Music Producers
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North Sea Producer looking weathered after years in the North Sea ... oil field, which lies 250km north-east of Aberdeen, for ConocoPhillips. ... The North Sea Producer ship docked near the Riverside Stadium.
This is One Big Ship .
Having seen this oil platform anchored off the coast of Applecross in the Scottish Highlands for the past few months, we finally took the perfect opportunity of dead flat calm conditions to kayak the more than three miles to get a closer look.
This is the Northern Producer, originally built as a drilling rig in Norway in 1976 before conversion to a floating production facility in 1991. It was formerly in the North Sea, north of the Shetland Islands - and has recently arrived in Loch Kishorn for decommissioning.
I was very glad to have my little waterproof Olympus TG-4, that handles RAW files! My next uploads will give more of a sense of scale of this massive structure.
087,365,
California Ag Museum,
Woodland, CA.
Garden Village, Burnaby, British Columbia
The California Agriculture Museum is home to the nation’s most unique collection of tractors and artifacts. Interactive exhibits and special events tell the history of farm to fork, dating back to the Gold Rush era. Hear local storytellers boast of how California food producers did things bigger and better. California evolved from horse drawn, to steam driven, to fuel powered machines. Galleries and corridors wind you by harvesters, wheel and crawler track-type tractors, combines, trucks, art and photo galleries.
The North Sea Producer berthed next to Middlesbroughs Riverside stadium on the River Tees.
The unit is 236 metres long and operates at a water depth of 92 metres. The North Sea Producer has a daily production capacity of 76,000 barrels of oil and has a storage capacity of 560,000 barrels.
IMO: 8124058
MMSI: 234148000
Call Sign: MWGF2
Flag: United Kingdom (GB)
AIS Type: Other
Gross Tonnage: 52434
Deadweight: 99800 t
Length × Breadth: 233m × 40m
Year Built: 1984
Status: Active
Read more at www.marinetraffic.com/ais/details/ships/shipid:185647/mms...
©pauldowning2015 All Rights Reserved. This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.
'North Sea Producer', Middlehaven.
My son Thomas and I went down to Middlehaven and the Transporter Bridge for a bit of Sunday afternoon photography. Quite pleased with the result here - although I'd forgotten she was in dock and it wasn't the original reason for heading down that way.
Built in 1983/4, the product tanker Dagmar Maersk worked in the MacCulloch oil field, 250km north-east of Aberdeen, for ConocoPhillips.
It was then converted on the Tees from 1996-97, in the same dock it’s in now, into an FPSO (floating production storage and offloading) vessel, eventually sailing off back, renamed North Sea Producer, into the North Sea on April 8, 1997.
It’s currently owned by the North Sea Production Company - a 50/50 split between conglomerates Maersk and Odebrecht
It could operate at a water depth of 92 metres, is 236m long and had a daily production capacity of 76,000 barrels of oil, plus a storage capacity of 560,000 barrels. Now it’s uncrewed, unpowered and awaiting its fate in Middlehaven Dock on the River Tees.
Docked at Nigg. Awaiting her fate, this 40-year-old vessel was once an oil tanker before being converted into an FPSO - Floating Production Storing and Offloading - in 2012/13. It may be recycled or recommissioned, but in the meantime, it is quietly rusting away after the oilfields that she worked on were shut down.
Okay, this is like the worst office portrait ever, a colleague took it with a camera. But in all it represents the day's highlight, a project finally launching. I don't know what I do to deserve it, but somehow I always end up being the producer, so a helmet and a signal lamp were in order. So the project went live today, Champaign was served (none for me, thanks) and everyone was happy. Finally some time to prepare for christmas.
N804CE, an Embraer EMB-135LR ERJ135, on approach to runway 24R at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, Ontario.
It was arriving from South Bend, Indiana.
Serial number 145326 began its career as N727AE with American Eagle Airlines, Inc. on October 17, 2000. It is currently operated by Cummins Inc. of Columbus, Indiana.
CE = Cummins Engine Company, the corporation's original name.
title.
under the sign.
( Nikon coolpix 8700 shot )
Manhattan. New York. America. 2007. … 5 / 8
(Today's photo. It's unpublished.)
Images.
ONE OK ROCK…Gravity feat. 藤原聡 歌詞和訳付
Important Notices.
I have relaxed the following conditions.
I will distribute my T-shirt to the world for free.
m.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/50656401427/in/dateposted-p...
m.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/50613367691/in/dateposted-p...
ユーチューブ更新しました
#ウクライナ #ロシア #ウクライナ侵攻 #ウィンストンチャーチル #貧困をなくす方法 #amazon #辻一弘
以下のテキストは随時編集しています😃
映画ウィンストンチャーチルのAmazonレビューと小泉進次郎さんが子どもに受けた質問、貧困はどうしたらなくなりますか？の答えを僕が回答😃
１ Amazonレビューの高い史観は、映画、ではなく、ドキュメンタリーと呼びます😅
現実と事実を並べることが、映画ではない。映画と小説の表現の手法はそれぞれ。
その詳しいレビューに沿ったドキュメンタリー映画を創ったら、スーパー退屈な、事実を並べただけの退屈映画になってしまいます。
映画とは、結論のテーマを支えるために
【脚色】
【撮影方法（カメラアングル、構図、編集）】などが必要とされています。
Amazonでご覧ください
ウィンストン・チャーチル ヒトラーから世界を救った男 [Blu-ray] amzn.asia/d/ezqNJA0
２ チャーチルの耳元に囁くのは、高レベルのお金持ち。
耳元で囁く人間らは、現状維持、「あなたは素晴らしい人間です、誰もあなたの悪口を言ってはいません」と甘い言葉で、現在の地位と貯蓄を維持できる方向へ持っていく。
首相に限らず、トップに立つ人間らは常に孤独であり、耳もとで囁かれる甘い言葉に擦り寄って流されるのではなく、耳に刺さる、厳しく痛い言葉にこそ耳を傾けること。それが真実なんです。
そして、イギリス国王がチャーチルに伝えた最後の言葉は以下のとおり。
３ 貧困はどうしたらなくなるか？
【チャーチル内のイギリス国王のセリフ】
街に出て、人々の声を聞け
声なき大衆の声を聞くのだ
そして、彼らにありのままの真実を話せ
僕が二日間悩んで出した答えは、
【声なき声の持ち主に、耳を傾けること】
ウィンストン・チャーチル
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ウィンストン・...
#ウィンストンチャーチル #ゲイリーオールドマン #ジョーライト #辻一弘 #amazon #prime #Amazon #アマゾン #プライム #ヒトラー #イギリス #世界 #第二次世界大戦 #ダンケルク #貧困 #小泉進次郎 #子供 #質問 #貧困をなくすにはどうしたらいいのか？
#Ukraine #Russia #invasion #winstonchurchill #Howtoeliminatepoverty #amazon #KazuhiroTsuji
#winstonchurchill #garyoldman #joewright #KazuhiroTsuji #amazon #prime #amazonprime #amazon #prime #hitler #britain #world #wwii #dunkirk #poverty #ShinjiroKoizumi #children #question #eliminates #poverty #what #shouldIdoto
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Exhibition in 2023
theme
The camera kisses time.
Mitsushiro --Nakagawa
The schedule for 2023 is unstable.
I plan to do one of the following two.
Both are scheduled around November.
I give priority to museums.
1 This will be done when the 1st attached gallery is released in 2023.
place
DIC Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art 1st attached gallery
2 This is planned as a spare.
place
Design Festa
images.
BTS… Film out Lyrics (방탄 소년단 / BTS Film out Japanese subtitles 가사) [Color Coded Lyrics / Kan / Rom / Eng]
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Latest news.
The following my T-shirt. Free distribution.
Due to the influence of corona # the method of transportation varies from country to country.
1/25
The first one has been decided.
It's a German.
m.flickr.com/photos/ute_kluge/favorites/
I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.
:)
December 3 # 2020. shipped.
It is a sea mail. It takes 2 to 3 months.
2/25
The second is a Thai woman.
youpic.com/photographer/Abbozzo/
I asked her to pick it up.
:)
December 10 # 2020. shipped.
It is a sea mail. It takes 2 to 3 months.
3/25
The third is a Mexican woman.
She has supported me since the days of fotolog.
She gave me directions.
Thank you.
:)
Shipped on December 10 # 2020.
It is EMS. Maybe it will arrive within 1 to 2 months.
4/25
The fourth is a woman from the Republic of Serbia.
youpic.com/photographer/IvanaPopov/
Shipped on December 14 # 2020.
It is a sea mail. Maybe it will arrive within 2 to 3 months.
:)
5/25
The fifth is an Indonesian man.
www.flickr.com/photos/33836533@N04/
December 24 # 2020. shipped.
It is EMS. Maybe it will arrive within 1 to 2 months.
6/25
The sixth is from France.
youpic.com/image/18158054/ombre-chinoise-by-ce-pe
www.flickr.com/photos/191604817@N04/
January 7 # 2021.
I shipped it.
:)
7/25
The seventh person is also from France.
www.flickr.com/photos/151630891@N07/
www.flickr.com/people/liveworkcreate/
January 7 # 2021.
I shipped it.
:)
8/25
The eighth person is from Romania.
It will be shipped in January 2021.
:)
9/25
The ninth person is from Japan. He is 16 years old
Award history
2017 Oguni Town Photo Contest 2 Division
2018 EPSON meet up selection Data Category Excellence Award
2020 Kumamoto Takafumiren First Half Photo Contest Excellence Award
Web Photo Contest Sponsoring Maker Award
10/25
The tenth person is from Brazil.
www.flickr.com/photos/mangelo/
It will be shipped in February 2021.
:)
11/25
11th person is from USA.
youpic.com/photographer/HeathBrunner/
www.flickr.com/photos/181948650@N04/
It will be shipped in February 2021.
:)
12/25
The 13th person is from Italy.
www.flickr.com/photos/122700703@N05/
youpic.com/photographer/raffadepa2019/
cacciatoredisogniblog.wordpress.com
It will be shipped in February 2021.
13/25
The 14th person is from Russia.
www.flickr.com/photos/183731920@N08/
youpic.com/photographer/Andjey/
It will be shipped in March 2021.
14/25
The 14th person is from the Philippines.
www.flickr.com/photos/44681455@N00/
youpic.com/photographer/Stitch/
Shipped on November 11, 2021.
Mitsu.
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Notice regarding "Lot No.402_”.
From now on # I will host "Lot No.402_".
The work of Leonardo da Vinci who was sleeping.
That is the number when it was put up for auction.
No sign was written on the work.
So this work couldn't conclude that it was his work.
However # as a result of various appraisals # it was exposed to the sun.
A work that no one notices. A work that speaks quietly without a title.
I will continue to strive to provide it to many people in various ways.
October 24 # 2020 by Mitsu - Nakagawa.
Mitsu Nakagawa belong to Lot No. 402 _.Copyright©︎2022 Lot No.402_ All rights reserved.
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Profile.
In November 2014 # we caught the attention of the party selected to undertake the publicity for a mobile phone that changed the face of the world with just a single model # and will conclude a confidentiality agreement with them.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
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Interviews and novels.
About my book.
I published a book a long time ago.
At that time # I uploaded my interview as a PDF on the internet.
Its Japanese and English.
I will publish it for free.
For details # I explained to the Amazon site.
How to write a novel.
How to take a picture.
A sense of distance to the work.
All of these have something in common.
I wrote down what I felt and left it.
I hope my text will be read by many people.
Thank you.
Mitsushiro.
1 Interview in English
2 novels. unforgettable 'English version.(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
3 Interview Japanese version
4 novels. unforgettable ' JPN version.
5 A streamlined trajectory. only Japanese.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
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iBooks. Electronic Publishing. It is free now.
0.about the iBooks.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
1.unforgettable '(ENG.ver.)(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216576828?ls=1&...
2.unforgettable '(JNP.ver.)(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216584262?ls=1&...
3. Streamlined trajectory.(For Japanese only.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/%E6%B5%81%E7%B7%9A%E5%BD%A2%E3%8... =11
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My Novel : Unforgettable'
(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
Synopsis
Kei Kitami # who is aiming for a university # meets Kaori Uemura # an event companion who is 6 years older than her on SNS.
Kaori's dream of coming to Tokyo is to become friends with famous artists.
For that purpose # the presence of radio station producer Ryo Osawa was necessary.
Osawa talks to Kaori during the live radio broadcast.
"I have a wife and a child # but I want to see you."
Kay's classmate # Rika Sanjo # who thinks of him # was exploring Kaori's trends. .. .. .. ..
Synopsis.
Kei Kitami who aims at university.
A 6 year old older event companion woman. Meet Kaori Uemura on SNS.
The dream of Kaori who has moved to Tokyo.
It is to be a friend of the artist.
The producer of the radio station for that. The existence of Ryo Osawa was necessary.
Live on the radio.Osawa talks to Kaori.
"I have a wife and a child # but I want to see you."
Kei’s classmate Rika Sanzyou who is thinking of him.
She was searching for Kaori.
Mitsushiro Nakagawa
All Translated by Yumi Ikeda .
images.
U2 - No Line On The Horizon Live in Dublin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE&feature=related
Main story
There are two reasons why a person faces the sea.
One # to enjoy a slice of shine in the sea like children bubbling over in the beach.
The other # to brush the dust of memory like an old man who misses old days # staring at the shine
quietly.
Those lead to only one meaning though they do not seem to overlap. It’s a rebirth.
I face myself to change tomorrow # a vague day into something certain.
That is the meaning of a rebirth.
I had a very sweet girlfriend when I was 18.
After she left # I knew the meaning of gentleness for the first time and also a true pain of loss. After
she left # how many times did I depend too much on her # doubt her # envy her and keep on telling lies
until I realized it is love?
I wonder whether a nobody like me could have given something to her who was struggling in the
daily life in those days. Giving something is arrogant conceit. It is nothing but self-satisfaction.
I had been thinking about such a thing.
However # I guess what she saw in me was because I had nothing. That‘s why she tried to see
something in me. Perhaps she found a slight possibility in me # a guy filled with ambiguous # unstable
tomorrow. But I wasted days depending too much on her gentleness.
Now I finally can convey how I felt in those days when we met.
1/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24577016535/in/dateposted...
2/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24209330259/in/dateposted...
3/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/23975215274/in/dateposted...
4/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24515964952/in/dateposted...
5/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24276473749/in/dateposted...
6/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24548895082/in/dateposted...
7/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24594603711/in/dateposted...
8/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24588215562/in/dateposted...
9/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24100804163/in/dateposted...
Fin.
images.
U2 - No Line On The Horizon
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE&feature=related
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Title of my book : unforgettable'
Author : Mitsushiro Nakagawa
Out Now.
ISBN978-4-86264-866-2
in Amazon.
www.amazon.co.jp/Unforgettable’-Mitsushiro-Nakagawa/dp/...
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The schedule of the next novel.
Still would stand all time. (Unforgettable '2)
(It will not go away forever)
Please give me some more time. That is Japanese.
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Exhibition in 2023
theme
The camera kisses time.
Mitsushiro --Nakagawa
The schedule for 2023 is unstable.
I plan to do one of the following two.
Both are scheduled around November.
I give priority to museums.
1 This will be done when the 1st attached gallery is released in 2023.
place
DIC Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art 1st attached gallery
2 This is planned as a spare.
place
Design Festa
images.
BTS… Film out Lyrics (방탄 소년단 / BTS Film out Japanese subtitles 가사) [Color Coded Lyrics / Kan / Rom / Eng]
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My Works.
1 www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/48072442376/in/dateposted...
2 www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/48078949821/in/dateposted...
3 www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/48085863356/in/dateposted...
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Do you want to hear my voice?
:)
1
About the composition of the picture posted to Flicker. First type.
2
About the composition of the picture posted to Flicker. Second type.
3
About when I started Fotolog. Architect 's point of view.
4
Why did not you have a camera so far?
5
What is the coolest thing? The photo is as it is.
6
About the current YouTube bar. I also want to tell # I want to leave.
7
About Japanese photographers. Japanese YouTube bar is Pistols.
8
The composition of the photograph is sensibility. Meet the designers in Milan. Two questions.
9
What is a good composition? What is a bad composition?
10
What is the time to point the camera? It is slow if you are looking into the viewfinder or display.
11
Family photos. I can not take pictures with others. The inside of the subject.
12
About YouTube 's photographer. Camera technology etc. Sensibility is polished by reading books.
13
About the Japanese newspaper. A picture of a good newspaper is Reuters. If you continue to look at useless photographs # it will be useless.
14
About Japanese photographers. About the exhibition.
Summary. I wrote a novel etc. What I want to tell the most.
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I talked about how to make a work.
About work production 1/2
About work production 2/2
1 Photo exhibition up to that point. Did you want to go?
2 Well # what is an exhibition that you want to visit even if you go there?
3 Challenge to exhibit one work every month before opening a solo exhibition at the Harajuku Design Festa.
4 works are materials and silhouettes. Similar to fashion.
5 Who is your favorite artist? What is it? Make it clear.
6 Creating a collage is exactly the same as taking photos. As I wrote in the interview # it is the same as writing a novel.
7 I want to show it to someone # but I do not make a piece to show it. Aim for the work you want to decorate your own room as in the photo.
8 What is copycat? Nowadays # it is suspected to be beaten. There is something called Mimesis?
kotobank.jp/word/Mimesis-139464
9 What is Individuality? What is originality?
www.youtube.com/user/mitsushiro/
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Explanation of composition. 2
1.Composition explanation 2 ... 1/4
2.Composition explanation 2 ... 2/4
3.Composition Explanation 2 ... 3/4
4.Composition Explanation 2 ... 4/4
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My shutter feeling.
Today's photo.
It is a photo taken from Eurostar.
This video is an explanation.
I went to Milan in 2005.
At that time # I went from Milan to Venice.
We took Eurostar into the transportation.
This photo was not taken from a very fast Eurostar.
When I changed the track # I took a picture at the moment I slowed down.
Is there a Japanese beside you?
Please have my video translated.
:)
In the Eurostar to Venice . 2005. shot ... 1 / 2
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/49127115021/in/dateposted...
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Miles Davis sheet 1955-1976.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
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flickr.
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/
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instagram.
www.instagram.com/mitsushiro_nakagawa/
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Pinterest.
www.pinterest.jp/MitsushiroNakagawa/
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YouPic
youpic.com/photographer/mitsushironakagawa/
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twitter.
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facebook.
www.facebook.com/mitsushiro.nakagawa
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Amazon.
www.amazon.co.jp/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AHSKI3YMYPYE5UE...
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My statistics. (As of May 11 # 2021)
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Japanese is the following.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
Title of my book unforgettable' Mitsushiro Nakagawa Out Now. ISBN978-4-86264-866-2
Mitsu Nakagawa belong to Lot No. 204 _ . Copyright©︎2020 Lot No.402_ All rights reserved.
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title.
看板の下。
( Nikon coolpix 8700 shot )
マンハッタン。 ニューヨーク。アメリカ。２００7。… 5 / 8
(今日の写真。それは未発表です。)
Images.
ONE OK ROCK…Gravity feat. 藤原聡 歌詞和訳付
次の小説のイメージ。
Still would stand all time.(unforgettable'2)
（いつまでもなくならないだろう）
重要なお知らせ。
僕は以下の条件を緩和します。
僕はTシャツを無料で世界中へ配布します。
m.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/50656401427/in/dateposted-p...
m.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/50613367691/in/dateposted-p...
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２０２３年の展示
テーマ
カメラは時間にキスをする。
Mitsushiro - Nakagawa
２０２３年のスケジュールは不安定です。
以下の二つのいずれかを予定しています。
どちらも１１月頃を予定しています。
僕は美術館を優先します。
１ こちらは、２０２３年に第１付属ギャラリーが解放されたら実施します。
場所
DIC川村記念美術館 第１付属ギャラリー
２ こちらは、予備として予定します。
場所
デザインフェスタ
images.
BTS … Film out Lyrics (방탄소년단/防弾少年団 Film out 日本語字幕 가사) [Color Coded Lyrics/Kan/Rom/Eng]
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最新のお知らせ。
以下の僕のTシャツ。無料配布。
コロナの影響で、運送方法は国によって変わります。
1/25
一人目が決まりました。
それはドイツの人です。
m.flickr.com/photos/ute_kluge/favorites/
僕は心から感謝します。ありがとう。
:)
２０２０年１２月３日。発送しました。
船便です。２ヶ月から３ヶ月を要します。
2/25
二人目はタイの女性です。
youpic.com/photographer/Abbozzo/
僕は彼女へ受け取って欲しいとお願いしました。
:)
２０２０年１２月１０日。発送しました。
船便です。２ヶ月から３ヶ月を要します。
3/25
3人目はメキシコの女性です。
彼女はfotologの頃からずっと僕を支えてくれました。
彼女は僕の道案内をしてくれました。
ありがとう。
:)
２０２０年１２月１０日発送しました。
EMSです。たぶん１ヶ月から２ヶ月以内で到着します。
4/25
4人目は、セルビア共和国の女性です。
youpic.com/photographer/IvanaPopov/
２０２０年１２月１４日発送しました。
船便です。たぶん２ヶ月から３ヶ月以内で到着します。
:)
5/25
５人目は、インドネシアの男性です。
www.flickr.com/photos/33836533@N04/
２０２０年１２月２４日。発送しました。
EMSです。たぶん１ヶ月から２ヶ月以内で到着します。
１月８日。到着しました。
6/25
6人目は、フランスの方です。
youpic.com/image/18158054/ombre-chinoise-by-ce-pe
www.flickr.com/photos/191604817@N04/
２０２１年１月７日。
僕は発送しました。
:)
7/25
7人目も、フランスの方です。
www.flickr.com/photos/151630891@N07/
www.flickr.com/people/liveworkcreate/
２０２１年１月７日。
僕は発送しました。
:)
8/25
８人目の 方はルーマニアの方です。
2021年１月中に発送します。
:)
9/25
9人目は日本の方です。16歳です。
受賞歴
2017 小国町フォトコンテスト2部門
2018 EPSONmeet up selectionデータ部門優秀賞
2020 熊本高文連前期写真コンテスト優秀賞
Webフォトコンテスト協賛メーカー賞
10/25
10人目は、ブラジルの方です。
www.flickr.com/photos/mangelo/
２０２１年２月中に発送します。
:)
11/25
11人目は、アメリカの方です。
youpic.com/photographer/HeathBrunner/
www.flickr.com/photos/181948650@N04/
２０２１年２月中に発送します。
:)
12/25
12人目は、イタリアの方です。
www.flickr.com/photos/122700703@N05/
youpic.com/photographer/raffadepa2019/
cacciatoredisogniblog.wordpress.com
２０２１年２月中に発送します。
13/25
13人目は、 ロシアの方です。
www.flickr.com/photos/183731920@N08/
youpic.com/photographer/Andjey/
２０２１年３月中に発送します。
14/25
14人目は、フィリピンの方です。
www.flickr.com/photos/44681455@N00/
youpic.com/photographer/Stitch/
２０２１年１１月１１日に発送しました。
Mitsu.
_________________________________
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” Lot No.402_ ” に関するお知らせ。
今後、僕は、” Lot No.402_ ”を主催します。
このロットナンバーは、眠っていたレオナルドダヴィンチの作品がオークションにかけらた際に付されたものです。
作品にはサインなどがいっさい記されていなかったため、彼の作品だと断定できませんでした。
しかし、様々な鑑定の結果、陽の光を浴びました。
誰にも気づかれない作品。肩書がなくとも静かに語りかける作品。
僕はこれから様々な形で、多くの皆様に提供できるよう努めてゆきます。
2020年10月24日 by Mitsu - Nakagawa.
Copyright©︎2021 Lot No.402_ All rights reserved.
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プロフィール
2014年11月、たった1機種で世界を塗り替えた携帯電話の広告を請け負った選考者の目に留まり、秘密保持同意書を結ぶ。
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
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インタビューと小説。
僕の本について。
僕は、昔に本を出版しました。
その際に、僕のインタビューをPDFでネット上へアップロードしていました。
その日本語と英語。
僕は、無料でを公開します。
詳細は、アマゾンのサイトへ解説しました。
小説の書き方。
写真の撮影方法。
作品への距離感。
これらはすべて共通項があります。
僕は、僕が感じたことを文章にして、残しました。
僕のテキストが多くの人に読んでもらえることを望みます。
ありがとう。
Mitsushiro.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
１ インタビュー 英語版
２ 小説。unforgettable’ 英語版。
３ インタビュー 日本語版
４ 小説。unforgettable’ 日本語版。(この小説は未来のアーティストへ捧げます)
(四百字詰め原稿用紙４５６枚)
あらすじ
大学を目指している北見ケイは、SNS上で、6歳年上のイベントコンパニオン、上村香織に出会う。
上京してきた香織の夢は、有名なアーティストの友達になるためだ。
そのためにはラジオ局のプロデューサー、大沢亮の存在が必要だった。
大沢は、ラジオの生放送中、香織へ語りかける。
「僕には妻子がある。しかし、僕は君に会いたいと思っている」
ケイの同級生で、彼を想っている三條里香は、香織の動向を探っていた。。。。。
本編
人が海へ向かう理由には、二つある。
ひとつは、波打ち際ではしゃぐ子供のように、今の瞬間の海の輝きを楽しむこと。
もうひとつは、その輝きを静かに見据えて、過ぎ去った日々を懐かしむ老人のように記憶の埃を払うこと。
二つは重なり合わないようではあるけれども、たったひとつの意味しか生まない。
再生だ。
明日っていう、曖昧な日を確実なものへと変えてゆくために、自分の存在に向き合う。
それが再生の意味だ。
十八歳だった僕には大切な人がいた。
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
５ 流線形の軌跡。 日本語のみ。
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
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iBooks.電子出版。（現在は無料）
0.about the iBooks.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
1.unforgettable’ ( ENG.ver.)(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216576828?ls=1&...
For Japanese only.
2.unforgettable’ ( JNP.ver.)(この小説は未来のアーティストへ捧げます)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216584262?ls=1&...
3.流線形の軌跡。
itunes.apple.com/us/book/%E6%B5%81%E7%B7%9A%E5%BD%A2%E3%8...
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僕の小説。英語版
My Novel Unforgettable' (This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
Mitsushiro Nakagawa
All Translated by Yumi Ikeda .
1/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24577016535/in/dateposted...
2/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24209330259/in/dateposted...
3/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/23975215274/in/dateposted...
4/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24515964952/in/dateposted...
5/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24276473749/in/dateposted...
6/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24548895082/in/dateposted...
7/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24594603711/in/dateposted...
8/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24588215562/in/dateposted...
9/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24100804163/in/dateposted...
Fin.
images.
U2 - No Line On The Horizon Live in Dublin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE&feature=related
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Title of my book : unforgettable'
Author : Mitsushiro Nakagawa
Out Now.
ISBN978-4-86264-866-2
in Amazon.
www.amazon.co.jp/Unforgettable’-Mitsushiro-Nakagawa/dp/...
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次の小説の予定。
Still would stand all time.(unforgettable'2)
（いつまでもなくならないだろう）
もう少し時間をください。それは日本語です。
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２０２３年の展示
テーマ
カメラは時間にキスをする。
Mitsushiro - Nakagawa
２０２３年のスケジュールは不安定です。
以下の二つのいずれかを予定しています。
どちらも１１月頃を予定しています。
僕は美術館を優先します。
１ こちらは、２０２３年に第１付属ギャラリーが解放されたら実施します。
場所
DIC川村記念美術館 第１付属ギャラリー
２ こちらは、予備として予定します。
場所
デザインフェスタ
images.
BTS … Film out Lyrics (방탄소년단/防弾少年団 Film out 日本語字幕 가사) [Color Coded Lyrics/Kan/Rom/Eng]
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僕の作品。
1 www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/48072442376/in/dateposted...
2 www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/48078949821/in/dateposted...
3 www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/48085863356/in/dateposted...
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あなたは僕の声を聞きたいですか？
:)
1
フリッカーへ投稿した写真の構図について。１種類目。
2
フリッカーへ投稿した写真の構図について。２種類目。
3
Fotologを始めた時について。 建築家の視点。
4
なぜ、今までカメラを手にしなかったのか？
5
何が一番かっこいいのか？ 写真はありのままに。
6
現在のユーチューバーについて。僕も伝え、残したい。
7
日本人の写真家について。日本のユーチューバーはピストルズ。
8
写真の構図は、感性。ミラノのデザイナーに会って。二つの質問。
9
良い構図とは？ 悪い構図とは？
10
カメラを向ける時とは？ ファインダーやディスプレイを覗いていては遅い。
11
家族写真。他人では撮れない。被写体の内面。
12
ユーチューブの写真家について。カメラの技術等。感性は、本を読むことで磨く。
13
日本の新聞について。良い新聞の写真はロイター。ダメな写真を見続けるとダメになる。
14
日本の写真家について。その展示について。
まとめ。僕が書いた小説など。僕が最も伝えたいこと。
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作品制作について 1/2
作品制作について 2/2
１ それまでの写真展。自分は行きたいと思ったか？
２ じゃ、自分が足を運んででも行きたい展示とは何か？
３ 原宿デザインフェスタで個展を開くまでに、毎月ひとつの作品を展示することにチャレンジ。
４ 作品とは、素材とシルエット。ファッションと似ている。
５ 自分が好きなアーティストは誰か？ どんなものなのか？ そこをはっきりさせる。
６ コラージュの作成も写真の撮り方と全く同じ。インタビューに書いたように小説の書き方とも同じ。
７ 誰かに見せたい、見せるがために作品は作らない。写真と同じように自分の部屋に飾りたい作品を目指す。
８ パクリとは何か？ 昨今、叩かれるパクリ疑惑。ミメーシスとは？
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ミメーシス
https://kotobank.jp/word/ミメーシス-139464
９ 個性とはなにか？ オリジナリティってなに？
おまけ 眞子さまについて
という流れです。
お時間がある方は是非聴いてください。
:)
www.youtube.com/user/mitsushiro/
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構図の解説２
1.構図の解説２ ... 1/4
2.構図の解説２ ... 2/4
3.構図の解説２ ... 3/4
4.構図の解説２ ... 4/4
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僕のシャッター感覚
In the Eurostar to Venice . 2005. shot ... 1 / 2
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/49127115021/in/dateposted...
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Miles Davis sheet 1955-1976.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
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flickr.
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/
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YouTube.
www.youtube.com/user/mitsushiro/
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instagram.
www.instagram.com/mitsushiro_nakagawa/
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Pinterest.
www.pinterest.jp/MitsushiroNakagawa/
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YouPic
youpic.com/photographer/mitsushironakagawa/
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fotolog
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twitter.
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facebook.
www.facebook.com/mitsushiro.nakagawa
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Amazon.
www.amazon.co.jp/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AHSKI3YMYPYE5UE...
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僕の統計。（2021年5月11日現在）
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Japanese is the following.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vBRMWGk29EmsoBV2o9NM1LIVi...
Title of my book unforgettable' Mitsushiro Nakagawa Out Now. ISBN978-4-86264-866-2
Mitsu Nakagawa belong to Lot no.204_ . Copyright©︎2020 Lot no.204_ All rights reserved.
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#小説 #文章の書き方 #小説の書き方
【 小説ってむずかしい？ 】
ここでは自分が書いた以下の小説（掌編）を解説して、文章の組み方や流れなどを、一行ずつ、徹底的に解説しました。
わかりやすいように、初稿と最終稿の比較で解説しています。約２時間半もかけました😃😅
まずは最終稿を読んでいただけるとわかりやすいです。
小説（掌編）【 夏のはじまりは、すりガラスの向こうに 】
あらすじ
遠藤 シュン 22才と、同級生、関口香奈のお話。
シュンは商社へ就職し、7月からオーストラリアへ。海外赴任前に実家へ帰る。
images
Base Ball Bear --short hair
_________________________________
_________________________________
” Lot No.402_ ” に関するお知らせ。
今後、僕は、” Lot No.402_ ”を主催します。
このロットナンバーは、眠っていたレオナルドダヴィンチの作品がオークションにかけらた際に付されたものです。
作品にはサインなどがいっさい記されていなかったため、彼の作品だと断定できませんでした。
しかし、様々な鑑定の結果、陽の光を浴びました。
誰にも気づかれない作品。肩書がなくとも静かに語りかける作品。
僕はこれから様々な形で、多くの皆様に提供できるよう努めてゆきます。
2020年10月24日 by Mitsu - Nakagawa.
Copyright©︎2020 Lot No.402_ All rights reserved.
_________________________________
_________________________________
_________________________________
_________________________________
Exhibition in 2023
theme
The camera kisses time.
Mitsushiro --Nakagawa
The schedule for 2023 is unstable.
I plan to do one of the following two.
Both are scheduled around November.
I give priority to museums.
1 This will be done when the 1st attached gallery is released in 2023.
place
DIC Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art 1st attached gallery
2 This is planned as a spare.
place
Design Festa
images.
BTS… Film out Lyrics (방탄 소년단 / BTS Film out Japanese subtitles 가사) [Color Coded Lyrics / Kan / Rom / Eng]
２０２３年の展示
テーマ
カメラは時間にキスをする。
Mitsushiro - Nakagawa
２０２３年のスケジュールは不安定です。
以下の二つのいずれかを予定しています。
どちらも１１月頃を予定しています。
僕は美術館を優先します。
１ こちらは、２０２３年に第１付属ギャラリーが解放されたら実施します。
場所
DIC川村記念美術館 第１付属ギャラリー
２ こちらは、予備として予定します。
場所
デザインフェスタ
images.
BTS … Film out Lyrics (방탄소년단/防弾少年団 Film out 日本語字幕 가사) [Color Coded Lyrics/Kan/Rom/Eng]
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#展示 #写真 #コラージュ #川村記念美術館 #Exhibition #Pic #kawamuramemorialdicmuseumofart #collage #BTS #Filmout #FUJIFILM #GFX50R #富士フィルム #日本 #九十九里浜 #山武市 #本須賀海岸 #japan #kujyukuribeach #sanmushi #motosukabeach
#展示 #写真 #コラージュ #川村記念美術館 #Exhibition #Pic #kawamuramemorialdicmuseumofart #collage #BTS #Filmout #FUJIFILM #GFX50R #富士フィルム
Exhibition in 2023
theme
The camera kisses time.
Mitsushiro - Nakagawa
place
Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art 1st attached gallery
images.
BTS … Film out Lyrics (방탄소년단/防弾少年団 Film out 日本語字幕 가사) [Color Coded Lyrics/Kan/Rom/Eng]
２０２３年の展示
テーマ
カメラは時間にキスをする。
Mitsushiro - Nakagawa
場所
DIC川村記念美術館 第１付属ギャラリー
images.
BTS … Film out Lyrics (방탄소년단/防弾少年団 Film out 日本語字幕 가사) [Color Coded Lyrics/Kan/Rom/Eng]
ユーチューブ更新しました
#ウクライナ #ロシア #ウクライナ侵攻 #ウィンストンチャーチル #貧困をなくす方法 #amazon #辻一弘
以下のテキストは随時編集しています😃
映画ウィンストンチャーチルのAmazonレビューと小泉進次郎さんが子どもに受けた質問、貧困はどうしたらなくなりますか？の答えを僕が回答😃
１ Amazonレビューの高い史観は、映画、ではなく、ドキュメンタリーと呼びます😅
現実と事実を並べることが、映画ではない。映画と小説の表現の手法はそれぞれ。
その詳しいレビューに沿ったドキュメンタリー映画を創ったら、スーパー退屈な、事実を並べただけの退屈映画になってしまいます。
映画とは、結論のテーマを支えるために
【脚色】
【撮影方法（カメラアングル、構図、編集）】などが必要とされています。
Amazonでご覧ください
ウィンストン・チャーチル ヒトラーから世界を救った男 [Blu-ray] amzn.asia/d/ezqNJA0
２ チャーチルの耳元に囁くのは、高レベルのお金持ち。
耳元で囁く人間らは、現状維持、「あなたは素晴らしい人間です、誰もあなたの悪口を言ってはいません」と甘い言葉で、現在の地位と貯蓄を維持できる方向へ持っていく。
首相に限らず、トップに立つ人間らは常に孤独であり、耳もとで囁かれる甘い言葉に擦り寄って流されるのではなく、耳に刺さる、厳しく痛い言葉にこそ耳を傾けること。それが真実なんです。
そして、イギリス国王がチャーチルに伝えた最後の言葉は以下のとおり。
３ 貧困はどうしたらなくなるか？
【チャーチル内のイギリス国王のセリフ】
街に出て、人々の声を聞け
声なき大衆の声を聞くのだ
そして、彼らにありのままの真実を話せ
僕が二日間悩んで出した答えは、
【声なき声の持ち主に、耳を傾けること】
ウィンストン・チャーチル
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ウィンストン・...
#ウィンストンチャーチル #ゲイリーオールドマン #ジョーライト #辻一弘 #amazon #prime #Amazon #アマゾン #プライム #ヒトラー #イギリス #世界 #第二次世界大戦 #ダンケルク #貧困 #小泉進次郎 #子供 #質問 #貧困をなくすにはどうしたらいいのか？
#Ukraine #Russia #invasion #winstonchurchill #Howtoeliminatepoverty #amazon #KazuhiroTsuji
#winstonchurchill #garyoldman #joewright #KazuhiroTsuji #amazon #prime #amazonprime #amazon #prime #hitler #britain #world #wwii #dunkirk #poverty #ShinjiroKoizumi #children #question #eliminates #poverty #what #shouldIdoto
A study funded by the Beef Research Council found that the cattle sector contributes much more to the overall economy than what is obvious from traditional measures related to direct contribution.
For the first time in a good while I've picked up a camera. I've been scouting this spot for a good while waiting to get this shot at dawn and I was finally rewrded.
Strong people of the best country in the world!
I want to begin this address with words of congratulations. On my own behalf and on your behalf, on behalf of all our citizens of Ukraine to the employees of the Security Service of Ukraine. Today is their day.
30 years ago, on March 25, the Security Service of our state was founded.
The Service has come a long way. And we all know that. But we also know that during the eight years of the war in Donbas and during the 30 days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many members of the Security Service have shown themselves from the best - heroic - side.
They have shown themselves principled, courageous and able to inflict losses on the enemy that the enemy does not expect. This is exactly what Ukraine needs now.
I am grateful to all our heroes from the Security Service of Ukraine. I am grateful to everyone in the Service who during 30 years of our common history broke the plans of enemies and worked in the interests of the Ukrainian people only.
Congratulations on the holiday! Respect to everyone!
And we will always remember all the employees of the Service who died for Ukraine while performing tasks to counter Russian aggression.
During this month of hostilities, 77 employees of the Security Service were awarded state awards. Two of them were posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. Both distinguished themselves in the battles near Makariv, Kyiv region. Thanks to their courageous actions, the enemy headquarters and more than 20 occupiers were destroyed.
I can't tell you the names of our heroes. This is the specifics of the service. But I can say with confidence: the memory of them will truly be eternal!
Today I signed a decree on state awards to 63 law enforcement officers of Ukraine. Seven of them were awarded posthumously.
Police, rescuers, border guards, special service officials of the State Bureau of Investigation and employees of the Court Protection Service. Thank you to everyone!
Over the past week, our heroic Armed Forces have dealt powerful blows to the enemy, significant losses. They say that the Minister of Defense of Russia has disappeared somewhere… I wonder if he personally wanted to visit Chornobaivka?
I am grateful to our defenders who showed the occupiers that the sea will not be calm for them even when there is no storm. Because there will be fire. As on those Russian ships that departed this week on the famous route from the port of Berdyansk.
I want to warn all traitors of Ukraine who sided with the enemy in Crimea years ago. You switched sides because you thought you would live better, right? Not because you want to repeat the tragic fate of your colleagues who died on those ships or somewhere else on land or at sea in Ukraine. Well, live. Stay as far away from our cities and our army as possible.
The number of Russian casualties in this war has already exceeded 16,000 killed. Among them are senior commanders. There have not been reports about killed Russian colonels-general or admirals yet. But the commander of one of the occupying armies and deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet are already there.
The Armed Forces continue to repel enemy attacks in the south of the country, in Donbas, in the Kharkiv direction and in the Kyiv region.
By restraining Russia's actions, our defenders are leading the Russian leadership to a simple and logical idea: talk is necessary. Meaningful. Urgent. Fair. For the sake of the result, not for the sake of the delay.
16,000 Russian servicemen have already died. For what? What does it give and to whom?
The conversation must be meaningful. Ukrainian sovereignty must be guaranteed. Ukraine's territorial integrity must be ensured. That is, the conditions must be fair. And the Ukrainian people will not accept others.
During the week we managed to establish 18 humanitarian corridors. A total of 37,606 people were rescued from the blocked cities.
In particular, 26,477 Mariupol residents were evacuated from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia via the humanitarian corridor. The situation in the city remains absolutely tragic. The Russian military does not allow any humanitarian aid into the city. They only use Mariupol residents in fakes for their propagandists. Pretending to start giving something to people.
I will continue to inform the nations of other countries in great detail about such disgusting cynicism of the occupiers, about all the war crimes of Russia against the civilians of our heroic Mariupol and other cities of Ukraine. It is very important. I want to emphasize: not only politicians and government officials, but nations. Everyone on the planet needs to know what Russia is doing. So that the responsibility for crimes against the Ukrainian people becomes inevitable and as severe as possible for the Russian military.
During the week alone, I addressed the parliaments of Italy, Japan, France and Sweden. I spoke at the summits of NATO, the G7 and the leaders of the European Union.
Each of these speeches attracted maximum attention in the respective countries and in the world as a whole. The reviews show that the Ukrainian position was heard. And this is my main goal in such speeches.
You know perfectly well what a powerful system of state propaganda Russia has built. They have spent and are spending tens of billions of dollars on it. Probably no one in the world has ever spent such crazy money on lies. But they did not take into account one thing. Where the path of lies needs to be paved with money and the result is not guaranteed, the path of truth is difficult, but the path of truth paves itself. The main thing is to be honest.
Next week I will continue this important work for our interests. Interests of Ukraine. Interests of freedom and independence.
I had a conversation today with Turkish President Erdoğan. The results of the NATO summit were discussed. Of course, we also talked about the efforts that could bring peace closer to Ukraine and end this senseless Russian invasion of a foreign land.
There is important news from our government officials.
First. They have already started paying pensions for April. In particular, the Pension Fund has transferred to Oschadbank the entire amount of pensions for the Chernihiv and Luhansk regions. Tomorrow people will have money on their bank cards and Ukrposhta will deliver cash.
Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, the payment of April pensions will continue in other regions of Eastern and Central Ukraine. The other day a wave of payments will cover the entire state.
This is one of our priorities: the Ukrainian state has fulfilled and will fulfill all obligations to our citizens, to our pensioners.
Second. Under the eSupport program, more than 20 billion hryvnias have already been paid to people who have lost their jobs or the opportunity to have business. The amount of payment is 6,500 hryvnias.
Third. Officials are preparing a new support program for our IDPs from the war zones.
Regional administrations have been given a clear task to quickly allocate land for the construction of temporary housing for displaced persons. I want to emphasize once again - this is temporary housing. Once we establish peace, we will begin the immediate, large-scale reconstruction of our state. But now people need a temporary home. Their home.
And it is better to have a home in Ukraine than somewhere abroad. We pay aid, we give a job. Native people. Native country. All the details of this support program will be presented by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal.
And a few more words about the path of truth. About those who bring you and us true information about everything that is happening in our country.
I would like to express special gratitude to our journalists today. To all those who ensure the work of the national telethon "United News", to all our media people. Correspondents, presenters, editors, media managers, cameramen, directors, video editors, make-up artists, producers - everyone without whom it is impossible to imagine television. Everyone who united and together with other defenders of our people provides Ukrainians with truthful information and, last but not least, confidence 24/7.
I am grateful to all of you! And, I'm sure, I can say this on behalf of all Ukrainians.
Glory to you all!
Glory to all our heroes!
Glory to Ukraine!
Digging through the archive, here's a chimney of an eastern power-heating generating plant (producer) and some apartment buildings (consumers). January 2020., pre-pandemic era.
Taken with Panasonic GX7 digital mirrorless camera and adapted Sigma 135–400mm F4.5–5.6 APO DG ultra-telephoto lens, via off-brand FourThirds-microFourThirds adapter.
Producer：mitsubachi＠BabyBee
Groove
「KANIHORU×mitsubachi＠BabyBee」
Isul：MAO
The commodity doll is put on the market in August.
NetShop
item.rakuten.co.jp/amiami/fig-dol-3049/?scid=af_ich_twitt...
Queen Sabine Mondestin is a actress, model, singer, dancer, writter, producer, and director.
To know more about this sublime multi talented artist visit her website at www.sabinemondestin.com
AT COSMO maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/No%20Comment/138/24/25
Johnny (jnakagawa)
Producer of Paragon Dance Animations
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Product Description
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Industry A-list dancer/choreographer/social media influencer Alexander Chung returns to share two of his popular YouTube choreographies:
7.3 million views
NO GUIDANCE - Chris Brown Ft. Drake
www.youtube.com/watch?v=n40VPrRvDr4
2.5 million views
PRIVACY - Chris Brown
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX43OfXzJb4&t=12s
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About Alexander Chung
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◘ Choreographer for Backstreet Boys "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" MV, Choreographer for DJ Snake "Lauv-A Different Way" MV, Becky G. "Break A Sweat" MV, Jesse McCartney "Punch Drunk" MV., Disney's "Raven's Home" Season 3.
◘ Choreographer for corporate brands: Bose, Honda, Danceon, Dark Horse Wine, Panda Express
◘ Dancer for Sean Kingston (Live in Edmonton)
◘ Dance Captain - Unity in Diversity (France, Germany, Switzerland Tour)
◘ Dancer for B2K (Live in Vancounver), America's Best Dance Crew Tour (Live in Edmonton)
◘ Choreographer/Director/Dancer – NXG Dance Company – World of Dance Las Vegas (2018) 1st place, World of Dance Los Angeles 2015 (1st place), Canada Hip Hop Championships 2014 (1st place), World Hip Hop Championships (semifinalist), World of Dance Hawaii 2013 (1st place)
◘ Judge/Instructor for "Soulplex" Dance Competition and Convention (Germany)
◘ Taught master classes in England, Israel, Mexico, Germany, China, Switzerland, France, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, the Netherlands, and across North America.
◘ Featured Choreographer at the Millenium Dance Complex in North Hollywood.
◘ 380000+ YouTube subscribers with 72 million+ views.
Instagram: www.instagram.com/alexander.chung/?hl=en
Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCokTNPfCQMbe5lrQ-z_Vidw
Facebook: www.facebook.com/AlexanderNXG/
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Product Features
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◘ Unisex friendly
◘ Bento hands/fingers (detailed finger articulation)
◘ Motion-captured on an 20-camera Optitrack Prime 41 optical mocap system (top of the line cameras), for the most realistic, smoothest and natural flowing animations.
◘ Authentically danced/choreographed and mocap recorded by Alexander Chung
*Licensed by Alexander Chung*
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Paragon Dance Animations Social Media
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American postcard by Fotofolio, New York, N.Y., no. P27. Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Caption: Orson Welles, 1979.
American actor, director, writer and producer Orson Welles (1915-1985) worked in theatre, radio and film, both in the US and in Europe. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaptation of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), ranked as one of the all-time greatest films. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958) and Le Procès/The Trial (1962).
George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1915. He was the second son of Beatrice (née Ives) and Richard Hodgdon Head Welles. In 1919, his parents separated and moved to Chicago. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. His brother ‘Dickie’ was institutionalized at an early age because he had learning difficulties. Welles's mother, a beautiful concert pianist, had to support her son and herself. In 1924, Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital, just after Welles's ninth birthday. He was taken in by Dudley Crafts Watson. At the age of ten Orson ran away from home with Watson's third daughter, Marjorie. They were found a week later, singing and dancing for money on a street corner in Milwaukee. Welles' father died when Orson was 15. Maurice Bernstein, a physician from Chicago, became his guardian. His school teacher Roger Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to perform and stage theatrical experiments and productions. Welles was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, but he chose instead to travel to Europe. In Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of Gate, Hilton Edwards, was impressed by his brashness and an impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate in 1931, appearing in Jew Suss as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, word of which reached the United States. On returning to the United States he wrote the immensely successful Everybody's Shakespeare. In 1933, he toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company, including two roles in Romeo and Juliet. In 1934, he shot his first film, an eight-minute short titled The Hearts of Age, and he married Chicago actress Virginia Nicholson. By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theatre as a radio actor, working with many actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre.
In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project (part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. Orson Welles was hired by John Houseman and assigned to direct a play for the Federal Theatre Project's Negro Theatre Unit. His production of Macbeth was set in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with voodoo witch doctors for the three Weird Sisters. The play was received rapturously and later toured the nation. At 20, Welles was hailed as a prodigy. A few minutes of Welles’ ‘Voodoo Macbeth’ was recorded on film in the documentary We Work Again (1937). Welles rehearsed Marc Blitzstein's political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock, but because of severe federal cutbacks in the Works Progress projects, the show's premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was cancelled. In a last-minute move, Welles announced to waiting ticket-holders that the show was being transferred to the Venice, twenty blocks away. Some cast, crew and audience members walked the distance on foot. Lacking the participation of the union members, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage with some cast members performing from the audience. This impromptu performance was well received and played at the Venice for two more weeks. Welles and Houseman then formed the Mercury Theatre, of which Welles became executive producer and whose repertory company eventually included the actors Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Everett Sloane, and Erskine Sanford. The first Mercury Theatre production was William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, set in a contemporary frame of fascist Italy. The production was widely acclaimed. In the second year of the Mercury Theater, Welles shifted his interests to radio. He adapted, directed and played Hamlet for CBS and Les Misérables for Mutual with great success. CBS gave the Mercury Theatre a weekly hour-long show to broadcast radio plays based on classic literary works. In 1938, their adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners from the rival more popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy program was later reported in the media to have created widespread confusion. Wikipedia: “Panic was reportedly spread among listeners who believed the news reports of a Martian invasion. The myth of the result created by the combination was reported as fact around the world and disparagingly mentioned by Adolf Hitler in a public speech some months later. The 1975 docudrama The Night That Panicked America was based on events centering on the production of, and events that resulted from the program.”
Orson Welles's growing fame drew Hollywood offers, lures that the independent-minded Welles resisted at first. RKO Radio Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered him complete artistic control and signed Welles in a two-picture deal, although Welles had a budget limit for his projects. In Hollywood, Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project. RKO rejected Welles's first two movie proposals, but agreed on the third offer, Citizen Kane (1941), for which Welles co-wrote, produced, directed and performed the lead role. Co-scriptwriter Joseph Mankiewicz based the original outline on an exposé of the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate, having once been great friends with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Kane's megalomania was modelled loosely on Robert McCormick, Howard Hughes and Joseph Pulitzer as Welles wanted to create a broad, complex character, intending to show him in the same scenes from several points of view. On Welles's instruction, John Houseman wrote the opening narration as a pastiche of The March of Time newsreels. Autobiographical allusions to Welles were worked in, most noticeably in the treatment of Kane's childhood and particularly, regarding his guardianship. Once the script was complete, Welles attracted cinematographer Gregg Toland, and actors from his Mercury Theatre. After gossip columnist Hedda Hopper saw a preview screening of Citizen Kane, the attempted suppression of Citizen Kane started. Hearst's media outlets boycotted the film. They exerted enormous pressure on Hollywood, but RKO gave the film a limited release. The film was well-received critically, and garnered nine Academy Award nominations. Welles was nominated as a producer, director, writer and actor, but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared with Mankiewicz. Today, the film is considered by most film critics and historians to be one of the classics in film history.
Orson Welles's second film for RKO was The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. At RKO's request, Welles worked also on an adaptation of Eric Ambler's spy thriller, Journey into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943), co-written with Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was the producer. Changes throughout RKO caused re-evaluations of both projects. RKO took control of The Magnificent Ambersons, and ordered to edit the film into a ‘commercial’ format. They removed fifty minutes of Welles's footage, re-shot sequences, rearranged the scene order, and added a happy ending. It resulted in an expensive flop for RKO, although The Magnificent Ambersons received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead. Welles found no studios interested in him as a director after the disaster of The Magnificent Ambersons and worked on radio. In 1943, he married Rita Hayworth. They had one child, Rebecca Welles, and divorced five years later in 1948. In between, Welles found work as an actor in other films. He starred in the film adaptation of Jane Eyre (Robert Stevenson, 1944), trading credit as associate producer for top billing over Joan Fontaine. He had a cameo in the wartime salute Follow the Boys (A. Edward Sutherland, 1944), in which he performed his magic act ‘sawing’ Marlene Dietrich in half. In 1946, Sam Spiegel produced The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946), starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Welles. The film follows the hunt for a Nazi war criminal living under an alias in the United States. Although disputes occurred during editing between Spiegel and Welles, the film was a box office success and it helped his standing with the studios. He then filmed The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) for Columbia Pictures, in which his then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-starred. Cohn disliked Welles's rough-cut, and ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. Approximately one hour of Welles's first cut was removed, including much of a climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release, though the closing shootout in a hall of mirrors has since become a touchstone of film noir. Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948). Republic initially trumpeted the film as an important work but decided it did not care for the Scottish accents and held up general release for almost a year after early negative press reaction. In the late 1970s, a fully restored version of Macbeth was released that followed Welles's original vision.
Orson Welles left Hollywood for Europe. In Italy he starred as Cagliostro in Black Magic (Gregory Ratoff, 1948) with Akim Tamiroff. His co-star impressed Welles so much that Tamiroff would appear in four of Welles's later productions. Welles starred as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), alongside Joseph Cotten. The film was an international smash hit. Welles also appeared as Cesare Borgia in the Italian film Prince of Foxes (Henry King, 1949), and as the Mongol warrior Bayan in The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1950), both with Tyrone Power. Welles was channelling his money from acting jobs into a self-financed film version of Shakespeare's play Othello. From 1949 to 1951, Welles filmed Othello (1952) on location in Europe and Morocco. Suzanne Cloutier co-starred as Desdemona. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d'Or, but the film did not receive a general release in the United States until 1955. Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles-Smith, restored Othello in 1992 for a wide re-release. Welles played the murdered victim in Trent's Last Case (Herbert Wilcox, 1952) and the title role in the 'Lord Mountdrago' segment of Three Cases of Murder (George More O'Ferrall, 1954). Herbert Wilcox cast Welles as the antagonist in Trouble in the Glen (1954) opposite Margaret Lockwood, and John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in Moby-Dick (1956), starring Gregory Peck. Welles's next turn as director was Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1955), filmed in France, Germany, Spain and Italy on a very limited budget. Welles played a billionaire who hires a man (Robert Arden) to delve into the secrets of his past. The film co-starred Welles's third wife, Paola Mori. Frustrated by his slow progress in the editing room, producer Louis Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him as Confidential Report. In 1956, Welles returned to Hollywood and guest-starred on radio and television shows. His next film role was in Man in the Shadow (Jack Arnold, 1957) for Universal Pictures, starring Jeff Chandler. Around this time period, Welles began to suffer from weight problems that would eventually cause a deterioration in his health. Welles stayed on at Universal to co-star with Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958). Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal at the insistence of Heston. He reunited with many actors and technicians with whom he had worked in the 1940s including Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich and Akim Tamiroff. Filming proceeded smoothly, but after the end of production, the studio re-edited the film, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot. In 1978, a longer preview version of the film was discovered and released. Next, Welles filmed his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote in Mexico, starring Mischa Auer as Quixote and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza. While filming would continue in fits and starts for several years, Welles would never complete the project. Welles continued acting, notably in The Long, Hot Summer (Marin Ritt, 1958) and Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959), but soon he returned to Europe.
In Italy, Orson Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in David e Golia/David and Goliath (Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier, 1959). In Hong Kong he co-starred with Curt Jürgens in Ferry to Hong Kong (Lewis Gilbert, 1959). In Paris he co-starred in Crack in the Mirror (Richard Fleischer, 1960). In Yugoslavia he starred in I tartari/The Tartars (Richard Thorpe, 1962) and Bitka na Neretvi/Battle of Neretva (Veljko Bulajić, 1969). In 1962, Welles directed Le Procès/The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962), based on the novel by Franz Kafka and starring Anthony Perkins as Josef K, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. The film failed at the box-office, but during the filming, he met Oja Kodar, who became his muse, star and mistress for the rest of his life. Welles played a film director in La Ricotta (1963)—Pier Paolo Pasolini's segment of the anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. He continued taking what work he could find acting, narrating or hosting other people's work, and began filming Campanadas a medianoche/Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1966). Filmed in Spain, it was a condensation of five Shakespeare plays, telling the story of Falstaff (Welles) and his relationship with Prince Hal (Keith Baxter). Then followed Histoire immortelle/The Immortal Story (Orson Welles, 1968) with Jeanne Moreau, which had a successful run in French theatres. He appeared as Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966) for which he won considerable acclaim. Welles began directing The Deep, based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams and filmed off the shore of Yugoslavia. The cast included Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Oja Kodar. Personally financed by Welles and Kodar, they could not obtain the funds to complete the project, and it was abandoned a few years later after the death of Harvey. The surviving footage was eventually edited and released by the Filmmuseum München. In 1969, Welles played a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles moved back to America in 1970.
In Hollywood, Orson Welles continued to self-finance his own film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on television talk shows. His primary focus during his final years was The Other Side of the Wind, an unfinished project that was filmed intermittently between 1970 and 1976. Written by Welles, it is the story of an aging film director (John Huston) looking for funds to complete his final film. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed, and disputes still prevent its release. Welles portrayed Louis XVIII of France in Waterloo (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1970), and narrated the historical comedy Start the Revolution Without Me (Bud Yorkin, 1970). He appeared in La décade prodigieuse/Ten Days' Wonder (Claude Chabrol, 1971), co-starring with Anthony Perkins. Wikipedia: “That same year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures". Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles, even while they refused to give Welles any work.” Welles played Long John Silver in Treasure Island (John Hough, 1972), an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. He completed F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1973) , a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr de Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving, and his documentary Filming Othello (Orson Welles, 1979). During the 1980s, Welles worked on such film projects as The Dreamers, based on two stories by Isak Dinesen. His last film appearance was in Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love (1987), released after his death. Welles had three daughters: Chris Welles Feder (1938), with Virginia Nicholson; Rebecca Welles Manning (1944–2004), with Rita Hayworth; and Beatrice Welles (1955), with Paola Mori. His only known son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (1940), is from Welles's affair with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet. On 10 October 1985, Orson Welles appeared on his final interview on The Merv Griffin Show. He died several hours later of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. His estranged wife Paola Mori refused to allow most of Welles's friends to attend the funeral, limiting the mourners to just nine: herself, Welles's three daughters, Roger Hill, and three of Welles's friends, as well as the doctor who had signed Welles's death certificate. Welles's companion for the last 20 years, Oja Kodar, was not invited, nor were either of his ex-wives. Welles's ashes were taken to Ronda, Spain, where they were buried in an old well covered by flowers, within the rural property of a long-time friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.
Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
This is me in my porn producing days back in the 70s. Yeah, that's right, that's a girl in assless chaps behind me. My life used to be AWESOME.
British postcard by Picturegoer, London, no. W. 410. Photo: Columbia. Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947).
American actor, director, writer and producer Orson Welles (1915-1985) worked in theatre, radio and film, both in the US and in Europe. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaptation of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), ranked as one of the all-time greatest films. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958) and Le Procès/The Trial (1962).
George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1915. He was the second son of Beatrice (née Ives) and Richard Hodgdon Head Welles. In 1919, his parents separated and moved to Chicago. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. His brother ‘Dickie’ was institutionalized at an early age because he had learning difficulties. Welles's mother, a beautiful concert pianist, had to support her son and herself. In 1924, Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital, just after Welles's ninth birthday. He was taken in by Dudley Crafts Watson. At the age of ten, Orson ran away from home with Watson's third daughter, Marjorie. They were found a week later, singing and dancing for money on a street corner in Milwaukee. Welles' father died when Orson was 15. Maurice Bernstein, a physician from Chicago, became his guardian. His school teacher Roger Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to perform and stage theatrical experiments and productions. Welles was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, but he chose instead to travel to Europe. In Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of Gate, Hilton Edwards, was impressed by his brashness and an impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate in 1931, appearing in Jew Suss as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, word of which reached the United States. On returning to the United States he wrote the immensely successful Everybody's Shakespeare. In 1933, he toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company, including two roles in Romeo and Juliet. In 1934, he shot his first film, an eight-minute short titled The Hearts of Age, and he married Chicago actress Virginia Nicholson. By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theatre as a radio actor, working with many actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre.
In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project (part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. Orson Welles was hired by John Houseman and assigned to direct a play for the Federal Theatre Project's Negro Theatre Unit. His production of Macbeth was set in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with voodoo witch doctors for the three Weird Sisters. The play was received rapturously and later toured the nation. At 20, Welles was hailed as a prodigy. A few minutes of Welles’ ‘Voodoo Macbeth’ was recorded on film in the documentary We Work Again (1937). Welles rehearsed Marc Blitzstein's political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock, but because of severe federal cutbacks in the Works Progress projects, the show's premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was cancelled. In a last-minute move, Welles announced to waiting ticket-holders that the show was being transferred to the Venice, twenty blocks away. Some cast, crew and audience members walked the distance on foot. Lacking the participation of the union members, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage with some cast members performing from the audience. This impromptu performance was well received and played at the Venice for two more weeks. Welles and Houseman then formed the Mercury Theatre, of which Welles became executive producer and whose repertory company eventually included the actors Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Everett Sloane, and Erskine Sanford. The first Mercury Theatre production was William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, set in a contemporary frame of fascist Italy. The production was widely acclaimed. In the second year of the Mercury Theater, Welles shifted his interests to radio. He adapted, directed and played Hamlet for CBS and Les Misérables for Mutual with great success. CBS gave the Mercury Theatre a weekly hour-long show to broadcast radio plays based on classic literary works. In 1938, their adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners from the rival more popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy program was later reported in the media to have created widespread confusion. Wikipedia: “Panic was reportedly spread among listeners who believed the news reports of a Martian invasion. The myth of the result created by the combination was reported as fact around the world and disparagingly mentioned by Adolf Hitler in a public speech some months later. The 1975 docudrama The Night That Panicked America was based on events centering on the production of, and events that resulted from the program.”
Orson Welles's growing fame drew Hollywood offers, lures that the independent-minded Welles resisted at first. RKO Radio Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered him complete artistic control and signed Welles in a two-picture deal, although Welles had a budget limit for his projects. In Hollywood, Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project. RKO rejected Welles's first two movie proposals but agreed on the third offer, Citizen Kane (1941), for which Welles co-wrote, produced, directed and performed the lead role. Co-scriptwriter Joseph Mankiewicz based the original outline on an exposé of the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate, having once been great friends with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Kane's megalomania was modelled loosely on Robert McCormick, Howard Hughes and Joseph Pulitzer as Welles wanted to create a broad, complex character, intending to show him in the same scenes from several points of view. On Welles's instruction, John Houseman wrote the opening narration as a pastiche of The March of Time newsreels. Autobiographical allusions to Welles were worked in, most noticeably in the treatment of Kane's childhood and particularly, regarding his guardianship. Once the script was complete, Welles attracted cinematographer Gregg Toland, and actors from his Mercury Theatre. After gossip columnist Hedda Hopper saw a preview screening of Citizen Kane, the attempted suppression of Citizen Kane started. Hearst's media outlets boycotted the film. They exerted enormous pressure on Hollywood, but RKO gave the film a limited release. The film was well-received critically and garnered nine Academy Award nominations. Welles was nominated as a producer, director, writer and actor, but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared with Mankiewicz. Today, the film is considered by most film critics and historians to be one of the classics in film history.
Orson Welles's second film for RKO was The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. At RKO's request, Welles worked also on an adaptation of Eric Ambler's spy thriller, Journey into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943), co-written with Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was the producer. Changes throughout RKO caused re-evaluations of both projects. RKO took control of The Magnificent Ambersons and ordered to edit the film into a ‘commercial’ format. They removed fifty minutes of Welles's footage, re-shot sequences, rearranged the scene order, and added a happy ending. It resulted in an expensive flop for RKO, although The Magnificent Ambersons received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead. Welles found no studios interested in him as a director after the disaster of The Magnificent Ambersons and worked on radio. In 1943, he married Rita Hayworth. They had one child, Rebecca Welles, and divorced five years later in 1948. In between, Welles found work as an actor in other films. He starred in the film adaptation of Jane Eyre (Robert Stevenson, 1944), trading credit as associate producer for top billing over Joan Fontaine. He had a cameo in the wartime salute Follow the Boys (A. Edward Sutherland, 1944), in which he performed his magic act ‘sawing’ Marlene Dietrich in half. In 1946, Sam Spiegel produced The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946), starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Welles. The film follows the hunt for a Nazi war criminal living under an alias in the United States. Although disputes occurred during editing between Spiegel and Welles, the film was a box office success and it helped his standing with the studios. He then filmed The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) for Columbia Pictures, in which his then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-starred. Cohn disliked Welles's rough-cut and ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. Approximately one hour of Welles's first cut was removed, including much of a climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release, though the closing shootout in a hall of mirrors has since become a touchstone of film noir. Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948). Republic initially trumpeted the film as an important work but decided it did not care for the Scottish accents and held up general release for almost a year after early negative press reaction. In the late 1970s, a fully restored version of Macbeth was released that followed Welles's original vision.
Orson Welles left Hollywood for Europe. In Italy, he starred as Cagliostro in Black Magic (Gregory Ratoff, 1948) with Akim Tamiroff. His co-star impressed Welles so much that Tamiroff would appear in four of Welles's later productions. Welles starred as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), alongside Joseph Cotten. The film was an international smash hit. Welles also appeared as Cesare Borgia in the Italian film Prince of Foxes (Henry King, 1949), and as the Mongol warrior Bayan in The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1950), both with Tyrone Power. Welles was channelling his money from acting jobs into a self-financed film version of Shakespeare's play Othello. From 1949 to 1951, Welles filmed Othello (1952) on location in Europe and Morocco. Suzanne Cloutier co-starred as Desdemona. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d'Or, but the film did not receive a general release in the United States until 1955. Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles-Smith, restored Othello in 1992 for a wide re-release. Welles played the murdered victim in Trent's Last Case (Herbert Wilcox, 1952) and the title role in the 'Lord Mountdrago' segment of Three Cases of Murder (George More O'Ferrall, 1954). Herbert Wilcox cast Welles as the antagonist in Trouble in the Glen (1954) opposite Margaret Lockwood, and John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in Moby-Dick (1956), starring Gregory Peck. Welles's next turn as director was Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1955), filmed in France, Germany, Spain and Italy on a very limited budget. Welles played a billionaire who hires a man (Robert Arden) to delve into the secrets of his past. The film co-starred Welles's third wife, Paola Mori. Frustrated by his slow progress in the editing room, producer Louis Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him as Confidential Report. In 1956, Welles returned to Hollywood and guest-starred on radio and television shows. His next film role was in Man in the Shadow (Jack Arnold, 1957) for Universal Pictures, starring Jeff Chandler. Around this time period, Welles began to suffer from weight problems that would eventually cause a deterioration in his health. Welles stayed on at Universal to co-star with Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958). Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal at the insistence of Heston. He reunited with many actors and technicians with whom he had worked in the 1940s including Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich and Akim Tamiroff. Filming proceeded smoothly, but after the end of production, the studio re-edited the film, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot. In 1978, a longer preview version of the film was discovered and released. Next, Welles filmed his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote in Mexico, starring Mischa Auer as Quixote and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza. While filming would continue in fits and starts for several years, Welles would never complete the project. Welles continued acting, notably in The Long, Hot Summer (Marin Ritt, 1958) and Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959), but soon he returned to Europe.
In Italy, Orson Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in David e Golia/David and Goliath (Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier, 1959). In Hong Kong, he co-starred with Curt Jürgens in Ferry to Hong Kong (Lewis Gilbert, 1959). In Paris, he co-starred in Crack in the Mirror (Richard Fleischer, 1960). In Yugoslavia, he starred in I tartari/The Tartars (Richard Thorpe, 1962) and Bitka na Neretvi/Battle of Neretva (Veljko Bulajić, 1969). In 1962, Welles directed Le Procès/The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962), based on the novel by Franz Kafka and starring Anthony Perkins as Josef K, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. The film failed at the box office, but during the filming, he met Oja Kodar, who became his muse, star and mistress for the rest of his life. Welles played a film director in La Ricotta (1963)—Pier Paolo Pasolini's segment of the anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. He continued taking what work he could find acting, narrating or hosting other people's work, and began filming Campanadas a medianoche/Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1966). Filmed in Spain, it was a condensation of five Shakespeare plays, telling the story of Falstaff (Welles) and his relationship with Prince Hal (Keith Baxter). Then followed Histoire immortelle/The Immortal Story (Orson Welles, 1968) with Jeanne Moreau, which had a successful run in French theatres. He appeared as Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966) for which he won considerable acclaim. Welles began directing The Deep, based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams and filmed off the shore of Yugoslavia. The cast included Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Oja Kodar. Personally financed by Welles and Kodar, they could not obtain the funds to complete the project, and it was abandoned a few years later after the death of Harvey. The surviving footage was eventually edited and released by the Filmmuseum München. In 1969, Welles played a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles moved back to America in 1970.
In Hollywood, Orson Welles continued to self-finance his own film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on television talk shows. His primary focus during his final years was The Other Side of the Wind, an unfinished project that was filmed intermittently between 1970 and 1976. Written by Welles, it is the story of an ageing film director (John Huston) looking for funds to complete his final film. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed, and disputes still prevent its release. Welles portrayed Louis XVIII of France in Waterloo (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1970), and narrated the historical comedy Start the Revolution Without Me (Bud Yorkin, 1970). He appeared in La décade prodigieuse/Ten Days' Wonder (Claude Chabrol, 1971), co-starring with Anthony Perkins. Wikipedia: “That same year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures". Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles, even while they refused to give Welles any work.” Welles played Long John Silver in Treasure Island (John Hough, 1972), an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. He completed F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1973), a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr de Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving, and his documentary Filming Othello (Orson Welles, 1979). During the 1980s, Welles worked on such film projects as The Dreamers, based on two stories by Isak Dinesen. His last film appearance was in Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love (1987), released after his death. Welles had three daughters: Chris Welles Feder (1938), with Virginia Nicholson; Rebecca Welles Manning (1944–2004), with Rita Hayworth; and Beatrice Welles (1955), with Paola Mori. His only known son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (1940), is from Welles's affair with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet. On 10 October 1985, Orson Welles appeared in his final interview on The Merv Griffin Show. He died several hours later of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. His estranged wife Paola Mori refused to allow most of Welles's friends to attend the funeral, limiting the mourners to just nine: herself, Welles's three daughters, Roger Hill, and three of Welles's friends, as well as the doctor who had signed Welles's death certificate. Welles's companion for the last 20 years, Oja Kodar, was not invited, nor were either of his ex-wives. Welles's ashes were taken to Ronda, Spain, where they were buried in an old well covered by flowers, within the rural property of a long-time friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.
Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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British postcard by Music & Movie Stars Ltd. Publishers, no. MMS 036. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
American actress, director, and producer Jodie Foster (1962) has received two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and the Cecil B DeMille Award. A child prodigy, Foster began her professional career at the age of 3. Foster's breakthrough came at 14 with Martin Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976). She played a child prostitute, for which she received an Oscar nomination. As an adult she won new acclaim with The Accused (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Nell (1994). She later starred in four thrillers, Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006) and The Brave One (2007), which were commercially successful and well-received by critics. She has focused on directing in the 2010s.
Jodie Foster was born Alicia Christian Foster in 1962 in Los Angeles. She is the daughter of Evelyn Ella "Brandy" (Almond), a producer, and Lucius Fisher Foster III, an Air Force lieutenant colonel and real estate broker. She is the younger sister of Buddy Foster, Cindy Foster Jones and Connie Foster, who all also acted. Brandy had filed for divorce in 1959 after having three children with Lucius, but the exes had a brief re-encounter in 1962 which resulted in Alicia's birth. Her older siblings nicknamed her Jodie, a name she has used in her profession. She started her career in a Coppertone Suntan Lotion commercial when she was 3 years old and made commercials for four years. She made her debut as an actress in the TV series Mayberry R.F.D. (1968), on which her brother, Buddy Foster, was a regular. She stayed very busy as a child actress, working on television programs such as The Doris Day Show (1968), Adam-12 (1968), The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969), The Partridge Family (1970), Bonanza (1972), and Gunsmoke (1969-1972). In films, her roles included playing Raquel Welch's daughter in Kansas City Bomber (Jerold Freedman, 1972) and a tomboy in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, 1974) starring Ellen Burstyn. She starred as Addie Pray on the short-lived television series Paper Moon (1974), which was originally a film by Peter Bogdanovich starring Tatum O'Neal. Jodie first drew attention from critics with her appearance in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) alongside Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, where she played a prostitute at the tender age of 12. Her sister, Connie Foster, was her stand-in during the more explicit scenes. She received her first Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role. She was 12 turning 13 during production of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (Nicolas Gessner, 1976), for which she won the Saturn Award for Best Actress. Foster went on to have a very successful career in her early teens with leading roles in Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker, 1976) as the mini-vamp Tallulah, and the Disney films Freaky Friday (Gary Nelson, 1976) with Barbara Harris and Candleshoe (Norman Tokar, 1977) opposite David Niven and Helen Hayes. Fluent in French by age 14, she spoke her own lines in the French film Moi, fleur bleue (Eric Le Hung, 1977) with Jean Yanne and Sydne Rome. She also co-starred in the Italian comedy Casotto (Sergio Citti, 1977) with Catherine Deneuve. The last film she made during this era was the coming-of-age drama Foxes (Adrian Lyne, 1980), before enrolling at Yale University. During her freshman year at Yale, she was attached to a worldwide scandal when a crazed and obsessed fan named John Hinckley stalked her and shot President Ronald Reagan to impress her.
In 1985, Jodie Foster graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a degree in literature. She resumed her acting career and appeared in the comedy drama The Hotel New Hampshire (Tony Richardson, 1984) opposite Rob Lowe and Nastassia Kinski, and based on the novel by John Irving. In France, she appeared in the historical drama Le sang des autres/The Blood of Others (Claude Chabrol, 1984) based on the novel by Simone de Beauvoir. Foster sought a breakthrough role that would return her to stardom. After appearing in a few obscure films with limited release, she landed an audition for The Accused (Jonathan Kaplan, 1988). She was cast in the part of Sarah Tobias, a waitress who is gang-raped in a bar during a night of partying and teams up with a lawyer played by Kelly McGillis to prosecute the attackers. This performance earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress, but despite the Oscar win, Jodie still hadn't re-established herself as a bankable star. Her next film, Catchfire (Dennis Hopper, 1990), went straight to video, and she had to campaign hard to get her next good role. In 1991, she starred as Clarice Starling, an FBI trainee assisting in a hunt for a serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991) with Anthony Hopkins. The film was a blockbuster hit, winning Jodie her second Academy Award for Best Actress and establishing her as an international film star. With the wealth and fame to do anything she wanted, Jodie started directing. She made her directorial debut with Little Man Tate (Jodie Foster, 1991), which was followed by Home for the Holidays (Jodie Foster, 1995) with Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft and Robert Downey Jr. These films were critically acclaimed but did not do well at the box office, and she proved to be a far more successful actress than she was a director. On the set of Sommersby (Jon Amiel, 1993) with Richard Gere, she met Cydney Bernard and was in a serious relationship with her until they broke up in 2008. 1994 was a huge triumph for her acting career. She first played a sexy con artist in the successful Western comedy Maverick (Richard Donner, 1994) with Mel Gibson and James Garner. Then, she played title role in Nell (Michael Apted, 1994), co-starring Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson. For her compelling performance as a wild, backwoods hermit who speaks an invented language and must return to civilization, Jodie was nominated for another Academy Award and won a Screen Actors Guild Award as Best Actress. Although she was working far less frequently as an adult than she did as a child, the films she turned out were commercially successful and critically acclaimed. Her next big screen role was in the science fiction drama Contact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997) opposite Matthew McConaughey. She played a scientist who receives signals from space aliens. The film was a huge hit and brought her a Golden Globe nomination. She had to pull out of Double Jeopardy (Bruce Beresford, 1999) because she became pregnant, and was replaced by Ashley Judd. In 1999, her son Charles Foster, with partner Cydney Bernard, was born. She returned to work four months later in order to begin filming Anna and the King (Andy Tennant, 1999), a non-musical remake of The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956). The film was only modestly received in the U.S. but was very successful overseas.
Jodie Foster returned to work four months after giving birth to her second son Kit Foster, but she shut down her production company Egg Pictures in late 2001 to spend more time with her children. She headlined the thriller Panic Room (David Fincher, 2002), which co-starred Kristen Stewart. The film was a smash box-office hit and gave Jodie a $30 million opening weekend, the biggest of her career yet. She then appeared in two low-profile projects: the independent film The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (Peter Care, 2002) and the French film Un long dimanche de fiançailles (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004) with Audrey Tautou and Gaspard Ulliel. She returned to making Hollywood mainstream films, first with Flightplan (Robert Schwentke, 2005), in which she played a woman whose daughter disappears on an airplane that she designed. Once again Jodie proved herself to be a box-office draw, and the film was a worldwide hit. The following year, she starred in another hit, the bank heist thriller Inside Man (Spike Lee, 2006) with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. Jodie was on a roll. Her next film was the revenge thriller The Brave One (Neil Jordan, 2007), which once again opened at #1 at the box office and earned her another Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. Following this succession of thrillers that all had her playing tough women, Jodie returned to the comedy genre in Nim's Island (Jennifer Flackett, Mark Levin, 2008) with Gerard Butler and Abigail Breslin. She reunited with Mel Gibson in the comedy The Beaver (Jodie Foster, 2011). Strong roles followed in Carnage (Roman Polanski, 2011) with Kate Winslet, and the SCi-Fi film Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013) with Matt Damon. In 2013, she received the Cecil B. DeMille award at the Golden Globe Awards. In April 2016, Jodie Foster married Alexandra Hedison. In July that year, John Hinckley was released after almost 35 years of commission to St. Elizabeth's Mental Institution. Lately, she focused on directing and made the film Money Monster (2016), as well as episodes for the TV series Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, and Black Mirror. Jodie Foster's most recent film is Hotel Artemis (Drew Pearce, 2018) in which she runs a high-security, members-only hospital for high-rolling criminals in Los Angeles.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
Please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard, Réf. 525. Photo: Herb Ritts.
American actor and producer Tom Cruise (1962) became, with his charismatic smile, the most successful member of Hollywood's Brat Pack, the golden boys and girls of the 1980s. Top Gun (1985) made him an action star, but with his roles in The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) he proved himself to be an all-round star and excellent actor. During the 1990s, he continued to combine action blockbusters like Mission Impossibe (1996) with highly acclaimed dramas like A Few Good Men (1992), Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Magnolia (1999). He received more praise for his roles in Minority Report (2000) and Collateral (2002) and was, for years, one of the highest paid actors in the world. Although he continued to score major box office hits with the Mission Impossible franchise, his later work was overshadowed by his outspoken attitude about Scientology, which alienated him from many of his viewers.
Tom Cruise was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV in 1962 in Syracuse, NY. He is the only son of Mary Lee (Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. He has three sisters: Marian, Lee Anne De Vette and Cass. In 1974, when Cruise was 12, his parents divorced. Young Tom spent his boyhood always on the move, and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the U.S. and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his mother and her new husband. Deeply religious, he enrolled in a Franciscan seminary with the ambition to join the priesthood. He dropped out after one year. At high-school, he was a wrestler until he was sidelined by a knee injury. Soon taking up acting, he found that the activity served a dual purpose: performing satiated his need for attention, while the memorisation aspect of acting helped him come to grips with his dyslexia. Moving to New York in 1980, he studied drama at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse, in conjunction with the Actors Studio, New School University, New York. He signed with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and began acting in films. His film debut was a small part in Endless Love (Franco Zeffirelli, 1981), starring Brooke Shields. It was followed by a major supporting role as a crazed military academy student in Taps (Harold Becker, 1981), starring George C. Scott and Timothy Hutton. In 1983, Cruise was part of the ensemble cast of The Outsiders (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983). The Hollywood press corps began touting Cruise as one of the 'Brat Pack', a group of twenty-something actors who seemed on the verge of taking over the movie industry in the early 1980s. Cruise's first big hit was the coming-of-age comedy Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983), in which he entered film-trivia infamy with the scene wherein he celebrates his parents' absence by dancing around the living room in his underwear. From the outset, he exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences. Cruise played the male lead in the dark fantasy Legend (Ridley Scott, 1985) and the action film Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986) with Kelly McGillis and Val Kilmer. Top Gun (1986) established Cruise as an action star. However, he refused to be pigeonholed, and followed it up with a solid characterszation of a fledgling pool shark in The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese, 1986), for which co-star Paul Newman earned an Academy Award. In 1988, he played the brother of an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in the drama Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988). However, Cruise had not yet totally convinced critics he was more than a pretty face while he also starred in Cocktail (Roger Donaldson, 1988), which earned him a nomination for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor. His chance came when he played paraplegic Vietnam vet Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone, 1989). For his role, he won a Golden Globe Award and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 1990 Tom Cruise renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church Of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. He was introduced to Scientology by his ex-wife Mimi Rogers. Though Cruise's bankability faltered a bit with the expensive disappointment Far and Away (Ron Howard, 1990) with his-then wife Nicole Kidman, A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992) brought him back into the game. By 1994, the star was undercutting his own leading man image with the role of the slick, dastardly vampire Lestat in the long-delayed film adaptation of the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994), opposite Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas. Although the author was vehemently opposed to Cruise's casting, Rice famously reversed her decision upon seeing the actor's performance, and publicly praised Cruise's portrayal. In 1996, Cruise scored financial success with the reboot of Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996), but it was with his multilayered performance in Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996), that Cruise proved once again why he is considered a major Hollywood player. For Jerry Maguire, he won another Golden Globe and received his second Oscar nomination. According to IMDb, Cruise is the first actor in history to star in five consecutive films that grossed $100 million in the United States: A Few Good Men (1992), the thriller The Firm (Sydney Pollack, 1993), Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996). 1999 saw Cruise reunited onscreen with Kidman in a project of a very different sort, Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1990). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The film, which was the director's last, had been the subject of controversy, rumour, and speculation since it began filming. It opened to curious critics and audiences alike across the nation, and was met with a violently mixed response. However, it allowed Cruise to once again take part in film history, further solidifying his position as one of Hollywood's most well-placed movers and shakers. Cruise's enviable position was again solidified later in 1999, when he earned a third Golden Globe and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a loathsome 'sexual prowess' guru in Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)."
In 2000, Tom Cruise scored again when he returned as international agent Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible II (John Woo, 2000), which proved to be one of the summer blockbusters. Like its predecessor, it was the highest-grossing film of the year, and had a mixed critical reception. He then reteamed with Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe for a remake of the Spanish film Abre los Ojos/Open Your Eyes (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997) titled Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001) with Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz. Though Vanilla Sky's sometimes surreal trappings found the film receiving a mixed reception at the box office, the same could not be said for the following year's massively successful Sci-Fi chase film Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, 2001), or of the historical epic The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003). For his next film, Cruise picked a role unlike any he'd ever played; starring as a sociopathic hitman in the psychological thriller Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004). He received major praise for his departure from the good-guy characters he'd built his career on, and for doing so convincingly. He teamed up with Spielberg again for the second time in three years with an epic adaptation of the H.G. Wells alien invasion story War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005). The summer blockbuster was in some ways overshadowed, however, by a cloud of negative publicity. It began, when Cruise became suddenly vocal about his beliefs in Scientology, the religion created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise publicly denounced actress Brooke Shields for taking medication to combat her postpartum depression, going so far as to call the psychological science a "Nazi science" in an Entertainment Weekly interview. In 2005, he was interviewed by Matt Lauer for The Today Show during which time he appeared to be distractingly argumentative in his insistence that psychiatry is a "pseudoscience," and in a Der Spiegel interview, he was quoted as saying that Scientology has the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. This behaviour caused a stirring of public opinion about Cruise, as did his relationship with 27-year-old actress Katie Holmes. The two announced their engagement in the spring of 2005, and Cruise's enthousiasm for his new romantic interest created more curiosity about his mental stability. He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he jumped up and down on the couch, professing his love for the newly-Scientologist Holmes. The actor's new public image alienated many of his viewers. As he geared up for the spring release of Mission: Impossible III (J.J. Abrams, 2006), his ability to sell a film based almost purely on his own likability was in question for the first time in 20 years. Despite this, the film was more positively received by critics than the previous films in the series, and grossed nearly $400 million at the box office. Cruise moved on to making headlines on the business front, when he and corporate partner Paula Wagner in 2006 officially "took over" the United Artists studio, which was all but completely defunct. One of the first films to be produced by the new United Artists was the tense political thriller Lions for Lambs (Robert Redford, 2007), with Redford, Cruise and Meryl Streep. The film took an earnest and unflinching look at the politics behind the Iraq war but was a commercial disappointment. This was followed by the World War II thriller Valkyrie (Bryan Singer, 2008) with kenneth Branagh and Carice van Houten.
Tom Cruise would find a solid footing as the 2010s progressed, with blockbusters like Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011) and Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015). He is known for doing many of his own stunts in these films, even exceptionally dangerous ones. The Mission Impossible franchise earned a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide. Cruise reteamed with Cameron Diaz in the action-comedy Knight and Day (James Mangold, 2010). He starred as Jack Reacher in the film adaptation of British author Lee Child's 2005 novel One Shot (Christopher McQuarrie, 2012). He also starred in big budget fantasy projects like Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013) and Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014). Tom Cruised was married three times. His first wife was actress Mimi Rogers, with whom he was married from 1987 till their divorce in 1990. His second marriage with Nicole Kidman from 1990 till 2001. They adopted two children Isabella Jane Cruise (1992) and Connor Antony Cruise (1995). he lived together with Vanilla Sky (2001) co-star Penélope Cruz from 2001 - 2004. His 2006 marriage to Katie Holmes ended in a divorce in 2012. They have one daughter, Surie Cruise (2006). Recently, Cruise returned on the screen as Ethan Hunt in the sixth installment of the Mission Impossible series, Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018). In 2020, he will also return as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020), in which Val Kilmer will also reprise his role from the first film.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.
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The Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area is situated south of Elphinstone Creek and to the west of School Street and Kerr Street, in the town of Ravenswood, about 85km south of Townsville and 65km east of Charters Towers. The Ravenswood goldfield was the fifth largest producer of gold in Queensland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its main mining periods, prior to modern open cut operations (1987 onwards), were: alluvial gold and shallow reef mining (1868 - 1872); attempts to extract gold from sulphide ores below the water table (1872 - 1898); the New Ravenswood Company era (1899 - 1917); and small scale mining and re-treatment of old mullock heaps and tailings dumps (1919 - 1960s). In 2016 the Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area contains surface structures from eight mines: the Grand Junction, Little Grand Junction, Sunset No. 1 and Sunset No. 2, Deep, General Grant, Duke of Edinburgh, and Grant and Sunset Extended mines, as well as the mill associated with the Deep mine, and the Mabel Mill tailings treatment plant (most structures dating from the New Ravenswood Company era). It also includes remnants of two treatment plants (Partridge and Ralston’s Mill, and Judge’s Mill) from the 1930s; and the Chinese settlement area (1870s to the early 20th century, covering the first three mining periods at Ravenswood).
The place contains important surviving evidence of: ore extraction (from underground shafts) and metallurgical extraction (separation of gold from the ore) conducted on and near the Ravenswood goldfield’s most productive reefs during the boom period of the town’s prosperity (1900 - 1908); later attempts to re-treat the mullock heaps and tailings dumps from these mines; and Ravenswood’s early Chinese community, which made an important contribution to the viability of the isolated settlement and was located along Deighton Street and Elphinstone Creek. The Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area also has the potential to reveal evidence of early alluvial and shallow reef mining, as well as domestic living arrangements on the Ravenswood goldfield. It is an evocative reminder of the precarious and short-lived nature of North Queensland’s mining booms, and has a special association with Archibald Lawrence Wilson, who established the New Ravenswood Company and improved both ore and metallurgical extraction processes on the goldfield.
Settlement and mining in North Queensland:
European settlement of the Kennedy Land District in North Queensland commenced with the founding of Bowen in 1861, and the spread of pastoralists through the hinterland. Pastoral stations were established up the valley of the Burdekin River, including ‘Ravenswood’ and ‘Merri Merriwa’. Townsville and Cardwell were both established north of Bowen in 1864.
However, mining, not pastoralism, proved to be the main catalyst for European settlement of North Queensland. In 1865 the founders of Townsville offered a reward for the discovery of a payable goldfield, and gold rushes occurred in the region from 1866. Mining employed 19.8% of the North Queensland population in 1868, and 50% by 1876, before dropping to 15% in 1911. Although gold mining attracted people to North Queensland, alluvial finds of gold usually led to temporary townships, whereas underground reef mining held the promise of more stable and permanent settlements.
Alluvial gold and shallow reef mining (1868 - 1872):
Alluvial gold was discovered south of the later site of Ravenswood, in tributaries of Connolly Creek on Merri Merriwa Station, north of the Burdekin River, in late 1868. Prospectors soon established ‘Middle Camp’ (later Donnybrook) on Tucker’s Creek, and ‘Lower Camp’ on Trieste Creek, with about 700 miners on the field by early 1869. Further north, in April 1869, the goldfield’s richest alluvial discoveries were made in three dry creek beds close to the site of Ravenswood: Nolan’s, Jessop’s, and Buchanan’s gullies. Despite these finds, many miners soon left for the rush to the Gilbert River (over 300km west of Townsville).
The parent reefs of the alluvial gold found in April were located about the same time as the exodus to the Gilbert – the General Grant being discovered first, followed by the Sunset. Both were visible above ground level, and both reefs would play an important part in the future prosperity of Ravenswood. In the next 40 years, nearly £3 million of gold would come from the reefs ‘in the little triangle between Buchanan’s Gully, just east of Macrossan Street, Jessop’s Gully, southwest of the town, and Elphinstone Creek’.
Other reefs were soon found north of Elphinstone Creek, and in Nolan’s Gully; and meanwhile, reefs had been discovered at Middle Camp. However, a lack of water meant that miners did not establish ‘Upper Camp’ (later Ravenswood) near the General Grant and Sunset reefs until October 1869, after a storm temporarily resolved the water issue. By this time, most miners had returned from the Gilbert. The three camps on the goldfield had a population of 600 by January 1870, most in Upper Camp. Work was slowed by a lack of water, until rains in February 1870 enabled panning and sluicing, the results of which confirmed that Ravenswood was the first significant reef mining goldfield in the northern half of Australia.
However, the miners needed to crush the quartz ore to extract gold. The first machinery for this purpose, WO Hodkinson’s five stamp crushing battery, the Lady Marion (or Lady Marian) Mill, was operational at Burnt Point (south of Upper Camp) from the 18th of April 1870. The first month’s crushing results caused ‘an even greater “rush” than that … caused by the discovery of the alluvial gold’. A second battery was operational in Upper Camp in August 1870, when the goldfield’s population was about 1200.
Official recognition of the goldfield and settlement soon followed. Government Geologist Richard Daintree visited Upper Camp in August 1870, and the Ravenswood goldfield (about 300 square miles) was proclaimed on the 3rd of November 1870. By this time, the goldfield had a population of about 2000, and Upper Camp had 10 ‘public houses’, with six public houses in Middle Camp.
The Government Surveyor, John von Stieglitz, arrived in November 1870, but was too late to impose a regular grid pattern on the settlement. Instead he formalised the existing plan, which was centred on the crossing of Elphinstone Creek by the main road (Macrossan Street), with tracks radiating out to the various diggings. Most commercial buildings were located along Macrossan Street. The resulting juxtaposition of mining, habitation and commerce gave the town its distinctive character.
The town was proclaimed on the 19th of May 1871, with an area of one square mile (259ha). This was later expanded to four square miles (1036ha) on the 13th of July 1883. Although gold had been discovered on Merri Merriwa Station, the name Ravenswood, after the run located further southeast, downstream on the Burdekin River, was preferred.
In 1871 the population of the goldfield was 900, with over half being in Upper Camp/Ravenswood, and by the end of 1871 there were five machines in Ravenswood. Hodgkinson’s mill had been moved into town, to a site just north of Elphinstone Creek, and was renamed the Mabel Mill. In 1871 the town had 30 licensed hotels, although these were referred to as ‘shanties’ and did not offer accommodation.
By this time Ravenswood also had a Chinese population, due to an influx of Chinese miners who had been forcefully evicted from the Western Creek diggings near Gilberton in mid-1871. At least three of the hotels of 1871 had Chinese licensees. The first Chinese had arrived in North Queensland in 1867, during the rush to the Cape River, and there were 200 Chinese looking for alluvial gold at Ravenswood in 1871. In January 1872 it was estimated that there were about 1500 Chinese present on the Ravenswood goldfield, and a matching number of Europeans. As the Chinese focussed on alluvial gold, and also provided other services, they were tolerated at Ravenswood, because the Europeans were now focusing on reef mining. The quartz reefs were originally worked at shallow depths by means of a windlass (hand-wound rope and bucket), or a horse-powered whip or whim (using poles, ropes and pulleys) raising the ore from shallow shafts.
Extracting gold from sulphide ores (1872 - 1898):
Despite its promising start, in 1872 the Ravenswood goldfield entered a ‘period of depression’, as its most important mines reached the water table at about 70ft (21m) deep – starting with the Sunset in 1871, followed by the General Grant, Black Jack, and Melaneur in 1872. Although the oxidised quartz (‘red stone’ or ‘brown stone’ quartz) close to the surface yielded its gold to traditional methods of mechanical crushing, below the water table the gold was in fine particles, which was not easily recovered by mechanical means. It was also mixed with sulphide ores; mainly iron sulphide (pyrite, or ‘mundic’ ore) but also sulphides containing lead, copper, zinc, arsenic, and antimony, which interfered with chemical treatments such as amalgamation (amalgamating the gold with mercury; then heating the resulting amalgam in a retort to vaporise the mercury) and chlorination (exposing roasted, concentrated ore to chlorine gas, and then precipitating gold out of the chloride solution). A process that worked on the ore from one reef might not work for an adjacent reef, due to a varying distribution of different types of sulphides. In addition, even if a process worked on a small scale, it could be uneconomical on a larger scale, given the price of transporting fuel to Ravenswood for smelting, or transporting concentrates for smelting elsewhere.
Once the mundic had been struck, ‘mining was "worse than dull" as the field grappled with the realisation that to break below the waterline, the days of the individual miner were over and the time of companies was looming’. The 1870s was a decade of major gold discoveries in Queensland, and miners keen on quick profits had plenty of new goldfields from which to choose. Many miners joined the rushes to Charters Towers (1872) and the Palmer River (1873). Charters Towers soon overtook Ravenswood as the most important inland town in north Queensland; and the Hodgkinson rush (southwest of Port Douglas) in 1876 also drew away miners.
However, Ravenswood grew during the 1870s and 1880s, despite the goldfield’s ‘refractory’ ores, and ‘mundic problem’. The goldfield had a population of 950 in 1877 (with 50 Chinese), rising to 1100 in 1880 (including 250 Chinese), and 2000 in 1883 (including 300 Chinese; with 190 working the alluvial, and 10 quartz miners).
The 1877 Pugh’s Almanac listed one Chinese hotelkeeper (out of seven hotelkeepers) in Ravenswood, and one Chinese storekeeper. The Chinese, as well as working alluvial claims and operating hotels and stores, were employed as wage labour in some mines; worked as roasters and chlorinators at the Mabel Mill; and operated 24 licensed gardens on the Ravenswood goldfield in 1883. Chinese gardens were vital in providing fresh vegetables to North Queensland’s goldfield populations.
For 19th Century diasporic Chinese communities such as Ravenswood’s, the establishment of specific cultural settlement areas, or ‘Chinatowns’, that ‘provided a range of sacred and secular services, including temples, stores, and accommodation’, was an important aspect of community building. Deighton Street, west of Macrossan Street, was the centre of Chinese life in Ravenswood. There were two eating houses close to Macrossan Street’s bridge across Elphinstone Creek, in the 1870s; and market gardens were located between Deighton Street and Elphinstone Creek, as well as north of Elphinstone Creek, interspersed amongst several crushing machine operations. There was also a temple south of Deighton Street. Temples were not just places of religious worship; rather, they were an integral part of a Chinese village. ‘They were places to meet, to check one's horoscope before embarking on a new venture and places where ancestors were venerated’. As well as being a place where the community could worship at any time, major gatherings were held at temples on festival days, with feasts and processions. The Ravenswood temple appears on an 1874 survey plan, making it the earliest known Chinese temple in Queensland. The nearby pig roasting oven is also a rare example of its type, and demonstrates the usual spatial arrangement of temple and oven, for community feasts.
Ravenswood continued to develop during the 1880s. By 1885, the Ravenswood goldfield had an estimated population of 2294 Europeans and 227 Chinese, with 1490 Europeans and 148 Chinese located in Ravenswood itself. Ravenswood at this time had four Chinese storekeepers, and two Chinese produce merchants, but all six hotel licensees were European. The Ravenswood National School, which began in late 1873, had an average attendance of 110 students in 1878, and reached its peak enrolment of 390 by 1889.
The 1880s were also a period of experimentation in metallurgical (gold extraction) technology. In 1883, the only method for dealing with sulphide ores was stamper mills and rotary buddles (which used water and gravity to separate and concentrate the crushed ores), but later Ravenswood ‘was the first place where the chlorination process and Wilfley tables, developed in 1896, to shake the ore and separate out different sized particles, and were used in Queensland, and probably the first place where the cyanide process (dissolving fine gold in a cyanide solution, and later precipitating the gold out of the solution) for extracting gold was used in Australia’. Other techniques attempted included fine grinding (using ball mills), roasting (burning off the sulphides), and smelting (prohibitively expensive, as it required high temperatures and thus a lot of fuel). By 1888 a new company at One Mile Creek, formed by Duncan and Peter Macintyre, had adapted an abandoned Cassell’s patent plant (a version of the chlorination process which was applied and failed in Ravenswood in 1886), to work on a ‘secret process’ (cyaniding).
Ravenswood mining continued to be viable, although only a (fluctuating) percentage of the gold was being recovered from the ore. In the mid-1880s there was even a temporary increase in the goldfield’s production, due to good returns from the Sandy Creek mines on the John Bull reef. For the next eight years, the principal producers of the district were the General Grant, Sunset, New England, Wild Irish Girl, Melaneur, and John Bull reefs, plus the silver lodes of the One Mile (at Totley).
Ravenswood’s economy survived the 1880s due to the development of silver mines at Totley, a township established about 2km north of Ravenswood. The silver mines opened circa 1879 - 1880, and Richard King floated the Ravenswood Silver Mining Company Ltd in 1882 – the year of Ravenswood’s lowest gold production between 1878 and 1898. Silver prices were high during the 1880s, and the Totley mines encouraged the Queensland Government to approve a branch railway line (off the Northern Railway between Townsville and Charters Towers) to Ravenswood in 1882, completed in 1884. The railway meant that some gold ores could be crushed, concentrated and sent for treatment at the Aldershot works just north of Maryborough or overseas to Swansea, in Wales. However, all silver mining had stopped by 1891, due to falling silver prices and over-expenditure on treatment plants.
Gold mining at Ravenswood continued during the 1880s and 1890s. Hugh Hawthorne Barton, who had operated Brothers Mill on Elphinstone Creek from the late 1870s, took over the General Grant, Sunset, and Black Jack mines, and the Mabel Mill (and later the Melaneur and Duke of Edinburgh mines), and floated the Ravenswood Gold Mining Company in 1887, with £100,000 in capital. From 1884 to 1896 Barton’s group was the largest and most successful operation in Ravenswood, its profitability assisted by the railway, economies of scale, and flexibility in ore-treatment methods. Barton utilised roasting, chlorination (by 1889), and smelting, and employed Chinese workers at the Mabel Mill. Along with their market gardens along Elphinstone Creek, Chinese employment at the Mabel Mill also influenced the location of the Chinese settlement area in Ravenswood. Meanwhile, the landscape was being altered by mining. The need for timber for boilers and for timbering-up mine shafts led to the loss of native trees in the locality, and goats also helped shape the landscape by eating regrowth.
By the mid-1890s, Barton was in debt to the Queensland National Bank, and his properties were seized in 1896, with the General Grant, Black Jack, and Mabel Mill being let on tribute (where a party of miners worked a mine, while giving the mine owner a percentage of any results) in 1897. The tributers refused to employ Barton’s experienced Chinese workers at the Mabel Mill, leading to disastrous attempts at chlorination. However, the goldfield’s production was boosted in the late 1890s when work resumed on the Donnybrook reefs for the first time in 20 years, and the Hillsborough (Eight Mile) reefs were taken up.
The New Ravenswood Company era (1899 - 1917):
Ravenswood’s boom period of gold production (1900 - 1908, with 1905 the year of highest production) is reflected in the town’s surviving mining infrastructure and commercial and public buildings. This boom occurred due to the efforts of Archibald Laurence Wilson (1852 - 1935). After gaining a diploma in mining engineering in Edinburgh, and working in New Zealand and on the Palmer River, Wilson arrived in Ravenswood in 1878. He was publican of the Silver King Hotel in Totley in the 1880s. As manager of the John Bull mine at Sandy Creek in the mid-1890s, he raised capital in London and installed a cyanide plant.
Wilson later travelled to London in 1898, where he floated both the Donnybrook Blocks Mining Syndicate and the New Ravenswood Company in 1899. Wilson was the General Manager of both companies, under their London directorates. Until 1917, the New Ravenswood Company was the largest mining operation on the Ravenswood goldfield. Registered with a capital of £50,000, the company purchased the General Grant, Sunset, Black Jack, Melaneur, and Shelmalier mines, and the Mabel Mill, from the Queensland National Bank (and later obtained the Saratoga, Duke of Edinburgh and London North mines), and initiated a new era in ore and metallurgical extraction. Using British capital, Wilson introduced modern machinery to work the mines, and effectively reshaped Ravenswood’s landscape. Wilson was known as ‘the uncrowned king of Ravenswood’. He was also Chairman of the Ravenswood Shire Council for some years, and was later on the Dalrymple Shire Council, until he resigned from poor health in 1934.
From 1900, both the Sunset and General Grant (also known as the Grant) mines were redeveloped by Wilson. These became the key earners for the New Ravenswood Company; by 1903 the two mines employed about 205 men, and were ‘the “backbone” of the town’.
The Sunset reef, which runs roughly northwest-southeast through the Ravenswood Mining Landscape, was the largest producer on the goldfield (almost a quarter of the total). It produced 14,722oz of gold from 1870 - 1894, and by 1900 it was worked from an underlie (an inclined shaft, following the dip of a reef) branching off from a vertical shaft 130ft (40m) deep. It was stated at this time that the reef had ‘much the same history as the General Grant, the two being generally worked together’. By 1903 the New Ravenswood Company had extended the underlie shaft right up to the surface, where a headframe was constructed to haul ore directly up the slope. The Sunset’s yield of ‘free gold’ (pure gold not combined with other minerals), which could be extracted at the Mabel Mill, peaked in 1904, then fell slowly. In 1905 an average of 170 men were employed at the mine. In 1908 the reef was being worked by the main underlie shaft, 900ft (274m) deep (Sunset No. 1); and a vertical shaft, 556ft (169m) deep (Sunset No. 2). As the Sunset reef was worked in conjunction with the General Grant and the Duke of Edinburgh reefs in the New Ravenswood Company era, its exact total production of gold is hard to calculate; but from 1876 to 1912 the reef probably produced about 177,000oz of gold; and probably most of the 22, 000oz that the company extracted from 1912 - 1917.
The General Grant, one of the most productive reefs on the goldfield, running roughly north-south just east of the Sunset reef, was worked almost continuously to the late 1880s, and periodically thereafter. By 1895 returns had diminished, due to the small size of the reef and its highly refractory ore. In 1900, the General Grant had a vertical shaft to 110ft (34m), and then an underlie of 610ft (186m), the bottom of the latter being 450ft (137m) below the level of the shaft mouth; but operations were ‘almost completely suspended’ as the New Ravenswood Company concentrated on the Sunset reef. To 1900 the General Grant had produced 23, 651oz of gold; and after crushing of ore from the mine resumed at the beginning of 1903, it was treated with ore from the Sunset. On average, 40 men were employed on the mine in 1905. In 1908 the powerhouse for both the Sunset and the General Grant mines was situated on the General Grant lease, with three Cornish boilers. By 1912 the General Grant had produced about 36,000oz of gold.
To the east of the General Grant was the Duke of Edinburgh reef, running roughly northwest-southeast. This was one of the early reefs discovered on the goldfield; and in 1872 it was identified by Warden TR Hackett as one of the 28 principal reefs. It was worked in several episodes prior to the 1890s, and was re-opened in 1891, producing 1286oz of gold during 1891 - 1895. In 1908 the mine was taken over by the New Ravenswood Company, and was reorganised as an underlie shaft with haulage machinery from the Golden Hill mine, being worked in conjunction with the General Grant until 1917.
Along with his modernisation of the goldfield’s best mines, Wilson also abandoned chlorination at the Mabel Mill, increased the mill’s crushing capacity to 30 stamps (by 1904), and introduced the first Wilfley tables to Queensland. Crushing resumed in January 1900. Wilson improved metallurgical extraction by ‘postponing amalgamation of the free gold till the great bulk of the sulphides had been removed by concentration’. The ore was crushed in stampers without using mercury. Then, using the Wilfley tables, the heavier Galena (lead sulphide ore) and free gold was separated from the lighter sulphides. The free gold and galena was then ground in Berdan pans with mercury, while the remaining sulphides (containing iron, zinc and copper) were dispatched to the Aldershot works (near Maryborough) for smelting. In 1902 - 1903, a raff wheel, 14.5m in diameter, was built at the Mabel Mill to lift tailings (post-treatment residue) up to a flume, which carried them over to the south side of Elphinstone Creek, where they could be treated with cyanide. The cyanide works (of which remnants still remain south of Elphinstone Creek) was erected circa 1904. A 21m long girder bridge was constructed across the creek to carry steam water pipes and electric cable from the Mabel Mill to the new works, which eventually comprised two Krupp ball mills and 12 Wilfley’s tables.
Due to the New Ravenswood Company’s efforts, the goldfield’s production increased between 1899 and 1905. Gold recovery increased from 18, 016oz in 1899 to 24, 832oz in 1900 and to 42, 465oz in 1905. The New Ravenswood Company paid impressive 50% dividends to its shareholders in 1901, 1902, and 1904; and 75% in 1903.
The productivity of Ravenswood’s mines during the New Ravenswood Company era was also reflected in the goldfield’s population, which rose from 3420 in 1901 to its peak of 4707 in 1903. The 1903 population included 215 Chinese, 89 of these being alluvial miners. In 1905 two Chinese were listed as ‘storekeepers and grocers’.
The population increase led to a building boom in the first decade of the 20th Century. Hundreds of new houses, the town’s first two brick hotels – the Imperial hotel (1901) and the Railway Hotel (1902) – as well as brick shops such as Thorp’s Building (1903), and the brick Ravenswood Ambulance Station (1904) were constructed in this period; the use of brick being spurred by the threat of fire. The New Ravenswood Company also rebuilt the mining landscape in and around the town, with expansion of the Mabel Mill, and new headframes and winders, magazines, boilers, and brick smokestacks erected beside all the principal shafts.
However, not all Wilson’s ventures in this period were successful. In 1902 he floated Deep Mines Ltd, with a capital of £100, 000, to sink a shaft east of the New Ravenswood Company’s leases. This mine (also within the Ravenswood Mining Landscape) was an ambitious attempt to reach a presumed intersection of the General Grant and Sunset reefs at depth. Using the capital raised, Wilson built a model mine and mill. The shaft was started in late 1902-early 1903, and construction work on the buildings and machinery was completed later in 1903. The mine reached 512m, the deepest on the goldfield, with extensive crosscutting and driving, but only about 240oz of gold was recovered. No ore was crushed at all in 1908. By 1910 a new shaft was being sunk ‘near the western boundary’; but the mine was abandoned in 1911, and never worked again. Wilson’s London investors lost at least £65,000.
The Deep’s mill, built nearby and operational by 1906, was a smaller version of the Mabel Mill, with gravity stamps, Wilfley tables, and a cyanide plant. Its site, adjacent to the mine, ran counter to the normal practice of siting mills near water courses. With the failure of the Deep mine, it milled ore from other mines until about 1917.
Another mine, the Grand Junction, was located north of the New Ravenswood Company’s most productive mines, in the Ravenswood Mining Landscape. The Grand Junction Consolidated Gold Mining Company was formed in 1900, and a shaft was sunk in 1901 (probably the No. 1 shaft on the Grand Junction Lease No. 520). In 1902 another exploration ‘deep shaft’ (No. 2) was sunk at the southwest boundary of the Grand Junction Lease No.503. The Grand Junction mine was another failed attempt to locate a presumed junction of the General Grant and Sunset reefs at depth; by 1908 it was owned by the New Ravenswood Company. Total production was about 425oz of gold.
Slightly more successful was the Grant and Sunset Extended mine, at the southern end of the Ravenswood Mining landscape. This was a deep shaft sunk by the Grant and Sunset Extended Gold Mining Company, a Charters Towers-owned company with Wilson as its local director. During the 19th Century, small mines had been operated in the Rob Roy reef, to the southeast. The Grant and Sunset Extended was floated in 1902, the intent being to locate the General Grant and Sunset reefs south of Buck Reef. The plant and buildings of the Yellow Jack mine, southeast of Ravenswood, were re-erected on the site. The shaft was down 70ft (21m) in 1902 and 930ft (283m) by 1908, with 50 men employed at the mine by the later date. The mine closed by 1910, but was worked on tribute until 1917, with about 15,000oz of gold obtained over 1904 - 1918.
The boom period at Ravenswood did not last. As well as losing money on the Deep and Grand Junction mines, the New Ravenswood Company faced the closure of the Aldershot works in 1906, and declining yields from 1908 to 1912. Although Wilson experimented with flotation (agitating crushed ore in oil and water, and extracting fine gold particles on the surface of air bubbles) and cyanide processes at the Mabel Mill, it was too late to save his company. The Shelmalier had closed by 1904, the Black Jack in 1909, and the Melaneur in 1910. By that year, the General Grant, Sunset, Duke of Edinburgh, and London North (obtained 1910) were the New Ravenswood Company’s only producing mines.
Few new buildings were constructed in Ravenswood after 1905. The hospital closed in 1908. That year the goldfield’s population consisted of 4141 Europeans (including 2625 women and children) and 181 Chinese (including 94 alluvial miners). This dropped to 2581, including 92 Chinese, by 1914.
Increased costs and industrial disputes in the 1910s hastened the end of the New Ravenswood Company era. During a miner’s strike between December 1912 and July 1913, over lay-offs, the fresh vegetables and business loans provided by Ravenswood’s Chinese community helped keep the town going. Although the miners won, it was a hollow victory, as the company could only afford to re-employ a few of the men. World War I (1914 - 1918) then increased labour and material costs for the New Ravenswood Company. The London North mine closed in 1915, and on the 24th of March 1917 the New Ravenswood Company ceased operations; ending large-scale mining in Ravenswood for the next 70 years.
By 1917, the Ravenswood goldfield had produced over 850, 000oz of gold (nearly a quarter coming from the Sunset mine), and 1, 000, 000oz of silver; making it the fifth largest gold producer in Queensland, after Charters Towers, Mount Morgan, Gympie, and the Palmer Goldfield. Ravenswood was also the second largest producer of reef gold in north Queensland, after Charters Towers.
Small scale mining and re-treatment (1919 - 1960s):
After 1917 the Ravenswood goldfield entered a period of hibernation, with intermittent small-scale attempts at mining. In 1919, Ravenswood Gold Mines Ltd took over some of Wilson’s leases and renovated the Deep mine’s mill, but obtained poor returns. Ravenswood Gold Mines also worked the Duke of Edinburgh from 1919 to 1930, with good returns reported in 1924. The General Grant and Sunset were also worked on a small scale from 1919 - 1921, while the Mabel Mill continued to provide crushing services for the limited local mining.
Consequently, Ravenswood’s population declined and the town shrank physically. In 1921 the town’s population fell below 1000, and by 1923 there were 530 people left, including 8 Chinese. During the 1920s, prior to the closure of the railway branch line to Ravenswood in 1930, hundreds of the town’s timber buildings were dismantled and railed away. By 1927, only the two brick hotels remained operating as hotels. The Ravenswood Shire was abolished in 1929, and by 1934 only 357 people remained in the town.
Despite this decline, some gold was still being extracted. There was a small increase in gold production between 1923 and 1927, and due to the gold price rise of the 1930s, some mines were re-worked and efforts were also made to treat the old mullock heaps (waste rock from mining) and tailings dumps with improved cyanide processes. Between 1931 and 1942, 12, 253oz of gold was obtained from the goldfield, the peak year being 1940.
A number of companies were active in Ravenswood in the 1930s-early 1940s. In 1933, the North Queensland Gold Mining Development Company took up leases along Buck Reef and reopened the Golden Hill mine, and the following year their operations were taken over by Gold Mines of Australia Ltd. The 1870s Eureka mine (near the Imperial Hotel) was revived by James Judge in 1934. In 1935 the Ravenswood Concentrates Syndicate began re-treating the Grant mullock heaps in the remaining stampers at the Mabel Mill, and dewatering the Sunset No. 2 shaft; while the Sunset Extended Gold Mining Company, with James Judge as manager, dewatered the Grant and Sunset Extended shafts (which connected to the Sunset, General Grant and Duke of Edinburgh shafts), and re-timbered the Grant and Sunset Extended, General Grant, and Sunset underlie (No. 1) shafts. The London North mine was reopened by R J Hedlefs in 1937, and Basque miners were working the Sunset No. 2 shaft at this time.
The Little Grand Junction mine, located at the intersection of Siggers Street and School Street, on the old Grand Junction Lease No. 520, was operated from 1937 - 1942 by local miners Henry John Bowrey and John Thomas Blackmore. Five men were employed at the mine in 1940. The shaft had apparently been sunk previously by the Grand Junction Consolidated Gold Mining Company; and Bowrey and Party reconditioned it and extended the existing workings.
In 1938, Archibald and Heuir set up a mill on the bank of One Mile Creek to treat mullock dumps, and the Ravenswood Gold Mining Syndicate (formed 1937, with James Judge as manager) began treating the mullock dumps of the Sunset mine in late 1938. The same syndicate also dewatered and reopened part of the Grant and Sunset Extended; and the Grand Junction mine was reopened by Judge circa 1939 - 1942.
The Ravenswood Gold Mining Syndicate’s (Judge’s) mill initially consisted of 10 head of stamps obtained from the Mother Lode Mill at Mount Wright (northwest of Ravenswood), powered by a diesel engine. The ore was crushed by the stamper battery, concentrated with Wilfley tables, and then either treated with cyanide or sent to the Chillagoe smelters. Initial success with some rich ore led to enlargement of the mill to 30 stamps in 1939 - 40. A Stirling boiler and a 250hp engine were also obtained from the Burdekin meatworks (Sellheim), and a rock breaker, elevator, and conveyor were installed. However, the upgraded mill proved to be overpowered and required a lot of timber fuel; the brick foundations used for the machinery were not strong enough; and the best ore from the Sunset had already been treated, so the mill closed early in 1942 and the plant was moved to Cloncurry.
Also in 1938, Maxwell Partridge and William Ralston installed a new plant south of Elphinstone Creek, to the immediate west of the Mabel Mill’s old cyanide works, to re-treat the old tailings with cyanide. A ball mill, filter, and other plant were purchased from the Golden Mile, Cracow in 1939, while later that year a suction gas engine and flotation machine were also installed. This operation closed circa 1942, and the coloured sands on the site today are residues from the flotation process: the yellow sand is from the floatation of iron pyrites; the grey sands are copper tailings; and the black material is zinc tailings.
There was limited activity on the goldfield in the late 1940s to early 1960s. The Empire Gold Mining Syndicate treated mullock dumps from The Irish Girl, London, and Sunset mines from 1946 to 1949, as well as some of the dumps from the Grand Junction (1947). The Duke of Edinburgh mine was briefly reopened by Cuevas and Wilson in 1947, and the Cornish boilers on the site (one with the maker’s mark ‘John Danks & Son Pty Ltd makers Melbourne) may relate to this (unsuccessful) operation. Percy Kean reopened the Great Extended mine at Totley in 1947, and later purchased Partridge’s mill in 1951 to use it as a flotation plant to treat the silver-lead ore from Totley, adding a diesel engine, stonebreaker, Wilfley tables, and classifier. The Totley mines closed in 1954, although the Great Extended mine was briefly sub-leased by Silver Horizons No Liability, in 1964. Partridge’s mill was closed circa 1965.
Other attempts were made in the early 1950s to rework old sites. A Townsville syndicate led by Leslie Cook and George Blackmore reopened the Grand Junction mine in 1951, but it soon closed. James Judge also recommenced gold mining at Donnybrook, but closed in 1954; while 900 tons of tailings from the Deep mine’s mill site were taken for re-treatment at Heuir’s cyanide plant in the early 1950s.
A new industry:
In the 1960 and 1970s, Ravenswood’s population shrank to its nadir of about 70 people. At the same time, there was a growing nostalgic interest in old towns in Australia. In 1968 the landscape of Ravenswood was described in romantic terms: ‘Mute testimonials are the numerous mullock heaps which dot the countryside; the rusty remains of steam engines; stampers which were used to crush stone; and collapsed cyanide vats… Derelict poppet-heads…stand above deep, abandoned shafts. Colossal columns of chimney stacks rise majestically from the entanglement of rubber vines and Chinese apple trees.’ Some locals realised that preserving the town’s surviving historic buildings and structures was necessary to attract tourists and create a new local industry.
From this time onwards the town’s mining heritage was seen as an asset. The National Trust of Queensland met with locals in 1974, and a conservation plan for the town was published in 1975. Later, the town sites of Totley and Ravenswood were both entered into the National Trust of Queensland Register. Comments from an International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) trip to northern Australia in 1978 included ‘Ravenswood…is one of the most evocative (gold towns of Australia) and this must be preserved. A policy of “all that is necessary but as little as possible” must be strongly pursued’. The increased population of North Queensland, longer paid holidays, improved roads, and the rise of car ownership after World War II, all increased visitation to Ravenswood, as did the completion of a road past Ravenswood to the Burdekin Dam, in the 1980s. As a result, the town and its mining landscape have been represented in brochures, art, and photography. In particular, the landmark qualities of the tall brick chimneys are a distinctive feature in representations of Ravenswood.
Modern operations:
However, gold mining recommenced at Ravenswood in the 1980s, due to a rise in the gold price and the efficiencies gained from open cut mining and modern cyanide metallurgical extraction processes. From 1983 - 1986 the Northern Queensland Gold Company Ltd conducted agglomeration heap-leaching (spraying a sodium cyanide solution on previously mined material heaped on a plastic membrane), in the process removing a landmark tailings dump at King’s mine in Totley, and mullock heaps from the Grant and Sunset mines. In 1987 Carpentaria Gold commenced open cut mining of the Buck reef (the Buck Reef West pit) near the old Grant and Sunset mines on the south side of the town. Later, pits were dug further east along the reef. Some underground mining was also undertaken from the Buck Reef West pit until 1993, which broke into the old workings of the General Grant, Sunset, and Duke of Edinburgh mines. The old headframe at the Grant and Sunset Extended was demolished in 1988, and replaced with a new steel headframe, which was used until 1993 and then removed. The Melaneur-Shelmalier-Black Jack-Overlander reef complex, on the north side of the town, was mined as an open cut 1990 - 1991, before being backfilled as a golf course. The Nolan’s Gully open cut commenced in 1993.
Although modern mining revived the economy of the town, it did not replicate the building boom of the early 20th century.
The heritage significance of Ravenswood’s surviving mining infrastructure was recognised in a 1996 Queensland Mining Heritage Places Study by Jane Lennon & Associates and Howard Pearce; and a 2000 Conservation Management Plan by Peter Bell. In 2006, the population of Ravenswood, the oldest surviving inland town in north Queensland, was 191.
By the mid-2010s the population of Ravenswood stood at 255 people.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register & Australian Bureau of Statistics.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Victoria, Bruxelles/Brussel, no. 270. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Lured (Douglas Sirk, 1947).
American red-haired actress Lucille Ball (1911-1989) was well-known as the crazy, accident-prone, lovable Lucy Ricardo in the television series I Love Lucy (1951-1957). She appeared in numerous films in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s before becoming one of America's most popular television comedians in 1951. She was also a producer on I Love Lucy and subsequent television series featuring the character of "Lucy" with her company Desilu Productions, making her the first head of a major film studio in the American show business.
Lucille Désirée Ball was born in Jamestown, New York, in 1911. Her father was Henry Durrell Ball and her mother Desiree Eve Hunt. Her father died in 1915 before she was four. Lucille and her younger brother Fred were raised by their grandparents while their mother worked several jobs. Her grandfather was an avid supporter of the theatre and encouraged Lucy to participate in plays at school. Always willing to take responsibility for her brother and young cousins, she was a restless teenager who yearned to "make some noise". She enrolled in the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts. There, however, she had a tough competitor who trumped her, Bette Davis. The teachers said she was 'too shy' and had no future and Ball returned home. In 1932, she moved to New York to become an actress and had success there as a mannequin and revue dancer. But her acting career did not take off till she was chosen to be a "Goldwyn Girl" and appeared in the film Roman Scandals (Frank Tuttle, 1933) starring Eddie Cantor. She was put under contract with RKO Radio Pictures and several bit roles, including one in Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935). She became friends with Ginger Rogers. In the 1930s she was under contract to RKO and Columbia Pictures and slowly worked her way up from small roles, unnamed in the credits, to more substantial parts. One of her first supporting roles was in Chatterbox (George Nichols Jr., 1936) in which she plays a temperamental actress. It was one of the first times her name was mentioned in the credits. She also got a good role in the A-picture Stage Door (Gregory La Cava, 1937) with Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. She played more supporting roles, including in Room Service (William A. Seiter, 1938) with the Marx Brothers, but she rarely got leading roles in major films, however, and usually when all the major film stars at RKO had already turned down the part. In 1940, Lucille Ball met Cuban bandleader-actor, Desi Arnaz, while filming the musical Too Many Girls (George Abbott, 1940). Despite different personalities, lifestyles, religions and ages (he was six years younger), he fell hard, too, and after a passionate romance, they eloped and were married in November 1940. The couple received a lot of media attention. Two years later, Arnaz had to join the army and was unfaithful. A knee injury allowed him to leave the army. In 1944, Ball filed for divorce but later recanted.
In the 1940s Lucille Ball moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she got better roles in films such as Du Barry Was a Lady (Roy Del Ruth, 1943) with Red Skelton and Gene Kelly, Best Foot Forward (Edward Buzzell, 1943) and the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy vehicle Without Love (Harold S. Bucquet, 1945). She failed to achieve major film success there either and returned to Columbia. She was known in Hollywood circles as the "B-movie queen" with Macdonald Carey as her "king". In 1948, she got a role in the radio comedy 'My Favorite Husband', in which she played the scatterbrained wife of a Midwestern banker. The show became a success and CBS asked her to turn it into a television series. She only wanted to do this if she could work with her husband, and they had creative control over the series. Ball wanted to work with Arnaz to save her marriage. So 'I Love Lucy' was born, the most popular and universally beloved sitcom of all time. The couple had started their own production company: Desilu Productions. CBS, however, was not impressed with the TV pilot episode, but after Ball and Arnaz toured vaudeville theatre with great success, the series came to television. As a side effect, she practically invented the sitcom and was one of the first stars to film with a live audience. The show was shot directly to film stock, unlike most other television shows of the time, which used the low-quality kinescope process to film images from a television monitor. The better quality of the Lucy show allowed it to be repeated via syndication (on independent television stations not affiliated with one of the major television networks ABC, CBS or NBC). During the production of I Love Lucy, German-born cameraman Karl Freund invented the "3-camera setup", now standard in television. Another unusual technique used on the Lucy show was to paint over unwanted shadows and hide lighting defects with paint that was kept in the studio in various shades from white to medium grey for this purpose. In 1951 her first child was born, Lucie Arnaz, followed a year later by Desi Arnaz Jr. The pregnancy was also supposed to be televised but CBS was not in favour of that, eventually, they were allowed to do it but they were not allowed to use the word "pregnant" but had to say "expecting". In 1953, Ball had to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities because, at the insistence of her socialist grandfather, she had registered as a supporter of the Communist Party for the 1936 primaries. In 1956, Desilu bought the RKO lot and moved there. In 1957, the last episode of I Love Lucy was aired and was followed by its sequels The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957-1960) and The Lucy Show (1962-1968), which was later renamed Here's Lucy (1968-1974).
In 1960, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's marriage was divorced after problems Arnaz had with alcohol, drugs and other women. Lucille Ball bought his share in Desilu, making her the sole owner of the studio. In the following years, Desilu developed such popular television series as The Untouchables (1959-1963), Star Trek (1966-1969), Mission: Impossible (1966-1973) and Mannix (1967-1975). In 1967, Desilu was sold to Gulf and Western Industries, which merged Desilu with Paramount Studios, located on the property next door. Arnaz and Ball remained good friends until his death in 1986. In 1961, Ball married stand-up comedy actor Gary Morton who was 12 years younger. He had never seen her on television because he himself performed on primetime when Lucy was on TV. He got a job at Desilu. After The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, Lucille got a series of her own, The Lucy Show (1962-1968) with Gale Gordon and Vivian Vance. It was again a success. Vivian Vance was given the name Viv, which she got because she was tired of being addressed as Ethel on the street. In 1968, after Lucille sold Desilu, she founded Lucille Ball Production. Lucille's third sitcom was Here's Lucy (1968-1974), played with her real children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr. Also in this series, Gale Gordon was her co-star. After I Love Lucy, Lucille starred in several more films including Yours, Mine, and Ours (Melville Shavelson, 1968) with Henry Fonda, the musical Mame (Gene Saks, 1974) and the TV movie Stone Pillow (George Schaefer, 1985). In 1986, she made a comeback with the series Life with Lucy, but it flopped with critics and viewers alike. After playing for less than two months, the series was cancelled by ABC. Ball was a guest on several shows. In 1989 at the 61st Academy Awards, she presented the Academy Awards with Bob Hope, she then received a standing ovation. A month later in 1989, Lucille Ball died of aortic dissection at the age of 77. She was buried in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles but was later moved by her children, Desi Arnaz Jr. and Lucie Arnaz, to Lake View Cemetery in her native Jamestown.
Source: Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
My apologies to many of my flickr friends for my extended absence, I am a freelance producer for a commercial photographer and for the last several months our calendars (thankfully) have been full.
I will make an effort to re-connect with your photo streams in the coming week. I am sure I have missed out on some great work.
Unless you have been living under a rock in the Disney community you have no doubt heard of the World of Color which made it's appearance to the public in early June. I have been fortunate to have visited Disney World at least 2 dozen times in my life, but had never been to Disneyland.
Well on Thursday, July 1st, I had a down day while I was in California, so I decided to go for it, and visit the park where it all began. I left my hotel in Santa Barbara at 5:30 in the morning and made the 2 hour drive to Anaheim through LA traffic.
I got to the park at opening and stayed well after close, I think I got about 2 hours of sleep before my 8am call time the next day, but it was well worth it.
World of Color was a wonderful show (however, I was a little disappointed given all the hype surrounding it, and my favorite show remains illuminations), being a water show, I really didn't want to shoot right at the edge without a water housing for the camera, and even from my vantage of the upper tier, my rig got soaked, and it wasn't even windy that night. At the end of the show I walked down to the edge of the pier to grab a few shots, only to see the people making their way out, soaked to the skin like they had just gotten off Kali Rapids at Animal Kingdom.
This was one of my best frames, I think next time I would like to shoot it from a balcony at the Grand Californian, or from the edge of the pier, in full rain gear. Cheers, and I can't wait to see what everyone has been up to lately.
British postcard by Santoro Graphics Ltd, London, no. C243.
American actor and producer Tom Cruise (1962) became with his charismatic smile the most successful member of Hollywood's Brat Pack, the golden boys and girls of the 1980s. Top Gun (1985) made him an action star, but with his roles in The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) he proved himself to be an all-round star and excellent actor. During the 1990s, he continued to combine action blockbusters like Mission Impossibe (1996) with highly acclaimed dramas like A Few Good Men (1992), Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Magnolia (1999). He received more praise for his roles in Minority Report (2000) and Collateral (2002) and was for years one of the highest paid actors in the world. Although he continued to score major box office hits with the Mission Impossible franchise, his later work was overshadwowed by his outspoken attitude about Scientology which alienated him from many of his viewers.
Tom Cruise was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV in 1962 in Syracuse, NY. He is the only son of Mary Lee (Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. He has three sisters: Marian, Lee Anne De Vette and Cass. In 1974, when Cruise was 12, his parents divorced. Young Tom spent his boyhood always on the move, and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the U.S. and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his mother and her new husband. Deeply religious, he enrolled in a Franciscan seminary with the ambition to join the priesthood. He dropped out after one year. At high-school, he was a wrestler until he was sidelined by a knee injury. Soon taking up acting, he found that the activity served a dual purpose: performing satiated his need for attention, while the memorisation aspect of acting helped him come to grips with his dyslexia. Moving to New York in 1980, he studied drama at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse, in conjunction with the Actors Studio, New School University, New York. He signed with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and began acting in films. His film debut was a small part in Endless Love (Franco Zeffirelli, 1981), starring Brooke Shields. It was followed by a major supporting role as a crazed military academy student in Taps (Harold Becker, 1981), starring George C. Scott and Timothy Hutton. In 1983, Cruise was part of the ensemble cast of The Outsiders (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983). The Hollywood press corps began touting Cruise as one of the 'Brat Pack', a group of twenty-something actors who seemed on the verge of taking over the movie industry in the early 1980s. Cruise's first big hit was the coming-of-age comedy Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983), in which he entered film-trivia infamy with the scene wherein he celebrates his parents' absence by dancing around the living room in his underwear. From the outset, he exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences. Cruise played the male lead in the dark fantasy Legend (Ridley Scott, 1985) and the action film Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986) with Kelly McGillis and Val Kilmer. Top Gun (1986) established Cruise as an action star. However, he refused to be pigeonholed, and followed it up with a solid characterszation of a fledgling pool shark in The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese, 1986), for which co-star Paul Newman earned an Academy Award. In 1988, he played the brother of an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in the drama Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988). However, Cruise had not yet totally convinced critics he was more than a pretty face while he also starred in Cocktail (Roger Donaldson, 1988), which earned him a nomination for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor. His chance came when he played paraplegic Vietnam vet Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone, 1989). For his role, he won a Golden Globe Award and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 1990 Tom Cruise renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church Of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. He was introduced to Scientology by his ex-wife Mimi Rogers. Though Cruise's bankability faltered a bit with the expensive disappointment Far and Away (Ron Howard, 1990) with his-then wife Nicole Kidman, A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992) brought him back into the game. By 1994, the star was undercutting his own leading man image with the role of the slick, dastardly vampire Lestat in the long-delayed film adaptation of the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994), opposite Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas. Although the author was vehemently opposed to Cruise's casting, Rice famously reversed her decision upon seeing the actor's performance, and publicly praised Cruise's portrayal. In 1996, Cruise scored financial success with the reboot of Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996), but it was with his multilayered performance in Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996), that Cruise proved once again why he is considered a major Hollywood player. For Jerry Maguire, he won another Golden Globe and received his second Oscar nomination. According to IMDb, Cruise is the first actor in history to star in five consecutive films that grossed $100 million in the United States: A Few Good Men (1992), the thriller The Firm (Sydney Pollack, 1993), Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996). 1999 saw Cruise reunited onscreen with Kidman in a project of a very different sort, Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1990). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The film, which was the director's last, had been the subject of controversy, rumour, and speculation since it began filming. It opened to curious critics and audiences alike across the nation, and was met with a violently mixed response. However, it allowed Cruise to once again take part in film history, further solidifying his position as one of Hollywood's most well-placed movers and shakers. Cruise's enviable position was again solidified later in 1999, when he earned a third Golden Globe and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a loathsome 'sexual prowess' guru in Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)."
In 2000, Tom Cruise scored again when he returned as international agent Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible II (John Woo, 2000), which proved to be one of the summer blockbusters. Like its predecessor, it was the highest-grossing film of the year, and had a mixed critical reception. He then reteamed with Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe for a remake of the Spanish film Abre los Ojos/Open Your Eyes (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997) titled Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001) with Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz. Though Vanilla Sky's sometimes surreal trappings found the film receiving a mixed reception at the box office, the same could not be said for the following year's massively successful Sci-Fi chase film Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, 2001), or of the historical epic The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003). For his next film, Cruise picked a role unlike any he'd ever played; starring as a sociopathic hitman in the psychological thriller Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004). He received major praise for his departure from the good-guy characters he'd built his career on, and for doing so convincingly. He teamed up with Spielberg again for the second time in three years with an epic adaptation of the H.G. Wells alien invasion story War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005). The summer blockbuster was in some ways overshadowed, however, by a cloud of negative publicity. It began, when Cruise became suddenly vocal about his beliefs in Scientology, the religion created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise publicly denounced actress Brooke Shields for taking medication to combat her postpartum depression, going so far as to call the psychological science a "Nazi science" in an Entertainment Weekly interview. In 2005, he was interviewed by Matt Lauer for The Today Show during which time he appeared to be distractingly argumentative in his insistence that psychiatry is a "pseudoscience," and in a Der Spiegel interview, he was quoted as saying that Scientology has the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. This behaviour caused a stirring of public opinion about Cruise, as did his relationship with 27-year-old actress Katie Holmes. The two announced their engagement in the spring of 2005, and Cruise's enthousiasm for his new romantic interest created more curiosity about his mental stability. He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he jumped up and down on the couch, professing his love for the newly-Scientologist Holmes. The actor's new public image alienated many of his viewers. As he geared up for the spring release of Mission: Impossible III (J.J. Abrams, 2006), his ability to sell a film based almost purely on his own likability was in question for the first time in 20 years. Despite this, the film was more positively received by critics than the previous films in the series, and grossed nearly $400 million at the box office. Cruise moved on to making headlines on the business front, when he and corporate partner Paula Wagner in 2006 officially "took over" the United Artists studio, which was all but completely defunct. One of the first films to be produced by the new United Artists was the tense political thriller Lions for Lambs (Robert Redford, 2007), with Redford, Cruise and Meryl Streep. The film took an earnest and unflinching look at the politics behind the Iraq war but was a commercial disappointment. This was followed by the World War II thriller Valkyrie (Bryan Singer, 2008) with kenneth Branagh and Carice van Houten.
Tom Cruise would find a solid footing as the 2010s progressed, with blockbusters like Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011) and Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015). He is known for doing many of his own stunts in these films, even exceptionally dangerous ones. The Mission Impossible franchise earned a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide. Cruise reteamed with Cameron Diaz in the action-comedy Knight and Day (James Mangold, 2010). He starred as Jack Reacher in the film adaptation of British author Lee Child's 2005 novel One Shot (Christopher McQuarrie, 2012). He also starred in big budget fantasy projects like Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013) and Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014). Tom Cruised was married three times. His first wife was actress Mimi Rogers, with whom he was married from 1987 till their divorce in 1990. His second marriage with Nicole Kidman from 1990 till 2001. They adopted two children Isabella Jane Cruise (1992) and Connor Antony Cruise (1995). he lived together with Vanilla Sky (2001) co-star Penélope Cruz from 2001 - 2004. His 2006 marriage to Katie Holmes ended in a divorce in 2012. They have one daughter, Surie Cruise (2006). Recently, Cruise returned on the screen as Ethan Hunt in the sixth installment of the Mission Impossible series, Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018). In 2020, he will also return as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020), in which Val Kilmer will also reprise his role from the first film.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard by Edycard, no. 29. Photo: Tom Cruise in Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986).
American actor and producer Tom Cruise (1962) became with his charismatic smile the most successful member of Hollywood's Brat Pack, the golden boys and girls of the 1980s. Top Gun (1986) made him an action star, but with his roles in The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) he proved himself to be an all-round star and excellent actor. During the 1990s, he continued to combine action blockbusters like Mission Impossibe (1996) with highly acclaimed dramas like A Few Good Men (1992), Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Magnolia (1999). He received more praise for his roles in Minority Report (2000) and Collateral (2002) and was for years one of the highest paid actors in the world. Although he continued to score major box office hits with the Mission Impossible franchise, his later work was overshadwowed by his outspoken attitude about Scientology which alienated him from many of his viewers.
Tom Cruise was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV in 1962 in Syracuse, NY. He is the only son of Mary Lee (Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. He has three sisters: Marian, Lee Anne De Vette and Cass. In 1974, when Cruise was 12, his parents divorced. Young Tom spent his boyhood always on the move, and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the U.S. and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his mother and her new husband. Deeply religious, he enrolled in a Franciscan seminary with the ambition to join the priesthood. He dropped out after one year. At high-school, he was a wrestler until he was sidelined by a knee injury. Soon taking up acting, he found that the activity served a dual purpose: performing satiated his need for attention, while the memorisation aspect of acting helped him come to grips with his dyslexia. Moving to New York in 1980, he studied drama at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse, in conjunction with the Actors Studio, New School University, New York. He signed with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and began acting in films. His film debut was a small part in Endless Love (Franco Zeffirelli, 1981), starring Brooke Shields. It was followed by a major supporting role as a crazed military academy student in Taps (Harold Becker, 1981), starring George C. Scott and Timothy Hutton. In 1983, Cruise was part of the ensemble cast of The Outsiders (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983). The Hollywood press corps began touting Cruise as one of the 'Brat Pack', a group of twenty-something actors who seemed on the verge of taking over the movie industry in the early 1980s. Cruise's first big hit was the coming-of-age comedy Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983), in which he entered film-trivia infamy with the scene wherein he celebrates his parents' absence by dancing around the living room in his underwear. From the outset, he exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences. Cruise played the male lead in the dark fantasy Legend (Ridley Scott, 1985) and the action film Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986) with Kelly McGillis and Val Kilmer. Top Gun (1986) established Cruise as an action star. However, he refused to be pigeonholed, and followed it up with a solid characterszation of a fledgling pool shark in The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese, 1986), for which co-star Paul Newman earned an Academy Award. In 1988, he played the brother of an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in the drama Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988). However, Cruise had not yet totally convinced critics he was more than a pretty face while he also starred in Cocktail (Roger Donaldson, 1988), which earned him a nomination for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor. His chance came when he played paraplegic Vietnam vet Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone, 1989). For his role, he won a Golden Globe Award and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 1990 Tom Cruise renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church Of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. He was introduced to Scientology by his ex-wife Mimi Rogers. Though Cruise's bankability faltered a bit with the expensive disappointment Far and Away (Ron Howard, 1990) with his-then wife Nicole Kidman, A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992) brought him back into the game. By 1994, the star was undercutting his own leading man image with the role of the slick, dastardly vampire Lestat in the long-delayed film adaptation of the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994), opposite Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas. Although the author was vehemently opposed to Cruise's casting, Rice famously reversed her decision upon seeing the actor's performance, and publicly praised Cruise's portrayal. In 1996, Cruise scored financial success with the reboot of Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996), but it was with his multilayered performance in Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996), that Cruise proved once again why he is considered a major Hollywood player. For Jerry Maguire, he won another Golden Globe and received his second Oscar nomination. According to IMDb, Cruise is the first actor in history to star in five consecutive films that grossed $100 million in the United States: A Few Good Men (1992), the thriller The Firm (Sydney Pollack, 1993), Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996). 1999 saw Cruise reunited onscreen with Kidman in a project of a very different sort, Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1990). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The film, which was the director's last, had been the subject of controversy, rumour, and speculation since it began filming. It opened to curious critics and audiences alike across the nation, and was met with a violently mixed response. However, it allowed Cruise to once again take part in film history, further solidifying his position as one of Hollywood's most well-placed movers and shakers. Cruise's enviable position was again solidified later in 1999, when he earned a third Golden Globe and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a loathsome 'sexual prowess' guru in Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)."
In 2000, Tom Cruise scored again when he returned as international agent Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible II (John Woo, 2000), which proved to be one of the summer blockbusters. Like its predecessor, it was the highest-grossing film of the year, and had a mixed critical reception. He then reteamed with Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe for a remake of the Spanish film Abre los Ojos/Open Your Eyes (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997) titled Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001) with Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz. Though Vanilla Sky's sometimes surreal trappings found the film receiving a mixed reception at the box office, the same could not be said for the following year's massively successful Sci-Fi chase film Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, 2001), or of the historical epic The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003). For his next film, Cruise picked a role unlike any he'd ever played; starring as a sociopathic hitman in the psychological thriller Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004). He received major praise for his departure from the good-guy characters he'd built his career on, and for doing so convincingly. He teamed up with Spielberg again for the second time in three years with an epic adaptation of the H.G. Wells alien invasion story War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005). The summer blockbuster was in some ways overshadowed, however, by a cloud of negative publicity. It began, when Cruise became suddenly vocal about his beliefs in Scientology, the religion created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise publicly denounced actress Brooke Shields for taking medication to combat her postpartum depression, going so far as to call the psychological science a "Nazi science" in an Entertainment Weekly interview. In 2005, he was interviewed by Matt Lauer for The Today Show during which time he appeared to be distractingly argumentative in his insistence that psychiatry is a "pseudoscience," and in a Der Spiegel interview, he was quoted as saying that Scientology has the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. This behaviour caused a stirring of public opinion about Cruise, as did his relationship with 27-year-old actress Katie Holmes. The two announced their engagement in the spring of 2005, and Cruise's enthousiasm for his new romantic interest created more curiosity about his mental stability. He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he jumped up and down on the couch, professing his love for the newly-Scientologist Holmes. The actor's new public image alienated many of his viewers. As he geared up for the spring release of Mission: Impossible III (J.J. Abrams, 2006), his ability to sell a film based almost purely on his own likability was in question for the first time in 20 years. Despite this, the film was more positively received by critics than the previous films in the series, and grossed nearly $400 million at the box office. Cruise moved on to making headlines on the business front, when he and corporate partner Paula Wagner in 2006 officially "took over" the United Artists studio, which was all but completely defunct. One of the first films to be produced by the new United Artists was the tense political thriller Lions for Lambs (Robert Redford, 2007), with Redford, Cruise and Meryl Streep. The film took an earnest and unflinching look at the politics behind the Iraq war but was a commercial disappointment. This was followed by the World War II thriller Valkyrie (Bryan Singer, 2008) with kenneth Branagh and Carice van Houten.
Tom Cruise would find a solid footing as the 2010s progressed, with blockbusters like Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011) and Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015). He is known for doing many of his own stunts in these films, even exceptionally dangerous ones. The Mission Impossible franchise earned a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide. Cruise reteamed with Cameron Diaz in the action-comedy Knight and Day (James Mangold, 2010). He starred as Jack Reacher in the film adaptation of British author Lee Child's 2005 novel One Shot (Christopher McQuarrie, 2012). He also starred in big budget fantasy projects like Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013) and Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014). Tom Cruised was married three times. His first wife was actress Mimi Rogers, with whom he was married from 1987 till their divorce in 1990. His second marriage with Nicole Kidman from 1990 till 2001. They adopted two children Isabella Jane Cruise (1992) and Connor Antony Cruise (1995). he lived together with Vanilla Sky (2001) co-star Penélope Cruz from 2001 - 2004. His 2006 marriage to Katie Holmes ended in a divorce in 2012. They have one daughter, Surie Cruise (2006). Recently, Cruise returned on the screen as Ethan Hunt in the sixth installment of the Mission Impossible series, Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018). In 2020, he will also return as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020), in which Val Kilmer will also reprise his role from the first film.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
The Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area is situated south of Elphinstone Creek and to the west of School Street and Kerr Street, in the town of Ravenswood, about 85km south of Townsville and 65km east of Charters Towers. The Ravenswood goldfield was the fifth largest producer of gold in Queensland during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its main mining periods, prior to modern open cut operations (1987 onwards), were: alluvial gold and shallow reef mining (1868 - 1872); attempts to extract gold from sulphide ores below the water table (1872 - 1898); the New Ravenswood Company era (1899 - 1917); and small scale mining and re-treatment of old mullock heaps and tailings dumps (1919 - 1960s). In 2016 the Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area contains surface structures from eight mines: the Grand Junction, Little Grand Junction, Sunset No. 1 and Sunset No. 2, Deep, General Grant, Duke of Edinburgh, and Grant and Sunset Extended mines, as well as the mill associated with the Deep mine, and the Mabel Mill tailings treatment plant (most structures dating from the New Ravenswood Company era). It also includes remnants of two treatment plants (Partridge and Ralston’s Mill, and Judge’s Mill) from the 1930s; and the Chinese settlement area (1870s to the early 20th century, covering the first three mining periods at Ravenswood).
The place contains important surviving evidence of: ore extraction (from underground shafts) and metallurgical extraction (separation of gold from the ore) conducted on and near the Ravenswood goldfield’s most productive reefs during the boom period of the town’s prosperity (1900 - 1908); later attempts to re-treat the mullock heaps and tailings dumps from these mines; and Ravenswood’s early Chinese community, which made an important contribution to the viability of the isolated settlement and was located along Deighton Street and Elphinstone Creek. The Ravenswood Mining Landscape and Chinese Settlement Area also has the potential to reveal evidence of early alluvial and shallow reef mining, as well as domestic living arrangements on the Ravenswood goldfield. It is an evocative reminder of the precarious and short-lived nature of North Queensland’s mining booms, and has a special association with Archibald Lawrence Wilson, who established the New Ravenswood Company and improved both ore and metallurgical extraction processes on the goldfield.
Settlement and mining in North Queensland:
European settlement of the Kennedy Land District in North Queensland commenced with the founding of Bowen in 1861, and the spread of pastoralists through the hinterland. Pastoral stations were established up the valley of the Burdekin River, including ‘Ravenswood’ and ‘Merri Merriwa’. Townsville and Cardwell were both established north of Bowen in 1864.
However, mining, not pastoralism, proved to be the main catalyst for European settlement of North Queensland. In 1865 the founders of Townsville offered a reward for the discovery of a payable goldfield, and gold rushes occurred in the region from 1866. Mining employed 19.8% of the North Queensland population in 1868, and 50% by 1876, before dropping to 15% in 1911. Although gold mining attracted people to North Queensland, alluvial finds of gold usually led to temporary townships, whereas underground reef mining held the promise of more stable and permanent settlements.
Alluvial gold and shallow reef mining (1868 - 1872):
Alluvial gold was discovered south of the later site of Ravenswood, in tributaries of Connolly Creek on Merri Merriwa Station, north of the Burdekin River, in late 1868. Prospectors soon established ‘Middle Camp’ (later Donnybrook) on Tucker’s Creek, and ‘Lower Camp’ on Trieste Creek, with about 700 miners on the field by early 1869. Further north, in April 1869, the goldfield’s richest alluvial discoveries were made in three dry creek beds close to the site of Ravenswood: Nolan’s, Jessop’s, and Buchanan’s gullies. Despite these finds, many miners soon left for the rush to the Gilbert River (over 300km west of Townsville).
The parent reefs of the alluvial gold found in April were located about the same time as the exodus to the Gilbert – the General Grant being discovered first, followed by the Sunset. Both were visible above ground level, and both reefs would play an important part in the future prosperity of Ravenswood. In the next 40 years, nearly £3 million of gold would come from the reefs ‘in the little triangle between Buchanan’s Gully, just east of Macrossan Street, Jessop’s Gully, southwest of the town, and Elphinstone Creek’.
Other reefs were soon found north of Elphinstone Creek, and in Nolan’s Gully; and meanwhile, reefs had been discovered at Middle Camp. However, a lack of water meant that miners did not establish ‘Upper Camp’ (later Ravenswood) near the General Grant and Sunset reefs until October 1869, after a storm temporarily resolved the water issue. By this time, most miners had returned from the Gilbert. The three camps on the goldfield had a population of 600 by January 1870, most in Upper Camp. Work was slowed by a lack of water, until rains in February 1870 enabled panning and sluicing, the results of which confirmed that Ravenswood was the first significant reef mining goldfield in the northern half of Australia.
However, the miners needed to crush the quartz ore to extract gold. The first machinery for this purpose, WO Hodkinson’s five stamp crushing battery, the Lady Marion (or Lady Marian) Mill, was operational at Burnt Point (south of Upper Camp) from the 18th of April 1870. The first month’s crushing results caused ‘an even greater “rush” than that … caused by the discovery of the alluvial gold’. A second battery was operational in Upper Camp in August 1870, when the goldfield’s population was about 1200.
Official recognition of the goldfield and settlement soon followed. Government Geologist Richard Daintree visited Upper Camp in August 1870, and the Ravenswood goldfield (about 300 square miles) was proclaimed on the 3rd of November 1870. By this time, the goldfield had a population of about 2000, and Upper Camp had 10 ‘public houses’, with six public houses in Middle Camp.
The Government Surveyor, John von Stieglitz, arrived in November 1870, but was too late to impose a regular grid pattern on the settlement. Instead he formalised the existing plan, which was centred on the crossing of Elphinstone Creek by the main road (Macrossan Street), with tracks radiating out to the various diggings. Most commercial buildings were located along Macrossan Street. The resulting juxtaposition of mining, habitation and commerce gave the town its distinctive character.
The town was proclaimed on the 19th of May 1871, with an area of one square mile (259ha). This was later expanded to four square miles (1036ha) on the 13th of July 1883. Although gold had been discovered on Merri Merriwa Station, the name Ravenswood, after the run located further southeast, downstream on the Burdekin River, was preferred.
In 1871 the population of the goldfield was 900, with over half being in Upper Camp/Ravenswood, and by the end of 1871 there were five machines in Ravenswood. Hodgkinson’s mill had been moved into town, to a site just north of Elphinstone Creek, and was renamed the Mabel Mill. In 1871 the town had 30 licensed hotels, although these were referred to as ‘shanties’ and did not offer accommodation.
By this time Ravenswood also had a Chinese population, due to an influx of Chinese miners who had been forcefully evicted from the Western Creek diggings near Gilberton in mid-1871. At least three of the hotels of 1871 had Chinese licensees. The first Chinese had arrived in North Queensland in 1867, during the rush to the Cape River, and there were 200 Chinese looking for alluvial gold at Ravenswood in 1871. In January 1872 it was estimated that there were about 1500 Chinese present on the Ravenswood goldfield, and a matching number of Europeans. As the Chinese focussed on alluvial gold, and also provided other services, they were tolerated at Ravenswood, because the Europeans were now focusing on reef mining. The quartz reefs were originally worked at shallow depths by means of a windlass (hand-wound rope and bucket), or a horse-powered whip or whim (using poles, ropes and pulleys) raising the ore from shallow shafts.
Extracting gold from sulphide ores (1872 - 1898):
Despite its promising start, in 1872 the Ravenswood goldfield entered a ‘period of depression’, as its most important mines reached the water table at about 70ft (21m) deep – starting with the Sunset in 1871, followed by the General Grant, Black Jack, and Melaneur in 1872. Although the oxidised quartz (‘red stone’ or ‘brown stone’ quartz) close to the surface yielded its gold to traditional methods of mechanical crushing, below the water table the gold was in fine particles, which was not easily recovered by mechanical means. It was also mixed with sulphide ores; mainly iron sulphide (pyrite, or ‘mundic’ ore) but also sulphides containing lead, copper, zinc, arsenic, and antimony, which interfered with chemical treatments such as amalgamation (amalgamating the gold with mercury; then heating the resulting amalgam in a retort to vaporise the mercury) and chlorination (exposing roasted, concentrated ore to chlorine gas, and then precipitating gold out of the chloride solution). A process that worked on the ore from one reef might not work for an adjacent reef, due to a varying distribution of different types of sulphides. In addition, even if a process worked on a small scale, it could be uneconomical on a larger scale, given the price of transporting fuel to Ravenswood for smelting, or transporting concentrates for smelting elsewhere.
Once the mundic had been struck, ‘mining was "worse than dull" as the field grappled with the realisation that to break below the waterline, the days of the individual miner were over and the time of companies was looming’. The 1870s was a decade of major gold discoveries in Queensland, and miners keen on quick profits had plenty of new goldfields from which to choose. Many miners joined the rushes to Charters Towers (1872) and the Palmer River (1873). Charters Towers soon overtook Ravenswood as the most important inland town in north Queensland; and the Hodgkinson rush (southwest of Port Douglas) in 1876 also drew away miners.
However, Ravenswood grew during the 1870s and 1880s, despite the goldfield’s ‘refractory’ ores, and ‘mundic problem’. The goldfield had a population of 950 in 1877 (with 50 Chinese), rising to 1100 in 1880 (including 250 Chinese), and 2000 in 1883 (including 300 Chinese; with 190 working the alluvial, and 10 quartz miners).
The 1877 Pugh’s Almanac listed one Chinese hotelkeeper (out of seven hotelkeepers) in Ravenswood, and one Chinese storekeeper. The Chinese, as well as working alluvial claims and operating hotels and stores, were employed as wage labour in some mines; worked as roasters and chlorinators at the Mabel Mill; and operated 24 licensed gardens on the Ravenswood goldfield in 1883. Chinese gardens were vital in providing fresh vegetables to North Queensland’s goldfield populations.
For 19th Century diasporic Chinese communities such as Ravenswood’s, the establishment of specific cultural settlement areas, or ‘Chinatowns’, that ‘provided a range of sacred and secular services, including temples, stores, and accommodation’, was an important aspect of community building. Deighton Street, west of Macrossan Street, was the centre of Chinese life in Ravenswood. There were two eating houses close to Macrossan Street’s bridge across Elphinstone Creek, in the 1870s; and market gardens were located between Deighton Street and Elphinstone Creek, as well as north of Elphinstone Creek, interspersed amongst several crushing machine operations. There was also a temple south of Deighton Street. Temples were not just places of religious worship; rather, they were an integral part of a Chinese village. ‘They were places to meet, to check one's horoscope before embarking on a new venture and places where ancestors were venerated’. As well as being a place where the community could worship at any time, major gatherings were held at temples on festival days, with feasts and processions. The Ravenswood temple appears on an 1874 survey plan, making it the earliest known Chinese temple in Queensland. The nearby pig roasting oven is also a rare example of its type, and demonstrates the usual spatial arrangement of temple and oven, for community feasts.
Ravenswood continued to develop during the 1880s. By 1885, the Ravenswood goldfield had an estimated population of 2294 Europeans and 227 Chinese, with 1490 Europeans and 148 Chinese located in Ravenswood itself. Ravenswood at this time had four Chinese storekeepers, and two Chinese produce merchants, but all six hotel licensees were European. The Ravenswood National School, which began in late 1873, had an average attendance of 110 students in 1878, and reached its peak enrolment of 390 by 1889.
The 1880s were also a period of experimentation in metallurgical (gold extraction) technology. In 1883, the only method for dealing with sulphide ores was stamper mills and rotary buddles (which used water and gravity to separate and concentrate the crushed ores), but later Ravenswood ‘was the first place where the chlorination process and Wilfley tables, developed in 1896, to shake the ore and separate out different sized particles, and were used in Queensland, and probably the first place where the cyanide process (dissolving fine gold in a cyanide solution, and later precipitating the gold out of the solution) for extracting gold was used in Australia’. Other techniques attempted included fine grinding (using ball mills), roasting (burning off the sulphides), and smelting (prohibitively expensive, as it required high temperatures and thus a lot of fuel). By 1888 a new company at One Mile Creek, formed by Duncan and Peter Macintyre, had adapted an abandoned Cassell’s patent plant (a version of the chlorination process which was applied and failed in Ravenswood in 1886), to work on a ‘secret process’ (cyaniding).
Ravenswood mining continued to be viable, although only a (fluctuating) percentage of the gold was being recovered from the ore. In the mid-1880s there was even a temporary increase in the goldfield’s production, due to good returns from the Sandy Creek mines on the John Bull reef. For the next eight years, the principal producers of the district were the General Grant, Sunset, New England, Wild Irish Girl, Melaneur, and John Bull reefs, plus the silver lodes of the One Mile (at Totley).
Ravenswood’s economy survived the 1880s due to the development of silver mines at Totley, a township established about 2km north of Ravenswood. The silver mines opened circa 1879 - 1880, and Richard King floated the Ravenswood Silver Mining Company Ltd in 1882 – the year of Ravenswood’s lowest gold production between 1878 and 1898. Silver prices were high during the 1880s, and the Totley mines encouraged the Queensland Government to approve a branch railway line (off the Northern Railway between Townsville and Charters Towers) to Ravenswood in 1882, completed in 1884. The railway meant that some gold ores could be crushed, concentrated and sent for treatment at the Aldershot works just north of Maryborough or overseas to Swansea, in Wales. However, all silver mining had stopped by 1891, due to falling silver prices and over-expenditure on treatment plants.
Gold mining at Ravenswood continued during the 1880s and 1890s. Hugh Hawthorne Barton, who had operated Brothers Mill on Elphinstone Creek from the late 1870s, took over the General Grant, Sunset, and Black Jack mines, and the Mabel Mill (and later the Melaneur and Duke of Edinburgh mines), and floated the Ravenswood Gold Mining Company in 1887, with £100,000 in capital. From 1884 to 1896 Barton’s group was the largest and most successful operation in Ravenswood, its profitability assisted by the railway, economies of scale, and flexibility in ore-treatment methods. Barton utilised roasting, chlorination (by 1889), and smelting, and employed Chinese workers at the Mabel Mill. Along with their market gardens along Elphinstone Creek, Chinese employment at the Mabel Mill also influenced the location of the Chinese settlement area in Ravenswood. Meanwhile, the landscape was being altered by mining. The need for timber for boilers and for timbering-up mine shafts led to the loss of native trees in the locality, and goats also helped shape the landscape by eating regrowth.
By the mid-1890s, Barton was in debt to the Queensland National Bank, and his properties were seized in 1896, with the General Grant, Black Jack, and Mabel Mill being let on tribute (where a party of miners worked a mine, while giving the mine owner a percentage of any results) in 1897. The tributers refused to employ Barton’s experienced Chinese workers at the Mabel Mill, leading to disastrous attempts at chlorination. However, the goldfield’s production was boosted in the late 1890s when work resumed on the Donnybrook reefs for the first time in 20 years, and the Hillsborough (Eight Mile) reefs were taken up.
The New Ravenswood Company era (1899 - 1917):
Ravenswood’s boom period of gold production (1900 - 1908, with 1905 the year of highest production) is reflected in the town’s surviving mining infrastructure and commercial and public buildings. This boom occurred due to the efforts of Archibald Laurence Wilson (1852 - 1935). After gaining a diploma in mining engineering in Edinburgh, and working in New Zealand and on the Palmer River, Wilson arrived in Ravenswood in 1878. He was publican of the Silver King Hotel in Totley in the 1880s. As manager of the John Bull mine at Sandy Creek in the mid-1890s, he raised capital in London and installed a cyanide plant.
Wilson later travelled to London in 1898, where he floated both the Donnybrook Blocks Mining Syndicate and the New Ravenswood Company in 1899. Wilson was the General Manager of both companies, under their London directorates. Until 1917, the New Ravenswood Company was the largest mining operation on the Ravenswood goldfield. Registered with a capital of £50,000, the company purchased the General Grant, Sunset, Black Jack, Melaneur, and Shelmalier mines, and the Mabel Mill, from the Queensland National Bank (and later obtained the Saratoga, Duke of Edinburgh and London North mines), and initiated a new era in ore and metallurgical extraction. Using British capital, Wilson introduced modern machinery to work the mines, and effectively reshaped Ravenswood’s landscape. Wilson was known as ‘the uncrowned king of Ravenswood’. He was also Chairman of the Ravenswood Shire Council for some years, and was later on the Dalrymple Shire Council, until he resigned from poor health in 1934.
From 1900, both the Sunset and General Grant (also known as the Grant) mines were redeveloped by Wilson. These became the key earners for the New Ravenswood Company; by 1903 the two mines employed about 205 men, and were ‘the “backbone” of the town’.
The Sunset reef, which runs roughly northwest-southeast through the Ravenswood Mining Landscape, was the largest producer on the goldfield (almost a quarter of the total). It produced 14,722oz of gold from 1870 - 1894, and by 1900 it was worked from an underlie (an inclined shaft, following the dip of a reef) branching off from a vertical shaft 130ft (40m) deep. It was stated at this time that the reef had ‘much the same history as the General Grant, the two being generally worked together’. By 1903 the New Ravenswood Company had extended the underlie shaft right up to the surface, where a headframe was constructed to haul ore directly up the slope. The Sunset’s yield of ‘free gold’ (pure gold not combined with other minerals), which could be extracted at the Mabel Mill, peaked in 1904, then fell slowly. In 1905 an average of 170 men were employed at the mine. In 1908 the reef was being worked by the main underlie shaft, 900ft (274m) deep (Sunset No. 1); and a vertical shaft, 556ft (169m) deep (Sunset No. 2). As the Sunset reef was worked in conjunction with the General Grant and the Duke of Edinburgh reefs in the New Ravenswood Company era, its exact total production of gold is hard to calculate; but from 1876 to 1912 the reef probably produced about 177,000oz of gold; and probably most of the 22, 000oz that the company extracted from 1912 - 1917.
The General Grant, one of the most productive reefs on the goldfield, running roughly north-south just east of the Sunset reef, was worked almost continuously to the late 1880s, and periodically thereafter. By 1895 returns had diminished, due to the small size of the reef and its highly refractory ore. In 1900, the General Grant had a vertical shaft to 110ft (34m), and then an underlie of 610ft (186m), the bottom of the latter being 450ft (137m) below the level of the shaft mouth; but operations were ‘almost completely suspended’ as the New Ravenswood Company concentrated on the Sunset reef. To 1900 the General Grant had produced 23, 651oz of gold; and after crushing of ore from the mine resumed at the beginning of 1903, it was treated with ore from the Sunset. On average, 40 men were employed on the mine in 1905. In 1908 the powerhouse for both the Sunset and the General Grant mines was situated on the General Grant lease, with three Cornish boilers. By 1912 the General Grant had produced about 36,000oz of gold.
To the east of the General Grant was the Duke of Edinburgh reef, running roughly northwest-southeast. This was one of the early reefs discovered on the goldfield; and in 1872 it was identified by Warden TR Hackett as one of the 28 principal reefs. It was worked in several episodes prior to the 1890s, and was re-opened in 1891, producing 1286oz of gold during 1891 - 1895. In 1908 the mine was taken over by the New Ravenswood Company, and was reorganised as an underlie shaft with haulage machinery from the Golden Hill mine, being worked in conjunction with the General Grant until 1917.
Along with his modernisation of the goldfield’s best mines, Wilson also abandoned chlorination at the Mabel Mill, increased the mill’s crushing capacity to 30 stamps (by 1904), and introduced the first Wilfley tables to Queensland. Crushing resumed in January 1900. Wilson improved metallurgical extraction by ‘postponing amalgamation of the free gold till the great bulk of the sulphides had been removed by concentration’. The ore was crushed in stampers without using mercury. Then, using the Wilfley tables, the heavier Galena (lead sulphide ore) and free gold was separated from the lighter sulphides. The free gold and galena was then ground in Berdan pans with mercury, while the remaining sulphides (containing iron, zinc and copper) were dispatched to the Aldershot works (near Maryborough) for smelting. In 1902 - 1903, a raff wheel, 14.5m in diameter, was built at the Mabel Mill to lift tailings (post-treatment residue) up to a flume, which carried them over to the south side of Elphinstone Creek, where they could be treated with cyanide. The cyanide works (of which remnants still remain south of Elphinstone Creek) was erected circa 1904. A 21m long girder bridge was constructed across the creek to carry steam water pipes and electric cable from the Mabel Mill to the new works, which eventually comprised two Krupp ball mills and 12 Wilfley’s tables.
Due to the New Ravenswood Company’s efforts, the goldfield’s production increased between 1899 and 1905. Gold recovery increased from 18, 016oz in 1899 to 24, 832oz in 1900 and to 42, 465oz in 1905. The New Ravenswood Company paid impressive 50% dividends to its shareholders in 1901, 1902, and 1904; and 75% in 1903.
The productivity of Ravenswood’s mines during the New Ravenswood Company era was also reflected in the goldfield’s population, which rose from 3420 in 1901 to its peak of 4707 in 1903. The 1903 population included 215 Chinese, 89 of these being alluvial miners. In 1905 two Chinese were listed as ‘storekeepers and grocers’.
The population increase led to a building boom in the first decade of the 20th Century. Hundreds of new houses, the town’s first two brick hotels – the Imperial hotel (1901) and the Railway Hotel (1902) – as well as brick shops such as Thorp’s Building (1903), and the brick Ravenswood Ambulance Station (1904) were constructed in this period; the use of brick being spurred by the threat of fire. The New Ravenswood Company also rebuilt the mining landscape in and around the town, with expansion of the Mabel Mill, and new headframes and winders, magazines, boilers, and brick smokestacks erected beside all the principal shafts.
However, not all Wilson’s ventures in this period were successful. In 1902 he floated Deep Mines Ltd, with a capital of £100, 000, to sink a shaft east of the New Ravenswood Company’s leases. This mine (also within the Ravenswood Mining Landscape) was an ambitious attempt to reach a presumed intersection of the General Grant and Sunset reefs at depth. Using the capital raised, Wilson built a model mine and mill. The shaft was started in late 1902-early 1903, and construction work on the buildings and machinery was completed later in 1903. The mine reached 512m, the deepest on the goldfield, with extensive crosscutting and driving, but only about 240oz of gold was recovered. No ore was crushed at all in 1908. By 1910 a new shaft was being sunk ‘near the western boundary’; but the mine was abandoned in 1911, and never worked again. Wilson’s London investors lost at least £65,000.
The Deep’s mill, built nearby and operational by 1906, was a smaller version of the Mabel Mill, with gravity stamps, Wilfley tables, and a cyanide plant. Its site, adjacent to the mine, ran counter to the normal practice of siting mills near water courses. With the failure of the Deep mine, it milled ore from other mines until about 1917.
Another mine, the Grand Junction, was located north of the New Ravenswood Company’s most productive mines, in the Ravenswood Mining Landscape. The Grand Junction Consolidated Gold Mining Company was formed in 1900, and a shaft was sunk in 1901 (probably the No. 1 shaft on the Grand Junction Lease No. 520). In 1902 another exploration ‘deep shaft’ (No. 2) was sunk at the southwest boundary of the Grand Junction Lease No.503. The Grand Junction mine was another failed attempt to locate a presumed junction of the General Grant and Sunset reefs at depth; by 1908 it was owned by the New Ravenswood Company. Total production was about 425oz of gold.
Slightly more successful was the Grant and Sunset Extended mine, at the southern end of the Ravenswood Mining landscape. This was a deep shaft sunk by the Grant and Sunset Extended Gold Mining Company, a Charters Towers-owned company with Wilson as its local director. During the 19th Century, small mines had been operated in the Rob Roy reef, to the southeast. The Grant and Sunset Extended was floated in 1902, the intent being to locate the General Grant and Sunset reefs south of Buck Reef. The plant and buildings of the Yellow Jack mine, southeast of Ravenswood, were re-erected on the site. The shaft was down 70ft (21m) in 1902 and 930ft (283m) by 1908, with 50 men employed at the mine by the later date. The mine closed by 1910, but was worked on tribute until 1917, with about 15,000oz of gold obtained over 1904 - 1918.
The boom period at Ravenswood did not last. As well as losing money on the Deep and Grand Junction mines, the New Ravenswood Company faced the closure of the Aldershot works in 1906, and declining yields from 1908 to 1912. Although Wilson experimented with flotation (agitating crushed ore in oil and water, and extracting fine gold particles on the surface of air bubbles) and cyanide processes at the Mabel Mill, it was too late to save his company. The Shelmalier had closed by 1904, the Black Jack in 1909, and the Melaneur in 1910. By that year, the General Grant, Sunset, Duke of Edinburgh, and London North (obtained 1910) were the New Ravenswood Company’s only producing mines.
Few new buildings were constructed in Ravenswood after 1905. The hospital closed in 1908. That year the goldfield’s population consisted of 4141 Europeans (including 2625 women and children) and 181 Chinese (including 94 alluvial miners). This dropped to 2581, including 92 Chinese, by 1914.
Increased costs and industrial disputes in the 1910s hastened the end of the New Ravenswood Company era. During a miner’s strike between December 1912 and July 1913, over lay-offs, the fresh vegetables and business loans provided by Ravenswood’s Chinese community helped keep the town going. Although the miners won, it was a hollow victory, as the company could only afford to re-employ a few of the men. World War I (1914 - 1918) then increased labour and material costs for the New Ravenswood Company. The London North mine closed in 1915, and on the 24th of March 1917 the New Ravenswood Company ceased operations; ending large-scale mining in Ravenswood for the next 70 years.
By 1917, the Ravenswood goldfield had produced over 850, 000oz of gold (nearly a quarter coming from the Sunset mine), and 1, 000, 000oz of silver; making it the fifth largest gold producer in Queensland, after Charters Towers, Mount Morgan, Gympie, and the Palmer Goldfield. Ravenswood was also the second largest producer of reef gold in north Queensland, after Charters Towers.
Small scale mining and re-treatment (1919 - 1960s):
After 1917 the Ravenswood goldfield entered a period of hibernation, with intermittent small-scale attempts at mining. In 1919, Ravenswood Gold Mines Ltd took over some of Wilson’s leases and renovated the Deep mine’s mill, but obtained poor returns. Ravenswood Gold Mines also worked the Duke of Edinburgh from 1919 to 1930, with good returns reported in 1924. The General Grant and Sunset were also worked on a small scale from 1919 - 1921, while the Mabel Mill continued to provide crushing services for the limited local mining.
Consequently, Ravenswood’s population declined and the town shrank physically. In 1921 the town’s population fell below 1000, and by 1923 there were 530 people left, including 8 Chinese. During the 1920s, prior to the closure of the railway branch line to Ravenswood in 1930, hundreds of the town’s timber buildings were dismantled and railed away. By 1927, only the two brick hotels remained operating as hotels. The Ravenswood Shire was abolished in 1929, and by 1934 only 357 people remained in the town.
Despite this decline, some gold was still being extracted. There was a small increase in gold production between 1923 and 1927, and due to the gold price rise of the 1930s, some mines were re-worked and efforts were also made to treat the old mullock heaps (waste rock from mining) and tailings dumps with improved cyanide processes. Between 1931 and 1942, 12, 253oz of gold was obtained from the goldfield, the peak year being 1940.
A number of companies were active in Ravenswood in the 1930s-early 1940s. In 1933, the North Queensland Gold Mining Development Company took up leases along Buck Reef and reopened the Golden Hill mine, and the following year their operations were taken over by Gold Mines of Australia Ltd. The 1870s Eureka mine (near the Imperial Hotel) was revived by James Judge in 1934. In 1935 the Ravenswood Concentrates Syndicate began re-treating the Grant mullock heaps in the remaining stampers at the Mabel Mill, and dewatering the Sunset No. 2 shaft; while the Sunset Extended Gold Mining Company, with James Judge as manager, dewatered the Grant and Sunset Extended shafts (which connected to the Sunset, General Grant and Duke of Edinburgh shafts), and re-timbered the Grant and Sunset Extended, General Grant, and Sunset underlie (No. 1) shafts. The London North mine was reopened by R J Hedlefs in 1937, and Basque miners were working the Sunset No. 2 shaft at this time.
The Little Grand Junction mine, located at the intersection of Siggers Street and School Street, on the old Grand Junction Lease No. 520, was operated from 1937 - 1942 by local miners Henry John Bowrey and John Thomas Blackmore. Five men were employed at the mine in 1940. The shaft had apparently been sunk previously by the Grand Junction Consolidated Gold Mining Company; and Bowrey and Party reconditioned it and extended the existing workings.
In 1938, Archibald and Heuir set up a mill on the bank of One Mile Creek to treat mullock dumps, and the Ravenswood Gold Mining Syndicate (formed 1937, with James Judge as manager) began treating the mullock dumps of the Sunset mine in late 1938. The same syndicate also dewatered and reopened part of the Grant and Sunset Extended; and the Grand Junction mine was reopened by Judge circa 1939 - 1942.
The Ravenswood Gold Mining Syndicate’s (Judge’s) mill initially consisted of 10 head of stamps obtained from the Mother Lode Mill at Mount Wright (northwest of Ravenswood), powered by a diesel engine. The ore was crushed by the stamper battery, concentrated with Wilfley tables, and then either treated with cyanide or sent to the Chillagoe smelters. Initial success with some rich ore led to enlargement of the mill to 30 stamps in 1939 - 40. A Stirling boiler and a 250hp engine were also obtained from the Burdekin meatworks (Sellheim), and a rock breaker, elevator, and conveyor were installed. However, the upgraded mill proved to be overpowered and required a lot of timber fuel; the brick foundations used for the machinery were not strong enough; and the best ore from the Sunset had already been treated, so the mill closed early in 1942 and the plant was moved to Cloncurry.
Also in 1938, Maxwell Partridge and William Ralston installed a new plant south of Elphinstone Creek, to the immediate west of the Mabel Mill’s old cyanide works, to re-treat the old tailings with cyanide. A ball mill, filter, and other plant were purchased from the Golden Mile, Cracow in 1939, while later that year a suction gas engine and flotation machine were also installed. This operation closed circa 1942, and the coloured sands on the site today are residues from the flotation process: the yellow sand is from the floatation of iron pyrites; the grey sands are copper tailings; and the black material is zinc tailings.
There was limited activity on the goldfield in the late 1940s to early 1960s. The Empire Gold Mining Syndicate treated mullock dumps from The Irish Girl, London, and Sunset mines from 1946 to 1949, as well as some of the dumps from the Grand Junction (1947). The Duke of Edinburgh mine was briefly reopened by Cuevas and Wilson in 1947, and the Cornish boilers on the site (one with the maker’s mark ‘John Danks & Son Pty Ltd makers Melbourne) may relate to this (unsuccessful) operation. Percy Kean reopened the Great Extended mine at Totley in 1947, and later purchased Partridge’s mill in 1951 to use it as a flotation plant to treat the silver-lead ore from Totley, adding a diesel engine, stonebreaker, Wilfley tables, and classifier. The Totley mines closed in 1954, although the Great Extended mine was briefly sub-leased by Silver Horizons No Liability, in 1964. Partridge’s mill was closed circa 1965.
Other attempts were made in the early 1950s to rework old sites. A Townsville syndicate led by Leslie Cook and George Blackmore reopened the Grand Junction mine in 1951, but it soon closed. James Judge also recommenced gold mining at Donnybrook, but closed in 1954; while 900 tons of tailings from the Deep mine’s mill site were taken for re-treatment at Heuir’s cyanide plant in the early 1950s.
A new industry:
In the 1960 and 1970s, Ravenswood’s population shrank to its nadir of about 70 people. At the same time, there was a growing nostalgic interest in old towns in Australia. In 1968 the landscape of Ravenswood was described in romantic terms: ‘Mute testimonials are the numerous mullock heaps which dot the countryside; the rusty remains of steam engines; stampers which were used to crush stone; and collapsed cyanide vats… Derelict poppet-heads…stand above deep, abandoned shafts. Colossal columns of chimney stacks rise majestically from the entanglement of rubber vines and Chinese apple trees.’ Some locals realised that preserving the town’s surviving historic buildings and structures was necessary to attract tourists and create a new local industry.
From this time onwards the town’s mining heritage was seen as an asset. The National Trust of Queensland met with locals in 1974, and a conservation plan for the town was published in 1975. Later, the town sites of Totley and Ravenswood were both entered into the National Trust of Queensland Register. Comments from an International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) trip to northern Australia in 1978 included ‘Ravenswood…is one of the most evocative (gold towns of Australia) and this must be preserved. A policy of “all that is necessary but as little as possible” must be strongly pursued’. The increased population of North Queensland, longer paid holidays, improved roads, and the rise of car ownership after World War II, all increased visitation to Ravenswood, as did the completion of a road past Ravenswood to the Burdekin Dam, in the 1980s. As a result, the town and its mining landscape have been represented in brochures, art, and photography. In particular, the landmark qualities of the tall brick chimneys are a distinctive feature in representations of Ravenswood.
Modern operations:
However, gold mining recommenced at Ravenswood in the 1980s, due to a rise in the gold price and the efficiencies gained from open cut mining and modern cyanide metallurgical extraction processes. From 1983 - 1986 the Northern Queensland Gold Company Ltd conducted agglomeration heap-leaching (spraying a sodium cyanide solution on previously mined material heaped on a plastic membrane), in the process removing a landmark tailings dump at King’s mine in Totley, and mullock heaps from the Grant and Sunset mines. In 1987 Carpentaria Gold commenced open cut mining of the Buck reef (the Buck Reef West pit) near the old Grant and Sunset mines on the south side of the town. Later, pits were dug further east along the reef. Some underground mining was also undertaken from the Buck Reef West pit until 1993, which broke into the old workings of the General Grant, Sunset, and Duke of Edinburgh mines. The old headframe at the Grant and Sunset Extended was demolished in 1988, and replaced with a new steel headframe, which was used until 1993 and then removed. The Melaneur-Shelmalier-Black Jack-Overlander reef complex, on the north side of the town, was mined as an open cut 1990 - 1991, before being backfilled as a golf course. The Nolan’s Gully open cut commenced in 1993.
Although modern mining revived the economy of the town, it did not replicate the building boom of the early 20th century.
The heritage significance of Ravenswood’s surviving mining infrastructure was recognised in a 1996 Queensland Mining Heritage Places Study by Jane Lennon & Associates and Howard Pearce; and a 2000 Conservation Management Plan by Peter Bell. In 2006, the population of Ravenswood, the oldest surviving inland town in north Queensland, was 191.
By the mid-2010s the population of Ravenswood stood at 255 people.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register & Australian Bureau of Statistics.
"Loved and admired across the board, tousle-haired, straight talking Rita Banerji is a conservation filmmaker par excellence. Starting out as an apprentice under the legendary filmmaker Mike Pandey. Banerji struck out on her own to found Dusty Foot Productions. Her portfolio includes several path breaking projects in the capacity of director, producer, editor and cameraperson. She has spent days out on the field documenting communities and wildlife across India’s vast geography -- she has walked with the honey-hunting Kurumbas in the Nilgiris; gone to sea with the transient traditional fisherfolk of Jambudwip; documented the realities of turtle conservation and traditional fisheries in Orissa; lived with the women's seaweed collectors of Gulf of Mannar; filmed the ‘Save the Chiru’ Campaign and alternative livelihood options for the shahtoosh shawl weaver community in the high Himalaya, and more."