Crafting. Creating. A writer thinks beyond words.

 

From the recent "The Writer" Photoshoot, featuring my friend and Script Writer Darren Page.

 

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Morecambe and Wise

Bring You Sunshine

Starline SRS 5066

1971

 

Today, in the popular imagination, they are inextricably linked with their block-busting 1970s show which broke records and entertained (nearly almost) an entire nation, but Morecambe and Wise had to work long and hard before they became successful and ubiquitous household names. From their first meeting in a touring troupe way back in 1940, the duo served their apprenticeship in a succession of venues all around the UK, touring, struggling and grafting, all the time striving to perfect their act and develop their unique sense of timing and delivery.

 

Ernie Wise though was an ambitious man, with an eye always firmly set on achieving enduring greatness and he had long coveted a television career. The nascent medium during their early years had appealed to his style of intimate joke telling, a style too subtle to be truly effective on variety stages.

 

As long ago as 1948 he had been writing increasingly insistent letters to the BBC begging for a chance to make a TV show.

 

After a disastrous, critically-panned television debut back in 1954 with the BBC series Running Wild, a sorry chapter that saw them pleading for the show to be taken off air, the duo had been brave enough to return to television a second time and try to establish themselves all over again.

 

Over the years they made numerous supporting appearances on the likes of The Winifred Atwell Show and the popular variety-fest that was Sunday Night at the London Palladium, diligently working away to establishing their reputation anew.

 

Finally in 1961, the hard work of Morecambe and Wise was rewarded by omnipotent showbiz mogul Bernard Delfont, who granted them their own ATV series, The Morecambe and Wise Show.

 

It was a brave decision, but I think it is fair to say that Delfont’s impetuous showbiz gamble was vindicated many, many times over.

 

For the next two decades Morecambe and Wise dominated television like few acts before or since, achieving huge viewing figures never likely to be surpassed, and forging the template for a comedy double act, a template that has been copied many times but never bettered.

 

The material on the album Bring You Sunshine is made up of songs and sketches penned by Morecambe and Wise’s regular scriptwriters Dick Hills and Sid Green.

 

Over six series of The Morecambe and Wise Show, Hills and Green did much to establish the personas and characters of Morecambe and Wise that would last the rest of their career.

 

Ernie Wise, a sensible sort with his ‘short fat hairy legs’ was the butt of many jokes and Eric Morecambe was a wisecracking interfering jester full of witty retorts and mischief.

 

The efforts of Morecambe and Wise and their writers paid off and they duly became bona fide TV stars.

 

By 1968 though their contract with ATV was due for renewal.

 

It was during negotiations over this contract that the particular die was cast which was to change British comedy forever.

 

In an office with Bernard Delfont’s brother Lew Grade, thick with the heady fog of his gargantuan cigars, Eric and Ernie picked a fight with one of the most powerful and obstinate figures in showbiz.

 

And won.

 

Eric and Ernie insisted that more money should be spent on their show and demanded that all their new shows be shown in colour.

 

This outraged the pug-faced cheroot-chomping mogul. It was rare that Lew Grade made mistakes in business but by refusing to accommodate the artistic and professional ambitions of Morecambe and Wise he effectively released them into the clutches of Bill Cotton over at the BBC.

 

Cotton realised immediately the gift he had received and saw to it that Morecambe and Wise would become the huge stars that they always believed they could be.

 

But there was yet more drama in the offing before they could go on to become true legends of the small screen.

 

In November 1968, just after their first BBC series had aired, Eric Morecambe suffered a major heart attack.

 

On doctor’s order he was forced to ease back on performing and the second BBC series was postponed indefinitely.

 

It was six months before Morecambe and Wise would appear in public together again, and before their TV series could return they were stunned by the defection of their tried and trusted writers, the reliable and dependable Green and Hill who had done so much to make them stars.

 

Unsettled by the long period of inactivity and fearful for their own future, Dick Hills and Sid Green were lured away from writing solely for Morecambe and Wise by their arch-nemesis Lew Grade who offered the writers a generous contract to sign exclusively for ATV.

 

They left without informing their former employers in a move which could have easily meant the premature end of Morecambe and Wise as a going concern.

 

Luckily for them though, a former Scouse market trader turned gag-writer named Eddie Braben was free after being ditched by Ken Dodd.

 

By building on the foundations that Green and Hill had established, the surreal wordplay and comic fantasies of Eddie Braben would make Morecambe and Wise undoubtedly the biggest, most popular comedy stars in the UK.

 

Bring You Sunshine captures the essence of Morecambe and Wise at this pivotal point in their long comedy career.

 

It was released in 1971 on EMI’s Starline label and gathered together a selection of much-loved comic routines created by Dick Hills and Sid Green for the 1960s TV series.

 

The sketches are, with a few exceptions, fairly insubstantial.

 

Ton Up Boy seems an obvious inspiration for Dick Emery and Tape Recorder is an enchanting piece of domestic comic whimsy.

 

The remaining sketches such as Indians and Get It Right Corporal are so brief as to almost be one line gags. Harmless filler really but not the meaty chunks that Morecambe and Wise fans were after.

 

The meaty comedy chunks in thick marrowbone stand-up jelly were delivered by the comic songs.

 

As with the sketches, the songs are also written by Dick Hills and Sid Green, with Walter Ridley taking charge of musical duties.

 

They are without exception an absolute joy, full of charm and gentle subtle wit, much like Morecambe and Wise’s TV act.

 

They do not try to force themselves on the audience, instead relying on clever, well rehearsed repartee. Singing the Blues is a faithfully rendered pastiche of white man blues and there is also an early prototype version of Eric’s brilliant mangling of Grieg’s piano concerto to enjoy, a routine which was later resurrected for none other than the great Andre Preview.

 

I’d love to put the entire album up for you to listen, but for the sake of brevity and bandwidth, I have selected just one track.

 

Bring Me Sunshine was perhaps the obvious choice, played as the end credits rolled on their TV shows and very much the signature theme of Morecambe and Wise.

 

As ever though, I prefer to spin the more obscure and unappreciated tracks.

 

So to play us out, here is Song of Youth, a wonderful comic song full of domestic violence, hard drinking, promiscuity and lunacy.

 

Somewhere in here lurk the spirits of John Osborne and Les Dawson, with perhaps just a dash of Violet Carson. Bring us sunshine lads:

 

downstairslounge.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/morecambe-and-w...

Italian postcard. Photo: Paramount. Nancy Kwan in Drop Dead Darling / Arrivederci, Baby! (Ken Hughes, 1966).

 

Chinese-American actress Nancy Kwan (1939) played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian ancestry in major Hollywood film roles. She is best known for her debut as a free-spirited Hong Kong prostitute who captivates artist William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong (1960). She followed it the next year with the hit musical, Flower Drum Song (1961). Kwan spent the 1960s commuting between film roles in America and Europe.

 

Nancy Kwan Ka Shen (Chinese: 關家蒨) was born in Hong Kong in 1939 and grew up in Kowloon Tong. She is the daughter of Kwan Wing Hong, a Cantonese architect and Marquita Scott, a European model of English and Scottish ancestry. Kwan has an older brother, Ka Keung. In fear of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong during World War II, Wing Hong, in the guise of a coolie, escaped from Hong Kong to North China in Christmas 1941 with his two children, whom he hid in wicker baskets. Kwan and her brother were transported by servants, evading Japanese sentries. They remained in exile in western China for five years until the war ended, after which they returned to Hong Kong and lived in a spacious, contemporary home her father designed. Scott escaped to England and never rejoined the family. Kwan's parents divorced when she was two years old. Her mother later moved to New York and married an American. Remaining in Hong Kong with the children, her father married a Chinese woman, whom Kwan called "Mother". Her father and her stepmother raised her, in addition to her brother and five half-brothers and half-sisters Five of Kwan's siblings became lawyers. Kwan attended the Catholic Maryknoll Convent School until she was 13 years old, after which she travelled to Kingsmoor School in Glossop, England a boarding school that her brother, Ka Keung, was then attending. Her brother studied to become an architect and she studied to become a dancer, soon also at the Royal Ballet School in London. Afterwards, she travelled back to Hong Kong, where she started a ballet school. Stage producer Ray Stark posted an advertisement in the Hong Kong Tiger Standard (later renamed The Standard) regarding auditions for the character Suzie Wong for a play. Kwan was discovered by Stark in a film studio constructed by her architect father. After auditioning for Stark, she was asked to screen test to play a character in the film The World of Suzie Wong. Kwan did three screen tests, and a deadlock existed between whether to choose Kwan or France Nuyen, who played Suzie Wong on stage. Owing to Kwan's lack of acting experience, at Stark's request, she travelled to the United States, where she attended acting school in Hollywood and resided in the Hollywood Studio Club, a chaperoned dormitory, with other junior actresses. She later moved to New York. Kwan signed a seven-year contract with Stark's Seven Arts Productions at a beginning salary of $300 a week though she was not given a distinct role. When The World of Suzie Wong began to tour, Kwan was assigned the part of a bargirl. In addition to her small supporting character role, Kwan became an understudy for France Nuyen. Though Stark and the male lead William Holden preferred Kwan, despite her somewhat apprehensive demeanour during the screen test, she did not get the role. Paramount favoured the eminent France Nuyen, who had been widely praised for her performance in the film South Pacific (1958) Stark acquiesced to Paramount's wishes. Nuyen received the role and Kwan later took the place of Nuyen on Broadway. In a September 1960 interview with Associated Press journalist Bob Thomas, she said, "I was bitterly disappointed, and I almost quit and went home when I didn't get the picture." In 1959, one month after Nuyen was selected for the film role and while Kwan was touring in Toronto, Stark told her to screen test again for the film. Nuyen, who was in an unstable relationship with Marlon Brando, had a nervous breakdown and was fired from the role because of her erratic actions. The film's director, Jean Negulesco, was fired and replaced by Richard Quine. Kwan began filming in London with co-star William Holden.

 

The World of Suzie Wong (Richard Quine, 1960) was a "box-office sensation". Critics lavished praise on Kwan for her performance. She was given the nickname "Chinese Bardot" for her unforgettable dance performance. Kwan and two other actresses, Ina Balin and Hayley Mills were awarded the Golden Globe for the "Most Promising Newcomer–Female" in 1960. Scholar Jennifer Leah Chan of New York University wrote that Suzie provided an Asian actress—Kwan—with the most significant Hollywood role since actress Anna May Wong's success in the 1920s. Kwan was on the October 1960 cover of Life, cementing her status as an eminent sex symbol in the 1960s. In 1961, Nancy Kwan starred in Flower Drum Song (Henry Koster, 1961) in a related role. The film, based on the Broadway musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, was distinguished for being the first major Hollywood feature film with an all-Asian cast. It would be also the last film to do so for more than 30 years. Her prior ballet education provided a strong foundation for her role in Flower Drum Song, where she had much space to dance. After starring in The World of Suzie Wong and Flower Drum Song, Kwan's fame peaked in 1962. As a Hollywood icon, Kwan lived in a house atop Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. She commuted in a white British sports car and danced to Latin verses. The 22-year-old Kwan was dating Swiss actor Maximilian Schell. Kwan's success in her early career was not mirrored in later years, due to the cultural nature of 1960s America. Kwan had to journey to Europe and Hong Kong to escape the ethnic typecasting in Hollywood that confined her largely to Asian roles despite her Eurasian appearance. Her third film was the British drama The Main Attraction (Daniel Petrie, 1962) with Pat Boone. She played an Italian circus performer who was the love interest of Boone's character. While she was filming in the Austrian Alps, she met Peter Pock, a hotelier and ski teacher, with whom she immediately fell in love. After several weeks, the two married and resided in Innsbruck, Austria. Kwan later gave birth to Bernhard "Bernie" Pock. Her contract with Seven Arts led her to travel around the world to make films. In 1963, Kwan starred as the title character of the comedy Tamahine (Philip Leacock, 1963), opposite Dennis Price. She played an English-Tahitian ward of the headmaster at an old English public school. In the aviation disaster film Fate Is the Hunter (Ralph Nelson, 1964), her seventh film, Kwan played an ichthyologist opposite Glenn Ford. It was her first role as a Eurasian character. Kwan's roles were predominantly comic characters. She divorced Peter Pock in 1968. Kwan met Bruce Lee when he choreographed the martial arts moves in the spy comedy The Wrecking Crew (Phil Karlson, 1969), starring Dean Martin as Matt Helm. In Kwan's role in the film, she fought the character played by Sharon Tate by throwing a flying kick. Her martial arts move was based not on karate training, but on her dance foundation. In 2019, the film was referenced and briefly seen in Quentin Tarantino's film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in which Tate is shown enjoying the film at the Fox Bruin Theater. Kwan became close friends with Lee and met his wife and two children. In the 1970s, both Kwan and Lee returned to Hong Kong, where they carried on their companionship.

 

Nancy Kwan married Hollywood scriptwriter David Giler in July 1970 in a civil ceremony in Carson City, Nevada. That year, Kwan returned to Hong Kong with her son because her father was sick. She initially intended to remain for one year to assist him, but ultimately remained for about seven years. In 1972 she divorced Giler. She did not stop her work, starring as Dr. Sue in the action film Wonder Women (Robert Vincent O'Neil, 1973), Supercock (Gus Trikonis, 1975), and Fear/Night Creature (Lee Madden, 1978) with Donald Pleasance and Ross Hagen. The latter introduced her to filmmaker Norbert Meisel, who became her third husband. While in Hong Kong, Kwan founded a production company, Nancy Kwan Films, which made dozens of commercials for the Southeast Asia market. In 1979, she returned to the United States, because Kwan wanted her son Bernie to finish his schooling there. There she played characters in the television series Fantasy Island (1978), Knots Landing (1984), and The A-Team (1986). In 1987, Nancy Kwan co-owned the dim sum restaurant, Joss. Kwan, producer Ray Stark, restaurateur and Hong Kong film director Cecile Tang financed the restaurant, located on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. In 1993, Kwan played Gussie Yang, a tough-talking, soft-hearted Hong Kong restaurateur, in the fictional Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (Rob Cohen, 1993). starring Jason Scott Lee. She played a pivotal role in the film, a character based on Seattle restaurateur and political leader Ruby Chow who hires Bruce Lee as a dishwasher and gives him the funds to open a martial arts school. She also wrote, directed, and starred in a film about Eurasians, Loose Woman With No Face (Nancy Kwan, 1993). She was asked about whether she was confronted with racism as a leading Asian Hollywood actress in the 1960s. Kwan replied, "That was 30 years ago and (prejudice) wasn't such a heavy issue then. I was just in great Broadway productions that were turned into films. I personally never felt any racial problems in Hollywood." In the 1990s, she faced a severe shortage of strong roles. She attributed this to both her age and the movie enterprise's aversion to selecting Asians for non-Asian roles. In earlier years, she was able to play an Italian and a Tahitian. She passed on a role in The Joy Luck Club (1993) because the filmmakers refused to excise a line calling The World of Suzie Wong a "...horrible racist film". In 1993, Kwan co-starred in the two-character play Arthur and Leila about two siblings who struggle with their Chinese identities, and in 1994 she assumed the role of 52-year-old Martha in Singapore Repertory Theatre's showing 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' by Edward Albee. She and her husband produced the feature film Biker Poet. of which Bernie was the director and an actor. In 1996, when he was 33, Kwan's son, Bernie, died after contracting AIDS. Four years after his death, poet and actress Amber Tamblyn compiled her debut poetry book 'Of the Dawn' and dedicated it to Pock. She acted in the film Biker Poet with him when she was nine. Into the 1990s, Kwan appeared in television commercials and appeared in infomercials as the spokesperson for the cosmetic Oriental Pearl Cream. Kwan has been involved in philanthropy for AIDS awareness. In 1997, she published 'A Celebration of Life – Memories of My Son'. In 2006, Kwan reunited with Flower Drum Song co-star James Shigeta to perform A. R. Gurney's two-person play Love Letters. Kwan appeared in the documentary Hollywood Chinese (Arthur Dong, 2007). Kwan and her husband Norbert Meisel wrote, directed, and produced Ray of Sunshine (Norbert Meisel, 2007), a Bildungsroman film starring Cheyenne Rushing and with Kwan in a supporting role. Kwan wrote an introduction for the 2008 book 'For Goodness Sake: A Novel of the Afterlife of Suzie Wong' by James Clapp. During her career, Kwan has appeared in two television series and over 50 films. Kwan currently resides in Los Angeles and has family members in Hong Kong. She recently appeared in the feature Paint It Black (Amber Tamblyn, 2016), and the documentary Be Water (Bao Nguyen, 2020) about Bruce Lee.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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

PHOTO: MIDTOWN MANHATTAN. NY 1950s

wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21249&page=10

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" LET'S START THE AUCTION ! " -

BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 18 November-December 1952 Cover: Gil KANE & Bernard SACHS

www.comics.org/issue/10050/

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Big Town @ Wikipedia

Big Town is a popular long-running radio drama series which was later adapted to both film and television and a comic book published by DC Comics.

Comic book

 

DC's Big Town comic book ran 50 issues, from January, 1951 to March-April, 1958. The comic book was edited by Whitney Ellsworth, and the contributing artists included Dan Barry, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, John Lehti, Manny Stallman and Alex Toth, with most of the later scripts written by John Broome.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Town

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Big Town ( DC )

# 1 January 1951 - # 50 March-April 1958

 

Publication Notes

Actual editors: Jack Schiff (#1-2); Julius Schwartz (#3-50).

Script and art credits confirmed by copies of DC editorial records received by Gene Reed from E. Nelson Bridwell in 1986. Changes in the handwriting on the editorial records indicate that Schwartz start keeping the records with one story in issue #3 and all records thereafter. This would indicate that Schwartz took over and finished work on issue #3 and assumed full assignment of script and art and editorial with issue #4.

 

Notes

Licensed title based on the radio and television shows.

www.comics.org/series/790/

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Big Town # 29 @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )

mikegrost.com/bigtown.htm

 

# 29 (September-October 1954)

Steve Wilson's Night Beat; Crime Goes to the Fair; The Riddle of the Roving Reporter

 

Crime Goes to the Fair (1954).

Steve discovers that crime waves are sweeping the country near Big Town. Delightfully inventive tale.

 

Broome's often wrote sf stories about worlds ruled by sinister dictatorships: see his Qward stories in Green Lantern. This story deals with a comic variation on this: a zany look at the criminal underworld. This is a whole miniature "society" ruled by criminals, a pocket version of the serious criminal worlds in his sf. This story also burlesques the many benevolent expositions that will appear in later Big Town tales, such as "Passkey to Big Town" (1957) and "Theft of the Billion-Carat Diamond" (1957). Everybody in Big Town wants to take part in large public institutions. Why shouldn't crooks? Broome will later develop other comic tales about people who support the underworld, such as his Paul Gambi story, "The Mystery of Flash's Third Identity" (Flash #141, December 1963). Flash also goes undercover in that tale, just as Steve does in this.

 

Carnival stories in Broome seem to take place underground. The basement scenes here resemble the maze of corridors containing dressing rooms underneath the circus in "The 3-Ring Murder Case" (1954).

**

 

Steve Wilson's Night Beat (1954).

Steve is a guest lecturer in the evening class at Big Town University taught by Lorelei Kilbourne. Steve will later teach a whole journalism course of his own at the same school in "Underground Trail of Peril" (#46, July-August 1957).

 

The plot here about undergrad Kenneth Mitchell is in the tradition of other Broome characters who are trying to find their place in life. Mitchell has given up more than other Broome characters - he is in the lost stage, without having figured anything out.

 

The bonding between Steve and Kenneth anticipates the stories about male friendship Broome would write in The Flash. We get a window into Steve's feelings here.

 

Unless I'm greatly mistaken, the trees on the beautiful University campus look like palms. This would place Big Town in the same latitudes as Los Angeles or Miami. This is in contradiction to nearly all other Big Town stories, which depict it as a fictionalized version of New York City. Perhaps I'm just not reading Stallman's vegetation right.

 

The campus here is very beautiful, with modern looking buildings and gorgeous landscaping. Stallman includes an overhead view of the campus (p2), and a close up view of one of the buildings (p8). There is also a good nocturnal landscape of a mansion (p3), with its grounds and a curving road. Stallman liked curving paths and roads in his tales. These overhead views of landscapes look like maps or models, such as one would use for model trains.

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The Riddle of the Roving Reporter (1954).

Illustrated Press foreign correspondent Courtney Kane behaves oddly after returning to the United States after five years covering the news in a dictatorship.

 

This is one of the few Big Town tales with an international theme, along with "The Billion Dollar Captive" (1954). While that tale offered a sympathetic view of India, this story echoes Broome's concerns about totalitarianism. One suspects that the country of Rogravia is a Communist state behind the Iron Curtain, although this is never stated explicitly in the story, and Broome's negative portrait of dictatorships could also apply to right-wing dictatorships such as Franco's Spain.

 

Another foreign correspondent friend of Steve's will show up in "The Dangerous Coat of Dan Brewster" (1957). Both tales will begin with a similar opening situation - a foreign correspondent will return to Big Town after many years covering the news abroad - but then their plots will shift to completely different directions.

 

This story is more interesting for its lively art, than for its easily guessed mystery plot. The splash has Stallman's circular arcs mixed with straight lines. The later sections of the tale have many Stallman views of a factory.

mikegrost.com/bigtown.htm

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Big Town @ @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )

 

All Big Town stories are written by John Broome, with art by Manny Stallman, unless otherwise noted.

Big Town starred Steve Wilson, a talented newsman. Although Steve was the editor of the daily newspaper the Illustrated Press, he seemed to spend most of his time as a reporter, tracking down big stories.

The tales took place in a city named Big Town, which was clearly a thinly fictionalized version of New York City. Big Town was a detective comic book. Nearly all of the stories in Big Town had an element of crime. However, in many of the tales the crime element was fairly downplayed, with greater concentration on the life of a newspaperman, and the glamorous world of Big Town itself in the 1950's. Even in the pure detective tales, the creators were far more interested in the reporter detectives and their efforts to solve the case, than in the crooks.

 

Big Town was a popular radio program (1937-1951) and TV show (1950-1956). The comic book lasted a year and a half longer than the TV show, then folded. The phenomenon of a program existing in several different media forms - radio, TV, comics - is today called "convergence". Some pundits describe it as a feature of today's world, when most of the media are controlled by a few corporations.

But in actual fact,, a large number of DC's pre-Silver Age comics of the earlier 1950's were based on TV programs. Even Superman was a TV series during much of the 1950's. I have no statistics on how profitable this was for DC. Were these TV-tie comic books lucrative? Or were they a desperate attempt by the comic book industry to keep afloat in tough times? These are questions for which I have no answer.

By contrast, the Silver Age revival of super-heroes around 1958 led to comic books that were much more divorced in content from the rest of the mass media. Silver Age super-hero comics were largely a world unto themselves, utterly different from the TV shows and paperback books of their era.

 

Big Town was never noir. During the Broome years, the tales were optimistic. This was not the smug optimism sometimes associated with the 1950's.

 

Big Town was among the most realistic of comic books. "Realism" is a loaded word, one with many meanings. Big Town focused on non-science fiction stories about honest people who lived in modern day New York City. It was partly in the tradition of such prose mystery story collections about typical New Yorkers as William MacHarg's The Affairs of O'Malley (collected 1940) and Ellery Queen's Q.B.I. (1950 - 1953).

 

New York City itself was considered a fascinating subject in those days, and people wanted to read about the fascinating lives of people who lived there. These people did not have to be criminals or sleazy to be interesting; rather, readers wanted to know about the actual inhabitants of the city.

 

During its early issues (#1-13), Big Town was scripted by a huge variety of writers. Most of these pieces are not very good, although a few were excellent, especially the handful of scripts by France E. Herron and Robert Kanigher. From issue #14, many of the scripts were by John Broome, who had occasionally contributed scripts before; he eventually became the sole scriptwriter of the magazine. In #17, the magazine got its permanent artist, Manny Stallman. There is little discussion in this article of the early, poorer quality scripts.

mikegrost.com/bigtown.htm

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COVER GALLERY >> Big Town

www.comics.org/series/790/

AND

comicbookdb.com/title.php?ID=17964

AND

www.atomicavenue.com/atomic/TitleDetail.aspx?TitleID=15064

AND

www.comicvine.com/big-town/49-1404/

Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick university and a member of the Russell Group, an association of research-intensive UK universities.

 

The university finds its roots in the School of Medicine and Surgery (later the College of Medicine), established in 1834, and the College of Physical Science (later renamed Armstrong College), founded in 1871. These two colleges came to form the larger division of the federal University of Durham, with the Durham Colleges forming the other. The Newcastle colleges merged to form King's College in 1937. In 1963, following an Act of Parliament, King's College became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

The university subdivides into three faculties: the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; the Faculty of Medical Sciences; and the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering. The university offers around 175 full-time undergraduate degree programmes in a wide range of subject areas spanning arts, sciences, engineering and medicine, together with approximately 340 postgraduate taught and research programmes across a range of disciplines.[6] The annual income of the institution for 2022–23 was £592.4 million of which £119.3 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £558 million.

 

History

Durham University § Colleges in Newcastle

The establishment of a university in Newcastle upon Tyne was first proposed in 1831 by Thomas Greenhow in a lecture to the Literary and Philosophical Society. In 1832 a group of local medics – physicians George Fife (teaching materia medica and therapeutics) and Samuel Knott (teaching theory and practice of medicine), and surgeons John Fife (teaching surgery), Alexander Fraser (teaching anatomy and physiology) and Henry Glassford Potter (teaching chemistry) – started offering medical lectures in Bell's Court to supplement the apprenticeship system (a fourth surgeon, Duncan McAllum, is mentioned by some sources among the founders, but was not included in the prospectus). The first session started on 1 October 1832 with eight or nine students, including John Snow, then apprenticed to a local surgeon-apothecary, the opening lecture being delivered by John Fife. In 1834 the lectures and practical demonstrations moved to the Hall of the Company of Barber Surgeons to accommodate the growing number of students, and the School of Medicine and Surgery was formally established on 1 October 1834.

 

On 25 June 1851, following a dispute among the teaching staff, the school was formally dissolved and the lecturers split into two rival institutions. The majority formed the Newcastle College of Medicine, and the others established themselves as the Newcastle upon Tyne College of Medicine and Practical Science with competing lecture courses. In July 1851 the majority college was recognised by the Society of Apothecaries and in October by the Royal College of Surgeons of England and in January 1852 was approved by the University of London to submit its students for London medical degree examinations. Later in 1852, the majority college was formally linked to the University of Durham, becoming the "Newcastle-upon-Tyne College of Medicine in connection with the University of Durham". The college awarded its first 'Licence in Medicine' (LicMed) under the auspices of the University of Durham in 1856, with external examiners from Oxford and London, becoming the first medical examining body on the United Kingdom to institute practical examinations alongside written and viva voce examinations. The two colleges amalgamated in 1857, with the first session of the unified college opening on 3 October that year. In 1861 the degree of Master of Surgery was introduced, allowing for the double qualification of Licence of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, along with the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Doctor of Medicine, both of which required residence in Durham. In 1870 the college was brought into closer connection with the university, becoming the "Durham University College of Medicine" with the Reader in Medicine becoming the Professor of Medicine, the college gaining a representative on the university's senate, and residence at the college henceforth counting as residence in the university towards degrees in medicine and surgery, removing the need for students to spend a period of residence in Durham before they could receive the higher degrees.

 

Attempts to realise a place for the teaching of sciences in the city were finally met with the foundation of the College of Physical Science in 1871. The college offered instruction in mathematics, physics, chemistry and geology to meet the growing needs of the mining industry, becoming the "Durham College of Physical Science" in 1883 and then renamed after William George Armstrong as Armstrong College in 1904. Both of these institutions were part of the University of Durham, which became a federal university under the Durham University Act 1908 with two divisions in Durham and Newcastle. By 1908, the Newcastle division was teaching a full range of subjects in the Faculties of Medicine, Arts, and Science, which also included agriculture and engineering.

 

Throughout the early 20th century, the medical and science colleges outpaced the growth of their Durham counterparts. Following tensions between the two Newcastle colleges in the early 1930s, a Royal Commission in 1934 recommended the merger of the two colleges to form "King's College, Durham"; that was effected by the Durham University Act 1937. Further growth of both division of the federal university led to tensions within the structure and a feeling that it was too large to manage as a single body. On 1 August 1963 the Universities of Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne Act 1963 separated the two thus creating the "University of Newcastle upon Tyne". As the successor of King's College, Durham, the university at its founding in 1963, adopted the coat of arms originally granted to the Council of King's College in 1937.

 

Above the portico of the Students' Union building are bas-relief carvings of the arms and mottoes of the University of Durham, Armstrong College and Durham University College of Medicine, the predecessor parts of Newcastle University. While a Latin motto, mens agitat molem (mind moves matter) appears in the Students' Union building, the university itself does not have an official motto.

 

Campus and location

The university occupies a campus site close to Haymarket in central Newcastle upon Tyne. It is located to the northwest of the city centre between the open spaces of Leazes Park and the Town Moor; the university medical school and Royal Victoria Infirmary are adjacent to the west.

 

The Armstrong building is the oldest building on the campus and is the site of the original Armstrong College. The building was constructed in three stages; the north east wing was completed first at a cost of £18,000 and opened by Princess Louise on 5 November 1888. The south-east wing, which includes the Jubilee Tower, and south-west wings were opened in 1894. The Jubilee Tower was built with surplus funds raised from an Exhibition to mark Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887. The north-west front, forming the main entrance, was completed in 1906 and features two stone figures to represent science and the arts. Much of the later construction work was financed by Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, the metallurgist and former Lord Mayor of Newcastle, after whom the main tower is named. In 1906 it was opened by King Edward VII.

 

The building contains the King's Hall, which serves as the university's chief hall for ceremonial purposes where Congregation ceremonies are held. It can contain 500 seats. King Edward VII gave permission to call the Great Hall, King's Hall. During the First World War, the building was requisitioned by the War Office to create the first Northern General Hospital, a facility for the Royal Army Medical Corps to treat military casualties. Graduation photographs are often taken in the University Quadrangle, next to the Armstrong building. In 1949 the Quadrangle was turned into a formal garden in memory of members of Newcastle University who gave their lives in the two World Wars. In 2017, a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. was erected in the inner courtyard of the Armstrong Building, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his honorary degree from the university.

 

The Bruce Building is a former brewery, constructed between 1896 and 1900 on the site of the Hotspur Hotel, and designed by the architect Joseph Oswald as the new premises of Newcastle Breweries Limited. The university occupied the building from the 1950s, but, having been empty for some time, the building was refurbished in 2016 to become residential and office space.

 

The Devonshire Building, opened in 2004, incorporates in an energy efficient design. It uses photovoltaic cells to help to power motorised shades that control the temperature of the building and geothermal heating coils. Its architects won awards in the Hadrian awards and the RICS Building of the Year Award 2004. The university won a Green Gown award for its construction.

 

Plans for additions and improvements to the campus were made public in March 2008 and completed in 2010 at a cost of £200 million. They included a redevelopment of the south-east (Haymarket) façade with a five-storey King's Gate administration building as well as new student accommodation. Two additional buildings for the school of medicine were also built. September 2012 saw the completion of the new buildings and facilities for INTO Newcastle University on the university campus. The main building provides 18 new teaching rooms, a Learning Resource Centre, a lecture theatre, science lab, administrative and academic offices and restaurant.

 

The Philip Robinson Library is the main university library and is named after a bookseller in the city and benefactor to the library. The Walton Library specialises in services for the Faculty of Medical Sciences in the Medical School. It is named after Lord Walton of Detchant, former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Professor of Neurology. The library has a relationship with the Northern region of the NHS allowing their staff to use the library for research and study. The Law Library specialises in resources relating to law, and the Marjorie Robinson Library Rooms offers additional study spaces and computers. Together, these house over one million books and 500,000 electronic resources. Some schools within the university, such as the School of Modern Languages, also have their own smaller libraries with smaller highly specialised collections.

 

In addition to the city centre campus there are buildings such as the Dove Marine Laboratory located on Cullercoats Bay, and Cockle Park Farm in Northumberland.

 

International

In September 2008, the university's first overseas branch was opened in Singapore, a Marine International campus called, NUMI Singapore. This later expanded beyond marine subjects and became Newcastle University Singapore, largely through becoming an Overseas University Partner of Singapore Institute of Technology.

 

In 2011, the university's Medical School opened an international branch campus in Iskandar Puteri, Johor, Malaysia, namely Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia.

 

Student accommodation

Newcastle University has many catered and non-catered halls of residence available to first-year students, located around the city of Newcastle. Popular Newcastle areas for private student houses and flats off campus include Jesmond, Heaton, Sandyford, Shieldfield, South Shields and Spital Tongues.

 

Henderson Hall was used as a hall of residence until a fire destroyed it in 2023.

 

St Mary's College in Fenham, one of the halls of residence, was formerly St Mary's College of Education, a teacher training college.

 

Organisation and governance

The current Chancellor is the British poet and artist Imtiaz Dharker. She assumed the position of Chancellor on 1 January 2020. The vice-chancellor is Chris Day, a hepatologist and former pro-vice-chancellor of the Faculty of Medical Sciences.

 

The university has an enrolment of some 16,000 undergraduate and 5,600 postgraduate students. Teaching and research are delivered in 19 academic schools, 13 research institutes and 38 research centres, spread across three Faculties: the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; the Faculty of Medical Sciences; and the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering. The university offers around 175 full-time undergraduate degree programmes in a wide range of subject areas spanning arts, sciences, engineering and medicine, together with approximately 340 postgraduate taught and research programmes across a range of disciplines.

 

It holds a series of public lectures called 'Insights' each year in the Curtis Auditorium in the Herschel Building. Many of the university's partnerships with companies, like Red Hat, are housed in the Herschel Annex.

 

Chancellors and vice-chancellors

For heads of the predecessor colleges, see Colleges of Durham University § Colleges in Newcastle.

Chancellors

Hugh Percy, 10th Duke of Northumberland (1963–1988)

Matthew White Ridley, 4th Viscount Ridley (1988–1999)

Chris Patten (1999–2009)

Liam Donaldson (2009–2019)

Imtiaz Dharker (2020–)

Vice-chancellors

Charles Bosanquet (1963–1968)

Henry Miller (1968–1976)

Ewan Stafford Page (1976–1978, acting)

Laurence Martin (1978–1990)

Duncan Murchison (1991, acting)

James Wright (1992–2000)

Christopher Edwards (2001–2007)

Chris Brink (2007–2016)

Chris Day (2017–present)

Civic responsibility

 

The university Quadrangle

The university describes itself as a civic university, with a role to play in society by bringing its research to bear on issues faced by communities (local, national or international).

 

In 2012, the university opened the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal to address issues of social and economic change, representing the research-led academic schools across the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences[45] and the Business School.

 

Mark Shucksmith was Director of the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal (NISR) at Newcastle University, where he is also Professor of Planning.

 

In 2006, the university was granted fair trade status and from January 2007 it became a smoke-free campus.

 

The university has also been actively involved with several of the region's museums for many years. The Great North Museum: Hancock originally opened in 1884 and is often a venue for the university's events programme.

 

Faculties and schools

Teaching schools within the university are based within three faculties. Each faculty is led by a Provost/Pro-vice-chancellor and a team of Deans with specific responsibilities.

 

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

School of Arts and Cultures

Newcastle University Business School

Combined Honours Centre

School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences

School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics

School of Geography, Politics and Sociology

School of History, Classics and Archaeology

Newcastle Law School

School of Modern Languages

Faculty of Medical Sciences

School of Biomedical Sciences

School of Dental Sciences

School of Medical Education

School of Pharmacy

School of Psychology

Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology (CBCB)

Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering

School of Computing

School of Engineering

School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics

School of Natural and Environmental Sciences

Business School

 

Newcastle University Business School

As early as the 1900/1 academic year, there was teaching in economics (political economy, as it was then known) at Newcastle, making Economics the oldest department in the School. The Economics Department is currently headed by the Sir David Dale Chair. Among the eminent economists having served in the Department (both as holders of the Sir David Dale Chair) are Harry Mainwaring Hallsworth and Stanley Dennison.

 

Newcastle University Business School is a triple accredited business school, with accreditation by the three major accreditation bodies: AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS.

 

In 2002, Newcastle University Business School established the Business Accounting and Finance or 'Flying Start' degree in association with the ICAEW and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The course offers an accelerated route towards the ACA Chartered Accountancy qualification and is the Business School's Flagship programme.

 

In 2011 the business school opened their new building built on the former Scottish and Newcastle brewery site next to St James' Park. This building was officially opened on 19 March 2012 by Lord Burns.

 

The business school operated a central London campus from 2014 to 2021, in partnership with INTO University Partnerships until 2020.

 

Medical School

The BMC Medicine journal reported in 2008 that medical graduates from Oxford, Cambridge and Newcastle performed better in postgraduate tests than any other medical school in the UK.

 

In 2008 the Medical School announced that they were expanding their campus to Malaysia.

 

The Royal Victoria Infirmary has always had close links with the Faculty of Medical Sciences as a major teaching hospital.

 

School of Modern Languages

The School of Modern Languages consists of five sections: East Asian (which includes Japanese and Chinese); French; German; Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies; and Translating & Interpreting Studies. Six languages are taught from beginner's level to full degree level ‒ Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese ‒ and beginner's courses in Catalan, Dutch, Italian and Quechua are also available. Beyond the learning of the languages themselves, Newcastle also places a great deal of emphasis on study and experience of the cultures of the countries where the languages taught are spoken. The School of Modern Languages hosts North East England's only branches of two internationally important institutes: the Camões Institute, a language institute for Portuguese, and the Confucius Institute, a language and cultural institute for Chinese.

 

The teaching of modern foreign languages at Newcastle predates the creation of Newcastle University itself, as in 1911 Armstrong College in Newcastle installed Albert George Latham, its first professor of modern languages.

 

The School of Modern Languages at Newcastle is the lead institution in the North East Routes into Languages Consortium and, together with the Durham University, Northumbria University, the University of Sunderland, the Teesside University and a network of schools, undertakes work activities of discovery of languages for the 9 to 13 years pupils. This implies having festivals, Q&A sessions, language tasters, or quizzes organised, as well as a web learning work aiming at constructing a web portal to link language learners across the region.

 

Newcastle Law School

Newcastle Law School is the longest established law school in the north-east of England when law was taught at the university's predecessor college before it became independent from Durham University. It has a number of recognised international and national experts in a variety of areas of legal scholarship ranging from Common and Chancery law, to International and European law, as well as contextual, socio-legal and theoretical legal studies.

 

The Law School occupies four specially adapted late-Victorian town houses. The Staff Offices, the Alumni Lecture Theatre and seminar rooms as well as the Law Library are all located within the School buildings.

 

School of Computing

The School of Computing was ranked in the Times Higher Education world Top 100. Research areas include Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and ubiquitous computing, secure and resilient systems, synthetic biology, scalable computing (high performance systems, data science, machine learning and data visualization), and advanced modelling. The school led the formation of the National Innovation Centre for Data. Innovative teaching in the School was recognised in 2017 with the award of a National Teaching Fellowship.

 

Cavitation tunnel

Newcastle University has the second largest cavitation tunnel in the UK. Founded in 1950, and based in the Marine Science and Technology Department, the Emerson Cavitation Tunnel is used as a test basin for propellers, water turbines, underwater coatings and interaction of propellers with ice. The Emerson Cavitation Tunnel was recently relocated to a new facility in Blyth.

 

Museums and galleries

The university is associated with a number of the region's museums and galleries, including the Great North Museum project, which is primarily based at the world-renowned Hancock Museum. The Great North Museum: Hancock also contains the collections from two of the university's former museums, the Shefton Museum and the Museum of Antiquities, both now closed. The university's Hatton Gallery is also a part of the Great North Museum project, and remains within the Fine Art Building.

 

Academic profile

Reputation and rankings

Rankings

National rankings

Complete (2024)30

Guardian (2024)67

Times / Sunday Times (2024)37

Global rankings

ARWU (2023)201–300

QS (2024)110

THE (2024)168=

 

Newcastle University's national league table performance over the past ten years

The university is a member of the Russell Group of the UK's research-intensive universities. It is ranked in the top 200 of most world rankings, and in the top 40 of most UK rankings. As of 2023, it is ranked 110th globally by QS, 292nd by Leiden, 139th by Times Higher Education and 201st–300th by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Nationally, it is ranked joint 33rd by the Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide, 30th by the Complete University Guide[68] and joint 63rd by the Guardian.

 

Admissions

UCAS Admission Statistics 20222021202020192018

Application 33,73532,40034,55031,96533,785

Accepte 6,7556,2556,5806,4456,465

Applications/Accepted Ratio 5.05.25.35.05.2

Offer Rate (%78.178.080.279.280.0)

Average Entry Tariff—151148144152

Main scheme applications, International and UK

UK domiciled applicants

HESA Student Body Composition

In terms of average UCAS points of entrants, Newcastle ranked joint 19th in Britain in 2014. In 2015, the university gave offers of admission to 92.1% of its applicants, the highest amongst the Russell Group.

 

25.1% of Newcastle's undergraduates are privately educated, the thirteenth highest proportion amongst mainstream British universities. In the 2016–17 academic year, the university had a domicile breakdown of 74:5:21 of UK:EU:non-EU students respectively with a female to male ratio of 51:49.

 

Research

Newcastle is a member of the Russell Group of 24 research-intensive universities. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF), which assesses the quality of research in UK higher education institutions, Newcastle is ranked joint 33rd by GPA (along with the University of Strathclyde and the University of Sussex) and 15th for research power (the grade point average score of a university, multiplied by the full-time equivalent number of researchers submitted).

 

Student life

Newcastle University Students' Union (NUSU), known as the Union Society until a 2012 rebranding, includes student-run sports clubs and societies.

 

The Union building was built in 1924 following a generous gift from an anonymous donor, who is now believed to have been Sir Cecil Cochrane, a major benefactor to the university.[87] It is built in the neo-Jacobean style and was designed by the local architect Robert Burns Dick. It was opened on 22 October 1925 by the Rt. Hon. Lord Eustace Percy, who later served as Rector of King's College from 1937 to 1952. It is a Grade II listed building. In 2010 the university donated £8 million towards a redevelopment project for the Union Building.

 

The Students' Union is run by seven paid sabbatical officers, including a Welfare and Equality Officer, and ten part-time unpaid officer positions. The former leader of the Liberal Democrats Tim Farron was President of NUSU in 1991–1992. The Students' Union also employs around 300 people in ancillary roles including bar staff and entertainment organisers.

 

The Courier is a weekly student newspaper. Established in 1948, the current weekly readership is around 12,000, most of whom are students at the university. The Courier has won The Guardian's Student Publication of the Year award twice in a row, in 2012 and 2013. It is published every Monday during term time.

 

Newcastle Student Radio is a student radio station based in the university. It produces shows on music, news, talk and sport and aims to cater for a wide range of musical tastes.

 

NUTV, known as TCTV from 2010 to 2017, is student television channel, first established in 2007. It produces live and on-demand content with coverage of events, as well as student-made programmes and shows.

 

Student exchange

Newcastle University has signed over 100 agreements with foreign universities allowing for student exchange to take place reciprocally.

 

Sport

Newcastle is one of the leading universities for sport in the UK and is consistently ranked within the top 12 out of 152 higher education institutions in the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) rankings. More than 50 student-led sports clubs are supported through a team of professional staff and a network of indoor and outdoor sports facilities based over four sites. The university have a strong rugby history and were the winners of the Northumberland Senior Cup in 1965.

 

The university enjoys a friendly sporting rivalry with local universities. The Stan Calvert Cup was held between 1994 and 2018 by major sports teams from Newcastle and Northumbria University. The Boat Race of the North has also taken place between the rowing clubs of Newcastle and Durham University.

 

As of 2023, Newcastle University F.C. compete in men's senior football in the Northern League Division Two.

 

The university's Cochrane Park sports facility was a training venue for the teams playing football games at St James' Park for the 2012 London Olympics.

 

A

Ali Mohamed Shein, 7th President of Zanzibar

Richard Adams - fairtrade businessman

Kate Adie - journalist

Yasmin Ahmad - Malaysian film director, writer and scriptwriter

Prince Adewale Aladesanmi - Nigerian prince and businessman

Jane Alexander - Bishop

Theodosios Alexander (BSc Marine Engineering 1981) - Dean, Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology of Saint Louis University

William Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong - industrialist; in 1871 founded College of Physical Science, an early part of the University

Roy Ascott - new media artist

Dennis Assanis - President, University of Delaware

Neil Astley - publisher, editor and writer

Rodney Atkinson - eurosceptic conservative academic

Rowan Atkinson - comedian and actor

Kane Avellano - Guinness World Record for youngest person to circumnavigate the world by motorcycle (solo and unsupported) at the age of 23 in 2017

B

Bruce Babbitt - U.S. politician; 16th Governor of Arizona (1978–1987); 47th United States Secretary of the Interior (1993–2001); Democrat

James Baddiley - biochemist, based at Newcastle University 1954–1983; the Baddiley-Clark building is named in part after him

Tunde Baiyewu - member of the Lighthouse Family

John C. A. Barrett - clergyman

G. W. S. Barrow - historian

Neil Bartlett - chemist, creation of the first noble gas compounds (BSc and PhD at King's College, University of Durham, later Newcastle University)

Sue Beardsmore - television presenter

Alan Beith - politician

Jean Benedetti - biographer, translator, director and dramatist

Phil Bennion - politician

Catherine Bertola - contemporary painter

Simon Best - Captain of the Ulster Rugby team; Prop for the Ireland Team

Andy Bird - CEO of Disney International

Rory Jonathan Courtenay Boyle, Viscount Dungarvan - heir apparent to the earldom of Cork

David Bradley - science writer

Mike Brearley - professional cricketer, formerly a lecturer in philosophy at the university (1968–1971)

Constance Briscoe - one of the first black women to sit as a judge in the UK; author of the best-selling autobiography Ugly; found guilty in May 2014 on three charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice; jailed for 16 months

Steve Brooks - entomologist; attained BSc in Zoology and MSc in Public Health Engineering from Newcastle University in 1976 and 1977 respectively

Thom Brooks - academic, columnist

Gavin Brown - academic

Vicki Bruce - psychologist

Basil Bunting - poet; Northern Arts Poetry Fellow at Newcastle University (1968–70); honorary DLitt in 1971

John Burgan - documentary filmmaker

Mark Burgess - computer scientist

Sir John Burn - Professor of Clinical Genetics at Newcastle University Medical School; Medical Director and Head of the Institute of Genetics; Newcastle Medical School alumnus

William Lawrence Burn - historian and lawyer, history chair at King's College, Newcastle (1944–66)

John Harrison Burnett - botanist, chair of Botany at King's College, Newcastle (1960–68)

C.

Richard Caddel - poet

Ann Cairns - President of International Markets for MasterCard

Deborah Cameron - linguist

Stuart Cameron - lecturer

John Ashton Cannon - historian; Professor of Modern History; Head of Department of History from 1976 until his appointment as Dean of the Faculty of Arts in 1979; Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1983–1986

Ian Carr - musician

Jimmy Cartmell - rugby player, Newcastle Falcons

Steve Chapman - Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University

Dion Chen - Hong Kong educator, principal of Ying Wa College and former principal of YMCA of Hong Kong Christian College

Hsing Chia-hui - author

Ashraf Choudhary - scientist

Chua Chor Teck - Managing Director of Keppel Group

Jennifer A. Clack - palaeontologist

George Clarke - architect

Carol Clewlow - novelist

Brian Clouston - landscape architect

Ed Coode - Olympic gold medallist

John Coulson - chemical engineering academic

Caroline Cox, Baroness Cox - cross-bench member of the British House of Lords

Nicola Curtin – Professor of Experimental Cancer Therapeutics

Pippa Crerar - Political Editor of the Daily Mirror

D

Fred D'Aguiar - author

Julia Darling - poet, playwright, novelist, MA in Creative Writing

Simin Davoudi - academic

Richard Dawson - civil engineering academic and member of the UK Committee on Climate Change

Tom Dening - medical academic and researcher

Katie Doherty - singer-songwriter

Nowell Donovan - vice-chancellor for academic affairs and Provost of Texas Christian University

Catherine Douglas - Ig Nobel Prize winner for Veterinary Medicine

Annabel Dover - artist, studied fine art 1994–1998

Alexander Downer - Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs (1996–2007)

Chloë Duckworth - archaeologist and presenter

Chris Duffield - Town Clerk and Chief Executive of the City of London Corporation

E

Michael Earl - academic

Tom English - drummer, Maxïmo Park

Princess Eugenie - member of the British royal family. Eugenie is a niece of King Charles III and a granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II. She began studying at Newcastle University in September 2009, graduating in 2012 with a 2:1 degree in English Literature and History of Art.

F

U. A. Fanthorpe - poet

Frank Farmer - medical physicist; professor of medical physics at Newcastle University in 1966

Terry Farrell - architect

Tim Farron - former Liberal Democrat leader and MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale

Ian Fells - professor

Andy Fenby - rugby player

Bryan Ferry - singer, songwriter and musician, member of Roxy Music and solo artist; studied fine art

E. J. Field - neuroscientist, director of the university's Demyelinating Disease Unit

John Niemeyer Findlay - philosopher

John Fitzgerald - computer scientist

Vicky Forster - cancer researcher

Maximimlian (Max) Fosh- YouTuber and independent candidate in the 2021 London mayoral election.

Rose Frain - artist

G

Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster - aristocrat, billionaire, businessman and landowner

Peter Gibbs - television weather presenter

Ken Goodall - rugby player

Peter Gooderham - British ambassador

Michael Goodfellow - Professor in Microbial Systematics

Robert Goodwill - politician

Richard Gordon - author

Teresa Graham - accountant

Thomas George Greenwell - National Conservative Member of Parliament

H

Sarah Hainsworth - Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Aston University

Reginald Hall - endocrinologist, Professor of Medicine (1970–1980)

Alex Halliday - Professor of Geochemistry, University of Oxford

Richard Hamilton - artist

Vicki L. Hanson - computer scientist; honorary doctorate in 2017

Rupert Harden - professional rugby union player

Tim Head - artist

Patsy Healey - professor

Alastair Heathcote - rower

Dorothy Heathcote - academic

Adrian Henri - 'Mersey Scene' poet and painter

Stephen Hepburn - politician

Jack Heslop-Harrison - botanist

Tony Hey - computer scientist; honorary doctorate 2007

Stuart Hill - author

Jean Hillier - professor

Ken Hodcroft - Chairman of Hartlepool United; founder of Increased Oil Recovery

Robert Holden - landscape architect

Bill Hopkins - composer

David Horrobin - entrepreneur

Debbie Horsfield - writer of dramas, including Cutting It

John House - geographer

Paul Hudson - weather presenter

Philip Hunter - educationist

Ronald Hunt – Art Historian who was librarian at the Art Department

Anya Hurlbert - visual neuroscientis

I

Martin Ince - journalist and media adviser, founder of the QS World University Rankings

Charles Innes-Ker - Marquess of Bowmont and Cessford

Mark Isherwood - politician

Jonathan Israel - historian

J

Alan J. Jamieson - marine biologist

George Neil Jenkins - medical researcher

Caroline Johnson - Conservative Member of Parliament

Wilko Johnson - guitarist with 1970s British rhythm and blues band Dr. Feelgood

Rich Johnston - comic book writer and cartoonist

Anna Jones - businesswoman

Cliff Jones - computer scientist

Colin Jones - historian

David E. H. Jones - chemist

Francis R. Jones - poetry translator and Reader in Translation Studies

Phil Jones - climatologist

Michael Jopling, Baron Jopling - Member of the House of Lords and the Conservative Party

Wilfred Josephs - dentist and composer

K

Michael King Jr. - civil rights leader; honorary graduate. In November 1967, MLK made a 24-hour trip to the United Kingdom to receive an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law from Newcastle University, becoming the first African American the institution had recognised in this way.

Panayiotis Kalorkoti - artist; studied B.A. (Hons) in Fine Art (1976–80); Bartlett Fellow in the Visual Arts (1988)

Rashida Karmali - businesswoman

Jackie Kay - poet, novelist, Professor of Creative Writing

Paul Kennedy - historian of international relations and grand strategy

Mark Khangure - neuroradiologist

L

Joy Labinjo - artist

Henrike Lähnemann - German medievalist

Dave Leadbetter - politician

Lim Boon Heng - Singapore Minister

Lin Hsin Hsin - IT inventor, artist, poet and composer

Anne Longfield - children's campaigner, former Children's Commissioner for England

Keith Ludeman - businessman

M

Jack Mapanje - writer and poet

Milton Margai - first prime minister of Sierra Leone (medical degree from the Durham College of Medicine, later Newcastle University Medical School)

Laurence Martin - war studies writer

Murray Martin, documentary and docudrama filmmaker, co-founder of Amber Film & Photography Collective

Adrian Martineau – medical researcher and professor of respiratory Infection and immunity at Queen Mary University of London

Carl R. May - sociologist

Tom May - professional rugby union player, now with Northampton Saints, and capped by England

Kate McCann – journalist and television presenter

Ian G. McKeith – professor of Old Age Psychiatry

John Anthony McGuckin - Orthodox Christian scholar, priest, and poet

Wyl Menmuir - novelist

Zia Mian - physicist

Richard Middleton - musicologist

Mary Midgley - moral philosopher

G.C.J. Midgley - philosopher

Moein Moghimi - biochemist and nanoscientist

Hermann Moisl - linguist

Anthony Michaels-Moore - Operatic Baritone

Joanna Moncrieff - Critical Psychiatrist

Theodore Morison - Principal of Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne (1919–24)

Andy Morrell - footballer

Frank Moulaert - professor

Mo Mowlam - former British Labour Party Member of Parliament, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, lecturer at Newcastle University

Chris Mullin - former British Labour Party Member of Parliament, author, visiting fellow

VA Mundella - College of Physical Science, 1884—1887; lecturer in physics at the College, 1891—1896: Professor of Physics at Northern Polytechnic Institute and Principal of Sunderland Technical College.

Richard Murphy - architect

N

Lisa Nandy - British Labour Party Member of Parliament, former Shadow Foreign Secretary

Karim Nayernia - biomedical scientist

Dianne Nelmes - TV producer

O

Sally O'Reilly - writer

Mo O'Toole - former British Labour Party Member of European Parliament

P

Ewan Page - founding director of the Newcastle University School of Computing and briefly acting vice-chancellor; later appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Reading

Rachel Pain - academic

Amanda Parker - Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire since 2023

Geoff Parling - Leicester Tigers rugby player

Chris Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes - British Conservative politician and Chancellor of the University (1999–2009)

Chris M Pattinson former Great Britain International Swimmer 1976-1984

Mick Paynter - Cornish poet and Grandbard

Robert A. Pearce - academic

Hugh Percy, 10th Duke of Northumberland - Chancellor of the University (1964–1988)

Jonathan Pile - Showbiz Editor, ZOO magazine

Ben Pimlott - political historian; PhD and lectureship at Newcastle University (1970–79)

Robin Plackett - statistician

Alan Plater - playwright and screenwriter

Ruth Plummer - Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at the Northern Institute for Cancer Research and Fellow of the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences.

Poh Kwee Ong - Deputy President of SembCorp Marine

John Porter - musician

Rob Powell - former London Broncos coach

Stuart Prebble - former chief executive of ITV

Oliver Proudlock - Made in Chelsea star; creator of Serge De Nîmes clothing line[

Mark Purnell - palaeontologist

Q

Pirzada Qasim - Pakistani scholar, Vice Chancellor of the University of Karachi

Joyce Quin, Baroness Quin - politician

R

Andy Raleigh - Rugby League player for Wakefield Trinity Wildcats

Brian Randell - computer scientist

Rupert Mitford, 6th Baron Redesdale - Liberal Democrat spokesman in the House of Lords for International Development

Alastair Reynolds - novelist, former research astronomer with the European Space Agency

Ben Rice - author

Lewis Fry Richardson - mathematician, studied at the Durham College of Science in Newcastle

Matthew White Ridley, 4th Viscount Ridley - Chancellor of the University 1988-1999

Colin Riordan - VC of Cardiff University, Professor of German Studies (1988–2006)

Susie Rodgers - British Paralympic swimmer

Nayef Al-Rodhan - philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Neil Rollinson - poet

Johanna Ropner - Lord lieutenant of North Yorkshire

Sharon Rowlands - CEO of ReachLocal

Peter Rowlinson - Ig Nobel Prize winner for Veterinary Medicine

John Rushby - computer scientist

Camilla Rutherford - actress

S

Jonathan Sacks - former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth

Ross Samson - Scottish rugby union footballer; studied history

Helen Scales - marine biologist, broadcaster, and writer

William Scammell - poet

Fred B. Schneider - computer scientist; honorary doctorate in 2003

Sean Scully - painter

Nigel Shadbolt - computer scientist

Tom Shakespeare - geneticist

Jo Shapcott - poet

James Shapiro - Canadian surgeon and scientist

Jack Shepherd - actor and playwright

Mark Shucksmith - professor

Chris Simms - crime thriller novel author

Graham William Smith - probation officer, widely regarded as the father of the national probation service

Iain Smith - Scottish politician

Paul Smith - singer, Maxïmo Park

John Snow - discoverer of cholera transmission through water; leader in the adoption of anaesthesia; one of the 8 students enrolled on the very first term of the Medical School

William Somerville - agriculturist, professor of agriculture and forestry at Durham College of Science (later Newcastle University)

Ed Stafford - explorer, walked the length of the Amazon River

Chris Steele-Perkins - photographer

Chris Stevenson - academic

Di Stewart - Sky Sports News reader

Diana Stöcker - German CDU Member of Parliament

Miodrag Stojković - genetics researcher

Miriam Stoppard - physician, author and agony aunt

Charlie van Straubenzee - businessman and investment executive

Peter Straughan - playwright and short story writer

T

Mathew Tait - rugby union footballer

Eric Thomas - academic

David Tibet - cult musician and poet

Archis Tiku - bassist, Maxïmo Park

James Tooley - professor

Elsie Tu - politician

Maurice Tucker - sedimentologist

Paul Tucker - member of Lighthouse Family

George Grey Turner - surgeon

Ronald F. Tylecote - archaeologist

V

Chris Vance - actor in Prison Break and All Saints

Géza Vermes - scholar

Geoff Vigar - lecturer

Hugh Vyvyan - rugby union player

W

Alick Walker - palaeontologist

Matthew Walker - Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley

Tom Walker - Sunday Times foreign correspondent

Lord Walton of Detchant - physician; President of the GMC, BMA, RSM; Warden of Green College, Oxford (1983–1989)

Kevin Warwick - Professor of Cybernetics; former Lecturer in Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Duncan Watmore - footballer at Millwall F.C.

Mary Webb - artist

Charlie Webster - television sports presenter

Li Wei - Chair of Applied Linguistics at UCL Institute of Education, University College London

Joseph Joshua Weiss - Professor of Radiation Chemistry

Robert Westall - children's writer, twice winner of Carnegie Medal

Thomas Stanley Westoll - Fellow of the Royal Society

Gillian Whitehead - composer

William Whitfield - architect, later designed the Hadrian Building and the Northern Stage

Claire Williams - motorsport executive

Zoe Williams - sportswoman, worked on Gladiators

Donald I. Williamson - planktologist and carcinologist

Philip Williamson - former Chief Executive of Nationwide Building Society

John Willis - Royal Air Force officer and council member of the University

Lukas Wooller - keyboard player, Maxïmo Park

Graham Wylie - co-founder of the Sage Group; studied Computing Science & Statistics BSc and graduated in 1980; awarded an honorary doctorate in 2004

Y

Hisila Yami, Nepalese politician and former Minister of Physical Planning and Works (Government of Nepal

John Yorke - Controller of Continuing Drama; Head of Independent Drama at the BBC

Martha Young-Scholten - linguist

Paul Younger - hydrogeologist

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 327.

 

Raymond Griffith (1895-1957) was an American silent movie comedian, known for films such as Paths to Paradise (1925) and Hands Up! (1926). In the sound era, he worked as production supervisor and associate producer.

 

Griffith, born in Boston, Mass., was raised in an actor's family and so he started acting on stage as a child. lost his voice at an early age, causing him to speak for the rest of his life in a hoarse whisper. Griffith claimed that it was the result of his having to scream at the top of his lungs every night in a stage melodrama as a child actor. Others have stated that a respiratory diphtheria had permanently damaged his vocal chords. Afterward, he worked in a circus, was dancer and dance teacher, toured Europe with French pantomime players and joined the US Navy for a while, before settling in California in 1914.

 

In 1915, he debut in film at the L-KO Kompany, where a played in countless comedies, switching to Mack Sennet's Keystone in 1916, where he remained for years, and at first worked mostly as gagman and scriptwriter. After interludes at Fox and Triangle, Griffith returned to Keystone in 1918. From 1918 he worked mainly in features. In 1921 he joined Marshall Neilan and the next year got a contract at Goldwyn Pictures, which eventually would merge into MGM. It was here that his career as star comedian began. As Jon Hopwood writes on IMDB: "During his Goldwyn period, Griffith created an acting style uniquely his own that was a hybrid of the comedic and the dramatic." At MGM he also played in dark tales such as The White Tiger (1923) by Tod Browning, in which he is searching for the murder of his father (Wallace Beery). In 1924 he moved to Paramount, where some of his best films were made, first of all Badger's Paths to Paradise (1925), a caper film that is in all circulating prints missing its final reel. It was highly praised when it came out and some predicted Chaplin a rival. But even more famous is Hands Up! (1926), a Civil War comedy feature directed by Clarence G. Badger, and co-starring Mack Swain, which was entered into the National Film Registry in 2005. In his 1975 book The Silent Clowns, Walter Kerr wrote about it: "'Hands Up!' contains some work that is daring -for its period, certainly -and some that is masterfully delicate, the work of an inventive, unaggressive, amiably iconoclastic intelligence." Like many silent comedians, Griffith had a traditional costume; his was a top hat, white tie and tails, often augmented by a cape and/or walking stick. Unfortunately, many of Griffith's starring feature films have long since been lost, or have not been re-released.

 

The coming of sound ended Griffith's acting career, but he did have one memorable role in a motion picture before retiring from the screen, playing a French soldier slowly dying in front of Lew Ayres's character in the 1930 Lewis Milestone film All Quiet on the Western Front. He then segued into a writing/producing career at Twentieth Century Fox. Griffith choked to death at the Masquers Club in Los Angeles, California, aged 62, in 1957. His asphyxia was due to partially masticated food. Griffith was married to stage and film actress Bertha Mann between 1928 and his death. They had one adopted daughter and two children of their own (one stillborn).

 

Sources: Wikipedia (English and German; actually, the German version gives much more information) and IMDb.

 

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

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

bit.ly/v3AElEEnglish may not seem like the most marketable major, but in today’s fast-changing employment market, when job titles and responsibilities are constantly shifting, English majors do actually have one key advantage. As part of their training, graduates with an English degree have learned to perform critical analysis then clearly and effectively communicate the results of their observations. These broadly-applicable skills make English students effective problem-solvers. As a result, English majors are found in many fields such as program management, marketing, medicine, social work, government jobs, non-profit organizations, and financial services. However, the most popular career choices for graduates with an English degree are still in the traditional writing, editing and public relations fields. Writers and authors with an English degree create original written materials for a wide range of online and offline publications including books, magazines, trade journals, company newsletters, and advertisements. In general, writers tend to specialize in certain types of writing such as novels, plays, biographies, and textbooks. Other types of writers include news analysts, reporters and correspondents who work in the newspaper or magazine publishing industry. And songwriters, screenwriters, and scriptwriters create scripts for radio, television, films, plays, and other types of performances. Copy writers use their writing skills to create advertisements for publications or broadcasting. Usually they also work with a client to produce advertising themes or slogans and they may go beyond writing and become involved in the marketing of products and services. Editors are primarily responsible for reviewing, rewriting, and editing the work of writers, though editors may also create original written content. The most common editorial duties include deciding on the content of books, journals, magazines, and other publications as well as reviewing story ideas proposed by other staff. Once a book or other written draft has been prepared, editors review and edit the draft, offer comments to improve the work, and suggest possible titles. In addition, editors often oversee the publication process for a book or other printed material. And editors who work in the book publishing industry review proposals for books and decide whether to buy an author's publication rights. Types of editors include executive and managing editors who typically plan budgets and hire writers, reporters, and other employees. Copy editors review written materials for errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling and suggest revisions to improve clarity or accuracy. They may also carry out research and verify facts, dates, and statistics. Finally, copy editors often do page layouts, compose headlines, and prepare written materials for printing. Editors at any level may be aided by Publication Assistants with an English degree who read and evaluate manuscripts, do proofreading, and even compile their own original articles using information from wire services or the Internet. Public relations specialists are communications specialists and media specialists, whose job is to help businesses, nonprofit associations, universities, hospitals, and other organizations to build and maintain positive relationships with the public. Public relations specialists usually oversee media, community, consumer, industry, and governmental relations. They may work on political campaigns, represent special-interest groups, mediate conflict resolution, and assist with a company's employee and investor relations. Public relations specialists write and distribute press releases which then end up on the internet and in printed or broadcast media as special reports, newspaper stories, and magazine articles. Public relations specialists also arrange opportunities to facilitate positive interactions between their clients and the public, such as scheduling speaking engagements and preparing speeches for officials of the companies that they represent. Finally, public relations specialists often represent their clients at community projects and meetings, make film, slide, and other visual presentations for meetings and school assemblies, and plan regional or national conventions for trade organizations and professional groups.

www.messersmith.name/wordpress/2010/09/11/life-act-two-sc...

It would be a hideous betrayal of honour to my dear Eunie if I allowed my despair to envelop me and the many joyous and exciting things in life which we shared. One small thing in our shared experience of life which enriched us both has been, over the last three years, Madang - Ples Bilong Mi. She was and remains my most faithful reader.

 

Don't get me wrong. There will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth yet to come. I'm starting a processes which is not unlike being run over by a freight train. Just when you think you've felt the last of it, along comes another set of wheels. I hope that I'll feel better in a year. Asking more than that seems unreasonable.

 

Dying is a complicated game. Eunie's passage was blessed by little pain and great dignity. To the end, her faith preserved her from fear. Oh, that we all could go with such style. When I tell the story to her mates, they will say, in the Australian manner, "Good on ya, Eunie!" - Job Well Done! However, it has left me behind with a huge mess. Stacks of unthinkable paperwork, often smudged by tears from me and my friends helping me grind through it.

 

For those of you who have gone through this before, you will understand my gruesome fascination with it. It seems simultaneously impossible to do and impossible to ignore. Life for the survivors depends on taking care of the mountainous cascade of insufferable minutia. If I did not have my friends to help me, I would fall down in a heap.

 

Which brings me to the title of this post. Some might think it a little early for frivolity and this is true. This is not frivolous. It's serious business. I've always said to anyone who was in the least amused by what I say that life is like the most fantastic play that has ever been performed and you are the scriptwriter and star. That's not to say that everything you write will be performed as written. The Director has something to say about that. However, by and large, we are expected to compose the script carefully while producing as much enjoyment in the audience as possible.

 

So, with this blank page before me, how to I begin the script for Act II, Scene I? Well let's start with Labradoodles, some good mates and a fascinating new experience.

 

We have a dear friend in Brisbane who once graced Madang with her presence. She is a nurse and she was with Eunie in the last few days making sure that everything was tended to in the most careful manner.Tracey Lee raises Labradoodles. One of these gorgeous little critters is going to Laos and the other to The Philippines. I suppose that they must be in great demand: Aside from the fact that they are ludicrously cute, they are also covered with the softest fur I have ever felt. Minks, eat your hearts out.

 

Here is another much missed vanished resident of Madang who took time from her own busy life to lighten my load, Amanda Watson:

 

While in Madang, Amanda was a keen diver and much fun out on Faded Glory.

 

Whenever anyone takes a decent photo of me, I like to hang onto it:

 

I seldom like the photos that I see of me, but this one works just fine. I'm your basic old dude who's been through the grinder a few times and had the most of the rough edges worn off. My dear Eunie provided most of the labour to spin the wheel, sparks flying everywhere. In my mature years I have some to see that a good, smart woman finds some raw ingredients and bakes the man that she wants. The recipe varies from time to time, but women are infinitely patient in getting what they need.

 

There was a long time in my life when I felt fairly worthless and most people agreed with me. You would not have wanted me as a friend. Eunie baked me into the man I am today. Not such a bad guy. I'll hold that in my heart, along with many other precious things until I draw my last breath.

 

Now, some may want to drop out at this point, because I'm going to show you a little tableau of tolerance. Eunie had the kind of love which we Christians call "Christlike" (duh). It's not rocket science. It's easy. You simply love everybody, regardless of their condition. The rationale is likewise easy to understand. It is only through love that we truly win hearts. Everybody knows that.

 

Here with Peter, Tracey's partner, Amanda Watson, Carol Dover, Tracey and Richard Jones is Michelle Rose, A. K. A. Michael Charles Turnbull:

 

 

Michelle, as he prefers, saw us sitting at the open front of a little pub and stopped for a chat. As one might suspect, there has likely been no small portion of heartbreak in this life. Eunie would have sat down for a little while and talked with Michelle about that life. He would have felt loved.

 

So, what is the first line in Act II, Scene I of the rest of my life?

 

Well, it's pretty much the same ol' same ol'.

 

All you need is love.

Spanish collector's card. Chocolate Salas-Sabadell, No. 3. French actress Fabienne Fabrèges and Didaco Chellini in the Italian silent film Spasimi (Giuseppe Giusti, Corona Films 1916). The Spanish release title of the film was Espasmos.

 

Fabienne Fabrèges (1889-?) was a French actress, but also scriptwriter and director of the silent film. She had a rich career at Gaumont, and afterward in Italian silent film.

Dutch collectors card, no. 50 by Monty, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969).

 

Finally I found some collectors cards of my favourite series, Floris (1969). The series was the start of the successful vareers of director Paul Verhoeven, scriptwriter Gerard Soeteman and of course Rutger Hauer. Hauer played the exiled knight Floris van Rosemondt. With his Indian friend Sindala (Jos Bergman), he tries to get his birth right papers back from Maarten van Rossem (Hans Culeman), an evil lord. During their quest they get help from Wolter van Oldenstein (Ton Vos), a noble man who offers them a place in his castle. They also meet the pirate Lange Pier (Hans Boskamp).

 

Source: IMDb.

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

Dutch actress Annie van Ees (1893-1970) performed hundreds of times in the stage play Boefje [Little Rascal] (1922), about a little streetboy who is always into mischief but has a heart of gold, here above opposite her husband, the Dutch thespian Cor van der Lugt-Melsert. In 1935 Annie had already played Boefje 500 times. In 1939, when Van Ees was 45, married and had a son, she starred in a film after the play, directed by Detlev Sierck, the future Douglas Sirk.

 

The popular Dutch novel Boefje (1903) by M.J. Brusse which had been the basis for the play, was scripted by the Germans Carl Zuckmayer and Curt Alexander, the former famous for Der blaue Engel, the latter the regular scriptwriter of Max Ophüls in the 1930s. The film was the last to be produced at the film studio Filmstad in Wassenaar near The Hague, built by Dutch film distributor, importer and cinema owner Loet Barnstijn and run by production manager Leo Meyer, who had been trained in Berlin. Curiously enough, the schoolmaster guarding the young rascal (cf. Ciske de Rat etc.), was turned into a catholic priest in the film, in spite of the Dutch pillarization which made it almost tabu to show either calvinist or catholic clergy in Dutch cinema.

 

Sirk had left Germany rather late, in 1937, after making succesful films as Schlussakkord and Zu neuen Ufern with Zarah Leander. His second wife, the Jewish Hilde Jary, had fled to Rome after being denounced by Sirk's first wife, the pro-nazi Lydia Brinken. Sirk and Jary went to Paris where he supervised a French remake of Schlussakkord. For the shooting of Boefje he came to Holland only for a few weeks. Sirk complained about the lack of money and the fact he could not have real children to work with. He was not very concentrated on the film, only thinking of getting a visum for the States. After the shooting was over, he left and did not wait for the editing. In 1941 he emigrated to the States. To Sirk himself, his experience in the Netherlands didn't leave him a big impression. He mentioned the film afterwards as 'Bouvier'. IMDB states, oddly enough, that Sirk's first feature film had been a Dutch film too, 't Was 1 April [It was 1th April], the Dutch version of the German comedy April, April, both shot in Berlin in 1935.

 

Boefje was selected for the first Cannes festival of 1939 but because of the war the festival never took place. In 2002 Boefje was shown in Cannes after all, in a commemorative edition honouring the 1939 edition. Boefje had its original Dutch premiere at the Amsterdam City Theater on 4 October 1939. The film has been restored by the Netherlands Filmmuseum and is now available on dvd. Memorable is the imagery of prewar, unbombed Rotterdam, done by Hungarian cameraman Akos Farkas.

 

(Sources: Kathinka Dittrich, Achter het doek. Duitse emigranten inde Nederlandse speelfilm in de jaren dertig; Cinema.nl; Wikipedia: Imdb)

 

Photo Coret, The Hague. N.V. Vereenigd Rotterdamsch Hofstadtooneel

American postcard by Kline Poster Co. Inc., Phila.

 

Charles Ray (1891-1943) was an American actor, scriptwriter, and director of the silent screen, who knew a parabole from rags to riches and back again. He worked for Paramount, his own company, United Artists and MGM. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, he was a very popular actor and one of Hollywood's best-paid stars.

 

Charles Edgar Ray was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1891. He moved several times in his youth before settling in Los Angeles, where he finished his education. Ray started his career as an actor on stage. Later he also began to act in short silent films, making his debut as an extra in The Fortunes of War (Thomas Ince, 1911). He appeared in several bit parts before moving on to supporting roles. From 1913 he had a steady career as the male lead in one- and two-reel short Western, Quaker, and Civil War dramas at Kaybee Pictures, Broncho Pictures, and Domino Pictures. In these films, he would be paired with actresses such as Enid Markey, Bessie Barriscale, Louise Glaum, and Dorothy Davenport. Ray must have worked fast then, as in 1913 and in 1914 he had a ratio of a film every two weeks. At Kaybee, Ince would direct him at times, at times also Raymond West, while at Bronco he was often directed by Charles Giblyn, and in 1915 a few times by William S. Hart. In 1915, Ray had his breakthrough in his first feature The Coward, produced by Thomas Ince for Kay-Bee and directed by Reginald Barker. In this Civil War drama, Ray played the son of a Virginia colonel (Frank Keenan), who needs to overcome his cowardice.

 

Charles Ray's popularity rose after appearing in a series of films, as Wikipedia writes "which cast him in juvenile roles, primarily young, wholesome hicks or naive 'country bumpkins' that foiled the plans of thieves or con men and won the heart of his dream girl." Ray's Kay-Bee films were now distributed by Triangle Distributing. Victor Schertzinger, the musician who had provided the music for The Coward, turned director at Kay-Bee and directed Ray in several films in 1917. Ray, Ince, and Schertzinger moved over to Paramount in 1917, where Ince got his own production company and where Schertzinger directed Ray in more films, such as The Claws of the Hun (Victor Schertzinger, 1918), a propaganda film signalling the US's participation in the First World War. Ray's star rose and rose. By 1920, he was earning a reported $11,000 a week (approximately $138,000 today). Ray had also earned a reputation for being egomaniacal and difficult to work with. In 1920, he left Paramount after studio head Adolph Zukor refused to give him a substantial pay raise. Ray started his own production company. Charles Ray Productions, and bought a studio on Sunset Boulevard where he began producing and shooting his own films. While he initially was fairly successful, an experiment for First National with a film without intertitles, The Old Swimmin' Hole (1921), co-starring Laura La Plante, had critical but not a huge popular success. Mind you, this was years before Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's famous Der Letzte Mann/The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924), which was made with only one intertitle.

 

In 1922, Charles Ray signed a contract with United Artists and starred in e.g. The Girl I Loved (1923) with Patsy Ruth Miller. He was fed up with the hillbillies types and strove to profile himself as a romantic lead and man of the world. Against everybody's advice to avoid lengthy historical drama, Ray insisted on the making of The Courtship of Miles Standish (1923), investing $500,000 (approximately $7,353,000 today) of his own money, including a $65,000 (approximately $956,000 today) 180-ton replica of the Mayflower. The film was a box office failure, Ray lost all his money and his reputation went down too. It did not mean his career was all over (despite what Wikipedia writes), because he first continued as a leading actor at smaller companies, produced by Ince, and in 1925 he got a contract at MGM, where he played for two years and acted as the male lead opposite actresses such as Pauline Starke, Joan Crawford, and May McAvoy. In those years Ray and his wife Clara Grant were enormous spendthrifts, with an over-the-top villa in Beverly Hills, a huge staff, and expensive cars. Grant would never wear a dress two times. Yet, in December 1925 Ray had to file for bankruptcy and his production company went under as well. Though he continued to act, after MGM the companies he worked for were less prestigious, such as Universal. In 1928 he made his last silent film, The Count of Ten (James Flood, 1928), after which he acted on stage for years, in off-Broadway productions, without much success. In 1932 Ray returned to the sets, but without success, and in 1934 he declared bankruptcy again. In 1935 he got divorced from Clara Grant, from whom he was already separated as of 1930. Ray still acted in cinema but in the mid-1930s in minor parts and in the early 1940s on uncredited parts. He tried to earn money by writing short stories and a popular movie magazine but to no avail. Charles Ray died of a systemic infection caused by an impacted wisdom tooth in 1943. He was only 52. In 1960 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to the motion picture industry.

 

Sources: Wikipedia (English, French and Italian), and IMDb.

 

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

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, no. 1693. Photo: EGC / Fernand Rivers / Constantin Film. Publicity still for La Lumière d'en face/Female and the Flesh (Georges Lacombe, 1955).

 

French actor Roger Pigaut (1919–1989) appeared in 40 films between 1943 and 1978. He also worked as a film director and scriptwriter.

 

Roger Pigaut was born Roger Paul Louis Pigot in Vincennes, France, in 1919. In 1938, Pigaut attended the theatre courses of Raymond Rouleau and the following year he was admitted to the Conservatoire. But because of the war, he left to the South of France. From 1943, he played in more than forty films. One of his first films was the romantic drama Douce/Love Story (Claude Autant-Lara, 1943) with Odette Joyeux. He co-starred with Madeleine Robinson in the crime drama Sortilèges/The Bellman (Christian-Jaque, 1945). D.B. Dumontiel at IMDb: “Robinson and Pigaut had already teamed up in Claude Autant-Lara's classic Douce and the scenes where they are together (particularly the ball) take the film out on a level of stratospheric intensity that simply rises above the rest.” Pigaut’s most prominent roles were as Antoine in the comedy Antoine et Antoinette (Jacques Becker, 1947) with Claire Mafféi as Antoinette, and as Pierre Bouquinquant in Les frères Bouquinquant/The brothers Bouquinquant (Louis Daquin, 1948). D.B. Dumontiel agaqin: “Antoine and Antoinette retains its pristine charm. It's very well acted, and Becker's camera is fluid, his sympathy for his characters is glaring. Qualities which will emerge again in such works as Rendez-vous de Juillet and his towering achievement Casque D'Or.” Pigaut then portrayed the eighteenth century adventurer Louis Dominique Bourguignon known as Cartouche in the historical film Cartouche, roi de Paris/Cartouche (Guillaume Radot, 1950).

 

In Italy, Roger Pigaut played a supporting part in the Italian Peplum Teodora, imperatrice di Bisanzio/Theodora, Slave Empress (Riccardo Freda, 1954) about Theodora (Gianna Maria Canale), a former slave who married Justinian I, emperor of Byzantium in AD 527–565. He also appeared as Le Marquis d'Escrainville in two parts of the popular Angélique series featuring Michèle Mercier, Indomptable Angélique/Untamable Angelique (Bernard Borderie, 1967) and Angélique et le sultan/Angelique and the Sultan (Bernard Borderie, 1968). Other historical films in which Pigaut appeared were the Italian-French J'ai tué Raspoutine/I Killed Rasputin (Robert Hossein, 1967) with Gert Fröbe as Grigori Rasputin, and the romantic tragedy Mayerling (Terence Young, 1968) starring Omar Sharif as Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and Catherine Deneuve as his mistress Baroness Maria Vetsera. His last film was Une Histoire simple/A Simple Story (Claude Sautet, 1978), starring Romy Schneider, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Roger Pigaut also directed six films, and played in the theatre. For five years, he was the companion of actress Betsy Blair from the late-1950s to the early-1960s (in between her marriages to Gene Kelly and Karel Reisz). Together with Serge Reggiani, they founded the production company Garance Films, with which they produced such films as Cerf-volant du bout du monde/The Magic of the Kite (Roger Pigaut, 1958) and the caper Trois milliards sans ascenseur/3000 Million Without an Elevator (Roger Pigaut, 1972) with Reggiani, and Dany Carrel. Later he was married to French actress Joëlle Bernard. Roger Pigaut passed away in 1989 in Paris. He was 70.

 

Sources: D.B. Dumonteil (IMDb), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.

German postcard. Ross Verlag, Berlin, No. 631/1/. Maxim Film. Postcard for the 1919 German silent film Das Schicksal der Carola von Geldern (1919), starring Lotte Neumann. The film was adapted by Ludwig Wolff from the novel Der grosse Rachen (1915) by Olga Wohlbrück-Wendland. Wolff was possibly co-director of the film too, possibly it was instead Carl Froehlich.

 

Carola von Geldern's mother (Grete Ebinger) has an affair with a gambler and dies. Carola (Lotte Neumann) loves a benefactor. When she has caused an accident, he kills her. Other actors were Rudolf Lettinger (the husband, Jack von Geldern), Eduard Rothauser (Von Glienen/Von Glidien), Martin Lübbert (Dr. Graebner), Margarete Ferida (Von Glidien's girlfriend), Paul Kaufmann (Dr. Ertzky), Mrs. Klein-Rohden (housekeeper). Cinematographer was Otto Tober, set designer Hans Sohnle.

 

Sources: www.earlycinema.uni-koeln.de/films/view/32901; www.filmportal.de/film/das-schicksal-der-carola-von-gelde...; IMDB. NB IMDB gives a different production company, the Deutsch-Östereichischer Film, and also states it was based on a book by Wolff (who was only the scriptwriter). IMDB also lists Blandine Ebinger among the cast. Finally, IMDB lists the film as Das Schicksal der Carola van Geldern. Filmportal indicates not Froehlich but Ludwig Wolff was the director. It also writes that Rothauser's character was Von Glidien. The Early German Cinema site is unsure whether Wolff or Froehlich was the director.

 

Lotte Neumann (1896-1977) was one of the most successful actresses in the early days of the German silent cinema. She also worked as a screenwriter and a producer.

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus Jin Ping Mei Beijing Dance Theatre Stage Presentation Brings Chinese Erotic Arts to Canada - Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto北京当代芭蕾舞团剧目把中国色情艺术带到加拿大温哥华、多伦多、蒙特利尔巡游表演

 

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus/Lotus d'or/Jin Ping Mei Ballet Stage Performance

 

This is a stage adaptation of the early 17th century erotic Chinese novel 'Jin Ping Mei'. The show was first produced in Hong Kong in 2011. However, it was banned (some say delayed due to content localization) in Mainland China for three years until 2014. After some racy scenes were toned down, the show was allowed to debut in China and now it is about to extend the work to oversea markets. This time around, the Beijing Dance Theatre took over the ballet presentation and it is now touring for the first time in Canada to entertain audiences in three cities – Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

 

The Golden Lotus or better known as Jing Ping Mei was written in the latter part of the Ming Dynasty by someone who used a pseudonym and the true authorship had not been satisfactorily proven to this day. Practically from day one of its existence, the work has been purged in society as a 'forbidden book' in China since its first printing in about 1610. Although generally regarded as pornography throughout the centuries, the book had nevertheless became known among many literal elites both in China and in the West as one of the most important works of Chinese literature in the same class as The Water Margin《水浒传》, Romance of the Three Kingdoms《三国演义》and Dream of the Red Chamber《红楼梦》. In fact, it could be said that The Golden Lotus was derived from The Water Margin as both shared some of the same historical and fictional characters as Wu Song武松, Xi Menqing西门庆, Pan Jinlian潘金莲 etc. But the plot concerning these characters are very different between the two novels.

 

Behind the scene, the Beijing Dance Theatre production has some big name attached to the project. The choreographer is Artistic Director Wang Yuanyuan（王媛媛）who was responsible for adapting the Ballet Raise The Red Lantern 《大红灯笼高高挂》from the movie that made director Zhang Yimou（张艺谋）a household name in Chinese entertainment. Costume Designer was Oscar-winning Set Designer and Artistic Director Tim Yip（叶锦添）of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 《卧虎藏龙》fame. Others such as the musical director, scriptwriters, effects masters and producers are mainly involved in the movies and stage productions.

 

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus Stage Adaptation -

 

Vancouver: Sep 21-22, 2017 Queen Elizabeth Theatre 7:30PM

Montreal: Oct 01-02, 2017 Montreal Place des Arts 7:30PM

Toronto: Oct 5-6, 2017 Living Arts Centre 7:30PM

 

Tickets: $285/235/185/145/105/85/65

Online: www.MegaBoxOffice.com

Phone: 778-321-5829 | 778-680-8800 | 778-927-9265 | 778-251-9839 (English & 中文)

Hotline: 604-343-6260

 

English: vancouver.ca/news-calendar/beijing-dance-theatre-golden-l...

中文：http://www.bcbay.com/life/community/2017/04/07/487157.html

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Ping_Mei

 

++++++++++++++++++++++

Ray Van Eng 雷云影 is an accomplished media professional, award-winning screenwriter and movie producer. His work has been part of the Hava Nagila Exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan in New York, NY from Sep 2012 to May 2013.

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TITLE: The Raven

YEAR RELEASED: 1963

DIRECTOR: Roger Corman

CAST: Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Hazel Court and Peter Lorre.

MINI-REVIEW BY STEPHEN JACOBS: “Roger Corman’s comedy is great fun. Vincent Price plays Dr. Erasmus Craven, a magician who discovers his wife [Hazel Court] is not dead but resides with rival sorcerer Dr. Scarabus [Boris Karloff]. Peter Lorre, however, steals the picture as Dr. Bedlo, a grouchy wizard who had been transformed into a raven by Scarabus. Also noteworthy as featuring a young Jack Nicholson as Lorre’s son, Rexford.”

 

MAIN REVIEW BY ADAM SCOVELL

 

With its rather ominous opening, the viewer would perhaps be forgiven for thinking that Roger Corman’s adaptation of Poe’s The Raven would be in similar ilk to his other dark Poe films. What at first seems like yet another gothic retelling of a Poe classic turns out to be a swiftly delivered curve ball that has, at its core, a desire for fun and mischief rather than for scares and dark forebodings.

Vincent Price plays Dr Erasmus Craven, one of many sorcerers to appear in the film. He may be on the side of good but this implies that the villains are genuinely bad. Boris Karloff plays the closest to what the film has to a villain in the form of Dr Scarabus but this is a film about having a laugh at the absurdity of the fantasy genre rather than genuine battles of good vs. evil. To add to an already impressive cast is Peter Lorre as the hilarious Dr. Bedlo who appears first in the form of a raven and then proceeds to be one of the most hilariously inept sorcerers in fantasy.

Bedlo was turned into a raven by Scarabus but the action taken by the sorcerers seems more in line with playground antics than fantasy action. Jack Nicholson also makes an early film appearance as the dashing hero of the piece though is sidelined in the film in place wizardry and joyfully silly battles. Though very clearly aiming at a younger market, Corman still manages to add a few spine tingling elements to the film. These are mainly to be found in the film’s opening twenty minutes and revolve around Craven trying to find the rather gruesome ingredients to cure Bedlo from of his raven form. It must be stated that though the connection to the original adaptation of The Raven (1935) through Boris Karloff is its only link. The original was a tense, gothic tale of murder far more in line with Poe’s original prose. This is the polar opposite in almost every conceivable way.

Corman’s Raven is far more laxed about its source material to the point where it’s all but abandoned after the film’s introduction. Though this may perhaps not do it any favours among the horror purists, criticisms of the film based around its lack of seriousness misses the point entirely. Perhaps also with Corman’s excellent track record for Poe adaptations, it comes as a shock to find him playing so freely with the material but it’s something he would come back to again and again (also remembering his previous horror comedy Little Shop of Horrors (1960)).

Though more in line with the TV series Bewitched than with the likes of Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Raven is a perfect film for the winter. Its silly nature gives it the feel of a Christmas film, however, boasting an extremely strong cast of horror royalty and providing some genuine laughs along with its witty wizardry, The Raven is a film that can be forgiven for straying array from the purely horrific and should instead be enjoyed for what it is; fun.

synopsis

Although Roger Corman narrowly managed to avoid self-mockery in his pulpy, flamboyant adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe tales, it appears that the director chose this opportunity to let loose with outright parody; the result is a wonderfully entertaining romp with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The first screen teaming of legendary horror stars Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and Peter Lorre -- later billed as "The Triumvirate of Terror" -- this so-called "adaptation" uses Poe's most famous poem as a springboard for Grand Guignol comedy from scriptwriter Richard Matheson. Melancholy magician Erasmus Craven (Price), having recently relinquished his membership in the Brotherhood of Sorcerers after the apparent death of his wife Lenore (Hazel Court), is paid a visit by a foul-mouthed talking raven, claiming to be small-time wizard Adolphus Bedlo (Lorre). After some persuasion, Craven returns Bedlo to human form, reversing a spell placed by the evil Dr. Scarabus (Karloff), Craven's chief rival. After learning that a woman bearing a strong likeness to Lenore was seen in the Doctor's company, Craven accompanies Bedlo to Scarabus' castle, where the resulting battle of wills escalates into all-out magical warfare between the two embittered sorcerers. Corman and company relished the opportunity to poke fun at the staid Poe series, and the distinguished leads contribute to the spirit of fun by lampooning their own cinematic reputations. Fans of Jack Nicholson (who cut his acting teeth on this and other AIP productions) should enjoy his melodramatic performance here as Bedlo's straight-arrow son; Nicholson would later co-star with Karloff in Corman's The Terror, which was shot in two days using the same sets!

 

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus Jin Ping Mei Beijing Dance Theatre Stage Presentation Brings Chinese Erotic Arts to Canada - Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto北京当代芭蕾舞团剧目把中国色情艺术带到加拿大温哥华、多伦多、蒙特利尔巡游表演

 

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus/Lotus d'or/Jin Ping Mei Ballet Stage Performance

 

This is a stage adaptation of the early 17th century erotic Chinese novel 'Jin Ping Mei'. The show was first produced in Hong Kong in 2011. However, it was banned (some say delayed due to content localization) in Mainland China for three years until 2014. After some racy scenes were toned down, the show was allowed to debut in China and now it is about to extend the work to oversea markets. This time around, the Beijing Dance Theatre took over the ballet presentation and it is now touring for the first time in Canada to entertain audiences in three cities – Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

 

The Golden Lotus or better known as Jing Ping Mei was written in the latter part of the Ming Dynasty by someone who used a pseudonym and the true authorship had not been satisfactorily proven to this day. Practically from day one of its existence, the work has been purged in society as a 'forbidden book' in China since its first printing in about 1610. Although generally regarded as pornography throughout the centuries, the book had nevertheless became known among many literal elites both in China and in the West as one of the most important works of Chinese literature in the same class as The Water Margin《水浒传》, Romance of the Three Kingdoms《三国演义》and Dream of the Red Chamber《红楼梦》. In fact, it could be said that The Golden Lotus was derived from The Water Margin as both shared some of the same historical and fictional characters as Wu Song武松, Xi Menqing西门庆, Pan Jinlian潘金莲 etc. But the plot concerning these characters are very different between the two novels.

 

Behind the scene, the Beijing Dance Theatre production has some big name attached to the project. The choreographer is Artistic Director Wang Yuanyuan（王媛媛）who was responsible for adapting the Ballet Raise The Red Lantern 《大红灯笼高高挂》from the movie that made director Zhang Yimou（张艺谋）a household name in Chinese entertainment. Costume Designer was Oscar-winning Set Designer and Artistic Director Tim Yip（叶锦添）of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 《卧虎藏龙》fame. Others such as the musical director, scriptwriters, effects masters and producers are mainly involved in the movies and stage productions.

 

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus Stage Adaptation -

 

Vancouver: Sep 21-22, 2017 Queen Elizabeth Theatre 7:30PM

Montreal: Oct 01-02, 2017 Montreal Place des Arts 7:30PM

Toronto: Oct 5-6, 2017 Living Arts Centre 7:30PM

 

Tickets: $285/235/185/145/105/85/65

Online: www.MegaBoxOffice.com

Phone: 778-321-5829 | 778-680-8800 | 778-927-9265 | 778-251-9839 (English & 中文)

Hotline: 604-343-6260

 

English: vancouver.ca/news-calendar/beijing-dance-theatre-golden-l...

中文：http://www.bcbay.com/life/community/2017/04/07/487157.html

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Ping_Mei

 

++++++++++++++++++++++

Ray Van Eng 雷云影 is an accomplished media professional, award-winning screenwriter and movie producer. His work has been part of the Hava Nagila Exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan in New York, NY from Sep 2012 to May 2013.

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The Postcard

 

A Valentine's Series postcard that was printed in Great Britain. The image is a glossy real photograph.

 

The card was posted in London on Tuesday the 22nd. July 1930 to:

 

Miss C. H. Gootcher,

High School for Girls,

Ashford,

Kent.

 

The pencilled message on the divided back of the card was as follows:

 

"I was here last night.

I stayed at an hotel on

the top of the hill. Good

views.

Tunbridge waters are

renowned.

Hope to see you at the

end of the week.

This view is well-known.

Love Daddie."

 

The Pantiles

 

The Pantiles is a Georgian colonnade in the town of Royal Tunbridge Wells. Formerly known as The Walks and the (Royal) Parade, it leads from the well that gave the town its name. The area was created following the discovery of a chalybeate spring in the early 17th. century, and is now a popular tourist attraction.

 

The Pantiles today includes a variety of specialist shops, art galleries, cafés, restaurants and bars as well as a Farmers market held outside every other Saturday. Throughout the summer jazz bands play outside on the bandstand attracting hundreds of people.

 

The Chalybeate Spring

 

The chalybeate spring is situated at the north-eastern end of The Pantiles. The spring is overlooked by the Dipper's Hall. The waters are rich in iron, giving them a unique taste.

 

Tourists can sample the spring water which is served by costumed 'Dippers' every summer.

 

The Development of the Wells

 

Dudley Lord North, a distinguished courtier during the reign of King James I, discovered the waters in 1606. Having lived a fashionably excessive lifestyle, he retired to the countryside (in nearby Eridge) in an unsuccessful attempt to repair his health.

 

Travelling through woodland on his return to London, he discovered the waters and decided to try them. He found his health completely restored, and lived to the age of 80.

 

With public interest aroused, Lord Abergavenny cleared the area of brushwood, sank wells and surrounded them with stone paving and railings. The waters subsequently attracted other visitors, who also claimed their health to be restored.

 

Although few in number, due to the lack of accommodation nearby (at this time, the nearest being in Tunbridge (now Tonbridge), some 5 miles to the north), the visitors were of high social standing. They included Henrietta Maria of France, wife of King Charles I, six weeks after the birth of her son (later to become King Charles II) whose party camped in opulent tents erected at Bishops Down, due to the lack of nearby lodgings.

 

Originally referred to as Frant Wells, they were later renamed Queen Mary’s Wells, in honour of Queen Mary II, and were only later given the present name of Tunbridge Wells.

 

The Upper and Lower Walks were created in 1638, when an existing bank of earth stretching south-west from the wells was levelled and planted with a double row of trees. Wooden buildings were constructed on both sides of the Walks.

 

Post-Restoration Development

 

The wells were neglected and almost forgotten during the English civil wars. Following the Restoration, several improvements were made to the immediate area, including construction of an assembly room and bowling green.

 

In 1664, following a dangerous illness, the queen (Catherine of Braganza) was ordered to drink the waters, increasing their popularity.

 

In 1687, a fire destroyed the wooden buildings located on either side of the Walks. The buildings were later rebuilt with the colonnades which give the Pantiles its distinctive character today. By 1697, coffee houses had been developed in the area.

 

Background to the name 'Pantiles'

 

In 1700 the Upper Walks were paved with pantiles.

 

The pantiles used to pave the Upper Walks should not be confused with roofing pantiles. The paving installed there comprised one-inch thick square tiles made from heavy wealden clay, so named because they were shaped in a wooden pan before firing.

 

In 1793 the pantiles were mostly removed and substituted with stone flagging – the region was then called The Parade.

In 1887 the old name was revived.

 

Events

 

The Pantiles hosts various festivals during the year, including a food festival, a music festival featuring local bands, a fashion market and an open air art exhibition.

 

During the summer, the Pantiles hosts a jazz season, featuring free outdoor jazz concerts on Thursday evenings where musicians play on the historic bandstand.

 

Cultural References to the Pantiles

 

The Pantiles was used as a filming location for the 1967 musical 'Half a Sixpence' starring Tommy Steele and Julia Foster.

 

In 1991 it was used as a backdrop for the band World Of Twist, on the cover of their debut album, 'Quality Street', with the group dressed in period costume.

 

In 2007 it was used in a Christmas television advert for the Morrisons supermarket chain starring the singer Lulu. This caused some local grumbling because Morrisons had only recently closed their Tunbridge Wells store.

 

Undaunted, Morrisons returned to the Pantiles for their 2009 Christmas advert starring Richard Hammond and Denise van Outen.

 

The Deadly Collapse of a Bridge

 

So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?

 

Well, on the 22nd. July 1930, celebrations of the Rhineland's liberation were marred by tragedy after a pontoon bridge collapsed in Koblenz, killing 38 people.

 

Jeremy Lloyd

 

The day also marked the birth in Danbury, Essex of the English actor and screenwriter Jeremy Lloyd.

 

John Jeremy Lloyd, OBE was a British television scriptwriter who was professionally active between 1958 and 2014. Jeremy was also a writer, screenwriter, author, poet and actor.

 

Lloyd's notable works include:

 

-- Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1969–70)

-- Are You Being Served? (1972–85)

-- Come Back Mrs Noah (1977–78)

-- Oh, Happy Band! (1980)

-- 'Allo 'Allo! (1982-92)

-- Grace and Favour (1992–93)

-- Which Way to the War (1994)

 

Jeremy Lloyd - The Early Years

 

John Jeremy Lloyd was born to a mother who had been a dancer, and a petroleum engineer father who served as an officer in the Royal Engineers in World War II.

 

As a child he was sent to live with his grandmother in Manchester and rarely saw his parents, whom he claimed had seen him as a failure. His father withdrew him from a private preparatory school in 1943.

 

Lloyd then worked as a junior assistant in the menswear department at Simpsons of Piccadilly, and many of the characters depicted in Are You Being Served? were drawn from his recollections of his time there.

 

He also worked as a travelling paint salesman, and believed his early jobs gave him a better education than a university could have provided.

 

Jeremy Lloyd's Career

 

Lloyd began his career as a writer in 1958 before making his film debut two years later in 1960 in School for Scoundrels. He appeared in numerous film and television comedies during the 1960's and 1970's.

 

Notably, Jeremy was a regular performer on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In during the 1969–70 television season.

 

Back in England, after he had completed the season, he met actress Joanna Lumley. A decision had to be made as to whether he would return to the U.S. for the start of the new season or remain in the UK and marry Lumley. He never returned to the United States.

 

In A Hard Day's Night (1964), Lloyd is uncredited as a tall man dancing at the disco with Beatles drummer Ringo Starr. In Help! (1965), he is a restaurant patron, also uncredited.

 

In 1969, he filmed a scene with Peter Sellers for The Magic Christian, which co-starred Ringo Starr. Lloyd can be seen in a boardroom meeting offering marketing slogans for a really big car, and suggests "The gang's all here back seat."

 

In 1967 he played the eccentric chimney sweep, Berthram Fortesque Wynthrope-Smythe, aka Bert Smith, in The Avengers episode, "From Venus With Love".

 

Lloyd's first major success as a comedy writer was with Are You Being Served? in 1972, on which he worked with David Croft. He and Croft subsequently produced 'Allo 'Allo!, which was equally popular in the UK, and a spinoff of Are You Being Served?, Grace & Favour, which aired in 1992.

 

Lloyd wrote the poem/lyrics for the popular Captain Beaky album and books in 1980.

 

In 1993 Lloyd published his autobiography, titled with a phrase from 'Allo 'Allo!, called Listen Very Carefully—I Shall Say this Only Once.

 

Lloyd was the subject of what was considered an urban legend, that he had been invited to a dinner party at the home of Sharon Tate on the night that she was murdered by followers of Charles Manson. However, the story was verified as true when the octogenarian was interviewed by Emma Freud on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Loose Ends, on the 10th. December 2011.

 

Lloyd was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to British comedy.

 

Jeremy Lloyd's Personal Life

 

Lloyd's first marriage in 1955 to model Dawn Bailey lasted seven years. After their marriage ended, he was briefly engaged to the actress Charlotte Rampling.

 

Lloyd then married actress Joanna Lumley in May 1970, but that union ended in September of the same year. In 1992 he married actress Collette Northrop, and in August 2014, Lloyd married Elizabeth "Lizzy" Moberly.

 

The Death of Jeremy Lloyd

 

Jeremy died in London on the 23rd. December 2014, aged 84, after being admitted to hospital with pneumonia (the 'old man's friend'). He was survived by his wife Elizabeth.

Shanghai Ballet: Echoes of Eternity

 

Shanghai Ballet presents 'Echoes of Eternity ' at the London Coliseum, choreographed by Patrick de Bana and inspired by the ancient Chinese poem ‘Song of Everlasting Sorrow. 7-21 August 2016.

 

Choreographer: Patrick de Bana

Set designer: Jaya Ibrahim

Costume designer: Agnes Letestu

Light designer: James Angot

Scriptwriter: Jean Francois Vazelle

Literature Consultant: Sifu TANG

 

Dancers:

Emperor: WU Husheng

Lady Yang: QI Bingxue

Moon Fairy: ZHAO Hanbing

Gao Lishi: ZHANG Yao

Chen Xuanli: WU Bin

An Lushan: ZHANG Wenjun

 

see www.dancetabs.com

photo - © Foteini Christofilopoulou | All rights reserved | For all usage/licensing enquiries please contact www.foteini.com

Italian postcard. I giovani patrizi si arruolano contro Spartaco (The Young patricians conspire against Spartacus).

 

Mario Guaita aka Ausonia (1881-1956) was an Italian actor, director, producer and scriptwriter in the silent era. He had his international breakthrough with Spartaco (Enrico Vidali 1913).

 

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

Italian postcard by Rizzoli & C., Milano, 1942. Photo: Pesce.

 

Anita Farra (1905–1979) was an Italian actress and scriptwriter, who also worked in Spain.

 

Born in Venice in 1905, Farra began attending small theater companies in the region, her arrival at the cinema would only take place in 1936 with the film Bertoldo, Bertoldino and Cacasenno, under the direction of Giorgio Simonelli. The career of the film actress consisted of about 31 films, in the period of about 40 years, but was extremely discontinuous, Farra would never be able to get out of secondary parts and would abandon work for the big screen in 1975, continuing to work in the theater. She also did occasional performances in radio programs of the thirties and forties by EIAR and RAI. Farra often worked in Spain, also participating in the screenplay for the film Buongiorno, Madrid! (Gian Maria Cominetti, 1943), starring Maria Mercader.

 

In the spring of 1943, Farra went to Spain for a series of Italo-Hispanic co-productions, such as Dora, la espia (1943), staring the diva of Italian silent cinema: Francesca Bertini. Her parts became considerably bigger. Her travel and work companions were Emilio Cigoli, Felice Romano, Franco Coop, Nerio Bernardi and Paola Barbara (who was already in Madrid with her husband, the director Primo Zeglio). After finishing the commitment with the production, the group of Italian actors, considering the wartime travel conditions and the state of order in Italy, decided to remain in the Spanish capital pending the end of the war. They were contacted by a representative of the 20th Century Fox who offered them the opportunity to work on the dubbing, in Italian, of the films of the American company, to make sure that at the end of the war, the films could be inserted in the circuits of the Italian cinemas, considering the shutdown of the dubbing plants in Rome. The group of actors set to work in a studio in Madrid, where several American films are dubbed, including How Green Was My Valley, Charley's Aunt, The Mark of Zorro, Suspicion, and The Lodger. These films arrived in Italy following the American Allied troops liberating Italy, and after a while they were distributed for viewing in public cinemas. In the middle of 1945 the actors returned to Rome, where they resumed their usual work within a short time.

 

After the war, Farra would continue act in films but much less than before, and alternating Italian and Spanish films. She played e.g. a friend of Paola (Lucia Bosé) In Michelangelo Antonioni's Cronaca di un amore (1950). Her last part Farra had as the mother of the leading character (played by Enrico Montesano) in Amore vuol dir gelosia (Mauro Severino, 1975).

 

NB While Italian Wikipedia writes Farra died August 7, 1979 in Madrid, IMDB and English Wikipedia state she died August 4, 2008 (age 103), in Predappio, Italy.

 

Source: Italian WIkipedia, IMDB.

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus Jin Ping Mei Beijing Dance Theatre Stage Presentation Brings Chinese Erotic Arts to Canada - Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto北京当代芭蕾舞团剧目把中国色情艺术带到加拿大温哥华、多伦多、蒙特利尔巡游表演

 

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus/Lotus d'or/Jin Ping Mei Ballet Stage Performance

 

This is a stage adaptation of the early 17th century erotic Chinese novel 'Jin Ping Mei'. The show was first produced in Hong Kong in 2011. However, it was banned (some say delayed due to content localization) in Mainland China for three years until 2014. After some racy scenes were toned down, the show was allowed to debut in China and now it is about to extend the work to oversea markets. This time around, the Beijing Dance Theatre took over the ballet presentation and it is now touring for the first time in Canada to entertain audiences in three cities – Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

 

The Golden Lotus or better known as Jing Ping Mei was written in the latter part of the Ming Dynasty by someone who used a pseudonym and the true authorship had not been satisfactorily proven to this day. Practically from day one of its existence, the work has been purged in society as a 'forbidden book' in China since its first printing in about 1610. Although generally regarded as pornography throughout the centuries, the book had nevertheless became known among many literal elites both in China and in the West as one of the most important works of Chinese literature in the same class as The Water Margin《水浒传》, Romance of the Three Kingdoms《三国演义》and Dream of the Red Chamber《红楼梦》. In fact, it could be said that The Golden Lotus was derived from The Water Margin as both shared some of the same historical and fictional characters as Wu Song武松, Xi Menqing西门庆, Pan Jinlian潘金莲 etc. But the plot concerning these characters are very different between the two novels.

 

Behind the scene, the Beijing Dance Theatre production has some big name attached to the project. The choreographer is Artistic Director Wang Yuanyuan（王媛媛）who was responsible for adapting the Ballet Raise The Red Lantern 《大红灯笼高高挂》from the movie that made director Zhang Yimou（张艺谋）a household name in Chinese entertainment. Costume Designer was Oscar-winning Set Designer and Artistic Director Tim Yip（叶锦添）of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 《卧虎藏龙》fame. Others such as the musical director, scriptwriters, effects masters and producers are mainly involved in the movies and stage productions.

 

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus Stage Adaptation -

 

Vancouver: Sep 21-22, 2017 Queen Elizabeth Theatre 7:30PM

Montreal: Oct 01-02, 2017 Montreal Place des Arts 7:30PM

Toronto: Oct 5-6, 2017 Living Arts Centre 7:30PM

 

Tickets: $285/235/185/145/105/85/65

Online: www.MegaBoxOffice.com

Phone: 778-321-5829 | 778-680-8800 | 778-927-9265 | 778-251-9839 (English & 中文)

Hotline: 604-343-6260

 

English: vancouver.ca/news-calendar/beijing-dance-theatre-golden-l...

中文：http://www.bcbay.com/life/community/2017/04/07/487157.html

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Ping_Mei

 

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Ray Van Eng 雷云影 is an accomplished media professional, award-winning screenwriter and movie producer. His work has been part of the Hava Nagila Exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan in New York, NY from Sep 2012 to May 2013.

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Italian postcard. G.B. Falci, Milano, No. 20. Cines-Pittaluga, Roma. Postcard for the Italian early sound film Terra madre (Mother Earth, Alessandro Blasetti, 1931), starring Leda Gloria, Sandro Salvini, and Isa Pola.

 

Duke Marco (Sandro Salvini) has been living in the city for a long time, far from the lands he owns. He comes back only when he decides to sell them to maintain a costly standard of living which also includes his mistress Daisy (Isa Pola). His return is welcomed by peasants hoping he'll stay with them. During a solitary tour of his lands, in which he remembers his youth in the countryside with growing nostalgia, Marco meets Emilia (Leda Gloria), the farmer's daughter, and is struck by her spontaneous energy and freshness. When the peasants learn about the news of the sale their enthusiasm turns into disappointment, but Marco, pressured by financial needs, returns to the city with Daisy to sign the documents. Here he is joined by a phone call from Emilia informing him of a serious fire that broke out on the farm. At that point, Marco leaves everything, runs into the countryside, directs the victorious fight against the fire and decides to revoke the sale. He will stay to take care of his lands and he will marry Emilia.

 

Terra Madre was drawn from a subject entitled Passa la morte, written in 1930 by Camillo Apolloni, a former actor of silent cinema, which was purchased in 1930 by "Cines" relaunched by Stefano Pittaluga as the first Italian company in the production of sound cinema. On the basis of that text Blasetti, in collaboration with the director of the silent era and writer Gianni Bistolfi, wrote the script with the intention of providing «an indication of the social and lyrical value of rural life. Two parties contested the originality of the story, but years after, Blasetti said that from the original story "only the boots of the farmer" had remained.

 

After a few years of vehement criticism of Pittaluga conducted with the group gathered around the magazine Cinematografo, in the middle of 1930 Blasetti and some of his collaborators entered the Cines and became its staunch defenders. The Roman director thus had the opportunity, after the searing failure of Sole (and apart from the parenthesis of Nerone/ Petrolini) to resume the themes of "rebirth" in the new situation, first with Resurrectio and then with Terra Madre, in which he revived the spirit " ruralista "already present in his debut film Sole. It was the contrast between the urban world, considered indolent and parasitic (the "Stracittà"), and the peasant one (the "Strapaese"), seen instead as strong and healthy by a current of fascism, the one born in the countryside, favorable to the preservation of the rural character of the Italian people.

 

The film - one of the 10 feature films published by the Cines-Pittaluga in the 1930 - 1931 season - was shot at the theater 3 of the Cines in Via Vejo in Rome, between September 1930 and January 1931, while for the exteriors some locations in the Roman countryside were used. Like the first sound film released in Italy, Gennaro Righelli's La canzone dell'amore, also Terra Madre was a co-production of which a German version was made, again at the Cines, on behalf of the company Atlas of Berlin (title: Kennst Du das Land), interpreted in the two main roles by Hans Adalbert Schlettow and Maria Solveg, and directed by Constantin David, former director of the German version of the Righelli film.

 

Next to Blasetti on the set of Terra Madre worked the future directors Ferdinando Maria Poggioli and Goffredo Alessandrini, who on that occasion had entered the Cines as scriptwriter and assistant, both from the group around the magazine Cinemagrafo that at the beginning of 1931 had ceased publication after the transfer of most of its exponents employed by Pittaluga. Particularly important for highlighting the contrast between city and countryside was the musical comment given on one side to Foxtrot motifs and the other to the rhythm of a popular "saltarello" and to 5 choirs performed by the Camerata Lughese of the "Canterini Romagnoli". A great deal of attention was also paid to photography, so much so that to the two hired operators (Montuori and De Luca) a third assistant joined them, the almost newcomer Clemente Santoni, producing a result of great expressive value in chiaroscuro and depth.

 

Terra madre was released in March 1931 and was a big success, both critically and commercially. This also was the case for the German version, and equally for a French dubbed version called Le rappel de la terre. Also in Latin America, it was very successful. Critics were not unanimous in their praise. Some rather praised Pittaluga's effort to raise the new national sound cinema and were less convinced by Blasetti's direction, claiming that in comparison with Sole, in Terra madre the landscape had lost their primitive, raw and pure beauty. Others, such as Leo Longanesi, considered Sole and Terra madre on a par, on equal height. Longanesi called it "a masterpiece of rural rhetoric, an oleography of our times."

 

Source: Italian Wikipedia, IMDB.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, nr. 5124/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa.

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was in 1925 chosen by Fritz Lang to star in Metropolis. Reportedly her mother had sent her photograph to scriptwriter Thea von Harbou and Lang made a screen test with her. The Ufa gave her a ten-year contract and Metropolis made her a star overnight. The wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927) was her first project working with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who was probably best able to bring out her mysterious adaptability. His films Abwege (1928) and L’ Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis (1932) are among the films that allowed Helm to act outside all the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers. Her other silent film appearances include Am Rande der Welt (1927, Karl Grune), the SF film Alraune (Henrik Galeen, 1928), Geheimnisse des Orients (Alexandre Volkoff, 1928), L’ Argent (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928), and Die Wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna (Hanns Schwarz, 1929).

 

Her first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She went on from her silent successes with a successful sound remake of Alraune (Richard Oswald, 1930). In addition, she also played in France and England, where she appeared among other things in foreign versions of her German films. Her relationship with the Ufa was very rocky. While the studio made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material offered to her and with restrictive clauses dictating over her weight. Her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Reportedly she was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel (1930) which went to Marlene Dietrich and she was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but she refused to come to America. In 1935, reportedly angered by Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision was the negative press reports which went round because of several traffic accidents she caused and of a short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of Oscar Wilde. She married industrialist Dr. Hugo Kunheim and retired. The pair would raise four children. Brigitte Helm lived out the rest of her life in quiet solitude in Italy and from the 1960s on in Switzerland. In 1968 she received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again or even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered questions of her old fans for her signature and her signature adorns a good many collections.

 

Sources: Thomas Staedeli, Wikipedia, Film Reference, Lenin Imports, and IMDb.

 

Click for more of our postcards of Brigitte Helm here and here.

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 561. Photo: 20th Century Fox.

 

Last, Saturday, Irish born Maureen O’Hara, one of the icons of Hollywood’s Golden Age, has died. The feisty and fearless actress starred in John Ford’s Oscar-winning drama How Green Was My Valley (1941), set in Wales, and Ford’s Irish-set The Quiet Man (1952) opposite John Wayne. The famously red-headed actress also worked successfully with Charles Laughton at Jamaica Inn (1939) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), starred in the perennial Christmas hit Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and appeared in the Disney children’s hit The Parent Trap (1961). O'Hara was 95.

 

Maureen O’Hara was born Maureen FitzSimons in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh in 1920. Her mother, Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons, was an accomplished contralto. Her father, Charles FitzSimons, managed a business in Dublin and also owned part of the renowned Irish soccer team The Shamrock Rovers. From the age of 6 to 17, Maureen trained in drama, music and dance, and at the age of 10 she joined the Rathmines Theatre Company and worked in amateur theatre in the evenings after her lessons. O'Hara's dream at this time was to be a stage actress. By age 14 she was accepted to the prestigious Abbey Theater and pursued her dream of classical theater and operatic singing. Her first screen test was for a British film called Kicking the Moon Around (Walter Forde, 1938) at Elstree Studios, It was arranged by American bandleader Harry Richman, who was then appearing in Dublin. The result was deemed unsatisfactory, but when Charles Laughton later saw it he was intrigued by her large and expressive eyes. He arranged for her to co-star with him in the British film Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1939). Laughton was so pleased with O'Hara's performance that she was cast in the role of Esmeralda opposite him in the Hollywood production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle, 1939). The epic film was an extraordinary success and international audiences were now alerted to her natural beauty and talent. From there, she went on to enjoy a long and highly successful career in Hollywood. Director John Ford cast her as Angharad in How Green Was My Valley (1941), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. She starred in Swashbucklers such as The Black Swan (Henry King, 1942), opposite Tyrone Power, and Sinbad the Sailor (Richard Wallace, 1947), with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., She also starred as Doris Walker and the mother of a young Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton, 1947), which became a perennial Christmas classic.

 

Maureen O'Hara made a number of films with John Wayne. She met Wayne through director John Ford, and the two hit it right off. O'Hara: "I adored him, and he loved me. But we were never sweethearts. Never, ever.” Opposite Wayne, she played Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952), an iconic film that is still very much celebrated in Ireland and abroad. In total, they made five films together between 1948 and 1972, also including Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950), The Wings of Eagles (John Ford, 1957), McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) and Big Jake (George Sherman, 1971). O’Hara most often played strong and willful women, but offscreen she was the same. In 1957 her career was threatened by scandal, when the tabloid Confidential magazine claimed she and a man had engaged in 'the hottest show in town' in the back row of Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. However, as she later told the Associated Press, at the time she “was making a movie in Spain, and I had the passport to prove it”. She testified against the magazine in a criminal libel trial and brought a lawsuit that was settled out of court. The magazine eventually went out of business.

 

Maureen O'Hara was married three times. In 1939, at the age of 19, O'Hara secretly married Englishman George H. Brown, a film producer, production assistant and occasional scriptwriter, who she had met on the set of Jamaica Inn. The marriage was annulled in 1941. Later that year, O'Hara married American film director William Houston Price (dialogue director in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), but the union ended in 1953, reportedly as a result of his alcohol abuse. They had one child, a daughter named Bronwyn FitzSimons Price (1944). In later life, Maureen O’Hara married her third husband, Brigadier General Charles Blair. The couple lived in the US Virgin Islands, where he operated an airline. He died in a plane crash in 1978 and O’Hara took over management of the airline, which she eventually sold. “Being married to Charlie Blair and traveling all over the world with him, believe me, was enough for any woman,” she said in 1995. “It was the best time of my life.” O'Hara remained retired from acting until 1991, when she starred in the film Only the Lonely (Chris Columbus, 1991), playing Rose Muldoon, the domineering mother of a Chicago cop played by John Candy. In the following years, she continued to work, starring in several made-for-TV films. Her autobiography, 'Tis Herself, was published in 2004 and was a New York Times Bestseller. She was never nominated for an Oscar, instead being given an honorary award in 2014. After accepting her statuette from a wheelchair, the then 94-year-old star protested when her speech of thanks was cut short. Maureen O'Hara died in her sleep at home in Boise, Idaho. She was 95 years old.

 

Dources: The Guardian, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

The design of the British Airways aircraft to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will be ‘The Dove’ by up and coming British designer Pascal Anson.

 

His artwork beat hundreds of entries in the BA Great Britons Programme, and was chosen by a judging panel including Turner-prize nominated artist and Royal Academician Tracey Emin, the Royal Academy of Arts and the airline.

 

As British Airways Great Britons mentor, Tracey Emin has advised Pascal during the project, and said: “It would have been easy to put a motif or a pattern on the side of an aircraft – but Pascal’s design takes it to another level. He uses the entire livery of the aircraft to redefine the way you look at it. The dove is a stunning piece of work and will bring real excitement to anyone who flies on one of the repainted planes.”

 

The 38 year-old designer and artist from Brighton, also a Design Tutor at Kingston University, has spent the past few months honing his design with Emin. It will be emblazoned across a number of British Airways aircraft and seen by a global audience of millions.

 

British Airways Great Britons winner Pascal Anson, said: “On my journeys from Brighton to London, I’ve often looked up at aircraft landing at Gatwick and wondered if it’s a ‘bird or a plane’, and the idea developed from there. When I started researching birds further I realised it had to be a dove. Not only are they a symbol of peace and social unity, but they were also used in previous Olympic Games ceremonies, including the last London Games in 1948.”

 

To create an illusion of a dove, Pascal spent hours in a cote observing the birds. He incorporates their intricate detail on the livery, which will use a new colour of paint produced by the British Airways engineering team and its suppliers.

 

Frank van der Post, British Airways managing director, brands and customer experience, said: “When we invited up and coming British artists to submit a design to celebrate the London 2012 Games, we didn’t expect a concept that would change the way we look at the aircraft - yet Pascal’s work has achieved this and we’re very proud to be sharing it with the world on our giant flying canvas!”

 

The Great Britons Programme was launched to discover the best of British talent in Art, as well as Food and Film and offer British talent a platform in the run up to the London 2012 Games. Pascal’s aircraft launch will coincide with the unveiling of a London 2012 inspired menu, created by Simon Hulstone with support from Michelin-star restaurant owner and chef Heston Blumenthal, and short film written by Prasanna Puwanarajah with mentoring from scriptwriter and director Richard E Grant. All three projects will be unveiled to the public in April.

 

Austrian postcard by B.K.W.I. (Brüder Kohn, Wien).

 

Russian opera singer Feodor Chaliapin (1873–1938) was an international sensation and is considered as the greatest Russian singer of the twentieth century, as well as the greatest male operatic actor ever. The possessor of a large, deep and expressive basso profundo, he was celebrated at major opera houses all over the world and established the tradition of naturalistic acting in operas. The only sound film which shows his acting style is Don Quixote (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933).

 

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (Russian: Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин, or Fyodor Ivanovich Shalyapin) was born in 1873, into a poor peasant family in Omet Tawi, near Kazan, Russia. His childhood was full of suffering, hunger, and humiliation. From the age of 10, he worked as an apprentice to a shoemaker, a sales clerk, a carpenter, and a lowly clerk in a district court before joining, at age 17, a local operetta company. In 1890, Chaliapin was hired to sing in a choir at the Semenov-Samarsky private theatre in Ufa. There he began singing solo parts. In 1891, he toured Russia with the Dergach Opera. In 1892, he settled in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia), because he found a good teacher, Dmitri Usatov, who gave Chaliapin free professional opera training for one year. He also sang at the St. Aleksandr Nevsky Cathedral in Tbilisi. In 1893, he began his career at the Tbilisi Opera, and a year later, he moved to Moscow upon recommendation of Dmitri Usatov. In 1895 ,Chaliapin debuted at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre as Mephistopheles in Charles Gounod’s Faust, in which he was a considerable success. In 1896 he also joined Mamontovs Private Russian Opera in Moscow, where he mastered the Russian, French, and Italian roles that made him famous. Savva Mamontov was a Russian industrialist and philanthropist, who staged the operas, conducted the orchestra, trained the actors, taught them singing and paid all the expenses. At Mamontov's, he met in 1897 Sergei Rachmaninoff, who started as an assistant conductor there. The two men remained friends for life. With Rachmaninoff he learned the title role of Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, which became his signature character. Rachmaninoff taught him much about musicianship, including how to analyse a music score, and insisted that Chaliapin learn not only his own roles but also all the other roles in the operas in which he was scheduled to appear. When Chaliapin became dissatisfied with his performances, Chaliapin began to attend straight dramatic plays to learn the art of acting. His approach revolutionised acting in opera. In 1896, Savva Mamontov introduced Chaliapin to a young Italian ballerina Iola Tornagi, who came to Moscow for a stage career. She quit dancing and devoted herself to family life with Chaliapin. He was very happy in this marriage. From 1899 until 1914, he also performed regularly at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The couple settled in Moscow and had six children. Their first boy died at the age of 4, causing Chaliapin a nervous breakdown.

 

In 1901, Feodor Chaliapin made his sensational debut at La Scala in the role of the devil in Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito under the baton of conductor Arturo Toscanini. Other famous roles were Boris Godunov in Mussorgsky's opera, King Philip in Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos. Bertram in Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable, and Ivan the Terrible in The Maid of Pskov by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. His great comic characterizations were Don Basilio in Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and Leporello in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In 1906, Chaliapin started a civil union with Maria Valentinovna Petzhold (also called: Maria Augusta Eluchen) in St. Petersburg, Russia. She had three daughters with Chaliapin in addition to 2 other children from her previous family. He could not legalize his second family, because his first wife would not give him a divorce. Chaliapin even applied to the Emperor Tsar Nicholas II with a request of registering his three daughters under his last name. His request was not satisfied. In 1913, Chaliapin was introduced to London and Paris by the brilliant entrepreneur Sergei Diaghilev. He began giving well-received solo recitals in Paris in which he sang traditional Russian folk songs as well as more serious fare, and also performed at the Paris Opera. His acting and singing was sensational to the western audiences. He made many sound recordings, of which the 1913 recordings of the Russian folk songs Vdol po Piterskoi and The Song of the Volga Boatmen are best known. In 1915, he made his film debut as Czar Ivan IV the Terrible in the silent Russian film Tsar Ivan Vasilevich Groznyy/Czar Ivan the Terrible (Aleksandr Ivanov-Gai, 1915) opposite the later director Richard Boleslawski. Fourteen years later, he appeared in another silent film, the German-Czech coproduction Aufruhr des Blutes/Riot of the blood (Victor Trivas, 1929) with Vera Voronina and Oscar Marion.

 

Feodor Chaliapin was torn between his two families for many years, living with one in Moscow, and with another in St. Petersburg. With Maria Petzhold and their three daughters, he left Russia in 1922 as part of an extended tour of western Europe. They would never return. Ther family settled in Paris. A man of lower-class origins, Chaliapin was not unsympathetic to the Bolshevik Revolution and his emigration from Russia was painful. Although he had left Russia for good, he remained a tax-paying citizen of Soviet Russia for several years. Finally he could divorce in 1927 and marry Maria Petzhold. Chaliapin worked for impresario Sol Hurok and from 1921 on, he sang for eight seasons at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His debut at the Met in the 1907 season had been disappointing due to the unprecedented frankness of his stage acting. In 1921, the public in New York had grown more broad-minded and the eight seasons were a huge success. According to Steve Shelokhonov at IMDb, Chaliapin was the undisputed best basso in the first half of the 20th century. He had revolutionised opera by bringing serious acting in combination with great singing. His first open break with the Soviet regime occurred in 1927 when the government, as part of its campaign to pressure him into returning to Russia, stripped him of his title of 'The First People’s Artist of the Soviet Republic' and threatened to deprive him of Soviet citizenship. Prodded by Joseph Stalin, Maxim Gorky, Chaliapin’s longtime friend, tried to persuade him to return to Russia. Gorky broke with him after Chaliapin published his memoirs, Man and Mask: Forty Years in the Life of a Singer (Maska i dusha, 1932), in which he denounced the lack of freedom under the Bolsheviks.

 

The only sound film which shows Chaliapin's acting style is Don Quixote/Adventures of Don Quixote (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933). He had also starred onstage as the knight in Jules Massenet's 1910 opera, Don Quichotte, but the 1933 film does not use Massenet's music, and is more faithful to Miguel de Cervantes' novel than the opera. In fact there were three versions of this early sound film. Georg Wilhelm Pabst shot simultaneously with the German language version also English and French versions. Feodor Chaliapin Sr. starred in all three versions of Don Quixote, but with a different supporting cast. Sancho Pansa was played by Dorville in the German and French versions but by George Robey in the English version. Benoit A. Racine at IMDb: "These films (the French, English and German versions) were an attempt to capture his legendary stage performance of this character even though the songs are by Jacques Ibert. Ravel had also been asked to compose the songs for the film but he missed the deadline and his songs survive on their own with texts that are different from those found here. The interplay between the French and English versions is fascinating. Some scenes are done exactly the same for better or worse, some use the same footage, re-cut to edit out performance problems, while others have slight variants in staging and dialogue. (The English version was doctored by Australian-born scriptwriter and director John Farrow, Mia's father, by the way.) Even though the films are short and they transform, reduce and simplify considerably the original novel, they still manage to carry the themes and the feeling that would make Man of La Mancha a hit several decades later and to be evocative of Cervantes' Spain." In the late 1930s, Feodor Chaliapin Sr. suffered from leukaemia and kidney ailment. In 1937, he died in Paris, France. He was laid to rest is the Novodevichy Monastery Cemetery in Moscow. Chaliapin was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 6770 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. In 1998, the TV film Chaliapin: The Enchanter (Elisabeth Kapnist, 1998) followed. His son Boris Chaliapin became a famous painter. who painted the portraits used on 414 covers of the Time magazine between 1942 and 1970. Another son Feodor Chaliapin Jr. became a film actor, who appeared in character roles in such films as the Western Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill (Mario Costa, 1965) with Gordon Scott, and Der Name der Rose/The Name of the Rose (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986), starring Sean Connery. His first wife, Iola Tornagi, lived in the Soviet Union until 1959, when Nikita Khrushchev brought the 'Thaw'. Tornagi was allowed to leave the Soviet Union and reunited with her son Feodor Chaliapin Jr, in Rome, Italy.

 

Sources: Steve Shelokhonov (IMDb), Benoit A. Racine (IMDb), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia and IMDb.

French postcard. Cinématographes Méric. Mario Guaita aka Ausonia performs under his stage name as strongman at the booth of the widow of Paul Mons, on a French fairground in the countryside. Note that the posters may well have been from Ausonia's former own stage career, in which he was also subtitled "l'Athlète mondain". Scene from Mes p'tits aka Le Calvaire d'une saltimbanque (1923) by Paul Barlatier and Charles Keppens.

 

Athletic muscleman Mario Guaita aka Ausonia (1881-1956) was an Italian actor, director, producer and scriptwriter in the silent era. He had his international breakthrough with Spartaco (Enrico Vidali 1913) and became a major actor in the Italian forzuto genre. In the early 1920s, he moved to Marseille, made a few films there and ran a cinema.

Shanghai Ballet: Echoes of Eternity

 

Shanghai Ballet presents 'Echoes of Eternity ' at the London Coliseum, choreographed by Patrick de Bana and inspired by the ancient Chinese poem ‘Song of Everlasting Sorrow. 7-21 August 2016.

 

Choreographer: Patrick de Bana

Set designer: Jaya Ibrahim

Costume designer: Agnes Letestu

Light designer: James Angot

Scriptwriter: Jean Francois Vazelle

Literature Consultant: Sifu TANG

 

Dancers:

Emperor: WU Husheng

Lady Yang: QI Bingxue

Moon Fairy: ZHAO Hanbing

Gao Lishi: ZHANG Yao

Chen Xuanli: WU Bin

An Lushan: ZHANG Wenjun

 

see www.dancetabs.com

photo - © Foteini Christofilopoulou | All rights reserved | For all usage/licensing enquiries please contact www.foteini.com

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus Jin Ping Mei Beijing Dance Theatre Stage Presentation Brings Chinese Erotic Arts to Canada - Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto北京当代芭蕾舞团剧目把中国色情艺术带到加拿大温哥华、多伦多、蒙特利尔巡游表演

 

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus/Lotus d'or/Jin Ping Mei Ballet Stage Performance

 

This is a stage adaptation of the early 17th century erotic Chinese novel 'Jin Ping Mei'. The show was first produced in Hong Kong in 2011. However, it was banned (some say delayed due to content localization) in Mainland China for three years until 2014. After some racy scenes were toned down, the show was allowed to debut in China and now it is about to extend the work to oversea markets. This time around, the Beijing Dance Theatre took over the ballet presentation and it is now touring for the first time in Canada to entertain audiences in three cities – Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

 

The Golden Lotus or better known as Jing Ping Mei was written in the latter part of the Ming Dynasty by someone who used a pseudonym and the true authorship had not been satisfactorily proven to this day. Practically from day one of its existence, the work has been purged in society as a 'forbidden book' in China since its first printing in about 1610. Although generally regarded as pornography throughout the centuries, the book had nevertheless became known among many literal elites both in China and in the West as one of the most important works of Chinese literature in the same class as The Water Margin《水浒传》, Romance of the Three Kingdoms《三国演义》and Dream of the Red Chamber《红楼梦》. In fact, it could be said that The Golden Lotus was derived from The Water Margin as both shared some of the same historical and fictional characters as Wu Song武松, Xi Menqing西门庆, Pan Jinlian潘金莲 etc. But the plot concerning these characters are very different between the two novels.

 

Behind the scene, the Beijing Dance Theatre production has some big name attached to the project. The choreographer is Artistic Director Wang Yuanyuan（王媛媛）who was responsible for adapting the Ballet Raise The Red Lantern 《大红灯笼高高挂》from the movie that made director Zhang Yimou（张艺谋）a household name in Chinese entertainment. Costume Designer was Oscar-winning Set Designer and Artistic Director Tim Yip（叶锦添）of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 《卧虎藏龙》fame. Others such as the musical director, scriptwriters, effects masters and producers are mainly involved in the movies and stage productions.

 

《金瓶梅》Golden Lotus Stage Adaptation -

 

Vancouver: Sep 21-22, 2017 Queen Elizabeth Theatre 7:30PM

Montreal: Oct 01-02, 2017 Montreal Place des Arts 7:30PM

Toronto: Oct 5-6, 2017 Living Arts Centre 7:30PM

 

Tickets: $285/235/185/145/105/85/65

Online: www.MegaBoxOffice.com

Phone: 778-321-5829 | 778-680-8800 | 778-927-9265 | 778-251-9839 (English & 中文)

Hotline: 604-343-6260

 

English: vancouver.ca/news-calendar/beijing-dance-theatre-golden-l...

中文：http://www.bcbay.com/life/community/2017/04/07/487157.html

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Ping_Mei

 

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Ray Van Eng 雷云影 is an accomplished media professional, award-winning screenwriter and movie producer. His work has been part of the Hava Nagila Exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan in New York, NY from Sep 2012 to May 2013.

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RICHARD OUTCALT

 

RICHARD OUTCALT

Richard Felton Outcault was one of the comic pioneers, and often credited as the inventor of the comic strip. Coming from Lancaster, Ohio, Outcault was a graduate from the McMicken University in Cincinnati, who studied art in Paris, and eventually settled in New York. After doing illustration work for publications like The Electrical World, Life and Judge, he was hired by media tycoon Joseph Pulitzer to come and work for the New York World in 1894.

For this newspaper, Outcault made series of cartoons set in certain quarters in Manhattan, which eventually resulted in the feature 'Down in Hogan's Alley'. Being one of the first continuing series with a regular cast, one character stood out. At the time, it was still difficult to use yellow ink in color printing, since it didn't dry properly. When one of the World's foremen of the color-press room wanted to experiment with a new type of yellow ink, he used the shirt of one of Outcault's characters as a test area. 'The Yellow Kid' was born.

The Yellow Kid had great success, and it generated the first comic merchandising ever: there were Yellow Kid key-rings, statuettes and a lot of other related paraphernalia sold. The character and its creator also became a pivot in the newspaper battle between tycoons Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Hearst overbid Pulitzer and Outcault went to work for his New York Morning Journal. A lawsuit followed, which resulted in Outcault being able to take his cast of characters over to the Journal, but the name 'Hogan's Alley' remained with Pulitzer. In the World, 'Hogan's Alley' was continued by George Luks, while Outcault made new features under the title 'McFadden's Row of Flats' for the Journal. Eventually, both titles appeared under the name 'The Yellow Kid'. With two rival 'Yellow Kids' appearing in the two newspapers, a new phrase in the American newspaper vernacular was born, "yellow journalism".

When the interest in 'Yellow Kid' cooled down around 1901, Outcault created new features, such as 'Lil' Mose', the first strip with a black as its principal character, in James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald. Then in 1902, R. F. Outcault created 'Buster Brown', another classic which would have even more success than The Yellow Kid. It too had lots of merchandise available, even including a popular line of kid's shoe. The character was also used to advertise for cigars and whiskey. And again, Hearst bought Outcault away from the rivaling newspaper, which was followed by a lawsuit and resulted in two seperate Buster Browns appearing in the Bennett's Herald and in Hearst's American.

Outcault continued 'Buster Brown' until 1921, after which it was reprinted for a couple of years. In addition, he had created other features, such as 'Tommy Dodd' and 'Aunt Ophelia' in the New York Herald (1904), as well as 'Buddy Tucker', featuring a side-character from 'Buster Brown', in 1905. Richard Outcault died in Queens, New York in 1928, at the age of 65.

Richard Felton Outcault (January 14, 1863-September 25, 1928) was an American comic strip scriptwriter, sketcher and painter. Outcault was the creator of the series The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown, and is considered the inventor of the modern comic strip.

Biography

Born in Lancaster, Ohio and died in Flushing, New York, Outcault began his career as Thomas Edison's technical illustrator and as humoristic sketcher for the magazines Judge and Life, but soon joined Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Pulitzer used Outcault's comics in an experimental color supplement, using a single-panel color cartoon on the front page called Hogan's Alley, depicting an event in a fictional slum. A character in the panel, The Yellow Kid, gave rise to the phrase "yellow journalism." Hogan's Alley debuted May 5, 1895.

In October 1896, Outcault defected to William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The result of a lawsuit awarded the title "Hogan's Alley" to the World and "The Yellow Kid" to the Journal.

In 1902, Outcault introduced Buster Brown, a mischievous boy dressed in Little Lord Fauntleroy style, and his dog Tige. The strip and characters were very popular and Outcault eventually licensed the name for a number of consumer products, most notably Buster Brown shoes.

In the Journal, Outcault began experimenting with using multiple panels and speech balloons. Although he was not the first to use either technique, his use of them created the standard by which comics were measured.

Richard F. Outcault died in 1928 and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

R. F. Outcault, The Father of the American Sunday Comics, and the Truth About the Creation of the Yellow Kid

by Richard D. Olson

 

Who is the Yellow Kid and why is everybody making a fuss over him? The answer is that he was the first successful comic strip character to achieve a popularity so great that he not only increased the sales of newspapers carrying him, but he was also the first to demonstrate that a comic strip character could be merchandised profitably. In fact, for these two reasons, the Yellow Kid and his creator, R. F. Outcault, are generally credited with permanently establishing the comic strip and making it a part of American society. Now let's take a closer look at how this historical milestone actually occurred.

Richard Felton Outcault, known to all who know his work as R. F. Outcault, was the comic genius who took advantage of the Zeitgeist. Others had tried but failed--Outcault was the first to have the intellect and artistic ability to see and depict New York City as many of its residents did, and to be able to present it to them in a manner that made them laugh. And for being in the right place at the right time, and for possessing unusual innate and learned talent, R. F. Outcault became the anointed father of the American comic strip.

Outcault was born in Lancaster, Ohio, on 14 January 1863, the son of Jesse and Catherine Outcault, and died at his Madison Avenue residence/studio in New York City on 25 September 1928. Even as a child it was apparent that he had artistic talent, and he developed that talent with training in the community. He later entered the McMicken University's School of Design in Cincinnati in 1878 and continued his studies for three years. When he left in 1881, he took a job as a painter of pastoral scenes for the Hall Safe and Lock Company. In 1888, the Centennial Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Middle Atlantic States was held in Cincinnati. The Edison Laboratories electric light display needed some sophisticated illustrations and hired Outcault to do the work. His drawings were superlative, and he soon moved to Edison's West Orange, New Jersey, headquarters as a full-time employee. In 1889, Edison named him the official artist for his travelling exhibit and sent him to Paris for the World's Fair, where he also continued his art studies in the Latin Quarter. While in Paris, he developed what was to become a life-long preference for berets and capes.

Outcault returned to New York City in 1890 and joined the staff of Electrical World magazine, which was owned by one of Edison's friends. He also freelanced jokes and cartoons to some of the weekly humor magazines like Truth. His humor and art were well received, and his work appeared more and more frequently, typically focusing on Blacks living in the imaginary town of Possumville or Irish tenement street children living in New York City. Let there be no mistake about it, these cartoons were created for adults, not children. Adults bought the magazines, not children, and the humor was aimed at adults, not children.

 

Coronation Street (informally known as Corrie) is a British soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960.

 

The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show's fictional history, the street was built in the early 1900s and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.

 

The show typically airs five times a week; Monday and Friday 7.30–8 pm & 8.30–9 pm and Wednesday 7.30–8 pm, however this occasionally varies due to sport or around Christmas and New Year. From late 2017 the show will air six times a week.

 

The programme was conceived in 1960 by scriptwriter Tony Warren at Granada Televisionin Manchester.

 

Warren's initial kitchen sink drama proposal was rejected by the station's founder Sidney Bernstein, but he was persuaded by producer Harry Elton to produce the programme for 13 pilot episodes. Within six months of the show's first broadcast, it had become the most-watched programme on British television, and is now a significant part of British culture.

 

The show has been one of the most lucrative programmes on British commercial television, underpinning the success of Granada Television and ITV.

 

Coronation Street is made by Granada Television at MediaCity Manchester and shown in all ITV regions, as well as internationally. On 17 September 2010, it became the world's longest-running TV soap opera in production.

 

On 23 September 2015, Coronation Street was broadcast live to mark ITV's 60th anniversary.

 

Coronation Street is noted for its depiction of a down-to-earth working class community combined with light-hearted humour, and strong characters.

French card by *Star Presse, Paris, no. 595. Photo: *Star.

 

Georgius (1891-1970), alias George Guibourg, alias Theodore Crapulet, was one of the most popular and versatile performers in Paris for more than 50 years." He was a famous singer and author of songs and appeared in a series of escapist films of the 1930s.

 

Georgius was born Georges Auguste Charles Guibourg in 1891 in Mantes-la-Ville, Yvelines, France. He was the son of Georges Charles Joseph Guibourg, a schoolteacher, editor of the Petit Mantais and then editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper La France aérienne, and Clémentine Augustine Bouteilly. He began studying the piano at the age of 11 and at age 16 went to Paris where he performed on stage, singing extracts of traditional operettas and lovesongs. Over the next few years, his various engagements with cabarets progressed. He began to write comic songs. It was in 1912 that he really began his career as a chansonnier. Called to the Gaîté-Montparnasse theatre to replace a comic singer, his songs were so popular that the theatre signed him a contract for a year; he remained there for three years. In 1916 he began writing plays, which he then performed with his troupe, Les Joyeux Compagnons, created in 1919. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was a veritable phenomenon of the music hall. His best-known song at the time was 'La Plus Bath des javas', a parody of fashionable javas. He continued to tour and put on revues with his troupe, which was renamed the Théâtre Chantant in 1926. During this inter-war period, he became one of the most popular singers in Paris, performing at the Moulin Rouge, Bobino, Alhambra Club and the Casino de Paris. 1930 was a great year for him: he released 'La Route de Pen-Zac', which sold more than 160,000 records, a record for the time! The shows followed one another, and everyone rushed to see him.

 

Georgius wrote and played the leading role in his film debut, the farce Pas de femmes?/No Women? (Mario Bonnard, 1932) with Aimos and the young Fernandel in a supporting part. He wrote the story for the short Maison hantée/Haunted House (Roger Capellani, 1933) with Monette Dinay and Paulette Dubost. He co-starred with Dolly Davis in Un train dans la nuit/The Ghost Train (René Hervil, 1934). Throughout the 1930s he appeared in nine escapist comedies. In 1936, he had another success as a singer, with the song 'Au Lycée Papillon', which also broke sales records. It had a verse that is no longer sung today because it was anti-Semitic. Other hits followed: 'Ca c'est de la bagnole' and 'On ne peut pas plaire à tout le monde'. In 1938 he wrote and performed a comic song against Hitler:' Il travaille du pinceau' in which he made fun of the house painter (Hitler was a painter in his youth). He continued his revues during the war. In 1941, he played Sganarelle in Moliere's 'Le Médecin malgré lui' at the Comédie-Française. In 1941 and 1942, he was the artistic director of three theatres: the Théâtre de l'Étoile, the Théâtre Antoine and the Théâtre de l'Ambigu. After the war, he was banned from the stage for a year by the Comité National d'Épuration du Spectacle. The main reasons were that he had campaigned for the 'Association syndicale des auteurs et compositeurs professionnels' during the Occupation, with the complicity of Alain Laubreaux, and for having staged Alain Laubreaux's play about Stavisky, 'Les Pirates de Paris', in his theatre at the Ambigu. He became a scriptwriter and writer under the pseudonym Jo Barnais. He wrote detective novels as a writer of detective novels for the Série noire. His final film appearance was in Julien Duvivier's drama Sous le ciel de Paris/Under the Paris Sky (Julien Duvivier, 1951) with Brigitte Auber. He also left the stage in 1951. He was married to Julia Bidault, Marcelle Irvin and Huguette Proye and had two children. Georgius died in 1970 in Paris, aged 78. Georgius was the author of more than 1,500 songs, 2,000 sketches, numerous screenplays and a dozen detective novels.

 

Sources: Jean-Pascal Constantin (Les Gens du Cinéma), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.

 

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

Italian postcard for the Italian silent film Frate Francesco aka Santo Francesco (ICSA, 1927), a biopic on the life of St. Francis, directed by Giulio Antamoro and starring Alberto Pasquali. ICSA, No. 573. Caption: the conversion of Sassorosso. Visible are Alberto Pasquali as St Francis and Romuald Joubé as Sassorosso.

 

Frate Francesco was the third Italian silent film on the life of St Frances of Assisi, after Il poverello di Assisi (Enrico Guazzoni 1911) and Frate Sole (Mario Corsi, Ugo Falena 1918). Also the poet Guido Gozzano had written a film script in 1916 and Adolfo Padovan had tried in vain his luck at Milano Films in the early 1910s. Antamoro's Frances had been an ambitious project: in budget, in length, and in scope. Several scriptwriters were attracted while the famous Francescan Dane Jörgensen wrote the first script version. Instead of the idyllic countryside in Falena's version, Antamoro focused on characters, extending the storyline with all kinds of antagonists like Monaldo di Sassorosso and Myria di Leros who get ample time and space. The film is also full of symbolism: Frances is presented as the new Christ, standing before the Crucifix, but also his mother holds a wounded man as in Mary's Pietà. The narrative's parable is that of a weak man who only thanks to his belief overcomes and mediates in conflicts. Still, not all critics liked the film at its release and some accused it of being too static and therefore uncinematic. Moreover, the film came out in a year that most Italian film people had lost hope to revive its national cinema and many had fled to Berlin to pursue careers.

 

Alberto Pasquali (1882 – 1929) was an Italian stage and screen actor, famous for his religious characters. Romuald Joubé (1876-1949) was an actor of French silent cinema, who became famous for his part in Abel Gance’s J’accuse (1918).

 

Sources: Italian Wikipedia, IMDB, Elena Mosconi, L'impressione del film (2006).

Vintage French film journal. Jean Toulout as General Prince Tcherkoff and Claudia Victrix as Princess Masha in La princesse Masha (René Leprince, 1927). La Petite Illustration 345, 13 August 1927, p. 8.

 

Jean Toulout (1887-1962) was a French stage and screen actor, director and scriptwriter. He was married to the actress Yvette Andreyor between 1917 and 1926.

 

Jean Toulout was born in Paris on 28 September 1887. While no real online biography has been written about him, this bio is largely based on Toulout’s filmography. According to Wikipedia, Toulout started to act on stage at least from 1907, when he played in the Victor Hugo play Marion Delorme at the Comédie Française. One year after, he was already acting at the Théàtre des Arts, so if he ever was a member of the Comédie Française, then not for long. In 1911 he travelled around with Firmin Gémier’s wandering stage company, while at least from 1913 he settled in Paris playing with André Antoine’s 1913 staging of Paul Lindau’s The Prosecutor Hallers. At the same time, Toulout debuted in French film, which quickly would become much more intense than his stage career. All-in all he would act in some 100 films within four decades.

 

Toulout started in short films by Abel Gance for Gance’s own company Le film français (Il y a des pieds au plafond, Le Nègre blanc, La Digue, Le Masque d’horreur, all 1912), but soon after he had also various parts at Gaumont, Pathé and smaller companies, under direction of Louis Feuillade (La Maison des lions, 1912), Henri Andréani (L’Homme qui assassina, 1913; Jacques l’honneur, 1913; Les Enfants d'Édouard, 1914), in addition to films directed by and Gaston Leprieur, René Leprince, Gérard Bourgeois and Alexandre Devarennes. For instance in L’homme qui assassina he is the evil, adulterous Lord Falkland [!], who presses his equally adulterous but goodhearted wife (Mlle Michelle) to either say goodbye to her child or publicly confess her sin, but her lover (Firmin Gémier) kills the husband and is even acquitted by the local Turkish commissionary (Adolphe Candé), who is very understanding in these matters. NB Les Enfants d'Édouard was of course based on Shakespeare.

 

While Toulout didn’t act on screen in 1915 (he may have been involved in the military during the First World War), he was back on track from later 1916 in several Gaumont films by Feuillade and others. In 1917 he played in Feuillade’s L’Autre, where he met the actress Yvette Andreyor, famous for her parts in Feuillade’s Fantomas and Judex, and they married in 12 June 1917. Toulout and Andreyor would perform together in various films until their divorce in 1926. In 1918 Toulout was the evil antagonist of Emmy Lynn in Gance’s La Dixième Symphonie, blackmailing her for having accidentally killed his sister, thus risking to wreck her new marriage with a composer (Séverin-Mars) but also the life of the composer’s daughter (Elizabeth Nizan). Luckily for the other he doesn’t kill them, only himself. As English Wikipedia writes, “Gance's mastery of lighting, composition and editing was accompanied by a range of literary and artistic references which some critics found pretentious and alienating.” While Toulout would be reunited with Emmy Lynn in La faute d’Odette Marchal (Henri Roussel 1920), he would also be reunited as – again – a jealous, evil husband with Séverin-Mars in Jacques Landauze (1920) by André Hugon, a director with whom Toulout would do several films in the 1920s and 1930s: in the 1920s Le Roi de Camargue (1921), Notre Dame d'amour (1922), Le Diamant noir (1922), La Rue du pavé d'amour (1923), and the first French sound film, Les Trois masques (1929), shot at the London Elstree studios in 15 days.

 

In the early 1920s Toulout also acted in films by Pierre Bressol (Le Mystère de la villa Mortain, La Mission du docteur Klivers), Germaine Dulac (La fête espagnole, La belle dame sans-merci), Jacques Robert, Henri Fescourt, Armand du Plessis, and others. In La belle dame sans-merci he is a local count who understands a playful femme fatale he brought home is wrecking his whole family, so he has them reunited. In Chantelouve (Georges Monca 1921) he was once more the jealous husband who threatens to kill his wife (Yvette Andreyor). In La conquête des Gaules (Yan B. Dyl, Marcel Yonnet, 1923) he is a film director who tries to film the conquest of the Gauls with modest means. In Le Crime de Monique (Robert Péguy 1923) Yvette Andreyor is accused of killing her brutal violent husband (Toulout, of course). Toulout also acted in Abel Gance’s hilarious comedy Au secours! (1924), starring Max Linder as a man who takes a bet to stay a night in a haunted house.

 

Instead Toulout masterfully performed the persistent commissionary Javert in Les Misérables (Henri Fescourt 1925), opposite Gabriel Gabrio as Jean Valjean. When a restored version was shown at the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone in October 2015, Peter Walsh on his blog Burnt Retina wrote: “Gabriel Gabrio as Jean Valjean was a towering presence on screen, and his redemptive arc, and gradual aging were shown in a convincing way. Jean Toulout as Javert was also superb, at times overpowered by some of the mightiest brows and mutton chops I’ve seen in a long time. The climax of his personal crisis, and collapse of his moral world was incredibly striking, with extreme close-ups capturing a bristling performance.” After smaller parts as in Germaine Dulac’s Antoinette Sabrier (1927), in which Toulout would be paired with Gabrio again, Toulout left the set in 1928 and instead returned to the stage for Le Carnaval de l'amour at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin.

 

In 1929, however, Toulout returned as Mr de Villefort in the late silent film Monte-Christo (Henri Fescourt) – the last big silent French production - as well as in the first French sound film Les Trois masques (see above) as a Corsican whose son (François Rozet) makes a girl (Renée Heribel) pregnant, after which her brothers take revenge during the carnival. Toulout had the lead in the Henry Bataille adaptation La Tendresse (André Hugon 1930) as a famous, older academician who discovers his much younger wife (Marcelle Chantal) isn’t that much in love with him as he is with her. When he gravely falls ill he discovers she still gave the best of her life to him. In 1930 Toulout also tried his luck in film direction and with Joe Francis he directed Le Tampon du Capiston, a comical operetta film on an old spinster (Hélène Hallier), a captain’s sister, who wants to marry the captain’s aide (Rellys) who presumably has inherited a fortune. In the same year Toulout also wrote the scripts for two other films, both by Hugon: La Femme et le Rossignol and Lévy & Cie. The collaboration continued in 1931 when Toulout scripted and starred in Hugon’s Le Marchand de sable, while he had a supporting part in Hugon’s La Croix du Sud. The collaboration with Hugon would last till well into the mid-1940s with Le Faiseur (1936), Monsieur Bégonia (1937), La Rue sans joie (1938), Le Héros de la Marne (1938), La Sévillane (1943), and Le Chant de l'exilé (1943). In 1931 Toulout also scripted Moritz macht sein Glück, a German film by Dutch director Jaap Speijer.

 

All through the 1930s Toulout had a steady, intense career as actor, but in 1934 he also directed his second film, La Reine du Biarritz, in which he himself had only a small part. Elenita de Sierra Mirador (Alice Field) is the toast of Biarritz. For her, a young groom leaves his wife. For her, a forty-year-old inflamed suddenly and deceives his young wife. But Elenita watched by her mother resigns herself to becoming honest and returns to her husband. Otherwise Toulout had mostly supporting parts, as in Le petit roi (1933) by Julien Duvivier, Fédora (1934) by Louis Gasnier, Les Nuits moscovites (Alexis Granowsky, 1934), and Le Bonheur (Marcel L’Herbier 1934). He could act the jealous, shooting husband again in Paul Schiller’s Le Vertige (1935), again starring Alice Field. He was the judge who forces Henri Garat and Lilian Harvey to marry on the spot in Les Gais lurons (Jacques Natanson/Paul Martin), the French version of Martin’s Glückskinder. He is the prosecutor in La Danseuse rouge (Jean-Paul Paulin 1937) , a court-case drama starring Vera Korène and inspired by Mata Hari’s trial. Toulout continued to act minor film parts in the late 1930s, during the war years and the late 1940s and quite continuously: fathers, judges, doctors, officers, aristocrats. But a major part among the first three actors of the film he didn’t have anymore. Memorable were his parts in Édouard et Caroline (Jacques Becker 1951), starring Daniel Gélin and Anne Vernon, and – again, a judge - in Obsession (Jean Delannoy 1952) with Michèle Morgan and Raf Vallone. Toulout also worked as voice actor in France, playing Donald Crisp’s part in How Green Was My Valley (1941, released in France in 1946), and Nigel Bruce’s part in Limelight (1952). In the late 1950s, Toulout also acted on television.

 

Jean Toulout died in Paris on 23 October 1962.

 

Sources: English, French and Italian Wikipedia, IMDB, DVD-Toile, burntretina.wordpress.com/2015/10/08/day-five-at-the-pord....