Belgian postcard by Les Editions L.A.B., Bruxelles, no. 1032. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Boom Town (Jack Conway, 1940).

 

With her round apple-face, big eyes and charm, French-born Hollywood star Claudette Colbert (1903-1996) was the epitome of chic sophistication. Her comedies It Happened One Night (1934) - for which she won the Oscar, Midnight (1939) and The Palm Beach Story (1942) are among Hollywood's greatest ever. After more than 60 films, she returned with great success to the theatre, and was 84 years old when she won a Golden Globe for the TV mini-series The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987).

 

Claudette Colbert was born Emilie ‘Lily’ Claudette Chauchoin in 1903 in Saint-Mandé, an eastern suburb of Paris, where her father owned a bakery. Her parents were Georges Claude Chauchoin and Jeanne Marie née Loew. In 1906 her family emigrated to New York. Though she did some acting in college, her primary interest was fashion design. She studied fashion when she met the writer Anne Morrison at a party who offered the 20-year-old student a small role in her play The Wild Westcotts (1923) on Broadway. She started to use the stage name Claudette Colbert. After signing a five-year contract with the producer Al Woods, Colbert played ingénue roles on Broadway from 1925 through 1929. British actor Leslie Howard, with whom she had a brief relationship in 1924, encouraged her and persuaded his friend the producer Al Woods to put her under contract but, despite personally good notices, she did not get into a major hit until The Barker (1927) with Walter Huston and Norman Foster. In The Barker she played a duplicitous snake charmer. She and Foster, later a Hollywood actor and director, were married the following year during the play's London run. Their marriage remained a secret for many years while they lived in separate homes. In Los Angeles, Colbert shared a home with her mother Jeanne Chauchoin, but her domineering mother disliked Foster and did not allow him into their home. Colbert and Foster divorced in 1935 in Mexico. Colbert's first film, For the Love of Mike (Frank Capra, 1927), was made during The Barker's Broadway run. The silent film is now believed to be lost. She was concerned that silent cinema failed to utilise her melodious voice, one of her greatest assets. The advent of talkies changed her attitude, and in 1929 she signed a Paramount contract. Only two of her first 15 films - The Big Pond (Hobart Henley, 1930) and The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931), both co-starring Maurice Chevalier - were better than mediocre. Then Cecil B. De Mille asked her to play Nero (Charles Laughton)'s unscrupulous wife Poppaea in the Biblical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932). Her performance was acclaimed, while her bath in asses' milk received immense publicity and has become a famous scene in Hollywood history. Columbia offered her the role of a spoiled heiress in It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934). Colbert was initially reluctant to appear in the screwball comedy and demanded to be paid $50,000 - twice her usual pay - and that filming was to be completed within four weeks to allow her to take a planned vacation. Tom Valance at The Independent: “the role gave her the chance to work with Clark Gable, who had been forced by his studio, MGM, to do the film. Neither star initially expected much of the low-budget comedy which won five Oscars. Colbert was in fact boarding a train for New York on the night of the ceremony when she was stopped and rushed back to accept her Best Actress award from Shirley Temple.” The madcap comedy was a mega-hit all across the country. Two more big hits consolidated her status. She played the title role in the lavish but inaccurate Cleopatra (Cecil B. De Mille, 1934), then starred in Imitation of Life (John Stahl, 1934), a trenchant study of racial intolerance. It was based on Fannie Hurst's novel about a young widow who becomes a millionairess marketing the pancake recipe of her black friend (Louise Beavers). While the widow and her daughter move into society, the friend insists on keeping in the background, and when her light-skinned daughter, who faces exclusion and prejudice where her counterpart has privilege and opportunity, tries to pass for white and disowns her mother tragedy follows.

 

In 1935, Claudette Colbert was named one of the top 10 money-making stars, a position she was to hold again in 1936 and 1947. Fred MacMurray had his first major role in her next film, The Gilded Lily (Wesley Ruggles, 1935), and the two would go on to co-star in six more films. Charles Boyer, co-star of Colbert's next film, Private Worlds (Gregory La Cava, 1935), and not yet fully conversant with the English language, would also acknowledge the support he received from the actress, who won a second Oscar nomination for her performance as a psychiatrist in this grim story of mental illness. Wikipedia: “Colbert was a stickler for perfection regarding the way she appeared on screen. She believed that her face was difficult to light and photograph, and was obsessed with not showing the right side of her face to the camera, because of a small bump resulting from a childhood broken nose. She often refused to be filmed from the right side of her face, and this sometimes necessitated redesigning movie sets.” Colbert's first marriage ended in 1935 while she was making She Married Her Boss (Gregory La Cava, 1935). The same year she married Joel Pressman, a throat specialist and surgeon at UCLA, who remained her husband until his death in 1968. Colbert's role in Under Two Flags (Frank Lloyd, 1936), based on Ouida's tale of the Foreign Legion, was an unusual one for her, that of the tempestuous camp-follower "Cigarette" who sacrifices herself for love of a soldier (Ronald Colman). For the same director she starred in Maid of Salem (Frank Lloyd, 1937), an account of the 1692 witch-hunts in Massachusetts. Colbert never seemed entirely comfortable in period pieces, and both audiences and critics were happy when she returned to modern comedy with I Met Him In Paris (Wesley Ruggles, 1937) and Tovarich (Anatole Litvak, 1937), in which she and Charles Boyer were impoverished Russian nobility working as maid and butler in a Parisian household. Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch, 1938), with a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, based on a 1923 Gloria Swanson silent film, was a disappointment. After a promising start in which Colbert meets Gary Cooper in a Riviera store where she is trying to buy pyjama bottoms while he is trying to purchase just the tops, it becomes contrived and frantic rather than funny. Zaza (George Cukor, 1939), in which Colbert sang several songs as a French music-hall star, was another failure. Then followed one of her greatest films, the Cinderella-inspired screwball comedy Midnight (1939), directed by Mitchell Leisen and brilliantly written by Brackett and Wilder. Colbert next appeared with Henry Fonda in the Western Drums Along the Mohawk (John Ford, 1939), her first film in colour, as a farmer's wife coping with rugged conditions and hostile Indians. Boom Town (Jack Conway, 1940) was one of her most popular films, due to its star-power of Gable, Colbert, Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr.

 

Claudette Colbert cited as her own favourite film Arise My Love (Mitchell Leisen, 1940), set just after the Spanish Civil War. Tom Valance in The Independent: “it has some splendidly romantic, dramatic and comic moments as Colbert, playing a reporter, pretends to be the wife of a condemned soldier of fortune (Ray Milland) to save him from a Spanish firing squad, then inevitably falls in love with him. Brackett and Wilder's screenplay tried to keep pace with changing events in Europe (the story ends after the invasion of France) which resulted in some uneasy shifts of mood in an otherwise impressive work.” Better still was Henry King's warmly charming piece of Americana Remember The Day (Henry King, 1941), in which Colbert gave a glowing performance as a school teacher who while visiting a now-famous former pupil recalls the past and her sweetheart who was killed in the First World War. Preston Sturges' The Palm Beach Story (1942) is one of the screen's greatest screwball comedies and contains the sequence Colbert later cited as her favourite comic scene. Having left her husband to find a millionaire to finance his inventions, she is climbing into a train's upper berth when she steps on the face and glasses of a rich passenger (Rudy Vallee). During the Second World War Colbert's husband, Joel Pressman, became a navy lieutenant and she spent much time selling war bonds and working for the war effort. Two of her major films were effective wartime propaganda: So Proudly We Hail (Mark Sandrich, 1943), a tribute to the nurses in Bataan and Since You Went Away (John Cromwell, 1944), producer David O. Selznick's ambitious three-hour tribute to the families at home. Colbert considered hard before taking the role of the mother to two teenage girls, but it became one of her finest, most deeply felt performances, representing the women left to raise families while their husbands are at war. In one remarkably touching scene Colbert, who has taken a job at a munitions factory, converses with a refugee, now a naturalised American (Alla Nazimova). For the part, she received her third Academy Award nomination, but lost to Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. She appeared in such mild comedies as Practically Yours (Mitchell Leisen, 1944), and tepid dramas as Tomorrow is Forever (Irving Pichel, 1946) with Orson Welles. Colbert and Fred MacMurray had an enormous box-office hit with The Egg and I (Chester Erskine, 1947) as a city couple trying to run a farm, but the slapstick (lots of falling about in the mud) was far from the sophistication Colbert purveyed so expertly. Three Came Home (Jean Negulesco, 1950) gave her a strong dramatic role as Agnes Newton Keith, a true-life American authoress captured when the Japanese invaded Borneo in 1941. Her scenes with Sessue Hayakawa (as the cultured prison camp commander) were memorable in a gripping film which was too grim to be a major hit. Colbert had appeared on radio regularly throughout her career, and in 1951 she made her television debut on The Jack Benny Show. Other appearances included The Royal Family of Broadway (1954), The Guardsman (1955) and Blithe Spirit (1956), with Noel Coward and Lauren Bacall. In 1951 she also returned to the stage, with a tour of Noel Coward's Island Fling (later known as South Sea Bubble). She went to Britain to star with Jack Hawkins in The Planter's Wife (Ken Annakin, 1952) based on the native terrorism being faced by rubber planters. The film was a hit in Britain. The following year Colbert went to France to play a mistress of Louis XIV in Sacha Guitry's lavish Si Versailles m'etait conte/Royal Affairs in Versailles (1953). She returned to Broadway in 1955, replacing Margaret Sullavan in Janus, then in 1958 starred in a new play, Leslie Stevens's The Marriage- Go-Round. The play was a hit and Colbert won a Tony nomination. Her last film was Parrish (Delmer Daves, 1961), a soap opera in which Colbert played the mother of Troy Donahue. She continued to make Broadway appearances, among them The Irregular Verb To Love (1963), The Kingfisher (1978) and A Talent For Murder (1981), and she returned to the London stage in Frederick Lonsdale's Aren't We All? (1984) opposite Rex Harrison. For her television work in the mini-series The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (John Erman, 1987) she received a Golden Globe and a nomination for an Emmy Award. Claudette Colbert spent much of her time at the 200-year-old plantation house she and her husband had bought long ago in Barbados, and she also had a flat in Paris and an apartment on the East Side of New York. After three strokes, she died in Barbados in 1996 at the age of 92.

 

Tom Vallance in The Independent: “It is no accident, surely, that she flourished at that most European of studios, Paramount, home of Lubitsch and Chevalier, Mamoulian, Von Sternberg and Wilder. Her distinctive high-cheekboned beauty and the throaty individuality of her voice were complemented by superb comic timing and fine technical skill honed by an extensive apprenticeship in the theatre. She could be warmly compassionate in romantic drama but was unsurpassable in sophisticated comedy.”

 

Sources: Tom Vallance (The Independent), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

West-German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK-1014. Photo: Sam Lévin, Paris.

 

French actress, writer and director Cécile Aubry (1928-2010) was often seen as the predecessor of Brigitte Bardot as the French cinema's sex goddess. Her acting career was successful but brief: during the late 1940s through the mid-1950s. Later she started a second career as a writer of children’s books, which she also adapted for TV. The series with the boy Sebastien, played by her own son Mehdi, became a classic children’s series.

 

Cécile Aubry was born Anne-José Madeleine Henriette Bénard in Paris, France, in 1928. Her family was well-to-do, and Cécile had an English governess and a personal dance teacher. In her late teens, she studied acting at the Cours Simon, where she was discovered by famous film director Henri-Georges Clouzot. Clouzot fell immediately for her ingenuity, her green bronze eyes, her blond hair and her seductive pout. He offered the 20-year-old Aubry the title role in Manon (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1949), opposite Serge Reggiani and Michel Auclair. In this dark adaptation of Abbé Prévost's 18th-century novel Manon Lescaut, set in post-World War II, she played a capricious, luxury-seeking young woman who corrupts her lover. Aubry managed to bring out the duality of the character – both femme fatale and femme enfant. She was a sensation. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1949 and the 20-years-old Cécile landed on the cover of Life magazine. In the accompanying article, Life described her as a “frisky, pert, sugar-and-spice bundle of adolescence.” Ronald Bergan described in The Guardian what happened next: "in a blaze of typical Hollywood publicity, Cécile Aubry was signed up by 20th Century-Fox to co-star with Tyrone Power and Orson Welles in Henry Hathaway's The Black Rose. It was to be Aubry's only American film, placing her among several French actresses who had short-lived Hollywood careers after the liberation of France in 1944." In her next, European film, Barbe-bleu/Bluebeard (Christian Jacque, 1951) she played the last wife of Bluebeard, played in the French version by Pierre Brasseur and in the German version by Hans Albers. She performed a silhouetted striptease that left little to the imagination. In the following years, she only appeared in a few more films, including Piovuto dal cielo/Fallen From the Sky (Leonardo De Mitri, 1953) and Tanz in der Sonne/Dance in the Sun (Géza von Cziffra, 1954) with Franco Andrei.

 

Cécile Aubry stopped acting after her marriage to Si Brahim El Glaoui, caïd (local administrator) of Telouet and the oldest son of T'hami El Glaoui, pasha of Marrakech. During the filming of The Black Rose in the dunes of the Moroccan Atlas mountains, the couple had met when he visited the set. They married in secret because Aubry thought that a marriage would harm her Hollywood career. Their marriage lasted for six years. She announced her retirement from the cinema and reportedly said that she had only enjoyed film acting for its travel opportunities. Aubry started a second successful career as a writer of children’s books. Her son Mehdi El Glaoui (only credited as Mehdi) later played roles in the French TV series Poly (1961-1973) about a boy and his horse, and in the three series around Sébastien (1965-1970). These series were all written and directed by Aubry. The most popular of these series was Belle et Sébastien/Belle and Sebastian (1965), which tells the adventures of a young orphan boy, Sébastien, in a small village in the Pyrenees, and the large white dog, Belle, whom he finds wandering through the mountains. Aubrey's series was broadcasted all over Europe during the 1960s. Later she wrote and also directed the series Le jeune Fabre/The Young Fabre (1973), again with Mehdi in the lead, now as a teenager. Belle et Sébastien was adapted in 1981 for a Japanese animated series, Meiken Jolie, which was itself translated into English. The Scottish rock band Belle and Sebastian took its name from Aubry’s series too. In 2010, Cécile Aubry died of lung cancer in Dourdan, outside of Paris, at the age of 81. In 2013, Belle et Sébastien was filmed again, but this time for the cinema. In Belle et Sébastien/Belle and Sebastian (Nicolas Vanier, 2013), the six-year-old boy and his dog look to foil a Nazi effort to capture French Resistance fighters. Sébastien was played by Félix Bossuet and Mehdi El Glaoui played a supporting part.

 

Sources: Marlene Pilaete (L'encinémathèque - French), Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Bruce Weber (The New York Times), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

The Ruins of the Home of the Wholesale Slayer, Mrs.

Gunness, near Laporte, Ind.

 

Date: 1908

Source Type: Postcard

Publisher, Printer, Photographer: Schrader and Dennis (#1113)

Postmark: None

Collection: Steven R. Shook

Remark: Belle Gunness, often referred to as the Lady Bluebeard, is considered to be the first American female serial killer.

 

Born in 1858 in Selbu, Norway, Belle Gunness emigrated to America in the mid 1880s. Belle married Mads Sorenson in 1893, and together they operated a store in Chicago. The store burned down, and Mads and Belle collected insurance on the property. Mads Sorenson died in 1900, with Belle collecting approximately $8,000 through his life insurance policy.

 

On April 1, 1902, Belle married Peter Gunness in LaPorte, Indiana. Together, Peter and Belle owned and operated a small farm on McClung Road in LaPorte County. Belle again collected insurance on a husband when Peter died after a coffee grinder allegedly fell from a shelf hitting him on the head. Following Peter's death, Belle began advertising in Norwegian language newspapers in America for a husband.

 

Several suitors answered Belle's advertisements. However, many of these potential bridegrooms would suddenly leave in the night, leading Belle's 18 year old niece, Jenny Olson, to be suspicious as to their welfare. Jenny then mysteriously disappeared, though Belle told friends and neighbors that she had left for schooling in California.

 

The final man to respond to Belle's advertisement was Andrew Helgelein. Belle requested that Andrew sell his property and bring his money (about $3,000) to LaPorte, which he did in 1908. Andrew's brother, Asa Helgelein became suspicious when letters from Andrew ceased to arrive. Asa therefore traveled to LaPorte County to inquire about the welfare of his brother.

 

In the early morning of April 28, 1908, the Gunness farmhouse burned to the ground. The Gunness children were found in the ashes of the home, as well as the body of a headless woman. This headless body, however, was much smaller in size than the rotund stature of Belle's body. After sluicing through the ashes of the home, dental work reportedly to be Belle's was found. Asa Helgelein arrived several days after the fire, and at his urging, the LaPorte County Sheriff began to further investigate the fire and Belle's relations with out-of-town men. The investigation turned into a national sensation, as numerous bodies were soon found to be buried on Belle's farm..

 

The remains of Andrew Helgelein were the first to be found, buried in a shallow grave in the garden. Jenny Olson's body was soon discovered nearby. In all, at least twelve other bodies were recovered from the property. It has been estimated that Belle may have buried forty men on the farm.

 

Enormous crowds, numbering in the thousands, visited the farm during the investigation. Special trains from Chicago and Indianapolis, as well as from other towns and cities, brought curious onlookers to the farm. Picnics were common. A farm building was used as a temporary morgue, where onlookers could view the remains as they were recovered and put on display. Numerous postcards were produced and sold during and after the investigation.

 

Ray Lamphere, a farm hand of Belle's, was eventually charged with murder and arson. Though not convicted of murder, Lamphere was found guilty of arson and incarcerated in the nearby Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, where he died a few years later. While in prison, Lamphere maintained that Belle had escaped and insisted that her body was not found in the debris of the burnt house. Lamphere's statement led to numerous reported sightings of Belle Gunness across the United States for many years, none of which were ever confirmed.

 

Copyright 2014. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.

Back to basics today, I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who looked at the new top 40 gallery on my website yesterday and gave me feedback here on flickr or on facebook. I really appreciate the time you took to do so.

 

The title is from a song from the 80's, prizes for whoever remembers it without the use of google! (small print.... please note, there are no actual prizes :)

 

And if anyone can ID the flower, that would be fantastic, its flowering now in my garden, and the bees are going mental for it (hint at some of the bee shots to come)

 

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©2010 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved

This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.

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Links to my website, facebook and twitter can be found on my flickr profile

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Lots of bees buzzing around the Bluebeard (Caryopteris) bush. I also spotted a preying mantis on the Mexican Bird of Paradise. The Mexican Bird of Paradise is huge...about 10 feet tall! It has just about engulfed the Bluebeard bush. I had to do some major cutting back on it this week.

 

☆ Comments and Favorites are always appreciated. Enjoy

the photo but please do not copy or download © images.

Thank you!

German cigarette card by Ross Verlag in the 'Künstler im Film' series for Zigarettenfabrik Monopol, Dresden, Serie 1, image 162 (of 200). Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

 

American screen legend Gary Cooper (1901-1961) is well remembered for his stoic, understated acting style in more than one hundred Westerns, comedies and dramas. He received five Oscar nominations and won twice for his roles as Alvin York in Sergeant York (1941) and as Will Kane in High Noon (1952).

 

Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana in 1901. His parents were English immigrants, Alice Cooper-Brazier and Charles Henry Cooper, a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a state supreme court judge. Frank left school in 1918 and returned to the family ranch to help raise their five hundred head of cattle and work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for his son to complete his high school education at Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana. His English teacher, Ida W. Davis, played an important role in encouraging him to focus on academics, join the school's debating team, and become involved in dramatics. He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp for the rest of his life. In the fall of 1924, Cooper's parents moved to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives. Cooper joined them and there he met some cowboys from Montana who were working as film extras and stuntmen in low-budget Western films. Cooper decided to try his hand working as a film extra for five dollars a day, and as a stuntman for twice that amount. In early 1925, Cooper began his film career working as an extra and stuntman on Poverty Row in such silent Westerns as Riders of the Purple Sage (Lynn Reynolds, 1925) with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider (W.S. Van Dyke, 1925) with Buck Jones. Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Collins changed his first name to ‘Gary’ after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper also worked in non-Western films. He appeared as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925) with Rudolph Valentino, as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925) with Ramón Novarro, and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (Irving Cummings, 1926) with George O'Brien. Gradually he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, such as Tricks (Bruce M. Mitchell, 1925), in which he played the film's antagonist. As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios and in June 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions. His first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky. The film was a major success, and critics called Cooper a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Cooper signed a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 per week. In 1927, with help from established silent film star Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles opposite her in Children of Divorce (Frank Lloyd, 1927) and Wings (William A. Wellman, 1927), the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. He received a thousand fan letters per week. The studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies in films such as Beau Sabreur (John Waters, 1928) with Evelyn Brent, Half a Bride (Gregory La Cava, 1928) with Esther Ralston, and Lilac Time (George Fitzmaurice, 1928) with Colleen Moore. The latter introduced synchronised music and sound effects and became one of the biggest box office hits of the year.

 

In 1929, Gary Cooper became a major film star with his first sound picture, The Virginian, (Victor Fleming, 1929). The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honour and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western genre. The romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero that embodied male freedom, courage, and honour was created in large part by Cooper's performance in the film. Cooper transitioned naturally to the sound medium, with his deep, clear, and pleasantly drawling voice. One of the high points of Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her American debut. Cooper produced one of his finest performances to that point in his career. In the Dashiell Hammett crime drama City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) he played a misplaced cowboy in a big city who gets involved with gangsters to save the woman (Sylvia Sidney) he loves. After making ten films in two years Cooper was exhausted and had lost thirty pounds. In May 1931, he sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year. During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso who taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus in the finest restaurants, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. In 1932, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 per week, and director and script approval. He appeared opposite Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932), the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Critics praised his highly intense and at times emotional performance, and the film went on to become one of the year's most commercially successful films. The following year, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Design for Living (1933) with Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March and based loosely on the successful Noël Coward play. Wikipedia: “The film received mixed reviews and did not do well at the box office, but Cooper's performance was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy”. Then, he appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever (1934), with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. The film was a box-office success. His next two Henry Hathaway films were the melodrama Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Ann Harding, about a man, caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the romantic adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. The latter was nominated for six Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films.

 

Gary Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, an innocent, sweet-natured writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Oscar nomination. In the adventure film The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone, 1936) with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success. In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman (1936) with Jean Arthur—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly fictionalised version of the opening of the American western frontier. That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of the top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-two years. In Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. In the adventure film Beau Geste (William A. Wellman, 1939) with Ray Milland, he joined the French Foreign Legion to find adventure in the Sahara fighting local tribes. Wikipedia: “Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona.” Cooper cemented his cowboy credentials in The Westerner (William Wyler, 1940). He won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1942 for his performance as Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier from the Great War, in Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941). Cooper worked with Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943) which earned him his third Oscar nomination. The film was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway, with whom Cooper developed a strong friendship. On 23 October 1947, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, not under subpoena but responding to an invitation to give testimony on the alleged infiltration of Hollywood by communists. Although he never said he regretted having been a friendly witness, as an independent producer, he hired blacklisted actors and technicians. He did say he had never wanted to see anyone lose the right to work, regardless of what he had done. Cooper won his second Oscar for his performance as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), one of his finest roles and a kind of come-back after a series of flops. He continued to play the lead in films almost to the end of his life. His later box office hits included the influential Western Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) in which he guns down villain Burt Lancaster in a showdown, William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956), in which he portrays a Quaker farmer during the American Civil War, Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Audrey Hepburn, and the hard-edged action Western Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958), with Lee J. Cobb. Cooper's final film was the British-American co-production The Naked Edge (Michael Anderson, 1961). In April 1960, Cooper underwent surgery for prostate cancer after it had metastasized to his colon. But by the end of the year, the cancer had spread to his lungs and bones. On 13 May 1961, six days after his sixtieth birthday, Gary Cooper died. The young and handsome Cooper had affairs with Clara Bow, Lupe Velez, Marlene Dietrich, and Tallulah Bankhead. In 1933, he married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. They had an ‘open’ marriage and Cooper also had relationships with the actresses Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and Patricia Neal. Sir Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with him.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Compositionally Challenged Week 36/2016 SOOC with a Twist

Canon G7X Creative Shot "Special" mode which the camera takes 6 different shots choosing distinct and bold effects. I left one out of the collage.

Alfred Hitchcock - Witches' Brew

Dell Books 9613, 1965

Cover Artist: unknown

 

"A postgraduate curriculum in terror."

 

Contents:

Charles Mergendahl - Premonition

Avram Davidson - A Shot from the Dark Night

Talmadge Powell - I Had a Hunch, and...

Robert Bloch - A Killing in the Market

Richard Hardwick - Gone as by Magic

Borden Deal - The Big Bajoor

Nedra Tyre - The Gentle Miss Bluebeard

Philip Tremont - The Guy that Laughs Last

Wenzell Brown - Diet and Die

Richard Marsten - Just for Kicks

Henry Kane - Please Forgive Me

Hal Dresner - A Crime Worthy of Me

Jack Ritchie - When Buying a Fine Murder

 

West-German postcard by F.J. Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 277. Photo: Alcina / Ala / National. Cecile Aubry in Barbe-Bleue/Blaubart/Bluebeard (Christian-Jacque, 1951).

 

French actress, writer and director Cécile Aubry (1928-2010) was often seen as the predecessor of Brigitte Bardot as the French cinema's sex goddess. Her acting career was successful but brief: during the late 1940s through the mid-1950s. Later she started a second career as a writer of children’s books, which she also adapted for TV. The series with the boy Sebastien, played by her own son Mehdi, became a classic children’s series.

 

Cécile Aubry was born Anne-José Madeleine Henriette Bénard in Paris, France, in 1928. Her family was well-to-do, and Cécile had an English governess and a personal dance teacher. In her late teens, she studied acting at the Cours Simon, where she was discovered by famous film director Henri-Georges Clouzot. Clouzot fell immediately for her ingenuity, her green bronze eyes, her blond hair and her seductive pout. He offered the 20-year-old Aubry the title role in Manon (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1949), opposite Serge Reggiani and Michel Auclair. In this dark adaptation of Abbé Prévost's 18th-century novel Manon Lescaut, set in post-World War II, she played a capricious, luxury-seeking young woman who corrupts her lover. Aubry managed to bring out the duality of the character – both femme fatale and femme enfant. She was a sensation. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1949 and the 20-years-old Cécile landed on the cover of Life magazine. In the accompanying article, Life described her as a “frisky, pert, sugar-and-spice bundle of adolescence.” Ronald Bergan described in The Guardian what happened next: "in a blaze of typical Hollywood publicity, Cécile Aubry was signed up by 20th Century-Fox to co-star with Tyrone Power and Orson Welles in Henry Hathaway's The Black Rose. It was to be Aubry's only American film, placing her among several French actresses who had short-lived Hollywood careers after the liberation of France in 1944." In her next, European film, Barbe-bleu/Bluebeard (Christian Jacque, 1951) she played the last wife of Bluebeard, played in the French version by Pierre Brasseur and in the German version by Hans Albers. She performed a silhouetted striptease that left little to the imagination. In the following years, she only appeared in a few more films, including Piovuto dal cielo/Fallen From the Sky (Leonardo De Mitri, 1953) and Tanz in der Sonne/Dance in the Sun (Géza von Cziffra, 1954) with Franco Andrei.

 

Cécile Aubry stopped acting after her marriage to Si Brahim El Glaoui, caïd (local administrator) of Telouet and the oldest son of T'hami El Glaoui, pasha of Marrakech. During the filming of The Black Rose in the dunes of the Moroccan Atlas mountains, the couple had met when he visited the set. They married in secret because Aubry thought that a marriage would harm her Hollywood career. Their marriage lasted for six years. She announced her retirement from the cinema and reportedly said that she had only enjoyed film acting for its travel opportunities. Aubry started a second successful career as a writer of children’s books. Her son Mehdi El Glaoui (only credited as Mehdi) later played roles in the French TV series Poly (1961-1973) about a boy and his horse, and in the three series around Sébastien (1965-1970). These series were all written and directed by Aubry. The most popular of these series was Belle et Sébastien/Belle and Sebastian (1965), which tells the adventures of a young orphan boy, Sébastien, in a small village in the Pyrenees, and the large white dog, Belle, whom he finds wandering through the mountains. Aubrey's series was broadcasted all over Europe during the 1960s. Later she wrote and also directed the series Le jeune Fabre/The Young Fabre (1973), again with Mehdi in the lead, now as a teenager. Belle et Sébastien was adapted in 1981 for a Japanese animated series, Meiken Jolie, which was itself translated into English. The Scottish rock band Belle and Sebastian took its name from Aubry’s series too. In 2010, Cécile Aubry died of lung cancer in Dourdan, outside of Paris, at the age of 81. In 2013, Belle et Sébastien was filmed again, but this time for the cinema. In Belle et Sébastien/Belle and Sebastian (Nicolas Vanier, 2013), the six-year-old boy and his dog look to foil a Nazi effort to capture French Resistance fighters. Sébastien was played by Félix Bossuet and Mehdi El Glaoui played a supporting part.

 

Sources: Marlene Pilaete (L'encinémathèque - French), Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Bruce Weber (The New York Times), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

West-German postcard by F.J. Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 134. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Cecile Aubry in The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1950).

 

French actress, writer and director Cécile Aubry (1928-2010) was often seen as the predecessor of Brigitte Bardot as the French cinema's sex goddess. Her acting career was successful but brief: during the late 1940s through the mid-1950s. Later she started a second career as a writer of children’s books, which she also adapted for TV. The series with the boy Sebastien, played by her own son Mehdi, became a classic children’s series.

 

Cécile Aubry was born Anne-José Madeleine Henriette Bénard in Paris, France, in 1928. Her family was well-to-do, and Cécile had an English governess and a personal dance teacher. In her late teens, she studied acting at the Cours Simon, where she was discovered by famous film director Henri-Georges Clouzot. Clouzot fell immediately for her ingenuity, her green bronze eyes, her blond hair and her seductive pout. He offered the 20-year-old Aubry the title role in Manon (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1949), opposite Serge Reggiani and Michel Auclair. In this dark adaptation of the Abbé Prévost's 18th-century novel Manon Lescaut, set in post-World War II, she played a capricious, luxury-seeking young woman who corrupts her lover. Aubry managed to bring out the duality of the character – both femme fatale and femme enfant. She was a sensation. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1949 and the 20-years-old Cécile landed on the cover of Life magazine. In the accompanying article, Life described her as a “frisky, pert, sugar-and-spice bundle of adolescence.” Ronald Bergan described in The Guardian what happened next: "in a blaze of typical Hollywood publicity, Cécile Aubry was signed up by 20th Century-Fox to co-star with Tyrone Power and Orson Welles in Henry Hathaway's The Black Rose. It was to be Aubry's only American film, placing her among several French actresses who had short-lived Hollywood careers after the liberation of France in 1944." In her next, European film, Barbe-bleu/Bluebeard (Christian Jacque, 1951) she played the last wife of Bluebeard, played in the French version by Pierre Brasseur and in the German version by Hans Albers. She performed a silhouetted striptease that left little to the imagination. In the following years, she only appeared in a few more films, including Piovuto dal cielo/Fallen From the Sky (Leonardo De Mitri, 1953) and Tanz in der Sonne/Dance in the Sun (Géza von Cziffra, 1954) with Franco Andrei.

 

Cécile Aubry stopped acting after her marriage to Si Brahim El Glaoui, caïd (local administrator) of Telouet and the oldest son of T'hami El Glaoui, pasha of Marrakech. During the filming of The Black Rose in the dunes of the Moroccan Atlas mountains, the couple had met when he visited the set. They married in secret because Aubry thought that a marriage would harm her Hollywood career. Their marriage lasted for six years. She announced her retirement from the cinema and reportedly said that she had only enjoyed film acting for its travel opportunities. Aubry started a second successful career as a writer of children’s books. Her son Mehdi El Glaoui (only credited as Mehdi) later played roles in the French TV series Poly (1961-1973) about a boy and his horse, and in the three series around Sébastien (1965-1970). These series were all written and directed by Aubry. The most popular of these series was Belle et Sébastien/Belle and Sebastian (1965), which tells the adventures of a young orphan boy, Sébastien, in a small village in the Pyrenees, and the large white dog, Belle, whom he finds wandering through the mountains. Aubrey's series were broadcasted all over Europe during the 1960s. Later she wrote and also directed the series Le jeune Fabre/The Young Fabre (1973), again with Mehdi in the lead, now as a teenager. Belle et Sébastien was adapted in 1981 for a Japanese animated series, Meiken Jolie, which was itself translated into English. The Scottish rock band Belle and Sebastian took its name from Aubry’s series too. In 2010, Cécile Aubry died of lung cancer in Dourdan, outside of Paris, at the age of 81. In 2013, Belle et Sébastien was filmed again, but this time for the cinema. In Belle et Sébastien/Belle and Sebastian (Nicolas Vanier, 2013), the six-year-old boy and his dog look to foil a Nazi effort to capture French Resistance fighters. Sébastien was played by Félix Bossuet and Mehdi El Glaoui played a supporting part.

 

Sources: Marlene Pilaete (L'encinémathèque - French), Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Bruce Weber (The New York Times), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3395/1, 1928-1929.

 

Bebe Daniels (1901-1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer, and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress and later the love interest of Harold Lloyd in dozens of short comedies. Cecil B. de Mille made her a silent star and later she sang and danced in early musicals like Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In Great Britain, she gained further fame on stage, radio, and television. In her long career, Bebe Daniels appeared in 230 films.

 

Phyllis Virginia Daniels was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1901. Bebe was her childhood nickname. Her father was a theatre manager and her mother was the stage and silent film actress Phyllis Daniels. The family moved to Los Angeles, California in her childhood and she began her acting career at the age of four in the stage play The Squaw Man. That same year she also went on tour in a stage production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. The following year she participated in productions by Oliver Morosco and David Belasco. By the age of eight, Daniels made her film debut as the young heroine in A Common Enemy (Otis Turner, 1910). Then she starred as Dorothy Gale in the short The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner, 1910), the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company. It was later followed by the sequels Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910), The Land of Oz (1910), and John Dough and the Cherub (1910), all considered to be lost films. At the age of fourteen, Bebe was enlisted by studio head Hal Roach to pair her with very young and talented Harold Lloyd and also Snub Pollard in a series of two-reel comedies starting with Giving Them Fits (Hal Roach, 1915). At the time, Harold Lloyd was trying to ape Charlie Chaplin in his character, 'Lonesome Luke'. Roach made 80 short comedies featuring Harold as Luke with Bebe playing his love interest between 1915 and 1917, including Bughouse Bellhops (Hal Roach, 1915), Tinkering with Trouble (Hal Roach, 1915), and Ruses, Rhymes and Roughnecks (Hal Roach, 1915). Lloyd and the charming and spunky Daniels eventually became known as ‘The Boy and The Girl’ in such shorts as Bliss (Alfred J. Goulding, 1917), The Non-stop Kid (Gilbert Pratt, 1918), and Young Mr. Jazz (Hal Roach, 1919). Stephan Eichenberg at IMDb: “Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife.” After 200 shorts for Hal Roach Studios. Bebe decided to move to greater dramatic roles and accepted a contract from Cecil B. DeMille in 1919. He gave her secondary roles in such feature films as Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919) starring Gloria Swanson, Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille, 1921), with Wallace Reid.

 

In the 1920s, Bebe Daniels was under contract with Paramount Pictures and made the transition from child star to adult in Hollywood. The now lost comedy The Speed Girl (Maurice Campbell, 1921) was supposedly expanded into a screenplay from Daniels's real-life jail sentence of 10 days for multiple speeding tickets. The film poster shows her walking out of a jail cell. At the time the 20-year-old was already a veteran film actress. By 1924 Bebe was playing Rudolph Valentino’s love interest in the costume drama Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott, 1924). Paramount spared no expense on the film from the sets, costumes down to the musical soundtrack that accompanied it upon its release. Following this, she was cast in a number of light popular films, namely Miss Bluebeard (Frank Tuttle, 1925), The Manicure Girl (Frank Tuttle, 1925), and Wild Wild Susan (A. Edward Sutherland, 1925) with Rod LaRocque. Paramount dropped her contract with the advent of talking pictures. Daniels was hired by Radio Pictures (later known as RKO) to star opposite John Boles in one of their biggest productions of the year, the talkie Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929). Its finale was photographed in two-color Technicolor. The musical comedy, based on the 1927 stage musical produced by legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld, proved to be the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933). Daniels found herself a star and RCA Victor hired her to record several records for their catalog. Radio Pictures starred her in lavish musicals such as Dixiana (Luther Reed, 1930) and Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930). Toward the end of 1930, Bebe Daniels appeared opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the musical comedy Reaching for the Moon (Edmund Goulding, 1930). However, by this time musicals had gone out of fashion so that most of the musical numbers from the film had to be removed before it could be released. Daniels had become associated with musicals and so Radio Pictures did not renew her contract. Warner Bros. realized what a box office draw she was and offered her a contract which she accepted. During her years at Warner Bros., she starred in such pictures as the drama My Past (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931), and the pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon was a huge success for Warner and garnered rave reviews for Bebe and Cortez. In 1932, she appeared opposite Edward G. Robinson in Silver Dollar (Alfred E. Green, 1932) and the successful Busby Berkeley choreographed musical extravaganza 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) in which she played the star of a stage musical who breaks her ankle. The backstage musical was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. That same year Daniels played opposite John Barrymore in the enjoyable Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933). The film was another box office smash. Her last film for Warner Bros. was Registered Nurse (Robert Florey, 1934).

 

Bebe Daniels retired from Hollywood in 1935. She had been a working actress for 30 years. With her husband, film actor Ben Lyon, whom she had married in 1930, she moved to London. Daniels and Lyon had two children: daughter Barbara (1932) and a son Richard whom they adopted. In England, they had found a quiet place in the countryside to raise their family. They starred in the British comedy crime film Treachery on the High Seas (Emil E. Reinert, 1936) with Charles Farrell. They also wanted to go back to the theatre. A few years later, Daniels starred in the London production of Panama Hattie in the title role originated by Ethel Merman. The Lyons then did radio shows for the BBC. Most notably, they starred in the radio series Hi Gang!, continuing for decades and enjoying considerable popularity during World War II. Daniels wrote most of the dialogue for the Hi Gang radio show. There was also the spin-off film Hi Gang! (Marcel Varnel, 1941) in which they starred opposite Vic Oliver). The couple stayed in London , broadcasting even during the worst days of The Blitz of WWII. Ben signed up for the Royal Air Force while Bebe kept the home fires burning in between appearing in the occasional stage play. Following the war, Daniels was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry S Truman for war service. In 1945 she returned to Hollywood for a short time to work as a film producer for Hal Roach and Eagle-Lion Films. She returned to the UK in 1948 and lived there for the remainder of her life. Daniels, her husband, her son Richard and her daughter Barbara all starred in the radio sitcom Life With The Lyons (1951-1961), which later made the transition to two films and to television (1955-1960). Daniels’ final film The Lyons in Paris (Val Guest, 1955). Bebe Daniels suffered a severe stroke in 1963 and withdrew from public life. She suffered a second stroke in late 1970. In 1971, Daniels died of a cerebral hemorrhage in London at the age of 70. Her ashes would eventually be interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood California. Upon his death in 1979, Ben Lyon's remains were interred next to Daniels'.

 

Sources: Stephan Eichenberg (IMDb), Page (My Love of Old Hollywood), Shawn Dwyer (TCM), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6498/1, 1931-1932. Photo: First National Pictures. Publicity still for Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931).

 

Bebe Daniels (1901-1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress and later a the love interest of Harold Lloyd in dozens of short comedies. Cecil B. de Mille made her a silent star and later she sang and danced in early musicals like Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In Great Britain, she gained further fame on stage, radio and television. In her long career, Bebe Daniels appeared in 230 films.

 

Phyllis Virginia Daniels was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1901. Bebe was her childhood nickname. Her father was a theatre manager and her mother was stage and silent film actress Phyllis Daniels. The family moved to Los Angeles, California in her childhood and she began her acting career at the age of four in the stage play The Squaw Man. That same year she also went on tour in a stage production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. The following year she participated in productions by Oliver Morosco and David Belasco. By the age of eight Daniels made her film debut as the young heroine in A Common Enemy (Otis Turner, 1910). Then she starred as Dorothy Gale in the short The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner, 1910), the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company. It was later followed by the sequels Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910), The Land of Oz (1910) and John Dough and the Cherub (1910), all considered to be lost films. At the age of fourteen Bebe was enlisted by studio head Hal Roach to pair her with very young and talented Harold Lloyd and also Snub Pollard in a series of two-reel comedies starting with Giving Them Fits (Hal Roach, 1915). At the time, Harold Lloyd was trying to ape Charlie Chaplin in his character, 'Lonesome Luke'. Roach made 80 short comedies featuring Harold as Luke with Bebe playing his love interest between 1915 and 1917, including Bughouse Bellhops (Hal Roach, 1915), Tinkering with Trouble (Hal Roach, 1915) and Ruses, Rhymes and Roughnecks (Hal Roach, 1915). Lloyd and the charming and spunky Daniels eventually became known as ‘The Boy and The Girl’ in such shorts as Bliss (Alfred J. Goulding, 1917), The Non-stop Kid (Gilbert Pratt, 1918) and Young Mr. Jazz (Hal Roach, 1919). Stephan Eichenberg at IMDb: “Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife.” After 200 shorts for Hal Roach Studios. Bebe decided to move to greater dramatic roles and accepted a contract from Cecil B. DeMille in 1919. He gave her secondary roles in such feature films as Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919) starring Gloria Swanson,, Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille, 1921), with Wallace Reid.

 

In the 1920s, Bebe Daniels was under contract with Paramount Pictures, and made the transition from child star to adult in Hollywood. The now lost comedy The Speed Girl (Maurice Campbell, 1921) was supposedly expanded into a screenplay from Daniels's real life jail sentence of 10 days for multiple speeding tickets. The film poster shows her walking out of a jail cell. At the time the 20-year-old was already a veteran film actress. By 1924 Bebe was playing Rudolph Valentino’s love interest in the costume drama Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott, 1924). Paramount spared no expense on the film from the sets, costumes down to the musical soundtrack that accompanied it upon it's release. Following this she was cast in a number of light popular films, namely Miss Bluebeard (Frank Tuttle, 1925), The Manicure Girl (Frank Tuttle, 1925), and Wild Wild Susan (A. Edward Sutherland, 1925) with Rod LaRocque. Paramount dropped her contract with the advent of talking pictures. Daniels was hired by Radio Pictures (later known as RKO) to star opposite John Boles in one of their biggest productions of the year, the talkie Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929). Its finale was photographed in two-color Technicolor. The musical comedy, based on the 1927 stage musical produced by legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld, proved to be the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933). Daniels found herself a star and RCA Victor hired her to record several records for their catalogue. Radio Pictures starred her in lavish musicals such as Dixiana (Luther Reed, 1930) and Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930). Toward the end of 1930, Bebe Daniels appeared opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the musical comedy Reaching for the Moon (Edmund Goulding, 1930). However, by this time musicals had gone out of fashion so that most of the musical numbers from the film had to be removed before it could be released. Daniels had become associated with musicals and so Radio Pictures did not renew her contract. Warner Bros. realized what a box office draw she was and offered her a contract which she accepted. During her years at Warner Bros. she starred in such pictures as the drama My Past (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931) and the pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon was a huge success for Warner and garnered rave reviews for Bebe and Cortez. In 1932, she appeared opposite Edward G. Robinson in Silver Dollar (Alfred E. Green, 1932) and the successful Busby Berkeley choreographed musical extravaganza 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) in which she played the star of a stage musical who breaks her ankle. The backstage musical was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. That same year Daniels played opposite John Barrymore in the enjoyable Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933). The film was another box office smash. Her last film for Warner Bros. was Registered Nurse (Robert Florey, 1934).

 

Bebe Daniels retired from Hollywood in 1935. She had been a working actress for 30 years. With her husband, film actor Ben Lyon, whom she had married in 1930, she moved to London. Daniels and Lyon had two children: daughter Barbara (1932) and a son Richard whom they adopted. In England, they had found a quiet place in the countryside to raise their family. They starred in the British comedy crime film Treachery on the High Seas (Emil E. Reinert, 1936) with Charles Farrell. They also wanted to go back to the theatre. A few years later, Daniels starred in the London production of Panama Hattie in the title role originated by Ethel Merman. The Lyons then did radio shows for the BBC. Most notably, they starred in the radio series Hi Gang!, continuing for decades and enjoying considerable popularity during World War II. Daniels wrote most of the dialogue for the Hi Gang radio show. There was also the spin-off film Hi Gang! (Marcel Varnel, 1941) in which they starred opposite Vic Oliver). The couple stayed in London , broadcasting even during the worst days of The Blitz of WWII. Ben signed up for the Royal Air Force while Bebe kept the home fires burning in between appearing in the occasional stage play. Following the war, Daniels was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry S Truman for war service. In 1945 she returned to Hollywood for a short time to work as a film producer for Hal Roach and Eagle-Lion Films. She returned to the UK in 1948 and lived there for the remainder of her life. Daniels, her husband, her son Richard and her daughter Barbara all starred in the radio sitcom Life With The Lyons (1951-1961), which later made the transition to two films and to television (1955-1960). Daniels’ final film The Lyons in Paris (Val Guest, 1955). Bebe Daniels suffered a severe stroke in 1963 and withdrew from public life. She suffered a second stroke in late 1970. In 1971, Daniels died of a cerebral hemorrhage in London at the age of 70. Her ashes would eventually be interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood California. Upon his death in 1979, Ben Lyon's remains were interred next to Daniels'.

 

Sources: Stephan Eichenberg (IMDb), Page (My Love of Old Hollywood), Shawn Dwyer (TCM), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5158/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Radio Pictures (RKO). Lloyd Hughes and Bebe Daniels in Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930).

 

Bebe Daniels (1901-1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress and later a the love interest of Harold Lloyd in dozens of short comedies. Cecil B. de Mille made her a silent star and later she sang and danced in early musicals like Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In Great Britain, she gained further fame on stage, radio and television. In her long career, Bebe Daniels appeared in 230 films.

 

Phyllis Virginia Daniels was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1901. Bebe was her childhood nickname. Her father was a theatre manager and her mother was stage and silent film actress Phyllis Daniels. The family moved to Los Angeles, California in her childhood and she began her acting career at the age of four in the stage play The Squaw Man. That same year she also went on tour in a stage production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. The following year she participated in productions by Oliver Morosco and David Belasco. By the age of eight Daniels made her film debut as the young heroine in A Common Enemy (Otis Turner, 1910). Then she starred as Dorothy Gale in the short The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner, 1910), the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company. It was later followed by the sequels Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910), The Land of Oz (1910) and John Dough and the Cherub (1910), all considered to be lost films. At the age of fourteen Bebe was enlisted by studio head Hal Roach to pair her with very young and talented Harold Lloyd and also Snub Pollard in a series of two-reel comedies starting with Giving Them Fits (Hal Roach, 1915). At the time, Harold Lloyd was trying to ape Charlie Chaplin in his character, 'Lonesome Luke'. Roach made 80 short comedies featuring Harold as Luke with Bebe playing his love interest between 1915 and 1917, including Bughouse Bellhops (Hal Roach, 1915), Tinkering with Trouble (Hal Roach, 1915) and Ruses, Rhymes and Roughnecks (Hal Roach, 1915). Lloyd and the charming and spunky Daniels eventually became known as ‘The Boy and The Girl’ in such shorts as Bliss (Alfred J. Goulding, 1917), The Non-stop Kid (Gilbert Pratt, 1918) and Young Mr. Jazz (Hal Roach, 1919). Stephan Eichenberg at IMDb: “Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife.” After 200 shorts for Hal Roach Studios. Bebe decided to move to greater dramatic roles and accepted a contract from Cecil B. DeMille in 1919. He gave her secondary roles in such feature films as Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919) starring Gloria Swanson,, Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille, 1921), with Wallace Reid.

 

In the 1920s, Bebe Daniels was under contract with Paramount Pictures, and made the transition from child star to adult in Hollywood. The now lost comedy The Speed Girl (Maurice Campbell, 1921) was supposedly expanded into a screenplay from Daniels's real life jail sentence of 10 days for multiple speeding tickets. The film poster shows her walking out of a jail cell. At the time the 20-year-old was already a veteran film actress. By 1924 Bebe was playing Rudolph Valentino’s love interest in the costume drama Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott, 1924). Paramount spared no expense on the film from the sets, costumes down to the musical soundtrack that accompanied it upon it's release. Following this she was cast in a number of light popular films, namely Miss Bluebeard (Frank Tuttle, 1925), The Manicure Girl (Frank Tuttle, 1925), and Wild Wild Susan (A. Edward Sutherland, 1925) with Rod LaRocque. Paramount dropped her contract with the advent of talking pictures. Daniels was hired by Radio Pictures (later known as RKO) to star opposite John Boles in one of their biggest productions of the year, the talkie Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929). Its finale was photographed in two-color Technicolor. The musical comedy, based on the 1927 stage musical produced by legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld, proved to be the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933). Daniels found herself a star and RCA Victor hired her to record several records for their catalogue. Radio Pictures starred her in lavish musicals such as Dixiana (Luther Reed, 1930) and Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930).

 

Toward the end of 1930, Bebe Daniels appeared opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the musical comedy Reaching for the Moon (Edmund Goulding, 1930). However, by this time musicals had gone out of fashion so that most of the musical numbers from the film had to be removed before it could be released. Daniels had become associated with musicals and so Radio Pictures did not renew her contract. Warner Bros. realized what a box office draw she was and offered her a contract which she accepted. During her years at Warner Bros. she starred in such pictures as the drama My Past (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931) and the pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon was a huge success for Warner and garnered rave reviews for Bebe and Cortez. In 1932, she appeared opposite Edward G. Robinson in Silver Dollar (Alfred E. Green, 1932) and the successful Busby Berkeley choreographed musical extravaganza 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) in which she played the star of a stage musical who breaks her ankle. The backstage musical was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. That same year Daniels played opposite John Barrymore in the enjoyable Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933). The film was another box office smash. Her last film for Warner Bros. was Registered Nurse (Robert Florey, 1934).

 

Bebe Daniels retired from Hollywood in 1935. She had been a working actress for 30 years. With her husband, film actor Ben Lyon, whom she had married in 1930, she moved to London. Daniels and Lyon had two children: daughter Barbara (1932) and a son Richard whom they adopted. In England, they had found a quiet place in the countryside to raise their family. They starred in the British comedy crime film Treachery on the High Seas (Emil E. Reinert, 1936) with Charles Farrell. They also wanted to go back to the theatre. A few years later, Daniels starred in the London production of Panama Hattie in the title role originated by Ethel Merman. The Lyons then did radio shows for the BBC. Most notably, they starred in the radio series Hi Gang!, continuing for decades and enjoying considerable popularity during World War II. Daniels wrote most of the dialogue for the Hi Gang radio show. There was also the spin-off film Hi Gang! (Marcel Varnel, 1941) in which they starred opposite Vic Oliver). The couple stayed in London , broadcasting even during the worst days of The Blitz of WWII. Ben signed up for the Royal Air Force while Bebe kept the home fires burning in between appearing in the occasional stage play. Following the war, Daniels was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry S Truman for war service. In 1945 she returned to Hollywood for a short time to work as a film producer for Hal Roach and Eagle-Lion Films. She returned to the UK in 1948 and lived there for the remainder of her life. Daniels, her husband, her son Richard and her daughter Barbara all starred in the radio sitcom Life With The Lyons (1951-1961), which later made the transition to two films and to television (1955-1960). Daniels’ final film The Lyons in Paris (Val Guest, 1955). Bebe Daniels suffered a severe stroke in 1963 and withdrew from public life. She suffered a second stroke in late 1970. In 1971, Daniels died of a cerebral hemorrhage in London at the age of 70. Her ashes would eventually be interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood California. Upon his death in 1979, Ben Lyon's remains were interred next to Daniels'.

 

Sources: Stephan Eichenberg (IMDb), Page (My Love of Old Hollywood), Shawn Dwyer (TCM), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

The Granary Morgue. Visitors Viewing the Bodies at the

Mrs. Gunness Farm, Near Laporte, Ind.

 

Date: 1908

Source Type: Postcard

Publisher, Printer, Photographer: Unknown

Postmark: May 23, 1908, LaPorte, Indiana

Collection: Steven R. Shook

Remark: This structure served as the granary on the Belle Gunness farm just north of LaPorte, LaPorte County, Indiana. It was used as a temporary morgue while bodies were recovered and disinterred from the property in 1908. A message on the reverse of this postcard states: "This is the place the bodies was helt [held] in."

 

Belle Gunness, often referred to as the Lady Bluebeard, is considered to be the first American female serial killer.

 

Born in 1858 in Selbu, Norway, Belle Gunness emigrated to America in the mid 1880s. Belle married Mads Sorenson in 1893, and together they operated a store in Chicago. The store burned down, and Mads and Belle collected insurance on the property. Mads Sorenson died in 1900, with Belle collecting approximately $8,000 through his life insurance policy.

 

On April 1, 1902, Belle married Peter Gunness in LaPorte, Indiana. Together, Peter and Belle owned and operated a small farm on McClung Road in LaPorte County. Belle again collected insurance on a husband when Peter died after a coffee grinder allegedly fell from a shelf hitting him on the head. Following Peter's death, Belle began advertising in Norwegian language newspapers in America for a husband.

 

Several suitors answered Belle's advertisements. However, many of these potential bridegrooms would suddenly leave in the night, leading Belle's 18 year old niece, Jenny Olson, to be suspicious as to their welfare. Jenny then mysteriously disappeared, though Belle told friends and neighbors that she had left for schooling in California.

 

The final man to respond to Belle's advertisement was Andrew Helgelein. Belle requested that Andrew sell his property and bring his money (about $3,000) to LaPorte, which he did in 1908. Andrew's brother, Asa Helgelein became suspicious when letters from Andrew ceased to arrive. Asa therefore traveled to LaPorte County to inquire about the welfare of his brother.

 

In the early morning of April 28, 1908, the Gunness farmhouse burned to the ground. The Gunness children were found in the ashes of the home, as well as the body of a headless woman. This headless body, however, was much smaller in size than the rotund stature of Belle's body. After sluicing through the ashes of the home, dental work reportedly to be Belle's was found. Asa Helgelein arrived several days after the fire, and at his urging, the LaPorte County Sheriff began to further investigate the fire and Belle's relations with out-of-town men. The investigation turned into a national sensation, as numerous bodies were soon found to be buried on Belle's farm..

 

The remains of Andrew Helgelein were the first to be found, buried in a shallow grave in the garden. Jenny Olson's body was soon discovered nearby. In all, at least twelve other bodies were recovered from the property. It has been estimated that Belle may have buried forty men on the farm.

 

Enormous crowds, numbering in the thousands, visited the farm during the investigation. Special trains from Chicago and Indianapolis, as well as from other towns and cities, brought curious onlookers to the farm. Picnics were common. A farm building was used as a temporary morgue, where onlookers could view the remains as they were recovered and put on display. Numerous postcards were produced and sold during and after the investigation.

 

Ray Lamphere, a farm hand of Belle's, was eventually charged with murder and arson. Though not convicted of murder, Lamphere was found guilty of arson and incarcerated in the nearby Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, where he died a few years later. While in prison, Lamphere maintained that Belle had escaped and insisted that her body was not found in the debris of the burnt house. Lamphere's statement led to numerous reported sightings of Belle Gunness across the United States for many years, none of which were ever confirmed.

 

Copyright 2023. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.

The Cooper Touch from the CineManArt series by ArtGraeco

 

Claudette Colbert’s spanking by Gary Cooper in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), reframed in the CineManArt series by ArtGraeco

In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Gary Cooper realizes that his relationship with his rebellious wife, Claudette Colbert, has many similarities with the plot in Taming of the Shrew. After exchanging slaps with his wife, he consults the book and tries something different: he puts his wife on his lap and starts spanking her, invoking Shakespeare!

Hollywood has used spanking routinely as a way to tame a rebellious woman. Studios reinforced the idea that spankings (retrograde, maligned, or erotic), were a healthy part of a woman's life.

 

CineManArt is a series of photomontages, collages and digital art by ArtGraeco that recast characters of mainstream movies, change scenarios and subvert plots. These up-stagings add new dimensions – some solemn, others playful – to the stereotypes, the intolerance and homophobia cinema portrayed for over 100 years of filmmaking.

The CineManArt series by Artgraeco depicts what cinema could be and could have been more of: open, daring, defiant, fair, inclusive.

 

0422-133-22

 

Located along the gently flowing Tom's Run outside of Moundsville is White Gate Cemetery, resting place for many of West Virginia's unwanted. Metal signs that read the deceased name, department of corrections number, date of birth, and date of death. Whitegate Cemetery is where some of the 94 executed prisoners of West Virginia Penitentiary, some murdered, some suicide, many from natural causes were laid to rest. If a prisoner's body was left unclaimed by family they were brought here and forgotten. Several of West Virginia's most notorious criminals are buried at White Gate cemetery, including William Griffith, Frank Hyer, Bud Peterson, and Harry Powers who gained national attention as the Bluebeard of Quiet Dell. Powers is suspected of murdering 55 women before he was caught in 1931, he was hanged on March 18, 1932 and was buried at White Gate Cemetery.

Blue-bearded bee-eater (Nyctyornis athertoni)

June 21 My third and final iris to bloom. I can't believe how beautiful these are. This is a real 'perriwinkle blue' shade. I just noticed that it has a blue 'beard' as well.

 

  

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard that was printed by Balding & Mansell Ltd. on behalf of the National Portrait Gallery.

 

Beatrix Potter

 

Helen Beatrix Potter (28th. July 1866 - 22nd. December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist. She was best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit'.

 

Born into an upper-middle-class household, Potter was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. She had numerous pets, and spent holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, developing a love of landscape, flora and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted.

 

Potter's study and watercolours of fungi led to her being widely respected in the field of mycology.

 

In her thirties, Potter self-published the highly successful children's book 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit'. Following this, Potter began writing and illustrating children's books full-time.

 

Beatrix wrote thirty books, the best known being her twenty-three children's tales. With the proceeds from the books and a legacy from an aunt, Potter bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in 1905; this is a village in the Lake District in the historic county of Lancashire. (The neighbouring village is called Far Sawrey). Over the following decades, Beatrix purchased additional farms to preserve the unique hill country landscape.

 

In 1913, at the age of 47, Beatrix married William Heelis, a respected local solicitor from Hawkshead.

 

Beatrix was also a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep, and a prosperous farmer keenly interested in land preservation. She continued to write and illustrate, and to design spin-off merchandise based on her children's books for British publisher Warne until the duties of land management and her diminishing eyesight made it difficult for her to continue.

 

Beatrix Potter died of pneumonia and heart disease on the 22nd. December 1943 at her home at the age of 77, leaving almost all her property to the National Trust. She is credited with preserving much of the land that now constitutes the Lake District National Park.

 

Potter's books continue to sell throughout the world in many languages, with her stories being re-told in songs, films, ballet, and animations, and her life is depicted in two films and a television series.

 

Beatrix Potter - The Early Years

 

Potter's family on both sides were from the Manchester area. They were English Unitarians, associated with dissenting Protestant congregations that were influential in 19th. century England. They affirmed the oneness of God, and rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.

 

Beatrix's paternal grandfather, Edmund Potter, from Glossop in Derbyshire, owned what was then the largest calico printing works in England, and later served as a Member of Parliament.

 

Potter's father, Rupert William Potter (1832–1914), was educated at Manchester College by the Unitarian philosopher James Martineau. He then trained as a barrister in London.

 

Rupert practised law, specialising in equity law and conveyancing. He married Helen Leech (1839–1932) on the 8th. August 1863 at Hyde Unitarian Chapel, Gee Cross. Helen was the daughter of Jane Ashton (1806–1884) and John Leech, a wealthy cotton merchant and shipbuilder from Stalybridge.

 

Helen's first cousins were siblings Harriet Lupton (née Ashton) and Thomas Ashton, 1st Baron Ashton of Hyde. It was reported in July 2014 that Potter had personally given a number of her own original hand-painted illustrations to the two daughters of Arthur and Harriet Lupton, who were cousins to both Beatrix Potter and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.

 

Potter's parents lived comfortably at 2 Bolton Gardens, West Brompton, where Helen Beatrix was born on the 28th. July 1866; her younger brother Walter Bertram was born there on the 14th. March 1872.

 

The house was destroyed in the Blitz. Bousfield Primary School now stands where the house once was. A blue plaque on the school building testifies to the former site of the Potter home.

 

Both of Beatrix's parents were artistically talented, and Rupert was an adept amateur photographer. Rupert had invested in the stock market, and by the early 1890's, he was extremely wealthy.

 

Beatrix Potter was educated by three governesses, the last of whom was Annie Moore (née Carter), just three years older than Potter, who tutored Potter in German as well as acting as lady's companion. She and Potter remained friends throughout their lives, and Annie's eight children were the recipients of many of Potter's picture letters. It was Annie who later suggested that these letters might make good children's books.

 

Beatrix and her younger brother Walter Bertram, who died in 1918, grew up with few friends outside their large extended family. Her parents were artistic, interested in nature, and enjoyed the countryside.

 

As children, Beatrix and Bertram had numerous small animals as pets which they observed closely and drew endlessly. In their schoolroom, they kept a variety of small pets - mice, rabbits, a hedgehog and some bats, along with collections of butterflies and other insects - which they drew and studied.

 

Potter was devoted to the care of her small animals, often taking them with her on long holidays. In most of the first fifteen years of her life, Potter spent summer holidays at Dalguise, an estate on the River Tay in Perthshire, Scotland. There she sketched and explored an area that nourished her imagination and her observation.

 

Potter and her brother were allowed great freedom in the country, and both children became adept students of natural history. In 1882, when Dalguise was no longer available, the Potters took their first summer holiday in the Lake District, at Wray Castle near Lake Windermere. Here Potter met Hardwicke Rawnsley, vicar of Wray and later the founding secretary of the National Trust, whose interest in the countryside and country life inspired the same in Potter, and who was to have a lasting impact on her life.

 

At about the age of 14, Potter began to keep a diary. It was written in a code of her own devising which was a simple letter for letter substitution. Her Journal was important to the development of her creativity, serving as both sketchbook and literary experiment: in tiny handwriting, she reported on society, recorded her impressions of art and artists, recounted stories, and observed life around her.

 

The Journal, decoded and transcribed by Leslie Linder in 1958, does not provide an intimate record of her personal life, but it is an invaluable source for understanding a vibrant part of British society in the late 19th. century. It describes Potter's maturing artistic and intellectual interests, her often amusing insights on the places she visited, and her unusual ability to observe nature and to describe it.

 

Started in 1881, her journal ends in 1897 when her artistic and intellectual energies were absorbed in scientific study and in efforts to publish her drawings. Precocious but reserved and often bored, she was searching for more independent activities, and wished to earn some money of her own while dutifully taking care of her parents, dealing with her especially demanding mother, and managing their various households.

 

Scientific Illustrations and Work in Mycology

 

Beatrix Potter's parents did not discourage higher education. As was common in the Victorian era, women of her class were privately educated, and rarely went to university.

 

Beatrix was interested in every branch of natural science save for astronomy. Botany was a passion for most Victorians, and nature study was a popular enthusiasm. She collected fossils, studied archaeological artefacts from London excavations, and was interested in entomology.

 

In all these areas, she drew and painted her specimens with increasing skill. By the 1890's, her scientific interests centred on mycology. First drawn to fungi because of their colours and evanescence in nature and her delight in painting them, her interest deepened after meeting Charles McIntosh, a revered naturalist and amateur mycologist, during a summer holiday in Dunkeld in Perthshire in 1892.

 

McIntosh helped to improve the accuracy of her illustrations, taught her taxonomy, and supplied her with live specimens to paint during the winter. Curious as to how fungi reproduced, Potter began microscopic drawings of fungus spores (the agarics) and in 1895 developed a theory of their germination.

 

Through the connections of her uncle Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, a chemist and vice-chancellor of the University of London, she consulted with botanists at Kew Gardens, convincing George Massee of her ability to germinate spores and her theory of hybridisation.

 

She did not believe in the theory of symbiosis proposed by Simon Schwendener, the German mycologist, as previously thought; instead, she proposed a more independent process of reproduction.

 

Rebuffed by William Thiselton-Dyer, the Director at Kew, because of her gender and amateur status, Potter wrote up her conclusions and submitted a paper, 'On the Germination of the Spores of the Agaricineae', to the Linnean Society in 1897.

 

The paper was introduced by Massee because, as a female, Potter could not attend proceedings or read her paper herself. She subsequently withdrew it, realising that some of her samples were contaminated, but continued her microscopic studies for several more years.

 

Beatrix's paper has only recently been re-discovered, along with the rich, artistic illustrations and drawings that accompanied it. Her work is only now being properly evaluated.

 

Potter later gave her other mycological and scientific drawings to the Armitt Museum and Library in Ambleside, where mycologists still refer to them to identify fungi. There is also a collection of her fungus paintings at the Perth Museum and Art Gallery in Perth, Scotland, donated by Charles McIntosh.

 

In 1967, the mycologist W.P.K. Findlay included many of Potter's beautifully accurate fungus drawings in his Wayside & Woodland Fungi, thereby fulfilling her desire to one day have her fungus drawings published in a book. In 1997, the Linnean Society issued a posthumous apology to Potter for the sexism displayed in its handling of her research.

 

Beatrix Potter's Artistic and Literary Career

 

Beatrix Potter's artistic and literary interests were deeply influenced by fairy tales and fantasy. She was a student of the classic fairy tales of Western Europe. As well as stories from the Old Testament, John Bunyan's 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', she grew up with Aesop's Fables, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Kingsley's 'The Water Babies', the folk tales and mythology of Scotland, the German Romantics, Shakespeare, and the romances of Sir Walter Scott.

 

As a young child, before the age of eight, Edward Lear's 'A Book of Nonsense', including the much loved 'The Owl and the Pussycat', and Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' had made their impression, although she later said of Alice that she was more interested in Tenniel's illustrations than what they were about.

 

The Brer Rabbit stories of Joel Chandler Harris had been family favourites, and she later studied his Uncle Remus stories and illustrated them.

 

Beatrix studied book illustration from a young age and developed her own tastes, but the work of the picture book triumvirate Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott, the last an illustrator whose work was later collected by her father, was a great influence.

 

When Beatrix started to illustrate, she chose first the traditional rhymes and stories, 'Cinderella', 'Sleeping Beauty', 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves', 'Puss-in-Boots', and 'Red Riding Hood'. However, most often her illustrations were fantasies featuring her own pets: mice, rabbits, kittens, and guinea pigs.

 

In her teenage years, Potter was a regular visitor to the art galleries of London, particularly enjoying the summer and winter exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London. Her Journal reveals her growing sophistication as a critic as well as the influence of her father's friend, the artist Sir John Everett Millais, who recognised Potter's talent of observation. Although Beatrix was aware of art and artistic trends, her drawing and her prose style were uniquely her own.

 

As a way to earn money in the 1890's, Potter and her brother began to print Christmas cards of their own design, as well as cards for special occasions. Mice and rabbits were the most frequent subject of her fantasy paintings.

 

In 1890, the firm of Hildesheimer and Faulkner bought several of the drawings of her rabbit Benjamin Bunny to illustrate verses by Frederic Weatherly entitled 'A Happy Pair'.

 

In 1893, the same publisher bought several more drawings for Weatherly's 'Our Dear Relations', another book of rhymes, and the following year Potter sold a series of frog illustrations and verses for 'Changing Pictures', a popular annual offered by the art publisher Ernest Nister. Potter was pleased by this success, and determined to publish her own illustrated stories.

 

Whenever Beatrix went on holiday to the Lake District or Scotland, she sent letters to young friends, illustrating them with quick sketches. Many of these letters were written to the children of her former governess Annie Carter Moore, particularly to Moore's eldest son Noel, who was often ill.

 

In September 1893, Potter was on holiday at Eastwood in Dunkeld, Perthshire. She had run out of things to say to Noel, and so she told him a story about "Four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter". It became one of the most famous children's letters ever written, and the basis of Potter's future career as a writer-artist-storyteller.

 

In 1900, Potter revised her tale about the four little rabbits, and fashioned it into a dummy book - it has been suggested, in imitation of Helen Bannerman's 1899 bestseller 'The Story of Little Black Sambo'.

 

Unable to find a buyer for the work, she published it for family and friends at her own expense in December 1901. It was drawn in black and white with a coloured frontispiece.

 

Rawnsley had great faith in Potter's tale, recast it in didactic verse, and made the rounds of the London publishing houses. Frederick Warne & Co. had previously rejected the tale but, eager to compete in the booming small format children's book market, reconsidered and accepted the 'Bunny Book' (as the firm called it) following the recommendation of their prominent children's book artist L. Leslie Brooke.

 

The firm declined Rawnsley's verse in favour of Potter's original prose, and Potter agreed to colour her pen and ink illustrations, choosing the then-new Hentschel three-colour process to reproduce her watercolours.

 

Potter used many real locations for her book illustrations. The Tower Bank Arms, Near Sawrey appears in 'The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck'.

 

On the 2nd. October 1902, 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' was published, and was an immediate success. It was followed the next year by 'The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin' and 'The Tailor of Gloucester', which had also first been written as picture letters to the Moore children.

 

Working with Norman Warne as her editor, Potter published two or three little books each year: 23 books in all. The last book in this format was 'Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes' in 1922, a collection of favourite rhymes. Although 'The Tale of Little Pig Robinson' was not published until 1930, it had been written much earlier.

 

Potter continued creating her little books until after the Great War when her energies were increasingly directed toward her farming, sheep-breeding and land conservation.

 

The immense popularity of Potter's books was based on the lively quality of her illustrations, the non-didactic nature of her stories, the depiction of the rural countryside, and the imaginative qualities she lent to her animal characters.

 

Potter was also a canny businesswoman. As early as 1903, she made and patented a Peter Rabbit doll. It was followed by other spin-off merchandise over the years, including painting books, board games, wall-paper, figurines, baby blankets and china tea-sets. All were licensed by Frederick Warne & Co., and earned Potter an independent income, as well as immense profits for her publisher.

 

In 1905, Potter and Norman Warne became unofficially engaged. Potter's parents objected to the match because Warne was "in trade" and thus not socially suitable. The engagement lasted only one month - Warne died of pernicious anaemia at the age of 37.

 

That same year, Potter used some of her income and a small inheritance from an aunt to buy Hill Top Farm, Near Sawrey in the English Lake District near Windermere. Potter and Warne may have hoped that Hill Top Farm would be their holiday home, but after Warne's death, Potter went ahead with its purchase as she had always wanted to own the farm, and live in "that charming village".

 

Country Life and Marriage

 

Hill Top is now owned by the National Trust, and preserved as it was when she lived and wrote her stories there.

 

The tenant farmer John Cannon and his family agreed to stay on to manage the farm for her while she made physical improvements and learned the techniques of fell farming and of raising livestock, including pigs, cows and chickens; the following year she added sheep.

 

Realising she needed to protect her boundaries, she sought advice from W.H. Heelis & Son, a local firm of solicitors with offices in nearby Hawkshead. With William Heelis acting for her, she bought contiguous pasture, and in 1909 the 20 acre (8.1 ha) Castle Farm across the road from Hill Top Farm.

 

Beatrix visited Hill Top at every opportunity, and her books written during this period (such as 'The Tale of Ginger and Pickles', about the local shop in Near Sawrey and 'The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse', a wood mouse) reflect her increasing participation in village life and her delight in country living.

 

Owning and managing these working farms required routine collaboration with the widely respected William Heelis. By the summer of 1912, Heelis had proposed marriage and Potter had accepted; although she did not immediately tell her parents, who once again disapproved because Heelis was only a country solicitor.

 

Potter and Heelis were married on the 15th. October 1913 in London at St. Mary Abbots in Kensington. The couple moved immediately to Near Sawrey, residing at Castle Cottage, the renovated farmhouse on Castle Farm, which was 34 acres large.

 

Hill Top remained a working farm, but was now remodelled to allow for the tenant family and Potter's private studio and workshop. At last her own woman, Potter settled into the partnerships that shaped the rest of her life: her country solicitor husband and his large family, her farms, the Sawrey community and the predictable rounds of country life.

 

'The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck' and 'The Tale of Tom Kitten' are representative of Hill Top Farm and her farming life, and reflect her happiness with her country life.

 

Rupert Potter died in 1914 and, with the outbreak of the Great War, Beatrix, by now a wealthy woman, persuaded her mother to move to the Lake District, and found a property for her to rent in Near Sawrey.

 

Finding life in Near Sawrey dull, Helen Potter soon moved to Lindeth Howe (now a 34 bedroomed hotel), a large house that the Potters had previously rented for the summer in Bowness, on the other side of Lake Windermere.

 

Beatrix's brother Walter Bertram Potter, who was also an accomplished artist and farmer, died suddenly of a stroke after working in his garden on the 22nd. June 1918. He was buried in the parish churchyard at Ancrum, Scotland, near the remains of the Old Parish Church, which was abandoned in 1890. Walter was 46 years of age when he died, or, to put it another way, he lived for 16,900 days.

 

Beatrix continued to write stories for Frederick Warne & Co., and fully participated in country life. She established a Nursing Trust for local villages, and served on various committees and councils responsible for footpaths and other rural issues.

 

Sheep Farming

 

Soon after acquiring Hill Top Farm, Potter became keenly interested in the breeding and raising of Herdwick sheep, the indigenous fell sheep breed.

 

In 1923 she bought a large sheep farm in the Troutbeck Valley called Troutbeck Park Farm, formerly a deer park. Beatrix restored its land with thousands of Herdwick sheep, and this established her as one of the major Herdwick sheep farmers in the county.

 

She was admired by her shepherds and farm managers for her willingness to experiment with the latest biological remedies for the common diseases of sheep, and for her employment of the best shepherds, sheep breeders, and farm managers.

 

By the late 1920's, Potter and her Hill Top farm manager Tom Storey had made a name for their prize-winning Herdwick flock, which took many prizes at the local agricultural shows, where Potter was often asked to serve as a judge.

 

In 1942 Beatrix became President-elect of the Herdwick Sheepbreeders' Association, the first time a woman had been elected, although she died before taking office.

 

Lake District Conservation

 

Beatrix Potter had been a disciple of the land conservation and preservation ideals of her long-time friend and mentor, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, the first secretary and founding member of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.

 

According to the National Trust:

 

"She supported the efforts of the National Trust

to preserve not just the places of extraordinary

beauty, but also those heads of valleys and low

grazing lands that would be irreparably ruined

by development."

 

Beatrix Potter was also an authority on the traditional Lakeland crafts and period furniture, as well as local stonework. She restored and preserved the farms that she bought or managed, making sure that each farm house had in it a piece of antique Lakeland furniture.

 

Beatrix was interested in preserving not only the Herdwick sheep, but also the way of life of fell farming. In 1930 the Heelises became partners with the National Trust in buying and managing fell farms included in the large Monk Coniston Estate. The estate comprised many farms spread over a wide area of north-western Lancashire, including the Tarn Hows.

 

Potter was the de facto estate manager for the Trust for seven years until the National Trust could afford to re-purchase most of the property from her. Potter's stewardship of these farms earned her full regard, but she was not without her critics, including those who felt that she used her wealth and the position of her husband to acquire properties in advance of their being made public.

 

She was notable in observing the problems of afforestation, preserving the intact grazing lands, and husbanding the quarries and timber on the farms. All her farms were stocked with Herdwick sheep, and frequently with Galloway cattle.

 

Beatrix Potter - The Later Years

 

Beatrix Potter continued to write stories and to draw as she aged, although mostly for her own pleasure. Her books in the late 1920's included the semi-autobiographical 'The Fairy Caravan', a fanciful tale set in her beloved Troutbeck fells. It was published only in the US during Potter's lifetime, and not until 1952 in the UK.

 

'Sister Anne', Potter's version of the story of Bluebeard, was written for her American readers, but illustrated by Katharine Sturges. A final folktale, 'Wag by Wall', was published posthumously by The Horn Book Magazine in 1944.

 

Potter was a generous patron of the Girl Guides, whose troupes she allowed to make their summer encampments on her land, and whose company she enjoyed as an older woman.

 

Potter and William Heelis enjoyed a happy marriage of thirty years, continuing their farming and preservation efforts throughout the hard days of World War II. Although they were childless, Potter played an important role in William's large family, particularly enjoying her relationship with several nieces whom she helped educate, and giving comfort and aid to her husband's brothers and sisters.

 

The Death of Beatrix Potter

 

Beatrix Potter died of complications from pneumonia and heart disease on the 22nd. December 1943 at Castle Cottage, and her remains were cremated at Carleton Crematorium.

 

Beatrix left nearly all her property to the National Trust, including over 4,000 acres (16 km2) of land, sixteen farms, cottages and herds of cattle and Herdwick sheep.

 

Hers was the largest gift at that time to the National Trust, and it enabled the preservation of the land now included in the Lake District National Park, as well as the continuation of fell farming. The central office of the National Trust in Swindon was named "Heelis" in 2005 in her memory.

 

William Heelis continued his stewardship of their properties and of her literary and artistic work for the twenty months he survived her. When he died in August 1945, he left the remainder of the land and property to the National Trust.

 

Beatrix Potter's Legacy

 

Beatrix left almost all the original illustrations for her books to the National Trust. The copyright to her stories and merchandise was left to her publisher Frederick Warne & Co., now a division of the Penguin Group.

 

On the 1st. January 2014, the copyright expired in the UK and other countries with a 70-years-after-death limit.

 

Hill Top Farm was opened to the public by the National Trust in 1946; her artwork was displayed there until 1985 when it was moved to William Heelis's former law offices in Hawkshead, also owned by the National Trust as the Beatrix Potter Gallery.

 

Beatrix gave her folios of mycological drawings to the Armitt Library and Museum in Ambleside before her death.

 

'The Tale of Peter Rabbit' is owned by Frederick Warne and Company, 'The Tailor of Gloucester' by the Tate Gallery, and 'The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies' by the British Museum.

 

The largest public collection of her letters and drawings is the Leslie Linder Bequest and Leslie Linder Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. (Linder was the collector who—after five years of work—finally transcribed Potter's early journal, originally written in code.)

 

In the United States, the largest public collections are those in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton University.

 

In 2015 a manuscript for an unpublished book was discovered by Jo Hanks, a publisher at Penguin Random House Children's Books, in the Victoria and Albert Museum archive. The book 'The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots', with illustrations by Quentin Blake, was published on the 1st. September 2016, to mark the 150th. anniversary of Potter's birth.

 

In 2017, 'The Art of Beatrix Potter: Sketches, Paintings, and Illustrations' by Emily Zach was published after San Francisco publisher Chronicle Books decided to mark the 150th. anniversary of Beatrix Potter's birth by showing that:

 

"She was far more than a 19th.-century

weekend painter. She was an artist of

astonishing range."

 

In December 2017, the asteroid 13975 Beatrixpotter, discovered by Belgian astronomer Eric Elst in 1992, was named in her memory.

 

Beatrix Potter's Work

 

There are many interpretations of Beatrix's literary work, the sources of her art, and her life and times. These include critical evaluations of her corpus of children's literature. 'That Naughty Rabbit: Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit' by Judy Taylor tells the story of the book's first publication and its many subsequent editions.

 

Potter's country life and her farming have been discussed in the work of Susan Denyer and other authors in the publications of The National Trust, such as 'Beatrix Potter at Home in the Lake District' (2004).

 

Potter's work as a scientific illustrator and her work in mycology are discussed in Linda Lear's books 'Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature' (2006) and 'Beatrix Potter: The Extraordinary Life of a Victorian Genius' (2008).

 

Adaptations of Beatrix Potter's Work

 

In 1971, a ballet film was released, 'The Tales of Beatrix Potter'. It was directed by Reginald Mills, set to music by John Lanchbery with choreography by Frederick Ashton, and performed in character costume by members of the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera House orchestra. The ballet of the same name has been performed by other dance companies around the world.

 

In 1992, Potter's children's book 'The Tale of Benjamin Bunny' was featured in the film Lorenzo's Oil.

 

Potter is also featured in Susan Wittig Albert's series of light mysteries called 'The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter'. The first of the eight-book series is 'Tale of Hill Top Farm' (2004), which deals with Potter's life in the Lake District and the village of Near Sawrey between 1905 and 1913.

 

Beatrix Potter in Film

 

In 1982, the BBC produced 'The Tale of Beatrix Potter'. This dramatisation of her life was written by John Hawkesworth, directed by Bill Hayes, and starred Holly Aird and Penelope Wilton as the young and adult Potter, respectively.

 

'The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends', a TV series based on nine of her twenty-four stories, starred actress Niamh Cusack as Beatrix Potter.

 

In 1993, Weston Woods Studios made a film called 'Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller, and Countrywoman' with narration by Lynn Redgrave and music by Ernest Troost.

 

In 2006, Chris Noonan directed 'Miss Potter', a biographical film of Potter's life focusing on her early career and romance with her editor Norman Warne. The film stars Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor and Emily Watson.

 

On 9 February 2018, Columbia Pictures released 'Peter Rabbit', directed by Will Gluck, based on the work by Beatrix Potter. The character Bea, played by Rose Byrne, is a re-imagined version of Beatrix. A sequel to the film entitled 'Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway' was released in 2021.

 

On the 24th. December 2020, Sky One premiered 'Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse', a made-for-television drama film. The film was inspired by the true story of six-year-old Roald Dahl meeting his idol Beatrix Potter.

 

Set in 1922, the movie was written by Abigail Wilson, directed by David Kerr and starred Dawn French as Beatrix Potter, Rob Brydon as William Heelis and Jessica Hynes as Sofie Dahl. Filming took place in Wales (the birthland of Roald Dahl, French and Brydon), during the COVID-19 pandemic. This production incorporates live action, stop motion and puppetry.

 

Final Thoughts From Beatrix Potter

 

"There is something delicious about

writing the first words of a story. You

never quite know where they'll take you."

 

"Once upon a time there were four little

Rabbits, and their names were--Flopsy,

Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter."

 

"I hold that a strongly marked personality

can influence descendants for generations."

 

"Believe there is a great power silently

working all things for good, behave

yourself and never mind the rest."

 

"Thank goodness I was never sent to

school; it would have rubbed off some

of the originality."

 

"I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor

the result, and when I have a bad time

come over me, it is a stronger desire than

ever."

 

"All outward forms of religion are almost

useless, and are the causes of endless

strife."

 

"I remember I used to half believe and

wholly play with fairies when I was a child.

What heaven can be more real than to

retain the spirit-world of childhood,

tempered and balanced by knowledge

and common-sense."

 

"It is said that the effect of eating

too much lettuce is 'soporific'."

 

"Most people, after one success, are so

cringingly afraid of doing less well that

they rub all the edge off their subsequent

work."

 

"Peter was not very well during the evening.

His mother put him to bed, and made some

chamomile tea: 'One table-spoonful to be

taken at bedtime'."

 

"This is a fierce bad rabbit; look at his savage

whiskers, and his claws and his turned-up tail."

 

"I hold an old-fashioned notion that a happy

marriage is the crown of a woman’s life."

 

"In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted

coats with flowered lappets - when gentlemen wore

ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and

taffeta - there lived a tailor in Gloucester."

 

"I fear that we shall be obliged

to leave this pudding."

 

"Peter lost one of his shoes among the

cabbages, and the other shoe amongst

the potatoes."

 

"I am aware these little books don't

last long, even if they are a success."

 

"With opportunity the world

is very interesting."

 

"If I have done anything, even a little,

to help small children enjoy honest,

simple pleasures, I have done a bit

of good."

 

"But not even Hitler can damage the fells."

 

"One place suits on person, another place

suits another person. For my part, I prefer

to live in the country, like Timmy Willie."

 

Final thought from Ian Dury and the Blockheads:

 

"There ain’t half been

some clever bastards ..."

Is it me, or does he have a twinkle in his eye?

 

Post and run from me today, not much time and very little internet access this week, but on the plus side.... lots of waves :) catch up soon.

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©2010 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved

This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.

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Links to my website, facebook and twitter can be found on my flickr profile

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4-color screenprint about the perils of trust and love, Bluebeard style. ain't love grand?

French postcard in the Entr'acte series by Éditions Asphodèle, Mâcon, no. 001/24. Collection: B. Courtel / D.R. Gary Cooper on the set of Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958). Caption: Gary Cooper and director Anthony Mann on the set of the film.

 

American screen legend Gary Cooper (1901-1961) is well remembered for his stoic, understated acting style in more than one hundred Westerns, comedies and dramas. He received five Oscar nominations and won twice for his roles as Alvin York in Sergeant York (1941) and as Will Kane in High Noon (1952).

 

Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana in 1901. His parents were English immigrants, Alice Cooper-Brazier and Charles Henry Cooper, a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a state supreme court judge. Frank left school in 1918 and returned to the family ranch to help raise their five hundred head of cattle and work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for his son to complete his high school education at Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana. His English teacher, Ida W. Davis, played an important role in encouraging him to focus on academics, join the school's debating team, and become involved in dramatics. He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp for the rest of his life. In the fall of 1924, Cooper's parents moved to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives. Cooper joined them and there he met some cowboys from Montana who were working as film extras and stuntmen in low-budget Western films. Cooper decided to try his hand working as a film extra for five dollars a day, and as a stuntman for twice that amount. In early 1925, Cooper began his film career working as an extra and stuntman on Poverty Row in such silent Westerns as Riders of the Purple Sage (Lynn Reynolds, 1925) with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider (W.S. Van Dyke, 1925) with Buck Jones. Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Collins changed his first name to ‘Gary’ after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper also worked in non-Western films. He appeared as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925) with Rudolph Valentino, as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925) with Ramón Novarro, and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (Irving Cummings, 1926) with George O'Brien. Gradually he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, such as Tricks (Bruce M. Mitchell, 1925), in which he played the film's antagonist. As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios and in June 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions. His first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky. The film was a major success, and critics called Cooper a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Cooper signed a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 per week. In 1927, with help from established silent film star Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles opposite her in Children of Divorce (Frank Lloyd, 1927) and Wings (William A. Wellman, 1927), the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. He received a thousand fan letters per week. The studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies in films such as Beau Sabreur (John Waters, 1928) with Evelyn Brent, Half a Bride (Gregory La Cava, 1928) with Esther Ralston, and Lilac Time (George Fitzmaurice, 1928) with Colleen Moore. The latter introduced synchronized music and sound effects and became one of the biggest box office hits of the year.

 

In 1929, Gary Cooper became a major film star with his first sound picture, The Virginian, (Victor Fleming, 1929). The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honour and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western genre. The romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero that embodied male freedom, courage, and honour was created in large part by Cooper's performance in the film. Cooper transitioned naturally to the sound medium, with his deep, clear, and pleasantly drawling voice. One of the high points of Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her American debut. Cooper produced one of his finest performances to that point in his career. In the Dashiell Hammett crime drama City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) he played a misplaced cowboy in a big city who gets involved with gangsters to save the woman (Sylvia Sidney) he loves. After making ten films in two years Cooper was exhausted and had lost thirty pounds. In May 1931, he sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year. During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso who taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus in the finest restaurants, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. In 1932, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 per week, and director and script approval. He appeared opposite Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932), the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Critics praised his highly intense and at times emotional performance, and the film went on to become one of the year's most commercially successful films. The following year, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Design for Living (1933) with Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March and based loosely on the successful Noël Coward play. Wikipedia: “The film received mixed reviews and did not do well at the box office, but Cooper's performance was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy”. Then, he appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever (1934), with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. The film was a box-office success. His next two Henry Hathaway films were the melodrama Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the romantic adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. The latter was nominated for six Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films.

 

Gary Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, an innocent, sweet-natured writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Oscar nomination. In the adventure film The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone, 1936) with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success. In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman (1936) with Jean Arthur—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly-fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-two years. In Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. In the adventure film Beau Geste (William A. Wellman, 1939) with Ray Milland, he joined the French Foreign Legion to find adventure in the Sahara fighting local tribes. Wikipedia: “Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona.” Cooper cemented his cowboy credentials in The Westerner (William Wyler, 1940). He won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1942 for his performance as Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier from the Great War, in Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941). Cooper worked with Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943) which earned him his third Oscar nomination. The film was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway, with whom Cooper developed a strong friendship. On 23 October 1947, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, not under subpoena but responding to an invitation to give testimony on the alleged infiltration of Hollywood by communists. Although he never said he regretted having been a friendly witness, as an independent producer, he hired blacklisted actors and technicians. He did say he had never wanted to see anyone lose the right to work, regardless of what he had done. Cooper won his second Oscar for his performance as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), one of his finest roles and a kind of come-back after a series of flops. He continued to play the lead in films almost to the end of his life. His later box office hits included the influential Western Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) in which he guns down villain Burt Lancaster in a showdown, William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956), in which he portrays a Quaker farmer during the American Civil War, Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Audrey Hepburn, and the hard-edged action Western Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958), with Lee J. Cobb. Cooper's final film was the British-American co-production The Naked Edge (Michael Anderson, 1961). In April 1960, Cooper underwent surgery for prostate cancer after it had metastasized to his colon. But by the end of the year cancer had spread to his lungs and bones. On 13 May 1961, six days after his sixtieth birthday, Gary Cooper died. The young and handsome Cooper had affairs with Clara Bow, Lupe Velez, Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead. In 1933, he married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. They had an ‘open’ marriage and Cooper also had relationships with the actresses Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and Patricia Neal. Sir Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with him.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

The person in the photo is the late French actress Corinne Calvet (born Corinne Dibos; 1925–2001). The photo includes an autograph signed by her and the production number P2996-31 is visible in the bottom right corner.

 

Corinne Calvet (April 30, 1925 – June 23, 2001), born Corinne Dibos, was a French actress who appeared mostly in American films. According to one obituary, she was promoted "as a combination of Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth", but her persona failed to live up to this description, though the fault lay partially with a string of mediocre films. She eventually became better known for her turbulent private life and some well-publicised legal battles. Calvet was born in Paris. Her mother was a scientist who played a part in the development of thermally resistant glass. One of her sisters, a doctor, died when taken hostage by the Germans during the war. She and her father had to flee Paris when the Germans came. Calvet studied criminal law at the Sorbonne. "A lawyer needs exactly what an actor needs, strong personality, persuasive powers and a good voice," she said later. While studying law, she often went to the Deux Magots café where her group of friends included Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais, which prompted her to try acting. Marais advised her to join Charles Dullin's acting school, where he had trained alongside Simone Signoret and Gérard Philipe. She then studied at L'Ecole du Cinema.

 

Calvet was a French actress who appeared in many American films during the 1940s and 1950s after being brought to Hollywood by producer Hal B. Wallis. She was known for her glamorous and sultry roles and appeared opposite leading stars such as Burt Lancaster in Rope of Sand (1949), James Stewart in The Far Country (1954), and the comedy duo Martin and Lewis in films like Sailor Beware (1952). After her acting career, she became a therapist specializing in hypnosis and wrote a memoir in 1983 titled Has Corinne Been a Good Girl?

 

LINK to video - Corinne Calvet--Rare 1992 TV Interview - www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hbCuiPI9S0

 

Selected filmography

Blind Desire (1945) – (uncredited)

Petrus (1946) – Liliane

We Are Not Married (1946) – Le modèle

Last Chance Castle (1947) – Mme Tritonel

Rope of Sand (1949) – Suzanne Renaud

When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950) – Yvonne Le Tete

My Friend Irma Goes West (1950) – Yvonne Yvonne

Quebec (1951) – Mme. Stephanie Durossac aka La Fleur

On the Riviera (1951) – Colette

Peking Express (1951) – Danielle Grenier

Thunder in the East (1951) – Lizette Damon

Sailor Beware (1952) – Herself

What Price Glory (1952) – Charmaine

Powder River (1953) – Frenchie Dumont

Flight to Tangier (1953) – Nicki

The Far Country (1954) – Renee Vallon

So This Is Paris (1954) – Suzanne Sorel

One Step to Eternity (1954) – Véra Volpone

Le ragazze di San Frediano (1955) – Bice

Sins of Casanova (1955) – Luisa di Charpillon

Operazione notte (1955)

Plunderers of Painted Flats (1959) – Kathy Martin

Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons (1960) – Odette

Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) – Contessa

Apache Uprising (1965) – Janice MacKenzie

Pound (1970)

The Phantom of Hollywood (1974, TV Movie) – Mrs. Wickes

Too Hot to Handle (1977) – Madame Ruanda

The French Atlantic Affair (1979, TV Movie) – Colette

Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype (1980) – Pizelle Puree

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

Side Roads (1988) – (final film role)

 

LINK to video - CORINNE CALVET TRIBUTE - www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u-C14hV9sM

Rufus King - Secret Beyond the Door

(Original Title: Museum Piece No 13)

Bantam Books 120, 1947

Cover Artist: David Attie

 

"She married a modern Bluebeard."

Seen at Manchester Pride 2017 festival.

 

To contact me or for different contrasts, tones and sizes of this image please email contact@ianbetley.com or via FlickrMail or @ianbetley (Twitter).

 

Website: www.ianbetley.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/ianbetley

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ianbetleyphotography

Instagram: www.instagram.com/ianbetley

You think you work hard? take a minute to check out a bee next time you get a chance, they put in a good shift.

 

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©2011 Jason Swain, All Rights Reserved

This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.

-----------------------------------

Links to my website, facebook and twitter can be found on my flickr profile

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Gilded Triggerfish, male.

Caryopteris can be deciduous shrubs or perennials, with aromatic, simple leaves and small blue or white flowers in compact axillary clusters in late summer and autumn,

 

'Heavenly Blue' aka Caryopteris x clandonensis is a compact, upright shrub to 1m tall, with arching branches bearing toothed, grey-green leaves and clusters of small dark blue flowers in the leaf axils in late summer and early autumn.

 

An added bonus is that bees and other insects love it!

The Women's Ward (1905–1906) was built out of necessity. Prior to its completion women did not have separate quarters. Male inmates built a wall around the old Wardens home to serve as a separate facility for women. This building had seven two-person cells, a central day room, kitchen and bathroom facilities. This building held the infamous Lyda Southard (Lady Bluebeard).

 

texture by skeletalmess

www.flickr.com/photos/skeletalmess/collections/7215761567...

London Celebrates Bluebeard's Birthday

West Pond, Parsonsfield, Maine.

  

South view Gunness

Farm

 

Date: 1908

Source Type: Postcard

Publisher, Printer, Photographer: Cyko

Postmark: June 29, 1908, Kankakee, Illinois

Collection: Steven R. Shook

Remark: Belle Gunness, often referred to as the Lady Bluebeard, is considered to be the first American female serial killer. Soon after the discovery of numerous bodies buried on Gunness' property, a number items of her personal property were auctioned. The auction, which took place on May 29, 1908, on the Gunness farm, attracted nearly 5,000 attendees. More than 500 carriages were tied about the farm. Most items sold at five to ten times beyond their ordinary sale value. The three items attracting the greatest attention at the sale were Gunness' pony, the pony cart, and a shepherd dog. The dog sold for $107 ($2,940 in 2019 dollars).

 

Born in 1858 in Selbu, Norway, Belle Gunness emigrated to America in the mid 1880s. Belle married Mads Sorenson in 1893, and together they operated a store in Chicago. The store burned down, and Mads and Belle collected insurance on the property. Mads Sorenson died in 1900, with Belle collecting approximately $8,000 through his life insurance policy.

 

On April 1, 1902, Belle married Peter Gunness in LaPorte, Indiana. Together, Peter and Belle owned and operated a small farm on McClung Road in LaPorte County. Belle again collected insurance on a husband when Peter died after a coffee grinder allegedly fell from a shelf hitting him on the head. Following Peter's death, Belle began advertising in Norwegian language newspapers in America for a husband.

 

Several suitors answered Belle's advertisements. However, many of these potential bridegrooms would suddenly leave in the night, leading Belle's 18 year old niece, Jenny Olson, to be suspicious as to their welfare. Jenny then mysteriously disappeared, though Belle told friends and neighbors that she had left for schooling in California.

 

The final man to respond to Belle's advertisement was Andrew Helgelein. Belle requested that Andrew sell his property and bring his money (about $3,000) to LaPorte, which he did in 1908. Andrew's brother, Asa Helgelein became suspicious when letters from Andrew ceased to arrive. Asa therefore traveled to LaPorte County to inquire about the welfare of his brother.

 

In the early morning of April 28, 1908, the Gunness farmhouse burned to the ground. The Gunness children were found in the ashes of the home, as well as the body of a headless woman. This headless body, however, was much smaller in size than the rotund stature of Belle's body. After sluicing through the ashes of the home, dental work reportedly to be Belle's was found. Asa Helgelein arrived several days after the fire, and at his urging, the LaPorte County Sheriff began to further investigate the fire and Belle's relations with out-of-town men. The investigation turned into a national sensation, as numerous bodies were soon found to be buried on Belle's farm..

 

The remains of Andrew Helgelein were the first to be found, buried in a shallow grave in the garden. Jenny Olson's body was soon discovered nearby. In all, at least twelve other bodies were recovered from the property. It has been estimated that Belle may have buried forty men on the farm.

 

Enormous crowds, numbering in the thousands, visited the farm during the investigation. Special trains from Chicago and Indianapolis, as well as from other towns and cities, brought curious onlookers to the farm. Picnics were common. A farm building was used as a temporary morgue, where onlookers could view the remains as they were recovered and put on display. Numerous postcards were produced and sold during and after the investigation.

 

Ray Lamphere, a farm hand of Belle's, was eventually charged with murder and arson. Though not convicted of murder, Lamphere was found guilty of arson and incarcerated in the nearby Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, where he died a few years later. While in prison, Lamphere maintained that Belle had escaped and insisted that her body was not found in the debris of the burnt house. Lamphere's statement led to numerous reported sightings of Belle Gunness across the United States for many years, none of which were ever confirmed.

 

Copyright 2021. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.

Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 368-3. Photo: Paramount-Film.

 

Bebe Daniels (1901-1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress and later a the love interest of Harold Lloyd in dozens of short comedies. Cecil B. de Mille made her a silent star and later she sang and danced in early musicals like Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In Great Britain, she gained further fame on stage, radio and television. In her long career, Bebe Daniels appeared in 230 films.

 

Phyllis Virginia Daniels was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1901. Bebe was her childhood nickname. Her father was a theatre manager and her mother was stage and silent film actress Phyllis Daniels. The family moved to Los Angeles, California in her childhood and she began her acting career at the age of four in the stage play The Squaw Man. That same year she also went on tour in a stage production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. The following year she participated in productions by Oliver Morosco and David Belasco. By the age of eight Daniels made her film debut as the young heroine in A Common Enemy (Otis Turner, 1910). Then she starred as Dorothy Gale in the short The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner, 1910), the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company. It was later followed by the sequels Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910), The Land of Oz (1910) and John Dough and the Cherub (1910), all considered to be lost films. At the age of fourteen Bebe was enlisted by studio head Hal Roach to pair her with very young and talented Harold Lloyd and also Snub Pollard in a series of two-reel comedies starting with Giving Them Fits (Hal Roach, 1915). At the time, Harold Lloyd was trying to ape Charlie Chaplin in his character, 'Lonesome Luke'. Roach made 80 short comedies featuring Harold as Luke with Bebe playing his love interest between 1915 and 1917, including Bughouse Bellhops (Hal Roach, 1915), Tinkering with Trouble (Hal Roach, 1915) and Ruses, Rhymes and Roughnecks (Hal Roach, 1915). Lloyd and the charming and spunky Daniels eventually became known as ‘The Boy and The Girl’ in such shorts as Bliss (Alfred J. Goulding, 1917), The Non-stop Kid (Gilbert Pratt, 1918) and Young Mr. Jazz (Hal Roach, 1919). Stephan Eichenberg at IMDb: “Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife.” After 200 shorts for Hal Roach Studios. Bebe decided to move to greater dramatic roles and accepted a contract from Cecil B. DeMille in 1919. He gave her secondary roles in such feature films as Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919) starring Gloria Swanson, Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille, 1921), with Wallace Reid.

 

In the 1920s, Bebe Daniels was under contract with Paramount Pictures, and made the transition from child star to adult in Hollywood. The now lost comedy The Speed Girl (Maurice Campbell, 1921) was supposedly expanded into a screenplay from Daniels's real life jail sentence of 10 days for multiple speeding tickets. The film poster shows her walking out of a jail cell. At the time the 20-year-old was already a veteran film actress. By 1924 Bebe was playing Rudolph Valentino’s love interest in the costume drama Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott, 1924). Paramount spared no expense on the film from the sets, costumes down to the musical soundtrack that accompanied it upon it's release. Following this she was cast in a number of light popular films, namely Miss Bluebeard (Frank Tuttle, 1925), The Manicure Girl (Frank Tuttle, 1925), and Wild Wild Susan (A. Edward Sutherland, 1925) with Rod LaRocque. Paramount dropped her contract with the advent of talking pictures. Daniels was hired by Radio Pictures (later known as RKO) to star opposite John Boles in one of their biggest productions of the year, the talkie Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929). Its finale was photographed in two-color Technicolor. The musical comedy, based on the 1927 stage musical produced by legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld, proved to be the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933). Daniels found herself a star and RCA Victor hired her to record several records for their catalogue. Radio Pictures starred her in lavish musicals such as Dixiana (Luther Reed, 1930) and Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930). Toward the end of 1930, Bebe Daniels appeared opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the musical comedy Reaching for the Moon (Edmund Goulding, 1930). However, by this time musicals had gone out of fashion so that most of the musical numbers from the film had to be removed before it could be released. Daniels had become associated with musicals and so Radio Pictures did not renew her contract. Warner Bros. realized what a box office draw she was and offered her a contract which she accepted. During her years at Warner Bros. she starred in such pictures as the drama My Past (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931) and the pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon was a huge success for Warner and garnered rave reviews for Bebe and Cortez. In 1932, she appeared opposite Edward G. Robinson in Silver Dollar (Alfred E. Green, 1932) and the successful Busby Berkeley choreographed musical extravaganza 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) in which she played the star of a stage musical who breaks her ankle. The backstage musical was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. That same year Daniels played opposite John Barrymore in the enjoyable Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933). The film was another box office smash. Her last film for Warner Bros. was Registered Nurse (Robert Florey, 1934).

 

Bebe Daniels retired from Hollywood in 1935. She had been a working actress for 30 years. With her husband, film actor Ben Lyon, whom she had married in 1930, she moved to London. Daniels and Lyon had two children: daughter Barbara (1932) and a son Richard whom they adopted. In England, they had found a quiet place in the countryside to raise their family. They starred in the British comedy crime film Treachery on the High Seas (Emil E. Reinert, 1936) with Charles Farrell. They also wanted to go back to the theatre. A few years later, Daniels starred in the London production of Panama Hattie in the title role originated by Ethel Merman. The Lyons then did radio shows for the BBC. Most notably, they starred in the radio series Hi Gang!, continuing for decades and enjoying considerable popularity during World War II. Daniels wrote most of the dialogue for the Hi Gang radio show. There was also the spin-off film Hi Gang! (Marcel Varnel, 1941) in which they starred opposite Vic Oliver). The couple stayed in London , broadcasting even during the worst days of The Blitz of WWII. Ben signed up for the Royal Air Force while Bebe kept the home fires burning in between appearing in the occasional stage play. Following the war, Daniels was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry S Truman for war service. In 1945 she returned to Hollywood for a short time to work as a film producer for Hal Roach and Eagle-Lion Films. She returned to the UK in 1948 and lived there for the remainder of her life. Daniels, her husband, her son Richard and her daughter Barbara all starred in the radio sitcom Life With The Lyons (1951-1961), which later made the transition to two films and to television (1955-1960). Daniels’ final film The Lyons in Paris (Val Guest, 1955). Bebe Daniels suffered a severe stroke in 1963 and withdrew from public life. She suffered a second stroke in late 1970. In 1971, Daniels died of a cerebral hemorrhage in London at the age of 70. Her ashes would eventually be interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood California. Upon his death in 1979, Ben Lyon's remains were interred next to Daniels'.

 

Sources: Stephan Eichenberg (IMDb), Page (My Love of Old Hollywood), Shawn Dwyer (TCM), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Lots of bees buzzing around the Bluebeard (Caryopteris) bush. I also spotted a preying mantis on the Mexican Bird of Paradise. The Mexican Bird of Paradise is huge...about 10 feet tall! It has just about engulfed the Bluebeard bush. I had to do some major cutting back on it this week.

 

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West German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 441. Photo: Nationalfilm. Hans Albers in Barbe-Bleue/Blaubart/Bluebeard (Christian-Jacque, 1951).

 

Jovial, pleasantly plump Hans Albers (1891-1960) was a superstar of German cinema between 1930 and 1945. He was also one of the most popular German singers of the twentieth century. His song 'Auf der Reeperbahn nachts um halb eins' (On the Reeperbahn at half past midnight) is the unofficial anthem of Hamburg’s neighbourhood of St. Pauli, famous for its brothels, music and nightclubs.

 

Hans Philipp August Albers was born in the North German port city of Hamburg in 1891. He was the son of a butcher and grew up in the Hamburg district of St. Georg. He was seriously interested in acting by his late teens and took acting classes without the knowledge of his parents. He debuted as a stage actor in Bad Schwandau, followed by engagements in Frankfurt, Güstrow, Cologne and Hamburg. His first film part was in Jahreszeiten des Lebens/Seasons of Life (Franz Hofer, 1915). Albers interrupted his career to serve in World War I, where he was badly wounded. After the war ‘der blonde Hans’ started as a comedic actor in various Berlin theatres. He appeared on-stage to great acclaim with Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater. Albers' breakthrough performance was that of a waiter in Ferdinand Bruckner's play Verbrecher (Criminals). His film roles ranged from Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1924) to the title character in Rasputins Liebesabenteuer/Rasputin (Martin Berger, 1928). In Weimar Berlin, he began a relationship with half-Jewish actress Hansi Burg in 1925. She was the daughter of his acting teacher Eugen Burg. In 1944 Eugen Burg would be killed in the concentration camp Theresienstadt. Albers stopped working in theatre to distance himself from the Hitler regime, but the Nazis forced him in 1935 to end his relationship with Hansi Burg, who in 1938 emigrated to England via Switzerland. They secretly remained a couple with him even managing to send her financial support. Burg returned to Germany and Albers in 1946. Hans and Hansi would live together until his death in 1960.

 

After roles in over one hundred silent films, Hans Albers starred in the first German talkie, the romance Die Nacht gehört uns/The Night Belongs to Us (Carl Froelich, 1929) with Charlotte Ander. He then played big-mouthed strong man Mazeppa alongside Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich in Der blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930), the film which made Dietrich an international star. Albers himself shot to fame with Der Greifer/The Snatcher (Richard Eichberg, 1930) about three crooks who are planning a jewel robbery. Albers enhanced his star status with similar daredevil roles in the 1930s. He was probably at his best when teamed up with Heinz Rühmann, as in Bomben auf Monte Carlo/Bombs Over Monte Carlo (Hanns Schwarz, 1931) and Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war/The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes (Karl Hartl, 1937). In the latter film Albers and Rühmann play two confidence tricksters who pretend to be the famous duo Holmes & Dr. Watson and the police, gangsters and girls believe them beyond any doubt. Another success was the comedy Quick (Robert Siodmak, 1932) in which he played a clown opposite Lilian Harvey.

 

Many of Hans Albers' songs from his films became huge hits and some even remain popular to this day. While Albers himself never supported the Nazi regime, he became the most popular actor of the Third Reich. Albers was paid a huge sum of money to star in Ufa's big-budgeted anniversary picture Münchhausen/The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Josef von Baky, 1943) but was always careful not to give the impression that he was endorsing the National Socialist regime. Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany had commissioned this lavish production as a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Ufa, the government-run German film association. More importantly, it was also to be a rival of the great fantasy films which had come from the Allied nations, such as The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) and The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940). On IMDb, Ron Oliver writes: "In that, it succeeds brilliantly and needs no comparison to any other film." In 1943 Albers also starred in another classic, Große Freiheit Nr. 7/Great Freedom No. 7 (Helmut Käutner, 1943) with Ilse Werner. The film was banned by the censorship of the Third Reich because the story was considered too 'anti-heroic' and demoralizing how German sailors and women were portrayed. The film could only be shown outside Germany. IMDb reviewer Jan Onderwater comments: "From directing till script, from acting till (Agfa colour) photography this is a brilliant film, with everyone involved giving the best of their talents. What we see is a compelling drama, well balanced, psychologically well conceived and at the same time a film that is great fun to watch over and over again. In this film, there are only people and their lives who are not up to standard Nazi definition."

 

After World War II, Hans Albers matured into character parts to some public and critical acclaim, but he never again enjoyed the huge stardom of the 1930s and early 1940s. One of his better roles of this period was an ageing industry tycoon in Vor Sonnenuntergang/Before Sundown (Gottfried Reinhardt, 1956), which won the Golden Globe as Best Foreign Film of the Year. On IMDb reviewer Diger Jantzen notes: "Hans Albers' performance is heartbreaking from the start until the end and it is clearly one of his best serious performances ever." Albers' final film was the crime comedy Kein Engel ist so rein/No Angel Is That Pure (Wolfgang Becker, 1960) with Sabine Sinjen. Today he is probably more known for his music than his films, and his music is still widely-known in modern Germany, even among young people. Many of Albers' songs were humorous tales of drunken, womanizing sailors on shore leave, with double entendres such as "It hurts the first time, but with time, you get used to it" in reference to a girl falling in love for the first time. Albers' songs were often peppered with expressions in Low German, which is spoken in Northern Germany. His most famous song is by far 'Auf der Reeperbahn nachts um halb eins' (On the Reeperbahn at half past midnight) which has become the unofficial anthem of the colourful neighbourhood of St. Pauli. The Hans-Albers-Platz, one block south of the Reeperbahn, has a statue of Albers, by the German artist Jörg Immendorff. Outside of Northern Europe, however, Albers remains virtually unknown, although the image of an older man in a seaman's cap and raincoat playing accordion and singing may be recognised by many outside of Germany, even if they don't know that this image is based on Hans Albers. As a case in point, McDonald's used such an image in an American television ad campaign in 1986. In reality, Albers had no experience on the water, this being restricted to a one-day trip to Helgoland. Hans Albers died in Kempfenhausen, Bavaria, in 1960. After his death, the Wilhelmplatz, a square in St. Pauli, was named after him. In 1989, Hans Albers was the subject of a biographical docudrama, 'In Meinem Hertzen Schatz' (In My Heart's Treasure.)

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Out on a City photoshoot.

"Taeyang Qurterly 2009 Contest", challenge 3 "Twisted Fairy Tales"

 

Make a fairy tale with twisted storyline? I like fairy tales but what they are!? After discussion on contest's site we've got some restrictions - fairy tale is NOT a myth, saga, legend, fantasy or something written by an author. Goodbye "Iliada" and "Beowulf", "The Snow Queen" and "Narnia"... A Russian fairy tale wasn't an option - we've a lot of them but they are probably not known outside of my land. It was obvious that most of contestants will choose a fairy tale collected by Grimm Brothers.

 

My "Bluebeard" fairy tale is actually a horror-tale - the only "magic" element in this tale is magic key always stained by blood. There are at least 3 variants of this fairy tale which differs in the storylines and characters.

 

- The traditional French fairy tale presented in 1697 by Charles Perrault as La Barbe bleue

- The traditional German fairy tale by Grimm Brothers presented in 1812 as Blaubart

- Bluebeard - a common English translation of German “Blaubart” by Grimm Brothers

 

For contest I took English variant which is quite far from German or French originals. My Raven is lord Bluebeard (not king, rider or sultan). His wife (not bride) is a girl from noble family (not peasant's daughter).

 

Time was short and I did what was possible to do in few days:

 

- Twisted storyline in English (with great help of my husband who knows foreign languages far better than me)

- A jacket with sleeves and pants of lord Bluebeard, fingerrings, 2 beards, dress of wife

- The tile floor, key stained by blood, wedding photo

 

The outfit of lord Bluebird was partially sewed and then combined with clothes of my other doll Another King. Bluebeard wife's dress is a fake (wrapped fabric) - I decided make a morning scene in her bedroom. The wedding photo was a fun! My Tara was rewigged and decorated as a lord's bride. She turned out so pretty that my session almost went wrong direction!

 

Scene: The last moment when lord Bluebeard is ready to kill his wife.

 

Original text of this scene from “Bluebeard”

 

His wife knelt to implore:

"Please, please don't kill me. I'll never tell anyone what I saw! I'll never say a word!"

"Yes, you'll never say a word for eternity!" snarled Bluebeard, raising his knife. The poor girl screamed:

"Have pity on me!" But he fiercely replied:

"No! You must die!"

...

And that young lady completely lost all her sense of curiosity...

  

The twisted storyline

 

His wife knelt to implore:

"Please, please don't kill me. I'll never tell anyone what I saw! I'll never say a word!"

"All my brides are the same! Woman's curiosity ruins my life again and again. Imagine what it's like to be in my place!" snarled Bluebeard, raising the magic key. Suddenly, the beautiful golden hair of his wife turned blue and an ugly beard covered her face. The poor girl screamed:

"Oh, my face, my face! Have pity on me! Even death is less cruel than this blue beard!" But he fiercely replied:

"No! You must learn your lesson until sundown! Then your face will be right again. But from now on don't even try lie to me or this blue beard will be yours forever!"

...

And that young lady completely lost all her sense of curiosity...

Italian postcard, no. 166. Photo: publicity still for Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920).

 

Bebe Daniels (1901-1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress and later a the love interest of Harold Lloyd in dozens of short comedies. Cecil B. de Mille made her a silent star and later she sang and danced in early musicals like Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In Great Britain, she gained further fame on stage, radio and television. In her long career, Bebe Daniels appeared in 230 films.

 

Phyllis Virginia Daniels was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1901. Bebe was her childhood nickname. Her father was a theatre manager and her mother was stage and silent film actress Phyllis Daniels. The family moved to Los Angeles, California in her childhood and she began her acting career at the age of four in the stage play The Squaw Man. That same year she also went on tour in a stage production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. The following year she participated in productions by Oliver Morosco and David Belasco. By the age of eight Daniels made her film debut as the young heroine in A Common Enemy (Otis Turner, 1910). Then she starred as Dorothy Gale in the short The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner, 1910), the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company. It was later followed by the sequels Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910), The Land of Oz (1910) and John Dough and the Cherub (1910), all considered to be lost films. At the age of fourteen Bebe was enlisted by studio head Hal Roach to pair her with very young and talented Harold Lloyd and also Snub Pollard in a series of two-reel comedies starting with Giving Them Fits (Hal Roach, 1915). At the time, Harold Lloyd was trying to ape Charlie Chaplin in his character, 'Lonesome Luke'. Roach made 80 short comedies featuring Harold as Luke with Bebe playing his love interest between 1915 and 1917, including Bughouse Bellhops (Hal Roach, 1915), Tinkering with Trouble (Hal Roach, 1915) and Ruses, Rhymes and Roughnecks (Hal Roach, 1915). Lloyd and the charming and spunky Daniels eventually became known as ‘The Boy and The Girl’ in such shorts as Bliss (Alfred J. Goulding, 1917), The Non-stop Kid (Gilbert Pratt, 1918) and Young Mr. Jazz (Hal Roach, 1919). Stephan Eichenberg at IMDb: “Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife.” After 200 shorts for Hal Roach Studios. Bebe decided to move to greater dramatic roles and accepted a contract from Cecil B. DeMille in 1919. He gave her secondary roles in such feature films as Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919) starring Gloria Swanson, Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille, 1921), with Wallace Reid.

 

In the 1920s, Bebe Daniels was under contract with Paramount Pictures, and made the transition from child star to adult in Hollywood. The now lost comedy The Speed Girl (Maurice Campbell, 1921) was supposedly expanded into a screenplay from Daniels's real life jail sentence of 10 days for multiple speeding tickets. The film poster shows her walking out of a jail cell. At the time the 20-year-old was already a veteran film actress. By 1924 Bebe was playing Rudolph Valentino’s love interest in the costume drama Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott, 1924). Paramount spared no expense on the film from the sets, costumes down to the musical soundtrack that accompanied it upon it's release. Following this she was cast in a number of light popular films, namely Miss Bluebeard (Frank Tuttle, 1925), The Manicure Girl (Frank Tuttle, 1925), and Wild Wild Susan (A. Edward Sutherland, 1925) with Rod LaRocque. Paramount dropped her contract with the advent of talking pictures. Daniels was hired by Radio Pictures (later known as RKO) to star opposite John Boles in one of their biggest productions of the year, the talkie Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929). Its finale was photographed in two-color Technicolor. The musical comedy, based on the 1927 stage musical produced by legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld, proved to be the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933). Daniels found herself a star and RCA Victor hired her to record several records for their catalogue. Radio Pictures starred her in lavish musicals such as Dixiana (Luther Reed, 1930) and Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930). Toward the end of 1930, Bebe Daniels appeared opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the musical comedy Reaching for the Moon (Edmund Goulding, 1930). However, by this time musicals had gone out of fashion so that most of the musical numbers from the film had to be removed before it could be released. Daniels had become associated with musicals and so Radio Pictures did not renew her contract. Warner Bros. realized what a box office draw she was and offered her a contract which she accepted. During her years at Warner Bros. she starred in such pictures as the drama My Past (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931) and the pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon was a huge success for Warner and garnered rave reviews for Bebe and Cortez. In 1932, she appeared opposite Edward G. Robinson in Silver Dollar (Alfred E. Green, 1932) and the successful Busby Berkeley choreographed musical extravaganza 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) in which she played the star of a stage musical who breaks her ankle. The backstage musical was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. That same year Daniels played opposite John Barrymore in the enjoyable Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933). The film was another box office smash. Her last film for Warner Bros. was Registered Nurse (Robert Florey, 1934).

 

Bebe Daniels retired from Hollywood in 1935. She had been a working actress for 30 years. With her husband, film actor Ben Lyon, whom she had married in 1930, she moved to London. Daniels and Lyon had two children: daughter Barbara (1932) and a son Richard whom they adopted. In England, they had found a quiet place in the countryside to raise their family. They starred in the British comedy crime film Treachery on the High Seas (Emil E. Reinert, 1936) with Charles Farrell. They also wanted to go back to the theatre. A few years later, Daniels starred in the London production of Panama Hattie in the title role originated by Ethel Merman. The Lyons then did radio shows for the BBC. Most notably, they starred in the radio series Hi Gang!, continuing for decades and enjoying considerable popularity during World War II. Daniels wrote most of the dialogue for the Hi Gang radio show. There was also the spin-off film Hi Gang! (Marcel Varnel, 1941) in which they starred opposite Vic Oliver). The couple stayed in London , broadcasting even during the worst days of The Blitz of WWII. Ben signed up for the Royal Air Force while Bebe kept the home fires burning in between appearing in the occasional stage play. Following the war, Daniels was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry S Truman for war service. In 1945 she returned to Hollywood for a short time to work as a film producer for Hal Roach and Eagle-Lion Films. She returned to the UK in 1948 and lived there for the remainder of her life. Daniels, her husband, her son Richard and her daughter Barbara all starred in the radio sitcom Life With The Lyons (1951-1961), which later made the transition to two films and to television (1955-1960). Daniels’ final film The Lyons in Paris (Val Guest, 1955). Bebe Daniels suffered a severe stroke in 1963 and withdrew from public life. She suffered a second stroke in late 1970. In 1971, Daniels died of a cerebral hemorrhage in London at the age of 70. Her ashes would eventually be interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood California. Upon his death in 1979, Ben Lyon's remains were interred next to Daniels'.

 

Sources: Stephan Eichenberg (IMDb), Page (My Love of Old Hollywood), Shawn Dwyer (TCM), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Keys, keys, keys. He would trust me with the keys to his office, although I was only a baby; and the keys to his safes, where he kept the jewels I should wear, he promised me, when we returned to Paris. Such jewels! Why, I would be able to change my earrings and necklaces three times a day, just as the Empress Josephine used to change her underwear. ...

One single key remained unaccounted for on the ring and he hesitated over it; for a moment, I thought he was going to unfasten it from its brothers, slip it back into its pockets and take it away with him.

"What is that key?" I demanded, for his chaffing had made me bold. "The key to your heart? Give it me!" ...

"Ah, no," he said. "Not the key to my heart. Rather, the key to my enfer." ...

"Every man must have one secret, even if only one, from his wife," he said. "Promise me this, my whey-faced piano player; promise me you'll use all the keys on the ring except the last little one I showed you. Play with anything you find, jewels, silver plate; make toy boats of my share certificates, if it pleases you ... All is yours, everywhere is open to you - except the lock that this single key fits".

(from Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber)

 

"Ecco," le disse, "le chiavi delle due grandi guardarobe: ecco quella dei piatti d'oro e d'argento, che non vanno in opera tutti i giorni: ecco quella dei miei scrigni, dove tengo i sacchi delle monete: ecco quella degli astucci, dove sono le gioie e i finimenti di pietre preziose: ecco la chiave comune, che serve ad aprire tutti i quartieri. Quanto poi a quest'altra chiavicina qui, è di quella stanzina, che rimane in fondo al gran corridoio del pian terreno. Padrona di aprir tutto, di andar dappertutto: ma in quanto alla piccola stanzina, vi proibisco d'entrarvi e ve lo proibisco in modo così assoluto, che se vi accadesse per disgrazia di aprirla, potete aspettarvi tutto dalla mia collera."

(da Barba-blu, traduzione italiana di C. Collodi della fiaba di C. Perrault)

 

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are not in Lettice’s flat, and whilst we have not travelled that far physically across London, the tough streets and blind alleys of Poplar in London’s East End is a world away from Lettice’s rarefied and privileged world. We have come to the home of Lettice’s charwoman*, Mrs. Boothby, where we find ourselves in the cheerful kitchen cum living room of her tenement in Merrybrook Place: by her own admission, a haven of cleanliness amidst the squalor of the surrounding neighbourhood. Edith, Lettice’s maid, is visiting her Cockney friend and co-worker on a rather impromptu visit, much to the surprise of the old char when she answered the timid knock on her door on a Saturday morning and found Edith standing on her stoop, out of breath, visibly distressed and awash with tears. The old woman quickly ushered her young friend inside with a protective arm wrapped around her, peering over her shoulder with a steely gaze as she observed the number of neighbours taking an unwelcome interest in the rather well dressed stranger at her door. “Youse right gawking there, Golda Friedmann?” she called out angrily to one of her neighbours, a Jewish busybody who lives at the end of her rookery**, causing the woman wrapped in the bright paisley shawl to turn away in shame at having been caught out staring at business that wasn’t her own.

 

Settled at the kitchen table, Mrs. Boothby has divested Edith of her smart black straw cloche decorated with feathers and satin roses and her three-quarter length black coat, and seated her comfortably in a chair by the warm old fashioned blacklead stove whilst she busies herself about her simple, yet clean, kitchen. She puts out a gilt edged blue and white cake plate on the surface of her scrubbed deal pine kitchen table, on which she carefully arranges a selection of biscuits from her pretty biscuit tin decorated with Art Nouveau ladies. The plate sits between two dainty blue floral tea cups, a sugar bowl and milk jug, whilst a Brown Betty*** sits to the side, steam snaking from her spout.

 

“Nah Edith dearie,” Mrs. Boothby says with concern, sinking with a groan down into her ladderback chair adjunct to Edith. “What’s all the commotion then?” She looks the young maid squarely in the face, a kindly look on her worn and wrinkled face. “Tell me why youse come to see me outta the blue like this on a Staurday? Are you alright? Is it something to do wiv your young Frank Leadbetter then? ‘As ‘e wound up in some trouble or other wiv them Bolshevik types ‘e ‘angs around wiv?”

 

“Oh it isn’t me, Mrs. Boothby,” Edith replies in an upset fashion as she tries to catch her breath. “Nor Frank. He’s fine. We’re fine.” Her breath rasps as her breathing slowly starts to settle down. “It’s Miss Lettice!”

 

“Miss Lettice?”

 

“Yes, Mrs. Boothby. It’s really quite distressing.” Edith pulls out a little embroidered handkerchief from the sleeve of her lace trimmed blouse and sniffs as she dabs her eyes with it with a shaky hand.

 

“Nah, nah!” the old Cockney char says. “Youse not makin’ no sense, Edith dearie. What’s ‘appened to Miss Lettice? She been in an accident or somefink?”

 

“No, Mrs. Boothby. Well yes… Well no, not that kind of accident.”

 

“Youse confusin’ me, dearie. Let’s get you a nice cup of Rosie-Lee**** and then youse can start from the beginnin’.” Mrs. Boothby lifts up the well worn Brown Betty pot and pours a slug of brackish, well steeped tea into Edith’s dainty floral cup, before adding some to her own. “I’ll let ya add your own milk ‘n sugar, dearie.” She pauses for a moment and looks across at Edith with worry in her eyes. “Although considerin’ the state yer in, I fink a couple of sugars might be in order.”

 

“You may well be right, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies with a sigh, picking up the elegant Regency blue and white sugar bowl, adding two heaped spoonsful of sugar to her tea and stirring it vigorously.

 

“That’s it, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby says kindly. “Nah, ‘ere’s the milk.” She passes her a jug decorated with blue grapes and accepts the sugar bowl in return.

 

Whilst Edith adds milk to her tea, Mrs, Boothby adds two heaped spoons of sugar to her own from the sugar bowl, not to offset any shock, but simply because she has a sweet tooth.

 

“’Elp yerself to some biscuits, Edith dearie.” Mrs. Boothby indicates with a nod to the selection she put out on the cake plate. “I’ve plenty more in ‘ere.” She taps the biscuit tin at her left with her gnarled and careworn hand with its bulbous knuckles. “Bad news is always betta on a full stomach, I find.”

 

“Oh I couldn’t right now, Mrs. Boothby,” Edith assures her hostess. “But perhaps in a little bit, once I’ve caught my breath and had some tea.” She lifts the cup to her mouth and gingerly takes a sip of the sweet strong tea, sighing contentedly as the hot liquid reaches her tongue and the flavour hits her tastebuds

 

“As you like, Edith dearie. Nah, I ‘ope ya don’t mind, but I’m dying for a fag! I was just about ta ‘ave one when you arrived.” Without waiting for a reply, Mrs Boothby starts fossicking through her capacious beaded bag sitting on the table before withdrawing her cigarette papers, Swan Vestas and tin of Player’s Navy Cut. Rolling herself a cigarette she lights it with a satisfied sigh and one of her fruity coughs, dropping the match into a black ashtray full of used cigarette butts that also sits on the table. Mrs. Boothby settles back comfortably in her ladderback chair with her cigarette in one hand and reaches out, snatching up a chocolate biscuit with the other. Blowing out a plume of blue smoke that tumbles through the air around them, the old woman continues. “Nah, what’s ‘appened to our Miss Lettice then, that’s got you in such a state, Edith dearie. Start at the beginnin’, nice and slow like, so I can keep up.”

 

“Well, it all started last night when Miss Lettice went out to the Savoy***** to have a celebratory birthday dinner with Mr. Spencely.”

 

“That’s Miss Lettice’s fancy man, ain’t it?” Mrs. Boothby asks, blowing out a plume of curling acrid grey smoke.

 

“Yes, he’s a duke, or rather going to be a duke someday.” Edith takes another, slightly deeper sip of tea. “I helped Miss Lettice pick a beautiful frock for the evening. She was so nervous about everything being just perfect for Mr. Spencely’s birthday that she couldn’t decide for herself and wanted my opinion. With my help she settled upon a nice green georgette frock with gold beaded panels over the skirt. Wrapped up in one of her furs, with Mr. Spencely’s present nicely wrapped under her arm, I bundled her into the taxi I had hailed from the stand down on the square and then with Miss Lettice gone, I settled down to a pleasurably quiet evening on my own in with my latest copy of Photoplay******.”

 

“And then what ‘appened?” Mrs. Boothby asks, chewing loudly through a large mouthful of biscuit.

 

“Well, not an hour later as I sat in the kitchen reading about Gloria Swanson’s new film ‘Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife’******, I heard the front door fly open and then slam closed. It gave me such a shock!” She puts her hand to her heart. “I hurried into the hallway, just in time to see Miss Lettice disappearing into her room, still in her gown but without her fur, crying as if her heart were breaking.”

 

“She ‘asn’t broken up wiv ‘er fancy man the duke, ‘as she, dearie?”

 

“Well, here’s the thing, Mrs. Boothby. I followed Miss Lettice into her boudoir, and there she was, pulling out her valise from her dressing room. She was in a terrible state! All her beautiful makeup was running down her face from the tears she was crying. She was muttering and talking to herself in a most distressed state, and she was shaking like a fir tree. I think she must have walked, or more likely run from the Savoy judging by how heavily she was breathing, and looking at the state of her shoes. The toes were all scuffed and marked and the heels are ruined.”

 

“So what ‘appened then, Edith?”

 

“Well, I walked up to her and I grasped her by the shoulders. It was almost as though until that moment, she hadn’t even noticed I was there. She started babbling on to me about how she had to pack to go to home to Wiltshire right away, and how she was going to catch a train from Victoria railway station that very night, although it was hard to make any real sense of what she was saying. She started sentences but didn’t finish them, or started part way through, and she was so breathless that half her words were lost anyway. I tried to calm her and had her sit down on her bed. I offered to pack her valise for her, and whilst I did, I asked her what had happened.”

 

“And?” Mrs. Boothby asks, her cigarette burning down almost to the butt as she holds it half way between her lips and the ashtray as she hangs on every word Edith says.

 

“Well, it turns out that when she got to dinner, Mr. Spencely’s mother, Lady Zinnia was there instead of Mr. Spencely himself!”

 

“No!” Mrs. Boothby takes a long drag on her cigarette, the paper crackling as she does.

 

“Yes,” Edith replies, taking another sip of the restorative tea. “Aand she told Miss Lettice that she had packed Mr. Spencely off to South Africa!”

 

“South Africa?” Mrs. Boothby queries, her question becoming a cloud of grey cigarette smoke, tumbling through the air. “Whyever ‘as she done that then?”

 

“Well, Miss Lettice confided in me that she and Mr. Spencely suspected that Lady Zinnia and Mr. Spencely’s uncle wanted to marry him off to the uncle’s daughter, his cousin who is one of this year’s debutantes, and that neither of them wanted Miss Lettice to be stepping out with Mr. Spencely. In fact, from what I can gather, I don’t think that horrible Lady Zinnia likes Miss Lettice at all, even though she hasn’t seen Miss Lettice since she was a little girl!”

 

“What cheek!” mutters Mrs. Boothby, stamping out her cigarette indignantly into the ashtray as though she were squashing the titled lady herself. “Miss Lettice is a very fine lady: much nicer than some of them uvver muckety-mucks I’s got ta deal wiv up the West End! What business is it of that woman who ‘er son wants to step out wiv?”

 

“Exactly, Mrs. Boothby, but you know how obsessed those old aristocratic families can be about their sons and heirs marrying the right daughters of the right families.”

 

Mrs. Boothby releases another fruity cough in a disgusted response.

 

“Anyway, she told Miss Lettice that she has sent Mr. Spencely away to South Africa for a year, just so she could break them up! Isn’t that frightful?”

 

“Awful!” spits Mrs. Boothby hotly before popping the rest of her biscuit into her mouth.

 

“Miss Lettice isn’t even allowed to write to Mr. Spencely.”

 

“Not at all?” the old Cockney char manages to utter through her mouthful of biscuit, spraying a smattering of biscuit crumbs onto her lap and the floor.

 

“Not even a postcard, Mrs. Boothby, and he isn’t allowed to write to her either, nor talk on that infernal contraption the telephone.”

 

“Does they even ‘ave telephones in them out-of-the-way places like South Africa?” asks Mrs. Boothby.

 

“Oh I’m sure they probably do these days, Mrs. Boothby, after all it is the Twentieth Century, but even so, Miss Lettice isn’t allowed to talk to Mr. Spencely even if they do have them: not for the whole year. Lady Zinnia said that she doesn’t want her son marrying for love.”

 

“’Ow cold ‘earted she must be, not lettin’ ‘er son marry the Miss Lettice if ‘e loves her!”

 

“Lady Zinnia said that if Mr. Spencely comes back from South Africa in a year and he tells her that he still loves Miss Lettice, she will let her and Mr. Spencely get married, but that if he doesn’t, that he’ll agree to marry his cousin the debutante.”

 

“What?”

 

“Yes that’s right!” Edith puts down her cup. “Mr. Spencely will marry the woman that Lady Zinnia and his uncle want him to marry if he doesn’t feel the same about Miss Lettice.” She picks up her cup again and takes another sip. “And a year is such a long time to wait!”

 

“Oh it certainly is, ‘specially if youse can’t even write a letter to one annuva. Oh what an ‘orrible fing for that Lady Zinnia to do! She sounds like a right piece of work, she does!” Mrs. Boothby crosses her bony arms as she sists back in her seat. “I’d like to get my ‘ands on ‘er, so I could wring ‘er neck! Pity she ‘as such a pretty name. My old Dad used ta grow zinnias in a pot by the back door. Lovely fings they was too: all bright and colourful.”

 

“Well Lady Zinnia certainly doesn’t take after her namesake, Mrs. Boothby. She’s horrible! It was awful to see Miss Lettice so upset like that.”

 

“What did you do then, Edith dearie?”

 

“Well, I packed Miss Lettice’s valise for her, made her a nice calming cup of cocoa, and then she took a taxi to Victoria Station. As far as I know, she’s gone home to Wiltshire to nurse her poor broken heart.”

 

“No wonder you was so upset when youse turned up ‘ere unannounced.” Mrs. Boothby says, shaking her head in pity at the young girl.

 

“Oh I’m sorry Mrs. Boothby, but I didn’t know who else to turn to who knows Miss Lettice! I just feel so… so very helpless.”

 

“Nah, nah, dearie,” Mrs. Boothby reaches across the table and gives Edith’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Youse done the best for ‘er, by doin’ what she wants and takin’ good care of ‘er when she can’t do it ‘erself.” She smiles kindly at the young girl across the table from her. “You’re a good girl, Edith, and that’s no mistake.” The old woman settles back in her seat again. “Did she say when she’s comin’ ‘ome?”

 

“Well, she’s gone home, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Nah! I mean, comin’ ‘ome ta London?”

 

“No, she didn’t say. I suppose she’ll send word when she’s ready. A few days, maybe? A week? I don’t know what else to do, except wait.”

 

“Well, that’s all you can do, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby raises her hands expansively. “It’s all any of us can do. Just wait, and be there when Miss Lettice needs us, just like youse done for ‘er last night.”

 

“Oh I just feel so helpless, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith’s eyes start to well with unshed tears again. “To see her beautiful blue eyes so dull and sad, and surrounded by smeared kohl******* like that was horrible. She was so unhappy, and that made me so sad.”

 

“I know, dearie, but youse just got ta get on wiv fings. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if ‘er old mum dahn the country was tellin’ ‘er the same fing right this very minute.”

 

“I don’t think you know Lady Sadie, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says doubtfully.

 

“I may not, Edith, but I do know mums. I certainly should do, bein’ one meself. And I can tell youse that any mum will tell their broken’earted daughter ta pick ‘erself up and get on wiv life. The sky ain’t fallen in, ‘though it’s cloudy out there today ‘n all. So Miss Lettice will shed a few tears, and then she’ll realise that there is life worth livin’ out there, even wiv a sore and sorry ‘eart.” Mrs. Boothby pauses, withdraws another cigarette paper and rolls herself another cigarette. As she lights it she asks, “Did she say what she were gonna do?”

 

“Who, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“Lawd child!” the old char rolls her eyes to the smoke and coal yellowed ceiling above. “Miss Lettice of course! Did she say whevva she was gonna wait for ‘im?”

 

“She did say to me last night that she loves Mr. Spencely, and even though it’s hard, she’d be willing to wait for him.” Edith sips gingerly at her tea as she contemplates the idea of waiting for Frank for a year without any contact between either of them. She quickly banishes the idea as she blinks away tears. “Mind you, a year is such a long time to wait.”

 

“Ahh,” Mrs. Boothby utters as she releases another heavy cough. “You only fink that cos yer a young’n. When youse get a bit older, you’ll come to realise that a year can fly by in the blink of an eye.”

 

Edith eyes the older woman dubiously.

 

“I don’t ‘pect you ta believe me right nah, but one day you’ll wake up and ask yerself where that time’s gone.”

 

“But a whole year and not being allowed to write to one another, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“Well, there is that I s’pose, but my Bill were never a writer, an’ when ‘e went off ta sea and I wouldn’t ‘ear from ‘im for months and months, it were always wonderful when ‘e come home again. In fact, it made the time we did ‘ave all the more intense. We ‘ad ta cram the love we ‘ad for one annuver into a smaller space.” The old woman scratches her wiry grey hair. “What’s that old sayin’ about absence and yer ‘eart?”

 

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Edith replies wistfully as she stares into her half empty teacup.

 

“There ya go then!” Mrs. Boothby slams the table, making all the crockery and the tin rattle. “If Miss Lettice really loves ‘er fancy man, an’ ‘e loves ‘er equally, then it’s meant to be, and no amount of time or distance can change that.”

 

“Do you really think so, Mrs. Boothby?”

 

“Course I do. That fancy Lady Zinnia might think she’s bein’ smart ‘n all by splittin’ her son from Miss Lettice, but she may find it might just backfire on ‘er, and serve her bloody right, if you’ll pardon me! I also know that they says that true love conquers all.” She smiles wisely, her dark eyes glinting from amongst her wrinkles in her weathered skin. “So let’s just ‘hope to God that Miss Lettice and ‘er duke really are truly in love.”

 

“Well, I think they are madly in love, Mrs. Boothby.”

 

“Good! That’s a start then.” the old cockney woman replies positively. “Nah, best youse dry your eyes again, cos my Ken’ll be ‘ome soon for ‘is tea, an’ ‘ell be beside ‘imself if ‘e sees you blubbin’. ‘E won’t know whevva to punch the lights out of ‘er what made yer upset, or give you a big ‘ug to make you feel better.” She releases another few fruity coughs before taking another deep drag on her cigarette. “’E’s taken a shine to you ever since you gave ‘im those new Beatrix Potter books for Christmas, you know.”

 

*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.

 

**A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area. The rookeries created in Victorian times in London’s East End were notorious for their cheapness, filth and for being overcrowded.

 

***A Brown Betty is a type of teapot, round and with a manganese brown glaze known as Rockingham glaze. In the Victorian era, when tea was at its peak of popularity, tea brewed in the Brown Betty was considered excellent. This was attributed to the design of the pot which allowed the tea leaves more freedom to swirl around as the water was poured into the pot, releasing more flavour with less bitterness.

 

****Rosie-Lee is Cockney slang for tea, and it is one of the most well-known of all Cockney rhyming slang.

 

*****The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. The Savoy was the first hotel in Britain to introduce electric lights throughout the building, electric lifts, bathrooms in most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. Carte hired César Ritz as manager and Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine; they established an unprecedented standard of quality in hotel service, entertainment and elegant dining, attracting royalty and other rich and powerful guests and diners. The hotel became Carte's most successful venture. Its bands, Savoy Orpheans and the Savoy Havana Band, became famous. Winston Churchill often took his cabinet to lunch at the hotel. The hotel is now managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. It has been called "London's most famous hotel". It has two hundred and sixty seven guest rooms and panoramic views of the River Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment. The hotel is a Grade II listed building.

 

******Photoplay was one of the first American film fan magazines. It was founded in 1911 in Chicago, the same year that J. Stuart Blackton founded Motion Picture Story, a magazine also directed at fans. For most of its run, Photoplay was published by Macfadden Publications. In 1921 Photoplay established what is considered the first significant annual movie award. The magazine ceased publication in 1980.

 

*******’Bluebeard's Eighth Wife’ is a 1923 American silent romantic comedy film produced by Famous Players–Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Sam Wood and stars Gloria Swanson. The film is based on the French play ‘La huitième femme de Barbe-Bleue’ by Alfred Savoir which is based on the Bluebeard tales of the Fifteenth Century. The play ran on Broadway in 1921 starring Ina Claire in the Swanson role. Mona (Swanson) marries John Brandon and immediately after discovers that she is his eighth wife. Determined that she will not be the eighth to be divorced from him, she sets out on a teaser campaign which proves very effective until Brandon tells her that she is bought and paid for. Furious, she determines to give him grounds for a divorce and is subsequently found in her room with another man. In the end, however, Brandon discovers that she really loves him and they leave for a happy honeymoon.

 

*******Cosmetics in the 1920s were characterized by their use to create a specific look: lips painted in the shape of a Cupid's bow, kohl-rimmed eyes, and bright cheeks brushed with bright red blush. The heavily made-up look of the 1920s was a reaction to the demure, feminine Gibson Girl of the pre-war period. In the 1920s, an international beauty culture was forged, and society increasingly focused on novelty and change. Fashion trends influenced theatre, films, literature, and art. With the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt, the fashion of kohl-rimmed eyes like Egyptian pharaohs was very popular in the early 1920s.

 

This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection.

 

Mrs. Boothby’s beloved collection of decorative “best” blue and white china on the kitchen table come from various online miniature stockists through E-Bay. The biscuits on the cake plate have been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. They actually come in their own 1:12 miniature artisan tin, complete with appropriate labelling. The pretty Alphonse Mucha, Art Nouveau style, biscuit tin came as part of a job lot of miniature bits and pieces at an auction house more than twenty years ago. All the other pieces were too big for my requirements, but I bought the lot just for this tin. The Brown Betty teapot came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. Mrs. Boothby’s beaded handbag is also a 1:12 artisan miniature. Hand crocheted, it is interwoven with antique blue glass beads that are two millimetres in diameter. The beads of the handle are three millimetres in length.

 

Also on the table are Mrs. Boothby’s Player’s Navy Cut cigarette tin and Swan Vesta matches, which are 1:12 miniatures hand made by Jonesy’s Miniatures in England. The black ashtray is also an artisan piece, the bae of which is filled with “ash”. The tray as well as having grey ash in it, also has a 1:12 cigarette which rests on its lip (it is affixed there). Made by Nottingham based tobacconist manufacturer John Player and Sons, Player’s Medium Navy Cut was the most popular by far of the three Navy Cut brands (there was also Mild and Gold Leaf, mild being today’s rich flavour). Two thirds of all the cigarettes sold in Britain were Player’s and two thirds of these were branded as Player’s Medium Navy Cut. In January 1937, Player’s sold nearly 3.5 million cigarettes (which included 1.34 million in London). Production continued to grow until at its peak in the late 1950s, Player’s was employing 11,000 workers (compared to 5,000 in 1926) and producing 15 brands of pipe tobacco and 11 brands of cigarettes. Nowadays the brands “Player” and “John Player Special” are owned and commercialised by Imperial Brands (formerly the Imperial Tobacco Company). Swan Vestas is a brand name for a popular brand of ‘strike-anywhere’ matches. Shorter than normal pocket matches they are particularly popular with smokers and have long used the tagline ‘the smoker’s match’ although this has been replaced by the prefix ‘the original’ on the current packaging. Swan Vestas matches are manufactured under the House of Swan brand, which is also responsible for making other smoking accessories such as cigarette papers, flints and filter tips. The matches are manufactured by Swedish Match in Sweden using local, sustainably grown aspen. The Swan brand began in 1883 when the Collard & Kendall match company in Bootle on Merseyside near Liverpool introduced ‘Swan wax matches’. These were superseded by later versions including ‘Swan White Pine Vestas’ from the Diamond Match Company. These were formed of a wooden splint soaked in wax. They were finally christened ‘Swan Vestas’ in 1906 when Diamond merged with Bryant and May and the company enthusiastically promoted the Swan brand. By the 1930s ‘Swan Vestas’ had become ‘Britain’s best-selling match’.

 

The various bowls, cannisters and dishes and the kettle in the background I have acquired from various online miniatures stockists throughout the United Kingdom, America and Australia.

 

The black Victorian era stove and the ladderback chair on the left of the table and the small table directly behind it are all miniature pieces I have had since I was a child. The ladderback chair on the right came from a deceased estate of a miniatures collector in Sydney.

Old Volvo outside Bluebeard Coffee, Tacoma, WA

The acropolis athens greece september 2010

  

History

 

Early settlement

 

While the earliest artifacts date to the Middle Neolithic era, there have been documented habitations in Attica from the Early Neolithic (6th millennium BC). There is little doubt that a Mycenaean megaron stood upon the hill during the late Bronze Age. Nothing of this megaron survives except, probably, a single limestone column-base and pieces of several sandstone steps. Soon after the palace was built a Cyclopean massive circuit wall was built, 760 meters long, up to 10 meters high, and ranging from 3.5 to 6 meters thick. This wall would serve as the main defense for the acropolis until the 5th century The wall consisted of two parapets built with large stone blocks and cemented with an earth mortar called emplekton (Greek: ἔμπλεκτον) The wall follows typical Mycenaean convention in that it followed the natural contour of the terrain and its gate was arranged obliquely, with a parapet and tower overhanging the incomers' right-hand side, thus facilitating defense. There were two lesser approaches up the hill on its north side, consisting of steep, narrow flights of steps cut in the rock. Homer is assumed to refer to this fortification when he mentions the "strong-built House of Erechtheus" . At some point before the 13th century an earthquake caused a fissure near the northeastern edge of the acropolis. This fissure extended some thirty five meters to a bed of soft marl in which a well was dug. An elaborate set of stairs was built and the well was used as a protected source of drinking water during some portion of the Mycenaean period, as it was invaluable in times of siege.

The Dark Ages

 

There is no conclusive evidence for the existence of a Mycenean palace on top of the Athenian Acropolis. However, if there was such a palace, it seems to have been transplanted by later building activity on the Acropolis. Not much is known as to the architectural appearance of the Acropolis until the archaic era. In the 7th and the 6th centuries BC the site was taken over by Kylon during the failed Kylonian revolt, and twice by Pisistratus: all attempts directed at seizing political power by coups d' etat. Nevertheless it seems that a nine-gate wall, the Enneapylon, had been built around the biggest water spring, the "Clepsydra", at the northwestern foot. It was Pisistratus who initially established a precinct for Artemis on the site.

Archaic Acropolis

A temple sacred to "Athena Polias" (Protectress of the City) was quickly erected by mid-6th century BC. This Doric limestone building, from which many relics survive, is referred to as the "Bluebeard" temple, named after the pedimental three-bodied man-serpent sculpture, whose beards were painted dark blue. Whether this temple replaced an older one, or a mere sacred precinct or altar, is not known. In the late 6th century BC yet another temple was built, usually referred to as the Archaios Naos (Old Temple). This temple of Athena Polias was built upon the Doerpfeld foundations.[6] It is unknown where the "Bluebeard" temple was built. There are two popular theories the "Bluebeard" temple was built upon the Doerpfeld foundations, the "Bluebeard" temple was built where the Parthenon now stands. That being said it is unknown if the "Bluebeard" temple and the Archaios Naos coexisted.

To confuse matters, by the time the "Bluebeard" Temple had been dismantled, a newer and grander marble building, the "Older Parthenon" (often called the "Ur-Parthenon", German for "Early Parthenon"), was started following the victory at Marathon in 490 BC. To accommodate it, the south part of the summit was cleared of older remnants, made level by adding some 8,000 two-ton blocks of Piraeus limestone, a foundation 11 m (36 ft) deep at some points, and the rest filled with earth kept in place by the retaining wall.

The Older Parthenon was still under construction when the Persians sacked the city in 480 BC. The building was burnt and looted along with the Archaios Naos and practically everything else on the rock. After the Persian crisis had subsided the Athenians incorporated many of the unfinished temple's architectural members (still unfluted column drums, triglyphs, metopes, etc.) to the newly built northern curtain wall of the Acropolis, where they also served as a prominent "war memorial" and where they can still be seen today. The devastated site was cleared from debris. Statuary, cult objects, religious offerings and unsalvageable architectural members were buried ceremoniously in several deeply dug pits on the hill, serving conveniently as a fill for the artificial plateau created around the classic Parthenon. This "Persian debris" is the richest archaeological deposit excavated on the Acropolis.

 

The Periclean building program

Most of the major temples were rebuilt under the leadership of Pericles during the Golden Age of Athens (460–430 BC). Phidias, a great Athenian sculptor, and Ictinus and Callicrates, two famous architects, were responsible for the reconstruction. During the 5th century BC, the Acropolis gained its final shape. After winning at Eurymedon in 468 BC, Cimon and Themistocles ordered the reconstruction of southern and northern walls, and Pericles entrusted the building of the Parthenon to Ictinus and Callicrates

  

In 437 BC Mnesicles started building the Propylaea, monumental gates with columns of Pentelic marble, partly built upon the old propylaea of Pisistratus. These colonnades were almost finished in 432 BC and had two wings, the northern one serving as picture gallery. At the same time, south of the propylaea, building of the small Ionic Temple of Athena Nike commenced. After an interruption caused by the Peloponnesian War, the temple was finished in the time of Nicias' peace, between 421 BC and 415 BC.

During the same period the building of the Erechtheum, a combination of sacred precincts including the temples of Athena Polias, Poseidon, Erechtheus, Cecrops, Herse, Pandrosos and Aglauros, with its so-called the Kore Porch (or Caryatids' balcony), was begun.

Between the temple of Athena Nike and the Parthenon there was the temenos of Artemis Brauronia or Brauroneion, the goddess represented as a bear and worshipped in the deme of Brauron. The archaic xoanon of the goddess and a statue made by Praxiteles in the 4th century BC were both in the sanctuary.

Behind the Propylaea, Phidias' gigantic bronze statue of Athena Promachos ("she who fights in the front line"), built between 450 BC and 448 BC, dominated. The base was 1.50 m (4 ft 11 in) high, while the total height of the statue was 9 m (30 ft). The goddess held a lance whose gilt tip could be seen as a reflection by crews on ships rounding Cape Sounion, and a giant shield on the left side, decorated by Mys with images of the fight between the Centaurs and the Lapiths. Other monuments that have left almost nothing visible to the present day are the Chalkotheke, the Pandroseion, Pandion's sanctuary, Athena's altar, Zeus Polieus's sanctuary and, from Roman times, the circular temple of Augustus and Rome.

Hellenistic and Roman periodThis section requires expansion.

During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many of the existing buildings in the area of the Acropolis were repaired, due to damage from age, and occasionally, war Monuments to foreign kings were erected, notably those of the Attalid kings of Pergamon Attalos II (in front of the NW corner of the Parthenon), and Eumenes II, in front of the Propylaia. These were rededicated during the early Roman Empire to Augustus (or perhaps Cladius), and Agrippa, respectively. Eumenes was also responsible for constructing a stoa on the South slope, not unlike that of Attalos in the Agora below.

During the Julio-Claudian period, the Temple of Rome and Augustus, a small, round edifice, about 23 meters from the Parthenon, was to be the last significant ancient construction on the summit of the rock.[10] Around the same time, on the North slope, in a cave next to the one dedicated to Pan since the classical period, a sanctuary was founded where the archons dedicated to Apollo on taking office. In the following century, on the South slope, Herodes Atticus built his grand odeon.

During the 3rd century, under threat from a Herulian invasion, repairs were made to the Acropolis walls, and the "Beule Gate" was constructed to restrict entrance in front of the Propylaia, thus returning the Acropolis to use as a fortress.

Byzantine, Latin and Ottoman period

The Venetian siege of 1687.

In the Byzantine period, the Parthenon was turned into a church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Under the Latin Duchy of Athens, the Acropolis functioned as the city's administrative center, with the Parthenon as its cathedral, and the Propylaia as part of the Ducal Palace. A large tower was added, the "Frankopyrgos" (Tower of the Franks), demolished in the 19th century. After the Ottoman conquest, the Parthenon was used as the garrison headquarters of the Turkish army,[13] and the Erechteum was turned into the Governor's private Harem. The buildings of the Acropolis suffered significant damage during the 1687 siege by the Venetians in the Morean War. The Parthenon, which was being used as a gunpowder magazine, was hit by artillery fire and severely damaged.

Archaeological remains

The entrance to the Acropolis was a monumental gateway called the Propylaea. To the south of the entrance is the tiny Temple of Athena Nike. A bronze statue of Athena, sculpted by Phidias, originally stood at its centre. At the centre of the Acropolis is the Parthenon or Temple of Athena Parthenos (Athena the Virgin). East of the entrance and north of the Parthenon is the temple known as the Erechtheum. South of the platform that forms the top of the Acropolis there are also the remains of an outdoor theatre called Theatre of Dionysus. A few hundred metres away, there is the now partially reconstructed Theatre of Herodes Atticus.

All the valuable ancient artifacts are situated in the Acropolis Museum, which resides on the southern slope of the same rock, 280 metres from the Parthenon.

Site plan of the Acropolis at Athens showing the major archaeological remains

     

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1898/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Paramount.

 

American screen legend Gary Cooper (1901-1961) is well remembered for his stoic, understated acting style in more than one hundred Westerns, comedies and dramas. He received five Oscar nominations and won twice for his roles as Alvin York in Sergeant York (1941) and as Will Kane in High Noon (1952).

 

Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana in 1901. His parents were English immigrants, Alice Cooper-Brazier and Charles Henry Cooper, a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a state supreme court judge. Frank left school in 1918 and returned to the family ranch to help raise their five hundred head of cattle and work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for his son to complete his high school education at Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana. His English teacher, Ida W. Davis, played an important role in encouraging him to focus on academics, join the school's debating team, and become involved in dramatics. He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp the rest of his life. In the fall of 1924, Cooper's parents moved to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives. Cooper joined them and there he met some cowboys from Montana who were working as film extras and stuntmen in low-budget Western films. Cooper decided to try his hand working as a film extra for five dollars a day, and as a stuntman for twice that amount. In early 1925, Cooper began his film career working as an extra and stuntman on Poverty Row in such silent Westerns as Riders of the Purple Sage (Lynn Reynolds, 1925) with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider (W.S. Van Dyke, 1925) with Buck Jones. Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Collins changed his first name to ‘Gary’ after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper also worked in non-Western films. He appeared as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925) with Rudolph Valentino, as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925) with Ramón Novarro, and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (Irving Cummings, 1926) with George O'Brien. Gradually he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, such as Tricks (Bruce M. Mitchell, 1925), in which he played the film's antagonist. As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios and in June 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions. His first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky. The film was a major success, and critics called Cooper a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Cooper signed a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 per week. In 1927, with help from established silent film star Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles opposite her in Children of Divorce (Frank Lloyd, 1927) and Wings (William A. Wellman, 1927), the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. He received a thousand fan letters per week. The studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies in films such as Beau Sabreur (John Waters, 1928) with Evelyn Brent, Half a Bride (Gregory La Cava, 1928) with Esther Ralston, and Lilac Time (George Fitzmaurice, 1928) with Colleen Moore. The latter introduced synchronized music and sound effects, and became one of the biggest box office hits of the year.

 

In 1929, Gary Cooper became a major film star with his first sound picture, The Virginian, (Victor Fleming, 1929). The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honour and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western genre. The romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero that embodied male freedom, courage, and honour was created in large part by Cooper's performance in the film. Cooper transitioned naturally to the sound medium, with his deep, clear, and pleasantly drawling voice. One of the high points of Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her American debut. Cooper produced one of his finest performances to that point in his career. In the Dashiell Hammett crime drama City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) he played a misplaced cowboy in a big city who gets involved with gangsters to save the woman (Sylvia Sidney) he loves. After making ten films in two years Cooper was exhausted and had lost thirty pounds. In May 1931, he sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year. During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso who taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus in the finest restaurants, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. In 1932, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 per week, and director and script approval. He appeared opposite Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932), the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Critics praised his highly intense and at times emotional performance, and the film went on to become one of the year's most commercially successful films. The following year, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Design for Living (1933) with Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, and based loosely on the successful Noël Coward play. Wikipedia: “The film received mixed reviews and did not do well at the box office, but Cooper's performance was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy”. Then, he appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever (1934), with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. The film was a box-office success. His next two Henry Hathaway films were the melodrama Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the romantic adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. The latter was nominated for six Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films.

 

Gary Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, an innocent, sweet-natured writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Oscar nomination. In the adventure film The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone, 1936) with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success. In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman (1936) with Jean Arthur—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly-fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-two years. In Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. In the adventure film Beau Geste (William A. Wellman, 1939) with Ray Milland, he joined the French Foreign Legion to find adventure in the Sahara fighting local tribes. Wikipedia: “Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona.” Cooper cemented his cowboy credentials in The Westerner (William Wyler, 1940). He won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1942 for his performance as Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier from the Great War, in Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941). Cooper worked with Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943) which earned him his third Oscar nomination. The film was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway, with whom Cooper developed a strong friendship. On 23 October 1947, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, not under subpoena but responding to an invitation to give testimony on the alleged infiltration of Hollywood by communists. Although he never said he regretted having been a friendly witness, as an independent producer, he hired blacklisted actors and technicians. He did say he had never wanted to see anyone lose the right to work, regardless of what he had done. Cooper won his second Oscar for his performance as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), one of his finest roles and a kind of come-back after a series of flops. He continued to play the lead in films almost to the end of his life. His later box office hits included the influential Western Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) in which he guns down villain Burt Lancaster in a showdown, William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956), in which he portrays a Quaker farmer during the American Civil War, Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Audrey Hepburn, and the hard-edged action Western Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958), with Lee J. Cobb. Cooper's final film was the British-American co-production The Naked Edge (Michael Anderson, 1961). In April 1960, Cooper underwent surgery for prostate cancer after it had metastasized to his colon. But by the end of the year the cancer had spread to his lungs and bones. On 13 May 1961, six days after his sixtieth birthday, Gary Cooper died. The young and handsome Cooper had affairs with Clara Bow, Lupe Velez, Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead. In 1933, he married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. They had an ‘open’ marriage and Cooper also had relationships with the actresses Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and Patricia Neal. Sir Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with him.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

Don't stick your tongue out at me, old man! (Or is it a critter?)