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gagosiangallery · 4 years ago

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Anselm Kiefer at Gagosian Le Bourget

December 17, 2020

ANSELM KIEFER Field of the Cloth of Gold

February 7–March 28, 2021 26 avenue de l”Europe, Le Bourget __________ What interests me is the transformation, not the monument. I don’t construct ruins, but I feel ruins are moments when things show themselves. A ruin is not a catastrophe. It is the moment when things can start again. The pictures become interesting when the subject matter is no more than an excuse, when the artist remembers the struggle, when he sets forth his own world in conflict with the self-secluding earth. —Anselm Kiefer Gagosian is pleased to present Field of the Cloth of Gold, an exhibition of four monumental new paintings by Anselm Kiefer. The tension between beauty and terror, alongside the inextricable relationship between history and place, has animated Kiefer’s work since the 1970s. Drawing on the literature of cultural memory—including poetry, the Old and New Testaments, and the Kabbalah—Kiefer gives material presence to myths and metaphors. He infuses the medium of paint with startling and unconventional gestures and objects, juxtaposing it with organic and abject materials such as straw, sand, charcoal, ash, and mud. Kiefer asserts himself as an iconoclast; his paintings undergo various processes—such as being cut, burned, buried, exposed to natural elements, splashed with acid, or poured over with lead—so as to be made anew. These strategies, along with the use of materials such as lead, concrete, glass, fabric, tree roots, or burned books, create a symbolic resonance, making palpable both the movement and destruction of human life and the persistence of the lyrical and the divine.

The exhibition’s title refers to the historic peace summit between King Henry VIII and King Francis I that took place five hundred years ago in a field in what is now Pas-de-Calais, France. The conference, centered around a strategic alliance between England and France, had the goal of outlawing war between Christian nations. The alliance was considered a key event in shaping Europe’s geopolitics—until it dissolved and war broke out, a year later. While Kiefer did not begin making these works with this event or title in mind, the connection became apparent and synchronous after their completion. As he stated in a recent interview, “the title is often not the explanation of the picture,” but is rather “an allusion.” History is one of the materials he uses and synthesizes in his work, “like clay for the sculptor or color for the painter.” Completed over the last two years, these works predate the COVID-19 pandemic, the ripple-effect crisis it created, and the international and cross-cultural relationships it has reconfigured. While history has been fractured and unpredictable since the Field of the Cloth of Gold conference, our cultural memory holds the violent unpredictability of human relations on a continuum. The layered and visceral character of these paintings, whose scale almost matches the landscapes they depict, evokes the surging capriciousness of European history and the effects and aftermaths of war. As in The Morgenthau Plan series of 2012, Kiefer affixes other elements to the surfaces of these paintings, from plant matter to industrial material, building a third dimension onto the painted canvas. Here the field of history is transfigured into a field of gold under a dark sky. As is customary in Kiefer’s work, each painting’s title and symbols contain a rich literary and historical set of references. Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut) (2019) refers to the Manstein Plan (Sichelschnittplan), a war plan devised by the German Army during the Battle of France in 1940, while Beilzeit—Wolfszeit (Axe Time—Wolf Time) (2019) nods to “Völuspá (Prophecy of the Seeress),” the first poem of the Poetic Edda of Old Norse mythology. Verse 45 of this poem is translated as “Axe-time, sword-time, | shields are sundered, / Wind-time, wolf-time, | ere the world falls.” Ein Wort von Sensen gesprochen (One Word Spoken by Scythes) (2019–20) evokes the poem “From Hearts and Brains” by Paul Celan, whose poetry has been a point of reference for Kiefer for decades. Celan’s verse reads, “and a word, spoken by scythes / bends them into life.” On Sunday, January 24, to celebrate the opening of the exhibition, the gallery will be open from 2 to 6pm. Anselm Kiefer was born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, Germany, and lives and works in France. His work is collected by museums worldwide and has been permanently installed at the Musée du Louvre (2007) and the Panthéon (2020), both in Paris. Exhibitions and retrospectives include Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2010–11), Shevirat Ha-Kelim (Breaking of the Vessels), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2011–12); Beyond Landscape, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2013–14); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2014), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015–16); l’alchimie du livre, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (2015–16); and The Woodcuts, Albertina, Vienna (2016). In 2009, Kiefer directed and designed the sets for Am Anfang (In the Beginning) at the Opéra national de Paris. In 2017, he was awarded the J. Paul Getty Medal for his contribution to the arts. _____

Anselm Kiefer, Ein Wort von Sensen gesprochen (One Word Spoken by Scythes), 2019–20, emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, straw, gold leaf, wood, and metal on canvas, 15 feet 5 1/8 inches × 27 feet 6 3/4 inches (470 × 840 cm) © Anselm Kiefer. Photo: Georges Poncet

#Anselm Kiefer #Gagosian

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thepoetoaster · 3 years ago

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It’s Always Cloudy in Buffalo, A Memoir by Me ™️ Lol. The sun still has not decided to grace us with its presence as we now encroach on day 10 of grey, overcast icky weather. Yesterday there was a flood & a tornado warning. But at least I can still workout, use the sauna & pick fresh flowers from Gatsby’s garden to add some life to my apartment, which is filled with the atmosphere of endings. Thinking about New York City and imagining all those massive concrete structures and how they look so small from faraway. This world is made up of inanimate objects; it’s its people that bring it to life. It’s YOU that breathes a spark of life into these concrete jungles and it’s the diversity of people that gives the world its magic. It’s the inner world that is seemingly endless and magnificent; the outer is only a reflection of it. It’s empty without the spirit of its people. When you’re reading a book it’s your own imagination that brings it to life; otherwise it’s just markings on a sheet of paper. #writing #writer #thoughts #poetry #photography #selfie #fitness #books #reading #literature #style #fashion #ootd #magic #spiritual #spirituality #travel #adventure #wanderlust #flowers #garden (at Delaware Avenue Historic District) https://www.instagram.com/p/CRegJzAL9jt/?utm_medium=tumblr

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hannibal-obsessed · 4 years ago

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30 REASONS WHY THE LAMBS ARE STILL SCREAMING!!!

- Celebrating 30 years of The Silence of the Lambs Movie -

The Silence of the Lambs is a pop culture phenomenon, who’s influence is still being felt today. It is considered one of the best horror/terror/thriller movies of all time!

Released in 1991 on February 14th, The Silence of the Lambs evoked a blood curdling Valentine’s Day scream!

Happy Valentine’s Day

1991-2021

Author – Harris worked the cop beat for a Texas newspaper and had an interest in the macabre, often freelancing for Men’s Magazines (Argosy, True), writing about some of the most gruesome stories.

1. Thomas Harris – As the author of The Silence of the Lambs and creator of Hannibal Lecter, none of this would be possible without Harris. He’s an impeccable researcher, studying the cases of the most notorious serial killers at the time. Harris was seen at parts of Ted Bundy’s Chi Omega trial taking notes.

Actors

2. Jodie Foster – Foster’s portrayal of rookie FBI in training agent Clarice Starling, is a spot on performance. Foster shows Starling’s vulnerability and how her abandonment issues and need to advance in the FBI, bring her under Lecter’s spell.

3. Anthony Hopkins – Hopkins portrayal of Hannibal Lecter left an indelible mark that still haunts us 30 years later. Thomas Harris wrote Lecter...Hopkins brought him to life. The duality of Lecter, which Hopkins plays to perfection, leads you into a false sense of security...that perhaps he’s not that bad...until he lets loose on the police officers during his escape from custody.

4. Scott Glenn – Glenn plays the head of the Behavioural Science Unit at Quantico, Jack Crawford aka the Guru by his agents. Crawford uses his father like status to entice Starling to interview Lecter thus hopefully gaining access, which Lecter had denied other agents.

5. Ted Levine – Levine‘s portrayal of Buffalo Bill has a creep factor that is impossible to put out of your mind, especially when the song Goodbye Horses by Q Lazzarus plays...and he dances...

6. Anthony Heald – Heald’s portrayal of Dr. Frederick Chilton oozes contempt and arrogance, which doesn’t make you feel a bit sorry him when he becomes Lecter’s meal.

7. Brooke Smith – The all American girl who’s kidnapped by Buffalo Bill and held in a pit for the harvesting of her skin. Catherine Martin is a clever one though and hatches a plan to escape using Precious the dog as a hostage.

8. Frankie Faison – The only actor to appear in 4 of the 5 Hannibal Lecter movies. Barney Matthews survives Lecter with his politeness as Lecter abhors rudeness. Lecter believes whenever feasible, one should eat the rude.

Art/Symbols/Theme

9. Basements – The basement is an underlying theme in The Silence of the Lambs: The BSU of the FBI work out of the basement at Quantico; Hannibal Lecter is kept in the basement of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and Buffalo Bill’s sanctuary is the basement of the former Mrs. Lippman's house.

10. Death Head Hawk Moth/Transformation – The theme throughout The Silence of the Lambs is transformation. The Moth represents Buffalo Bill’s transformation from a pupae/chrysalis/cocoon into a beautiful butterfly.

11. Salvador Dali/Philippe Halsman – In Voluptas Mors/Voluptuous Death (1951), the most scandalous photo of it’s time was the brainchild of Dali and Halsman. Dali arranged seven naked women into a macabre skull. This skull is used as the marking for the Death Head Hawk Moth on the poster for The Silence of the Lambs, which has become synonymous with the movie.

12. Cannibalism – Lecter doesn’t keep trophies in the usual sense, he eats his victims ensuring they will be part of him forever and leaving no evidence behind.

13. Sketches – Hannibal Lecter is a gifted artist and uses his talent to escape the confining basement walls of The Baltimore State Hospital with sketches of the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo as seen from the Belvedere in Florence.

14. Music – Hannibal Lecter has an appreciation for the finer things in life like classical music in particular Goldberg’s Variations Aria. Catherine Martin rocks out to Tom Petty’s American Girl and Buffalo Bill dances to Goodbye Horses by Q Lazzarus.

Behavioural Science Unit – It was a new age of criminal behaviour which needed a new type of agent...a profiler.

15. FBI – The Federal Bureau Of Investigation was formed to combat the criminal Mob element by J. Edgar Hoover. It was only upon Hoover’s death that the FBI started exploring other avenues to catch a new type of killer, the serial killer. After Hoover’s death the FBI would start to hire female agents, which would spur Harris to write a story about an up and coming female agent in training.

16. John E. Douglas – Douglas is the real Jack Crawford, an agent who helped in the development of Behavioural Sciences to catch the newly ordained serial killer. Douglas was a consultant for The Silence of the Lambs movie and is an author of many serial killer/profiling books.

17. Robert Ressler – Crawford is also based on Ressler who was in charge of developing the BSU and was instrumental in the creation of profiling serial killers by interviewing them behind bars. Ressler is responsible for writing some of the best profiling books.

Production

18. Jonathan Demme – It’s Demme’s vision as Director of The Silence of the Lambs which is the magic that has cemented The Silence of the Lambs in the minds of all who watch and re-watch and re-watch...

19. Orion Pictures – The little studio that took a big chance. Unfortunately The Silence of the Lambs wouldn’t save Orion from bankruptcy and they’d be bought out by MGM, who would acquire their movie catalogue.

20. Ted Tally – The man who would turn Harris’ novel into a great screenplay, hitting all the major marks. Tally would pass on the Hannibal screenplay; being lured back for the Red Dragon screenplay.

21. Dino De Laurentiis – If not for De Laurentiis passing on the movie rights to Harris’ novel, The Silence of the Lambs, after the bad box office return of Manhunter, and for allowing Demme to use Hannibal Lecter, we wouldn’t even be discussing this 30 years later.

Quotes – The Silence of the Lambs gave us a few extremely recognizable quotes!

22. Chianti and Fava Beans – “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

- Hannibal Lecter

23. Lotion – “It rubs the lotion on it’s skin or else it gets the hose again.”

- Buffalo Bill

24. Friendship – “I’m having an old friend for dinner.”

- Hannibal Lecter

Serial Killers – Harris based Lecter and Buffalo Bill on some very real killers...

25. Ed Gein – Buffalo Bill is part Gein for without the crimes of Ed Gein, Buffalo Bill wouldn’t exist. It was Gein’s skinning of corpses and his two murder victims that would inspire Buffalo Bill...

26. Gary Heideck – If Buffalo Bill is part Gein, he’s also part Heideck, who’d kidnap women and then tortured them in a pit in his basement.

27. Ted Bundy – Buffalo is also part Ted Bundy, who would lure his victims with injuries like an arm in a cast; he would seem vulnerable seeking help with books or a canoe and in Buffalo Bill’s case a chair.

28. Ed Kemper – What do Hannibal Lecter and Ed Kemper have in common? A high IQ., a fondness of co-eds and a love of cars.

29. Alfredo Balli Trevino – Harris met Trevino in a Mexican prison, mistaking him for a doctor who worked in the prison; Trevino was actually an inmate working in the prison.

Trevino was convicted of murdering then dismembering his lover. It was this encounter that would set the tone for Lecter.

30. Alonzo Robinson – Lecter has been compared to many serial killers over the decades, many of who’s crimes are too late to be included in The Silence of the Lambs novel (1988). It was most likely the story of Alonzo Robinson/James Coyner/William Coyner that planted the seeds of a cannibal killer in the young mind of Thomas Harris.

Influence – Every Serial Killer book written after The Silence of the Lambs was released in theatres, has a reference to it...even BTK referenced Buffalo Bill in his essay to FBI Profiler, John E. Douglas, among an impressive list of serial killers...Ted Bundy, Son of Sam, Ed Kemper, Steven Pennell and Gary Heideck.

Conclusion: Thomas Harris’ first Lecter novel, Red Dragon, turns 40 in October, so Hannibal Lecter has been part of our literary world for 40 years. Although Manhunter was released in 1986 as the first film featuring Lektor (spelling in the movie), it was Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs that will be remembered as bringing Lecter to the masses. Even though Hopkins would play Lecter two more times in Hannibal (2001) and in the remake of Manhunter, Red Dragon (2002), it’s Hopkins Oscar winning portrayal in The Silence of the Lambs that we will always remember and keep the lambs screaming...

Shannon L. Christie

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classic-laugjhing-hollywood · 4 years ago

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Marie Dressler (born Leila Marie Koerber, November 9, 1868 – July 28, 1934) was a Canadian stage and screen actress, comedian, and early silent film and Depression-era film star. In 1914, she was in the first full-length film comedy. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1931.

Leaving home at the age of 14, Dressler built a career on stage in traveling theatre troupes, where she learned to appreciate her talent in making people laugh. In 1892, she started a career on Broadway that lasted into the 1920s, performing comedic roles that allowed her to improvise to get laughs. From one of her successful Broadway roles, she played the titular role in the first full-length screen comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), opposite Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand. She made several shorts, but mostly worked in New York City on stage. During World War I, along with other celebrities, she helped sell Liberty bonds. In 1919, she helped organize the first union for stage chorus players.

Her career declined in the 1920s, and Dressler was reduced to living on her savings while sharing an apartment with a friend. In 1927, she returned to films at the age of 59 and experienced a remarkable string of successes. For her performance in the comedy film Min and Bill (1930), Dressler won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She died of cancer in 1934.

Marie Dressler's original name was Leila Marie Koerber. She was born on November 9, 1868, Cobourg, Ontario. She was one of the two daughters of Anna (née Henderson), a musician, and Alexander Rudolph Koerber (b. April 13, 1826, Lindow, Neu-Ruppin, Germany – d. November 1914, Wimbledon, Surrey, England), a German-born former officer in the Crimean War. Leila's elder sister, Bonita Louise Koerber (b. January 1864, Ontario, Canada – d. September 18, 1939, Richmond, Surrey, England), later married playwright Richard Ganthony.

Her father was a music teacher in Cobourg and the organist at St. Peter's Anglican Church, where as a child Marie would sing and assist in operating the organ. According to Dressler, the family regularly moved from community to community during her childhood. It has been suggested by Cobourg historian Andrew Hewson that Dressler attended a private school, but this is doubtful if Dressler's recollections of the family's genteel poverty are accurate.

The Koerber family eventually moved to the United States, where Alexander Koerber is known to have worked as a piano teacher in the late 1870s and early 1880s in Bay City and Saginaw (both in Michigan) as well as Findlay, Ohio. Her first known acting appearance, when she was five, was as Cupid in a church theatrical performance in Lindsay, Ontario. Residents of the towns where the Koerbers lived recalled Dressler acting in many amateur productions, and Leila often irritated her parents with those performances.

Dressler left home at the age of 14 to begin her acting career with the Nevada Stock Company, telling the company she was actually 18. The pay was either $6 or $8 per week, and Dressler sent half to her mother. At this time, Dressler adopted the name of an aunt as her stage name. According to Dressler, her father objected to her using the name of Koerber. The identity of the aunt was never confirmed, although Dressler denied that she adopted the name from a store awning. Dressler's sister Bonita, five years older, left home at about the same time. Bonita also worked in the opera company. The Nevada Stock Company was a travelling company that played mostly in the American Midwest. Dressler described the troupe as a "wonderful school in many ways. Often a bill was changed on an hour's notice or less. Every member of the cast had to be a quick study". Dressler made her professional debut as a chorus girl named Cigarette in the play Under Two Flags, a dramatization of life in the Foreign Legion.

She remained with the troupe for three years, while her sister left to marry playwright Richard Ganthony. The company eventually ended up in a small Michigan town without money or a booking. Dressler joined the Robert Grau Opera Company, which toured the Midwest, and she received an improvement in pay to $8 per week, although she claimed she never received any wages.

Dressler ended up in Philadelphia, where she joined the Starr Opera Company as a member of the chorus. A highlight with the Starr company was portraying Katisha in The Mikado when the regular actress was unable to go on, due to a sprained ankle, according to Dressler. She was also known to have played the role of Princess Flametta in an 1887 production in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She left the Starr company to return home to her parents in Saginaw. According to her, when the Bennett and Moulton Opera Company came to town, she was chosen from the church choir by the company's manager and asked to join the company. Dressler remained with the company for three years, again on the road, playing roles of light opera.

She later particularly recalled specially the role of Barbara in The Black Hussars, which she especially liked, in which she would hit a baseball into the stands. Dressler remained with the company until 1891, gradually increasing in popularity. She moved to Chicago and was cast in productions of Little Robinson Crusoe and The Tar and the Tartar. After the touring production of The Tar and the Tartar came to a close, she moved to New York City.

In 1892, Dressler made her debut on Broadway at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in Waldemar, the Robber of the Rhine, which only lasted five weeks. She had hoped to become an operatic diva or tragedienne, but the writer of Waldemar, Maurice Barrymore, convinced her to accept that her best success was in comedy roles. Years later, she appeared in motion pictures with his sons, Lionel and John, and became good friends with his daughter, actress Ethel Barrymore. In 1893, she was cast as the Duchess in Princess Nicotine, where she met and befriended Lillian Russell.

Dressler now made $50 per week, with which she supported her parents. She moved on into roles in 1492 Up To Date, Girofle-Girofla, and A Stag Party, or A Hero in Spite of Himself After A Stag Party flopped, she joined the touring Camille D'Arville Company on a tour of the Midwest in Madeleine, or The Magic Kiss, as Mary Doodle, a role giving her a chance to clown.

In 1896, Dressler landed her first starring role as Flo in George Lederer's production of The Lady Slavey at the Casino Theatre on Broadway, co-starring British dancer Dan Daly. It was a great success, playing for two years at the Casino. Dressler became known for her hilarious facial expressions, seriocomic reactions, and double takes. With her large, strong body, she could improvise routines in which she would carry Daly, to the delight of the audience.

Dressler's success enabled her to purchase a home for her parents on Long Island. The Lady Slavey success turned sour when she quit the production while it toured in Colorado. The Erlanger syndicate blocked her from appearing on Broadway, and she chose to work with the Rich and Harris touring company. Dressler returned to Broadway in Hotel Topsy Turvy and The Man in the Moon.

She formed her own theatre troupe in 1900, which performed George V. Hobart's Miss Prinnt in cities of the northeastern U.S. The production was a failure, and Dressler was forced to declare bankruptcy.

In 1904, she signed a three-year, $50,000 contract with the Weber and Fields Music Hall management, performing lead roles in Higgeldy Piggeldy and Twiddle Twaddle. After her contract expired she performed vaudeville in New York, Boston, and other cities. Dressler was known for her full-figured body, and buxom contemporaries included her friends Lillian Russell, Fay Templeton, May Irwin and Trixie Friganza. Dressler herself was 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m) tall and weighed 200 pounds (91 kg).

In 1907, she met James Henry "Jim" Dalton. The two moved to London, where Dressler performed at the Palace Theatre of Varieties for $1500 per week. After that, she planned to mount a show herself in the West End. In 1909, with members of the Weber organization, she staged a modified production of Higgeldy Piggeldy at the Aldwych Theatre, renaming the production Philopoena after her own role. It was a failure, closing after one week. She lost $40,000 on the production, a debt she eventually repaid in 1930. She and Dalton returned to New York. Dressler declared bankruptcy for a second time.

She returned to the Broadway stage in a show called The Boy and the Girl, but it lasted only a few weeks. She moved on to perform vaudeville at Young's Pier in Atlantic City for the summer. In addition to her stage work, Dressler recorded for Edison Records in 1909 and 1910. In the fall of 1909, she entered rehearsals for a new play, Tillie's Nightmare. The play toured in Albany, Chicago, Kansas City, and Philadelphia, and was a flop. Dressler helped to revise the show, without the authors' permission, and in order to keep the changes she had to threaten to quit before the play opened on Broadway. Her revisions helped make it a big success there. Biographer Betty Lee considers the play the high point of her stage career.

Dressler continued to work in the theater during the 1910s, and toured the United States during World War I, selling Liberty bonds and entertaining the American Expeditionary Forces. American infantrymen in France named both a street and a cow after Dressler. The cow was killed, leading to "Marie Dressler: Killed in Line of Duty" headlines, about which Dressler (paraphrasing Mark Twain) quipped, "I had a hard time convincing people that the report of my death had been greatly exaggerated."

After the war, Dressler returned to vaudeville in New York, and toured in Cleveland and Buffalo. She owned the rights to the play Tillie's Nightmare, the play upon which her 1914 movie Tillie's Punctured Romance was based. Her husband Jim Dalton and she made plans to self-finance a revival of the play. The play fizzled in the summer of 1920, and the production was disbanded. In 1919, during the Actors' Equity strike in New York City, the Chorus Equity Association was formed and voted Dressler its first president.

Dressler accepted a role in Cinderella on Broadway in October 1920, but the play failed after only a few weeks. She signed on for a role in The Passing Show of 1921, but left the cast after only a few weeks. She returned to the vaudeville stage with the Schubert Organization, traveling through the Midwest. Dalton traveled with her, although he was very ill from kidney failure. He stayed in Chicago while she traveled on to St. Louis and Milwaukee. He died while Marie was in St. Louis, and Marie then left the tour. His body was claimed by his ex-wife, and he was buried in the Dalton plot.

After failing to sell a film script, Dressler took an extended trip to Europe in the fall of 1922. On her return she found it difficult to find work, considering America to be "youth-mad" and "flapper-crazy". She busied herself with visits to veteran hospitals. To save money she moved into the Ritz Hotel, arranging for a small room at a discount. In 1923, Dressler received a small part in a revue at the Winter Garden Theatre, titled The Dancing Girl, but was not offered any work after the show closed. In 1925, she was able to perform as part of the cast of a vaudeville show which went on a five-week tour, but still could not find any work back in New York City. The following year, she made a final appearance on Broadway as part of an Old Timers' bill at the Palace Theatre.

Early in 1930, Dressler joined Edward Everett Horton's theater troupe in Los Angeles to play a princess in Ferenc Molnár's The Swan, but after one week, she quit the troupe. Later that year she played the princess-mother of Lillian Gish's character in the 1930 film adaptation of Molnar's play, titled One Romantic Night.

Dressler had appeared in two shorts as herself, but her first role in a feature film came in 1914 at the age of 44. In 1902, she had met fellow Canadian Mack Sennett and helped him get a job in the theater. After Sennett became the owner of his namesake motion picture studio, he convinced Dressler to star in his 1914 silent film Tillie's Punctured Romance. The film was to be the first full-length, six-reel motion picture comedy. According to Sennett, a prospective budget of $200,000 meant that he needed "a star whose name and face meant something to every possible theatre-goer in the United States and the British Empire."

The movie was based on Dressler's hit Tillie's Nightmare. She claimed to have cast Charlie Chaplin in the movie as her leading man, and was "proud to have had a part in giving him his first big chance." Instead of his recently invented Tramp character, Chaplin played a villainous rogue. Silent film comedian Mabel Normand also starred in the movie. Tillie's Punctured Romance was a hit with audiences, and Dressler appeared in two Tillie sequels and other comedies until 1918, when she returned to vaudeville.

In 1922, after her husband's death, Dressler and writers Helena Dayton and Louise Barrett tried to sell a script to the Hollywood studios, but were turned down. The one studio to hold a meeting with the group rejected the script, saying all the audiences wanted is "young love." The proposed co-star of Lionel Barrymore or George Arliss were rejected as "old fossils". In 1925, Dressler filmed a pair of two-reel short movies in Europe for producer Harry Reichenbach. The movies, titled the Travelaffs, were not released and were considered a failure by both Dressler and Reichenbach. Dressler announced her retirement from show business.

In early 1927, Dressler received a lifeline from director Allan Dwan. Although versions differ as to how Dressler and Dwan met, including that Dressler was contemplating suicide, Dwan offered her a part in a film he was planning to make in Florida. The film, The Joy Girl, an early color production, only provided a small part as her scenes were finished in two days, but Dressler returned to New York upbeat after her experience with the production.

Later that year, Frances Marion, a screenwriter for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio, came to Dressler's rescue. Marion had seen Dressler in the 1925 vaudeville tour and witnessed Dressler at her professional low-point. Dressler had shown great kindness to Marion during the filming of Tillie Wakes Up in 1917, and in return, Marion used her influence with MGM's production chief Irving Thalberg to return Dressler to the screen. Her first MGM feature was The Callahans and the Murphys (1927), a rowdy silent comedy co-starring Dressler (as Ma Callahan) with another former Mack Sennett comedian, Polly Moran, written by Marion.

The film was initially a success, but the portrayal of Irish characters caused a protest in the Irish World newspaper, protests by the American Irish Vigilance Committee, and pickets outside the film's New York theatre. The film was first cut by MGM in an attempt to appease the Irish community, then eventually pulled from release after Cardinal Dougherty of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia called MGM president Nicholas Schenck. It was not shown again, and the negative and prints may have been destroyed. While the film brought Dressler to Hollywood, it did not re-establish her career. Her next appearance was a minor part in the First National film Breakfast at Sunrise. She appeared again with Moran in Bringing Up Father, another film written by Marion. Dressler returned to MGM in 1928's The Patsy as the mother of the characters played by stars Marion Davies and Jane Winton.

Hollywood was converting from silent films, but "talkies" presented no problems for Dressler, whose rumbling voice could handle both sympathetic scenes and snappy comebacks (the wisecracking stage actress in Chasing Rainbows and the dubious matron in Rudy Vallée's Vagabond Lover). Frances Marion persuaded Thalberg to give Dressler the role of Marthy in the 1930 film Anna Christie. Garbo and the critics were impressed by Dressler's acting ability, and so was MGM, which quickly signed her to a $500-per-week contract. Dressler went on to act in comedic films which were popular with movie-goers and a lucrative investment for MGM. She became Hollywood's number-one box-office attraction, and stayed on top until her death in 1934.

She also took on serious roles. For Min and Bill, with Wallace Beery, she won the 1930–31 Academy Award for Best Actress (the eligibility years were staggered at that time). She was nominated again for Best Actress for her 1932 starring role in Emma, but lost to Helen Hayes. Dressler followed these successes with more hits in 1933, including the comedy Dinner at Eight, in which she played an aging but vivacious former stage actress. Dressler had a memorable bit with Jean Harlow in the film:

Harlow: I was reading a book the other day.

Dressler: Reading a book?

Harlow: Yes, it's all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of a book. Do you know that the guy said that machinery is going to take the place of every profession?

Dressler: Oh my dear, that's something you need never worry about.

Following the release of Tugboat Annie (1933), Dressler appeared on the cover of Time, in its issue dated August 7, 1933. MGM held a huge birthday party for Dressler in 1933, broadcast live via radio. Her newly regenerated career came to an abrupt end when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1934. MGM head Louis B. Mayer learned of Dressler's illness from her doctor and reportedly asked that she not be told. To keep her home, he ordered her not to travel on her vacation because he wanted to put her in a new film. Dressler was furious but complied. She appeared in more than 40 films, and achieved her greatest successes in talking pictures made during the last years of her life. The first of her two autobiographies, The Life Story of an Ugly Duckling, was published in 1924; a second book, My Own Story, "as told to Mildred Harrington," appeared a few months after her death.

Dressler's first marriage was to an American, George Francis Hoeppert (1862 – September 7, 1929), a theatrical manager. His surname is sometimes given as Hopper. The couple married on May 6, 1894, in Grace Church Rectory, Greenville, New Jersey, as biographer Matthew Kennedy wrote, under her birth name, Leila Marie Koeber,. Some sources indicate Dressler had a daughter who died as a small child, but this has not been confirmed.

Her marriage to Hoeppert gave Dressler U.S. citizenship, which was useful later in life, when immigration rules meant permits were needed to work in the United States, and Dressler had to appear before an immigration hearing. Ever since her start in the theatre, Dressler had sent a portion of her salary to her parents. Her success on Broadway meant she could afford to buy a home and later a farm on Long Island, which she shared with her parents. Dressler made several attempts to set up theatre companies or theatre productions of her own using her Broadway proceeds, but these failed and she had to declare bankruptcy several times.

In 1907, Dressler met a Maine businessman, James Henry "Jim" Dalton, who became her companion until his death [Death Record 3104-27934] on November 29, 1921, at the Congress Hotel in Chicago from diabetes. According to Dalton, the two were married in Europe in 1908. However, according to Dressler's U.S. passport application, the couple married in May 1904 in Italy.

Dressler reportedly later learned that the "minister" who had married them in Monte Carlo was actually a local man paid by Dalton to stage a fake wedding. Dalton's first wife, Lizzie Augusta Britt Dalton, claimed he had not consented to a divorce or been served divorce papers, although Dalton claimed to have divorced her in 1905. By 1921, Dalton had become an invalid due to diabetes mellitus, and watched her from the wings in his wheelchair. After his death that year, Dressler was planning for Dalton to be buried as her husband, but Lizzie Dalton had Dalton's body returned to be buried in the Dalton family plot.

After Dalton's death, which coincided with a decline in her stage career, Dressler moved into a servant's room in the Ritz Hotel to save money. Eventually, she moved in with friend Nella Webb to save on expenses. After finding work in film again in 1927, she rented a home in Hollywood on Hillside Avenue. Although Dressler was working from 1927 on, she was still reportedly living hand to mouth. In November 1928, wealthy friends Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Neurmberg gave her $10,000, explaining they planned to give her a legacy someday, but they thought she needed the money immediately. In 1929, she moved to Los Angeles to 6718 Milner Road in Whitley Heights, then to 623 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, both rentals. She moved to her final home at 801 North Alpine in Beverly Hills in 1932, a home which she bought from the estate of King C. Gillette. During her seven years in Hollywood, Dressler lived with her maid Mamie Cox and later Mamie's husband Jerry.

Although atypical in size for a Hollywood star, Dressler was reported in 1931 to use the services of a "body sculptor to the stars", Sylvia of Hollywood, to keep herself at a steady weight.

Biographers Betty Lee and Matthew Kennedy document Dressler's long-standing friendship with actress Claire Du Brey, whom she met in 1928. Dressler and Du Brey's falling out in 1931 was followed by a later lawsuit by Du Brey, who had been trained as a nurse, claiming back wages as the elder woman's nurse.

On Saturday, July 28, 1934, Dressler died of cancer, aged 65, in Santa Barbara, California. After a private funeral held at The Wee Kirk o' the Heather chapel, she was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.

She left an estate worth $310,000, the bulk left to her sister Bonita.

Dressler bestowed her 1933 Duesenberg Model J automobile and $35,000 to her maid of 20 years, Mamie Steele Cox, and $15,000 to Cox's husband, Jerry R. Cox, who had served as Dressler's butler for four years. Dressler intended that the funds should be used to provide a place of comfort for black travelers, and the Coxes used the funds to open the Coconut Grove night club and adjacent tourist cabins in Savannah, Georgia, in 1936, named after the night club in Los Angeles.

Dressler's birth home in Cobourg, Ontario, is known as Marie Dressler House and is open to the public. The home was converted to a restaurant in 1937 and operated as a restaurant until 1989, when it was damaged by fire. It was restored, but did not open again as a restaurant. It was the office of the Cobourg Chamber of Commerce until its conversion to its current use as a museum about Dressler and as a visitor information office for Cobourg.[66] Each year, the Marie Dressler Foundation Vintage Film Festival is held, with screenings in Cobourg and in Port Hope, Ontario. A play about the life of Marie Dressler called "Queen Marie" was written by Shirley Barrie and produced at 4th Line Theatre in 2012 and Alumnae Theatre in 2018.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Dressler has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1731 Vine Street, added in 1960. After Min and Bill, Dressler and Beery added their footprints to the cement forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, with the inscription "America's New Sweethearts, Min and Bill."

Canada Post, as part of its "Canada in Hollywood" series, issued a postage stamp on June 30, 2008, to honour Marie Dressler.

Dressler is beloved in Seattle. She played in two films based on historical Seattle characters. Tugboat Annie (1933) was loosely based on Thea Foss, of Seattle. Likewise Hattie Burns, in Politics (1931), was based on Bertha Knight Landes, the first woman to become mayor of Seattle.

Dressler's 152nd birthday was commemorated in a Google Doodle on November 9, 2020.

#marie dressler #classic hollywood #classic movie stars #golden age of hollywood #early film #silent era #silent hollywood #silent movie stars #1910s movies #1920s hollywood #1930s hollywood #comedy legend #hollywood legends

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blackkudos · 5 years ago

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Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delany (born April 1, 1942), Chip Delany to his friends, is an American author and literary critic. His work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism and essays on science fiction, literature, sexuality, and society.

His fiction includes Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection (winners of the Nebula Award for 1966 and 1967 respectively), Nova, Dhalgren, the Return to Nevèrÿon series, and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. His nonfiction includes Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, About Writing, and eight books of essays. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo Awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. From January 1975 until his retirement in May 2015, he was a professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing at SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Albany, and Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1997 he won the Kessler Award, and in 2010 he won the third J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction from the academic Eaton Science Fiction Conference at UCR Libraries. The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 30th SFWA Grand Master in 2013.

Early life

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr. was born on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany (1916–1995), was a clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany Sr. (1906–1960), ran the Levy & Delany Funeral Home on 7th Avenue in Harlem, from 1938 until his death in 1960. The civil rights pioneers Sadie and Bessie Delany were his aunts. He used their adventures as the basis for Elsie and Corry in "Atlantis: Model 1924", the opening novella in his semi-autobiographical collection Atlantis: Three Tales. His grandfather, Henry Beard Delany, was the first black bishop of the Episcopal Church.

The family lived in the top two floors of a three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany envied children with nicknames and took one for himself on the first day of a new summer camp, Camp Woodland, at about the age of 12, by answering "Everybody calls me Chip" when asked his name. Decades later, Frederik Pohl called him "a person who is never addressed by his friends as Sam, Samuel or any other variant of the name his parents gave him."

Delany attended the Dalton School and from 1951 through 1956, spent summers at Camp Woodland in Phoenicia, New York, followed by the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program.

Delany has identified as gay since adolescence, though his complicated marriage with Marilyn Hacker (who was aware of Delany's orientation and has identified as a lesbian since their divorce) has led some authors to classify him as bisexual.

Upon the death of Delany's father from lung cancer in October, 1960 and his marriage in August 1961, he and Hacker settled in New York's East Village neighborhood at 629 East 5th Street. Hacker's intervention (while employed as an assistant editor at Ace Books), helped Delany become a published science fiction author by the age of 20, though he actually finished writing that first novel (The Jewels of Aptor) while at 19, shortly after dropping out of the City College of New York after one semester.

Career

He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as two prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and later in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). In 1966, with Hacker remaining in New York, Delany took a five-month trip to Europe, writing The Einstein Intersection while in France, England, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. These locales found their way into several pieces of his work at that time, including the novel Nova and the short stories "Aye, and Gomorrah" and "Dog in a Fisherman's Net".

Weeks after returning, Delany and Hacker began to live separately; Delany played and lived communally for five months on the Lower East Side with the Heavenly Breakfast, a folk-rock band, one of whose members, Bert Lee, was later a founding member of the Central Park Sheiks (the other two members of the quartet were Susan Schweers and Steven Greenbaum [aka Wiseman]); a memoir of his experiences with the band and communal life was eventually published as Heavenly Breakfast (1979). After a very brief time together again, Hacker moved to San Francisco and then England. Delany published his first eight novels with Ace Books from 1962 to 1967, culminating in Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection, and Nova, which were consecutively recognized as the year's best novel by the Science Fiction Writers of America (Nebula Awards). Calling him a genius and poet, Algis Budrys listed Delany with J. G. Ballard, Brian W. Aldiss, and Roger Zelazny as "an earthshaking new kind" of writer,and Judith Merril labelling him "TNT (The New Thing)."

Delany's first short story was published by Pohl in the February 1967 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow, and he placed three more in other magazines that year. After four short stories (including the critically lauded "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones") and Nova were published to wide acclaim (the latter by Doubleday, marking Delany's departure from Ace) in 1968 alone, an extended interregnum in publication commenced until the release of Dhalgren (1975), abated only by two short stories, two comic book scripts, and an erotic novel, The Tides of Lust (1973), reissued in 1994 under Delany's preferred title, Equinox.

On New Year's Eve in 1968, Delany moved to San Francisco to join Hacker, who was already there, and again to London in the interim, before Delany returned to New York in the summer of 1971 as a resident of the Albert Hotel in Greenwich Village. In 1972, Delany directed a short film entitled The Orchid (originally titled The Science Fiction Film in the Latter Twentieth Century, produced by Barbara Wise. Shot in 16mm with color and sound, the production also employed David Wise, Adolfas Mekas, and was scored by John Herbert McDowell. In November 1972, Delany was a visiting writer at Wesleyan University's Center for the Humanities. From December 1972 to December 1974, Delany and Hacker lived in Marylebone, London. During this period, he began working with sexual themes in earnest and wrote two pornographic works, one of which (Hogg) was unpublishable due to its transgressive content. Twenty years later, it found print.

Delany wrote two issues of the comic book Wonder Woman in 1972, during a controversial period in the publication's history when the lead character abandoned her superpowers and became a secret agent. Delany scripted issues #202 and #203 of the series. He was initially supposed to write a six-issue story arc that would culminate in a battle over an abortion clinic, but the story arc was canceled after Gloria Steinem complained that Wonder Woman was no longer wearing her traditional costume, a change predating Delany's involvement. Scholar Ann Matsuuchi concluded that Steinem's feedback was "conveniently used as an excuse" by DC management.

Delany's eleventh and most popular novel, the million-plus-selling Dhalgren, was published in 1975 to both literary acclaim (from both inside and outside the science fiction community) and derision (mostly from within the community). Upon its publication, Delany returned to the United States at the behest of Leslie Fiedler to teach at the University at Buffalo as Butler Professor of English in the spring of 1975, preceding his return to New York City that summer. Though he wrote two more major science fiction novels (Triton and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand) in the decade following Dhalgren, Delany began to work in fantasy and science fiction criticism for several years. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was Return to Nevèrÿon, the overall title of the four-volume series and also the title of the fourth and final book. Following the publication of Return to Nevèrÿon, Delany published one more fantasy novel. Released in 1993, They Fly at Çiron is a re-written and expanded version of an unpublished short story Delany wrote in 1962. This would be Delany's last novel in either the science fiction or fantasy genres for many years. Among the works that appeared during this time was his novel The Mad Man and a number of his essay collections.

Delany became a professor in 1988. Following visiting fellowships at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (1977), the University at Albany (1978) and Cornell University (1987), he spent 11 years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo, then, after an invited stay at Yaddo, moved to the English Department of Temple University in January 2001, where he taught until his retirement in April 2015. He served as Critical Inquiry Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago during the winter quarter of 2014.

Beginning with The Jewel-Hinged Jaw (1977), a collection of critical essays that applied then-nascent literary theory to science fiction studies, he published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In the memoir Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), Delany drew on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men in New York City.

He received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 1993.

In 2007, his novel Dark Reflections was a winner of the Stonewall Book Award. That same year Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, directed by Fred Barney Taylor. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. The following year, 2008, it tied for Jury Award for Best Documentary at the International Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Also in 2007, Delany was the April "calendar boy" in the "Legends of the Village" calendar put out by Village Care of New York.

In 2010, Delany was one of the five judges (along with Andrei Codrescu, Sabina Murray, Joanna Scott and Carolyn See) for the National Book Awards fiction category. In 2015, the Caribbean Philosophical Association named Delany the recipient of its Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2013 he received the Brudner Award from Yale University, for his contributions to gay literature. Since 2018, his archive has been housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale where it is currently being organized. Till then, his papers were housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.

In 1991, Delany entered a committed, nonexclusive relationship with Dennis Rickett, previously a homeless book vendor; their courtship is chronicled in the graphic memoir Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999), a collaboration with the writer and artist Mia Wolff. After fourteen years, he retired from teaching at Temple University.

Delany is an atheist.

Themes

Recurring themes in Delany's work include mythology, memory, language, sexuality, and perception. Class, position in society, and the ability to move from one social stratum to another are motifs that were touched on in his earlier work and became more significant in his later fiction and non-fiction, both. Many of Delany's later (mid-1980s and beyond) works have bodies of water (mostly oceans and rivers) as a common theme, as mentioned by Delany in The Polymath. Though not a theme, coffee, more than any other beverage, is mentioned significantly and often in many of Delany's fictions.

Writing itself (both prose and poetry) is also a repeated theme: several of his characters — Geo in The Jewels of Aptor, Vol Nonik in The Fall of the Towers, Rydra Wong in Babel-17, Ni Ty Lee in Empire Star, Katin Crawford in Nova, the Kid, Ernest Newboy, and William in Dhalgren, Arnold Hawley in Dark Reflections, John Marr and Timothy Hasler in The Mad Man, and Osudh in Phallos – are writers or poets of some sort.

Delany also makes use of repeated imagery: several characters (Hogg, the Kid, and the sensory-syrynx player, the Mouse, in Nova; Roger in "We .. move on a rigorous line") are known for wearing only one shoe; and nail biting along with rough, calloused (and sometimes veiny) hands are characteristics given to individuals in a number of his fictions. Names are sometimes reused: "Bellona" is the name of a city in both Dhalgren and Triton, "Denny" is a character in both Dhalgren and Hogg (which were written almost concurrently despite being published two decades apart; and there is a Danny in "We ... move on a rigorous line"), and the name "Hawk" is used for five different characters in four separate stories – Hogg, the story "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones" and the novella "The Einstein Intersection", and the short story "Cage of Brass", where a character called Pig also appears.

Jewels, reflection, and refraction – not just the imagery but reflection and refraction of text and concepts – are also strong themes and metaphors in Delany's work. Titles such as The Jewels of Aptor, The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", Driftglass, and Dark Reflections, along with the optic chain of prisms, mirrors, and lenses worn by several characters in Dhalgren, are a few examples of this; as in "We (...) move on a rigorous line" a ring is nearly obsessively described at every twist and turn of the plot. Reflection and refraction in narrative are explored in Dhalgren and take center stage in his Return to Nevèrÿon series.

Following the 1968 publication of Nova, there was not only a large gap in Delany's published work (after releasing eight novels and a novella between 1962 and 1968, his published output virtually stopped until 1973), there was also a notable addition to the themes found in the stories published after that time. It was at this point that Delany began dealing with sexual themes to an extent rarely equaled in serious writing. Dhalgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand include several sexually explicit passages, and several of his books such as Equinox (originally published as The Tides of Lust, a title that Delany does not endorse), The Mad Man, Hogg and, Phallos can be considered pornography, a label Delany himself endorses.

Novels such as Triton and the thousand-plus pages making up his four-volume Return to Nevèrÿon series explored in detail how sexuality and sexual attitudes relate to the socioeconomic underpinnings of a primitive – or, in Triton's case, futuristic – society.Even in works with no science fiction or fantasy content to speak of, such as Atlantis: Three Tales, The Mad Man, and Hogg, Delany pursued these questions by creating vivid pictures of New York and other American cities, now in the Jazz Age, now in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, New York private schools in the 1950s, as well as Greece and Europe in the 1960s, and – in Hogg – generalized small-town America. Phallos details the quest for happiness and security by a gay man from the island of Syracuse in the second-century reign of the Emperor Hadrian. Dark Reflections is a contemporary novel, dealing with themes of repression, old age, and the writer's unrewarded life.

Writer and academic C. Riley Snorton has addressed Triton's thematic engagement with gender, sexual, and racial difference and how their accommodations are instrumentalized in the state and institutional maintenance of social relations. Despite the novel's infinite number subject positions and identities available through technological intervention, Snorton argues that Delany's proliferation of identities "take place within the context of increasing technologically determined biocentrism, where bodies are shaped into categories-cum-cartographies of (human) life, as determined by socially agreed-upon and scientifically mapped genetic routes." Triton questions social and political imperatives towards anti-normativity insofar that these projects do not challenge but actually reify the constrictive categories of the human. In his book Afro-Fabulations, Tavia Nyong'o makes a similar argument in his analysis of "The Einstein Intersection." Citing Delany as a queer theorist, Nyong'o highlights the novella's "extended study of the enduring power of norms, written during the precise moment—'the 1960s'—when antinormative, anti-systemic movements in the United States and worldwide were at their peak." Like Triton, "The Einstein Intersection" features characters that exist across a range of differences across gender, sexuality, and ability. This proliferation of identities "takes place within a concerted effort to sustain a gendered social order and to deliver a stable reproductive futurity through language" in the Lo society's caging of the non-functional "kages" who are denied language and care. Both Nyong'o and Snorton connect Delany's work with Sylvia Wynter's "genres of being human," underscoring Delany's sustained thematic engagement with difference, normativity, and their potential subversions or reifications, and placing him as an important interlocutor in the fields of queer theory and black studies.

The Mad Man, Phallos, and Dark Reflections are linked in minor ways. The beast mentioned at the beginning of The Mad Man graces the cover of Phallos.

Delany has also published seven books of literary criticism, with an emphasis on issues in science fiction and other paraliterary genres, comparative literature, and queer studies. He has commented that he believes that to omit the sexual practices that he portrays in his writing would limit the dialogue children and adults can have about it themselves, and that this lack of knowledge can kill people.

Works

FictionNovelsReturn to Nevèrÿon seriesShort storiesComics

Wonder Woman, 1972

Anthologies

Quark/1 (1970, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)

Quark/2 (1971, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)

Quark/3 (1971, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)

Quark/4 (1971, science fiction) (edited with Marilyn Hacker)

Nebula Winners 13 (1980, science fiction)

NonfictionCritical works

The Jewel-hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (Dragon Press, 1977; Wesleyan University Press revised edition 2009, with an introduction by Matthew Cheney)

The American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction (Dragon Press, 1978; Wesleyan University Press 2014, with an introduction by Matthew Cheney)

Starboard Wine: More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction (Dragon Press, 1984; Wesleyan University Press, 2012, with an introduction by Matthew Cheney)

Wagner/Artaud: A Play of 19th and 20th Century Critical Fictions (Ansatz Press, 1988) 0-945195-01-X

The Straits of Messina (1989), 0-934933-04-9

Silent Interviews (1995), 0-8195-6280-7

Longer Views (1996) with an introduction by Kenneth R. James, 0-8195-6293-9

Shorter Views (1999), 0-8195-6369-2

About Writing (2005), 0-8195-6716-7

Conversations with Samuel R. Delany (2009), edited by Carl Freedman, University of Mississippi Press.

"Racism and Science Fiction" (1998), New York Review of Science Fiction, Issue 120.

Memoirs and letters

Heavenly Breakfast (1979), a memoir of a New York City commune during the so-called Summer of Love, 0-553-12796-9

The Motion of Light in Water (1988), a memoir of his experiences as a young gay science fiction writer; winner of the Hugo Award, 0-87795-947-1

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (NYU Press, 1999; 2019, 20th anniversary edition with foreword by Robert Reid-Pharr), a discussion of changes in social and sexual interaction in New York's Times Square, 0-8147-1919-8; 978-1-4798-2777-0

Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999), an autobiographical comic drawn by Mia Wolff with an introduction by Alan Moore, 1-890451-02-9

1984: Selected Letters (2000) with an introduction by Kenneth R. James, 0-9665998-1-0

In Search of Silence: The Journals of Samuel R. Delany. Volume 1, 1957-1969 (2017), edited and with an introduction by Kenneth R. James, 978-0-8195-7089-5. 2018 Locus Award Finalist (non-fiction)

Letters from Amherst: Five Narrative Letters (Wesleyan University Press, 2019), with foreword by Nalo Hopkinson, 9780819578204

Introductions

The Adventures of Alyx, by Joanna Russ

We Who Are About To..., by Joanna Russ

Black Gay Man by Robert Reid-Pharr

Burning Sky, Selected Stories, by Rachel Pollack

Conjuring Black Funk: Notes on Culture, Sexuality, and Spirituality, Volume 1 by Herukhuti

The Cosmic Rape, by Theodore Sturgeon

Glory Road, by Robert A. Heinlein

Microcosmic God, by Theodore Sturgeon

The Magic: (October 1961-October 1967) Ten Tales by Roger Zelazny, selected and introduced by Samuel R. Delany

Masters of the Pit, by Michael Moorcock

Nebula Winners 13, edited by Samuel R. Delany

A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction, by Baird Searles, Martin Last, Beth Meacham, and Michael Franklin; foreword by Samuel R. Delany

The Sandman: A Game of You, by Neil Gaiman

Shade: An Anthology of Fiction by Gay Men of African Descent, edited by Charles Rowell and Bruce Morrow

Interviews

Sci-Fi Legend Samuel R. Delany Doesn't Play Favorites (2017)

#04/01

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cinema-tv-etc · 5 years ago

Link

Film Treasures, Streaming Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The astonishment of riches includes up-close looks at our history in hundreds of films. And they’re all free.

One of the world’s oldest films, “Sneeze,” is a gift that keeps on giving. Shot in 1894 and about as long as an achoo, it shows a mustachioed gent emitting a single sneeze, a kerchief clutched in one hand. The film was made by W.K.L. Dickson and the sneeze delivered by Fred Ott. Working in Thomas Edison’s New Jersey studio, they gave us the first celluloid sneeze, an open-mouth exhalation that was meant to be humorous but today seems ominous. Cover your mouth! I yelled when I looked at it again.

“Sneeze” is just one of many films that you can watch for free online courtesy of the Library of Congress, which partly acquires deposits through the United States Copyright Office. The biggest library in the world, it has an extraordinary trove of online offerings — more than 7,000 videos — that includes hundreds of old (and really old) movies. With one click, you can watch Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show parade down Fifth Avenue in 1902; click again to giggle at Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse in a 1916 cartoon. And while the library is temporarily closed to the public, its virtual doors remain open. It remains one of my favorite places to get lost in.

The Library of Congress was created in 1800 by the same act of Congress that moved the federal government to Washington, with a $5,000 budget for books approved by John Adams. The library was originally meant for the sole use of Congress and its role was debated over successive administrations and crises, including several catastrophic fires. By the time its first dedicated building opened in 1897, though, its status was settled: It was “the book palace of the American people,” as one librarian of Congress called it, a classification that expanded when it began adding films.

“Sneeze,” a.k.a. “Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze,” is the library’s earliest surviving copyrighted motion picture and was submitted in paper form. Films weren’t protected by copyright until 1912 but photos were, so savvy producers deposited their films as paper contact prints (entire motion pictures were submitted that way). There are more than 3,000 such paper prints in the library (they’ve been turned back into films). Most were produced in the United States and open fascinating, often charming windows to earlier times whether through a Yale-Princeton football game, a New Jersey baby parade or some nuzzling in “Kiss,” the first film to show lips locking.

You can sample this bounty on the Library of Congress website or through its more limited, curated selections on YouTube, where loading times seem faster.

On each platform, the films are organized into playlists like the National Screening Room, a catchall that includes everything from educational films to slapstick comedies. Here’s where you can watch “Mabel and Fatty’s Wash Day” (1915), which was co-directed by one of its stars, Mabel Normand, or dive into Pare Larentz’s “The River” (1938), a classic about the Mississippi made for the Farm Security Administration. Here, too, is where to find Edward O. Bland’s “The Cry of Jazz” (1959), a political scorcher about jazz that has bad acting, searing documentary imagery and terrific music (from Sun Ra, among others).

The aesthetic quality of the titles varies, but that’s to the point of the library’s democratic mandate. Not all the films on deposit are exemplars of the art — although greatness abounds here — but they nevertheless have cultural and historical value. Some are flat-out weird and wonderful, while others seem like souvenirs from a distant land. That’s true of “Television,” a 1939 curio that opens with an audience seated in the dark before a tiny glowing screen that abruptly grows larger, a stark encapsulation of TV’s challenge to moviegoing. “Television now takes its place,” the narrator promises (threatens!), “as a new American art and industry.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/movies/library-congress-streaming-free.html

#micheaux #oscar #Library of Congress #Free Movies

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paulkupperberg · 4 years ago

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Meet #Frenchy the #Clown... star of #NationalLampoon in the 90s... and the clown that gives #Pennyworth #nightmares! The as complete as we could make it collection by Alan Kupperberg, with 2 all-new stories!

#paul kupperberg #comic books #DIY #self publishing #indie comics #national lampoon #satire #humor #black & white comic book art #b&w comics #Buffalo Avenue Comics #alan kupperberg #pennyworth #clowns #evil clowns

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n0manisan · 6 years ago

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I just bought the Incredi-files, and while most of the info isn't new, it does provide interesting little details like:

Dynaguy was sued for $1 million in emotional distress because he didn't save a kid's teddy bear while rescuing her and her family from a fire. He did replace the teddy bear though

The Parr's previous addresses are difficult to decipher because they’re crossed out (thus anything i can't read is replaced with a blank) but to the best of my ability they are:

1107 Madison Avenue, _____ Hill, CA, _____

310 Mackenze Street, _____, CA, _4556

__67 Avery Way, _afay _____, CA, _454_

Helen runs a carpool, along with Beth Giles and Dovie Ramsey to pick up Dash, Jacob, Jordyn, Kai, Taidan, Lucy, Devin, Ben, Madison, and Mackenzie. Helen drives on Mondays. Assuming they are the same person, Ben is one of Violet's classmates

As Elastigirl, Helen wrote a newspaper article about shopping tips

The Happy Platter serves cheesy buffalo wings

Dash ran at 475 mph when he placed the tack on Bernie's chair, and was running at least 85 mph on water. Evelyn estimates that his top speed will increase as he gets older, and may be able to break the sound barrier

Evelyn has suggested putting a surveillance team on Dash's track coach because he's getting suspicious about Dash's constant second place finishes. Bernie is also under surveillance

Jack Jack has acute hearing, taste, and has super intellect (supposedly, but not confirmed)

Devtech has a childcare center and Winston wants to use Jack Jack to market a utility belt meant to hold baby supplies

Lucius has a clothing line and a career in the music industry

Lucius also wishes he had a car like the Incredibile

Before the deaths of Thunderhead, Metaman, Splashdown, Dynaguy, and Stratogale capes were considered standard issue

People without powers are called non-super individuals (NSIs)

Ironically, the charge Mr. Incredible was brought to court for was endangering the life of a despondent citizen

The fabric Edna uses is called haluminum vibronic dacralor polymesh

Edna is said to have abandoned capes, meaning that she has designed them in the past, and she is the first to pioneer capeless designs

Edna's studio is located in her basement

Most villains began pursuing legitimate lines of work after the Super ban

Mirage is not Mirage's real name (though her real name is unknown)

Due to Mirage's surveillance equipment, we know that Mirage spotted Bob and Lucius at 11:46 pm

The Incredibile's top speed is 300mph, while the Elasticycle's top speed is 200mph

The Elasticycle runs on two solar-hydrogen hybrid fuel cells

Fewer commuters rely on the monorail because of how many incidents there have been involving them

The mind wiping device that Rick uses is called the MW-086 Decerebralator, and there are only two in existance. Rick intends to repurpose or dismantle it when the Superhero Relocation Act is repealed

Evelyn's hypo-goggles can project holograms, augmented reality, and virtual reality. Also Winston doesn't like how they look

Jack Jack's baby monitor tracks the supply of cookies and diapers and automatically places an order when the supply runs too low

Kari is under surveillance by the NSA

Jack Jack weighs 22.1 lbs

The book is not written by Brad Bird (it is instead written by John Edwards) so this information is debatable canon, but I’m just putting it out here so you can decide for yourselves.

#the incredibles #incredibles 2

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detroitlib · 6 years ago

Photo

View of an advertising card for A.R. Morgan, depicting several rabbits. Printed on front: "Gies & Co., Buffalo, N.Y." Printed on back: "Johnnie, dear, run down to the corner and get a pair of shoes. Tell him to charge it. Oh no, ma, give me the money and let me go to Morgan's Great Cash Store; can save 25 cents, and then I can buy a story book, do, mamma, won't you? Well, here's the money, Johnnie. Hurry up. That Morgan is making children crazy to save money; success to Morgan's boot, shoe, slipper and rubber house, 106 Woodward Avenue, Detroit."

Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

#a.r. morgan #gies & co.#rabbits #illustration #detroit #vintage advertising #vintage #rabbit #bunny #bunnies #bunny rabbit #morgan #gies #vintage ad #vintage ads #woodward #woodward avenue #detroit history #detroit public library

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lawfirm4immigrants44114-blog · 5 years ago

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#Immigration Lawyer #law firm

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letheatreofmusic · 6 years ago

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Theatre Bucket List

Plays to Read/See:

Agamemnon (Aeschylus)

American Buffalo (David Mamet)

Angels in America (Tony Kushner)

Antigone (Sophocles)

Arms and the Man (George Bernard Shaw)

As You Like It (Shakespeare)

August: Osage County (Tracy Letts)

The Bacchae (Euripides)

The Birthday Party (Harold Pinter)

Betrayal (Harold Pinter)

Blackbird (David Harrower)

Buried Child (Sam Shepard)

The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Bertolt Brecht)

The Cherry Orchard (Anton Chekhov)

The Clean House (Sarah Ruhl)

Clybourne Park (Bruce Norris)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

Cyclops (Euripides)

Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller)

Disgraced (Ayad Akhtar)

Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe)

A Doll’s House (Henrik Ibsen)

Doubt (John Patrick Stanley)

Eclipsed (Dunai Gurira)

Electra (Sophocles)

Equus (Peter Shaffer)

A Free Man of Color (John Guare)

The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams)

Glengarry Glen Ross (David Mamet)

Hamlet (Shakespeare)

The Heidi Chronicles (Wendy Wasserstein)

Hir (Taylor Mac)

The Humans (Stephen Karam)

The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O’Neill)

The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde)

Indecent (Paula Vogel)

In the Blood (Suzan-Lori Parks)

Jitney (August Wilson)

The Killer (Eugene Ionesco)

King Lear (Shakespeare)

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Eugene O’Neil)

Lysistrata (Aristophenes)

Macbeth (Shakespeare)

Machinal (Sophie Treadwell)

The Mandrake (Nicolo Macchiavelli)

Medea (Euripides)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare)

Miss Julie (August Strindberg)

The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail (Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee)

Noises Off (Michael Frayn)

The Normal Heart (Larry Kramer)

Oedipus the King (Sophocles)

Othello (Shakespeare)

Our Town (Thornoton Wilder)

The Playboy of the Western World (J.M. Synge)

Private Lives (Noel Coward)

Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw)

A Raisin in the Sun (Lorraine Hansbury)

Richard III (Shakespeare)

Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Tom Stoppard)

Ruined (Lynn Nottage)

The School for Scandal (Richard Brinsley Sheridan)

The Seagull (Anton Chekhov)

Significant Other (Joshua Harmon)

Small Mouth Sounds (Beth Wohl)

Speed-the-Plow (David Mamet)

Spreading the News (Lady Augusta Gregory)

A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams)

The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare)

Tartuffe (Moliere)

The Tempest (Shakespeare)

The Threepenny Opera (Bertolt Brecht)

The Tracking Satyrs (Sophocles)

The Trojan Woman (Euripides)

Topdog/Underdog (Suzan Lori-Parks)

Twelfth Night (Shakespeare)

Ubu Roi (Alfred Jarry)

Uncle Vanya (Anton Chekhov)

The Vagina Monologues (Eve Ensler)

A View from the Bridge (Arthur Miller)

Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee)

Gypsy

My Fair Lady

Sweeney Todd

Fiddler on the Roof

Guys and Dolls

Oklahoma!

Cabaret

West Side Story

The Music Man

A Chorus Line

Chicago

The Fantasticks

Carousel

Company

Show Boat

The King and I

Little Shop of Horrors

Sunday in the Park with George

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

A Little Night Music

She Loves Me

Nine

Follies

Falsettos

Ragtime

Kiss Me, Kate

1776

Into the Woods

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Urinetown

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Wicked

Hair

Evita

Hello, Dolly!

La Cage aux Folles

110 in the Shade

The Producers

Lady in the Dark

City of Angels

Dreamgirls

Avenue Q

The Book of Mormon

42nd Street

Brigadoon

The Cradle Will Rock

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Jesus Christ Superstar

Once on this Island

Adding Machine

On the Town

Les Miserables

Bat Boy

Caroline, or Change

South Pacific

The Pajama Game

The Sound of Music

Hairspray

The Phantom of the Opera

Damn Yankees

Rent

Grey Gardens

Assassins

Mame

Man of La Mancha

A Man of No Importance

You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown

Sweet Charity

Camelot

Anything Goes

Wonderful Town

The Light in the Piazza

The Drowsy Chaperone

The Full Monty

Romance/Romance

Godspell

Of Thee I Sing

The Secret Garden

Pippin

Kiss of the Spider Woman

Finian’s Rainbow

Pal Joey

Annie Get Your Gun

Pacific Overtures

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

On Your Toes

Candide

Annie

Beauty and the Beast

Ain’t Misbehavin’

Bye Bye Birdie

Jelly’s Last Jam

A New Brain

Floyd Collins

Grand Hotel

Violet

A Day in Hollywood, A Night in Ukraine

The Scottsboro Boys

Next to Normal

Hadestown

Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812

The Band’s Visit

Hamilton

Dear Evan Hansen

Heathers

Dream Roles (plays):

Laura in The Glass Menagerie

Nora in A Doll’s House

Regina in The Little Foxes

Harper in Angels in America

Daisy in The Great Gatsby

Lady MacBeth in Macbeth

Catherine in Proof

Ashlee in Dance Nation

Emma in People, Places, & Things

Nina in The Seagull

Dream Roles (Musicals):

Johanna in Sweeney Todd

Fantine in Les Miserables

Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors

Cinderella in Into the Woods

Wendla in Spring Awakening

Amalia in She Loves Me

Sonya in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812

Princess Mary in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812

Sibella in Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder

Clara in The Light in the Piazza

Cathy in The Last Five Years

Margo in Bright Star

Rosa Bud in The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Tony in West Side Story (Anyone looking for a female Tony?)

Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar

To Be Continued as I Discover More Things...

#theatre bucket list #dream roles #plays #musicals #about me

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handeaux · 6 years ago

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The Saga Of Pat McAvoy, Cincinnati’s Lion Slayer

The Cincinnati Zoo was not quite two weeks old when the Cincinnati Daily Times [30 September 1875] printed this rather snarky observation:

“It is said that the Zoological Society consists of two persons, Andrew Erkenbrecker and McAvoy. The former furnishes the game for the latter to shoot.”

Mr. Erkenbrecker, of course is the man most directly responsible for the creation of the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden. But who is McAvoy? And what did he shoot?

The answer is carved on a tombstone at New St. Joseph Cemetery in Price Hill. The capstone, badly eroded by acid rain, tells the curious tale of Patrick McAvoy, Cincinnati’s “Lion Slayer.”

McAvoy was born about 1835 in Ireland and emigrated as a child to the United States at the end of the devastating Great Potato Famine. In later years, legend had it that McAvoy landed in California during the Gold Rush. Maybe he did, and maybe he spent some time out west before settling down. It is known that he had a reputation as an expert marksman and belonged to an elite hunting and fishing club.

When the defining adventures of his life took place, however, McAvoy was settled on Ludlow Avenue, raising a family and enjoying an apparently prosperous career as a building contractor and carpenter. He also served as a town marshal in Clifton.

On 24 March 1895, McAvoy was engaged in constructing buildings at the Cincinnati Zoo, which would open that fall. While many of the Zoo’s buildings were still being assembled. many animals were already on-site and housed in temporary quarters. This was the situation involving a testy lioness, who was driven by hunger or by instinct to attack a donkey being led past her cage by a young boy. According to the Cincinnati Gazette [25 March 1875]:

“The lioness no sooner set eyes upon the ill-starred donkey, than she crouched in the back part of her cage, and, with a roar that startled the echoes, sprang against the bars, snapping them like threads, and landed upon the [donkey’s] back.”

The donkey put up quite a fight, inflicting a serious bite upon the lion’s spine and spared no opportunity to attack with its hooves, kicking repeatedly as the carnivore slashed its sides.

A policeman fired at the lion with his seven-shooter without much effect and night watchman John Nordheim led a small posse armed with a miscellaneous assortment of construction tools and actual weapons, trying to corner the beast. McAvoy joined this rag-tag brigade after fetching a shotgun from his tool shed.

Just as it appeared the lioness was hemmed in near the buffalo house, she sprang into the crowd and pinned watchman Nordheim to the ground, sinking her teeth into his thigh. McAvoy marched to within four feet of the animal and fired a load of birdshot at close range. The lion let go Nordheim, but leapt upon foreman George Haupt and mauled him. Another blast from McAvoy’s gun, and the animal was dead.

According to Kevin Grace and Tom White, authors of the 2004 book, “Cincinnati Cemeteries”:

“ . . . it is said that for the rest of his life, he could walk into any bar in the city and be treated to a drink for his heroism.”

McAvoy’s reputation as a crack shot and wild-animal slayer was cemented that fall when a leopard escaped from the Zoo and prowled Burnet Woods for a couple of days.

It was 18 September 1875 when the first paying customers filed through the Zoo’s gates. On Sunday of the next weekend, while the new zoological garden entertained 12,000 visitors, a keeper left the wrong door unlatched and a leopard got loose. Years later, Sol Stephan, the longtime Zoo manager, recalled the hunt for the Cincinnati Post [23 October 1907]:

“You must remember that at that time all the land around here was a great common. Avondale was a little village; Clifton was another. We offered $100 for any one who would kill the leopard. The city was terrified. Every time an old tom cat would yowl at night, another report would reach us that the ‘leopard’ was heard. He was seen in 20 different places from Maysville, Ky., to Dayton, O., on the same day.”

Both Avondale and Clifton – a decade before they were annexed to Cincinnati – had their own constabularies. John Pfeiffer of the Avondale department and Patrick McAvoy, Clifton’s marshal, roamed the area looking for the leopard. The leopard announced itself by chasing a gentleman down Clifton Avenue one night. As Mr. Stephan recalled, the city was, indeed, terrified. The Gazette [28 September 1875] opined that an uncaged leopard was good for parental discipline:

“The zoological leopard which is at large in the precincts of Clifton will be a blessing to mothers in keeping boys at home of nights.”

McAvoy and Pfeiffer cornered the leopard just outside the Zoo’s fence, no more than a couple hundred feet from where it escaped. Attempts at capturing it alive proved futile and, once again, Patrick McAvoy was hailed as the marksman who fired the fatal shot. The Gazette, deep in a long article, speculates that Constable John Pfeiffer may have inflicted the fatal wound, but “Lion Slayer” McAvoy got the headlines.

The lioness, the donkey and the leopard all met the same fate. They were stuffed and displayed at the Zoo for decades. An 1876 guidebook tells the tale:

“The interior of the Carnivora contains also the stuffed skin of the famous little Jackass, which resisted successfully an attack made by a Lioness at the Garden.”

McAvoy died in 1903, aged about 67 years old. He left behind a 38-year-old widow and that mysterious tombstone at St. Joseph Cemetery.

#Patrick McAvoy #Pat McAvoy #cincinnati zoo #Clifton #avondale #Kevin Grace #Sol Stephan

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