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citizenscreen · 5 years ago

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It’s been the practice here to honor notable film-related anniversaries at the onset of every year – Looking back to move forward, if you will. This year there is particular excitement across social media because 2020 brings with it echoes of a century ago, the decade called The Roaring Twenties when youth threw caution to the wind and enjoyed life to its fullest. It was an era of economic prosperity and interesting (to say the least) social and artistic changes, an era of happenings and creativity. Some of that is reflected in films depicting the Roaring Twenties, which – luckily for us – happens to be this month’s theme on TCM.

In all pictures about the Roaring Twenties you’re likely to see the Flapper, perhaps the most familiar symbol of the era. The Flapper helped the decade retain a certain “feel,” one of partying and promiscuity with distinct style and energy. In movie terms you might look to Colleen Moore and Clara Bow to get a sense of what the Flapper was like.

Colleen Moore

Clara Bow

While the flapper enjoyed life throughout the decade, she gained considerable freedoms in 1920. On August 18 of that year the 19th Amendment was passed, giving women the right to vote. Due to the great economy at the time, millions of women worked in white-collar jobs and could afford to contribute in ways they previously could not. The increased availability of birth-control devices allowed for more personal choice and advances in technology helped the effort as well. Many homes in America, especially in the industrialized cities, were now powered by electricity, and effort-saving devices such as refrigerators, washing machines, irons, and vacuum cleaners, most of which were used by women, made life much easier as well.

Other inventions that came to be in 1920 include the hair dryer, invented by a women who inserted a hose in the exhaust of a vacuum cleaner. Brilliant! The traffic light was also born that year thanks to police officer William Potts who used red, amber, and green lights and $37 worth of wire to make his traffic light in Detroit, Michigan. The Band-Aid was invented by a man called Earle Dickson for his wife Josephine who cut herself often. The final invention worth noting was the automobile with the combustion, probably the most popular invention in the 1920s, which facilitated the Flapper lifestyle and led to many new jobs. The popular, reliable, and inexpensive Ford Model T made it all possible – and made it in the movies.

Harold Lloyd in GET OUT AND GET UNDER 1920

Stan Laurel in a Ford Model T 1920, which appeared in several Laurel and Hardy movies

While previously mentioned freedoms were expanded, others were curtailed in 1920. The most famous being the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1919, but put into effect in 2020. The Federal Volstead Act, formally the National Prohibition Act, established to carry out the intent of the 18th Amendment, banned the manufacture and sale of “intoxicating liquors,” and at 12 A.M. on January 16, 1920, the Act closed every tavern, bar and saloon in the United States. Tragic as that may seem to some, there was plenty of booze to go around thanks to unseemly types who took control of underground “wet” businesses.

Hollywood’s fascination with Prohibition and the times during which it took place have resulted in fantastic film offerings through the decades. Sam Mendes’ Road to Perdition (2002) is one example of a great modern film dealing with the subject. But I am here for the classics and suggest you revisit the following to get a sense of how colorful the world was during the Prohibition era:

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Another right was curtailed on June 13, 1920 when the US Post Office stated that children could not be sent by parcel post. Various instances of this occurrence made the law a necessity.

More interesting facts about 1920:

The average life span in the United States that year was about fifty-four years.

The top ten toys of the 1920s were:

Teddy bears

Erector sets

Lionel trains

Lincoln Logs

Raggedy Ann

Radio Flyer Wagon

Tinker Toys

Crayons

Tin toys

Tiddlywinks

On January 29, 1920 Walt Disney started work as an artist with KC Slide Co. for $40 a week.

On May 1, 1920 legendary slugger Babe Ruth hit his 50th career home run, his first for the NY Yankees in a 6-0 win over the Boston Red Sox. How sweet it was.

On May 16 Joan of Arc (Jeanne D’arc c. 1412 – May 30, 1431) was canonized a saint. Her life has inspired numerous films starting as early as 1900 with Georges Méliès’ Joan of Arc. I must admit I’ve only seen two films on this topic, but can recommend both: Carl Theodor Dreyer’s deeply affecting The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Victor Fleming’s visually appealing Joan of Arc (1948).

On June 2 the Pulitzer prize for Drama was awarded to Eugene O’Neill for Beyond the Horizon.

On July 29 rebel leader Pancho Villa surrendered to Mexican authorities. As it turns out Villa who had an interesting connection to movies as this Smithsonian Magazine article explains.

On November 2, 1920 the first commercially licensed radio broadcast was heard, from KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The first broadcast was live results of the presidential election, a transmission of breaking news that was new and unprecedented. The impact of the medium of radio and the importance of this 1920 event cannot be overstated.

1920 in Hollywood

By the early 1920s, the film industry had made its (more or less) permanent move to Hollywood from the East Coast. The face of American cinema was transformed. Hollywood was now the world’s film capital producing virtually all films shown in the United States and 80 percent of the revenue from films shown abroad. Many American towns had a movie theater with over 20,000 movie houses operating in the U.S. by that year. Most Americans went to see the movies at least once a week. The movie industry became a big business. And Hollywood’s position only got stronger as many of Europe’s most talented movie players arrived.

By the end of the decade, the movies claimed to be the nation’s fifth largest industry, attracting 83 cents out of every dollar Americans spent on amusement. It’s only natural then that through this journey Hollywood also became the ideal of many things in the audience’s eyes. In particular the movies excelled at extravagance, fun, and glamour – and they were the primary distraction through tough times. Here’s more…

In 1920, Metro Pictures Corporation (with its already-acquired Goldwyn Pictures Corporation) was purchased by early theater exhibitor Marcus Loew of Loew’s Inc. In another acquisition, Loew merged his Metro-Goldwyn production company with Louis B. Mayer Pictures.

In 1920 C.B.C. Film Sales Corporation was founded in 1920 by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn, and Joseph Brandt. C.B.C. was renamed Columbia in 1924.

On March 28, 1920 the wedding of the century took place when Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford joined in matrimony. Fairbanks bought a lodge for his new bride and it was named Pickfair, a place that soon became the social center of Hollywood. In June 1920 the couple joined fellow newlyweds Frances Marion and Fred Thomson on a European honeymoon.

On April 3, 1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald wed novelist Zelda Sayre at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

Director John Ford wed Mary Smith in 1920.

Charlie Chaplin discovered Jackie Coogan and chose him to play The Kid released in 1921.

Alice Guy, the world’s first female filmmaker and a key figure in the development of narrative film, directed her final film, the feature-length Tarnished Reputations (1920).

Born in 1920

I am astounded by the talent born in 1920. Expect major centennial celebrations for these important people who have given us so much joy through film and television.

Vincent Gardenia

Constance Moore

DeForest Kelley

Federico Fellini

Delbert Mann

James Doohan

Toshiro Mifune

Jack Webb

Denver Pyle

Peggy Lee

Yul Brynner

Maureen O’Hara

Shelley Winters

Ray Bradbury

Jack Warden

Mickey Rooney

William Conrad

Walter Matthau

Laraine Day

Montgomery Clift

Merlina Mercouri

Hy Averback

Nanette Fabray

Gene Tierney

Ricardo Montalban

Noel Neill

Virginia Mayo

Frances Gifford

Jack Lord

Tony Randall

Ray Harryhausen

Deaths in 1920

1920 is relatively early in the life of the movies so it’s not surprising only one stood out as notable…and particularly sad. On or about September 10 of that year actor Olive Thomas ingested bi-chloride of mercury from a French-labeled bottle in a darkened bathroom, believing it to be another medication. Found unconscious, she died five days later. The death made worldwide headlines. Olive was only 25 when she died.

With Olive’s death came a flood of stories linking her to alcohol and drug use and to sexual promiscuity. The evils of “movie people” were spotlighted along with her death by moralists everywhere. Regardless of the circumstances, which I believe have never come to light, this was the tragic death of a 25-year-old woman. Olive was survived by her husband Jack Pickford who was with her in Paris when the tragedy occurred. You can read more about the life and death of Olive Thomas at Silents are Golden.

Olive Thomas c. 1919

Among the notables who made their film debuts in 1920…

Mary Astor made her film debut by way of an uncredited part in Buster Keaton’s The Scarecrow

Madge Bellamy made her debut in Edward José’s The Riddle: Woman.

Charles Boyer in Marcel L’Herbier’s L’homme de Large

Greta Garbo in Ragnar Ring’s How Not to Dress, which according to the New York Times obituary is a short sponsored by the department story where Greta worked as a sales clerk.

Alfred Hitchcock – Hitchcock submitted a portfolio of title cards for The Sorrows of Satan and The Great Day and is hired by Famous Players-Lasky British Producers Limited. (Hitchcock.zone)

Barbara La Marr , the girl who was too beautiful caught everyone’s attention when she co-starred with Douglas Fairbanks in The Nut in 1921, but she made her debut the year prior in Bertram Bracken’s Harriet and the Piper.

Victor McLaglen in A. E. Coleby’s The Call of the Road (1920) he gets a starring role right off the bat as a gambler-turned-boxer.

Nita Naldi – the story goes that her dancing was spotted by John Barrymore, who obtained her debut role for her in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920).

Claude Rains – we see him for a brief moment at the end of the film, but it’s a brilliant turn he delivers in his formal film debut as James Whale’s The Invisible Man in 1933, but as is news to me at this writing, Rains appeared in Fred Goodwins’ Build Thy House in 1920.

Notable Film Releases

Germany’s silent landmark classic, director Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was released in the US in 1920.

Douglas Fairbanks’ first swashbuckler, Fred Niblo’s The Mark of Zorro (1920).

Buster Keaton made his first solo film appearance in the comedy short One Week (1920), after co-starring with Roscoe Arbuckle for the three previous years.

Legendary Broadway stage star John Barrymore appeared in the adapted Robert Louis Stevenson tale-horror film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) directed by John. S. Robertson.

Ernst Lubitsch’s Passion was released in the U.S. bringing attention to Polish actress Pola Negri.

Way Down East, a romantic drama directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish was a top grossing movie of the year.

Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton released several shorts each that are worth watching so check out their filmographies and get to it. Roscoe Arbuckle had a slow year given his star status in 1920, but that would all fall apart in 1921 following the Virginia Rappe scandal.

Harry Millarde’s Over the Hill to the Poorhouse or just Over the Hill starring Mary Carr was one of the top grossing films of the decade.

Paul Powell’s Pollyanna starring Mary Pickford was popular despite both screenwriter Frances Marion and Mary Pickford not liking it.

Shipwrecked Among Cannibals, a travelogue/documentary directed by William F. Adler, was the first Universal film to gross $1,000,000.

Cecil B. DeMille’s Something to Think About starring Elliott Dexter, Gloria Swanson and Monte Blue was popular with audiences.

Top Money-making actors

According to Quigley Polls from results of 1919 film releases.

Wallace Reid

Marguerite Clark

Charles Ray

Douglas Fairbanks

Mary Miles Minter

Mary Pickford

Clara Kimball Young

William S. Hart

Norma Talmadge

Theda Bara

Theda Bara in THE LIGHT 1919

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I hope you enjoyed these hundred-year-old highlights. I look forward to what I hope will be a stellar, enjoyable year of blogging and wish you and yours the very best. Now, in 1920s lingo, “Go chase yourself!”

HAPPY NEW YEAR…1920, A Centennial Celebration It's been the practice here to honor notable film-related anniversaries at the onset of every year - Looking back to move forward, if you will.

#1920 Centennial #1920 in Hollywood #1920 in Movies #Happy New Year

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baronessblixen · 5 years ago

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Can we talk about how beautiful marlon brando was. I remember when I was younger I wanted to see a streetcar named desire so bad because of him (and also because my middle name is Blanche lol) even though his character is awful and violent the whole time

His character IS awful (and violent), yes, but Marlon Brando was beautiful. I think he said something to the effect that he hated how violent Stanley is?

Sometimes I can't believe that this guy is the same guy as Don Corleone in The Godfather 😁

And since we're speaking of beautiful men from Old Hollywood, have some Montgomery Clift, too 😁

The two knew each other, too. Not sure you'd exactly call them friends, but they were something like it.

#lovely anons #i had a very short lived marlon brando phase #him singing in guys and dolls? did things to me #and you gotta love him in the godfather #where young al pacino is also really yummy you know

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astrognossienne · 7 years ago

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tragic star: montgomery clift - an analysis

“I don’t want to be labeled as either a pansy or a heterosexual. Labeling is so self-limiting. We are what we do - not what we say we are.” - Montgomery Clift

The question is: who is Montgomery Clift? He was a movie star of the late ‘40s and early ‘50s who blazed brightly in the early part of his career before an inevitable deterioration, considered by those in the know to be one of the greatest actors of all time. Much has been made of the new male American star of the 1950s: a tormented, sensitive, masculine type who wore dirty T-shirts while he raged and cried. It was quite a shift from what came before and has rightly been called explosive; the effects of that new type of star are still being felt now, images echoing over time. And Clift was the very first of his kind. He was also the victim of a traumatic car accident that many claim crushed his spirit as much as his body, leaving him with an altered appearance and sending him into what would later be deemed “the longest suicide in Hollywood history.” It’s a neat tagline, summing up what Clift’s legacy has become: a tragic footnote in the landscape of American cinema, and often little more than that. Clift’s life was tragic. There is no denying that. He was an alcoholic and an addict, he suffered from a myriad of health issues throughout his life, and he was bisexual at a time and place when it would have been impossible to be open about it. He struggled greatly with his personal identity and it’s certainly easy to feed that tragedy into the roles he played and allow his personal life to inform what we see on screen. It coalesces to form a single narrative – a neat tagline. But there is always more to the story than that.

Montgomery Clift, according to astrotheme, was a Libra sun and Sagittarius moon. He was the product of an upper-middle class family from Omaha who lost all their money in the Depression. Reportedly, his banker father was bigoted and often abusive; much later, it’s claimed that in scenes requiring rage or anger, Monty would dredge up his deep-seated resentment towards his Dad. His mother, by most accounts, was a tireless social climber and snob. Unlike his two siblings, Monty always struggled in school, but found his calling in the theater at an early age. No doubt this colorful world of make-believe also served as a refuge and escape from his home life. He made his Broadway debut at age 15, and by the time he moved to Hollywood ten years later, he was an acting veteran. During the first half of the 1950s Clift was considered one of Hollywood’s finest actors, but his life went into a tailspin after he was seriously injured in a car accident in 1956. He made eighteen movies during his career and was nominated for an Academy Award four times.

Long before his accident, Clift abused pills and booze. Additionally, he was a closeted homosexual in the habit of picking up strangers and male hustlers, often finding himself in trouble that had to be cleaned up by his agent or movie studio. He was moody, insecure and an outsider to Hollywood’s A-list. However, he counted Elizabeth Taylor as a close friend (they appeared together in A Place in the Sun; Suddenly Last Summer; and Raintree Country). Monty was awed by Liz’s ethereal beauty, openly admitted that she was ‘only woman who turned him on,’ and told her on more than one occasion that she was the only woman he would ever love. He seriously considered marrying Taylor, and he alluded to it often enough, but eventually decided against it. Indeed, his most meaningful, spiritual relationships were with women and his list of lovers is long and sundry (Liz Taylor, Libby Holman, Mira Rostova, Nancy Walker, Myrna Loy, etc.,) but he was attracted to men and was absolutely more fulfilled by them sexually. In the hidden hours of Monty’s life he cruised Third Avenue, picked up guys at the underground gay bars and had a string of highly volatile affairs. By the mid-’60s, Clift was un-insurable, un-bankable, abandoned by many of his friends, and no longer able to perform, he spiraled into a depression from which he never fully pulled out of and died of a massive heart attack of at the early age of 45.

Next week, I’ll talk about a pretty starlet whose end was as ironic as it was tragic: Cancer Natalie Wood.

Stats

birthdate: October 17, 1920

major planets:

Sun: Libra

Moon: Sagittarius

Rising: Virgo

Mercury: Scorpio

Venus: Scorpio

Mars: Sagittarius

Midheaven: Taurus

Jupiter: Virgo

Saturn: Virgo

Uranus: Pisces

Neptune: Leo

Pluto: Cancer

Overall personality snapshot: Was he purposefully ambitious or easy-going? Was he happiest socializing with friends or when chasing the next project and a new horizon? Did he run everywhere or stroll at his leisure? Did he listen, all-ears to others or did he tend to hold forth about his latest obsession to the nearest audience he could find? If he was doing what he wanted to do and what he believed in, life for him was a constant love affair, as he delighted in doing his own thing, especially if it involved helping others. He was the soul of diplomacy, capable of seeing all sides of any question and genuinely wanting to be truthful and fair, but this didn’t prevent him from being fabulously enthusiastic about his own convictions and viewpoints. His obvious integrity gave emphasis to his compelling charm and may have helped to hide from him his very real, if almost invisible, ambition and determination to make his mark. The person who said ‘If you want something done, ask a busy person’ probably had him in mind. With his immense enthusiasm, energy, charm and humour, he managed to juggle several things at once. He not only showed interest in, but also actually facilitate, other people’s pet projects. An excellent organizer and communicator, he enjoyed cooperative ventures. He also had the qualities of a natural diplomat, with an added touch of flair, elegance and extravagance.

Naturally considerate and concerned for the welfare of others, he could harness his high moral sense and forthright approach to further their needs and do what he believed to be the right thing. Although he wasn’t always terribly practical, he could usually get down to the essentials and cut through protocol. He was helpful and obliging, but could also see how to get his own way in most things without necessarily bending the rules, and certainly without offending anyone – the only time this might have happened was when his sense of moral correctness got carried away and he became a bit holier-than-thou and unable to adapt to imperfect circumstances. His lively, original mind was constantly tuned in to the Zeitgeist, so he knew spontaneously where things were going and what needed to be done. This gave him an immense flair as a populist and as a formulator and mouthpiece for grand visions that took society by storm, or for establishing businesses that spoke to the needs of the masses. He wanted others to hear what he had to say; he loved spreading the message and would’ve made an inspiring teacher, lecturer and educationalist. He could have also excelled in advertising where his charm, wit and ability to see patterns and recognize trends could have taken him far. Whether drawn to science or art, he loved to look ahead and explore new paths. He may have had a deep appreciation for philosophy, art and literature and, in addition to acting, may have been especially drawn to music, though he enjoyed expressing himself and his ideas through most media, given half a chance.

His body was neat and wiry, and he used neat and economical movements. His well-groomed appearance was mirrored in his cool and classic way of dressing, good posture, fine bone structure and animated expression. Physically, he possessed good stamina. He tended to look younger than he really was, all the way through into his later years. He followed his instincts and beliefs with great dedication, but few people really knew what he was up to until after his demise. This is because he liked to keep his motivations a secret. More than likely was too brash, foul-speaking, critical and sharp-tongued at times. It was very important for him to know that he had the security of a guaranteed paycheck coming in regularly. He had an artistic side to him that influenced her choice of career, either in the music arena or arts. In either case, he tended to express his artistic side in a conventional fashion, rather than in a more radical way. Once he had decided upon his career, he was able to pursue it with great determination. He was honest, idealistic and conscientious. He had good technical and scientific ability due to his, at times almost fanatical, attention to detail. He was also fastidious when it came to matters of health, diet and appearance. He was well-informed about many things, but tried not to get bogged down in endless superficial details and perfectionism. He was not afraid of work and was very resourceful and capable. He also worked well in a team. Emotionally, he was quite serious, and his close relationships may lack some warmth and humour. This can be partly attributed to the fact that he felt a strongly developed sense of responsibility and duty in everything he did. He found himself drawn to people who were responsible and self-sufficient, although he liked to believe that they depended on him for stability and security. He held high standards and had a tendency to be critical, which meant that he could act act quite severely towards subordinates. He was a very practical person, excellent with method and precision, and unafraid of hard work. His standards may have been so high that nothing ever seemed good enough, leaving him dissatisfied with both himself and life in general. On the other hand, his conscientious attention to being the best brought him considerable recognition for his achievements in his career.

He belonged to a generation gifted with original and unusual artistic talents, highly imaginative, secretive and visionary. As a member of this generation, he felt uncomfortable facing reality, finding the world a difficult place to survive in. The unknown and the taboo appealed to him, because he wanted to have the freedom to explore and think for himself. As a member of this generation, he felt the world’s suffering very deeply and felt a great need to help the less fortunate. He was part of a very artistically talented and creative generation that wanted to escape from the demands of the world around them into a world of excitement and glamour. Members of this generation loved the theater and the cinema, in fact, any sort of creative self-expression. They also believed in the rights of any individual to express themselves. This generation was both idealistic and romantic, selfish and individualistic.Montgomery Clift embodied all of these Leo Neptunian ideals. Also, as a member of the Leo Neptune generation, he experienced and fully embraced changes in sexual mores and attitudes, changing the way people approach the whole issue of romantic relationships. Changes were also experienced in the relationships between parents and children, with the ties becoming looser. Was part of a generation known for its devastating social upheavals concerning home and family. The whole general pattern of family life experiences enormous changes and upheavals; as a Cancer Plutonian, this aspect is highlighted with Clift having a dysfunctional family; his father was a violent, abusive, ultra-conservative bigot and did not get along with his son. His mother was an overbearing social climbing snob.

Love/sex life: He was the least optimistic Mars in Sagittarius lover. He expected no cleansing grace from love. He expected trouble and guilt and all the sticky emotional complexities that were the inevitable outcome of human entanglements. Yet, oddly enough, this touch of wisdom (or, in some cases, cynicism) made him no less eager for adventure and he tackled love at any opportunity, no matter how many times it kicked him in the face. Unlike most Mars in Sagittarius lovers, for him sex was more than a passionate flash in the pan. It was a real physical and emotional need that reached deep down into his psyche. There was a dark edge to his sexuality and a potential for obsessive attachments. All this emotional depth and mystery made him one of the most alluring lovers of this type. It also made him the most likely candidate for long-term commitment, once he understood that his natural taste for novelty and adventure were not going to satisfy his emotional needs. Clift became a movie star playing sensitive, emotionally vulnerable characters. He also became a male sex symbol in the 1940s and 50s and dated some of he most beautiful women on Hollywood but, in reality, Clift was closeted and deeply conflicted homosexual. His most important relationships were with a few close friends to whom he was extremely loyal. After an automobile accident shattered his face, Clift and began a long, slow decline.

minor asteroids and points:

North Node: Scorpio

Lilith: Capricorn

Vertex: Aquarius

Fortune: Cancer

East Point: Leo

His North Node in Scorpio dictated that he needed to be careful not to let the more emotional side of his personality overwhelm him. Instead, he should have set out to consciously develop his more practical abilities. His Lilith in Capricorn ensured that he was dangerously attracted to men who had a scrappy plucky attitude hot-wired into their psyches. He liked partners who needed to be in control and to be masters of their own destiny, because their lives were in the control of not-so-well-meaning others as children. His Vertex in Aquarius, 5th house dictated that he yearned for completion of himself through the highest ideal of friendship. Hidden in the inner recesses of his soul were desires for a union that would impact the world in an almost utopian sense. His dreams for ideal relationship were entirely alien when compared to conventional soap opera images. There was a yearning for each act of intimacy to reflect a conviction of how all relationships should be in order for the world to be a better place. He had a childlike orientation, in all of its manifestations, toward relationships on an internal level. He had an implicit trust, or perhaps naivete, that was instilled in his childhood which persisted far into maturity.

The concomitant explosions and occasional tantrums when these constructs were violated also accompany this position. He had a need for fun, creativity, and excitement in a committed relationship, no matter how many years it has endured. He often had deep fears, typical of children, of abandonment, as well as a need for universal acceptance, no matter how he acted, which he needed his partner to respect and nurture, rather than rebuke, especially in adulthood. His Part of Fortune in Cancer and Part of Spirit in Capricorn dictated that his destiny brought money into his life. His wealth may have come through his domestic partner or (in actuality) his mother. Happiness and good fortune lay within his home and family, which would have provided emotional and financial security. His soul’s purpose was to create practical and long-lasting achievements. He felt spiritual connections and see the spark of the divine when he observed his progress through life and saw it take a form and structure that will outlive him. East Point in Leo dictated dictated that he was more likely to initially identify with the need for attention, response, admiration from the world. He was more likely to be personally acting out and expressing his need to be a star. He was the natural actor with tremendous charisma, magnetism and persuasive ability.

elemental dominance:

water

earth

He had high sensitivity and elevation through feelings. His heart and his emotions were his driving forces, and he couldn’t do anything on earth if he didn’t feel a strong effective charge. He needed to love in order to understand, and to feel in order to take action, which caused a certain vulnerability which he should (and often did) fight against. He could be a practical, reliable man and could provide structure and protection. He was oriented toward practical experience and thought in terms doing rather than thinking, feeling, or imagining. Could be materialistic, unimaginative, and resistant to change. But at his best, he provided the practical resources, analysis, and leadership to make dreams come true.

modality dominance:

mutable

He wasn’t particularly interested in spearheading new ventures or dealing with the day-to-day challenges of organization and management. He excelled at performing tasks and producing outcomes. He was flexible and liked to finish things. Was also likely undependable, lacking in initiative, and disorganized. Had an itchy restlessness and an unwillingness to buckle down to the task at hand. Probably had a chronic inability to commit—to a job, a relationship, or even to a set of values.

house dominants:

3rd

4th

1st

Short journeys, traveling within his own country were themes throughout his life; his immediate environment, and relationships with his siblings, neighbours and friends were of importance. The way his mental processes operated, as well as the manner and style in which he communicated was emphasized in his life. As such, much was revealed about his schooling and childhood and adolescence. The domestic arena and the home were also emphasized. By extension, the influence of the family he was born into, and the parents that raised him, in particular his father, as well as his personal and private life was of paramount importance to him. His personality, disposition and temperament was highlighted in his life. The manner in which he expressed himself and the way he approached other people is also highlighted. The way he approached new situations and circumstances contributed to show how he set about his life’s goals. The general state of his health is also shown, as well as his early childhood experiences defining the rest of his life.

planet dominants:

Uranus

Mercury

Jupiter

He was unique and protected his individuality. He had disruptions appear in his life that brought unpleasant and unexpected surprises and he immersed himself in areas of his life in which these disruptions occurred. Change galvanized him. He was inventive, creative, and original. He was intelligent, mentally quick, and had excellent verbal acuity. He dealt in terms of logic and reasoning. It was likely that he was left-brained. He was restless, craved movement, newness, and the bright hope of undiscovered terrains. He had luck, and believed in expansion, integration, and growth. He could also be excessive and lazy. He reached out beyond himself and expanded his consciousness. He loved travel, was fairly religious, and liked to integrate himself into the larger social order—church or religion, community, and corporation. He had intellectual and spiritual interests in the most.

sign dominants:

Virgo

Scorpio

Sagittarius

He was a discriminating, attractive, thorough, scientific, hygienic, humane, scientific, man and had the highest standards. His attention to detail was second to none and he had a deeply penetrative and investigative mind. He was an intense, passionate, and strong-willed person. He was not above imposing his will on others. This could manifest in Clift as cruelty, sadism, and enmity, which had the possibility to make him supremely disliked. He needed to explore his world through his emotions. He sought the truth, expressed it as he saw it—and didn’t care if anyone else agreed with him. He saw the large picture of any issue and couldn’t be bothered with the mundane details. He was always outspoken and likely couldn’t understand why other people weren’t as candid. After all, what was there to hide?

Read more about him under the cut.

Edward Montgomery Clift (nicknamed ‘Monty’ his entire life) was born on October 17, 1920 in Omaha, Nebraska, just after his twin sister Roberta and eighteen months after his brother Brooks Clift. He was the son of Ethel “Sunny” Anderson (Fogg) and William Brooks Clift. His father made a lot of money in banking but was quite poor during the depression. His mother was born out of wedlock and spent much of her life and the family fortune finding her illustrious southern lineage and raising her children as aristocrats. At age 13, Monty appeared on Broadway (“Fly Away Home”), and chose to remain in the New York theater for over ten years before finally succumbing to Hollywood. He gained excellent theatrical notices and soon piqued the interests of numerous lovelorn actresses; their advances met with awkward conflict. While working in New York in the early 1940s, he met wealthy former Broadway star Libby Holman. She developed an intense decade-plus obsession over the young actor, even financing an experimental play, “Mexican Mural” for him. It was ironic his relationship with the bisexual middle-aged Holman would be the principal (and likely the last) heterosexual relationship of his life and only cause him further anguish over his sexuality. She would wield considerable influence over the early part of his film career, advising him in decisions to decline lead roles in Sunset Boulevard (1950), (originally written specifically for him; the story perhaps hitting a little too close to home) and High Noon (1952). His long apprenticeship on stage made him a thoroughly accomplished actor, notable for the intensity with which he researched and approached his roles. By the early 1950’s he was exclusively homosexual, though he continued to hide his homosexuality and maintained a number of close friendships with theater women (heavily promoted by studio publicists). His film debut was Red River (1948) with John Wayne quickly followed by his early personal success The Search (1948) (Oscar nominations for this, A Place in the Sun (1951), From Here to Eternity (1953) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)). By 1950, he was troubled with allergies and colitis (the U.S. Army had rejected him for military service in World War II for chronic diarrhea) and, along with pill problems, he was alcoholic. He spent a great deal of time and money on psychiatry. In 1956, during filming of Raintree County (1957), he ran his Chevrolet into a tree after leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor’s; it was she who saved him from choking by pulling out two teeth lodged in his throat. His smashed face was rebuilt, he reconciled with his estranged father, but he continued bedeviled by dependency on drugs and his unrelenting guilt over his homosexuality. With his Hollywood career in an irreversible slide (despite giving an occasional riveting performance, such as in Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)), Monty returned to New York and tried to slowly develop a somewhat more sensible lifestyle in his brownstone row house on East 61st Street in Manhattan. He was set to play in Taylor’s Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), when he died on the early morning hours of July 23, 1966 at his home at age 45. His body was found by his live-in personal secretary/companion Lorenzo James who found Clift lying nude on top of his bed, dead from what the autopsy called “occlusive coronary artery disease.” (x)

#astrology #libra #long ass post #montgomery clift #tragic stars #star analyses #mine

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tuckinpodcast-blog · 7 years ago

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EPISODE 6: BEYOND THE BRANDO EFFECT

LISTEN: SOUNDCLOUD / iTUNES / GOOGLE PLAY

SOURCES: listed at end of transcript

NOTES: I deeply apologize for my Don Corleone and Cary Grant impressions.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, I'm Jack, and this is Tuck In, We're Rolling: Queer Hollywood Stories, and this week, we're going to be talking about Marlon Brando and the way he helped to reshape Hollywood masculinity. This is kind of a three part episode, I think. This week we're talking about Brando, and next week we're talking about James Dean, and the week after that is going to be about Monty Clift. All three of them really sort of started this reshaping process of the way men behaved in Hollywood, and we're going to look at each of them in turn.

So, I debated how personal I wanted to get in the telling of this story. You know, this isn't a podcast about me, it's a podcast about queer Hollywood history. But the stories I'm telling, from back last week to the next two weeks, are going to be stories that mean a lot to me. They're about things that have shaped me, personally. I could sit here and give you a very impersonal account of some of the things that Brando did and a list of movies that he acted in, but even the blandest of filmographies would still be painted because I'm the one telling it, and I think that six episodes in, you folks can tell that I'm not very good at staying objective or impersonal.

Without going on a five minute long spiel about myself, sufficed to say that Brando is another actor who I've been interested in since I was a teenager. He was maybe the first or second person that had me thinking, “Do I want to be this man, or just be with him?” Specifically, I'm talking about him in A Streetcar Named Desire. It was another one we had to watch in school, and it was probably one of the first times that I was like, “Oh, thank God, I thought this black and white movie was going to suck, but it totally doesn't.” This is kind of the first time that I was exposed to classic Hollywood film that I can actually remember – It's a Wonderful Life and Gone With The Wind not withstanding, because one is on television every damn year and is unavoidable, and I absolutely hate the other one. So basically, Cary Grant and Marlon Brando are the two actors that have been with me more or less throughout my formative years.

But, I've gone all the way off topic. Basically, the long and the short of that is: the next few episodes are very dear and personal to me, and I apologize in advance if that clouds or colors my judgment or storytelling.

So, a little background information about Brando, in case the only thing you know about him is how to do a Don Corleone voice and say, “I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.” He was born on April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska into a family that had a sort of weird, wandering vibe to it. They were all really into Eastern medicine, very big into Civil Rights and Native rights. His mother was an alcoholic for many years until she dried out and started some AA chapters, and he and his father never really got along. He had two older sisters, Jocelyn – who's a pretty famous actress in her own right – and Frances. They moved around a lot, from Omaha to Chicago and eventually to Santa Ana, California. He went to Shattuck Military Academy in Minnesota, but eventually dropped out – after the school board tried to expel him and then his fellow students rallied to let him stay, of course. Eventually, he followed his sisters to New York to try his hand at acting, and came under the tutelage of Stella Adler, where he learned the Method. He officially made it onto Broadway in 1944, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, Brando maybe wasn't the first person to employ the so-called “Method”, but I think he's certainly one of the most famous examples of it. For those of you not familiar with it, basically the point of the Method is to bring yourself into the role you're supposed to play. The very first tenet is “don't act – behave.” So when Brando would get a role, he would very notoriously and sometimes contentiously rewrite entire pages of dialogue. In On The Waterfront, he's almost entirely responsible for the “contender” speech that the movie is famous for. You know, he added his own touches to every role he got – he was very well-versed in makeup and costuming, and had a direct hand in Stanley's look in Streetcar, working closely with the costume director to make the look of a working-class good ol' boy perfect. I think that's part of why his appeal is so widespread, honestly. Every time Brando was on screen or on the stage, it feels like he's bringing a little more of himself to light, bringing a little more of his personality to the forefront, so people feel like they know him – even when they had no idea who he was behind the mask of his characters. I really think this is when the general public started to maybe feel more like they knew their favorite actors, to sort of blur the lines between the character and the person.

I think Marlon Brando holds such a place in the hearts and minds of film fans for a lot of reasons. You know, it doesn't matter what people talk about – all the bad jokes about him letting himself go in his later years, to the stories about how difficult he was on-set, to some of the shitty things my new arch-nemesis David Thomson said about people who employed method acting – the fact remains that Brando became a legend. My friends and I have a way of judging the character of celebrities that I think is a pretty good tool to use: Have they, at any point, stuck up for minorities – be it the queer community, people of color, immigrants, Native people, you know, any marginalized group – not when it was convenient for them, but when it was actually a detriment to their career? You know, good deeds done for attention or notoriety aren't truly good deeds. Dolly Parton comes to mind – she's come out in favor of the LGBTQ community over and over, despite her conservative fan base getting in a snit about it. I'm also thinking of Liz Taylor, who used to open up her home to people in LA who were going through treatment for AIDS and HIV and had nowhere else to go and kept it as quiet as possible. And, of course, I'm thinking about Marlon Brando sending Sacheen Little Feather up to collect his award as an act of protest on behalf of the treatment of Native Americans in the film industry and by the American government. It was a publicity stunt, yeah, sure. But the thing that you won't hear about is that Brando had been getting arrested at protests demanding Native people be given their rights and their land for years. He once got arrested at a fish-in along with a group of Native people, and when the police wouldn't release the others when they released him, he went right back to the protest and got arrested again. I mean, he was one of a very scant handful of white people that were allowed to speak at Black Panther events.

So, you know, it's really interesting to me that people tried to say that Brando only used declining his Oscar as a stunt to get notoriety, when really he was using it as a last resort to call attention to an issue he had passionate about his entire life. And Brando really was a man of passion. I don't think there's a single thing he did half-assed. When he died, he left behind a massive library filled with books that he had written in the margins of, and crates of screenplays that he had edited and added his own dialogue to. The very first play he was in was about the Zionist cause in Israel, and he toured to raise money for the new country and to bring attention to what had happened during the Holocaust. You know, this is a really early example of Brando using his work as a platform to raise consciousness about social issues. He did a movie called The Young Lions with post-accident Montgomery Clift where he played a Nazi officer, because he wanted people to see it and realize that the people of Germany during World War Two were just ordinary citizens. He wanted people to understand the social impact here – could they, with one charismatic leader and some political propaganda, also be persuaded to lose their humanity and become monstrous? I think that movie is incredibly important, especially in today's political climate.

Brando was a fascinating and complex person. I learned most of this information from a book called Brando's Smile by Susan Mizruchi. I liked the book quite a bit, but I took a few issues with it. She mentions that Brando was a victim of “sexism” because people saw his pretty face and assumed that he was an idiot, and I think she meant to say “objectification”. She also refers to Native Americans throughout the book as “American Indians”, which I disagree with for obvious reasons. Brando, throughout his life, referred to Native Americans incorrectly, in his writings and in his impassioned pleas for justice on their behalf. I think, you know, maybe Mizruchi was just referring to Native Americans the way that Brando did for the sake of clarity and continuity, but I mean, in that case, why not just make a note of it or make mention of it elsewhere? Why not just, you know, say, “Oh, you know, Marlon Brando referred to Native Americans like this but I want to point out that it's not the respectful way to refer to them today and I'm not going to refer to them as anything but Native Americans, don't be confused.” But, you know, whatever. That's just my opinion.

The Mizruchi book also mentions briefly that Brando met James Dean once. Only once. Way back in my very first episode, I mentioned reading this. Mizruchi says Brando met with Dean and they had a conversation, and then when Dean died, Brando said it was such a shame because the boy had real talent. I've since found a few photos of Brando and Dean hanging around with each other that basically proves that, at least in this instance, Mizruchi is mistaken. There's a lot of speculation about who Brando went to bed with, with fingers pointed at Dean, Cary Grant, Montgomery Clift and John Gielgud as rumored lovers. The thing is that Brando openly admitted in a 1976 interview for his biography The Only Contender that he had some kind of homosexual experiences. He goes so far as say that he wasn't ashamed of it, and he thought it was funny that people thought he and Jack Nicholson were having an affair.

You heard it here, folks: Brando himself confirmed that he was queer. I mean, he had a lot of wives and a lot of lovers and a lot of kids – and I say again that he's a very passionate man. He's someone that really looked at life and was like “I'm going to make the absolute most of my time on this rock or die trying.” I'm saying definitively that Brando was one of us: queer as a three dollar bill. The issue that comes up with him isn't whether or not he was queer, but who he hooked up with. A lot of this information seems like it's … well. I hate to call anything false, but I will say that it sounds incredibly bloated beyond the scope of what the truth might have been. Despite the rumor that Brando had a weekend fling with Cary Grant, Grant is quoted as saying: “I have no rapport with the new idols of the screen, and that includes Marlon Brando and his style of Method acting. It certainly includes Montgomery Clift and that God-awful James Dean. Some producer should cast them all in the same movie and let them duke it out. When they've finished each other off, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy and I will return and start making real movies again like we used to.” Ouch, Archie. Ouch. Now, Cary Grant getting nasty with someone he was supposed to have had a relationship with doesn't surprise me – he was pretty terrible to Orry Kelly after their split, but this goes way beyond what we would normally see out of him. Ironically, he calls out the three people this and the next two episodes are dedicated to, and talks about two more people that were also rumored to be gay or bisexual. C'est la vie.

I'll talk a little more about the relationship that Brando supposedly had with James Dean in our next episode, but now that I've confirmed that Brando was queer, I wanted to talk a little bit about how he was instrumental in the reshaping of Hollywood masculinity. So, if we think about the kinds of roles that Brando played when he was younger – and I'm thinking specifically of Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront and Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar – he's playing these men that are vulnerable and moody. They're very much overgrown children. James Dean and Monty Clift played similar roles in their films – they're these sort of sheepish, complicated characters with a lot of emotion and nowhere to put it. They were lovers, but they weren't lovers like Clark Gable or Errol Flynn. They were on the fringes of society but not like Jimmy Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. Brando, Dean and Clift were part of this new wave of actors that came from the Midwest, betting all their hopes and dreams on being in the movies – but acting like they were too cool to care about whether or not they were famous. They played small town boys with big dreams, and they notoriously toyed with the press. Their sexuality was speculated on and about, and their appeal really was without limits.

If you think it sounds like I could be describing actors like James Franco, Ryan Gosling, Tom Hardy – or even, if we go back to before he was was a bloated abuser ruining my childhood in Harry Potter movies, Johnny Depp – then you're right. You know, I'm not James Franco's biggest fan – I had a friend back in New Haven who worked with some of the Yale Repertory dancers, and a few of them got to know him when he was attending Yale back in the aughts, and none of the stories I heard really endeared him to me – but I think, to me, he's just a weird harmless stoner who's trying really hard to cash in on being a weird harmless stoner for as long as he can. And, I'm not going to say the man can't act. But you can pretty much draw a straight line from Franco's pretentious comments about his art to the way that Brando used to torment interviewers. Gosling got turned into the “Hey, Girl” meme, and Tom Hardy's been dodging questions about his sexual history for as long as I've known who Tom Hardy is. I mean, Brando was quoted once as saying that he didn't think of being an actor as art or anything – he looked at it like a job. If that quote sounds familiar, it's because Ryan Gosling said almost the exact same thing a few years ago.

I'll be straight with you: when I read the article that compared Brando, Dean, and Clift's vulnerable masculinity to the likes of people like James Franco and Christian Bale, I almost threw up in my mouth, and I think it's because I look at contemporary actors like that, and I think to myself, “Christ, you know those guys get high off the smell of their own farts.” They just seem pretentious to me. And maybe one day I'll meet James Franco and we'll smoke a blunt together and he'll prove me wrong, but I also don't think I could look him in the eye knowing that he has to watch his own movies before he hooks up with someone. I digress. You know, I think it upset me at the gut level because of that, but when I posted up the article to my Facebook, my glorious friend Ricci pointed out that it seems kind of stupid to him that Clift and Dean have been dead for at least fifty years and Marlon Brando wasn't playing the moody, sensitive young man for at least as long, but we're still expected to trip over our own feet because Tom Hardy might have touched a dick once and James Franco sneers at the work that's provided him with millions of dollars and the kind of artistic freedom to openly mock a communist dictator. My buddy Ricci went on to say that these parallels didn't address the toxic parts of this “new” masculinity, and that it only allowed for certain emotions in certain spaces, made or expressed by certain kinds of men. This “Brando” masculinity really doesn't account for men of color, trans men, queer men. It's great that Brando got the ball rolling, right? But it seems like it's totally anachronistic and a little absurd that contemporary actors are still trying to hang onto that Streetcar, Rebel Without A Cause, From Here to Eternity nihilism in a leather jacket. Yes, I think it's important that the ball got rolling, and fuck yes, I think Brando, Dean and Clift are important actors in the 20th century. But do I think it's necessarily healthy that there are still people basing their entire persona on them? No. It's performative masculinity at its peak, and performative masculinity – even the non-violent kind – is still toxic.

It's really important, I think, to look back at the characters in the films I mentioned – all played by method actors – and kind of inspect their character traits. Stanley Kowalski used sexual violence as a means to an end. Jim Stark ended up surrounded by dead bodies because of an innate desire to conform and also impress. Robert Prewitt ended up dead after an almost compulsive desire to prove himself turned fatal. And even the actors themselves are cautionary tales. Brando was the only one of the three who lived well into old age, as Dean died in that car wreck and Clift died from heart failure after a lifetime of alcohol and drug abuse. Maybe back in the day, these expressions of alternate masculinity were actually directly going against the grain and they were almost revolutionary. But today, the same kinds of shows of bravado and swagger are just tired. And maybe that's not James Franco's fault, you know? Maybe that's society and the media still expecting so little from famous men that they think masculinity stopped evolving when Marlon Brando moved away from playing moody young men and into more austere dramatic roles. But that's not really fair – nor is it realistic. Maybe if we expected more from contemporary actors than being flip about their sexuality and being self-deprecating about their careers, then we could start to move on from the “Brando effect” and onto something more constructive and beneficial for the world at large. James Franco, please sponsor my podcast.

Thank you for listening to Tuck In, We're Rolling: Queer Hollywood Stories. This episode was written, recorded, edited, and researched by me, Jack Segreto. Special thanks this week to Nessa for editing my script Ricci for adding invaluable commentary to the discourse. You can find a transcript of this episode and all our episodes, along with movie and book recommendations, fun facts and photos on our tumblr, tuckinpodcast.tumblr.com. You can also give us a like on Facebook at facebook.com/tuckinpodcast. We accept messages on both of those platforms, so please feel free to shoot us any suggestions for show topics and comments you might have. We put out new episodes every Wednesday, and you can listen to us on SoundCloud, iTunes and Google Play, so don't forget to rate and subscribe to us! We'll be back next week with an episode about James Dean and the power of legacy. See you next time!

SOURCES:

Brando’s Smile, Susan L. Mizruchi (2014)

The Brando Effect

Hollywood Stars’ Meanest Remarks

Marlon Brando’s Homosexual Celebrity Affairs Revealed (this fucing title you guys)

#( TRANSCRIPTS & SHOW NOTES. )#( EPISODE 6. )#queer history #hollywood history #queer history podcast #hollywood history podcast #podcast #new podcast #marlon brando #james dean

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micaramel · 5 years ago

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Artist: Monica Majoli

Venue: Galerie Buchholz, New York

Exhibition Title: blueboys

Date: November 8 – December 21, 2019

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release, and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York

Press Release:

People still die of AIDS—or of AIDS-related complications or illness, as the dispiriting boilerplate has it. Hooray for those who can afford the drugs that make the syndrome manageable, hooray for those who can afford to party without a care in the world, since there should be no worry when one is horny or “in love” or dancing, lustfully unthinking, but close to a million people died of AIDS, just last year.

In an exchange between Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian that would have been called Eyewitness, had Kevin’s death from cancer not interrupted it, at one point Dodie writes: “I’m thinking of how Dennis Cooper said AIDS ruined death.” Not immediately (they reconnoiter the fact of Kevin’s diagnosis), but soon enough, Kevin, after taking a few beats, glosses Dennis’ epigrammatic observation. “Dennis’ point is that once we were in love with death in the Punk Era. It seemed like the real thing, the point of living. Then came AIDS,” Kylie Minogue’s most dedicated fan explained, “and death was reduced to nothing. Just the end. It was stripped of meaning.”

Once we were in love with death… Do you hear Keats’ nightingale in Kevin’s explanation? “I have been half in love with easeful death, call’d him soft names…” Who hasn’t called certain darkling attractions by soft names? Sometimes you live to regret it, sometimes you don’t.

Monica Majoli took inspiration for her newest body of work from the sexy post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS hiatus still known as the ’70s, particularly centerfolds from Blueboy, which billed itself as “the national magazine about men.” In 1980, when I was 15—hold on. I find myself striking out for memory lane again, and I have to say that for the most part I just couldn’t care less about memory lane. (I guess people now call it autofiction.) Instead I’ll relay this little fact: In an interview for High Times, published in the early summer of 1977, Andy Warhol was asked what his favorite magazines were. He replied: “Blueboy, Pussy, Penthouse. Whatever I’m in.”

Or, whatever I’m into. Andy, like others, would have been into the range of Blueboy’s editorial content: interviews with author James Purdy or Perry King, the hunky lead of Andy Warhol’s Bad, co-written by Pat Hackett and directed by Andy’s longest live-in partner, Jed Johnson; into the first English translation of Verlaine’s erotic poetry; into “what really happened to” Montgomery Clift, a profile of Casablanca records, the “photoerotica” of Baron von Gloeden; into commentary on the political debacle initiated by Anita Bryant, via “Save Our Children,” to pass an ordinance to legalize discrimination based on sexual orientation or on the assassination of Harvey Milk; into keeping up with culture almost as much as they were keeping up with cock.

Blueboy’s founding publisher, Donald N. Embinder, a former ad exec at Benton & Bowles as well as an ad rep for After Dark, told the New York Times, in 1976, that “Playgirl and Viva made male nudity on newsstands viable”; it was the same year he took out a full-page ad in the trade magazine Advertising Age, headlined: “Now you can reach America’s most affluent minority…The Male Homosexual.” TMH was seen to be single and to have money to spare. The ads in Blueboy targeted an audience interested in self-care, bodily upkeep, and places in which clothes could be easily shed. The tagline for a K’WEST skin products ad made it clear: “Fashion Pointers for the Well Undressed Male—Clothes may make the man but only K’WEST makes the man touchable.” Contourex offered “a new exercise system designed to give you tighter, shaplier [sic] buns.” Cabana wear by International Male. Caftans by Ah Men.

Blueboy had a small part in the push to transvalue issues of class specificity into issues of taste—what’s classy, what’s not—rather than only into realpolitik. Some of the magazine’s models were trade, which was the vernacular before gay-for-pay, and before the entire mainstreaming of sexual preference—with its radical potential for undoing rote and rigid forms of relationality—became gay-for-pay or pay-for-gay—PayPal (read GayPal) in a sense, before the fact. In the quest to sell its dream, America has always privileged affluence, a dream of financial security, even clout, wooing a striving majority, whether they were part of a minority population or not, to vote with their wallets.

The fight to end the AIDS pandemic would rally grassroots coalitions and would stymie that push, if only for a moment; putting the action between the sheets into the streets. Fran Lebowitz has provided some of the most searching thinking on how we still live in the wake of that moment, the consequence of kinds of audience, many of whom would have read Blueboy alongside Interview:

When I was young, you know, later ’70s early ’80s, my first real audience was from Interview magazine, and at that time that audience was 99.9% homosexual, male homosexual. And that audience was very important to me. This is part of what formed my voice.

Everyone talks about the effect that AIDS had on the culture—I mean, people don’t talk about it anymore, but when people did talk about it—they talked about what artists were lost, but they never talked about this audience that was lost. When people talk about, like, Why was the New York City Ballet so great? Well, it was because of Balanchine and Jerry Robbins and people like that, but also that audience…was so… I can’t even think of the word. I mean, if Suzanne Farrell went like this [tiny gesture of fingers] instead of this [the reverse of that tiny gesture] that was it: she might as well just kill herself. There would be like a billion people who knew exactly every single thing. There was such a high level of connoisseurship…of everything that people like this were interested in. Of everything. That made the culture better. A very discerning audience, an audience with a high level of connoisseurship, is as important to the culture as artists. It is exactly as important. Now, we don’t have any kind of connoisseur audience. When that audience died, and that audience died in five minutes. Literally, people didn’t die faster in a war. And it allowed, of course, the second, third, fourth tier to rise to the front. Because, of course, the first people who died of AIDS were the people, oh, I don’t know how to put this, got laid a lot. Okay, now imagine who didn’t get AIDS? Okay? That’s who was then lauded as the great artists, okay? If the other people who hadn’t died, if they were alive, if they all came back to life, and I would say to them, Guess who’s a big star? Guess! Guess who has a show on Broadway? Guess who’s like a famous photographer? They would fall on the floor. Are you kidding me? Because everyone else died. Last man standing. […] Things in the culture that had nothing to do with the New York City Ballet, it just got dumbed down, dumbed down, dumbed down—all the way down. What we have had, in, like, the last 30 years, is too much democracy in the culture, not enough democracy in the society.

Inspired by mokuhanga, Japanese woodblock printing, Majoli’s large-scale Whiteline woodcut watercolor paintings are based on images from Blueboy, circa 1976-79, a period she considers “the halcyon years of gay liberation, when homosexuality was understood to be politically charged and under threat, presaging the trauma of the AIDS epidemic.” Halcyon provides a way to understand the aesthetic of the soft-core centerfolds of the magazine: the lighting is sun-kissed, the palette warm with rose-golds’ ember glow, the bodies toned and unmanscaped. Mother Nature smiles on these men making themselves available to other men, a possibility she always intended. (Long before homosexuality was legal, porn would show men in showers or out in nature, among flora and fauna, and it would be theoretically stingy not to see such scenarios as emphasizing the cleanliness and naturalness of such pleasures, when they were still seen to be “dirty” and “unnatural.”) The models were known by their first names (“Joe”, “Roger”); some appeared a single time, while others became featured players; they all had histories, lives, and they’re seen in repose that is also work. Their cocks, balls, and buns remain, as they were, magnificent and inviting. The hard-edged, roided body of the 1980s—a “built” body weaponized, Ramboized (apotropaically and/or phantasmatically) against viral invasion and wasting—is nowhere to be seen.

While considering all that is lost when the map of masculinity permits few ways to trace the radical potential of male vulnerability, tenderness, as a source of strength and communing, don’t fail to reckon with what Monica achieves with the gentle but grand shift in scale from the magazine centerfold: these works are history paintings. They chronicle not only soft power rather than toxic masculinity, but also sexual fantasy, intimacy in which the nameable earns no more importance than the nameless or unnameable. The pigments with which the paintings are made, water-soluble, suggest tears and/or sweat (synecdoches for other bodily fluids), no longer mistaken as dangerous, contaminant, but, whether joyfully or sadly, communicating without need of language. These radiant, touching pictures embody a vision of how once we were in love with life.

Bruce Hainley

Link: Monica Majoli at Galerie Buchholz

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2rsYluO

#micaramel

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garyh2628 · 6 years ago

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To my Pharma Hubs, Technology Hubs, Social Creative/Personal Hub, My Private Hubs, My Financial Hubs and my Health and Wellbeing/Scientific Hubs, Legal and Innovation Hubs, Hinterland Hub and to my Eastern Caribbean Hub, Linguistic/Psychology Hub, to my beloved additions and to my Institutions and Partners and Team, Pool of Potential Personal Assistants and Private Secretaries and Business Managers and also to my Fitness Hub which is an extension of my Health and Wellbeing Hub and not to forget my beloved Brooklyn Hub and my Wine/Adviser Hub and my Influential Legal Cashier.

This Network and the Global Structure are becoming an institution of all the regions we will be operating in because our Programs and Initiatives are useful in more ways than one; they bring us together, and thereby make us better acquainted, and better friends than we otherwise would be, we are Intellectuals. From the first appearance of man upon the earth, down to very recent times, the words "stranger" and "enemy" were quite or almost, synonymous. Long after civilized nations had defined robbery and murder as high crimes, and had affixed severe punishments to them, when practiced among and upon their own people respectively, it was deemed no offence, but even meritorious, to rob, and murder, and enslave strangers, whether as nations or as individuals. Even yet, this has not totally disappeared. The man of the highest moral cultivation, in spite of all which abstract principle can do, likes him whom he does know, much better than him whom he does not know. To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy, and from positive enmity, among strangers, as nations, or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization. To this end our further Responsibility to the Environment in no small degree. They make more pleasant, and stronger, and more durable, the bond of social and economic union among us. Constituted as man is, he has positive need of occasional recreation; and whatever can give him this, associated with virtue and advantage, and free from vice and disadvantage, is a positive good. Such recreation our Network and Global Structure on our responsibility to Education and Intellect afford. They are a present pleasure, to be followed by no pain, as a consequence; they are a present pleasure, making the future more pleasant.

And not only to bring together, and to impart all which has been accidentally discovered or invented upon ordinary motive; but, by exciting emulation, for premiums, and for the pride and honor of the success of Intellect, Education and the Environment -- of triumph, in some sort -- to stimulate that discovery and invention into extraordinary activity. We will win for patent and we will win for exclusivity and we will win for all our profit centres. We must win.

Everyone who comes here is a people person. It’s about a long-term relationship with us: Some of our Initiatives and Programs and Institutions and Partners are the largest test cases imported from all across the world to right here in the UK and in every Region in which we operate. I’m more than excited, from one CEO to another, I am brimming with excitement and cannot wait until we are all operating out of one Office. These test cases which sits with the walls of the Network are all owned by my Personal Wealth Fund and will be managed those classical Intellect that are part of the Global Structure Infrastructure. We will win, we must win. This Network and Community of my Team et al and CEOs and Partners and Institution is possibly the most in demand and south after esoterically inspired brand. There is so much scope. When my Investors and stakeholders were briefed on what I’m doing and the direction in which I’m taking this Network and Global Structure we immediately become a hit. A family joined together by bonds that will and can never be broken. Immediately they joined the list of my biggest Investor with regards to Intellectual Capacity for a lot of the Global Initiatives and also in making sure that the right staff are on the OLC in order to make sure that the delivery of the cases for perusal and also for the delivery of the tool-kits to myself and further the delivery of the Offices. We will win and win, I’m the only Global Legal Authority on Intellect. “It’s fascinating that through this inanimate object, a complete stranger opens up to you about something so personal and you feel like you have this bond.” “No More Tears”, will be based on a single tear shed by a life-long sinner Dante meets in the poem, a tear that at the last moment gets him into purgatory. Today the progress and delays that were plaguing are no longer. We will win for this family and we will for progress.

I think there are some who really couldn’t care less. They just want to wear the name Intellectuals or want to be CEOs or Business Manager or be part of the Structure because of prestige and doing it surreptitiously,” she says with a grin. But then there are some who’ve emailed and say they’ve just read a copy of my post because they want to know more. Then there were some who filed lawsuits and complained; Now we’re their biggest customer and they’re hiring more people just for us in order to make sure that progress is made in getting the particulars to myself and also for the delivery of the Offices and also to make sure that all those Corporations remain a going concern and also to make sure that my Property Expert Guy get the assistance he needed to deliver all the Global portfolio in a matter of weeks and not months. Also, to make sure we win the Election and deliver all our programs. Further that the policy documents get to me for perusal before negotiations begin or delivered on those big attachments.

When Gary was awarded all those legally binding agreements and also these large settlement agreements, they were some who took it upon themselves to either apply shocking delay tactics and as such they were delayed in getting to him and it further affected the work of the Network and the Global Structure. It is better explained in this analogy the reason: Wyler had had large sections of Copland’s music re-scored, particularly in the opening credits, making greater use of a melody that Copland had employed only passingly — an old French song called “Plaisir d’Amour” (sung in the film by Montgomery Clift to Olivia de Havilland). Copland hated the fact that this sweet tune had supplanted chunks of his own score. The episode effectively ended the composer’s association with Hollywood”. We will win for Intellect and we will win for the Environment and further it will flush out mediocrity. We will win for all of our stakeholders and we will win the Election. We will not share.

Since my Personal CEO came on Board we turned over and recovered a lot of the agreements were being laid idle and making sure that they are cross reference with the various Companies and further to identify if contact was made with me. I’m delighted to let the Team et al and the CEOs and Partners and Institutions know that we have your back, our foundation is earthquake proof and legally full proof, I would also like the other Institutions to know that those hard-passes are absolute and non-negotiable. We will win for work, we will win for jobs and we will win for their hard-working people that make up our Economic Community. When they were confronted with the facts It reminded them of the first canto of The Inferno, where Dante is confronted by a lion described as so terrifying that even the air around him is trembling with fear.” We also confirmed that my Personal Wealth Fund is funded by my own money and no outside Investment. That confrontation was a moment where my Heavy Weight Advisers appear and those who were confronted with fear previously are no full of courage.

I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.

We will win in the media, we will in the papers, we will win on the radio and we will on the phones we will win for Technology, we will win and win. This family will win and win and win. Truth to Tell, Tell it First and Tell it like it is. We must win. . We are a natural producer, and this is where your future lies, we do not do synthetics.

Head of Human Resources Finance and People and Global Head of Corporate Responsibility

Investments/Contracts/Superior/Technically Competent and Right-Hand Men

NGO - (Finance, planning, industry and foreign trade portfolios) Private

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