#cops 1922

[justbusterkeaton]

[friendlessghoul]

Buster Keaton with his tie mustache disguise (and Virginia Fox) Cops (1922) & Hard Luck (1921)

[littleplasticthings]

Cops, 1922

[nando161mando]

Nabat" anarchists in prison, 1922 - photo found in the archives of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv.

via Philip Ruff

[filmap]

Cops Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton. 1922

Mansion gate 1145 Arden Rd, Pasadena, CA 91106, USA See in map

See in imdb

[ennaih]

Every Film I Watch In 2023:

87. Cops (1922) -- a rewatch

[blondebrainpowered]

Cops, 1922

[logray]

COPS! (1922) dir. Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (2014) dir. Marc Webb

[streamondemand]

Buster Keaton's brilliant solo comedy shorts on Criterion Channel and free on Kanopy

Buster Keaton was arguably the cinema’s first modernist: an old fashioned romantic with a 20th century mind behind the deadpan visage. His films brim with some of the most breathtaking stunts and ingenious gags ever put on film, all perfectly engineered to look effortless. It all began with his first solo flights: 19 short films that he made between 1920 and 1923. Though he did not take director…

[literaryvein-reblogs]

121 Words & Phrases for Dying

A remarkable creativity surrounds the vocabulary of death. The words and expressions range from the solemn and dignified to the jocular and mischievous.

Old English

swelt/forswelt ⚜ give up the ghost ⚜ dead ⚜ i-wite

wend ⚜ forworth ⚜ go out of this world ⚜ quele ⚜ starve

c.1135 — 1600s

die (c.1135) ⚜ fare (c.1175) ⚜ end; let; shed (one’s own) blood (c.1200)

yield (up) the ghost (c.1290) ⚜ take the way of death (1297)

die up; fall; fine; leave; spill; tine (c.1300)

leese one’s life-days (c.1325) ⚜ part (c.1330)

flit (c.1340) ⚜ trance; pass (1340) ⚜ determine (c.1374)

disperish (c.1382) ⚜ be gathered to one’s fathers (1382)

miscarry (c.1387) ⚜ go; shut (1390)

expire; flee; pass away; seek out of life; sye; trespass (c.1400)

decease (1439) ⚜ ungo (c.1450) ⚜ have the death (1488)

vade (1495) ⚜ depart (1501) ⚜ pay one’s debt to nature (c.1513)

galp (1529) ⚜ go west (c.1532) ⚜ pick over the perch (1532)

die the death (1535) change one’s life; jet (1546)

play tapple up tail (1573) ⚜ inlaik (1575) ⚜ finish (1578) ⚜ relent (1587)

unbreathe (1589) ⚜ transpass (1592) ⚜ lose one’s breath (1596)

go off (1605) ⚜ make a die (of it) (1611) ⚜ fail (1613)

go home (1618) ⚜ drop (1654) ⚜ knock off (c.1657) ⚜ ghost (1666)

go over to the majority (1687) ⚜ march off (1693)

bite the ground/sand/dust; die off; pike (1697)

1700s — 1960s

pass to one’s reward (1703) ⚜ sink; vent (1718) ⚜ demise (1727)

slip one’s cable (1751) ⚜ turf (1763) ⚜ move off (1764)

kick the bucket (1785) pass on (1805) exit (1806)

launch into eternity (1812) ⚜ go to glory (1814) ⚜ sough (1816)

hand in one’s accounts (1817) ⚜ croak (1819)

slip one’s breath (1819) ⚜ stiffen (1820) ⚜ buy it (1825)

drop short (1826) ⚜ fall a sacrifice to (1839)

go off the hooks (1840) ⚜ succumb (1849) ⚜ step out (1851)

walk (forth) (1858) ⚜ snuff out (1864) ⚜ go/be up the flume (1865)

pass out (c.1867) ⚜ cash in one’s checks (1869) ⚜ peg out (1870)

go bung (1882) ⚜ get one’s call (1884) ⚜ perch (1886) ⚜ off it (1890)

knock over (1892) ⚜ pass in (1904) ⚜ the silver cord is loosed (1911)

pip (out) (1913) ⚜ cop it (1915) ⚜ stop one (1916) ⚜ conk (out) (1918)

cross over (1920) ⚜ kick off (1921) ⚜ shuffle off (1922)

pack up (1925) ⚜ step off (1926) ⚜ take the ferry (1928)

meet one’s Maker (1933) ⚜ kiss off (1945)

have had it (1952) ⚜ crease it (1959) ⚜ zonk (1968)

The list displays a remarkable inventiveness, as people struggle to find fresh forms of expression.

The language of death is inevitably euphemistic, but few of the verbs or idioms shown here are elaborate or opaque.

In fact the history of verbs for dying displays a remarkable simplicity: 86 of the 121 entries (over 70%) consist of only one syllable, and monosyllables figure largely in the multi-word entries (such as pay one’s debt to nature).

Only 16 verbs are disyllabic, and only 3 are trisyllabic (determine, disperish, miscarry), loanwords from French, and along with expire, trespass, and decease showing the arrival of a more scholarly vocabulary in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Even the euphemisms of later centuries have a markedly monosyllabic character.

Some constructions evidently have permanent appeal because of their succinct and enigmatic character, such as the popularity of ‘____ it’ (whatever the ‘it’ is): snuff it, peg it, buy it, cop it, off it, crease it, have had it.

It’s possible to see changes in fashion, such as the vogue for colloquial usages in "off" in the middle of the 18th century (move off, pop off, pack off, hop off ).

And styles change: we no longer feel that "pass out" would be appropriate on a tombstone. But some things don’t change. Pass away has been with us since the 14th century. And, in a usage that dates back to the 12th, we still do say that people, simply, died.

Source ⚜ More: Word Lists ⚜ Notes & References ⚜ Historical Thesaurus

[writingwithcolor]

My alternate universe fantasy colonial Hong Kong is more authoritarian and just as racist but less homophobic than in real life, should I change that?

@floatyhands asked:

I’m a Hongkonger working on a magical alternate universe dystopia set in what is basically British colonial Hong Kong in the late 1920s. My main character is a young upper middle-class Eurasian bisexual man.  I plan to keep the colony’s historical racial hierarchy in this universe, but I also want the fantasy quirks to mean that unlike in real life history, homosexuality was either recently decriminalized, or that the laws are barely enforced, because my boy deserves a break. Still, the institutions are quite homophobic, and this relative tolerance might not last. Meanwhile, due to other divergences (e.g. eldritch horrors, also the government’s even worse mishandling of the 1922 Seamen's Strike and the 1925 Canton-Hong Kong Strike), the colonial administration is a lot more authoritarian than it was in real history. This growing authoritarianism is not exclusive to the colony, and is part of a larger global trend in this universe.  I realize these worldbuilding decisions above may whitewash colonialism, or come off as choosing to ignore one colonial oppression in favor of exaggerating another. Is there any advice as to how I can address this issue? (Maybe I could have my character get away by bribing the cops, though institutional corruption is more associated with the 1960s?) Thank you!

Historical Precedent for Imperialistic Gay Rights

There is a recently-published book about this topic that might actually interest you: Racism And The Making of Gay Rights by Laurie Marhoefer (note: I have yet to read it, it’s on my list). It essentially describes how the modern gay rights movement was built from colonialism and imperialism. 

The book covers Magnus Hirschfeld, a German sexologist in the early 1900s, and (one of) his lover(s), Li Shiu Tong, who he met in British Shanghai. Magnus is generally considered to have laid the groundwork for a lot of gay rights, and his research via the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was a target of Nazi book-burnings, but he was working with imperial governments in an era where the British Empire was still everywhere. 

Considering they both ended up speaking to multiple world leaders about natural human sexual variation both in terms of intersex issues and sexual attraction, your time period really isn’t that far off for people beginning to be slightly more open-minded—while also being deeply imperialist in other ways.

The thing about this particular time period is homosexuality as we know it was recently coming into play, starting with the trial of Oscar Wilde and the rise of Nazism. But between those two is a pretty wildly fluctuating gap of attitudes.

Oscar Wilde’s trial is generally considered the period where gay people, specifically men who loved men, started becoming a group to be disliked for disrupting social order. It was very public, very scandalous, and his fall from grace is one of the things that drove so many gay and/or queer men underground. It also helped produce some of the extremely queercoded classical literature of the Victorian and Edwardian eras (ex: Dracula), because so many writers were exploring what it meant to be seen as such negative forces. A lot of people hated Oscar Wilde for bringing the concept to such a public discussion point, when being discreet had been so important.

But come the 1920s, people were beginning to wonder if being gay was that bad, and Mangus Hirschfeld managed to do a world tour of speaking come the 1930s, before all of that was derailed by wwii. He (and/or Li Shiu Tong) were writing papers that were getting published and sent to various health departments about how being gay wasn’t an illness, and more just an “alternative” way of loving others. 

This was also the era of Boston Marriages where wealthy single women lived together as partners (I’m sure there’s an mlm-equivalent but I cannot remember or find it). People were a lot less likely to care if you kept things discreet, so there might be less day to day homophobia than one would expect. Romantic friendships were everywhere, and were considered the ideal—the amount of affection you could express to your same-sex best friend was far above what is socially tolerable now.

Kaz Rowe has a lot of videos with cited bibliographies about various queer disasters [affectionate] of the late 1800s/early 1900s, not to mention a lot of other cultural oddities of the Victorian era (and how many of those attitudes have carried into modern day) so you can start to get the proper terms to look it up for yourself.

I know there’s a certain… mistrust of specifically queer media analysts on YouTube in the current. Well. Plagiarism/fact-creation scandal (if you don’t know about the fact-creation, check out Todd in the Shadows). I recommend Kaz because they have citations on screen and in the description that aren’t whole-cloth ripped off from wikipedia’s citation list (they’ve also been published via Getty Publications, a museum press). 

For audio-preferring people (hi), a video is more accessible than text, and sometimes the exposure to stuff that’s able to pull exact terms can finally get you the resources you need. If text is more accessible, just jump to the description box/transcript and have fun. Consider them and their work a starting place, not a professor. 

There is always a vulnerability in learning things, because we can never outrun our own confirmation bias and we always have limited time to chase down facts and sources—we can only do our best and be open to finding facts that disprove what we researched prior.

Colonialism’s Popularity Problem

Something about colonialism that I’ve rarely discussed is how some colonial empires actually “allow” certain types of “deviance” if that deviance will temporarily serve its ends. Namely, when colonialism needs to expand its territory, either from landing in a new area or having recently messed up and needing to re-charm the population.

By that I mean: if a fascist group is struggling to maintain popularity, it will often conditionally open its doors to all walks of life in order to capture a greater market. It will also pay its spokespeople for the privilege of serving their ends, often very well. Authoritarians know the power of having the token supporter from a marginalized group on payroll: it both opens you up directly to that person’s identity, and sways the moderates towards going “well they allow [person/group] so they can’t be that bad, and I prefer them.”

Like it or not, any marginalized group can have its fascist members, sometimes even masquerading as the progressives. Being marginalized does not automatically equate to not wanting fascism, because people tend to want fascist leaders they agree with instead of democracy and coalition building. People can also think that certain people are exaggerating the horrors of colonialism, because it doesn’t happen to good people, and look, they accept their friends who are good people, so they’re fine. 

A dominant fascist group can absolutely use this to their advantage in order to gain more foot soldiers, which then increases their raw numbers, which puts them in enough power they can stop caring about opening their ranks, and only then do they turn on their “deviant” members. By the time they turn, it’s usually too late, and there’s often a lot of feelings of betrayal because the spokesperson (and those who liked them) thought they were accepted, instead of just used.

You said it yourself that this colonial government is even stricter than the historical equivalent—which could mean it needs some sort of leverage to maintain its popularity. “Allowing” gay people to be some variation of themselves would be an ideal solution to this, but it would come with a bunch of conditions. What those conditions are I couldn’t tell you—that’s for your own imagination, based off what this group’s ideal is, but some suggestions are “follow the traditional dating/friendship norms”, “have their own gender identity slightly to the left of the cis ideal”, and/or “pretend to never actually be dating but everyone knows and pretends to not care so long as they don’t out themselves”—that would signal to the reader that this is deeply conditional and about to all come apart. 

It would, however, mean your poor boy is less likely to get a break, because he would be policed to be the “acceptable kind of gay” that the colonial government is currently tolerating (not unlike the way the States claims to support white cis same-sex couples in the suburbs but not bipoc queer-trans people in polycules). It also provides a more salient angle for this colonial government to come crashing down, if that’s the way this narrative goes.

Colonial governments are often looking for scapegoats; if gay people aren’t the current one, then they’d be offered a lot more freedom just to improve the public image of those in power. You have the opportunity to have the strikers be the current scapegoats, which would take the heat off many other groups—including those hit by homophobia.

In Conclusion

Personally, I’d take a more “gays for Trump” attitude about the colonialism and their apparent “lack” of homophobia—they’re just trying to regain popularity after mishandling a major scandal, and the gay people will be on the outs soon enough.

You could also take the more nuanced approach and see how imperialism shaped modern gay rights and just fast-track that in your time period, to give it the right flavour of imperialism. A lot of BIPOC lgbtqa+ people will tell you the modern gay rights movement is assimilationalist, colonialist, and other flavours of ick, so that angle is viable.

You can also make something that looks more accepting to the modern eye by leaning heavily on romantic friendships that encouraged people waxing poetic for their “best friends”, keeping the “lovers” part deeply on the down low, but is still restrictive and people just don’t talk about it in public unless it’s in euphemisms or among other same-sex-attracted people because there’s nothing wrong with loving your best friend, you just can’t go off and claim you’re a couple like a heterosexual couple is.

Either way, you’re not sanitizing colonialism inherently by having there be less modern-recognized homophobia in this deeply authoritarian setting. You just need to add some guard rails on it so that, sure, your character might be fine if he behaves, but there are still “deviants” that the government will not accept. 

Because that’s, in the end, one of the core tenants that makes a government colonial: its acceptance of groups is frequently based on how closely you follow the rules and police others for not following them, and anyone who isn’t their ideal person will be on the outs eventually. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have a facade of pretending those rules are totally going to include people who are to the left of those ideals, if those people fit in every other ideal, or you’re safe only if you keep it quiet.

~ Leigh

[justbusterkeaton]

Cops (1922)

[friendlessghoul]

Buster Keaton Cops (1922)

[busterkeatonsociety]

Movie Monday - Buster Keaton is the bomb! On the Run from the Law from all sides, “Cops,” 1922, provides the best chase scenes in Buster’s short-film career.

[bleedingcoffee42]

Happy Birthday Chuck Grant!!!

Charles Ensworth Grant was born March 1, 1922 in Pittsburgh, Pa. He was the son of Francis Bingham Grant and Katharine Willis Grant Francis was a veteran who served in the cavalry and sold furniture. Katharine's family traces back to New England and her family moved west to California around the same time the Grants did. In the 40s Chuck would have her sister, his Aunt Elizabeth Willis Knapp and her family across the street from him as well as Grandma Willis who would move in with his parents later on. Katharine's brother Edward would live close by in West LA as well.

Chuck may have graduated from University High School in 1940 but he didn't take his senior picture so it's difficult to verify. He worked as a gas station attendant before taking a job with Vega Aircraft. He also listed his address on his draft card as that of a friend's father, a friend who's wedding he would be in as part of the wedding party. Later another member of that party would accompany him to Las Vegas as witness for his own wedding in 1946.

He fought every campaign with Easy company, from Toccoa to Austria. He is described by his fellow soldiers:

-"Loved life. Loved women. Sharp as a tack" -Babe (also memories.)

-"Sunny, quiet, golden-haired boy from CA"- Webster

-"Sinewy physique, excellent combat record..easy going but all man. "- Christenson (memories)

Chuck was promoted to Corporal at the same time Ranney, Petty and Harris were demoted to privates in 1943. Chuck received a Purple Heart for being wounded in Holland (shot in the ass) and was awarded the Bronze Star. He more than likely had more.

On May 27, 1945 he is shot by Floyd Craver of Item Company. Speirs, Foley and Roe loaded him up and took him to Battalion HQ where a sloppily dressed Captain said he couldn't do anything for him, so they loaded him back up and took him to Saalbach where they knew there was a hospital. Jack Foley kept his affairs in order while he was in the hospital in Austria and wrote his parents, as did Don Malarkey. Chuck's parents wrote him back and thanked him. After the war he is discharged from Hammond General Hospital in Modesto, California on November 3, 1945.

On November 2, 1946 Chuck Grant married Norma Jean Darland(She gets her own post), a marine, in Las Vegas with his friends Keith and Doris Morgan to witness. He and Norma move to San Diego where she is a cashier at the Naval Training station and he does get some veteran assistance. He fills vending machines 5 hrs a week. They have two children, Dan Edward Grant and Charles E Grant, Jr. In Sept 1954, Norma commits suicide by overdose and Chuck finds her in their bedroom. He takes the kids to a friends and comes back to call the cops. He never remarries. By 1960 he is back in Los Angeles area where he stays until his death in his home on Bracken Street Arleta, CA on October 12, 1982.

Chuck was an active member and officer of the Disabled American Veterans, Military Order of the Purple Heart and a co-founder of a chapter of the 101st Airborne Association in his area. He was present at most of the reunions. He visited members of Easy who were ill like C.T. Smith and went to Arlington for the dedication. He was voted to be the 506 representative in the 101st in 1980 and it was well deserved.

There is no evidence Chuck lived in San Francisco and he would have had to do it between 1956-1960 where he falls off the radar in my research. He is a disabled widower with two little boys, the common sense move is to go back to LA where he has family. The gentleman who owned Grant's Smoke Shop in San Francisco was Edward L. Grant who's parents were English immigrants and no relation to Chuck.(separate post).

Chuck struggled with partial paralysis but still was extremely dedicated to veterans, and Easy Company, and served years with vet organizations in the LA area. He appears to have never remarried, had one DUI, his stereo stolen twice.

Chuck appears in several photos besides Skip Muck (above), is included in the Niland story, and Hack Hansen was closest to him. He's not only the victim of what appears to be being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but not having a best friend who wanted to keep his memories alive and make sure he wasn't forgotten. He is way more than the guy who was shot in the head, but nobody was around to tell those stories to Ambrose.

Happy Birthday Chuck! And special thanks to my partner in research @noneedtoamputate who has been on this journey with me as we try to find out WHO was Chuck Grant besides 'the guy shot in the head'.

(under the cut- Dog Tags in possession of GMH. David Lowry's coveralls with Hack Hansen and Chuck Grant stenciled on them. Chuck from Easy Company photo at Fort Bragg. Chuck at a reunion which may be 1981 San Diego- from Winter's files. Also the write up from Christenson which seems to be were the tobacco and SF thing came from. 101st Airborne article and Bronze Start article).

[streda]

Buster Keaton

Born Joseph Francis Keaton on October 4, 1895, was an American director and actor who became famous for various comedy scenes that are still repeated in films today. You may recognize him from the nickname "the man with the stone face". He is known as a director, screenwriter and actor in famous silent comedies such as "The General" and "The Navigator".

Keaton was born into a vaudeville family in Piqua, Kansas. His name Joseph didn't come out of nowhere, it was a family tradition from his father's side. The nickname Buster was invented by Harry Houdini (a friend of his parents) when little Buster fell down the stairs and instead of crying or reacting in any way, he got up and moved on (The nickname was also a reference to the fact that he often caused trouble as a child). At the age of three, Keaton began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons. He first appeared on stage in 1899 in Wilmington, Delaware. The act was mainly a comedy sketch. Despite his run-ins with the law, Keaton was a rising and relatively well-paid theater star. He stated that he learned to read and write late and was taught by his mother. When he was 21, his father's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family actor, 20, so Keaton and his mother Myra went to New York, where Keaton's career quickly moved from vaudeville to film. Keaton served with the American Expeditionary Forces in France in the United States Army's 40th Infantry Division during World War I. His unit remained intact and was not broken up to provide replacements, as had been the case with some other late-arriving divisions. While in uniform, he contracted an ear infection that permanently damaged his hearing. Keaton was such a natural in his first film, "Butcher Boy," that he was hired on the spot. Finally, he asked to borrow one of the cameras to see how it worked. He took the camera back to his hotel room, where he disassembled and reassembled it by morning. He appeared in a total of 14 Arbuckle shorts, running into 1920. They were popular, and contrary to Keaton's later reputation as "The Great Stone Face", he often smiled and even laughed in them. In 1920, The Saphead was released, marking Keaton's first starring role in a feature-length feature film. After Keaton's successful collaboration with Arbuckle, Schenck gave him his own production unit, Buster Keaton Productions. He made a series of 19 two-reel comedies, including One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921), Cops (1922), and The Electric House (1922).

The more adventurous ideas called for dangerous stunts, performed by Keaton at great physical risk. During the railroad water-tank scene in Sherlock Jr. (gags written by Clyde Bruckman), Keaton broke his neck when a torrent of water fell on him from a water tower, but he did not realize it until years afterwards. A scene from Steamboat Bill, Jr. required Keaton to stand still on a particular spot. Then, the facade of a two-story building toppled forward on top of Keaton. Keaton's character emerged unscathed, due to a single open window. The stunt required precision, because the prop house weighed two tons, and the window only offered a few inches of clearance around Keaton's body. The sequence furnished one of the most memorable images of his career. Aside from Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), Keaton's most enduring feature-length films include Three Ages (1923), Our Hospitality (1923), The Navigator (1924), Sherlock Jr. (1924), Seven Chances (1925), The Cameraman (1928), and The General (1926). The General, set during the American Civil War, combined physical comedy with Keaton's love of trains, including an epic locomotive chase. Employing picturesque locations, the film's storyline reenacted an actual wartime incident. Though it would come to be regarded as Keaton's greatest achievement, the film received mixed reviews at the time. It was too dramatic for some filmgoers expecting a lightweight comedy, and reviewers questioned Keaton's judgment in making a comedic film about the Civil War, even while noting it had a "few laughs." it was an expensive dud, His distributor, United Artists, insisted on a production manager who monitored expenses and interfered with certain story elements. Keaton endured this treatment for two more feature films, and then exchanged his independent setup for employment at Hollywood's biggest studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Keaton's loss of independence as a filmmaker coincided with the coming of sound films (although he was interested in making the transition) and mounting personal problems, and his career in the early sound era was hurt as a result.

I guess that's it for Buster's success.

Keaton died of lung cancer on February 1, 1966, aged 70, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. Despite being diagnosed with cancer in January 1966, he was never told he was terminally ill. Keaton thought that he was recovering from a severe case of bronchitis. Confined to a hospital during his final days, Keaton was restless and paced the room endlessly, desiring to return home. In a British television documentary about his career, his widow Eleanor told producers from Thames Television that Keaton was up out of bed and moving around, and even played cards with friends who came to visit the day before he died. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California.

Keaton was presented with a 1959 Academy Honorary Award at the 32nd Academy Awards, held in April 1960. Keaton has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: 6619 Hollywood Boulevard (for motion pictures); and 6225 Hollywood Boulevard (for television).

Three Ages (1923)

Our Hospitality (1923)

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

The Navigator (1924)

Seven Chances (1925)

The Cameraman (1928)

Go West (1925)

Battling Butler (1926)

The General (1926)

College (1927)

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)

Spite Marriage (1929)

-¤-