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French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 40-110-07. Photo: Parc Film / KIM. Micheline Presle and Jacques Perrin in Peau d'âne/Donkey Skin (Jacques Demy, 1970). Caption: Donkey Skin. A Tale by Charles Perrault. A film written and directed by Jacques Demi. My mother, I want Donkey Skin to make me a cake.
On Thursday 21 April 2022, French actor Jacques Perrin (1941-2022) passed away. Handsome and talented, Perrin started his career as the romantic hero in the films of Italian director Valerio Zurlini. Later he made powerful films with Costa-Gravas and played the adult Salvatore in the international hit Cinema Paradiso (1988). With his studio, he produced successful political films such as Z (1969) and nature documentaries as Microcosmos (1996).
Jacques Perrin was born Jacques André Simonet in Paris in 1941. Occasionally, he is credited as Jacques Simonet. Perrin was his mother's name. His father, Alexandre Simonet, was a theatre director. In 1946, the five years old made his uncredited film debut in Les Portes de la nuit/Gates of the Night (1946, Marcel Carné), starring Serge Reggiani and Yves Montand. Perrin was trained as an actor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique. On stage, he gave over 400 performances of L'Année du bac in a Paris theatre. In the cinema he played his first major juvenile parts in Italy for director Valerio Zurlini. He played Claudia Cardinale’s boyfriend in the romantic comedy La Ragazza con la valigia/Girl with a Suitcase (1961, Valerio Zurlini) and Marcello Mastroianni’s younger brother in Cronaca familiar/Family Diary (1962, Valerio Zurlini). In France he acted with Brigitte Bardot in La Vérité/The Truth (1960, Henri-Georges Clouzot), with Anna Karina in Le Soleil dans l'oeil/Sun in Your Eyes (1962, Jacques Bourdon), and with Bruno Cremer in the war film La 317ème section/317th Platoon (1965, Pierre Schoendoerffer). He also worked on the thriller film Compartiment tueurs/The Sleeping Car Murders (1965, Costa-Gravas). Hames Travers at Films de France: “Costa-Gavras made his directoral debut with this fast-moving, convoluted but magnificently assembled crime thriller. The film reflects the director’s interest for American film noir and, thanks largely to an impressive cast, is one of his most entertaining films.” It was the start of a long-time cooperation between actor and director. In 1966, Perrin won two Best Actor awards at the Venice Film Festival or the Italian film Un uomo a metà/Almost a Man (1966, Vittorio De Seta), and the Spanish film La busca/The Search (1966, Angelino Fons). The next year he co-starred in the musical Les demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy) with Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorleac. He would cooperate again with Demy and Deneuve on the fairytale Peau d'âne/Donkey Skin (1970, Jacques Demy) in which he played an appealing Prince Charming. Craig Butler at AllMovie: “Donkey Skin is a strange but utterly captivating little fantasy, and one that, despite its fairy tale origins, is really aimed more at adults than at children. Jacques Demy has directed with an eye toward whimsy, but whimsy mixed both with magic and subtle disorientation.”
At 27, Jacques Perrin created his own studio. He produced and acted in Z (1969), directed by Costa Gavras and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, and Irene Papas. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. Dan Pavlides at AllMovie: “Z is one of the most politically insightful films ever made, exposing government hypocrisy and cover-up in the wake of a political assassination.” The production had nearly 4 million admissions in France and was the 4th highest grossing film of the year. It was also the 10th highest grossing film of 1969 in the United States. Z is also one of the few films to be nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture. Perrin worked with Costa-Gavras again on État de Siège/State of Siege (1972, Costa-Gavras) and Section special/Special Section (1975, Costa-Gavras). Both films had political themes, and Perrin continued this trend with La guerre d'Algérie (1975, Yves Courrière, Philippe Monnier), a documentary on the Algerian uprising, and La Spirale (1976, Armand Mattelart, Valérie Mayoux, Jacqueline Meppiel), a film on the Chilean presidency of Salvador Allende . In 1976, Perrin produced another Oscar-winning film in La Victoire en chantant/Black and White in Color (1976, Jean-Jacques Annaud). That year, he also embarked on Il deserto dei Tartari/Le Désert des Tartares/ The Desert of the Tartars (1976, Valerio Zurlini), with a cast filled with such big-name actors as Jean-Louis Trintignant, Vittorio Gassman, Max von Sydow, Francisco Rabal, Helmut Griem, Giuliano Gemma, Philippe Noiret, Fernando Rey, Laurent Terzieff and Jean-Louis Trintignant. The film, based on the Dino Buzzati's novel The Tartar Steppe, tells the story of a young officer, Giovanni Drogo (Jacques Perrin), and the time that he spent guarding the Bastiani Fortress, an old, unmaintained border fortress. Although the film won the Grand Prix du Cinéma Français and three David di Donatello Awards 1977, it was not very successful and left Perrin with debts.
Jacques Perrin had a huge success with the Italian drama Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (1988, Giuseppe Tornatore). He played a famous film director remembers his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist (Philippe Noiret), first brought about his love of films. Cinema Paradiso was a critical and box-office success and won many awards including the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Two years later, he also appeared in Tornatore’s Stanno tutti bene/Everybody’s Fine (1990, Giuseppe Tornatore) starring Marcello Mastroianni. As a producer Perrin changed direction when he decided that the natural life around us could tell stories as fascinating and varied as anything dreamt up by a scriptwriter. He produced nature documentaries that transformed the scope of wildlife films, from Microcosmos (1996, Claude Nuridsany, Marie Pérennou), in which ants performed the starring role, to the austere travelogue Himalaya (1999, Eric Valli), nominated for an Oscar, and Le Peuple Migrateur/Winged Migration (2001, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats, Jacques Perrin), which followed some 50 species of birds across 30 countries. All were filmed by Perrin’s studio Galatée Films. Another successful production was Les choristes/The Chorus (2004, Christophe Barratier). In this drama Perrin played the narrator, the old orchestra conductor Pierre Morhange, who reminisces about his childhood inspirations through the pages of a diary kept by his old music teacher. The young Pépinot was played by Perrin’s son Maxence. Other films in which he played were the historical horror film Le pacte des loups/Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001, Christophe Gans), and the crime drama Le petit lieutenant/The Young Lieutenant (2005, Xavier Beauvois) with Nathalie Baye. In 1985, Perrin was made Knight of the Ordre national du Mérite, in 1997 he was promoted to Officer and in 2003 to Commander. He was also made Knight of the Légion d'honneur in 1990 and promoted to Officer in 2007. Jacques Perrin has three sons, actor MathieuPerrin (1975), actor Maxence Perrin (1995), and Lancelot Perrin (2000). His most recent film production is Océans/Oceans (2009, Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud). Tracie Cooper at AllMovie: “Narrated by Pierce Brosnan, Oceans is made up of a compilation of underwater photography from over 75 diving expeditions that took place over a period of four years, and captures an astoundingly intimate glimpse into the lives of a wide array of sea life”.
Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Craig Butler (AllMovie), Dan Pavlides (AllMovie), Tracie Cooper (AllMovie), John Whitley (The Telegraph), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
sur la ligne Chronobus C1 à destination de Gare de Chantenay (Nantes), terminus Haluchère-Batignolles, rue du Ranzay, Nantes (Loire-Atlantique (44), Pays-de-la-Loire, France, FR)
Humanista é uma pessoa com grande interesse pelos seres humanos. Meu cachorro é humanista. [Kurt Vonnegut]
Essa é a Demi, minha doce e fofa senhora, tem 13 anos que a pegamos e está protegendo minha família, nesse momento mais fazendo companhia,
French collectors card in the Hit Collection series by Figurine Panini, no. 66. Photo: Philips. Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg.
On 16 July 2023, British actress Jane Birkin (1946) was found dead in her Paris home by her personal nurse. In the Swinging Sixties, the shy, awkward-looking Birkin made a huge international splash as one of the nude models in Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966). In France, she became the muse of singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, who wrote several of her albums, plus their explicitly erotic duet 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'. Later, she worked with such respected film directors as Jacques Rivette, Agnès Varda, and Jacques Doillon, and won several acting awards. She was 76 years old.
Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London in 1946. Her mother, Judy Campbell, was an English stage actress, and her father, David Birkin, was a Royal Navy lieutenant-commander, who had worked on clandestine operations as a navigator with the French Resistance. Her brother is the screenwriter and director Andrew Birkin. She was educated at Upper Chine School, Isle of Wight, and then went to Kensington Academy in London. At 17, she first went on stage in Graham Greene's 1964 production 'Carving a Statue'. A year later, she was chosen to play in the musical comedy 'Passion Flower Hotel' with music by John Barry, the composer of the James Bond theme. They met and married shortly afterwards. Their daughter Kate Barry, now a photographer, was born in 1967. Jane emerged in the Swinging London scene of the 1960s. First, she appeared uncredited as a girl on a motorbike in the comedy The Knack …and How to Get It (Richard Lester, 1965) starring Rita Tushingham. Then she attracted attention with a brief scene as a nude, blonde model in Blowup (1966), Michelangelo Antonioni's scandalous masterpiece that received the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1968, Birkin played a fantasy-like model in the psychedelic picture Wonderwall (Joe Massot, 1968). That same year, she auditioned in France for the lead female role in Slogan (Pierre Grimblat, 1969) with pop star Serge Gainsbourg, who was still grieving after his break up with Brigitte Bardot. Jane barely spoke French, and Gainsbourg gave her a rough time. When she burst into tears, mixing private sadness about John Barry and the film part, he disapproved, but he recognised that she cried well in front of the camera. Jane got the part, and a mythical and passionate Paris love story began. Birkin performed with Gainsbourg on the film's theme song, 'La chanson de slogan' - the first of many collaborations between the two. They became inseparable and a living legend when they recorded the duet 'Je t'aime... moi non plus' (I love you... me neither), a song Gainsbourg originally had written for Brigitte Bardot. The song's fame is partly a result of its salacious lyrics, sung by Gainsbourg and Birkin to a background of passionate whispering and moaning from Birkin, concluding in her simulated orgasm. Censorship in several countries went wild, the Vatican condemned the immoral nature of the song, and in Great Britain, the BBC refused to play the original and did their own orchestral version. The record benefitted from all the free publicity and rocketed straight to the top of the charts, selling a million copies in a matter of months.
At the Côte d'Azur, Jane Birkin played in the thriller La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969) in which she was seduced by Alain Delon. Then she went with Serge Gainsbourg to Yugoslavia to play in the adventure film Romansa konjokradice/Romance of a horse thief (Abraham Polonsky, 1971) starring Yul Brynner. In 1971, her daughter, the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg was born. Birkin took a break from acting, but returned as the lover of Brigitte Bardot (in her final film role) in Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme.../Don Juan 73 (Roger Vadim, 1973). Her first solo album, 'Di Doo Dah', was also released in 1973. The title song became another chart hit. In the cinema, Birkin played 'cute but stupid' roles in such box office hits as La moutarde me monte au nez/Lucky Pierre (Claude Zidi, 1974) and La course à l’échalotte/The Wild Goose Chase (Claude Zidi, 1975), two popular comedies starring Pierre Richard. She proved herself as a film actress in Le Mouton enragé/Love at the Top (Michel Deville, 1974) starring Romy Schneider, and the highly dramatic Sept morts sur ordonnance/Seven Deaths by Prescription (Jacques Rouffio, 1975) opposite Michel Piccoli. In 1975, she also appeared as an androgynous-looking teenager opposite Joe Dallesandro in Gainsbourg's daring directorial début Je t'aime... moi non plus (Serge Gainsbourg, 1976). The film created a stir for its frank examination of sexual ambiguity and controversial sex scenes. In the following year, she had a cameo as herself in the blockbuster L'Animal/Stuntwoman (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. In the meantime, her second album 'Lolita go home' (1975) came out, on which she sang Philippe Labro's lyrics set to Gainsbourg's music. Three years later, her 'Ex-fan des sixties' (1978) was released. Birkin appeared in a series of mainstream films such as the Agatha Christie films Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978) and Evil Under the Sun (Guy Hamilton, 1982), with Peter Ustinov as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. In the arthouse production Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung/Egon Schiele: Excess and Punishment (Herbert Vesely, 1980), she appeared as the mistress of Austrian artist Egon Schiele, played by Mathieu Carrière.
Serge Gainsbourg had plunged into several major bouts of alcoholism and depression, resulting in all-night partying and scandals, and in 1980 Jane Birkin left him. The couple remained on good terms though. Birkin starred as Anne in La fille prodigue/The Prodigal Daughter (Jacques Doillon, 1981). Jacques Doillon proved to be her dream of a director, who imposed his own personal style of drama and brought out the very best of her. She went to live with him, and in 1982 she had her third daughter Lou Doillon. She also appeared as Alma opposite Maruschka Detmers in his film La pirate/The Pirate (Jacques Doillon, 1984), for which she was nominated for a César Award. This work led to an invitation from theatre director Patrice Chéreau to star on stage in 'La Fausse suivante' (The False Servant) by Pierre de Marivaux. Gainsbourg, suffering from the separation, wrote 'Baby alone in Babylone' for her. The record won the Charles Cross award and became a gold record. Jane Birkin began to appear frequently on stage in plays and concerts in France, Japan, the U.K., and then the U.S. In the cinema, she received another César Award nomination for her role in La femme de ma vie/The Woman of My Life (Régis Wargnier, 1986). Film director Jacques Rivette collaborated with her in L'amour par terre/Love on the Ground (Jacques Rivette, 1983) starring Geraldine Chaplin, and La Belle Noiseuse/The Beautiful Troublemaker (Jacques Rivette, 1991) with Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Béart. For the latter film, Birkin was nominated for the César for best supporting actress. She created a sensation as the star and screenwriter of director Agnès Varda's Kung Fu Master (1987), in which she played a 40-year-old woman carrying on a torrid affair with a 15-year-old boy, played by Mathieu Demy, Varda's son. The following year, Varda expressed her admiration for Birkin with the feature-length documentary Jane B. par Agnes V (Agnès Varda, 1988). Birkin’s work in Dust (Marion Hänsel, 1985) with Trevor Howard and Daddy Nostalgie (Bertrand Tavernier, 1990) opposite Dirk Bogarde also earned her the praise and respect of international critics. Additionally, she appeared in Merchant-Ivory's A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory, 1998) and Merci Docteur Rey (Andrew Litvack, 2002) with Dianne Wiest, while the end title song of Le Divorce (James Ivory, 2003) featured her singing 'L'Anamour', composed by Serge Gainsbourg. In 1990 Serge Gainsbourg dedicated a new album to her: 'Amours des feintes'. It was to be his last. He died in 1991. A year later Birkin won the Female Artist of the Year award at the 1992 Victoires de la Musique. In 1993 she separated from Jacques Doillon. In the following years, she devoted herself to her family and to her humanitarian work with Amnesty International on immigrant welfare and AIDS issues. Birkin visited Bosnia, Rwanda, and Palestine, often working with children. In 2001, she was awarded the OBE in Great Britain. She has also been awarded the French Ordre National du Mérite in 2004. Jane Birkin continues to make films, theatre, and music. She collaborated with such artists as Bryan Ferry, Manu Chao, Françoise Hardy, Rufus Wainwright, and Les Negresses Vertes on albums such as 'Rendez-Vous' (2004) and 'Fictions' (2006). The self-penned 'Enfants d'Hiver' arrived in 2008. In 2006, Birkin played the title role in 'Elektra', directed by Philippe Calvario in France. At the Cannes Film Festival 2007, she presented a film, both as a director and actor: Boxes (2007) with Michel Piccoli, Geraldine Chaplin, and her daughter Lou Doillon. She also appeared in Si tu meurs, je te tue/If you die, I’ll kill you (Hiner Saleem, 2011) with Jonathan Zaccaï, and La femme et le TGV/The Railroad Lady (2016), a short film directed by Swiss filmmaker Timo von Gunten. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film. In a 2017 interview, Birkin stated that La femme et le TGV would be her final acting performance and that she had no plans to return to acting. In March 2017, Jane Birkin released 'Birkin/Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique', a collection of songs Serge Gainsbourg had written for her during and after their relationship, reworked with full orchestral arrangements. In 2021, she suffered a stroke. Her declining health forced her to cancel performances frequently. Birkin was found dead in her Paris home by her personal nurse on 16 July 2023. She was 76 years old. In January 2022, an intimate and touching documentary about her has been released in French cinemas Jane par Charlotte. It was directed by her daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), John Bush (AllMusic), RFI Musique (now defunct), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
I am a transvestite, a male to female cross-dresser who most of the time is happy to live as a man. However. I cannot deny that occasionally I really want nothing more than to be a woman. The cross-dressing releases an inner desire to be female.
On these occasions I create fantasies and scenarios in my head about what it may have been if I was born female.
This picture, from the summer of 2004 caught at an emotionally powerful moment in my longing to actually be female, I genuinely wanted to be a woman for real that day.
It changes my approach to my make-up, wig style and choice of female clothing as I am desperately trying to be realistic and convincing. I find it helps to create a back story to my female illusion. In this case I decided if I was going to act as if I was a woman then I kind of had to become one in my head. I actually enjoyed this as I practiced and got into the character.
I started off by completely banishing the man I am and just concentrated on being a woman. I found I was more animated, softer and felt somewhat vulnerable. Not vulnerable because of the female persona but vulnerable because I fear being outed as a transvestite and cross-dressing is a big risk for me. I also felt vulnerable because emotionally I was euphoric and aware I enjoyed being a woman more than I cared to admit to.
I wanted nothing more than to be female and I pretended I was posing for my husband and I was surprised just how much I liked thinking of myself as 'The Wife'!
I found myself keen to spend more time in this persona but inevitably the overpowering urges and emotions begin to diminish and by the end of the day I feel mentally exhausted and wrung out by the experience and it is, surprisingly after such an intense desire to be female, a relief to return to being a man again.
I often wonder if my own experiences are shared by other transvestites. I increasingly feel isolated as others often accuse me of being homosexual as I like being in the (pretend) role of a girlfriend or a wife. To me it's not sexuality it's just portraying a persona that is in reality an illusion. Helene is not real, she is a he dressed up. I enjoy the release of the emotions and I love daring to act the part of a woman but I have no sexual desire toward men. Such topics seem to draw anger from some who are uncomfortable with the fact they enjoy dressing up and spending time as women. I wish the debate were wider on this as I rather tortured myself for years on this one.
I simply cannot demy I adore being a woman and feel good yet I have a fear about it as well. I have reduced the fear but it still lingers. I enjoy acting as a woman and adopting the behaviour ans mannerisms and being a bit flirty, it's great being female! Yet, I am not attracted to men and yet...I like being admired by them...aaarrggghhhh!
I call it the transvestite paradox. I love being a woman and I'm happy to live as a man.
Helene x
French postcard by Studio Erving, Paris, no. 696. Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd. Harrison Ford in Star Wars - Episode IV - A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977).
American film actor Harrison Ford (1942) specialises in roles of cynical, world-weary heroes in popular film series. He played Han Solo in the Star Wars franchise, archaeologist Indiana Jones in a series of four adventure films, Rick Deckard in the Science Fiction films Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and secret agent Jack Ryan in the spy thrillers Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). These film roles have made him one of the most successful stars in Hollywood. In all, his films have grossed about $5.4 billion in the United States and $9.3 billion worldwide.
Harrison Ford was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1942. His parents were former radio actress Dorothy (née Nidelman) and advertising executive and former actor John William "Christopher" Ford. Harrison graduated in 1960 from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. His voice was the first student voice broadcast on his high school's new radio station, WMTH, and he was its first sportscaster during his senior year. He attended Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where he was a philosophy major and did some acting. After dropping out of college, he first wanted to work as a DJ in radio and left for California to work at a large national radio station. He was unable to find work and, in order to make a living, he accepted a job as a carpenter. Another part-time job was auditioning, where he had to read out lines that the opposing actor would say to an actor auditioning for a particular role. Harrison did this so well that he was advised to take up acting. He was also briefly a roadie for the rock group The Doors. From 1964, Ford regularly played bit roles in films. He was finally credited as "Harrison J. Ford" in the Western A Time for Killing (Phil Karlson, 1967), starring Glenn Ford, George Hamilton, and Inger Stevens. The "J" did not stand for anything since he has no middle name but was added to avoid confusion with a silent film actor named Harrison Ford, who appeared in more than 80 films between 1915 and 1932 and died in 1957. French filmmaker Jacques Demy chose Ford for the lead role of his first American film, Model Shop (1969), but the head of Columbia Pictures thought Ford had "no future" in the film business and told Demy to hire a more experienced actor. The part eventually went to Gary Lockwood. He had an uncredited, non-speaking role in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point (1970) as an arrested student protester. His first major role was in the coming-of-age comedy American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973). Ford became friends with the directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, and he made a number of films with them. In 1974, he acted in The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) starring Gene Hackman, and played an army officer named "G. Lucas" in Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, co-produced by George Lucas. Ford made his breakthrough as Han Solo in Lucas's epic space opera Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977). Star Wars became one of the most successful and groundbreaking films of all time and brought Ford, and his co-stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, widespread recognition. He reprised the role in four sequels over the course of the next 42 years: Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980), Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983), Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015), and Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019).
Harrison Ford also worked with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on the successful Indiana Jones adventure series playing the heroic, globe-trotting archaeologist Indiana Jones. The series started with the action-adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981). Like Star Wars, the film was massively successful and became the highest-grossing film of the year. Ford went on to reprise the role throughout the rest of the decade in the prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984), and the sequel Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989), which co-starred Sean Connery as Indy's father, Henry Jones Sr. and River Phoenix as young Indiana. In between the successful film series, Ford also played very daring roles in more artistic films. He played the role of a lonely depressed detective in the Sci-Fi film Blade Runner, (Ridley Scott, 1981) opposite Rutger Hauer. While not initially a success, Blade Runner went on to become a cult classic and one of Ford's most highly regarded films. Ford received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the crime drama Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) with Kelly McGillis, and also starred for Weir as a house-father in the survival drama The Mosquito Coast (Peter Weir, 1986) with River Phoenix as his son. In 1988, he played a desperate man searching for his kidnapped wife in Roman Polanski's Frantic. For his role as a wrongly accused prisoner Dr. Richard Kimble in the action thriller The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993), also starring Tommy Lee Jones, Ford received some of the best reviews of his career. He became the second of five actors to portray Jack Ryan in two films of the film series based on the literary character created by Tom Clancy: the spy thrillers Patriot Games (Phillip Noyce, 1992) and Clear and Present Danger (Phillip Noyce, 1994). He then played the American president in the blockbuster Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997) opposite Gary Oldman. Later his success waned somewhat and his films Random Hearts (Sydney Pollack, 1999) and Six Days Seven Nights (Ivan Reitman, 1998) both disappointed at the box office. However, he did play a few special roles, such as an assassin in the supernatural horror-thriller What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, 2000) opposite Michele Pfeiffer, and a Russian submarine captain in K-19: The Widowmaker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2002) with Liam Neeson. In 2008, he reprised his role as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008) with Cate Blanchett. The film received generally positive reviews and was the second highest-grossing film worldwide in 2008. Later Ford accepted more supporting roles, such as in the sports film 42 (Brian Helgeland, 2013) about baseball player Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), the first black athlete to play in Major League Baseball. Ford reprised the role of Han Solo in the long-awaited Star Wars sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015), which became massively successful like its predecessors. He also reprised his role as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), co-starring Ryan Gosling. Harrison Ford has been married three times and has four biological children and one adopted child. From 1964 to 1979, Ford was married to Mary Marquardt, a marriage that produced two children. From 1983 to 2003, he was married to Melissa Mathison, from which marriage two more children were born. In 2010, he married actress Calista Flockhart, famous for her role in the TV series Ally McBeal. He owns a ranch in Jackson Hole (Wyoming). Besides being an actor, Ford is also an experienced pilot. Ford survived three plane crashes of planes he piloted himself. The most recent accident occurred in 2015 when he suffered an engine failure with a Ryan PT-22 Recruit and made an emergency landing on a golf course. Among other injuries, Ford sustained a broken pelvis and ankle from this latest accident. In 2003, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
American postcard by Fotofolio, no. 2859. Photo: Milton H. Greene. Caption: Gene Kelly, Los Angeles, 1959. Gene Kelly in The Happy Road (Gene Kelly, 1957).
Gene Kelly (1912-1996) was an American actor, dancer, singer, filmmaker, and choreographer. He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks, and the likable characters that he played on screen. He starred in, choreographed, or co-directed some of the most well-regarded musical films of the 1940s and 1950s until they fell out of fashion in the late 1950s. Kelly is best known today for his performances in films such as Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), which was his directorial debut, An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), Brigadoon (1954), and It's Always Fair Weather (1955).
Eugene Curran Kelly was born in 1912 in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He was the third son of James Patrick Joseph Kelly, a phonograph salesman, and his wife, Harriet Catherine Curran. By the time he decided to dance, he was an accomplished sportsman and able to defend himself. He attended St. Raphael Elementary School in the Morningside neighborhood of Pittsburgh and graduated from Peabody High School at age 16. He entered Pennsylvania State College as a journalism major, but after the 1929 crash, he left school and found work in order to help his family financially. He created dance routines with his younger brother Fred to earn prize money in local talent contests. They also performed in local nightclubs. In 1931, Kelly enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh to study economics. His family opened a dance studio in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In 1932, they renamed it the Gene Kelly Studio of the Dance and opened a second location in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1933. Kelly served as a teacher at the studio during his undergraduate and law-student years at Pitt. Kelly eventually decided to pursue a career as a dance teacher and full-time entertainer, so he dropped out of law school after two months. In 1937, having successfully managed and developed the family's dance-school business, he finally did move to New York City in search of work as a choreographer. His first Broadway assignment, in 1938, was as a dancer in Cole Porter's 'Leave It to Me!' Kelly's first big breakthrough was in the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'The Time of Your Life' (1939), in which, for the first time on Broadway, he danced to his own choreography. In 1940, he got the lead role in Rodgers and Hart's 'Pal Joey', choreographed by Robert Alton. This role propelled him to stardom. Offers from Hollywood began to arrive.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the largest and most powerful studio in Hollywood when Gene Kelly arrived in town in 1941. There he made his film debut with Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal (Busby Berkeley, 1942). The film was a production of the Arthur Freed unit at MGM and it was one of the big hits of the year. The talent pool at MGM was especially large during World War II, when Hollywood was a refuge for many musicians and others in the performing arts of Europe who were forced to flee the Nazis. Kelly's film debut was followed by Cole Porter's Du Barry Was a Lady (Roy Del Ruth, 1943) with Lucille Ball, the morale booster Thousands Cheer (George Sidney, 1943), Cover Girl (Charles Vidor, 1944) opposite Rita Harworth, and Anchors Aweigh (George Sidney, 1945) with Frank Sinatra. MGM gave him a free hand to devise a range of dance routines for the latter, including his duets with Sinatra and the celebrated animated dance with Jerry Mouse—the animation for which was supervised by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Anchors Aweigh became one of the most successful films of 1945 and Kelly was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In Ziegfeld Follies (1946), Kelly collaborated with Fred Astaire, for whom he had the greatest admiration, in 'The Babbitt and the Bromide' challenge dance routine. He co-starred with Judy Garland in The Pirate (1948) which gave full rein to Kelly's athleticism. It features Kelly's work with the Nicholas Brothers—the leading black dancers of their day—in a virtuoso dance routine. Now regarded as a classic, the film was ahead of its time but flopped at the box office. Kelly made his debut as a director with On the Town (1949), for Arthur Freed. Stanley Donen, brought to Hollywood by Kelly to be his assistant choreographer, received co-director credit for On the Town. A breakthrough in the musical film genre, it has been described as "the most inventive and effervescent musical thus far produced in Hollywood."
Two musicals secured Gene Kelly's reputation as a major figure in the American musical film. First, he directed and starred in An American in Paris (1951) with Leslie Caron. The highlight of the film is the seventeen-minute ballet sequence set to the title song written by George Gershwin and choreographed by Kelly. The sequence cost a half-million dollars (U.S.) to make in 1951 dollars. Kelly's many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences. In 1952, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements, the same year An American in Paris won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Probably the most admired of all film musicals is his next film, Singin' in the Rain (1952). As co-director, lead star, and choreographer, Kelly was the central driving force and unforgettable is Kelly's celebrated and much-imitated solo dance routine to the title song. Kelly continued his string of classic Hollywood musicals with Brigadoon (1954) with Cyd Charisse, and It's Always Fair Weather (1955), co-directed with Donen. The latter was a musical satire on television and advertising and includes his roller-skate dance routine to I Like Myself, and a dance trio with Michael Kidd and Dan Dailey that Kelly used to experiment with the widescreen possibilities of Cinemascope. Next followed Kelly's last musical film for MGM, Les Girls (1957), in which he partnered a trio of leading ladies, Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, and Taina Elg. It, too, sold few movie tickets. Dale O'Connor at IMDb: "Kelly was in the same league as Fred Astaire, but instead of a top hat and tails Kelly wore work clothes that went with his masculine, athletic dance style." He finally made for MGM The Happy Road (1957), set in his beloved France, his first foray in a new role as producer-director-actor. After leaving MGM, Kelly returned to stage work.
After musicals got out of fashion, Gene Kelly starred in two films outside the musical genre: Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer, 1960) with Spencer Tracey and Fredric March, and What a Way to Go! (1964). In 1967, he appeared in French musical comedy Les Demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967) opposite Catherine Deneuve. It was a box-office success in France and nominated for Academy Awards for Best Music and Score of a Musical Picture. Kelly directed films without a collaborator, including the bedroom-farce comedy A Guide for the Married Man (1967) starring Walter Matthau, and the musical Hello, Dolly! (1969) starring Barbra Streisand and Matthau. The latter was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He appeared as one of many special narrators in the surprise hit That's Entertainment! (Jack Haley Jr., 1974). The compilation film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to celebrate the studio's 50th anniversary. The film turned the spotlight on MGM's legacy of musical films from the 1920s through the 1950s. Kelly subsequently directed and co-starred with his friend Fred Astaire in the sequel That's Entertainment, Part II (Gene Kelly, 1976). It was a measure of his powers of persuasion that he managed to coax the 77-year-old Astaire—who had insisted that his contract rule out any dancing, having long since retired—into performing a series of song-and-dance duets, evoking a powerful nostalgia for the glory days of the American musical film. It was later followed by That's Dancing! (Jack Haley Jr., 1985), and That's Entertainment, Part III (Bud Friedgen, Michael J. Sheridan, 1994). Kelly received lifetime achievement awards in the Kennedy Center Honors (1982) and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute. In 1999, the American Film Institute also ranked him as the 15th greatest male screen legend of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Gene Kelly passed away in 1996 at the age of 83 in Beverly Hills, California, U.S. His final film project was the animated film Cats Don't Dance, not released until 1997, on which Kelly acted as an uncredited choreographic consultant. It was dedicated to his memory. Gene Kelly was married three times: yo actress Betsy Blair (1941-1957), Jeanne Coyne (1960- her death in 1973) , and Patricia Ward (1990- his death in 1996).
Sources: Dale O'Connor (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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Demy Schandeler S.à.r.l. (Demy Cars): the bus with registration DC 4382 (Mercedes-Benz Citaro C2 LE Ü, put into service in 2016) leaves the Stäreplaz-Étoile bus terminal, working a service on line 262 of the RGTR (Régime Général des Transports Routiers), to Mersch-Gare.
After the last phase of the restructuring of the national bus service, from July 17, 2022 this line has become the 921.
French postcard by Editions Nugeron, no. Star 196. Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd. Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Cruisade (Steven Spielberg, 1989).
American film actor Harrison Ford (1942) specialises in roles of cynical, world-weary heroes in popular film series. He played Han Solo in the Star Wars franchise, archaeologist Indiana Jones in a series of four adventure films, Rick Deckard in the Science Fiction films Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and secret agent Jack Ryan in the spy thrillers Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). These film roles have made him one of the most successful stars in Hollywood. In all, his films have grossed about $5.4 billion in the United States and $9.3 billion worldwide.
Harrison Ford was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1942. His parents were former radio actress Dorothy (née Nidelman) and advertising executive and former actor John William "Christopher" Ford. Harrison graduated in 1960 from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. His voice was the first student voice broadcast on his high school's new radio station, WMTH, and he was its first sportscaster during his senior year. He attended Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where he was a philosophy major and did some acting. After dropping out of college, he first wanted to work as a DJ in radio and left for California to work at a large national radio station. He was unable to find work and, in order to make a living, he accepted a job as a carpenter. Another part-time job was auditioning, where he had to read out lines that the opposing actor would say to an actor auditioning for a particular role. Harrison did this so well that he was advised to take up acting. He was also briefly a roadie for the rock group The Doors. From 1964, Ford regularly played bit roles in films. He was finally credited as "Harrison J. Ford" in the Western A Time for Killing (Phil Karlson, 1967), starring Glenn Ford, George Hamilton, and Inger Stevens. The "J" did not stand for anything since he has no middle name but was added to avoid confusion with a silent film actor named Harrison Ford, who appeared in more than 80 films between 1915 and 1932 and died in 1957. French filmmaker Jacques Demy chose Ford for the lead role of his first American film, Model Shop (1969), but the head of Columbia Pictures thought Ford had "no future" in the film business and told Demy to hire a more experienced actor. The part eventually went to Gary Lockwood. He had an uncredited, non-speaking role in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point (1970) as an arrested student protester. His first major role was in the coming-of-age comedy American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973). Ford became friends with the directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, and he made a number of films with them. In 1974, he acted in The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) starring Gene Hackman, and played an army officer named "G. Lucas" in Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, co-produced by George Lucas. Ford made his breakthrough as Han Solo in Lucas's epic space opera Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977). Star Wars became one of the most successful and groundbreaking films of all time and brought Ford, and his co-stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, widespread recognition. He reprised the role in four sequels over the course of the next 42 years: Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980), Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983), Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015), and Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019).
Harrison Ford also worked with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on the successful Indiana Jones adventure series playing the heroic, globe-trotting archaeologist Indiana Jones. The series started with the action-adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981). Like Star Wars, the film was massively successful and became the highest-grossing film of the year. Ford went on to reprise the role throughout the rest of the decade in the prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984), and the sequel Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989), which co-starred Sean Connery as Indy's father, Henry Jones Sr. and River Phoenix as young Indiana. In between the successful film series, Ford also played very daring roles in more artistic films. He played the role of a lonely depressed detective in the Sci-Fi film Blade Runner, (Ridley Scott, 1981) opposite Rutger Hauer. While not initially a success, Blade Runner went on to become a cult classic and one of Ford's most highly regarded films. Ford received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the crime drama Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) with Kelly McGillis, and also starred for Weir as a house-father in the survival drama The Mosquito Coast (Peter Weir, 1986) with River Phoenix as his son. In 1988, he played a desperate man searching for his kidnapped wife in Roman Polanski's Frantic. For his role as a wrongly accused prisoner Dr. Richard Kimble in the action thriller The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993), also starring Tommy Lee Jones, Ford received some of the best reviews of his career. He became the second of five actors to portray Jack Ryan in two films of the film series based on the literary character created by Tom Clancy: the spy thrillers Patriot Games (Phillip Noyce, 1992) and Clear and Present Danger (Phillip Noyce, 1994). He then played the American president in the blockbuster Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997) opposite Gary Oldman. Later his success waned somewhat and his films Random Hearts (Sydney Pollack, 1999) and Six Days Seven Nights (Ivan Reitman, 1998) both disappointed at the box office. However, he did play a few special roles, such as an assassin in the supernatural horror-thriller What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, 2000) opposite Michele Pfeiffer, and a Russian submarine captain in K-19: The Widowmaker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2002) with Liam Neeson. In 2008, he reprised his role as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008) with Cate Blanchett. The film received generally positive reviews and was the second highest-grossing film worldwide in 2008. Later Ford accepted more supporting roles, such as in the sports film 42 (Brian Helgeland, 2013) about baseball player Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), the first black athlete to play in Major League Baseball. Ford reprised the role of Han Solo in the long-awaited Star Wars sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015), which became massively successful like its predecessors. He also reprised his role as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), co-starring Ryan Gosling. Harrison Ford has been married three times and has four biological children and one adopted child. From 1964 to 1979, Ford was married to Mary Marquardt, a marriage that produced two children. From 1983 to 2003, he was married to Melissa Mathison, from which marriage two more children were born. In 2010, he married actress Calista Flockhart, famous for her role in the TV series Ally McBeal. He owns a ranch in Jackson Hole (Wyoming). Besides being an actor, Ford is also an experienced pilot. Ford survived three plane crashes of planes he piloted himself. The most recent accident occurred in 2015 when he suffered an engine failure with a Ryan PT-22 Recruit and made an emergency landing on a golf course. Among other injuries, Ford sustained a broken pelvis and ankle from this latest accident. In 2003, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Ils défilent devant la statue de la Madone, s'inclinent en signe de révérence et rentrent par l'autre porte.
Au troisième étage est posé sur une plate-forme spéciale le Lion de Saint Marc, sur un fond d'émail bleu, chargé d'étoiles d'or.
Au sommet de la tour, il y a, entourée d'une élégante balustrade, la cloche colossale, sur laquelle depuis six siècles les deux gigantesques figures en bronze appelées communément Maures, à cause de leur patine sombre, battent imperturbablement avec leur marteau les heures et les demies
ENGLISH :
On the second floor there is the Virgin holding the Child sitting between two doors. Between Ascension and Pentecost we see every day, every hour, exit through the door the three Magi preceded by an angel with a trumpet.
They filed past the statue of the Madonna, bow in reverence and go through the other door.
On the third floor is placed on a special platform the Lion of St. Mark, on a background of blue enamel, loaded with gold stars.
At the top of the tower there is, surrounded by an elegant balustrade, the colossal bell, on which for six centuries the two huge bronze figures commonly called Moors, because of their dark patina, beat them with a hammer imperturbably hours and halves
Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. C-136, 1964. Photo: Radio Films. Jacques Perrin in La ragazza con la valigia/Girl with a Suitcase (Valerio Zurlini, 1961).
On Thursday 21 April 2022, French actor Jacques Perrin (1941-2022) passed away. Handsome and talented, Perrin started his career as the romantic hero in the films of Italian director Valerio Zurlini. Later he made powerful films with Costa-Gravas and played the adult Salvatore in the international hit Cinema Paradiso (1988). With his own studio, he produced successful political films as Z (1969) and nature documentaries as Microcosmos (1996).
Jacques Perrin was born Jacques André Simonet in Paris in 1941. Occasionally, he is credited as Jacques Simonet. Perrin was his mother's name. His father, Alexandre Simonet, was a theatre director. In 1946, the five years old made his uncredited film debut in Les Portes de la nuit/Gates of the Night (1946, Marcel Carné), starring Serge Reggiani and Yves Montand. Perrin was trained as an actor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique. On stage, he gave over 400 performances of L'Année du bac in a Paris theatre. In the cinema, he played his first major juvenile parts in Italy for director Valerio Zurlini. He played Claudia Cardinale’s boyfriend in the romantic comedy La Ragazza con la valigia/Girl with a Suitcase (1961, Valerio Zurlini) and Marcello Mastroianni’s younger brother in Cronaca familiar/Family Diary (1962, Valerio Zurlini). In France he acted with Brigitte Bardot in La Vérité/The Truth (1960, Henri-Georges Clouzot), with Anna Karina in Le Soleil dans l'oeil/Sun in Your Eyes (1962, Jacques Bourdon), and with Bruno Cremer in the war film La 317ème section/317th Platoon (1965, Pierre Schoendoerffer). He also worked on the thriller film Compartiment tueurs/The Sleeping Car Murders (1965, Costa-Gravas). Hames Travers at Films de France: “Costa-Gavras made his directoral debut with this fast-moving, convoluted but magnificently assembled crime thriller. The film reflects the director’s interest in American Film Noir and, thanks largely to an impressive cast, is one of his most entertaining films.” It was the start of long-time cooperation between actor and director. In 1966, Perrin won two Best Actor awards at the Venice Film Festival for the Italian film Un uomo a metà/Almost a Man (1966, Vittorio De Seta), and the Spanish film La busca/The Search (1966, Angelino Fons). The next year he co-starred in the musical Les demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy) with Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorleac. He would cooperate again with Demy and Deneuve on the fairytale Peau d'âne/Donkey Skin (1970, Jacques Demy) in which he played an appealing Prince Charming. Craig Butler at AllMovie: “Donkey Skin is a strange but utterly captivating little fantasy, and one that, despite its fairy tale origins, is really aimed more at adults than at children. Jacques Demy has directed with an eye toward whimsy, but whimsy mixed both with magic and subtle disorientation.”
At 27, Jacques Perrin created his own studio. He produced and acted in Z (1969), directed by Costa Gavras and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, and Irene Papas. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. Dan Pavlides at AllMovie: “Z is one of the most politically insightful films ever made, exposing government hypocrisy and cover-up in the wake of a political assassination.” The production had nearly 4 million admissions in France and was the 4th highest-grossing film of the year. It was also the 10th highest-grossing film of 1969 in the United States. Z is also one of the few films to be nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture. Perrin worked with Costa-Gavras again on État de Siège/State of Siege (1972, Costa-Gavras) and Section special/Special Section (1975, Costa-Gavras). Both films had political themes, and Perrin continued this trend with La guerre d'Algérie (1975, Yves Courrière, Philippe Monnier), a documentary on the Algerian uprising, and La Spirale (1976, Armand Mattelart, Valérie Mayoux, Jacqueline Meppiel), a film on the Chilean presidency of Salvador Allende. In 1976, Perrin produced another Oscar-winning film La Victoire en chantant/Black and White in Color (1976, Jean-Jacques Annaud). That year, he also embarked on Il deserto dei Tartari/Le Désert des Tartares/ The Desert of the Tartars (1976, Valerio Zurlini), with a cast filled with such big-name actors as Jean-Louis Trintignant, Vittorio Gassman, Max von Sydow, Francisco Rabal, Helmut Griem, Giuliano Gemma, Philippe Noiret, Fernando Rey, Laurent Terzieff and Jean-Louis Trintignant. The film, based on Dino Buzzati's novel The Tartar Steppe, tells the story of a young officer, Giovanni Drogo (Jacques Perrin), and the time that he spent guarding the Bastiani Fortress, an old, unmaintained border fortress. Although the film won the Grand Prix du Cinéma Français and three David di Donatello Awards 1977, it was not very successful and left Perrin with debts.
Jacques Perrin had a huge success with the Italian drama Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (1988, Giuseppe Tornatore). He played a famous film director remembers his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist (Philippe Noiret), first brought about his love of films. Cinema Paradiso was a critical and box-office success and won many awards including the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Two years later, he also appeared in Tornatore’s Stanno tutti bene/Everybody’s Fine (1990, Giuseppe Tornatore) starring Marcello Mastroianni. As a producer, Perrin changed direction when he decided that the natural life around us could tell stories as fascinating and varied as anything dreamt up by a scriptwriter. He produced nature documentaries that transformed the scope of wildlife films, from Microcosmos (1996, Claude Nuridsany, Marie Pérennou), in which ants performed the starring role, to the austere travelogue Himalaya (1999, Eric Valli), nominated for an Oscar, and Le Peuple Migrateur/Winged Migration (2001, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats, Jacques Perrin), which followed some 50 species of birds across 30 countries. All were filmed by Perrin’s studio Galatée Films. Another successful production was Les choristes/The Chorus (2004, Christophe Barratier). In this drama Perrin played the narrator, the old orchestra conductor Pierre Morhange, who reminisces about his childhood inspirations through the pages of a diary kept by his old music teacher. The young Pépinot was played by Perrin’s son Maxence. Other films in which he played were the historical horror film Le pacte des loups/Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001, Christophe Gans), and the crime drama Le petit lieutenant/The Young Lieutenant (2005, Xavier Beauvois) with Nathalie Baye. In 1985, Perrin was made Knight of the Ordre national du Mérite, in 1997 he was promoted to Officer and in 2003 to Commander. He was also made Knight of the Légion d'honneur in 1990 and promoted to Officer in 2007. Jacques Perrin has three sons, actor Mathieu Perrin (1975), actor Maxence Perrin (1995), and Lancelot Perrin (2000). His most recent film production is Océans/Oceans (2009, Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud). Tracie Cooper at AllMovie: “Narrated by Pierce Brosnan, Oceans is made up of a compilation of underwater photography from over 75 diving expeditions that took place over a period of four years, and captures an astoundingly intimate glimpse into the lives of a wide array of sea life”.
Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Craig Butler (AllMovie), Dan Pavlides (AllMovie), Tracie Cooper (AllMovie), John Whitley (The Telegraph), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Vintage card. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (M.G.M.).
Gene Kelly (1912-1996) was an American actor, dancer, singer, filmmaker, and choreographer. He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks, and the likable characters that he played on screen. He starred in, choreographed, or co-directed some of the most well-regarded musical films of the 1940s and 1950s until they fell out of fashion in the late 1950s. Kelly is best known today for his performances in films such as Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), which was his directorial debut, An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), Brigadoon (1954), and It's Always Fair Weather (1955).
Eugene Curran Kelly was born in 1912 in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He was the third son of James Patrick Joseph Kelly, a phonograph salesman, and his wife, Harriet Catherine Curran. By the time he decided to dance, he was an accomplished sportsman and able to defend himself. He attended St. Raphael Elementary School in the Morningside neighborhood of Pittsburgh and graduated from Peabody High School at age 16. He entered Pennsylvania State College as a journalism major, but after the 1929 crash, he left school and found work in order to help his family financially. He created dance routines with his younger brother Fred to earn prize money in local talent contests. They also performed in local nightclubs. In 1931, Kelly enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh to study economics. His family opened a dance studio in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In 1932, they renamed it the Gene Kelly Studio of the Dance and opened a second location in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1933. Kelly served as a teacher at the studio during his undergraduate and law-student years at Pitt. Kelly eventually decided to pursue a career as a dance teacher and full-time entertainer, so he dropped out of law school after two months. In 1937, having successfully managed and developed the family's dance-school business, he finally did move to New York City in search of work as a choreographer. His first Broadway assignment, in 1938, was as a dancer in Cole Porter's 'Leave It to Me!' Kelly's first big breakthrough was in the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'The Time of Your Life' (1939), in which, for the first time on Broadway, he danced to his own choreography. In 1940, he got the lead role in Rodgers and Hart's 'Pal Joey', choreographed by Robert Alton. This role propelled him to stardom. Offers from Hollywood began to arrive.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the largest and most powerful studio in Hollywood when Gene Kelly arrived in town in 1941. There he made his film debut with Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal (Busby Berkeley, 1942). The film was a production of the Arthur Freed unit at MGM and it was one of the big hits of the year. The talent pool at MGM was especially large during World War II, when Hollywood was a refuge for many musicians and others in the performing arts of Europe who were forced to flee the Nazis. Kelly's film debut was followed by Cole Porter's Du Barry Was a Lady (Roy Del Ruth, 1943) with Lucille Ball, the morale booster Thousands Cheer (George Sidney, 1943), Cover Girl (Charles Vidor, 1944) opposite Rita Harworth, and Anchors Aweigh (George Sidney, 1945) with Frank Sinatra. MGM gave him a free hand to devise a range of dance routines for the latter, including his duets with Sinatra and the celebrated animated dance with Jerry Mouse—the animation for which was supervised by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Anchors Aweigh became one of the most successful films of 1945 and Kelly was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In Ziegfeld Follies (1946), Kelly collaborated with Fred Astaire, for whom he had the greatest admiration, in 'The Babbitt and the Bromide' challenge dance routine. He co-starred with Judy Garland in The Pirate (1948) which gave full rein to Kelly's athleticism. It features Kelly's work with the Nicholas Brothers—the leading black dancers of their day—in a virtuoso dance routine. Now regarded as a classic, the film was ahead of its time but flopped at the box office. Kelly made his debut as a director with On the Town (1949), for Arthur Freed. Stanley Donen, brought to Hollywood by Kelly to be his assistant choreographer, received co-director credit for On the Town. A breakthrough in the musical film genre, it has been described as "the most inventive and effervescent musical thus far produced in Hollywood."
Two musicals secured Gene Kelly's reputation as a major figure in the American musical film. First, he directed and starred in An American in Paris (1951) with Leslie Caron. The highlight of the film is the seventeen-minute ballet sequence set to the title song written by George Gershwin and choreographed by Kelly. The sequence cost a half-million dollars (U.S.) to make in 1951 dollars. Kelly's many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences. In 1952, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements, the same year An American in Paris won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Probably the most admired of all film musicals is his next film, Singin' in the Rain (1952). As co-director, lead star, and choreographer, Kelly was the central driving force and unforgettable is Kelly's celebrated and much-imitated solo dance routine to the title song. Kelly continued his string of classic Hollywood musicals with Brigadoon (1954) with Cyd Charisse, and It's Always Fair Weather (1955), co-directed with Donen. The latter was a musical satire on television and advertising and includes his roller-skate dance routine to I Like Myself, and a dance trio with Michael Kidd and Dan Dailey that Kelly used to experiment with the widescreen possibilities of Cinemascope. Next followed Kelly's last musical film for MGM, Les Girls (1957), in which he partnered a trio of leading ladies, Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, and Taina Elg. It, too, sold few movie tickets. Dale O'Connor at IMDb: "Kelly was in the same league as Fred Astaire, but instead of a top hat and tails Kelly wore work clothes that went with his masculine, athletic dance style." He finally made for MGM The Happy Road (1957), set in his beloved France, his first foray in a new role as producer-director-actor. After leaving MGM, Kelly returned to stage work.
After musicals got out of fashion, Gene Kelly starred in two films outside the musical genre: Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer, 1960) with Spencer Tracey and Fredric March, and What a Way to Go! (1964). In 1967, he appeared in French musical comedy Les Demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967) opposite Catherine Deneuve. It was a box-office success in France and nominated for Academy Awards for Best Music and Score of a Musical Picture. Kelly directed films without a collaborator, including the bedroom-farce comedy A Guide for the Married Man (1967) starring Walter Matthau, and the musical Hello, Dolly! (1969) starring Barbra Streisand and Matthau. The latter was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He appeared as one of many special narrators in the surprise hit That's Entertainment! (Jack Haley Jr., 1974). The compilation film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to celebrate the studio's 50th anniversary. The film turned the spotlight on MGM's legacy of musical films from the 1920s through the 1950s. Kelly subsequently directed and co-starred with his friend Fred Astaire in the sequel That's Entertainment, Part II (Gene Kelly, 1976). It was a measure of his powers of persuasion that he managed to coax the 77-year-old Astaire—who had insisted that his contract rule out any dancing, having long since retired—into performing a series of song-and-dance duets, evoking a powerful nostalgia for the glory days of the American musical film. It was later followed by That's Dancing! (Jack Haley Jr., 1985), and That's Entertainment, Part III (Bud Friedgen, Michael J. Sheridan, 1994). Kelly received lifetime achievement awards in the Kennedy Center Honors (1982) and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute. In 1999, the American Film Institute also ranked him as the 15th greatest male screen legend of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Gene Kelly passed away in 1996 at the age of 83 in Beverly Hills, California, U.S. His final film project was the animated film Cats Don't Dance, not released until 1997, on which Kelly acted as an uncredited choreographic consultant. It was dedicated to his memory. Gene Kelly was married three times: yo actress Betsy Blair (1941-1957), Jeanne Coyne (1960- her death in 1973) , and Patricia Ward (1990- his death in 1996).
Sources: Dale O'Connor (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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Désolé pour la qualité, photo prise avec mon nouveau téléphone et non à l'appareil photo.. ceci dit, désormais je posterai plus régulièrement des photos prises au téléphone car j'ai pris des véhicules incroyables avec !
Fiches techniques du véhicules : busphoto.eu/vehicle/419456
fotobus.msk.ru/vehicle/1126633
[Photo un peu améliorée par Affinity Photo 2]
French postcard by Editions Nugeron, no. Star 202. Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd. Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Cruisade (Steven Spielberg, 1989).
American film actor Harrison Ford (1942) specialises in roles of cynical, world-weary heroes in popular film series. He played Han Solo in the Star Wars franchise, archaeologist Indiana Jones in a series of four adventure films, Rick Deckard in the Science Fiction films Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and secret agent Jack Ryan in the spy thrillers Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). These film roles have made him one of the most successful stars in Hollywood. In all, his films have grossed about $5.4 billion in the United States and $9.3 billion worldwide.
Harrison Ford was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1942. His parents were former radio actress Dorothy (née Nidelman) and advertising executive and former actor John William "Christopher" Ford. Harrison graduated in 1960 from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. His voice was the first student voice broadcast on his high school's new radio station, WMTH, and he was its first sportscaster during his senior year. He attended Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where he was a philosophy major and did some acting. After dropping out of college, he first wanted to work as a DJ in radio and left for California to work at a large national radio station. He was unable to find work and, in order to make a living, he accepted a job as a carpenter. Another part-time job was auditioning, where he had to read out lines that the opposing actor would say to an actor auditioning for a particular role. Harrison did this so well that he was advised to take up acting. He was also briefly a roadie for the rock group The Doors. From 1964, Ford regularly played bit roles in films. He was finally credited as "Harrison J. Ford" in the Western A Time for Killing (Phil Karlson, 1967), starring Glenn Ford, George Hamilton, and Inger Stevens. The "J" did not stand for anything since he has no middle name but was added to avoid confusion with a silent film actor named Harrison Ford, who appeared in more than 80 films between 1915 and 1932 and died in 1957. French filmmaker Jacques Demy chose Ford for the lead role of his first American film, Model Shop (1969), but the head of Columbia Pictures thought Ford had "no future" in the film business and told Demy to hire a more experienced actor. The part eventually went to Gary Lockwood. He had an uncredited, non-speaking role in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point (1970) as an arrested student protester. His first major role was in the coming-of-age comedy American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973). Ford became friends with the directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, and he made a number of films with them. In 1974, he acted in The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) starring Gene Hackman, and played an army officer named "G. Lucas" in Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, co-produced by George Lucas. Ford made his breakthrough as Han Solo in Lucas's epic space opera Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977). Star Wars became one of the most successful and groundbreaking films of all time and brought Ford, and his co-stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, widespread recognition. He reprised the role in four sequels over the course of the next 42 years: Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980), Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983), Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015), and Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019).
Harrison Ford also worked with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on the successful Indiana Jones adventure series playing the heroic, globe-trotting archaeologist Indiana Jones. The series started with the action-adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981). Like Star Wars, the film was massively successful and became the highest-grossing film of the year. Ford went on to reprise the role throughout the rest of the decade in the prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984), and the sequel Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989), which co-starred Sean Connery as Indy's father, Henry Jones Sr. and River Phoenix as young Indiana. In between the successful film series, Ford also played very daring roles in more artistic films. He played the role of a lonely depressed detective in the Sci-Fi film Blade Runner, (Ridley Scott, 1981) opposite Rutger Hauer. While not initially a success, Blade Runner went on to become a cult classic and one of Ford's most highly regarded films. Ford received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the crime drama Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) with Kelly McGillis, and also starred for Weir as a house-father in the survival drama The Mosquito Coast (Peter Weir, 1986) with River Phoenix as his son. In 1988, he played a desperate man searching for his kidnapped wife in Roman Polanski's Frantic. For his role as a wrongly accused prisoner Dr. Richard Kimble in the action thriller The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993), also starring Tommy Lee Jones, Ford received some of the best reviews of his career. He became the second of five actors to portray Jack Ryan in two films of the film series based on the literary character created by Tom Clancy: the spy thrillers Patriot Games (Phillip Noyce, 1992) and Clear and Present Danger (Phillip Noyce, 1994). He then played the American president in the blockbuster Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997) opposite Gary Oldman. Later his success waned somewhat and his films Random Hearts (Sydney Pollack, 1999) and Six Days Seven Nights (Ivan Reitman, 1998) both disappointed at the box office. However, he did play a few special roles, such as an assassin in the supernatural horror-thriller What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, 2000) opposite Michele Pfeiffer, and a Russian submarine captain in K-19: The Widowmaker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2002) with Liam Neeson. In 2008, he reprised his role as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008) with Cate Blanchett. The film received generally positive reviews and was the second highest-grossing film worldwide in 2008. Later Ford accepted more supporting roles, such as in the sports film 42 (Brian Helgeland, 2013) about baseball player Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), the first black athlete to play in Major League Baseball. Ford reprised the role of Han Solo in the long-awaited Star Wars sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015), which became massively successful like its predecessors. He also reprised his role as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), co-starring Ryan Gosling. Harrison Ford has been married three times and has four biological children and one adopted child. From 1964 to 1979, Ford was married to Mary Marquardt, a marriage that produced two children. From 1983 to 2003, he was married to Melissa Mathison, from which marriage two more children were born. In 2010, he married actress Calista Flockhart, famous for her role in the TV series Ally McBeal. He owns a ranch in Jackson Hole (Wyoming). Besides being an actor, Ford is also an experienced pilot. Ford survived three plane crashes of planes he piloted himself. The most recent accident occurred in 2015 when he suffered an engine failure with a Ryan PT-22 Recruit and made an emergency landing on a golf course. Among other injuries, Ford sustained a broken pelvis and ankle from this latest accident. In 2003, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 776. Photo: Studio Vauclair.
French actor and stage director Laurent Terzieff (1935-2010) starred during the 1960s and 1970s in many films by famous French and Italian directors. The magnetic and politically engaged actor began his film career as one of the existential youth in Les Tricheurs (1958) and later often portrayed cynical bohemians or political activists.
Laurent Terzieff was born Laurent Didier Alex Laurent Tchemerzine in 1935 in Toulouse, France. He was the son of a French visual artist and a Russian sculptor who had emigrated to France during the First World War. The spectacle of the bombardments during WW II had a dramatic effect on nine-year-old Laurent. As an adolescent, he was fascinated with philosophy and poetry. He assisted director Roger Blin with the production of the play La Sonate des spectres (The Ghost Sonata) by August Strindberg. Then and there, he decided to become an actor. Terzieff made his debut in 1953 with the Theatre of Babylon in Tous contre Adamov (All Against Adamov) by Jean-Marie Serreau. His film début was opposite Yves Montand in Premier mai/The First of May (Luis Saslavsky, 1958). A year earlier he had gained some notoriety playing a role as an assassin in L'affaire Weidmann/The Weidmann case (Jean Prat, 1957), an episode of the TV series En votre âme et conscience/In your conscience (1954-1969). Legendary director Marcel Carné spotted him and offered him a leading role opposite Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Les Tricheurs/The Cheats (Marcel Carné, 1958), a portrait of the existentialist youth in the late 1950s. At AllMovie, Hal Erickson writes: “Carné's youthful characters are not so much people as symbols of the postwar relaxation of worldwide manners and mores. In anticipation of the hippie flicks of the 1960s, the main characters indulge in a great deal of sex, but abstain from true love and commitment, citing these things as irrelevant in a world full of instant gratification.“ Les Tricheurs was Terzieff’s breakthrough in the cinema. For a long time, the public would identify him with the bohemian and cynical student.
Laurent Terzieff played roles in films by such famous directors as Gillo Pontecorvo in Kapò (1959) about a young Jewish girl (Susan Strasberg) who leads an escape attempt from a concentration camp, Claude Autant-Lara in Tu ne tueras point/Thou Shalt Not Kill (1961), a portrait of a conscientious objector, and Jacques Demy in the portmanteau (omnibus film) Les Sept Péchés/The Seven Deadly Sins (1962). He appeared in a segment about the lusty conversation between two young men, one of whom has x-ray eyes that enable him to see through women's clothing. Terzieff starred with Rosanna Schiaffino and Elsa Martinelli in the Italian film La Notte Brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959). Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote this social drama about three young Roman criminals and three beautiful prostitutes without any perspective in life but having some money to spend during a night of illusions and adventures. More famous Italian film directors would ask him for their films. Terzieff appeared as a revolutionary on the run from government troops in Vanina Vanini/The Betrayer (Roberto Rossellini, 1961), as the centaur in Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) opposite Maria Callas, as an anarchistic petty thief in Ostia (Sergio Citti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970), and as a military in Il deserto dei Tartari/Desert of the Tartars (Valerio Zurlini, 1976) opposite Vittorio Gassman and Jacques Perrin. In France, he played in A cœur joie/Two Weeks in September (Serge Bourguignon, 1967) with Brigitte Bardot, and La Prisonnière/Woman in Chains (Henri Georges Clouzot, 1968), in which he interpreted a disturbed modern art gallery owner who manipulates Elisabeth Wiener. He made four films with director Philippe Garrel. Le Révélateur/The developper (Philippe Garrel, 1968) was shot in May 1968 during the student revolution, and Les hautes solitudes (Philippe Garrel, 1974), a biographical film about actress Jean Seberg. Terzieff worked with more great auteurs. Famous Spanish director Luis Buñuel took him and Paul Frankeur on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in La Voie lactée/The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969). He was once directed by Jean-Luc Godard in Détective/Detective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985). On television, he appeared in the American-Italian Mini-Series Moses the Lawgiver/Moses (Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974) starring Burt Lancaster.
Since the 1980s, Laurent Terzieff was seen less in the cinemas and mostly acted on stage. In the theatre, he often worked as a director, writer and actor with his own troupe, co-founded in 1961 with his companion Pascale de Boysson. He also ran the theatre Lucernaire in Paris. His later film roles include a Trotskyist in Rouge Baiser/Red Kiss (Véra Belmont, 1985), an anarchist in Germinal (Claude Berri, 1993) starring Gérard Depardieu, and the painter Hérigault in Le radeau de la Méduse/The Raft of the Medusa (Iradj Azimi, 1994), inspired by a tragic maritime event that happened in 1816. Politically engaged, Terzieff signed in 1960 La Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la Guerre d'Algérie (Declaration on the Right of Insubordination in the War of Algeria), and in 2002, the petition Pas en notre nom (Not in our name) against the Iraq War. In his seventies, the gaunt-faced actor had not lost his magnetism, as was proved by his appearance in the Agatha Christie adaptation Mon petit doigt m'a dit.../A Little Bird Told Me... (Pascal Thomas, 2005) with Catherine Frot and André Dussollier. Terzieff also stayed active in the theatre. In 2009 he played an acclaimed Philoctetes in the play by Sophocles. His last films were the comedy J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster/I always dreamed of being a gangster (Samuel Benchetrit, 2008) with Jean Rochefort, and the Italian production Le ombre rosse/The Red Shadow (Francesco Maselli, 2009). Posthumously he was seen opposite Sharon Stone in the thriller Largo Winch 2/The Burma Conspiracy (Jérôme Salle, 2011). During his long career, Laurent Terzieff was hailed with many awards (Prix Gérard Philippe, Molière for Best Director and Best Show for Temps contre temps (Time against time) in 1993), and he was also an Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite (Officer of the Order of Merit) and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (Commander of Arts and Letters). Laurent Terzieff died in 2010 in Paris from a lung ailment. He was 75. He was the widower of actress Pascale de Boysson.
Sources: Hans Beerekamp (Het Schimmenrijk) (Dutch), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Evene.fr (French), Ciné-Ressources (Cinémathèque française) (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Demy Schandeler S.à.r.l. (Demy Cars): the articulated bus number 722 (MAN A40 Lion's City GL NG363, registration DC 4396, put into service in 2017) leaves from Gare Routière Luxexpo, working a service on city line 6.
sur la ligne Chronobus C1 à destination de Haluchère – Batignolles (Nantes), arrêt Saint-Nicolas, rue du Calvaire, Nantes (Loire-Atlantique (44), Pays-de-la-Loire, France, FR)
Demy Schandeler S.à.r.l. (Demy Cars): the bus with registration DC 4397 (Setra S 418 LE business, put into service in 2017) leaves from Gare Routière Luxexpo, working a service on regional line 248 of the RGTR (Régime Général des Transports Routiers), from Eicher, Denn Mairie to Kirchberg, Rehazenter.
After the last phase of the restructuring of the national bus service, from July 17, 2022 this line has become the 812.
Sunrise
Sonnenaufgang
Mono Lake (/ˈmoʊnoʊ/ MOH-noh) is a saline soda lake in Mono County, California, formed at least 760,000 years ago as a terminal lake in an endorheic basin. The lack of an outlet causes high levels of salts to accumulate in the lake which make its water alkaline.
The desert lake has an unusually productive ecosystem based on brine shrimp, which thrive in its waters, and provides critical habitat for two million annual migratory birds that feed on the shrimp and alkali flies (Ephydra hians). Historically, the native Kutzadika'a people ate the alkali flies' pupae, which live in the shallow waters around the edge of the lake. When the city of Los Angeles diverted water from the freshwater streams flowing into the lake, it lowered the lake level, which imperiled the migratory birds. The Mono Lake Committee formed in response and won a legal battle that forced Los Angeles to partially replenish the lake level.
Geology
Mono Lake occupies part of the Mono Basin, an endorheic basin that has no outlet to the ocean. Dissolved salts in the runoff thus remain in the lake and raise the water's pH levels and salt concentration. The tributaries of Mono Lake include Lee Vining Creek, Rush Creek and Mill Creek which flows through Lundy Canyon
The basin was formed by geological forces over the last five million years: basin and range crustal stretching and associated volcanism and faulting at the base of the Sierra Nevada. 45 Five million years ago, the Sierra Nevada was an eroded set of rolling hills and Mono Basin and Owens Valley did not yet exist.
From 4.5 to 2.6 million years ago, large volumes of basalt were extruded around what is now Cowtrack Mountain (east and south of Mono Basin); eventually covering 300 square miles (780 km2) and reaching a maximum thickness of 600 feet (180 m). 45 Later volcanism in the area occurred 3.8 million to 250,000 years ago. This activity was northwest of Mono Basin and included the formation of Aurora Crater, Beauty Peak, Cedar Hill (later an island in the highest stands of Mono Lake), and Mount Hicks.
Mono Lake is believed to have formed at least 760,000 years ago, dating back to the Long Valley eruption. Sediments located below the ash layer hint that Mono Lake could be a remnant of a larger and older lake that once covered a large part of Nevada and Utah, which would put it among the oldest lakes in North America. At its height during the most recent ice age, the lake would have been about 900 feet (270 m) deep. Prominent old shore lines, called strandlines by geologists, can be seen west of the Lake.
Currently, Mono Lake is in a geologically active area at the north end of the Mono–Inyo Craters volcanic chain and is close to Long Valley Caldera. Volcanic activity continues in the Mono Lake vicinity: the most recent eruption occurred 350 years ago, resulting in the formation of Paoha Island. Panum Crater (on the south shore of the lake) is an example of a combined rhyolite dome and cinder cone.
Tufa towers
Many columns of limestone rise above the surface of Mono Lake. These limestone towers consist primarily of calcium carbonate minerals such as calcite (CaCO3). This type of limestone rock is referred to as tufa, which is a term used for limestone that forms in low to moderate temperatures.
Tufa tower formation
Mono Lake is a highly alkaline lake, or soda lake. Alkalinity is a measure of how many bases are in a solution, and how well the solution can neutralize acids. Carbonate (CO32-) and bicarbonate (HCO3−) are both bases. Hence, Mono Lake has a very high content of dissolved inorganic carbon. Through supply of calcium ions (Ca2+), the water will precipitate carbonate-minerals such as calcite (CaCO3). Subsurface waters enter the bottom of Mono Lake through small springs. High concentrations of dissolved calcium ions in these subsurface waters cause huge amounts of calcite to precipitate around the spring orifices. The tufa originally formed at the bottom of the lake. It took many decades or even centuries to form the well-recognized tufa towers. When lake levels fell, the tufa towers came to rise above the water surface and stand as the majestic pillars seen today (see Lake Level History for more information).
Lake-level history
An important characteristic of Mono Lake is that it is a closed lake, meaning it has no outflow. Water can only escape the lake if it evaporates or is lost to groundwater. This may cause closed lakes to become very saline. The lake level of closed lakes will be strongly dependent on changes in climate. Hence, studying lake levels can reveal information about climate change in the past and present. Geochemists have observed that carbonates from closed lakes appear to have δ13C and δ18O (carbon and oxygen isotopes) with covariant trends. It has been proposed that this covariation occurs because of coupled evaporation and CO2 degassing. The lighter isotopes, 12C and 16O, will preferentially go to the gas phase with increased evaporation. As a result, δ13C and δ18O in the remaining lake both become increasingly heavy. Other factors such as biology, atmospheric properties, and freshwater compositions and flow may also influence δ13C and δ18O in lakes. These factors must be stable to achieve a covariant δ13C and δ18O trend. As such, correlations between δ18O and δ13C can be used to infer developments in the lake stability and hydrological characteristics through time. It is important to note that this correlation is not directly related to the lake level itself but rather the rate of change in lake level. Three different studies with three different methods provide different resolutions to understanding the lake level history of Mono Lake.
150-year record
The covariation between δ18O in lake water and lake level in Mono Lake have been recorded over a 150-year time interval in Mono Lake. The δ18O record was compared to historic lake levels recorded by the USGS. The lake level and δ18O record were observed to have a strong correlation with minor offsets. Changes in δ18O of lake water were inversely correlated with lake level. This revealed six stages in lake level in the past 150 years: high stands at 1845, 1880, and 1915 as well as low stands at 1860, 1900, and 1933. The δ18O record compared well to the recorded precipitation and streamflow of Nevada City in California. Decreases in δ18O correlated well with increases in precipitation as well as increases in streamflow and vice versa.
10,000-year record
A sediment core from Mono Lake reveals a 10,000 year record of carbonates (dated through ash beds). Here δ18O and δ13C did covary when observed through long time intervals of>5,000 years, whereas the correlation was not present during shorter time scales. It was found that the record revealed 5 periods of distinct lake conditions:
9.7 - 8.7 ka: Rising lake level. Decreasing δ18O and δ13C reflected an increased lake level. In fact, the lake level reached the Holocene High Stand. This high stand corresponded to a period of maximum effective moisture in the Great Basin.
8.7 - 6.5 ka: Dropping lake level. A sudden increase in δ18O and δ13C suggested that lake levels dropped. Following, weak correlation between δ18O and δ13C suggested that lake levels stabilized.
6.5 - 5.9 ka: Rising lake level. An increase in δ18O and δ13C correlated with a decrease in lake level. The lake level drop continued until the Holocene Low Stand at 5.9 ka, which corresponded to a period of minimum effective moisture in the Great Basin.
2 - 0.6 ka: Unconformity. The gap between 6 - 2 ka could be attributed to shallow lake conditions. In addition, sediment types observed in the core between 2 - 0.6 ka largely reflected shallow water conditions. During the Medieval Warm Period, which occurred from 0.9 - 0.7 ka, the lake level was around the same as today. In general, the period was dominated by a shallow, stable lake level with low covariance between δ18O and δ13C.
490 – 360 years ago: High, fluctuating lake levels. This period corresponded to the Little Ice Age. The isotopic record had very high annual resolution. The lake levels were generally high but fluctuated a little resulting in low correlation between δ18O and δ13C . At the end of this period, δ18O and δ13C evolved towards a trend of decreasing lake level.
Overall the lake levels of Mono Lake appeared to have corresponded to known climatic events such as periods of maximum or minimum effective moisture, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age.
35,000-year record
Lake levels of Mono Lake during the Pleistocene have also been reconstructed using stratigraphic inspection of paleoshorelines, radio carbon dating, and δ18O records from sediments. These analyses helped reconstruct lake levels of the past 35,000 years.
36 - 35 ka: Rising lake level. Decreasing δ18O revealed that lake level began to rise at about this time from a lake level altitude of 2015 m.
35 - 21 ka: High stable lake level. Little fluctuation in δ18O suggested a stable lake level. This stable lake level corresponded to two beds of silt that would have been deposited in a deep lake.
20 - 15 ka: Dropping lake level. There was a sudden fall in lake level at the beginning of this period. Sand delta terraces from this time period indicated a lake-surface altitude of 2035 m. Recorded δ18O increased over this time period, reflecting falling lake level.
5 - 13 ka: Rising lake level. During this period, Mono Lake rose to its highest lake-surface altitude of 2155 m. This corresponded to a decrease in δ18O.
13+ ka: Dropping lake level. Following peak lake level, the lake level decreased to 1965 m at ~ 10 ka as evidenced by an increase in δ18O and paleoshorelines.
This lake-level record has been correlated with significant climatic events including polar jet stream movement, Heinrich, and Dansgaard-Oeschger events.
Ecology
Aquatic life
The hypersalinity and high alkalinity (pH=10 or equivalent to 4 milligrams of NaOH per liter of water) of the lake means that no fish are native to the lake. An attempt by the California Department of Fish and Game to stock the lake failed.
The whole food chain of the lake is based on the high population of single-celled planktonic algae present in the photic zone of the lake. These algae reproduce rapidly during winter and early spring after winter runoff brings nutrients to the surface layer of water. By March the lake is "as green as pea soup" with photosynthesizing algae.
The lake is famous for the Mono Lake brine shrimp, Artemia monica, a tiny species of brine shrimp, no bigger than a thumbnail, that are endemic to the lake. During the warmer summer months, an estimated 4–6 trillion brine shrimp inhabit the lake. Brine shrimp have no food value for humans, but are a staple for birds of the region. The brine shrimp feed on microscopic algae.
Alkali flies, Ephydra hians live along the shores of the lake and walk underwater, encased in small air bubbles for grazing and to lay eggs. These flies are an important source of food for migratory and nesting birds.
8 Nematode species were found living in the littoral sediment:
Auanema spec., which is outstanding for its extreme arsenic resistance (survives concentrations 500 times higher than humans), having 3 sexes, and being viviparous.
Pellioditis spec.
Mononchoides americanus
Diplogaster rivalis
species of the family Mermithidae
Prismatolaimus dolichurus
2 species of the order Monhysteridae
Birds
Mono Lake is a vital resting and eating stop for migratory shorebirds and has been recognized as a site of international importance by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. Nearly 2,000,000 waterbirds, including 35 species of shorebirds, use Mono Lake to rest and eat for at least part of the year. Some shorebirds that depend on the resources of Mono Lake include American avocets, killdeer and sandpipers. Over 1.5 million eared grebes and phalaropes use Mono Lake during their long migrations.
Late every summer tens of thousands of Wilson's phalaropes and red-necked phalaropes arrive from their nesting grounds, and feed until they continue their migration to South America or the tropical oceans respectively.
In addition to migratory birds, a few species spend several months to nest at Mono Lake. Mono Lake has the second largest nesting population of California gulls, Larus californicus, second only to the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Since abandoning the landbridged Negit Island in the late 1970s, California gulls have moved to some nearby islets and have established new, if less protected, nesting sites. Cornell University and Point Blue Conservation Science have continued the study of nesting populations on Mono Lake that was begun 35 years ago. Snowy plovers also arrive at Mono Lake each spring to nest along the remote eastern shores.
History
Native Americans
The indigenous people of Mono Lake are from a band of the Northern Paiute, called the Kutzadika'a. They speak the Northern Paiute language. The Kutzadika'a traditionally forage alkali fly pupae, called kutsavi in their language. Mono Lake was also referred to as Teniega Bah. The origin of the name "Kutzadika'a" is uncertain but could be a Yokut Native American term for "fly eater".
The term "Mono" is derived from "Monachi", a Yokut term for the tribes that live on both the east and west side of the Sierra Nevada.
During early contact, the first known Mono Lake Paiute chief was Captain John. He was also referred to by the Paiute names of Shibana or Poko Tucket. Captain John was the son of a Northern Paiute named 'older Captain John.'
The Mono tribe has two bands: Eastern and Western. The Eastern Mono joined the Western Mono bands' villages annually at Hetch Hetchy Valley, Yosemite Valley, and along the Merced River to gather acorns, different plant species, and to trade. The Western Mono traditionally lived in the south-central Sierra Nevada foothills, including Historical Yosemite Valley.
Present day Mono Reservations are currently located in Big Pine, Bishop, and several in Madera County and Fresno County, California.
Conservation efforts
The city of Los Angeles diverted water from the Owens River into the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power extended the Los Angeles Aqueduct system farther northward into the Mono Basin with the completion of the Mono Craters Tunnel between the Grant Lake Reservoir on Rush Creek and the Upper Owens River. So much water was diverted that evaporation soon exceeded inflow and the surface level of Mono Lake fell rapidly. By 1982 the lake was reduced to 37,688 acres (15,252 ha), 69 percent of its 1941 surface area. By 1990, the lake had dropped 45 vertical feet and had lost half its volume relative to the 1941 pre-diversion water level. As a result, alkaline sands and formerly submerged tufa towers became exposed, the water salinity doubled, and Negit Island became a peninsula, exposing the nests of California gulls to predators (such as coyotes), and forcing the gull colony to abandon this site.
In 1974 ecologist David Gaines and his student David Winkler studied the Mono Lake ecosystem and became instrumental in alerting the public of the effects of the lower water level with Winkler's 1976 ecological inventory of the Mono Basin. The National Science Foundation funded the first comprehensive ecological study of Mono Lake, conducted by Gaines and undergraduate students. In June 1977, the Davis Institute of Ecology of the University of California published a report, "An Ecological Study of Mono Lake, California," which alerted California to the ecological dangers posed by the redirection of water away from the lake for municipal uses.
Gaines formed the Mono Lake Committee in 1978. He and Sally Judy, a UC Davis student, led the committee and pursued an informational tour of California. They joined with the Audubon Society to fight a now famous court battle, the National Audubon Society v. Superior Court, to protect Mono Lake through state public trust laws. While these efforts have resulted in positive change, the surface level is still below historical levels, and exposed shorelines are a source of significant alkaline dust during periods of high winds.
Owens Lake, the once-navigable terminus of the Owens River which had sustained a healthy ecosystem, is now a dry lake bed during dry years due to water diversion beginning in the 1920s. Mono Lake was spared this fate when the California State Water Resources Control Board (after over a decade of litigation) issued an order (SWRCB Decision 1631) to protect Mono Lake and its tributary streams on September 28, 1994. SWRCB Board Vice-chair Marc Del Piero was the sole Hearing Officer (see D-1631). Since that time, the lake level has steadily risen. In 1941 the surface level was at 6,417 feet (1,956 m) above sea level. As of October 2013, Mono Lake was at 6,380.6 feet (1,945 m) above sea level. The lake level of 6,392 feet (1,948 m) above sea level is the goal, a goal made more difficult during years of drought in the American West.
In popular culture
Artwork
In 1968, the artist Robert Smithson made Mono Lake Non-Site (Cinders near Black Point) using pumice collected while visiting Mono on July 27, 1968, with his wife Nancy Holt and Michael Heizer (both prominent visual artists). In 2004, Nancy Holt made a short film entitled Mono Lake using Super 8 footage and photographs of this trip. An audio recording by Smithson and Heizer, two songs by Waylon Jennings, and Michel Legrand's Le Jeu, the main theme of Jacques Demy's film Bay of Angels (1963), were used for the soundtrack.
The Diver, a photo taken by Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis for Pink Floyd's album Wish You Were Here (1975), features what appears to be a man diving into a lake, creating no ripples. The photo was taken at Mono Lake, and the tufa towers are a prominent part of the landscape. The effect was actually created when the diver performed a handstand underwater until the ripples dissipated.
In print
Mark Twain's Roughing It, published in 1872, provides an informative early description of Mono Lake in its natural condition in the 1860s. Twain found the lake to be a "lifeless, treeless, hideous desert... the loneliest place on earth."
In film
A scene featuring a volcano in the film Fair Wind to Java (1953) was shot at Mono Lake.
Most of the movie, High Plains Drifter (1973), by Clint Eastwood, was shot on the southern shores of Mono Lake in the 1970s. An entire town was built here for the movie. It was Clint Eastwood's first movie to direct and star in.
In music
The music video for glam metal band Cinderella's 1988 power ballad Don't Know What You Got ('Till It's Gone) was filmed by the lake.
(Wikipedia)
Der Mono Lake ist ein Natronsee; er ist also sowohl besonders alkalisch als auch besonders salzhaltig. Er liegt in Mono County im zentral-östlichen Teil von Kalifornien, in einem abflusslosen Becken am Westrand des Großen Beckens unter der Ostflanke der Sierra Nevada. Wegen der harschen Umweltbedingungen müssen Tiere und Pflanzen sowohl an den hohen pH-Wert angepasst sein als auch den Salzgehalt ertragen können. Daher hat sich ein Ökosystem aus sehr wenigen angepassten Arten bei sehr hoher Individuenzahl entwickelt, das für einige Vogelarten von besonderer Bedeutung ist.
Aus dem Einzugsgebiet des Sees wird seit 1941 Trinkwasser in eine über 520 km lange Wasserleitung abgeführt, die die Stadt Los Angeles versorgt. Dadurch sank der Wasserspiegel des Sees kontinuierlich ab, der Salzgehalt stieg, Teile des Seebetts trockneten aus. Für die Zuflüsse und den See ergaben sich schwerwiegende ökologische Folgen. Zugleich wurden im See und am Ufer zahlreiche unter Wasser entstandene Kalktuff-Gebilde in bizarren Formen sichtbar, was zur Bekanntheit des Sees beitrug. Naturschützer thematisierten ab Anfang der 1980er Jahre die Absenkung des Wasserspiegels. Nach Gerichtsbeschlüssen über eine Begrenzung der Ableitung steigt er seit Mitte der 1990er Jahre langsam wieder an.
Geographie
Das Mono-Becken liegt am Westrand der Basin-and-Range-Region, die durch eine Krustendehnung entstand. Dabei wurden überwiegend parallele Horst-und-Graben-Strukturen gebildet oder einzelne Becken wie am Mono Lake. Die Basin and Range-Region setzt sich im Norden, Osten und Süden des Sees in Kalifornien und Nevada fort. Im Südosten liegen die White Mountains, im Westen steigt die steile Flanke der Sierra Nevada auf. Das Einzugsgebiet des Mono Lake mit rund 2020 km² erstreckt sich in der Höhe vom Hauptkamm der Sierra mit Mount Lyell (3994 m) und Mount Dana (3978 m) bis hinunter zum Wasserspiegel von derzeit 1945 m über dem Meer (Stand 2017). Benachbarte Einzugsgebiete sind im Norden der Walker River, im Süden das Owens Valley mit der Long Valley Caldera als oberem Talschluss und im Westen jenseits des Sierra-Hauptkamms und des Tioga Passes der Yosemite-Nationalpark mit dem Merced River und dem Tuolumne River. Im Südwesten entspringt der San Joaquin River. Das Becken reicht 500 bis 1350 m unter das heutige Bodenniveau, es ist mit Sedimenten verfüllt, die von Gletschern, Oberflächengewässern und Vulkanen abgelagert wurden.
Das Becken entstand vor rund drei Millionen Jahren, der See gehört mit einem Alter von mindestens 760.000 Jahren zu den ältesten Seen Nordamerikas. Am Ende der letzten Eiszeit (in Nordamerika als Wisconsin glaciation bezeichnet) füllte sich das Mono-Becken vollständig mit Schmelzwasser und lief nach Osten in die benachbarten Becken über. Der dadurch entstandene, als Lake Russell bezeichnete prähistorische See hatte vor etwa 12.500 Jahren eine Fläche von knapp 900 km² und eine Tiefe von rund 100 m. Die damalige Uferlinie kann an den Hängen im Westen aus ihrer Terrassenstruktur abgelesen werden. Nach dem Ende der Eiszeit schmolzen die den See speisenden Gletscher ab; infolge des damit einhergehenden Klimawandels ließen auch die Niederschläge stark nach. Vor rund 9000 Jahren schließlich hatte der See etwa die heutige Ausdehnung, mit der er heute als Mono Lake bezeichnet wird.
Das heutige Erscheinungsbild des Mono Lake ist stark von historischem Vulkanismus geprägt. Die Mono-Inyo Craters südlich des Sees sind rhyolithische Lavadome und mit einem Alter von 2000 bis 600 Jahren die jüngste Hügelkette Nordamerikas. Der Panum-Krater, der nördlichste des Kraterfelds, ist mit rund 650 Jahren der jüngste und liegt nur etwas mehr als einen Kilometer südlich des Sees. Die dunkle Negit-Insel im Norden des Sees ist vulkanischen Ursprungs und knapp 2000 Jahre alt. Die größere, zentrale Pahoa-Insel ist die jüngste Auswirkung des Vulkanismus in der Region. Selbst nicht aus vulkanischem Material, wurde sie durch darunter aufsteigendes Magma angehoben und durchbrach vor rund 250 Jahren die Wasseroberfläche. Black Point am Nordwestufer ist der Überrest eines basaltischen Schlackenkegelvulkans, der vor etwa 13.300 Jahren unter Wasser ausbrach.
Da das Becken östlich der Sierra Nevada liegt, befindet es sich in ihrem Regenschatten. Während die östlichen Hochlagen des Gebirges Niederschläge von 1300 mm/a erhalten, herrscht an den Hängen und im Hügelland ein semiarides, am See selbst ein arides Klima mit 140 mm/a am Nordostufer. Der Zulauf zum See stammt von winterlichem Schneefall auf die höheren Lagen der Sierra, der nach der Schneeschmelze über den Lee Vining Creek und den Rush Creek zum See abläuft; beide Bäche werden vom Los Angeles Aqueduct angezapft. Kleinere Zuflüsse sind der Mill Creek und der Wilson Creek im Nordwesten. Weitere Zuflüsse im Süden und Norden führen nur zeitweise Wasser und spielen für den Wasserstand des Sees keine Rolle. Rush Creek und Mill Creek werden zur Gewinnung von Wasserkraft aufgestaut.
Mit seiner langen geologischen Existenz einhergehend ließen Klima und Niederschlag den Wasserspiegel des Sees immer wieder stark schwanken, in den letzten 3800 Jahren variierte der Wasserpegel um mindestens 40 m. Der höchste Wasserstand von 1980 m über dem Meer wurde mittels Radiokohlenstoffmethode auf vor rund 3800 Jahren datiert, der niedrigste feststellbare Pegel lag vor rund 1800 Jahren bei 1940 m. Beim Beginn der historischen Aufzeichnungen 1857 lag er bei 1949 m. Danach folgte ein Anstieg auf den Höchststand in der durch direkte Messungen belegten Zeit bei 1959 m im Jahr 1919 und ein langsamer Rückgang auf 1956 m beim Beginn der Ausleitung 1941. Im Ergebnis stand der Wasserspiegel in den letzten 2000 Jahren überwiegend unterhalb der vor der Ausleitung vorgefundenen Werte, so dass die Planungen für Wasserversorgung und -nutzung berücksichtigen müssen, dass ihre Modelle auf einer Phase mit überdurchschnittlichem Niederschlag beruhen und sie mit größerer Trockenheit rechnen sollten als bisher angenommen.
Da der Mono Lake keinen natürlichen Abfluss hat, verliert er nur durch Verdunstung an Wasser. Dadurch sammeln sich alle im zufließenden Wasser gelösten Mineralien im See an. In der Folge stieg der Salzgehalt, und das Seewasser wurde zunehmend alkalisch. Der See enthält ungefähr 258 Millionen Tonnen an im Wasser gelösten Salzen. Der Salzgehalt variiert entsprechend dem schwankenden Wasservolumen. Vor 1941 betrug er 50 Gramm pro Liter (die Ozeane der Welt haben einen durchschnittlichen Wert von 31,5 Gramm pro Liter). Als der See 1982 auf seinen niedrigsten Pegel sank, hatte der Salzgehalt sich auf 99 Gramm pro Liter verdoppelt. 2002 waren es 78 Gramm Salz pro Liter. Es wird erwartet, dass sich mit steigendem Wasserstand der Salzgehalt langfristig auf einem durchschnittlichen Niveau von 69 Gramm Salz pro Liter stabilisieren wird. Der See ist durch die Vielzahl an gelösten Carbonaten mit einem pH-Wert von 9,8 stark alkalisch. Höhere Salzkonzentrationen kommen in anderen Seen in den Vereinigten Staaten und anderen Teilen der Erde vor, aber kein anderer See der Erde weist eine vergleichbare Kombination aus Salinität und Alkalinität auf.
Auch andere Stoffe konzentrierten sich im See – die hohen Werte von ≈130 Mikromol Schwefel pro Liter Seewasser, 35 Mikromol Bor und insbesondere der hohe Gehalt von rund 200 bis im Einzelfall 300 Mikromol an Arsen pro Liter stellen einen weiteren Umweltfaktor des Sees dar, den nur wenige angepasste Organismen ertragen.
Die charakteristischen Kalktuff-Gebilde an den Seeufern entstehen unter Wasser, die heute sichtbaren wurden erst durch die Absenkung des Wasserspiegels freigelegt. Im See treten Quellen aus, die Wasser mit gelöstem Calciumcarbonat aus den umliegenden Bergen transportieren. Durch die unterschiedlichen Säurewerte von Quellwasser und See kommt es zur Ausfällung der Carbonate als Kalktuff. Eine Besonderheit des Mono Lake ist der Sand-Tuff. Quellen mit hoher Schüttung an sandigen Uferabschnitten können Süßwasser, Sand und das Salzwasser des Sees so verwirbeln, dass Tuffausfällungen in dünnen Schichten im Sand auftreten. Wird der Sand später durch die Strömung ausgewaschen, bleiben kleine, filigrane Gebilde aus Tuff erhalten, die in einigen Fällen trocken fallen und so der schnellen Zerstörung durch die Strömung entgehen.
Ein weiteres Mineral am Mono Lake ist Hazenit. Das biogene Phosphat wird in Algen des Sees gebildet, die an den Kalktuff-Säulen wachsen. Es wurde 2007 erstmals beschrieben und bisher an keinem anderen Ort gefunden.
Ökologie
Die hohe Salinität des Mono Lake in Verbindung mit der Alkalität eines pH-Wertes von knapp 10 schränkt das Ökosystem im und am See stark ein. Im See können nur Arten leben, deren Stoffwechsel in besonderem Maße an den osmotischen Druck und dem daraus folgenden geringen Gehalt an freiem Wasser im Organismus angepasst ist.
Der See unterteilt sich in zwei wesentliche Lebensräume:
In den tiefen Wasserbereichen ist Phytoplankton die Grundlage der Nahrungskette. Von diesen ernähren sich Krebstiere, vorwiegend die im Mono Lake endemische Art Artemia monica und in geringerem Maße Artemia salina, Kleinkrebse mit einer Größe von wenigen Millimetern bis unter einem Zentimeter. Im offenen Wasser gibt es kein Zooplankton von nennenswerter Verbreitung, der Seegrund ist in den tiefen Wasserbereichen völlig frei von tierischem Leben. Diese Krebstiere sind die Nahrungsgrundlage für den Schwarzhalstaucher und die Kaliforniermöwe.
In den Uferzonen ist die Salzfliegenart Ephydra hians maßgeblich. Auch sie ernährt sich von Phytoplankton. Anders als im Tiefwasser kommen in den Uferbereichen allerdings auch einige weitere Insektenarten vor, so zwei Bremsen der Gattung Chrysops sowie eine Stechfliegenart aus der Gnitzen-Gattung Culicoides und weitere Arten mit wesentlich geringerem Anteil. Die Insekten und ihre Larven bilden die Nahrungsgrundlage für Limikolen, die Vögel der Uferzonen. Darunter ist besonders der Wilson-Wassertreter zu nennen.
Weil im Mono Lake keine Fische leben können, ist die Nahrungskette vom Phytoplankton als Primärproduzenten über Zooplankton und Insekten als Primärkonsumenten zu den Vögeln als Endkonsumenten sehr kurz. Dafür kommen die Arten in großer Individuenzahl vor. Die höchste gemessene Dichte an Artemia-Krebsen im Mono Lake betrug 31.000 Tiere/m², der Wert schwankt zeitlich und räumlich stark. Die Salzfliegen und ihre Puppen bilden im Sommer Teppiche und Matten im Uferbereich. Die Matten aus Salzfliegen-Puppen halten sich unter Wasser vorwiegend im östlichen Teil des Seeufers auf, wobei sie an Tuff-Türmen ein ideales Substrat vorfinden. Die erwachsenen Tiere leben vorwiegend auf den Uferebenen und bilden dort dichte Bestände, die dunklen Wolken gleichen.
Auch einige Arten der Endkonsumenten kommen in sehr hoher Dichte vor, so dass der Mono Lake eine besondere Bedeutung für ihre Populationen hat. Schwarzhalstaucher nutzen den See als Rastplatz auf dem Vogelzug, wobei sie sich Nahrungsreserven anfressen und die Zeit zur Mauser nutzen. Spitzenzahlen von 600.000 bis 900.000 Exemplaren wurden beobachtet. Nachdem die Gesamtpopulation der Schwarzhalstaucher in Nordamerika auf etwa 2,5 Millionen geschätzt wird, ist der Mono Lake für mindestens ein Viertel bis zu etwa einem Drittel aller Individuen von großer Bedeutung. Die Artemia-Krebse und die Larven der Salzfliegen machen rund 95 % ihrer Nahrungsaufnahme während des Aufenthaltes am See aus.
Wilson-Wassertreter sind in besonderem Maße auf Rastplätze mit guter Nahrungsversorgung angewiesen, weil sie von Nordamerika auf dem Vogelzug einen Non-Stop-Flug in die Winterquartiere Südamerikas antreten.[23] Mono Lake ist der mit großem Abstand wichtigste Sammel- und Rastplatz für diese Art im westlichen Nordamerika mit rund 100.000 bis 125.000 Tieren pro Jahr, von denen etwa 70.000 als Spitzenbestand gleichzeitig anwesend sind. Auch sie nutzen den Aufenthalt am See zur Mauser. Das eng verwandte Odinshühnchen wird mit über 50.000 Individuen im Jahr am Mono Lake beschrieben, dies stellt aber einen wesentlich geringeren Anteil der nordamerikanischen Gesamtpopulation dar, weshalb diese Art weniger auf den See angewiesen ist. Für eine weitere Wassertreterart, das Thorshühnchen, ist der See nicht von Bedeutung.
Die Kaliforniermöwe ist die dritte Vogelart, für die der Mono Lake eine wesentliche Funktion von kontinentaler Bedeutung hat. Sie brütet mit rund 50.000 Exemplaren auf den Inseln des Sees. Bei einer Weltpopulation von 220.000 Tieren ist der Mono Lake für den Bestand der Art wichtig. Sie litt in besonderem Maße unter der Absenkung des Wasserspiegels zu den Zeiten des Tiefstandes Anfang und erneut Ende der 1980er Jahre. Damals fiel ein Teil des nördlichen Sees trocken und die Negit-Insel wurde zur Halbinsel. Über die Landbrücke konnten Kojoten die Brutgebiete erreichen und verhinderten in den betroffenen Jahren jeden Bruterfolg auf dieser Insel.
Für den Seeregenpfeifer ist der See ebenfalls von besonderer Bedeutung, obwohl er sich nur teilweise von den Larven der Salzfliegen ernährt und seine Nahrung überwiegend in der Vegetation der Uferebene sucht. Da er seine gut getarnten Nester nur auf weitgehend vegetationsfreiem Gelände anlegt, nutzt er besonders die trocken gefallenen Teile des ehemaligen Seebodens. Er profitierte daher von der Absenkung des Wasserspiegels. Die Art steht unter Artenschutz des Bundes nach dem Endangered Species Act, auf den Uferebenen des Mono Lake brüten rund 10 % des kalifornischen Bestands.[26] Weitere Limikolen, die das Nahrungsangebot des Mono Lake in besonderem Maße nutzen, sind Amerikanische Säbelschnäbler und der Keilschwanz-Regenpfeifer. Der See hat für diese Arten aber keine herausragende Bedeutung.
Die Uferbereiche sowie die Berg- und Hügelhänge im Mono-Becken reichen vom Hochgebirge über diverse Wald- und Buschökosysteme, Beifuß-Steppe und Grasland unterschiedlicher Dichte bis zu den weitgehend vegetationsfreien Salzböden des trockengefallenen Seebetts. Von besonderer Bedeutung ist nur die Salzvegetation. Auch sie ist wegen der hohen Anforderungen des Lebensraums arm an verschiedenen Arten und besteht insbesondere aus dem Kreuzblütler Cleomella parviflora, der Radmelde Bassia hyssopifolia, der Salzschwade Puccinellia airoides, dem Süßgras Distichlis spicata und mehreren Arten aus der Gattung der Simsen. Als die ersten Weißen das Gebiet erreichten, lebten in den Gewässern des Mono-Beckens keine Fische. Es wird angenommen, dass sie durch die erst relativ kurz zuvor stattgefundenen vulkanischen Aktivitäten ausgestorben waren, da verhältnismäßig junge, fossile Fische im Gebiet nachgewiesen wurden. Während im See selbst keine Fische leben können, wurden in den Zuflüssen zur Förderung des Angelsports zehn Fischarten eingesetzt, darunter fünf Forellen-Arten. Über 290 Vogelarten wurden im Mono-Gebiet nachgewiesen.[29] Säugetiere kommen mit über 70 Arten im Einzugsgebiet des Sees vor, Arten von besonderer Bedeutung aber nur in den höheren Lagen des Gebirges, so dass der Mono Lake selbst für Säugetiere keine besondere Rolle spielt.
Die besonderen Umweltbedingungen am Mono Lake werden intensiv erforscht. Das bislang größte Projekt war von 2000 bis 2006 das Mono Lake Microbial Observatory der University of Georgia. Auch die NASA forscht für ihr Astrobiology laboratory am See, um herauszufinden, wie Lebensformen sich an extreme Bedingungen anpassen. Ende 2010 gab ein NASA-Team bekannt, dass aus Sedimenten des Sees ein Bakterienstamm mit der Bezeichnung GFAJ-1 isoliert wurde, der Arsenat an Stelle von Phosphat in die DNA einbauen können soll. Dies würde das bisherige Verständnis der biochemischen Möglichkeiten für Lebewesen erweitern. Die Veröffentlichung wurde stark kritisiert, eine Überprüfung 2012 ergab, dass Arsen keinen Anteil an den Erbinformationen des Bakterienstammes hat und die ursprüngliche These damit zurückgewiesen werden muss.
Im Sediment des Uferbereichs wurden Fadenwurm-Arten entdeckt, die in besonderer Weise an die Umweltbedingungen angepasst sind. Insbesondere fällt Auanema spec. auf, die extrem arsenresistent ist und 500-fach so hohe Konzentrationen wie Menschen überlebt. Es gibt neben zwittrigen und männlichen auch weibliche Tiere. Außerdem legt diese Art keine Eier, sondern ist lebendgebärend.
Geschichte der Landnutzung
Die ursprünglichen Bewohner des Mono-Lake-Gebiets gehörten zu den Paiute-Indianern. Der regionale Stamm nannte sich selbst Kutzadika’a, was von dem Wort für die Salzfliegen in ihrer uto-aztekischen Sprache abgeleitet zu sein scheint. Sie sammelten die Fliegenlarven, trockneten sie und nutzten sie als proteinreiches Nahrungsmittel. Ihre Nachbarn, die Yokut, nannten sie Monachi, was wohl von den ersten Weißen zu Mono verkürzt wurde. Die Bedeutung des Wortes gilt als verloren.[36] Die westlichen Mono lebten das ganze Jahr in den Tälern der Westflanke der Sierra Nevada, insbesondere im Yosemite- und im Hetch-Hetchy-Tal. Die östlichen Mono verbrachten den größten Teil des Jahres östlich der Berge rund um den Mono Lake und zogen nur im Herbst über den Kamm, um Eicheln und andere Baumfrüchte als Wintervorrat zu sammeln.
Als 1852 eine Abteilung der US Army unter Lieutenant Tredwell Moore Miwok-Indianer von Westen über den Kamm der Sierra verfolgte, betraten erstmals Weiße das Mono-Gebiet. Kurz darauf erkundeten Prospektoren die Vorkommen von Rohstoffen auf der Ostseite der Sierra Nevada. Als einer der ersten Prospektoren kam Leroy Vining in das Gebiet, er fand keine lukrativen Bodenschätze und wandte sich der Forstwirtschaft zu. Die Zuflüsse des Mono Lake wurden zum Zentrum einer bescheidenen Weidewirtschaft mit Rindern und Schafen, mit der vor allem die Bergleute versorgt wurden, die zunächst nach Gold, später nach anderen Metallen gruben. Die heutige Geisterstadt Bodie im nördlichen Nachbartal des Sees war die größte Bergbaustadt der Region. Außerdem wurden die Bergwälder forstwirtschaftlich genutzt. Die Mono Mill wurde als größtes Sägewerk der Region 1881 gegründet und bestand bis 1917. Die Versorgung von Bodie mit Holz war der Hauptgrund für die Errichtung der Bodie Railway 1881, die vom Mono Lake über das Sägewerk zur Goldgräbersiedlung fuhr und ebenfalls 1917 eingestellt wurde.
Mark Twain hielt sich 1861 und 62 in der Region auf und schrieb in Roughing It (dt.: Durch Dick und Dünn) fasziniert über die „Millionen an Enten und Möwen“. Im Auftrag der Bauleitung für die Eisenbahn zog 1881 der Geologe Israel Russell in die Region und blieb hier mehrere Jahre. Er erforschte die Geologie des Gebietes – sein Buch Quaternary History of Mono Valley, California (1884) gilt bis heute als Referenz. 1886 kam John Muir vom Yosemite-Tal über einen Indianerpfad an den See. Er schrieb in seinem Tagebuch (erst 1911 als My First Summer in the Sierra veröffentlicht) ausführlich über das Zusammenwirken von Gletschern und Vulkanismus, die die Landschaft des Beckens prägen. Der See selbst spielte bei ihm keine große Rolle.
Die Anwohner entwickelten früh bescheidene Anfänge von Tourismus. In den 1920er Jahren wurden Badeeinrichtungen an den Stränden des Sees eröffnet, das Wasser hatte etwa den eineinhalbfachen Salzgehalt eines Ozeans, und vor der Wasserableitung gab es am Nordufer ausgedehnte Sandstrände. Ab 1928 und bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg fanden jährlich Strandfeste mit Motorbootrennen und Schönheitswettbewerben in Badekostümen statt.[40] In den 1960er Jahren, bei bereits stark sinkendem Wasserspiegel, stand am nordwestlichen Ufer eine Marina, von der aus Bootsfahrten und Wasserskifahren angeboten wurden. Doch schon vor Ende des Jahrzehnts musste der Betrieb eingestellt werden, weil das Wasser vom Bootshaus nicht mehr erreichbar war und weite Uferbereiche sich in Schlammzonen verwandelten.
Heute liegt die kleine, nach dem Pionier Leroy Vining benannte Siedlung Lee Vining am westlichen Ufer des Sees, an den Hängen der Sierra die etwas größere Ortschaft June Lake. Noch immer findet ein bescheidener Abbau von Bimsstein an den Mono-Kratern statt. Ansonsten lebt die Region vom Tourismus. Im Sommer ist sie attraktiv für Wanderer und Angler und der See ist ein bedeutender Stopp für Touristen, die über den Tioga Pass in den Yosemite-Nationalpark fahren oder von dort kommen. Im Winter zieht das Skigebiet June Lake Ski Area am Oberlauf des Rush Creek die meisten Besucher an.
Wasserableitung
Die in den Wüsten Südkaliforniens liegende Siedlung Los Angeles hätte nicht zur Groß- und Millionenstadt anwachsen können, wenn sie sich nicht zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts dauerhafte Trinkwasserquellen erschlossen hätte. William Mulholland plante als Leiter des Los Angeles Department of Water and Power die Niederschläge auf der Ostflanke der Sierra Nevada zu nutzen. 1913 wurde der erste Los Angeles Aqueduct eröffnet, der vom Owens River im südlich an das Mono-Becken anschließenden Owens Valley Wasser ableitete. Von 1934 bis 1940 verlängerte Los Angeles das Aquäduktsystem bis in das Mono-Becken und zapfte ab 1941 Oberflächenwasser ab. Dazu wurde der Lee Vining Creek durch eine Pipeline an den Hängen der Sierra mit dem Grant Lake Reservoir am aufgestauten Rush Creek verbunden und ein Tunnel mit einer Druckröhre nach Südosten unter den Mono-Kratern in die Long Valley Caldera gebohrt. Dort wird das Wasser zunächst in einem Wasserkraftwerk zur Energiegewinnung genutzt; es fließt anschließend im Bett des Owens River nach Süden, bis es zwischen Big Pine und Lone Pine in den Aquädukt ausgeleitet wird.[43] Die Erlaubnis sah vor, dass Los Angeles aus dem Mono-Becken und dem Owens Valley bis zu 200 Kubikfuß pro Sekunde (≈5,66 m³/s) ableiten darf, ohne Restwassermengen festzulegen, die in den Bächen verbleiben und dem See zufließen müssen.[44] 1970 wurde die Kapazität der Leitung erweitert, als der zweite Los Angeles Aqueduct im Owens Valley eröffnet wurde, erst jetzt konnte Los Angeles die genehmigten Wassermengen tatsächlich ableiten und nutzen.
Folgen für die Ökosysteme
Schon bald überstieg die natürliche Verdunstung den reduzierten Wasserzufluss in den Mono Lake, so dass der Pegel des Sees dramatisch sank. 1941, vor der Ableitung der Zuflüsse, lag der Wasserspiegel des Sees auf 1956 m über dem Meer. Der niedrigste Wert wurde 1982 mit 1933 m über dem Meer erreicht. Die Bachläufe zum See fielen weitgehend trocken oder führten nur noch in der nassen Jahreszeit Wasser. Süßwassersümpfe auf dem Westufer, in denen bis 1940 zehntausende Entenvögel lebten, trockneten aus. Die Enten verschwanden aus dem Mono Basin. Am Ufer fiel Seeboden trocken, der mit alkalischem Sand bedeckt war. Einmal getrocknet, wurde dieser bei Stürmen aufgewirbelt und erzeugte ätzende Sandstürme, die die Grenzwerte für Partikel in der Luft weit überschritten und gesundheitsgefährdend waren. Andererseits wurden die meisten der heute sichtbaren bizarren Kalktufftürme trockengelegt und zugänglich, was wiederum erheblich zum Bekanntheitsgrad des Sees beigetragen hat.
1974 kartierte David Gaines, damals Doktorand der University of California, Davis, am See. Er verfasste einen Text über die Krise des bedrohten Ökosystems. 1976 war er an einer studentischen Forschungsgruppe an der Stanford University beteiligt, die die erste umfassende Studie des Mono-Lake-Ökosystems verfasste. Gaines gründete 1978 das Mono Lake Committee als Organisation innerhalb der Audubon Society und spielte eine ausschlaggebende Rolle in der Kampagne, die kalifornische Öffentlichkeit und Politiker über die Wirkungen des gesunkenen Pegels zu informieren. Zudem reichte die Naturschutzorganisation zusammen mit Fischereiverbänden und weiteren Interessengruppen Klagen gegen die Genehmigungen zur Wasserausleitung ein.
Als durch den sinkenden Wasserspiegel die Negit-Insel zur Halbinsel wurde, so dass Kojoten die Nester der Kaliforniermöwen plündern konnten, experimentierte der Forest Service mit Sprengungen, um einen Wassergraben zu erhalten. Nach dem niedrigsten Wasserstand von 1982 ließen überdurchschnittliche Regenfälle den See bis 1986 wieder etwas wachsen. Anschließend setzte eine mehrjährige Trockenheit ein. Als die Negit-Insel im Norden des Sees 1989 erneut zur Halbinsel wurde, bauten Naturschützer Elektrozäune, um die Brutplätze zu schützen. Zudem verstärkten sie Lobbykampagnen, mit denen Politiker des Staates Kalifornien, der Bundesebene und im Laufe der Zeit auch zunehmend Vertreter der Stadt Los Angeles für den Schutz des Mono Lake gewonnen wurden.
Kampf vor Politik und Gerichten
Demgegenüber standen die Interessen der Stadt Los Angeles. Sie nutzt einerseits das Trinkwasser von der Ostflanke der Sierra Nevada direkt, andererseits erzeugt es auf dem Weg und im Aquädukt Energie aus Wasserkraft, die ebenfalls Los Angeles zur Verfügung steht. Das Department of Water and Power stellte sich auf den Standpunkt, dass ihre Genehmigungen zur Wassernutzung unanfechtbar seien und ging zunächst auch auf großzügige Angebote kalifornischer Politiker zur Gewinnung von Wasser aus anderen Gebieten oder zur Nutzung von Einsparpotentialen nicht ein. Als die Prozesse ergaben, dass die Ausleitungsgenehmigungen erfolgreich angefochten werden konnten und die öffentliche Meinung sich stark für den Schutz des Mono-Gebiets einsetzte, änderte sich die Position des Departments langsam. Ab Ende der 1980er Jahre und verstärkt in den ersten Jahren nach 1990 wirkte die Stadtverwaltung an Projekten mit, durch die Kläranlagen in ganz Südkalifornien ausgebaut wurden. Geklärtes Wasser konnte so für Zwecke eingesetzt werden, die bisher Trinkwasser erforderten, welches dadurch für höherwertige Nutzungen frei wurde. Effektivere Bewässerungsmethoden in der Landwirtschaft sparten erhebliche Wassermengen ein, die den Siedlungsgebieten zur Verfügung gestellt werden konnten. Durch Kampagnen für Wassereinsparung, die gezielt auf den Schutz von Naturräumen wie dem Mono Lake und der Santa Monica Bay abstellten, wurde der Wasserverbrauch von Haushalten in Los Angeles im selben Zeitraum dauerhaft um über 15 % gesenkt.
Die Wasserableitung wirkte sich nicht nur am Mono Lake aus. Der aus dem Owens River gespeiste, rund 190 km südlich des Mono Lake gelegene Owens Lake, in dem früher ein ähnliches Ökosystem existierte, trocknete vollständig aus. Der Mono Lake entkam dem Schicksal des Owens Lake, weil 1983 eine Klage des Mono Lake Committee und verbündeter Organisationen vor dem Supreme Court of California ergab, dass die Wasserkontrollbehörde die öffentlichen Belange bei der Abwägung über die Wasserableitung nicht ausreichend beachtet hatte. Ein untergeordnetes Gericht bestimmte daraufhin einen vorläufigen Mindestpegel von 1944 m über dem Meer und schränkte die Ableitung ein, bis dieser erreicht wäre. Der Kongress der Vereinigten Staaten gab 1984 eine Studie in Auftrag, die den Mono Lake und das Becken auf Auswirkungen verschiedener Wasserstände untersuchen sollte. Eine dafür eingesetzte Arbeitsgruppe des National Research Council legte 1987 die umfassende Studie zur Ökologie des Gebietes und den Folgen der Wasserpegelabsenkung vor. Weitere Studien wurden vom Bundesstaat Kalifornien und der Fachbehörde für Wassernutzung in Auftrag gegeben.
Anordnung von Schutzmaßnahmen
Aufgrund der Studie von 1987, weiterer Studien sowie einer Umweltverträglichkeitsprüfung und nach einer Reihe langwieriger Prozesse erließ die kalifornische Behörde für Wasserressourcen California State Water Resources Control Board im September 1994 eine Entscheidung zum Schutz des Mono Lake und seiner Zuflüsse, durch die die Wasserableitung begrenzt wurde. Die Behörde legte für Rush Creek und Lee Vining Creek, die Zuflüsse des Sees, Restwassermengen fest, die unterhalb der Wehre zur Wasserableitung ein Ökosystem mit stabilem Fischbestand ermöglichen. Dabei sollen langfristig wieder Teile der für Entenvögel wichtigen Süßwassersumpfzonen entstehen. Für den Mono Lake selbst gab sie einen Wasserstand von 1948 Metern als Ziel vor. Der Wert wurde ermittelt, indem die in den Studien ermittelten Einflüsse verschiedener Wasserstände auf die einzelnen Ökofaktoren und die in besonderem Maße auf den See angewiesenen Arten abgewogen wurden.
Seitdem ist der Pegel langsam gestiegen; die Negit Insel ist wieder vor Landraubtieren sicher. Vom 1994 als Ziel definierten Pegelstand von 1948 Metern war der Wasserstand Ende 2017 noch rund drei Höhenmeter entfernt. Ursprünglich war vorgesehen, dass die Behörde für Wasserressourcen nach 20 Jahren, also im September 2014, prüft, ob das Ziel erreicht wurde und gegebenenfalls weitere Beschränkungen bei der Wasserableitung anordnet. Dazu kam es nicht, weil im August 2013 eine Vereinbarung zwischen den ursprünglichen Klägern, der Stadt Los Angeles und der kalifornischen Naturschutzbehörden geschlossen wurde. Sie sieht vor, dass die Stadtverwaltung auf eigene Kosten den Stausee Grant Lake im Einzugsgebiet des Mono Lake so umbauen muss, dass damit ein natürlicher Wasserabfluss in den Rush Creek simuliert werden kann. Dadurch werden die Ökosysteme des Bachlaufs und der Mündung in den Mono Lake renaturiert. Im Gegenzug erhält die Stadt Los Angeles das Recht, einmalig zusätzliche Wassermengen abzuleiten. Die Datenerhebung am See und in seinem Einzugsgebiet geht weiter, die kalifornische Wasserbehörde wird bis 2020 die Einhaltung überprüfen und gegebenenfalls weitere Maßnahmen anordnen.
Weitere Folgen
Als durch die Einschränkung der Wasserableitung erstmals Ende 1994 große Mengen Süßwasser dem See zuflossen, in dem eine hohe Salzkonzentration herrschte, legte sich das leichte Süßwasser über das schwere Salzwasser. Daher fanden 1995 die ansonsten durch jahreszeitliche Temperaturschwankungen im Frühjahr und Herbst ausgelösten, vollständigen Wasserzirkulationen im See nicht statt. Dieser Zustand wird meromiktisch genannt und hat Folgen für die Verteilung von Sauerstoff und Nährstoffen, insbesondere Stickstoff im See. Ohne Durchmischung von Oberflächen- mit Tiefenwasser gelangt kein Sauerstoff in die Tiefe, andererseits werden Nährstoffe, die in Form von Stoffwechselprodukten oder toten Lebewesen absinken, nicht mehr in die biologisch aktiveren Schichten nahe der Oberfläche transportiert.
Eine meromiktische Periode war schon während der Ausleitung zwischen 1982/83 und Ende 1988 durch besonders hohe Niederschläge aufgetreten, für die Jahre 1938 und 1969 besteht wegen bekannt hoher Niederschläge der Verdacht, dass eine meromiktische Phase vorlag, die aber wegen der damals geringeren Salinität jeweils nur ein Jahr dauern konnte. Der Beginn der meromiktischen Phase 1995 infolge der Renaturierung löste wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen aus. Aufgrund der damaligen Modelle wurde angenommen, dass diese Phase 44 bis 63 Jahre dauern und erhebliche negative Auswirkungen auf das Ökosystem des Sees haben würde. Daher schlug eine vom Los Angeles Department of Water and Power finanzierte Arbeitsgruppe vor, die volle Wasserableitung wieder aufzunehmen, um die Schichtung auf diese Weise aufzubrechen.
Tatsächlich folgte die längste bekannte meromiktische Periode des Mono Lake, jedoch war die Dauer erheblich geringer als vorhergesagt. Ende 2003 erfolgte eine vollständige Durchmischung und die Wiederaufnahme des Nährstofftransports zwischen den Wasserschichten. Eine weitere, kurze Phase dauerte von 2005/2006 bis 2007. In allen Fällen zeigten sich keine dauerhaften Folgen. Die Population der Salzkrebse ging während der meromiktischen Zustände zurück, worunter auch der Bruterfolg der Kaliforniermöwe litt, jedoch nicht in schwerwiegendem Ausmaß.
Außer der Beschränkung der Wasserableitung werden die Bachbetten der Zuflüsse auch direkt renaturiert. Am Mill Creek fand in den Jahren 2012 und 2013 ein Umbau des Wasserlaufs unterhalb des Kraftwerks statt, damit auch hier die rechtlich zugesicherte Wassermenge tatsächlich in den Bach abfließen kann.
Schutzgebiete am See
Seit 1982 ist der Teil des ehemaligen Seebetts, der seit dem Beginn der Wasserausleitung im Jahr 1941 trocken gefallen ist, unter dem Namen Mono Lake Tufa State Reserve als Schutzgebiet des Staates Kalifornien ausgewiesen. Aufgrund der Haushaltsnotlage des Staates Kalifornien war 2012 die Schließung der State Reserve geplant. Nur weil die Bodie Foundation, eine gemeinnützige Organisation, einige Verwaltungsfunktionen übernahm, bleibt das Schutzgebiet weiterhin zugänglich. Das Umfeld des Sees ist mit Ausnahme des Siedlungsbereichs von Lee Vining nahezu vollständig im Besitz der Bundesregierung und untersteht großteils dem Inyo National Forest innerhalb des United States Forest Service. Seit 1984 sind der Talgrund, die unteren Hänge und große Teile des Mono-Kraterfelds als Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area ausgewiesen. Diese Form eines Schutzgebietes unter der Verwaltung des Forest Service ist einmalig. Bei Lee Vining informiert ein kleines Besucherzentrum in den Sommermonaten über die Problematik der Wasserableitung und die ökologische Bedeutung des Sees.
In den Hochlagen der Sierra Nevada liegen auf der Ostflanke und damit zumindest teilweise innerhalb des Mono Lake Basin zwei Wilderness Areas, die strengste Klasse von Naturschutzgebieten in den USA. Die Ansel Adams Wilderness und die Hoover Wilderness wurden 1964 eingerichtet, haben zusammen 1440 km² und stehen unter der Verwaltung des US Forest Service. Östlich des Sees wurde 2009 im Hügelland mit der Granite Mountain Wilderness eine weitere Wilderness Area eingerichtet. Sie hat 139 km² und wird durch das Bureau of Land Management verwaltet.
20 Kilometer nördlich des Mono Lake liegt der Bodie State Historic Park, der über eine Schotterstraße zu erreichen ist. Der State Park dient der Erhaltung der alten Goldgräberstadt Bodie, einer der besterhaltenen Geisterstädte der USA.
Mono Lake in den Medien
Clint Eastwood ließ für den Film Ein Fremder ohne Namen (1973) ein Dorf am südlichen Seeufer errichten. International bekannt wurde die bizarre Landschaft des Sees ab 1975, als ein Foto von Storm Thorgerson das Innencover und eine beiliegende Postkarte des Pink-Floyd-Albums Wish You Were Here zierte. Es zeigt den Mono Lake mit Tufftürmen und einen scheinbar ohne Spritzer ins Wasser eintauchenden Schwimmer. Es entstand im flachen Wasser, der Schwimmer war in Yoga geübt und konnte unter Wasser einen Handstand halten, bis die Wellen ausgelaufen waren. 1979 stellten Naturschützer eine Ausstellung von Fotos des Sees zusammen und erkannten, dass seit 1868 nahezu alle prominenten Landschaftsfotografen Amerikas den See und seine Tuff-Gebilde fotografiert hatten. Die Ausstellung zeigte unter anderem Werke von Ansel Adams, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Philip Hyde und Brett Weston und reiste durch den Westen der Vereinigten Staaten. Sie ist heute im Besucherzentrum von Lee Vining zu sehen. Seitdem erschien eine Vielzahl an Bildbänden und Fotokalender, die den See und seine ungewöhnlichen Landschaften darstellen.
(Wikipedia)
The opening evening fair at the "Halle de La Machine" in Toulouse.
The fairground stall to the left has a central rotating plate. Small bowls ring around the edge and sweets and foods are placed into the bowls. The disc spins at speed and the contestants wait by their mechanical levers. When the lever is pressed the movement is heavy but drives an attached kitchen fork down. The idea is to hit a bowl and spike its contents; a sweet or food. Not so easy, but everyone wins something.
The central image is of a fairground stall holder with a camping gas blow torch. She has been lighting floats.
The image to the right is a version of the game 'catch the duck' or 'hook a duck'. Here a canal of water race-tracks around a central podium. The flames have hooks and members of the public have to see past the flame to trap the hook. Again everyone wins, and its pleasantly ridiculous just taking part.
Whilst these are all alternative takes on the fairground, other ironical non productive machines of the street theatre movement were closer to the absurd. For several years after 2003 we had an apple in our freezer. The apple had a bite taken out of it by the teeth of the French actress Catherine Deneuve, the story being that a dentist had access to her teeth-mould and passed it on to a 'machine maker' who used it to add 'celebrity added value' to 10,000 apples which were sold for added profit near Angers. The real machine manipulated and turned the apples to a position where an 'exact mould' of 'her' teeth bit down leaving the 'semi-precious stigmat'. Over the years the apple shrank despite the cold.
Apart from being highly photogenic, Catherine Deneuve's contribution to photography perhaps can be best measured in Jacque Demy's 1964 'Les Parapluies de Cherbourg'. In this film the colour of everything was chosen to effect a global mood beyond the palate of the film-stock or lighting filters. Her best acting performance will be a point of contention, but her performance in Juan Luis Buñuel's 1974 'La Femme aux bottes rouges' is an unusual expose of feminine insight that perhaps only she could have pulled off. A role that demanded appearance over word, so again of great interest to the world of the camera.
Alfred Jarry's 1902 novel 'The superman' included a description of an absurd multi-manned cycle offering an early date for an absurd machine.
cycles-bentoline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/surmalewb...
The first prehistorical object that might be described as being at least suitable for absurd role playing and playful fantasy might be the 26,000 year old Brno marionette from the Gravettian ice age site of Dolni Vestonice - a sprawling and atypical megasite. Although it's impossible to know if the 'doll' was for rites, guided puppet theatre or simple play, the sheer number of pottery animal silhouettes from the sprawling site suggests that play was important. Many animals play and so do humans, and without sounding absurd, it is possible to say that carnival, sport and theatre can all allow play to find expression into adult life.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=exl3IVM4mw4
AJM 13.1.19
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 996.
French actor and stage director Laurent Terzieff (1935-2010) starred during the 1960s and 1970s in many films by famous French and Italian directors. The magnetic and politically engaged actor began his film career as one of the existential youth in Les Tricheurs (1958) and later often portrayed cynical bohemians or political activists.
Laurent Terzieff was born Laurent Didier Alex Laurent Tchemerzine in 1935 in Toulouse, France. He was the son of a French visual artist and a Russian sculptor who had emigrated to France during the First World War. The spectacle of the bombardments during WW II had a dramatic effect on nine-year-old Laurent. As an adolescent, he was fascinated with philosophy and poetry. He assisted director Roger Blin with the production of the play La Sonate des spectres (The Ghost Sonata) by August Strindberg. Then and there, he decided to become an actor. Terzieff made his debut in 1953 with the Theatre of Babylon in Tous contre Adamov (All Against Adamov) by Jean-Marie Serreau. His film début was opposite Yves Montand in Premier mai/The First of May (Luis Saslavsky, 1958). A year earlier he had gained some notoriety playing a role as an assassin in L'affaire Weidmann/The Weidmann case (Jean Prat, 1957), an episode of the TV series En votre âme et conscience/In your conscience (1954-1969). Legendary director Marcel Carné spotted him and offered him a leading role opposite Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Les Tricheurs/The Cheats (Marcel Carné, 1958), a portrait of the existentialist youth in the late 1950s. At AllMovie, Hal Erickson writes: “Carné's youthful characters are not so much people as symbols of the postwar relaxation of worldwide manners and mores. In anticipation of the hippie flicks of the 1960s, the main characters indulge in a great deal of sex, but abstain from true love and commitment, citing these things as irrelevant in a world full of instant gratification.“ Les Tricheurs was Terzieff’s breakthrough in the cinema. For a long time, the public would identify him with the bohemian and cynical student.
Laurent Terzieff played roles in films by such famous directors as Gillo Pontecorvo in Kapò (1959) about a young Jewish girl (Susan Strasberg) who leads an escape attempt from a concentration camp, Claude Autant-Lara in Tu ne tueras point/Thou Shalt Not Kill (1961), a portrait of a conscientious objector, and Jacques Demy in the portmanteau (omnibus film) Les Sept Péchés/The Seven Deadly Sins (1962). He appeared in a segment about the lusty conversation between two young men, one of whom has x-ray eyes that enable him to see through women's clothing. Terzieff starred with Rosanna Schiaffino and Elsa Martinelli in the Italian film La Notte Brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959). Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote this social drama about three young Roman criminals and three beautiful prostitutes without any perspective in life but having some money to spend during a night of illusions and adventures. More famous Italian film directors would ask him for their films. Terzieff appeared as a revolutionary on the run from government troops in Vanina Vanini/The Betrayer (Roberto Rossellini, 1961), as the centaur in Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) opposite Maria Callas, as an anarchistic petty thief in Ostia (Sergio Citti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970), and as a military in Il deserto dei Tartari/Desert of the Tartars (Valerio Zurlini, 1976) opposite Vittorio Gassman and Jacques Perrin. In France, he played in A cœur joie/Two Weeks in September (Serge Bourguignon, 1967) with Brigitte Bardot, and La Prisonnière/Woman in Chains (Henri Georges Clouzot, 1968), in which he interpreted a disturbed modern art gallery owner who manipulates Elisabeth Wiener. He made four films with director Philippe Garrel. Le Révélateur/The developper (Philippe Garrel, 1968) was shot in May 1968 during the student revolution, and Les hautes solitudes (Philippe Garrel, 1974), a biographical film about actress Jean Seberg. Terzieff worked with more great auteurs. Famous Spanish director Luis Buñuel took him and Paul Frankeur on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in La Voie lactée/The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969). He was once directed by Jean-Luc Godard in Détective/Detective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985). On television, he appeared in the American-Italian Mini-Series Moses the Lawgiver/Moses (Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974) starring Burt Lancaster.
Since the 1980s, Laurent Terzieff was seen less in the cinemas and mostly acted on stage. In the theatre, he often worked as a director, writer and actor with his own troupe, co-founded in 1961 with his companion Pascale de Boysson. He also ran the theatre Lucernaire in Paris. His later film roles include a Trotskyist in Rouge Baiser/Red Kiss (Véra Belmont, 1985), an anarchist in Germinal (Claude Berri, 1993) starring Gérard Depardieu, and the painter Hérigault in Le radeau de la Méduse/The Raft of the Medusa (Iradj Azimi, 1994), inspired by a tragic maritime event that happened in 1816. Politically engaged, Terzieff signed in 1960 La Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la Guerre d'Algérie (Declaration on the Right of Insubordination in the War of Algeria), and in 2002, the petition Pas en notre nom (Not in our name) against the Iraq War. In his seventies, the gaunt-faced actor had not lost his magnetism, as was proved by his appearance in the Agatha Christie adaptation Mon petit doigt m'a dit.../A Little Bird Told Me... (Pascal Thomas, 2005) with Catherine Frot and André Dussollier. Terzieff also stayed active in the theatre. In 2009 he played an acclaimed Philoctetes in the play by Sophocles. His last films were the comedy J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster/I always dreamed of being a gangster (Samuel Benchetrit, 2008) with Jean Rochefort, and the Italian production Le ombre rosse/The Red Shadow (Francesco Maselli, 2009). Posthumously he was seen opposite Sharon Stone in the thriller Largo Winch 2/The Burma Conspiracy (Jérôme Salle, 2011). During his long career, Laurent Terzieff was hailed with many awards (Prix Gérard Philippe, Molière for Best Director and Best Show for Temps contre temps (Time against time) in 1993), and he was also an Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite (Officer of the Order of Merit) and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (Commander of Arts and Letters). Laurent Terzieff died in 2010 in Paris from a lung ailment. He was 75. He was the widower of actress Pascale de Boysson.
Sources: Hans Beerekamp (Het Schimmenrijk) (Dutch), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Evene.fr (French), Ciné-Ressources (Cinémathèque française) (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard by Images d'Avignon, Avignon. Photo: Atzinger. Laurent Terzieff in the play 'Nicomède' (1964) by Pierre Corneille at the XVIIIe Festival d'Avignon (1964).
French actor and stage director Laurent Terzieff (1935-2010) starred during the 1960s and 1970s in many films by famous French and Italian directors. The magnetic and politically engaged actor began his film career as one of the existential youth in Les Tricheurs (1958) and later often portrayed cynical bohemians or political activists.
Laurent Terzieff was born Laurent Didier Alex Laurent Tchemerzine in 1935 in Toulouse, France. He was the son of a French visual artist and a Russian sculptor who had emigrated to France during the First World War. The spectacle of the bombardments during WW II had a dramatic effect on nine-year-old Laurent. As an adolescent, he was fascinated with philosophy and poetry. He assisted director Roger Blin with the production of the play La Sonate des spectres (The Ghost Sonata) by August Strindberg. Then and there, he decided to become an actor. Terzieff made his debut in 1953 with the Theatre of Babylon in Tous contre Adamov (All Against Adamov) by Jean-Marie Serreau. His film début was opposite Yves Montand in Premier mai/The First of May (Luis Saslavsky, 1958). A year earlier he had gained some notoriety playing a role as an assassin in L'affaire Weidmann/The Weidmann case (Jean Prat, 1957), an episode of the TV series En votre âme et conscience/In your conscience (1954-1969). Legendary director Marcel Carné spotted him and offered him a leading role opposite Pascale Petit, Jacques Charrier and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Les Tricheurs/The Cheats (Marcel Carné, 1958), a portrait of the existentialist youth in the late 1950s. At AllMovie, Hal Erickson writes: “Carné's youthful characters are not so much people as symbols of the postwar relaxation of worldwide manners and mores. In anticipation of the hippie flicks of the 1960s, the main characters indulge in a great deal of sex, but abstain from true love and commitment, citing these things as irrelevant in a world full of instant gratification.“ Les Tricheurs was Terzieff’s breakthrough in the cinema. For a long time, the public would identify him with the bohemian and cynical student.
Laurent Terzieff played roles in films by such famous directors as Gillo Pontecorvo in Kapò (1959) about a young Jewish girl (Susan Strasberg) who leads an escape attempt from a concentration camp, Claude Autant-Lara in Tu ne tueras point/Thou Shalt Not Kill (1961), a portrait of a conscientious objector, and Jacques Demy in the portmanteau (omnibus film) Les Sept Péchés/The Seven Deadly Sins (1962). He appeared in a segment about the lusty conversation between two young men, one of whom has x-ray eyes that enable him to see through women's clothing. Terzieff starred with Rosanna Schiaffino and Elsa Martinelli in the Italian film La Notte Brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959). Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote this social drama about three young Roman criminals and three beautiful prostitutes without any perspective in life but having some money to spend during a night of illusions and adventures. More famous Italian film directors would ask him for their films. Terzieff appeared as a revolutionary on the run from government troops in Vanina Vanini/The Betrayer (Roberto Rossellini, 1961), as the centaur in Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) opposite Maria Callas, as an anarchistic petty thief in Ostia (Sergio Citti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970), and as a military in Il deserto dei Tartari/Desert of the Tartars (Valerio Zurlini, 1976) opposite Vittorio Gassman and Jacques Perrin. In France, he played in A cœur joie/Two Weeks in September (Serge Bourguignon, 1967) with Brigitte Bardot, and La Prisonnière/Woman in Chains (Henri Georges Clouzot, 1968), in which he interpreted a disturbed modern art gallery owner who manipulates Elisabeth Wiener. He made four films with director Philippe Garrel. Le Révélateur/The developper (Philippe Garrel, 1968) was shot in May 1968 during the student revolution, and Les hautes solitudes (Philippe Garrel, 1974), a biographical film about actress Jean Seberg. Terzieff worked with more great auteurs. Famous Spanish director Luis Buñuel took him and Paul Frankeur on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in La Voie lactée/The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969). He was once directed by Jean-Luc Godard in Détective/Detective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985). On television, he appeared in the American-Italian Mini-Series Moses the Lawgiver/Moses (Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974) starring Burt Lancaster.
Since the 1980s, Laurent Terzieff was seen less in the cinemas and mostly acted on stage. In the theatre, he often worked as a director, writer and actor with his own troupe, co-founded in 1961 with his companion Pascale de Boysson. He also ran the theatre Lucernaire in Paris. His later film roles include a Trotskyist in Rouge Baiser/Red Kiss (Véra Belmont, 1985), an anarchist in Germinal (Claude Berri, 1993) starring Gérard Depardieu, and the painter Hérigault in Le radeau de la Méduse/The Raft of the Medusa (Iradj Azimi, 1994), inspired by a tragic maritime event that happened in 1816. Politically engaged, Terzieff signed in 1960 La Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la Guerre d'Algérie (Declaration on the Right of Insubordination in the War of Algeria), and in 2002, the petition Pas en notre nom (Not in our name) against the Iraq War. In his seventies, the gaunt-faced actor had not lost his magnetism, as was proved by his appearance in the Agatha Christie adaptation Mon petit doigt m'a dit.../A Little Bird Told Me... (Pascal Thomas, 2005) with Catherine Frot and André Dussollier. Terzieff also stayed active in the theatre. In 2009 he played an acclaimed Philoctetes in the play by Sophocles. His last films were the comedy J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster/I always dreamed of being a gangster (Samuel Benchetrit, 2008) with Jean Rochefort, and the Italian production Le ombre rosse/The Red Shadow (Francesco Maselli, 2009). Posthumously he was seen opposite Sharon Stone in the thriller Largo Winch 2/The Burma Conspiracy (Jérôme Salle, 2011). During his long career, Laurent Terzieff was hailed with many awards (Prix Gérard Philippe, Molière for Best Director and Best Show for Temps contre temps (Time against time) in 1993), and he was also an Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite (Officer of the Order of Merit) and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (Commander of Arts and Letters). Laurent Terzieff died in 2010 in Paris from a lung ailment. He was 75. He was the widower of actress Pascale de Boysson.
Sources: Hans Beerekamp (Het Schimmenrijk) (Dutch), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Evene.fr (French), Ciné-Ressources (Cinémathèque française) (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Desde el día 26 de agosto, Monbus ha renovado la concesión del servicio entre terminales del aeropuerto de El Prat con la novedad de una nueva lanzadera exclusiva para trabajadores del Aeropuerto que parte desde el Parking de la T2C, hasta la T1.
Este Mercedes Citaro C2 Hybrid, procede de la empresa Voyages Demy Schandeler de Luxemburgo
French postcard, Ref. 973.
American film actor Harrison Ford (1942) specialises in roles of cynical, world-weary heroes in popular film series. He played Han Solo in the Star Wars franchise, archaeologist Indiana Jones in a series of four adventure films, Rick Deckard in the Science Fiction films Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and secret agent Jack Ryan in the spy thrillers Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). These film roles have made him one of the most successful stars in Hollywood. In all, his films have grossed about $5.4 billion in the United States and $9.3 billion worldwide.
Harrison Ford was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1942. His parents were former radio actress Dorothy (née Nidelman) and advertising executive and former actor John William "Christopher" Ford. Harrison graduated in 1960 from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. His voice was the first student voice broadcast on his high school's new radio station, WMTH, and he was its first sportscaster during his senior year. He attended Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where he was a philosophy major and did some acting. After dropping out of college, he first wanted to work as a DJ in radio and left for California to work at a large national radio station. He was unable to find work and, in order to make a living, he accepted a job as a carpenter. Another part-time job was auditioning, where he had to read out lines that the opposing actor would say to an actor auditioning for a particular role. Harrison did this so well that he was advised to take up acting. He was also briefly a roadie for the rock group The Doors. From 1964, Ford regularly played bit roles in films. He was finally credited as "Harrison J. Ford" in the Western A Time for Killing (Phil Karlson, 1967), starring Glenn Ford, George Hamilton, and Inger Stevens. The "J" did not stand for anything since he has no middle name but was added to avoid confusion with a silent film actor named Harrison Ford, who appeared in more than 80 films between 1915 and 1932 and died in 1957. French filmmaker Jacques Demy chose Ford for the lead role of his first American film, Model Shop (1969), but the head of Columbia Pictures thought Ford had "no future" in the film business and told Demy to hire a more experienced actor. The part eventually went to Gary Lockwood. He had an uncredited, non-speaking role in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point (1970) as an arrested student protester. His first major role was in the coming-of-age comedy American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973). Ford became friends with the directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, and he made a number of films with them. In 1974, he acted in The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) starring Gene Hackman, and played an army officer named "G. Lucas" in Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, co-produced by George Lucas. Ford made his breakthrough as Han Solo in Lucas's epic space opera Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977). Star Wars became one of the most successful and groundbreaking films of all time and brought Ford, and his co-stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, widespread recognition. He reprised the role in four sequels over the course of the next 42 years: Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980), Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983), Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015), and Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019).
Harrison Ford also worked with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on the successful Indiana Jones adventure series playing the heroic, globe-trotting archaeologist Indiana Jones. The series started with the action-adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981). Like Star Wars, the film was massively successful and became the highest-grossing film of the year. Ford went on to reprise the role throughout the rest of the decade in the prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984), and the sequel Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989), which co-starred Sean Connery as Indy's father, Henry Jones Sr. and River Phoenix as young Indiana. In between the successful film series, Ford also played very daring roles in more artistic films. He played the role of a lonely depressed detective in the Sci-Fi film Blade Runner, (Ridley Scott, 1981) opposite Rutger Hauer. While not initially a success, Blade Runner went on to become a cult classic and one of Ford's most highly regarded films. Ford received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the crime drama Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) with Kelly McGillis, and also starred for Weir as a house-father in the survival drama The Mosquito Coast (Peter Weir, 1986) with River Phoenix as his son. In 1988, he played a desperate man searching for his kidnapped wife in Roman Polanski's Frantic. For his role as a wrongly accused prisoner Dr. Richard Kimble in the action thriller The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993), also starring Tommy Lee Jones, Ford received some of the best reviews of his career. He became the second of five actors to portray Jack Ryan in two films of the film series based on the literary character created by Tom Clancy: the spy thrillers Patriot Games (Phillip Noyce, 1992) and Clear and Present Danger (Phillip Noyce, 1994). He then played the American president in the blockbuster Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997) opposite Gary Oldman. Later his success waned somewhat and his films Random Hearts (Sydney Pollack, 1999) and Six Days Seven Nights (Ivan Reitman, 1998) both disappointed at the box office. However, he did play a few special roles, such as an assassin in the supernatural horror-thriller What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, 2000) opposite Michele Pfeiffer, and a Russian submarine captain in K-19: The Widowmaker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2002) with Liam Neeson. In 2008, he reprised his role as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008) with Cate Blanchett. The film received generally positive reviews and was the second highest-grossing film worldwide in 2008. Later Ford accepted more supporting roles, such as in the sports film 42 (Brian Helgeland, 2013) about baseball player Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), the first black athlete to play in Major League Baseball. Ford reprised the role of Han Solo in the long-awaited Star Wars sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015), which became massively successful like its predecessors. He also reprised his role as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), co-starring Ryan Gosling. Harrison Ford has been married three times and has four biological children and one adopted child. From 1964 to 1979, Ford was married to Mary Marquardt, a marriage that produced two children. From 1983 to 2003, he was married to Melissa Mathison, from which marriage two more children were born. In 2010, he married actress Calista Flockhart, famous for her role in the TV series Ally McBeal. He owns a ranch in Jackson Hole (Wyoming). Besides being an actor, Ford is also an experienced pilot. Ford survived three plane crashes of planes he piloted himself. The most recent accident occurred in 2015 when he suffered an engine failure with a Ryan PT-22 Recruit and made an emergency landing on a golf course. Among other injuries, Ford sustained a broken pelvis and ankle from this latest accident. In 2003, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.