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a-little-revolution · 4 years

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A Brief History of Dwarfism

(TW/CW: cure, medical, pet culture and slavery mentioned, discriminative language)

LYZ LENZ Updated: June14, 2017 Origional: February 25, 2015

When researchers from the biopharmaceutical company BioMarin told representatives of the Little People of America about the results of a drug that could potentially cure one of the causes of dwarfism, they expected a better response than the silence they were treated to. This caught the BioMarin folks off guard. “I think they wanted us to be happy,” says Leah Smith, LPA's director of public relations. “But really, people like me are endangered and now, they want to make me extinct. How can I be happy?”

BioMarin isn’t the only company trying to eliminate dwarfism. For years doctors have been using limb lengthening and hormone treatments to counter and cure the over 400 underlying causes of dwarfism. And yet, despite these efforts to eliminate what many people see as a disability, society can’t stop staring. From The Lord of the Rings to Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones, people have long been mesmerized by depictions of LPs. As Smith explains, “It doesn’t matter how normal I am, it’s hard for people to look at me an see anything besides Leah the LP.”

Dr. Judith Hall, a clinical geneticist whose work focuses on short-limbed dwarfism, explains that our staring and our desire to cure are intimately connected. “In the same way that ancient societies viewed those people with differences as a pathway to the divine,” Hall says, “I see them as a pathway to access the knowledge of nature. There is so much to be learned about humans and our genetic make-up by studying the genetics of people with short stature and anyone with a ‘disability’ although I hate that term, don’t you?”

But understanding our curiosity and desire to cure requires an understanding of the history of dwarfism, which lies in the nebulous intersection of medicine and myth.

For much of early history, LPs were considered to be intimately connected to the divine. In fact, pre-literate societies often saw all people with disabilities as conduits to heaven. The ancient Egyptians associated dwarfs with Bes, the god of home, family, and childbirth; and Ptah, the god of the Earth’s essential elements. (Both gods—representing youth and the Earth—play a role in enduring myths and stereotypes, like the fairy tales that claim that dwarfs live underground, or the stereotype about the childish nature of people with short stature.) Because of their connection with the gods, dwarfs were often revered in Egypt, and were allowed to serve high roles in the government.

Whereas dwarfs in the Old Kingdom of Egypt (2575-2134 B.C.E.) were often jewelers, linen attendants, bird catchers, and pilots of boats—all positions of high-esteem, by the Middle Kingdom dwarfs were more likely to be personal attendants or nurses. These positions, while still respected, were comparatively lower status. Historians surmise that dwarfs were relegated to these roles because their short limbs made them perfect midwives and the association with the god Bes. Of course, even in this age of reverence, dwarfs lived lives of bondage.

In ancient Rome, the attitude toward dwarfs was less reverential. Owners would intentionally malnourish their slaves so they would sell for a higher price. In ancient Greece, dwarfs were associated in a menacing and lurid way with the rituals of the Dyonisian cult; art from that period shows them as bald men with out-sized penises lusting after averaged-sized women. This same pattern of reverence and bondage also appears in China and West Africa, where LPs were so often servants of the king. A 17th-century author wrote that the Yoruba people in West Africa believed dwarfs to be “uncanny in some rather undefined way, having form similar to certain potent spirits who carry out the will of the gods.” And out of a similar reverence for their stature, the courts of China employed dwarfs as entertainers and court jesters. Here there also may have been a level of fetishism; Emperor Hsuan-Tsung kept dwarf slaves in the harem he called the Resting Palace for Desirable Monsters.

By the time of the Italian Renaissance, LPs had become a court commodity all over Western Europe, Russia, and China. There are tragic tales of court dwarfs and their wild antics. Jan Bondeson writes in The Two-Headed Boy about Nicolas Ferry, the infamous court dwarf of King Sanislas Leszynski of Poland. Ferry was given to King Sanislas when he was about five years old. The King promised his father he would be given the best education and medical care. Ferry’s father didn’t even consult his wife, who had to journey to the court to say goodbye to her son. Ferry, who may have also had learning disabilities, was spoiled and terrorized the court with his antics—kicking the shins of servants and crawling up the skirts of ladies. He even threw a dog out of the window when he believed the Queen loved the dog more than him.

Another Italian, Isabella d’Este, marchioness of Mantua, viewed dwarfs as collectable items. She hoarded them in her vast palace along with art, classical writings, gold, and silver. She also tried to breed dwarfs and kept them in a series of specially designed rooms, with low ceilings and staircases to scale. This was more for their display than comfort. One of Isabella’s dwarfs was “Crazy Catherine,” an alcoholic who stole from her mistress and whose misdeeds were laughed off as entertainment. The history of courts throughout Europe and Russia tell similar tales of dwarfs employed as jesters, or little more than pets—laughed at, loved, and never fully allowed to be human.

As the age of monarchy ended, the era of medicine and medical curiosity arose to fill its place, often providing more opportunities for LPs. Dwarfs were put on display—by others or themselves—for money. In a time where very few occupations were open to LPs, putting yourself on display in a freak show was at least a way to make a living. While traveling around provided LPs with more independence, it also opened them up to the gaping and insensitive curiosity of the public and medical professionals.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, then, to say that LPs were subsequently taken advantage of by greedy brokers and agents. In his book Freak Show, Robert Bogdan explains the phenomena of human exhibits, singling out the insular nature of communities as a leading cause. Animals and humans that were outside of the norm were exciting curiosities; different races, ethnicities, and disabilities were all billed as novel entertainment. Bogdan quotes a handbill advertising a Carolina dwarf in 1738 who was “taken in a wood in Guinea; tis a female about four foot high, in every part like a human excepting her head which nearly resembles an ape.”

FOR MOST OF EARLY HISTORY, THE RESPONSE OF DOCTORS TO LPS WAS TO MEASURE EVERYTHING—NOSE, HAIR, GENITALS. THIS MEANINGLESS COLLECTION OF DATA IS OFTEN ACCOMPANIED BY CONDESCENDING NOTES ON THE APPEARANCE AND INTELLECT OF THE DWARF.

From these human exhibits came the growth of dime museums, midget villages, and Lilliputian touring communities, where many LPs rose to prominence. But while these exhibitions took center stage, several LPs made incredible, albeit quieter, contributions to history. There were people like Antoine Godeau, a poet and bishop best known for his works of criticism, or economist Ferdinando Galiani, one of the leading figures in the Enlightenment. Then there’s Alexander Pope, a classical poet known as the “most accomplished verse satirist in English.” Plus Benjamin Lay, an early abolitionist and good friend of Benjamin Franklin. And Novelist Paul Leicester Ford, artist Henry de Toulous Lautrec, electrical engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz. The list goes on.

Yet even in this time, as many LPs grew to prominence, medicine was able to do little more than collect data. Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor, kept an LP family of Romanian performers captive in Auschwitz, subjecting them to various tests and experiments that included pulling out teeth and hair specimens. Mengele is remembered as the angel of death—a cruel doctor who performed unscientific and often deadly experiments—yet his data collection on LPs isn’t much different than that of the medical community in centuries prior.

For most of early history, the response of doctors to LPs was to measure everything—nose, hair, genitals. This meaningless collection of data is often accompanied by condescending notes on the appearance and intellect of the dwarf. Even as late as 1983, Mercer’s Orthopaedic Surgery offered this observation about achondroplasia: “Because of their deformed bodies they have strong feelings of inferiority and are emotionally immature and are often vain, boastful, excitable, fond of drink and sometimes lascivious.”

The obsessive data collection reads like a stack of clues, wherein doctors hope to find an answer to the riddle of difference. With nothing else to do, like the Egyptian pharaohs and the courts of kings, doctors found themselves staring too.

In the absence of a cure, most early doctors focused on prevention. They believed that dwarfism was caused by the mother having seen another dwarf or animal. In fact, for most of medical history many disabilities and unexplained deformities were chalked up to maternal impressions. Consequently, pregnant women often sequestered themselves away from their communities, acting like they themselves had a disability.

This isn’t different from the modern approach to “curing” dwarfism. With early genetic testing, many in the LP community are worried about unborn dwarfs being allowed to be born.

In the aftermath of World War II, LPs found more and more opportunities to work outside of entertainment. This was due in part to Billy Barty, a film actor and television star who, in 1957, organized a meeting of LPs in Reno, Nevada. This meeting eventually led to the founding of the Little People of America, a powerful non-profit that advocates for the rights of LPs in America.

THE HISTORY OF DWARFS IS A HISTORY OF SUBVERSION, STEREOTYPES, EXPECTATION, AND SURVIVAL. IT’S THE HISTORY OF HOW PEOPLE TREAT OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE DIFFERENT.

Before Barty, with the exception of circuses and traveling groups, most LPs were isolated. There was no way to band together to advocate for civil rights. A little more than 30 years after that first meeting in Reno, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the United States, granting LPs more access and freedom than ever before.

The history of dwarfs is a history of subversion, stereotypes, expectation, and survival. It’s the history of how people treat other people who are different. And, while much has changed, very little is different. The tension between curiosity and cure is still prevalent. The popularity of shows like Little People, Big World and The Little Couple, while laudable for their portrayal of normal people with difference, show that we can’t stop looking at LPs. And companies like BioMarin and non-profits like Growing Stronger, which all seek to find a cure, show that we can’t stop trying to change them.

Yet, as a geneticist, Hall dismisses the notion that she is trying to change the LP community. She describes her work as merely offering a choice to individuals. “There are genetic tests for Downs Syndrome, but they haven’t eradicated people with Downs,” Hall says. “In the same way, the work I do and the work of other scientists isn’t to eradicate difference, but rather to offer options for dealing with it. It’s all about offering choices, really.”

But Smith, the LPA's director of public relations, pushes back. “The world is full of difference.” Smith says, “Sometimes I wish people would look elsewhere.”

BY LYZ LENZ

Origional Article Post: https://psmag.com/social-justice/a-brief-history-of-dwarfism-and-the-little-people-of-america

#dwarfism #dwarf history #disabled #disabled history #not-from-erebor #medical #article #dwarf education

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sauerland-2001 · 4 years

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Riz won Best Actor from the Nevada Film Critics Society! :-)

#hey I wasn't kidding when I saw that every US state has their own film award #and within those states cities that also give out their own award #riz ahmed #why? who knows #*said not saw

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kisafilms · 4 years

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The Nevada Film Critics Society Honors Promising Young Woman

Earlier today, The Nevada Film Critics Society announced their picks for the best of 2020–early 2021 and what’s interesting is that Nomadland didn’t win a thing. Instead, Promising Young Woman took the awards for Best Film, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. Meanwhile, in the supporting races, Daniel Kaluuya picked up another win […]The Nevada Film Critics Society Honors…

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#Promising Young Woman

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timeless-hollywood-classics · 4 years

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Julia Faye (born Julia Faye Maloney, September 24, 1892 – April 6, 1966) was an American actress of silent and sound films. She was known for her appearances in more than 30 Cecil B. DeMille productions. Her various roles ranged from maids and ingénues to vamps and queens.

She was "famed throughout Hollywood for her perfect legs" until her performance in Cecil B. DeMille's The Volga Boatman (1926) established her as "one of Hollywood's popular leading ladies."

Faye was born at her grandmother's home near Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Robert J. Maloney (born c. 1865), worked for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Her mother, Emma Louise Elliott (1872–1955), was from New Castle, Indiana.[9] Her parents had married in 1890 in Newton, Kansas. Faye's paternal grandfather, Thomas Maloney, was born in Ireland and had immigrated to the United States in the 1850s.

Faye's father died sometime before 1901, when her widowed mother married Cyrus Demetrios Covell (1862–1941) in Indiana. Faye took her stepfather's name and listed him as her father.

She had lived in St. Louis, Missouri, prior to coming to Hollywood in 1915, to visit friends. She visited one of the film studios and was introduced to actor and director Christy Cabanne. The two reminisced about St. Louis and discovered that they had lived next door to one another there. Cabanne persuaded Faye's reluctant mother to allow her to be in motion pictures.

Faye made her debut in silent films with bit roles in Martyrs of the Alamo and The Lamb, both directed by Christy Cabanne for Triangle Film Corporation in 1915. Her first credited and important role was as Dorothea opposite DeWolf Hopper's Don Quixote in the 1915 Fine Arts adaptation of the famous Miguel de Cervantes novel. Neil G. Caward, a reviewer for the film journal Motography, wrote, in his review of Don Quixote, that "both Fay Tincher as Dulcinea and Julia Faye as Dorothea add much enjoyment to the picture." Faye's growing popularity increased with her appearances in several Keystone comedies, including A Movie Star, His Auto Ruination, His Last Laugh, Bucking Society, The Surf Girl, and A Lover's Might, all released in 1916. She also worked for D. W. Griffith, who gave her a minor role in Intolerance (1916).

Faye's first role for Cecil B. DeMille was featured in The Woman God Forgot (1917). She continued working for DeMille in The Whispering Chorus, Old Wives for New, The Squaw Man and Till I Come Back to You (all 1918).

In 1919, Faye played the stenographer in Stepping Out. Cast with Enid Bennett, Niles Welch, and Gertrude Claire, Faye was complimented by a critic for playing her role with "class". In DeMille's Male and Female (1919), she played Gloria Swanson's maid.

Her next film, It Pays To Advertise (1919), was a Paramount Pictures release adapted by Elmer Harris from the play of the same name by Rol Cooper Megrue and Walter Hackett. It was directed by Donald Crisp. Faye was among the actors with Lois Wilson depicting the leading lady.

Faye was listed as a member of the Paramount Stock Company School in July 1922. Its noteworthy personalities included Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Betty Compson, Wallace Reid, Bebe Daniels, and Pola Negri.

In 1923, she played The Wife of Pharaoh, one of her most famous roles, in the prologue of DeMille's The Ten Commandments.

Faye joined Raymond Griffith and ZaSu Pitts in the screen feature Changing Husbands (1924), a Leatrice Joy comedy adapted from a magazine story entitled Roles.

When DeMille resigned as director general of Famous Players-Lasky, in January 1925, he became the production head of Cinema Corporation of America. He planned to direct two or three films per year and supervise the making of between ten and twenty more. Faye came along with him as did Joy, Rod La Roque, Florence Vidor, Mary Astor, and Vera Reynolds.

The Volga Boatman (1926) was directed by DeMille and named for the noted Russian song. William Boyd, Elinor Fair, and Faye have primary roles in a production DeMille called "his greatest achievement in picture making." Faye's depiction of a "tiger woman" was esteemed as the most captivating of her career, to this point. Before this role she had been known for "silken siren roles". Theodore Kosloff played opposite her as a stupid blacksmith.

Faye played Martha in The King of Kings (1927). Christ, portrayed by H.B. Warner, is introduced with great majesty in the DeMille photodrama. A blind child searches for the Lord and the producer/director turns the camera gradually down to the child's eyes. The viewer sees Christ initially like the blind child whose sight is restored. Faye traveled to New York City for personal appearances in association with The King of Kings and to address a sales convention in Chicago, Illinois.

Faye won critical acclaim for her leading performance in the 60-minute silent comedy Turkish Delight (1927), directed by Paul Sloane for DeMille Pictures Corporation. She was featured as Velma in the 1927 DeMille-produced film adaptation of the play Chicago; she has the distinction of being the first actress to portray Velma on-screen.

Faye had a small role as an inmate in DeMille's The Godless Girl (1929), which featured some talking sequences, but she made her "talkie" debut playing Marcia Towne in DeMille's first sound film, Dynamite (1929), co-starring Conrad Nagel, Kay Johnson, and Charles Bickford. Dynamite was also her first Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film. She also appeared in two other MGM productions, the Marion Davies comedy Not So Dumb (1930) and DeMille's third and final remake of The Squaw Man (1931), before her brief retirement from films in the early 1930s.

After a short-lived marriage, Faye returned to films with a minor role in Till We Meet Again (1936) and would go on to appear in every one of DeMille's films after Union Pacific (1939), which marked her return to DeMille films. In Samson and Delilah (1949), she had a prominent supporting role as Delilah's maidservant, Hisham. In The Ten Commandments (1956), she played Elisheba, Aaron's wife. Her last role was as a dowager in the 1958 remake of DeMille's The Buccaneer, produced by DeMille himself but directed by his son-in-law Anthony Quinn.

Faye married Harold Leroy Wallick on August 2, 1913, in Manhattan. Wallick predeceased her, and she is listed as a widow in the 1930 census.

Faye first met Cecil B. DeMille in 1917 and became one of his mistresses. In 1920, Faye resided at 2450 Glendower Avenue in Los Feliz.[32] She later bought a Colonial Revival-style mansion at 2338 Observatory Avenue, also in Los Feliz.

Faye married screenwriter Walter Anthony Merrill on October 24, 1935, in Los Angeles. In April 1936, she announced that she had obtained a Nevada divorce from Merrill.

Faye began writing a memoir, Flicker Faces, in the mid-1940s. Although it remains unpublished, some excerpts from the memoir are included in author Scott Eyman's 2010 biography of DeMille, Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille.

Faye died of cancer at her home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, on April 6, 1966, at the age of 73. Her cremated remains rest in the Colonnade at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

#silent movie stars #silent stars #golden age of hollywood

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sweetsmellosuccess · 4 years

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TIFF 2020: Day 3

Films: 3 Best Film of the Day: Nomadland

Nomadland: Perhaps no American director since Terrance Malick has made more of the collapsing light of dusk and twilight than Chloe Zhao. Much of her new film, which stars Frances McDormand as a transigent woman (“not homeless, houseless”), who traverses back and forth across the west in her beat up live-in van, doing seasonal work, takes place in that particular kind of vibrant half-darkness that shrouds the desert and its mountains with a magic kind of mystery. Zhao, whose previous film, The Rider, was one of the very best of 2018, has a way of focusing on the margins of society, the poverty stricken and the non-conformists, finding distinct poetry and longing in their journeys. Her storytelling is economic but powerfully effective: In an early scene McDormand’s character, Fern, is pulling items out of a storage facility she has somewhere near the now-defunct town of Empire, Nevada, where she used to live. Amidst other pieces of ephemera, she comes across a battered old jean jacket and freezes, holding it close to her face, emotion clouding her face. When we find out sometime later her husband died shortly after the gypsum factory where he had worked shut down, we connect the piece of info with her emotion from before. Nothing is overt in Zhao’s palate (which will be interesting to see play out with her next film, The Eternals, as part of the MCU), everything moves in these subtle shades, like the soft shadows of firelight on the faces of the congregation of fellow nomads Fern meets up with later, down somewhere in the Sonoran, after being invited by her good friend Linda May (played by Linda May). There, she eventually comes to meet fellow wanderer Dave (David Strathairn), a sweet-hearted man who clearly feels something for Fern that she chooses not to address. The film isn’t plotted so much as it stays in contact with Fern, as she hits the road from one place to another, spending time with another woman in a trailer, Swankie (Swankie), who only has a few months to live, or intermittently working odd gigs at other RV spots, or the occasional stint at an Amazon warehouse. Things happen with her of a type — she gets a flat, her car’s engine requires a large sum of money which requires her to visit her sister briefly — but what Zhao wants us to see isn’t so much in the mundane details of Fern’s life, as to her steely commitment to her lifestyle. She’s willing to pay the large sacrifices in order to keep her freedom, drawn as she is to the painted highway hyphens. Most such films treat the wanderers as afflicted, bereft, emotionally stunted until the right person allows them to happily shuck off their feckless lifestyle for something solid and permanent: In Zhao’s remarkable work, Fern’s ceaseless wanderings aren’t viewed as her flaw, they are her strength.

Summer of 85: Something has clearly gone horribly wrong at the beginning of Francois Ozon’s tragic romance between two young men who meet on the coast of Normandy one summer. Alexis (Felix Lefebvre), a 16-year-old who lives in Normandy with his parents, his face pale and strained, is being held by the local gendarmes as he tells us in VO just how obsessed he’s always been with the idea of death. Someone has died, it would seem, and Alexis doesn’t wait long to inform us the identity of the corpse: It’s a handsome young man named David Gorman (Benjamin Voisin), whom Alexis meets during a sailing mishap that leaves him capsized, eventually fished out of the water by his new friend. David is abuzz with energy, a glowing lantern that attracts attention wherever he goes. In very short order, he’s made friends with the more naturally cautious Alexis, and they eventually become lovers (a curiously chaste film, their big love scene happens behind the closed door of David’s bedroom, with Alexis telling us in VO that we are not allowed to see what happened, but it was “the best night” of his young life). But their love quickly becomes unbalanced, with David all too happy to flirt and hook up with nearly anyone in a moment’s notice, and Alexis feeling increasingly marginalized, until they get into a huge argument in which David mercilessly tells his friend he’s become bored of him. The film flips back and forth from flashbacks of their story, and Alexis’ current predicament as somehow connected to the eventual death of his lover, having at last to write out what happened, as lead by his kindly English teacher, to offer an explanation for the caseworker who’s trying to keep him out of further trouble. Ozon seems to be working at cross purposes here, avoiding some of the most obvious trappings of the retrospective love story narrative, only to fall headlong into others. The initial narrative hook — trying to determine Alexis’ involvement in David’s death — turns out to be a clunky red herring, and the love story itself, beyond some beautiful shots of the two of them sailing together in the late afternoon sun, feels less organic than ordained, a necessity for the plot to plough ahead. Lefebvre turns in a fine performance, and Voisin is suitably both charming and ruthless, but it all feels more than a little played out.

The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel: Back in 2003, Canadian documentarians Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan made The Corporation, a film that chronicled the depressing rise of the corporation as becoming the de facto government in those countries in which they are prevalent, the laws changing to grant them ever more freedoms and powers, going so far as to treat them legally with individual-type rights. Now, 17 years later, Abbott and Bakan have gone back to the boardrooms to further chronicle the ever-more powerful and pervasive corporate entity, and their shift in philosophy, from blatantly serving none but their shareholders seeking ever-spiraling profit, to their “new” approach, in which they pay lip service to doing better by the planet and taking social responsibility, only to ratchet up their endless batch of dirty tricks to ensure that almost literally every public-based system in the world — from water to education — is privatized and allowed to become new profit centers for them. It’s all prevalent, and nefarious and depressing as hell, as you might imagine, as we watch the corporate titans all congregating at the infamous annual gathering of Davos, making self-congratulatory speeches about how much more caring and compassionate they’ve become since the 2008 meltdown, only to be revealed as further tricks of their endless branding. Tying this attitude into more current events, the filmmakers connect the COVID crisis with government’s capitulation to corporate wealth, laying out the “playbook” corporations are using to further turn the country’s wealth over to their infinitesimally small cadre of super-wealthy stakeholders, concluding their most successful maneuver is to defund a government social program until it fails, blame the government for its failing, and suggest that the solution is to hand more control over to them. But just before you pour the bottle of sleeping pills down your throat, the filmmakers see fit to relent a bit, and show how popular uprisings, in countries all over the globe, have led to substantial change. They also suggest that activists have finally learned it’s not enough to protest from outside, but they must get elected leaders in place who can truly stand behind a fundamental change in policy. The film doesn’t have the completeness of their previous effort — one gets the sense they sacrificed some breadth for the sake of topicality — but it does suggest there are ways in which we can make a difference, and the protest marches, against Wall Street, and police brutality, and for unions, and the end of systemic racism can be a real solution if enough people are motivated to go out and make a difference. The literal fate of the planet is at stake, either way.

In a year of bizarre happenings, and altered realities, TIFF has shifted its gears to a significantly paired down virtual festival. Thus, U.S. film critics are regulated to watching the international offerings from our own living room couches.

#sweet smell of success #ssos #piers marchant #films #movies #tiff2020 #toronto international film festival #nomadland #chloe zhao #frances mcdormand #david strathairn #summer of 85 #francois ozon #the new corporation #documentary

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silent-era-of-cinema · 4 years

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Constance Campbell Bennett (October 22, 1904 – July 24, 1965), was an American stage, film, radio and television actress. She was a major Hollywood star during the 1920s and 1930s and for a time during the early 1930s, she was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, as well as one of the most popular. Bennett frequently played society women, focusing on melodramas in the early 1930s and then taking more comedic roles in the late 1930s and 1940s. She is best known today for her leading roles in What Price Hollywood? (1932), Bed of Roses (1933), Topper (1937), Topper Takes a Trip (1938), and had a prominent supporting role in Greta Garbo's last film, Two-Faced Woman (1941).

She was the daughter of stage and silent film star Richard Bennett, and the older sister of actress Joan Bennett.

Constance Bennett was born in New York City, the eldest of three daughters of actress Adrienne Morrison and actor Richard Bennett. Her younger sisters were actresses Joan Bennett and Barbara Bennett. All three girls attended the Chapin School in New York.

After some time spent in a convent, Bennett went into the family business. Independent, cultured, ironic and outspoken, Constance, the first Bennett sister to enter motion pictures, appeared in New York-produced silent movies before a meeting with Samuel Goldwyn led to her Hollywood debut in Cytherea (1924). She abandoned a burgeoning career in silents for marriage to Philip Plant in 1925, but resumed her film career after their divorce, with the advent of talking pictures (1929), and with her delicate blonde features and glamorous fashion style, she quickly became a popular film star.

In the early 1930s, Bennett was frequently among the top actresses named in audience popularity and box-office polls. For a short time, she was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. So successful was Bennett during this time, that RKO, Bennett's home studio at the time, controlled the careers of actresses Ann Harding and Helen Twelvetrees in a similar manner, hoping to duplicate Bennett's success.

In 1931, a short-lived contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer earned her $300,000 for two movies which included The Easiest Way and made her one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood. Warner Brothers paid her the all-time high salary of $30,000 a week for Bought! in 1931. Richard Bennett, her father, was also cast in this film.

The next year she moved to RKO, where she acted in What Price Hollywood? (1932), directed by George Cukor, an ironic and at the same time tragic behind-the-scenes looks at the old Hollywood studio system, in which she portrayed waitress Mary Evans, who becomes a movie star. Lowell Sherman co-starred as the film director who discovers her, and Neil Hamilton as the wealthy playboy she marries. It was a critical and box office hit at the time of its release.[citation needed] The film Morning Glory had been written with Bennett in mind for the lead role, but producer Pandro S. Berman gave the role to Katharine Hepburn, who won an Academy Award for her performance.

Bennett next showed her versatility in the likes of Our Betters (1933), writer/director Gregory La Cava's Bed of Roses (1933) with Pert Kelton, After Tonight (1933) (co-starring with future husband Gilbert Roland), The Affairs of Cellini (1934), After Office Hours (1935) with Clark Gable, the original Topper (1937, in a career standout as Marian Kerby opposite Cary Grant, a role she repeated in the 1939 sequel, Topper Takes a Trip), the ultimate madcap family comedy Merrily We Live (1938) and Two-Faced Woman (1941, supporting Greta Garbo).

By the 1940s, Bennett was working less frequently in film but was in demand in both radio and theatre. She had her own program, Constance Bennett Calls on You, on ABC radio in 1945-1946. Shrewd investments had made her a wealthy woman, and she founded a cosmetics and clothing company.

Bennett was married five times and had three children.

On June 15, 1921, Bennett eloped with Chester Hirst Moorehead of Chicago, a student at the University of Virginia who was the son of oral surgeon, Frederick Moorehead. They were married by a justice of the peace in Greenwich, Connecticut. Bennett was 16 at the time. A New York Times article that reported the elopement noted, "The parents of Miss Bennett were opposed to their marriage at this time solely on account of their youth." The marriage was annulled in 1923.

Bennett's next serious relationship was with millionaire socialite Philip Morgan Plant. Her parents planned a cruise to Europe, taking Constance with them, to separate the couple. As the ship was preparing to leave port, however, the Bennetts saw Plant and his parents boarding, too. A contemporary newspaper article reported, "Now the little beauty and the heir to all the Plant millions were assured a week of the cosy intimacy which an ocean liner affords." In November 1925, the two eloped and were married in Greenwich, Connecticut, by the same justice of the peace who officiated at Bennett's wedding to Moorehead. They divorced in a French court.

In 1932, Bennett returned from Europe with a three-year-old child, whom she claimed to have adopted and named Peter Bennett Plant (born 1929). In 1942, however, during a battle over a large trust fund established to benefit any descendants of her former husband, Bennett announced that her adopted son actually was her natural child by Plant, born after the divorce and kept hidden to ensure that the child's biological father did not get custody. During the court hearings, the actress told her former mother-in-law and her husband's widow that "if she got to the witness stand she would give a complete account of her life with Plant." The matter was settled out of court.

In 1931, Bennett made headlines when she married one of Gloria Swanson's former husbands, Henri le Bailly, the Marquis de La Coudraye de La Falaise, a French nobleman and film director. She and de la Falaise founded Bennett Pictures Corp. and co-produced two films which were the last filmed in Hollywood in the two-strip Technicolor process, Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) filmed in Bali, and Kilou the Killer Tiger (1936), filmed in Indochina. They were divorced in Reno, Nevada in 1940.

Bennett's fourth marriage was to actor Gilbert Roland. They were married in 1941 and had two daughters, Lorinda "Lynda" (1938) and Christina "Gyl" (1941). They divorced in 1946, with Bennett winning custody of their children. Later that year, Bennett married for the fifth and final time to US Air Force Colonel (later Brigadier General) John Theron Coulter. After her marriage, she concentrated her efforts on providing relief entertainment to US troops still stationed in Europe, winning military honors for her services. Bennett and Coulter remained married until her death in 1965.

She had a major supporting role in Warner Bros' The Unsuspected (1947) opposite Claude Rains, in which she played Jane Moynihan, the program director who helps prove that radio host Victor Grandison (Rains) is guilty of murder. In 1958, she hosted "The Constance Bennett Show" with Scott Vincent on ABC Radio. She made no films from the early 1950s until 1965 when she made a comeback in the film Madame X (released posthumously in 1966) as the blackmailing mother-in-law of Madame X (Lana Turner).

On July 25, 1965, shortly after filming of Madame X was completed, Bennett collapsed and died from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 60. In recognition of her military contributions, and as the wife of John Theron Coulter, who had achieved the rank of brigadier general, she was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Coulter died in 1995 and was buried with her.

Bennett has a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the film industry. Her star is located at 6250 Hollywood Boulevard, a short distance from the star of her sister, Joan.

#constance bennett #silent movie stars #classic movie stars #silent era #silent hollywood #golden age of hollywood #classic hollywood #old hollywood #1920s cinema #1930s movies #1930s hollywood

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thejewofkansas · 3 years

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Awards Season 2021-22: Awards Round-Up 1/3

Been a couple of weeks, but in that time only seven groups have announced their winners, those being: Black Film Critics Circle (BFCC)Dublin Film Critics (DFC)Florida Film Critics Circle (FFCC)Greater Western New York Film Critics Association (GWNYFCA)Nevada Film Critics Society (NFCS)North Texas Film Critics Association (NTFCA)Online Association of Female Film Critics (OAFFC) Picture: BFCC:…

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#2021 Films #2021 in Film #Awards Season 2021-22 #Black Film Critics Circle #Dublin Film Critics #Film Awards #Florida Film Critics Circle #Greater Western New York Critics #Nevada Film Critics Society #North Texas Film Critics Association #Online Association of Female Film Critics

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wisheswell · 6 years

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BACK TO THE 70s \ DESERTCRUISE!

NEVADA, late 1992. in the hot and dusty heart of the mojave desert, HARLAN ELLIS is the leading man of the HIPPY KILLERS – a notorious biker gang of outlaws and freedom fighters who don’t play by society’s rules or conventions. target of the law, their rival gang and the people of nevada, the ‘beast of america’ is forced to make a decision that will not only impact his gang, but his whole legacy.

HARLAN ELLIS is the man in tight levi’s jeans, the naked venus on the buckle of his belt and the dirt of ten thousand miles under the heels of his rattlesnake boots. HARLAN ELLIS takes the screen willfully provocative, sexually loaded and with unparalleled confidence which would, after the movie’s release in 1971, polarize fans and critics alike and only move on to take the place of a critically acclaimed cult classic upon its rediscovery in the early 2000s.

envisioning an ultra-conservative future that aims to suffocate the struggles for independence and freedom in the wake of a changing political and social climate and civil disobedience, HIPPY KILLER is a declaration of war against a rise of political conservatism and the purge of free thought and speech. refusing to compromise or sacrifice anything to match the tastes of a mainstream clientele, director anson lee’s first and only cinematic release shocked audiences with daring images and bold statements, giving birth to one of cinema’s most iconic anti-hero archetypes.

featuring the controversial shower stall scene which caused the film to be banned in turkey upon release and coming with an all new audio commentary from some of the 70’s most renowned names in the film industry, HIPPY KILLER is the newest installment in a series of re-releases from the unforgotten past.

navigating the desert on the back of his 1967 norton commando, it is upon HARLAN ELLIS to seal the fate of the mojave and his people, - FOR BETTER OR WORSE.

‘ they say eyes are the windows to the soul… you say if you'll go tonight its to find some truth beneath my high sunglasses. oh, that ain’t no way, baby. ‘

LIMITED THEATRICAL RELEASE / VHS RELEASE.

#\ SINEMA!#me: hheehehe hooohoo #it's been ages since i did the image so i'm not 100% confident with it anymore BUT #i really wanted to finish what i'd started and i've got a few more in my inbox which i reallly want to do to because they're #a ton of fun to make #the quite is the best part and i didn't write it myself hsdfdhj #but it's so good...

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blackkudos · 6 years

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Tupac Shakur

Tupac Amaru Shakur (/ˈtuːpɑːk ʃəˈkʊər/ TOO-pahk shə-KOOR; born Lesane Parish Crooks; June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), also known by his stage names 2Pac and briefly as Makaveli, was an American rapper, songwriter, and actor. Shakur has sold over 75 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. His double disc albums All Eyez on Me and his Greatest Hits are among the best selling albums in the United States. He has been listed and ranked as one of the greatest artists of all time by many magazines, including Rolling Stone which ranked him 86th on its list of The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Consistently ranked as one of the greatest rappers ever, he was ranked number 2 by MTV in their list of The Greatest MCs of All-Time in 2006. 2Pac is also ranked as the most influential rapper of all time.

Shakur began his career as a roadie, backup dancer, and MC for the alternative hip hop group Digital Underground, eventually branching off as a solo artist. The themes of most of Shakur's songs revolved around the violence and hardship in inner cities, racism and other social problems. Both of his parents and several other of his family were members of the Black Panther Party, whose ideals were reflected in his songs.

During the latter part of his career, Shakur was a vocal participant in the so-called East Coast–West Coast hip hop rivalry, becoming involved in conflicts with other rappers, producers and record-label staff members, most notably The Notorious B.I.G. and the label Bad Boy Records.

On September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot multiple times in a drive-by shooting at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was taken to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, where he died six days later.

Early life

Shakur, whose birth name according to relatives was Lesane Parish Crooks, was born on June 16, 1971, in the East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York City. He was named after Túpac Amaru II, the 18th-century Peruvian revolutionary who was executed after leading an indigenous uprising against Spanish rule.

His mother, Afeni Shakur (born Alice Faye Williams), and his father, Billy Garland, were active members of the Black Panther Party in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The infant was born a month after his mother was acquitted of more than 150 charges of "Conspiracy against the United States government and New York landmarks" in the New York "Panther 21" court case.

Shakur lived from an early age with people who were involved with the Black Liberation Army and convicted of serious criminal offenses and who were imprisoned. His godfather, Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a high-ranking Black Panther, was convicted of murdering a school teacher during a 1968 robbery, although his sentence was later overturned. His stepfather, Mutulu, spent four years at large on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list beginning in 1982. Mutulu was wanted for having helped his sister Assata Shakur (also known as Joanne Chesimard) to escape from a penitentiary in New Jersey. She had been imprisoned for killing a state trooper in 1973. Mutulu was caught in 1986 and imprisoned for the robbery of a Brinks armored truck in which two police officers and a guard were killed. Shakur had a half-sister, Sekyiwa, two years his junior, and an older stepbrother, Mopreme "Komani" Shakur, who appeared in many of his recordings.

At the age of twelve, Shakur enrolled in Harlem's 127th Street Repertory Ensemble and was cast as the Travis Younger character in the play A Raisin in the Sun, which was performed at the Apollo Theater. In 1986, the family relocated to Baltimore, Maryland. After completing his second year at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, he transferred to the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he studied acting, poetry, jazz, and ballet. He performed in Shakespeare plays, and in the role of the Mouse King in the ballet The Nutcracker. Shakur, accompanied by one of his friends, Dana "Mouse" Smith, as his beatbox, won many rap competitions and was considered to be the best rapper in his school. He was remembered as one of the most popular kids in his school because of his sense of humor, superior rapping skills, and ability to mix with all crowds. He developed a close friendship with a young Jada Pinkett (later Jada Pinkett Smith) that lasted until his death.

In the documentary Tupac: Resurrection, Shakur says, "Jada is my heart. She will be my friend for my whole life." Pinkett Smith calls him "one of my best friends. He was like a brother. It was beyond friendship for us. The type of relationship we had, you only get that once in a lifetime." A poem written by Shakur titled "Jada" appears in his book, The Rose That Grew from Concrete, which also includes a poem dedicated to Pinkett Smith called "The Tears in Cupid's Eyes". During his time in art school, Shakur became affiliated with the Baltimore Young Communist League USA, and began dating the daughter of the director of the local chapter of the Communist Party USA.

In June 1988, Shakur, then 17, and his family moved to Marin City, California, a residential community located 5 miles (8.0 km) north of San Francisco, where he attended Tamalpais High School in nearby Mill Valley. Shakur contributed to the school's drama department by performing in several productions. In an English class, Shakur wrote a paper "Conquering All Obstacles" where he said, "our raps not the sorry-story raps everyone is so tired of. They are about what happens in the real world. Our goal is [to] have people relate to our raps, making it easier to see what really is happening out there. Even more important, what we may do to better our world." He began attending the poetry classes of Leila Steinberg in 1989. That same year, Steinberg organized a concert with a former group of Shakur's, "Strictly Dope"; the concert led to him being signed with Atron Gregory. He set him up as a roadie and backup dancer with the hip hop group Digital Underground in 1990.

Career

1991–93: Beginnings and rise to fame

Shakur's professional entertainment career began in the early 1990s, when he debuted his rapping skills in a vocal turn in Digital Underground's "Same Song" from the soundtrack to the 1991 film Nothing but Trouble and also appeared with the group in the film of the same name. The song was later released as the lead song of the Digital Underground extended play (EP) This is an EP Release, the follow-up to their debut hit album Sex Packets. Shakur appeared in the accompanying music video. After his rap debut, he performed with Digital Underground again on the album Sons of the P. Later, he released his first solo album, 2Pacalypse Now. Though the album did not generate any "Top Ten" hits, 2Pacalypse Now is hailed by many critics and fans for its underground feel, with many rappers such as Nas, Eminem, Game, and Talib Kweli having pointed to it as inspiration. Although the album was originally released on Interscope Records, rights of it are now owned by Amaru Entertainment. The album's name is a reference to the 1979 film Apocalypse Now.

The album generated significant controversy. Dan Quayle criticized it after a Texas youth's defense attorney claimed he was influenced by 2Pacalypse Now and its strong theme of police brutality before shooting a state trooper. Quayle said, "There's no reason for a record like this to be released. It has no place in our society." Shakur stated that he felt he had been misunderstood. He said, "I started out saying I was down for the young black male, you know, and that was gonna be my thang," Shakur said. "I just wanted to rap about things that affected young black males. When I said that, I didn't know that I was gonna tie myself down to just take all the blunts and hits for all the young black males, to be the media's kicking post for young black males. I just figured since I lived that life I could do that, I could rap about that." The record was important in showcasing Shakur's political conviction and his focus on lyrical prowess. On MTV's Greatest Rappers of All Time list, 2Pacalypse Now was listed as one of Shakur's "certified classic" albums, along with Me Against the World, All Eyez on Me and The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. 2Pacalypse Now went on to be certified Gold by the RIAA. It featured three singles; "Brenda's Got a Baby", "Trapped", and "If My Homie Calls".

His second studio album, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., was released in February 1993. The album did better than the previous one debuting on number 24 on the Billboard 200. The album contains many tracks emphasizing Shakur's political and social views. This album had more commercial success than its predecessor, and there were noticeable differences in production. While Shakur's first effort had an indie-rap-oriented sound, this album was considered his "breakout" album. It spawned the hits "Keep Ya Head Up" and "I Get Around" and reached platinum status. On vinyl, Side A (tracks 1–8) was labeled the "Black Side" and Side B (tracks 9–16) the "Dark Side". It is his tenth-biggest selling album, with 1,366,000 units moved as of 2004.

1994–95: Acting and rise to prominence

In late 1993, Shakur formed the group Thug Life with a number of his friends, including Big Syke, Macadoshis, his stepbrother Mopreme Shakur, and Rated R. The group released their only album Thug Life: Volume 1 on September 26, 1994, which went gold. The album featured the single "Pour Out a Little Liquor", produced by Johnny "J" Jackson, who went on to produce a large part of Shakur's album All Eyez on Me. The group usually performed their concerts without Shakur. The album was originally released by Shakur's label Out Da Gutta Records. Due to criticism about gangsta rap at the time, the original version of the album was scrapped and re-recorded with many of the original songs being cut. Among the notable tracks on the album are "Bury Me a G", "Cradle to the Grave", "Pour Out a Little Liquor" (which also appears in the soundtrack to the 1994 film Above the Rim), "How Long Will They Mourn Me?" and "Str8 Ballin'". The album contains ten tracks because Interscope Records felt many of the other recorded songs were too controversial to release. Although the original version of the album was not completed, Shakur performed the planned first single from the album, "Out on Bail" at the 1994 Source Awards. Although the album was originally released on Shakur's label Out Da Gutta, Amaru Entertainment, the label owned by Shakur's mother, has since gained the rights to it. Thug Life: Volume 1 was certified Gold. The track "How Long Will They Mourn Me?" appeared later in 1998 from 2Pac's Greatest Hits album.

His third album, Me Against The World, was very well received, with many calling it the magnum opus of his career. It is considered one of the greatest and most influential hip hop albums of all-time. It is his fourth biggest selling album with 3,524,567 copies in the United States as of 2011.Me Against the World won best rap album at the 1996 Soul Train Music Awards.

"Dear Mama" was released as the album's first single in February 1995, along with the track "Old School" as the B-side. "Dear Mama" would be the album's most successful single, topping the Hot Rap Singles chart, and peaking at the ninth spot on the Billboard Hot 100. The single was certified platinum in July 1995, and later placed at #51 on the year-end charts. The second single, "So Many Tears", was released in June, four months after the first single. The single would reach the number six on the Hot Rap Singles chart, and number 44 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Temptations", released in August, was the third and final single from the album. The single would be the least successful of the three released, but still did fairly well on the charts, reaching number 68 on the Billboard Hot 100, 35 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks, and 13 on the Hot Rap Singles charts.

1996: Final recordings

All Eyez on Me was the fourth studio album by 2Pac, released on February 13, 1996 by Death Row Records and Interscope Records. The album is frequently recognized as one of the crowning achievements of 1990s rap music. It has been said that "despite some undeniable filler, it is easily the best production 2Pac's ever had on record". It was certified 5× Platinum after just 2 months in April 1996 and 9× platinum in 1998. The album featured the Billboard Hot 100 number one singles "How Do U Want It" and "California Love". It featured 5 singles in all, the most of any 2Pac album. Moreover, All Eyez on Me (which was the only Death Row release to be distributed through PolyGram by way of Island Records) made history as the first double-full-length hip-hop solo studio album released for mass consumption. It was issued on two compact discs and four LPs. Chartwise, All Eyez on Me was the second album from 2Pac to hit number-one on both the Billboard 200 and the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts. It sold 566,000 copies in the first week of its release, and was charted on the top 100 with the top one-week Soundscan sales since 1991. The album won the 1997 Soul Train R&B/Soul or Rap Album of the Year Award. Shakur also won the Award for Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Artist at the 24th Annual American Music Awards.

Makaveli – The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, commonly shortened to The 7 Day Theory, is his fifth and final studio album and was released under the new stage name Makaveli. The album was completely finished in a total of seven days during the month of August 1996. The lyrics were written and recorded in three days and mixing took an additional four days. In 2005, MTV.com rankedKilluminati: The 7 Day Theory at #9 on their greatest hip hop albums of all time list and, in 2006, recognized it as a classic. The emotion and anger showcased on the album has been admired by a large part of the hip-hop community, including other rappers.

George "Papa G" Pryce, former Head of Publicity for Death Row, claimed that "Makaveli, which we did was sort of tongue-in-cheek and it was not really to come out and after Tupac was murdered, it did come out. But before that it was going to be a sort of an underground [record]." The album peaked at number one on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and the Billboard 200. The album generated the second-highest debut-week sales total of any album that year, was certified 4× Platinum on June 15, 1999.

Other ventures

Death Row Records

Upon his release from Clinton Correctional Facility in 1995, Shakur immediately went back to song recording. He began a new group called Outlaw Immortalz. Shakur began recording his first album with Death Row and released the single "California Love" soon after.

On February 13, 1996, Shakur released his fourth solo album, All Eyez on Me. This double album was the first and second of his three-album commitment to Death Row Records. It sold over nine million copies. The record was a general departure from the introspective subject matter of Me Against the World, being more oriented toward a thug and gangsta mentality. Shakur continued his recordings despite increasing problems at the Death Row label. Dr. Dre left his post as house producer to form his own label, Aftermath. Shakur continued to produce hundreds of tracks during his time at Death Row, most of which would be released on his posthumous albums Still I Rise, Until the End of Time, Better Dayz, Loyal to the Game and Pac's Life. He also began the process of recording an album with the Boot Camp Clik and their label Duck Down Records, both New York – based, entitled One Nation.

On June 4, 1996, he and Outlawz released the diss track "Hit 'Em Up", a scathing lyrical assault on Biggie and others associated with him. In the track, Shakur claimed to have had sexual intercourse with Faith Evans, Biggie's wife at the time, and attacked Bad Boy's street credibility. Shakur was convinced that some members associated with Bad Boy had known about the '94 attack on him beforehand due to their behavior that night and what his sources told him. After the attack, Shakur immediately accused Jimmy Henchman (an associate of Bad Boy CEO Sean Combs) of orchestrating the attack, according to a 2005 interview with Henchman inVibe magazine. After the attack, Shakur therefore aligned himself with Suge, Death Row's CEO, who was already bitter toward Combs over a 1995 incident at the Platinum Club in Atlanta, Georgia, which culminated in the death of Suge Knight's friend and bodyguard, Jake Robles; Knight was adamant in voicing his suspicions of Combs' involvement.

Collaborator Buckshot claimed in 2015 that Shakur defended him against Suge Knight, who had insisted that the East Coast rapper could not come with him to Las Vegas on the grounds of the ongoing hip hop rivalry. Shakur asserted that he would not board the plane unless accompanied by Buckshot and was described by the fellow rapper as looking "discomforted" while they recorded a song together in a studio after Shakur "tore up the plane tickets".

Outlawz

When Shakur recorded "Hit 'Em Up," a diss song towards his former friend and rival The Notorious B.I.G. (also known as Biggie Smalls), he recruited three members from the former group Dramacydal with whom he had worked previously and was eager to do so again. Together with the three New Jersey rappers and other associates, they formed the original lineup of the Outlawz. When 2Pac signed to Death Row upon his release from prison, he recruited his step brother Mopreme Shakur and Big Syke from Thug Life. Hussein Fatal, Napoleon, E.D.I. Mean, Kastro, Yaki Kadafi, and Storm (the only female Outlaw) were also added, and together they formed the original lineup of the Outlaw Immortalz that debuted on 2Pac's multi-platinum smash All Eyez on Me. They later dropped the Immortal part of their name after the untimely deaths of 2Pac and Yaki Kadafi and moved on as Outlawz without the members of Thug Life. Young Noble was later added and appeared on 2Pac's second Death Row release The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. It was on 2Pac's Makaveli album that Outlawz first came to the greater rap community's notice, appearing on a few songs. The idea behind the group was for each member to have a rap name coinciding with the names of various tyrants or enemies of America, past and present. Outlawz chose in later years to make a backronym out of the letters of their group name Operating Under Thug Laws as Warriorz although it does not stand for the group's name and is used infrequently.

On forming the Outlawz, Shakur gave each of them a name of a dictator/military leader or an enemy of America.

Yaki Kadafi, after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi

Hussein Fatal, after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein

Mussolini (formerly Big Syke), after Italian dictator Benito Mussolini

Komani (Shakur's half brother Mopreme Shakur), after Iranian Islamic Revolution leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

Kastro, after Cuban leader Fidel Castro

E.D.I. Mean, after Ugandan dictator Idi Amin

Napoleon, after military strategist and leader Napoleon Bonaparte

For himself, Shakur created the alias "Makaveli" from Renaissance Italian philosopher and strategist Niccolò Machiavelli, whose writings inspired Shakur in prison, but who also preached that a leader could eliminate his enemies by all means necessary. He mentioned Makaveli Records a few times before his death. This was supposed to be a music label for up and coming artists that Shakur had an interest in developing or potentially signing, and his own future projects would have also been published through it as well.

Acting career

In addition to rapping and hip hop music, Shakur acted in films. He made his first film appearance in the motion picture Nothing but Trouble, as part of a cameo by the Digital Underground. His first starring role was in the film Juice. In this film, he played Roland Bishop, a violent member of the Wrecking Crew, for which he was hailed by Rolling Stone's Peter Travers as "the film's most magnetic figure". He then went on to star in Poetic Justice and Above the Rim. After his death, three of his completed films were released:Bullet, Gridlock'd, and Gang Related.

Shakur had been slated to star in the Hughes brothers' film Menace II Society, but was replaced by Larenz Tate after assaulting Allen Hughes as a result of a quarrel. Director John Singleton mentioned that he wrote the script for Baby Boy with Shakur in mind for the lead role. It was eventually filmed with Tyrese Gibson in his place and released in 2001, five years after Shakur's death. The film features a mural of Shakur in the protagonist's bedroom, as well as featuring the song "Hail Mary" in the film's score.

Artistry

Shakur's music and philosophy is rooted in many American, African-American, and world entities, including the Black Panther Party, Black nationalism, egalitarianism, and liberty.

Shakur's love of theater and Shakespeare also influenced his work. A student of the Baltimore School for the Arts where he studied theater, Shakur understood the Shakespearian psychology of inter-gang wars and inter-cultural conflict. During a 1995 interview, Shakur stated:

In a European interview music journalist Chuck Philips said that what impressed him the most about Shakur was that he was a poet. Philips said "I like sacred texts, myths, proverbs and scriptures. ... When Tupac came along, I thought he was quite the poet... It wasn't just how cleverly they rhymed. It wasn't just the rhythm or the cadence. I liked their attitude. It was protest music in a way nobody had ever thought about before. ...These artists were brave, wise and smart – wickedly smart. The thing about Tupac was he had so many sides. He was unafraid to write about his vulnerabilities."

Shakur's debut album, 2Pacalypse Now, revealed the socially conscious side of Shakur. On this album, Shakur attacked social injustice, poverty and police brutality on songs "Brenda's Got a Baby", "Trapped" and "Part Time Mutha". His style on this album was highly influenced by the social consciousness and Afrocentrism pervading hip hop in the late 1980s and early 1990s. On this initial release, Shakur helped extend the success of such rap groups as Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, X-Clan, and Grandmaster Flash, as he became one of the first major socially conscious rappers from the West Coast.

On his second record, Shakur continued to rap about the social ills facing African-Americans, with songs like "The Streetz R Deathrow" and "Last Wordz". He also showed his compassionate side with the anthem "Keep Ya Head Up", while simultaneously putting his legendary aggressiveness on display with the title track from the album Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. He added a salute to his former group Digital Underground by including them on the playful track "I Get Around". Throughout his career, an increasingly aggressive attitude can be seen pervading Shakur's subsequent albums.

The contradictory themes of social inequality and injustice, unbridled aggression, compassion, playfulness, and hope all continued to shape Shakur's work, as witnessed with the release of his incendiary 1995 album Me Against the World. In 1996, Shakur released All Eyez on Me. Many of these tracks are considered by many critics to be classics, including "Ambitionz Az a Ridah", "I Ain't Mad at Cha", "California Love", "Life Goes On" and "Picture Me Rollin". All Eyez on Me was a change of style from his earlier works; while still containing socially conscious songs and themes, Shakur's album was heavily influenced by party tracks and tended to have a more "feel good" vibe than his first albums. Shakur described it as a celebration of life, and the record was critically and commercially successful.

He had enjoyed and had been influenced by the work of contemporary English and Irish pop musicians as a teenager such as Kate Bush, Culture Club, Sinéad O'Connor and U2.

Personal life

Shakur never professed following a particular religion, but his lyrics in singles such as "Only God Can Judge Me" and poems such asThe Rose That Grew from Concrete suggest he believed in God. This means many analysts currently describe him as a deist. He believed in Karma, but rejected a literal afterlife and organized religion. Shakur has had several family members who were members of the Black Panthers; Mutulu Shakur, his step-father; Assata Shakur, his step-aunt; Billy Garland, his biological father; and Afeni Shakur, his mother. Shakur publicly spoke out against interracial marriage in an interview with Source magazine in 1994, but later retracted these comments.

His bandana tied into rabbit ears struck mythic chords and remains one of hip-hop's most recognizable style flourishes to date.

He was also engaged to Kidada Jones.

Legal issues

In October 1991, Shakur filed a $10 million civil suit against the Oakland Police Department, alleging they brutally beat him for jaywalking. Shakur received approximately $43,000 in settlement money, much of which went to pay his lawyer.

On April 5, 1993, Shakur was charged with one count of felonious assault. He was accused of attempting to hit rapper Chauncey Wynn from the group M.A.D. with a baseball bat at a concert at Michigan State University. The incident reportedly began when Shakur became angry and threw a microphone. Shakur pleaded guilty on September 14, 1994 to a misdemeanor in exchange for the dropping of felony assault charges. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail, 20 of which were suspended, and ordered to perform 35 hours of community service.

In October 1993, in Atlanta, two brothers and off-duty police officers, Mark and Scott Whitwell, were with their wives celebrating Mrs. Whitwell's passing of the state bar examination. The officers were drunk and in possession of stolen guns. As they crossed the street, a car with Shakur inside passed by them or "almost struck them". The Whitwells argued with the driver, Shakur and the other passengers, which was joined by a second passing car. Shakur shot one officer in the buttocks and the other in the leg, back or abdomen, according to varying news reports. Mark Whitwell was charged with firing at Shakur's car and later lying to the police during the investigation. Shakur was charged with the shooting. Prosecutors dropped all charges against the parties.

In early 1994, he was found guilty of assault on Menace II Society co-director Allen Hughes and served 15 days in jail.

1992 shooting

On August 22, 1992, in Marin City, Shakur performed at an outdoor festival, and stayed for an hour afterwards signing autographs and pictures. A confrontation occurred and Shakur drew a legally registered Colt Mustang, and allegedly dropped it. As it was picked up by a member of his entourage, a bullet discharged. About 100 yards away, Qa'id Walker-Teal, a 6-year-old, was pedaling his bicycle at a school playground nearby when a bullet struck him in the forehead and killed him. Although the gun was matched by police to a .38-caliber pistol registered to Shakur, and his stepbrother Maurice Harding was initially arrested on suspicion of firing the weapon, no charges were filed. Marin County prosecutors have said they were stymied by a lack of witnesses. Charges were dropped when Shakur agreed to pay a $300,000–$500,000 settlement to the parents. The police "rescued" them and took the two into custody, who were soon released without charge for lack of evidence.

In 1995, a wrongful death suit was brought against Shakur by Qa'id's mother. The defense attorney acknowledged that the bullet that killed Qa'id was traced by authorities to a gun registered to Shakur. Shakur's record company settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount, reportedly between $300,000 and $500,000.

1993 Sexual assault case

In November 1993, Shakur and others were charged with sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room. Shakur denied the charges. According to Shakur, he had prior relations days earlier with the woman that were consensual (the woman admitted she performed oral sex on Shakur). The complainant claimed sexual assault after her second visit to Shakur's hotel room; she alleged that Shakur and his entourage raped her. As a result of the trial, Shakur was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse, and acquitted of the weapons and sodomy charges. The judge described the crimes during the sentencing of Shakur to 1½–4½ years in prison, as "an act of brutal violence against a helpless woman." While appearing on the Arsenio Hall Show, Shakur stated he was innocent of all charges and he was hurt that "a woman would accuse me of taking something from her" when he was raised by and was surrounded by females. Shakur, did however, admit that he should have been more responsible with the people he surrounded himself with.

In October 1995, Shakur's case was on appeal but due to his considerable legal fees he could not raise the $1.4 million bail. After serving nine months of his sentence, Shakur was released from the Clinton Correctional Facility due in large part to the help and influence of Suge Knight, the CEO of Death Row Records, who posted a $1.4 million bail pending appeal of the conviction in exchange for Shakur to release three albums under the Death Row label.

On April 5, 1996, a judge sentenced him to serve 120 days in jail for violating terms of his release on bail.

1994 Attack at Quad Recording Studios

On the night of November 30, 1994, the day before the verdict in his sexual abuse trial was to be announced, Shakur was robbed and shot five times by three men in the lobby of Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan. Shakur stated that he believed the robbery to be a setup for the attack wondering why they would take jewelry and leave his Rolex watch.

Shakur checked out of the Bellevue Hospital Center against doctor's orders, three hours after surgery. In the day that followed, he entered the courthouse in a wheelchair and was found guilty of three counts of molestation and not guilty of six others, including sodomy, stemming from his 1993 arrest for sexual assault. On February 6, 1995, he was sentenced to one-and-a-half to four-and-a-half years in prison on the sexual assault charges.

In a 1995 interview with Vibe magazine. Shakur accused Sean Combs, an associate of Combs named Jimmy Henchman and Biggie among others of setting up the Quad Recording Studios attack. Vibe changed the names of the accused assailants upon publication. Later evidence did not implicate Biggie in the studio assault. When Biggie's entourage went downstairs to check on the incident, Shakur was being taken out on a stretcher, giving the finger to those around.

On March 17, 2008, Chuck Philips wrote in the Los Angeles Times about an alleged order for an attack on Shakur. The article was retracted by the LA Times because it partially relied on FBI documents supplied by a man convicted of fraud which turned out to be forged. In 2011 Dexter Isaac admitted to attacking Shakur. Following Isaac’s public confession, Philips named Isaac as one of his unnamed sources for the retracted article.

1995 Prison sentence

Shakur began serving his prison sentence on sexual assault charges at Clinton Correctional Facility on February 14, 1995. Shortly afterward, he released his multi-platinum album Me Against the World. Shakur became the first artist to have an album at number one on the Billboard 200 while serving a prison sentence. Me Against the World made its debut on the Billboard 200 and stayed at the top of the charts for four weeks. The album sold 240,000 copies in its first week, setting a record for highest first week sales for a solo male rap artist at the time. While serving his sentence, he married his long-time girlfriend, Keisha Morris, on April 4, 1995; the couple divorced in 1996. Shakur stated he married her "for the wrong reasons".

While imprisoned, Shakur read many books by Niccolò Machiavelli, Sun Tzu's The Art of War and other works of political philosophy and strategy. The works inspired his pseudonym "Makaveli" under which he released the album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. The album presents a stark contrast to previous works. Throughout the album, Shakur continues to focus on the themes of pain and aggression, making this album one of the emotionally darker works of his career. Shakur wrote and recorded all the lyrics in only three days and the production took another four days, combining for a total of seven days to complete the album (hence the name).

Death

September 1996 shooting

On the night of September 7, 1996, Shakur attended the Bruce Seldon vs. Mike Tyson boxing match with Suge Knight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. After leaving the match, one of Knight's associates spotted Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, an alleged Crips gang member from Compton, California, in the MGM Grand lobby. Earlier that year, Anderson and a group of Crips had robbed a member of Death Row's entourage in a Foot Locker store. Knight's associate told Shakur, who attacked Anderson. Shakur's entourage, as well as Knight and his followers, assisted in assaulting Anderson. The fight was captured on the hotel's video surveillance. After the brawl, Shakur went with Knight to go to Death Row-owned Club 662 (now known as restaurant/club Seven). He rode in Knight's 1996 black BMW 750iL sedan as part of a larger convoy, including many in Shakur's entourage.

At around 11:00–11:05 pm (PDT), they were halted on Las Vegas Boulevard by Metro bicycle police for playing the car stereo too loudly and not having license plates. The plates were found in the trunk of Knight's car; the party was released a few minutes later without being fined. At about 11:10 pm (PDT), while they were stopped at a red light at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in front of the Maxim Hotel, a vehicle occupied by two women pulled up on their left side. Shakur, who was standing up through the sunroof, exchanged words with the two women, and invited them to go to Club 662. At approximately 11:15 pm (PDT), a white, four-door, late-model Cadillac with an unknown number of occupants pulled up to the sedan's right side, rolled down a window, and rapidly fired gunshots at Shakur. He was hit in the chest, pelvis, and his right hand and thigh. One of the rounds went into Shakur's right lung. Knight was hit in the head by fragmentation, though it is thought that a bullet grazed him. The bodyguard, Frank Alexander, stated that when he was about to ride along with the rapper in Knight's car, Shakur asked him to drive the car of Shakur's fiancée Kidada Jones instead, in case they needed additional vehicles from Club 662 back to the hotel. The bodyguard reported in his documentary, Before I Wake, that shortly after the assault, one of the convoy's cars drove off after the assailant but he never heard from the occupants. After arriving at the scene, police and paramedics took Knight and a wounded Shakur to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada. According to an interview with the music video director Gobi, while at the hospital, he received news from a Death Row marketing employee that the shooters had called the record label and threatened Shakur. Gobi told the Las Vegas police, but said they claimed to be understaffed. No attackers came. At the hospital, Shakur was heavily sedated, was placed on life support machines, and was ultimately put under a barbiturate-induced coma after repeatedly trying to get out of the bed. While in the critical care unit, on the afternoon of Friday, September 13, 1996, Shakur died of internal bleeding; doctors attempted to revive him but could not stop the hemorrhaging. His mother, Afeni, made the decision to tell the doctors to stop. He was pronounced dead at 4:03 pm (PDT). The official cause of death was noted as respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest in connection with multiple gunshot wounds. Shakur's body was cremated the next day and some of his ashes were later mixed with marijuana and smoked by members of the Outlawz. However, E.D.I. Mean claimed in an interview in 2014 that despite believing that the ashes were those of Shakur at the time, he later found that the ashes did not in fact belong to Shakur. His fifth album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory was released two months later.

Aftermath

In 2002, the LA Times published a two-part story by investigative reporter Chuck Philips, titled "Who Killed Tupac Shakur?", based on yearlong research that reconstructed the crime and the events leading up to it. Information gathered by the paper indicated that: "the shooting was carried out by a Compton gang called the Southside Crips to avenge the beating of one of its members by Shakur a few hours earlier. Orlando Anderson, the Crip whom Shakur had attacked, fired the fatal shots. Las Vegas police discounted Anderson as a suspect and interviewed him only once, briefly. He was later killed in an unrelated gang shooting." The article also reported the involvement of East Coast rapper Biggie, Shakur's rival at the time, and several New York criminals.

Before they died, The Notorious B.I.G. and Anderson denied any role in the murder. In support of their claims, Biggie's family produced computerized invoices suggesting that Biggie was working in a New York recording studio the night of the drive-by shooting. His manager Wayne Barrow and fellow rapper James "Lil' Cease" Lloyd made public announcements denying Biggie's role in the crime and claimed further that they were with him in the recording studio the night of the event. The New York Times called the evidence "inconclusive", noting:

The pages purport to be three computer printouts from Daddy's House, indicating that Wallace was in the studio recording a song called Nasty Boy on the afternoon Shakur was shot. They indicate that Wallace wrote half the session, was In and out/sat around and laid down a ref, shorthand for a reference vocal, the equivalent of a first take. But nothing indicates when the documents were created. And Louis Alfred, the recording engineer listed on the sheets, said in an interview that he remembered recording the song with Wallace in a late-night session, not during the day. He could not recall the date of the session but said it was likely not the night Shakur was shot. 'We would have heard about it,' Mr. Alfred said."

In 2011, pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI released documents revealing its investigation of the Jewish Defense League for making death threats against Shakur and other rappers.

http://wikipedia.thetimetube.com/?q=Tupac+Shakur&lang=en

#Tupac Shakur

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tkmedia · 3 years

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Doctors Weigh In On Errol Spence's Vision-Saving Torn Retina Discovery

When it was announced that Errol Spence Jr. had sustained a retinal tear and would not be able to fight Manny Pacquiao on August 21, there was a collective sense of disappointment that boxing had lost perhaps its biggest fight of the year. However, there should have also been a feeling of relief, as the injury being discovered ahead of time may have preserved the career of one of the sport’s brightest stars. During a pre-fight medical examination, doctors with the Nevada State Athletic Commission discovered the tear and recommended emergency surgery. Spence flew home to Dallas and had surgery two days later. “I was telling the doctor let me fight this fight and I’ll get surgery right after. Doc wasn’t (having) it,” said Spence in an Instagram post showing his bandaged eye. Of course, going through with the fight was never a consideration, and it’s a good thing the doctor wasn’t having it. While athletic commissions across the world often draw the ire of the boxing public, this finding highlighted the importance of medical oversight in the sport and was an example of a commission acting firmly and appropriately. According to NSAC regulations, fighters who wish to compete in Nevada “must submit a dilated ophthalmological exam administered by a licensed ophthalmologist. This exam must be done more than 24 hours before the fight and is valid for one calendar year.” This may sound like a no-brainer for commissions to require. But in a list of state medical requirements compiled by the Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports, there are a number of state commissions who either do not require an eye exam of any sort or do not offer confirmation that they do. That means that had Spence-Pacquiao been staged in a different state, or if Spence had completed an eye exam within the calendar year but had sustained the tear since the test, the fight would be happening, putting Spence in serious danger. “The retina is a membrane filled with light-sensing cells in the back of the eye. It acts like film in a camera to capture light and transmit it to the brain. If someone is hit hard enough, or the head swivels quick enough around, it can detach from the wall of the eye,” said Dr. Jonathan Gelber, a member of the Association of Ringside Physicians and the author of the book Tiger Woods's Back and Tommy John's Elbow: Injuries and Tragedies That Transformed Careers, Sports, and Society. “Untreated it can lead to severe consequences, even blindness. Consider Michael Bisping in MMA. He suffered a detached retina in his fight against Vitor Belfort and fought again three months later. Eventually he became blind in the eye and says he secretly fought with a glass eye for years.” Spence offered on social media that he had “come back from worse,” referencing the horrific car crash that placed him in critical condition in October of 2019. Despite the grisly images from the scene and the speculation that Spence might never be the same physically, he showed no appreciable decline in either skill or durability in a comeback win over Danny Garcia in December of 2020. Gelber speculates that following his surgery, Spence will be cleared for everyday activities in a couple of weeks. But in terms of a return to contact sport, the likely recovery period is several months. Provided a doctor clears him for combat once again, he’ll be able to make a full return. As Gelber points out, this kind of prognosis would have been unthinkable 40 years ago. “Sugar Ray Leonard listened to his doctors and had surgery. Fortunately, his retina wasn't completely detached, but he was starting to see spots and flashes of lights,” he said. “Before that, it was considered a career ending injury. Sugar Ray Leonard fought for another fifteen years.” In 1982, Leonard was forced to back out of a scheduled world title defense against Roger Stafford after it was discovered he had a partially detached retina. Leonard sought out influential eye surgeon Dr. Ronald G. Michels for his operation. Although many believe Leonard is the first fighter to return to boxing after retinal surgery, he is actually only one of the first, but by far the most publicized and discussed. In fact, Leonard picked Michels because he operated on Ernie Shavers, who suffered a detached retina during a bout with Larry Holmes in 1979, enabling Shavers to fight another 21 times. A year later, then-WBC super welterweight champion Maurice Hope had retina surgery presumed to spell the end of his career, but returned to make two defenses of his title—the second of which was even paired with a closed circuit showing of Leonard-Roberto Duran in Wembley Arena. The success of Leonard’s operation and his continued success in the ring began to change the industry’s previous hard line on fighters returning from retinal surgeries. Marvin Camel, boxing’s first cruiserweight champion, underwent retinal surgery under an assumed name in order to avoid being denied a license, and fought for close to 13 years afterwards before the California State Athletic Commission, which previously did not allow fighters with retinal detachments in their medical history to fight, became aware of Camel’s past. These days, commissions provide much more leeway, even ones previously as strict as the CSAC. Abner Mares suffered a detached retina in 2008 and went on to fight in California many times. Unfortunately, Mares suffered another detachment in sparring in 2019 and while he has said he intends upon returning, he has been seen wearing sunglasses during his on-air duties for Showtime. The list of fighters who have had to hang up their gloves due to eye injuries is long, even after the advancement in optical surgical procedures. Notable fighters such as Oscar Negrete, Nicola Adams, John Murray, Lee Purdy, Anthony Ogogo and more have seen their careers cut short in recent years due to injuries ranging from detached retinas to torn pupils. In a study titled "A 16 year study of injuries to professional boxers in the state of Victoria, Australia," which documented injuries in boxing matches from 1985 to 2001 in Victoria, researchers found that 45.8% of all boxing injuries are to the eye region. It concluded that "a high rate (66%) of boxers suffer appreciable ocular trauma that may go unrecognized in injury surveillance studies,” which can perhaps explain the number of ex-fighters who have developed cataracts over the years. In 2003, the British Journal of Sports Medicine unsurprisingly concluded that a boxer is 10 times more likely to suffer an ocular lesion than the general public. It is important to distinguish between Spence’s injury, a retinal tear, and a retinal detachment. While both are severe on their own and can lead to blindness, a detachment would be considered more worrisome. In a general sense, one wants to repair retinal tears so that they don’t turn into detachments. However, that would have been a real possibility for Spence had his affliction gone undetected. "I would argue that the timing of this fight and his pre-fight physical might have saved (Spence’s) vision," said Dr. Brian Sutterer in a video posted to his YouTube channel on August 11. "Overall Spence is extremely fortunate that this is discovered. This is a perfect example of why we do these eye exams. We're trying to catch these things. Because if he wasn't checked, he went and fought, he gets another eye injury, now it can be a full-blown detachment that can threaten his vision, which goes beyond boxing." The good news is that according to Dr. Gelber, retinal tear operations have high success rates in terms of sustaining the integrity of the eye moving forward. “Like any surgery there are re-tear rates but they are generally pretty low,” said Gelber, while offering that “it’s possible (the rates could be) higher with certain at-risk activities like fighting.” For now, Spence can still plan on a future in the ring, but in his Instagram announcement seemed to put the situation in a healthy perspective. “Being able to see my kids grow is the most important thing to me,” said Spence. Corey Erdman is a boxing writer and commentator based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Follow him on Twitter @corey_erdman Read the full article

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barbaragmoro · 3 years

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#Robert Pattinson #The Twilight Saga #Twilight BR

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analogscum · 6 years

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HELLS ANGELS ON WHEELS (1967, d. Richard Rush)

Way back in 1966, before he was reduced to a Johnny Depp caricature and the personal hero of that one libertarian douchebag in your college Philosophy 101 class, Hunter S. Thompson burst onto the literary scene with his debut book, Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. Expanded from a 1965 article for The Nation, Hell’s Angels introduced America to not only the Doctor’s freewheeling, lysergic brand of prose, but this new underground culture of the motorcycle gang. No longer the leather-bound toughs of The Wild Ones, these bikers were hairier, freakier, and ten times more drugged up. They didn’t even bother to ask what you had for them to rebel against, they let their chains to the talkin’, maaaaaaan.

Hells Angels on Wheels roared into movie theaters the following year, when the Summer of Love had cooled down into the Winter of…I guess still Love? I dunno. I imagine the film must’ve been very shocking in its day and age, but for today’s viewer, Hells Angels on Wheels is notable for other reasons, namely its nascency. It represents ground zero for an entire sub-genre which played a major part in cementing the explosion of creativity that was American cinema in the 1970s, and provided a launching pad for a number of players who would go on to become indispensable cornerstones of that scene. But, before they could do that, they had to shoot a bunch of establishing shots of bikes parking in places.

In the spirit of the Peace movement, why don’t we be generous and describe the narrative structure of Hells Angels on Wheels as…episodic? Yeah, that’s the ticket! Basically every scene in the movie follows this structure: the Hells Angels show up somewhere and park their bikes for like five minutes, go into a place where everyone hates them, get into a fight with the people who hate them, then leave when either they kill someone or the cops show up. That’s it. That’s the whole movie. The audience’s surrogate is a young man named Poet, who quits his job at a gas station when a customer is a total jerk to him. Then his bike gets sideswiped by one of the Angels, who has, shall we say, questionable facial hair. Either this guy’s mustache just grows weird, or they did a terrible makeup job on him, anyway, you be the judge:

So Poet’s headlight is damaged, and he proceeds to start a fight with the Angel with the questionable facial hair. Now, instead of just beating him to death with some wrenches, the lead Angel, Buddy, appreciates Poet’s ability to scrap. They all hang out for awhile. They get into a fight in a bar with a rival biker gang. They get into a fight at a carnival with some sailors. Then they all go back to a swingin’ pad full of groovy wall decor and have a drug orgy for what feels like nine hours. At one point, a painter who looks and talks suspiciously like Hunter S. Thompson — floppy hat, sunglasses, gruff mumble — begins doing body paint on all the women, which takes up roughly six hours of this nine hour scene. But most importantly, Poet falls for Shrill, one of the biker mamas who he can tell is a little too smart to be around this scene, because so is he. Just one problem: Shrill is Buddy’s woman. I’m sure this won’t lead to awkward, poorly choreographed violence at all!

Speaking of, kudos to the filmmakers for going for realism; there’s a lot of handheld camerawork, plenty of Nouvelle Vague-influenced jump cuts, and the film seems to feature quite a few actual Hells Angels. In fact, Sonny Barger, the president of the Angels’ Oakland chapter, gets his own title card in the opening credits, even though he appears on camera for less than two seconds. Surely this title was properly earned, and not the result of any threats against studio people with switchblades. However, we’re talking about an era where filmmakers still hadn’t quite figured out how to properly choreograph a fight scene, so every scuffle still kinda looks like drunken acrobatics. And the death scenes are even worse. Here’s a short list of how people die in this movie: they’re awkwardly knocked down and punched once; their car is run off the road but otherwise totally unharmed; and their bike runs into a two by four, slowly tilts over, and catches on fire for no discernible reason. It’s a shame that the one thing that reads as hokey in a movie dedicated to portraying the reality of this violent lifestyle is, well, the violence.

Eventually Poet is made a “prospect” by Buddy, and the whole gang hits the road. One of the bikers and his woman get married at a Catholic Church in Nevada. There are more fights with people who don’t like them. In once scene a biker drives his bike up a real tall hill for awhile. One biker gets arrested on a murder beef, but the gang busts him loose less than a minute later, because stakes or tension is for squares, I guess. By far the most interesting part of this movie is watching the relationship between Poet and Shrill develop, and how that begins to threaten Buddy. These two are joined together by their discontent: they both want something outside of the ordinary from life, but are paralyzed by their self-destructive tendencies. This is especially true of Shrill, who isn’t happy unless she is causing unhappiness all around her, which leads her to play Poet and Buddy off of one another, until it all blows up in a powerful final confrontation that is unfortunately capped off by a truly stupid coda that never should’ve happened.

Hells Angels on Wheels was directed by a gentleman named Richard Rush. Though he wouldn’t be as prolific after the sixties, and hasn’t directed a feature film since 1994’s Color of Night (speaking of truly stupid codas that never should’ve happened), this film helped propel him to greater artistic heights: 1970’s Getting Straight was a critical darling and called the “best American film of the decade” by none other than Ingmar Bergman; 1974’s Freebie and the Bean was a box office smash and more or less invented the buddy cop movie; and 1980’s The Stunt Man earned him two Oscar nominations. Richard Rush has kinda been forgotten these days, but, I mean, François Truffaut called this guy his favorite American director. Have YOU ever been François Truffaut’s favorite anything? I doubt it, he’s been dead since 1984, genius.

Eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed that the cinematography on Hells Angels on Wheels was credited to one “Leslie Kovacs.” If you’re a hopeless dork like me, you probably whispered to yourself, “I bet that’s Lázló Kovacs.” Well, fellow hopeless dork, we were both right: this was one of Kovacs’s first American feature jobs, after shooting commercials and nature documentaries for much of the early sixties. He continued to collaborate with Rush throughout the seventies, as well as lensing classic films by the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Bob Rafelson, Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, and Norman Jewison. Shockingly, he never won an Oscar, but odds are if you paint a mental picture of American cinema in the seventies, you’re imagining an image shot by Lázló Kovacs.

That finally brings us to Poet, who was played by a young upstart named Jack Nicholson. Is it even necessary to point out that he’s the best actor in the film? Well, he is. The character is a bit underwritten, but he makes the most out of it. Nicholson can do more with a smile or a glance than other actors in the film attempt with an entire monologue. Best of all, he still hadn’t gone full on bug-eyed, jive talkin’, scenery chewin’, Lakers court side Jaaaaaaaack yet. There’s a vulnerable, wounded quality to his acting here that is incredibly compelling, I would argue that he perfected it in Five Easy Pieces, one of yours truly’s favorite films of all time, before moving on to the more ostentatious work that would net him 3 Oscars and turn him into a tabloid playboy.

Hells Angels on Wheels would help establish the counterculture motorcycle gang as a cinematic force to be reckoned with, at least on the drive-in circuit. More quick and dirty films of that ilk followed in its wake, such as The Wild Angels, Born Losers, and Hells Angels ’69, before one such film broke on through to the other side: an acid-soaked exploration that pitted the battle between the bikers and normal society as the struggle for the very soul of America in the Vietnam age. Oh, and they brought Kovacs and Nicholson along too. Obviously I’m talking about Otto Preminger’s Skidoo.

Nah, just kidding, I’m talking about Easy Rider. Released in 1969, the film proved to be the flashpoint for the most artistically fertile decade in the history of American cinema. And to think, it all may not have happened if it wasn’t for a little movie that’s mostly establishing shots of bikes being parked.

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#ANALOG SCUM #analogscum #VHS #vhsishappiness #bekindrewind #tapehead #tapeheads #bikers #hells angels #genre #exploitation #exploitationfilm #hellsangelsonwheels #1967 #jack nicholson #lazlo kovacs #richard rush #new american cinema

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timeless-hollywood-classics · 4 years

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Bennett was married five times and had three children.

Bennett's fourth marriage was to actor Gilbert Roland. They were married in 1941 and had two daughters, Lorinda "Lynda" (b. 1938) and Christina "Gyl" (1941). They divorced in 1946, with Bennett winning custody of their children. Later that year, Bennett married for the fifth and final time to US Air Force Colonel (later Brigadier General) John Theron Coulter. After her marriage, she concentrated her efforts on providing relief entertainment to US troops still stationed in Europe, winning military honors for her services. Bennett and Coulter remained married until her death in 1965.

#constance bennett #classic hollywood #golden age of hollywood #classic movie stars #old hollywood #1930s hollywood

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