#ray porter icons

[grqnticons]

please like if you use.

[leanuponmybar]

OK LONDON CAST ANNOUNCED SO I HAVE THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUGHTS

Butch Lesbian Greaseball?

AMAZING 100% CAN'T WAIT IM SCREAMING IM IN LOVE I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE HER SLAY

Return of Tassita? I'm excited. Before now, Tassita hasn't seen the light of day, only appearing in the 2017 Workshop before the 2018 rewrites. We'll see what this character looks and acts like. Hopefully, they'll have an actual personality but we'll see.

About the casting of a male identifying actor as Tassita, I'm not sure how I feel about it. The coaches have always been ladies. When Volta and Wrench were covered by guys, the coaches and Joule were the only girls in the show pre-2018. I bet that Benz (First Cast Tassita) and all of the other Tassita covers will definitely do an awesome job and totally slay on stage, but I don't know how to feel about the genderswapped!Tassita. This may be just me and my tism brain but idk. I wish all the Tassita's an amazing run and to break all of the legs once it opens! (ofc not literally)

A Rusty and Pearl of color? Amazing. It's awesome that we're back to having a black Rusty since the role was originated by a black actor in London. Ray Shell, the original Rusty, has said multiple times that he's very thankful for getting to lead a West End show as a black performer and I love that this brings Rusty to his roots. Similarly with Pearl. There have been first cast Pearls of Color and covers of color before but they've been a tragic rarity. Ofc the queen Reva Rice originating the role on Broadway is continuing to do an awesome job on the Bochum stage. I cannot wait for these two to step into the skates of these iconic characters!

Overall, I'm cautiously excited. In general, I feel like the show is mixing the 2018 changes and some of the changes introduced in the 2017 Workshop. As for the new characters, we'll see more about them closer to opening night.

Now, to speculate. I feel like characters like Orange Flash and Grey Wolf may be racers or new Nationals of some kind. It's not new to add new Nationals so those names sound more flashy while characters like Porter and Lumber may be additional freight. Seeing context clues, Lumber might be some kind of wood transportation car ( i dont know the official name for it)

Well, what do you think? Do you like these changes? Do you not? Do you like the cast?

[confield]

PSA

If you're into any of the following bands/artists: Autechre, Ryoji Ikeda, Pan Sonic, alva noto, Bernard Parmegiani, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, TODAY IS THE DAY, Peter Rehberg, Merzbow, Oval, Yasunao Tone, Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, Hecker, Unwound, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, John Cage, Muslimgauze, Jan Jelinek, Anthony Braxton, Farmers Manual, Daphne Oram, Mira Calix, Einstürzende Neubauten, Eric Dolphy, Karleinz Stockhausen, Maryanne Amacher, Edgar Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, Laurel Halo, Fennesz, General Magic, Gescom, Ramleh, Prurient, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Pauline Oliveros, William Basinski, Luc Ferrari, Matthew Shipp, City of Caterpillar, Kouhei Matsunaga, Sensational, Mike Ink, Coil, Nobukazu Takemura, Halim El-Dabh, Martin Tetrault, Tod Dockstader, Matana Roberts, Chicago Underground Quartet, Microstoria, Vladislav Delay, Sonny Sharrock, Beatrice Dillon, SND, Mark Fell, Mika Vainio, Robin Rimbaud, Darkthrone, Christoph de Babalon, Toshimaru Nakamura, Steve Roden, Lithops, Nisennenmondai, Tackhead, Aaron Dilloway, Henry Flynt, Foehn, Yamantaka Eye, Portraits of Past, Pg99, Maxwell Sterling, Slint, Big Black, Russell Haswell, Sébastien Roux, Loraine James, Surgeon, Terrence Dixon, Underground Resistance, Dopplereffekt, Plastikman, Wolfgang Voigt, Robert Hood, Cecil Taylor, Matmos, Kangding Ray, Hijokaidan, Babyfather, Team Doyobi, Paul Lansky, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Soul Oddity, Kid606, Hugh Le Caine, Actress, Klein, Sven-Åke Johansson, Porter Ricks, Luciano Berio, The Third Eye Foundation, Grischa Lichtenberger, Replikants, Genocide Organ, Joji Yuasa, The Jesus Lizard, African Head Charge, Drive Like Jehu, Peter Brotzmann, Sonic Youth, Jawbox, Chino Amobi, Luke Vibert, James Ferraro, Florian Hecker, Tim Hecker, Eyehategod, Gorgoroth, Basic Channel, Maurizio, Steve Reich, Mouse on Mars, Burial, The Future Sound of London, Dean Blunt, Susumu Yokota, Skream, Benga, Farben, Polvo, Keiji Haino, The Black Dog, LFO, The Bug, SOPHIE, Global Communication, B12, Jlin, Stereolab, Pole, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Juan Atkins, Wormrot, Oli XL, Napalm Death, Orchid, Bitch Magnet, Codeine, Microstoria, Moss Icon, Frank Bretschneider, Joey Beltram, Jeromes Dream, A Guy Called Gerald or DJ Manny

I am looking for a sugar baby to spoil with a $5000 weekly allowance. DM me if you are interested.

[lboogie1906]

Jonathan Moore (born April 21, 1969 - March 8, 2017) teacher, musician, entrepreneur, activist, and youth advocate, was born to Gwendolyn Jones and Jonny Moore in Seattle. He attended Morehouse College, where he formed the group Source of Labor with his brother Upendo “Negus 1” Tookas and DJ Kamikaze.

He started producing a series of community-based hip-hop shows and activities, the first of which, “African Echoes—A Hip-Hop Continuum,” premiered in 1992. Source of Labor played the Crocodile Café in Belltown, which brought Seattle’s ‘second generation’ of hip-hop downtown for the first time. He and his wife Erika “Kylea” White and Tookas—founded Jasiri Media Group, which Mickey Hess in the book Hip-Hop America: A Regional Guide.

He produced the all-age-friendly “Sure Shot Sundays” in 1999 at the Sit & Spin downtown to provide opportunities for young people to see, hear, and perform local hip-hop. It was there, that Ben “Macklemore” Haggerty made his live stage debut as a member of the group Elevated Elements.

When Seattle Mayor Paul Schell publicly blamed hip-hop for a 2000 shooting outside a Pioneer Square nightclub, he organized a peaceful rally at Westlake Park in response. Schell’s replacement, Greg Nickels, presented him with the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Hip-Hop in 2003. He teamed with fellow Seattle icon Vitamin D to grow the local “Big Tunes” producer/ beat competition into a traveling national event broadcast on BET. He began co-hosting “Sunday Night Sound Session” with DJ Hyphen on KUBE 93 FM in 2005. A lunch with Sub Pop Records Executive VP Megan Jasper led to experimental Seattle hip-hop duo Shabazz Palaces, signing with the label in 2010, which led to the signing of up-and-coming local MC Porter Ray, and the release of his debut album Watercolor.

His depth of service and contributions place him among the most significant cultural figures in Seattle’s hip-hop history. He is survived by his wife, Caitlin Brower Moore, and two sons. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[firststepexpeditions]

Experience the Inca Trail: Unveil Ancient Wonders with First Step

Embark on an unforgettable adventure with First Step Expeditions as you explore the legendary Inca Trail, one of the most iconic trekking routes in the world. This historic trail offers a unique blend of breathtaking natural beauty and rich cultural heritage, guiding you through the heart of the Andes to the awe-inspiring ruins of Machu Picchu.

The Inca Trail is not just a trek; it’s a journey through history. As you follow the ancient paths once trodden by the Incas, you’ll witness stunning landscapes, from lush cloud forests to snow-capped mountains. The trail is dotted with fascinating archaeological sites, each telling the story of the Inca civilization’s incredible engineering prowess and spiritual depth.

With First Step Expeditions, your Inca Trail experience is crafted to ensure maximum comfort and safety. Our expert guides are passionate about sharing the history, culture, and natural beauty of Peru. Whether you’re an experienced trekker or a first-time adventurer, we offer various packages to suit your needs, including the classic four-day trek and shorter, less strenuous options.

What sets First Step Expeditions apart is our commitment to sustainable tourism. We work closely with local communities to ensure that your adventure has a positive impact. From hiring local porters to using eco-friendly practices, we prioritize preserving the environment and supporting the people who call this incredible region home.

As you ascend the trail, you’ll pass through mystical cloud forests, cross ancient stone bridges, and climb steep mountain passes. The highlight of the journey is reaching the Sun Gate, where the first rays of dawn reveal the majestic citadel of Machu Picchu, an experience that will leave you breathless.

Booking your Inca Trail adventure with First Step Expeditions means more than just a trek. It’s an opportunity to immerse yourself in the vibrant culture and history of the Andes, to challenge yourself physically, and to create memories that will last a lifetime.

Join us on this extraordinary journey and discover why the Inca Trail is a must-do for adventurers around the globe. With First Step Expeditions, your dream of exploring one of the world’s most famous trails is within reach.

[freedombrewery]

British Beers: A Celebration of Heritage and Innovation

The Hallmarks of British Beer

British beers are renowned for their quality, diversity, and rich history. With a brewing tradition that spans centuries, British brewers have perfected the art of creating distinctive beers that cater to a wide range of tastes. From traditional ales to modern craft brews, British beers offer something for everyone.

Traditional British Beer Styles

Bitter: A classic British ale, bitters are characterized by their balanced flavor and moderate hop bitterness. They range from pale amber to dark brown and are typically low in carbonation.

Porter: Originating in London in the 18th century, porters are dark ales with a robust flavor profile, often featuring notes of chocolate, coffee, and caramel.

Stout: A variation of porter, stouts are known for their rich, dark color and strong flavors. The most famous stout, Guinness, has become a global icon.

Pale Ale: Pale ales are lighter in color and have a more pronounced hop flavor compared to bitters. They are often brewed with pale malt, giving them their distinctive golden hue.

The Craft Beer Revolution

In recent years, the British beer scene has been transformed by the craft beer revolution. Small, independent breweries have sprung up across the country, experimenting with new styles and ingredients to create unique and exciting beers. This movement has not only revitalized the industry but also introduced a new generation of beer drinkers to the joys of British beer.

Popular British Craft Beers

IPA (India Pale Ale): Originally brewed to withstand long sea voyages, IPAs are now a staple of the craft beer scene. British IPAs tend to be more balanced and less intensely hoppy than their American counterparts.

Session Ales: Designed for extended drinking sessions, session ales are lower in alcohol but full of flavor, making them perfect for social gatherings.

Sour Beers: While not traditionally British, sour beers have gained popularity in the craft beer community. These beers are intentionally tart and often feature fruit flavors.

Iconic British Breweries

Fuller's Brewery: Known for its traditional ales like London Pride, Fuller's has been a cornerstone of the British beer industry since the 19th century.

Samuel Smith's Brewery: With a history dating back to 1758, Samuel Smith's is celebrated for its organic and vegan-friendly beers, as well as its classic Yorkshire Stingo.

Beavertown Brewery: A modern craft brewery, Beavertown has made a name for itself with bold and innovative beers like Gamma Ray and Neck Oil.

The Role of CAMRA

The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has played a crucial role in preserving and promoting traditional British beer styles.

Founded in 1971, CAMRA advocates for the production and consumption of real ale, which is beer that is brewed from traditional ingredients and matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed. CAMRA's efforts have helped ensure that traditional British beer styles continue

[jumobear]

i joined sheezy! https://sheezy.art/jumo/ i made a few icons for my galleries <3

[chiseler]

The Mysterious Death of a Hollywood Director

This is the tale of a very famous Hollywood mogul and a not-so-famous movie director. In May of 1933 they embarked together on a hunting trip to Canada, but only one of them came back alive. It’s an unusual tale with an uncertain ending, and to the best of my knowledge it’s never been told before.

I. The Mogul

When we consider the factors that enabled the Hollywood studio system to work as well as it did during its peak years, circa 1920 to 1950, we begin with the moguls, those larger-than-life studio chieftains who were the true stars on their respective lots. They were tough, shrewd, vital, and hard working men. Most were Jewish, first- or second-generation immigrants from Europe or Russia; physically on the small side but nonetheless formidable and – no small thing – adaptable. Despite constant evolution in popular culture, technology, and political and economic conditions in their industry and the outside world, most of the moguls who made their way to the top during the silent era held onto their power and wielded it for decades. Their names are still familiar: Zukor, Goldwyn, Mayer, Jack Warner and his brothers, and a few more. And of course, Darryl F. Zanuck. In many ways Zanuck personified the common image of the Hollywood mogul. He was an energetic, cigar-chewing, polo mallet-swinging bantam of a man, largely self-educated, with a keen aptitude for screen storytelling and a well-honed sense of what the public wanted to see. Like Charlie Chaplin he was widely assumed to be Jewish, and also like Chaplin he was not, but in every other respect Zanuck was the very embodiment of the dynamic, supremely confident Hollywood showman.

In the mid-1920s he got a job as a screenwriter at Warner Brothers, at a time when that studio was still something of a podunk operation. The young man succeeded on a grand scale, and was head of production before he was 30 years old. Ironically, the classic Warners house style, i.e. clipped, topical, and earthy, often dark and sometimes grimly funny, as in such iconic films as The Public Enemy, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, and 42nd Street, was established not by Jack, Harry, Sam, or Albert Warner, but by Darryl Zanuck, who was the driving force behind those hits and many others from the crucial early talkie period. He played a key role in launching the gangster cycle and a new wave of sassy show biz musicals. At some point during 1932-33, however, Zanuck realized he would never rise above his status as Jack Warner’s right-hand man and run the studio, no matter how successful his projects proved to be, because of two insurmountable obstacles: 1) his name was not Warner, and 2) he was a Gentile. Therefore, in order to achieve complete autonomy, Zanuck concluded that he would have to start his own company.

In mid-April of 1933 he picked a public fight with Jack Warner over a staff salary issue, then abruptly resigned. Next, he turned his attention to setting up a company in partnership with veteran producer Joseph Schenck, who was able to raise sufficient funds to launch the new concern. And then, Zanuck invited several associates from Warner Brothers to accompany him on an extended hunting trip in Canada.

Going into the wilderness and killing wild game, a pastime many Americans still regard as a routine, unremarkable form of recreation, is also of course a conspicuous show of machismo. But in this realm, as with his legendary libido, Zanuck was in a class by himself. He had been an enthusiastic hunter most of his life, dating back to his boyhood in Nebraska. Once he became a big wheel at Warners in the late ’20s he took to organizing high-style duck-hunting expeditions: the young executive and his fellow sportsmen would travel to the appointed location in private railroad cars, staffed by uniformed servants. Heavy drinking on these occasions was not uncommon. (Inevitably, film buffs will recall The Ale & Quail Club from Preston Sturges’ classic comedy The Palm Beach Story, but DFZ and his pals were not cute old character actors, and their bullets were quite real.) Members of Zanuck’s studio entourage were given to understand that participation in these outings was de rigueur if they valued their positions, and expected desirable assignments in the future. Director Michael Curtiz, who had no fondness for hunting, remembered the trips with distaste, and recalled that on one occasion he was nearly shot by a casting director who had no idea how to properly handle a gun.

But ducks were just the beginning. In 1927 Zanuck took his wife Virginia on an African safari. In Kenya Darryl bagged a rhinoceros and posed for a photo with his wife, crouched beside the rhino’s carcass. Virginia, an erstwhile Mack Sennett bathing beauty and former leading lady to Buster Keaton, appears shaken. Her husband looks exhilarated. During this safari Zanuck also killed an elephant. He kept the animal’s four feet in his office on the Warners lot, and used them as ashtrays. If any animal lover dared to express dismay, the Hollywood sportsman would retort: “It was him or me, wasn’t it?” Zanuck made several forays to Canada with his coterie in this period, gunning for grizzly bears. Director William “Wild Bill” Wellman, who was more of an outdoorsman than Curtiz, once went along, but soon became irritated with Zanuck’s bullying. The two men got into a drunken fistfight the night before the hunting had even begun. In the course of the ensuing trip the hunting party was snowbound for three days; Zanuck sprained his ankle while trailing a grizzly; the horse carrying medical supplies vanished; and Wellman got food poisoning. “It was the damnedest trip I’ve ever seen,” the director said later, “but Zanuck loved it.”

Now that Zanuck had severed his ties with the Warner clan and was on the verge of a new professional adventure, a trip to Canada with a few trusted associates would be just the ticket. This time the destination would be a hunting ground on the banks of the Canoe River, a tributary of the Columbia River, 102 miles north of Revelstoke, British Columbia, a city about 400 miles east of Vancouver. There, in a remote scenic area far from any paved roads, telephones, or other niceties of modern life, the men could discuss Zanuck’s new production company and, presumably, their own potential roles in it. Present on the expedition were screenwriter Sam Engel, director Ray Enright, 42nd Street director Lloyd Bacon, producer (and former silent film comedian) Raymond Griffith, and director John G. Adolfi, best known at the time for his work with English actor George Arliss. Adolfi, who was around 50 years old and seemingly in good health, would not return.

II. The Director

Even dedicated film buffs may draw a blank when the name John Adolfi is mentioned. Although he directed more than eighty films over a twenty-year period beginning in 1913, most of those films are now lost. He worked in every genre, with top stars, and made a successful transition from silent cinema to talkies. He seems to have been a well-respected but self-effacing man, seldom profiled in the press. 

According to his tombstone Adolfi was born in New York City in 1881, but the exact date of his birth is one of several mysteries about his life. His father, Gustav Adolfi, was a popular stage comedian and singer who emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1879. Gustav performed primarily in New York and Philadelphia, and was known for such roles as Frosch the Jailer in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. But he was a troubled man, said to be a compulsive gambler, and after his wife Jennie died (possibly of scarlet fever) it appears his life fell apart. Gustav’s singing voice gave out, and then he died suddenly in Philadelphia in October 1890, leaving John and his siblings orphaned. (An obituary in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent reported that Gustav suffered a stroke, but family legend suggests he may have committed suicide.) After a difficult period John followed in his father’s footsteps and launched a stage career, and was soon working opposite such luminaries of the day as Ethel Barrymore and Dustin Farnum. Early in the new century the young actor wed Pennsylvania native Florence Crawford; the marriage would last until his death.

When the cinema was still in its infancy stage performers tended to regard movie work as slumming, but for whatever reason John Adolfi took the plunge. He made his debut before the cameras around 1907, probably at the Vitagraph Studio in Brooklyn. There he appeared as Tybalt in J. Stuart Blackton’s 1908 Romeo and Juliet , with Paul Panzer and Florence Lawrence in the title roles. He worked at the Edison Studio for director Edwin S. Porter, and at Biograph in a 1908 short called The Kentuckian which also featured two other stage veterans, D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett. Most of Adolfi’s work as a screen actor was for the Éclair Studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the first film capital. The bulk of this company’s output was destroyed in a vault fire, but a 1912 adaptation of Robin Hood in which Adolfi appeared survives. That same year he also appeared in a famous docu-drama, as we would call it, Saved from the Titanic. This ten-minute short premiered less than a month after the Titanic disaster, and featured actress Dorothy Gibson, who actually survived the voyage, re-enacting her experience while wearing the same clothes she wore in the lifeboat. (This film, unfortunately, is among the missing.) After appearing in dozens of movies Adolfi moved behind the camera.

Much of his early work as a director was for a Los Angeles-based studio called Majestic, where he made crime dramas, Westerns, and comedies, films with titles like Texas Bill’s Last Ride and The Stolen Radium. In 1914 the company had a new supervisor: D. W. Griffith, now the top director in the business, who had just departed Biograph. Adolfi was one of the few Majestic staff directors who kept his job under the new regime. A profile in the February 1915 issue of Photoplay describes him as “a tallish, good-looking man, well-knit and vigorous, dark-haired and determined; his mouth and chin suggest that their owner expects (and intends) to have his own way unless he is convinced that the other fellow’s is better.” It was also reported that Adolfi had developed something of a following as an actor, but that he dropped out of the public eye when he became a director. Presumably, that’s what he wanted.

Adolfi left Majestic after three years, worked at Fox Films for a time as a staff director, then freelanced. During the remainder of the silent era he guided some of the screen’s legendary leading ladies: Annette Kellerman (Queen of the Sea, 1918), Marion Davies (The Burden of Proof, 1918), Mae Marsh (The Little ‘Fraid Lady, 1920), Betty Blythe (The Darling of the Rich, 1922), and Clara Bow (The Scarlet West, 1925). Not one of these films survives. A profile published in the New York World-Telegram during his stint at Fox reported that Adolfi was well-liked by his employees. He was “reticent when the conversation turned toward himself, but frank and outspoken when it concerned his work. Mr. Adolfi is not only a director who is skilled in the technique of his craft; he is also a deep student of human nature.” Asked how he felt about the cinema’s potential, he replied, with unconscious irony, “it is bound to live forever.”

III. The Talkies

In spring of 1927 Adolfi was offered a job at Warner Brothers. His debut feature for the studio What Happened to Father? (now lost) was a success, or enough of one anyway to secure him a professional foothold, and he worked primarily at WB thereafter. Thus he was fortuitously well-positioned for the talkie revolution, for although talking pictures were not invented at the studio it was Sam Warner and his brothers, more than anyone else, who sold an initially skeptical public on the new medium. After Adolfi had proven himself with three talkie features Darryl Zanuck handed him an expensive, prestige assignment, a lavish all-star revue entitled The Show of Shows which featured every Warners star from John Barrymore to Rin-Tin-Tin.

Other important assignments followed. In March of 1930 a crime melodrama called Penny Arcade opened on Broadway. It was not a success, but when Al Jolson saw it he sensed that the story had screen potential. He purchased the film rights at a bargain rate and then re-sold the property to his home studio, Warner Brothers. Adolfi was chosen to direct, but was doubtless surprised to learn that Jolson had insisted that two of the actors from the Broadway production repeat their performances before the cameras. One of the pair, Joan Blondell, had already appeared in three Vitaphone shorts to good effect, but the other, James Cagney, had never acted in a movie. Any doubts about Jolson’s instincts were quickly dispelled. Rushes of the first scenes featuring the newcomers so impressed studio brass that both were signed to five-year contracts. While Adolfi can’t be credited with discovering the duo, the film itself, re-christened Sinners’ Holiday,remains his strongest surviving claim to fame: he guided Jimmy Cagney’s screen debut.

At this point the director formed a professional relationship that would shape the rest of his career. George Arliss was a veteran stage actor who went into the movies and unexpectedly became a top box office draw. He was, frankly, an unlikely candidate for screen stardom. Already past sixty when talkies arrived, Arliss was a short, dignified man who resembled a benevolent gargoyle. But he was also a journeyman actor, a seasoned professional who knew how to command attention with a sudden sharp word or a raised eyebrow. Like Helen Hayes he was valued in Hollywood as a performer of unblemished reputation who lent the raffish film industry a touch of Class, in every sense of the word.

In 1929 Arliss appeared in a talkie version of Disraeli, a role he had played many times on stage, and became the first Englishman to take home an Academy Award for Best Actor. Thereafter he was known for stately portrayals of History’s Great Men, such as Voltaire and Alexander Hamilton, as well as fictional kings, cardinals, and other official personages. The old gentleman formed a close alliance with Darryl Zanuck, whom he admired, and was in turn granted privileges highly unusual for any actor at the time. Arliss had final approval of his scripts and authority over casting. He was also granted the right to rehearse his selected actors for two weeks before filming began. All that was left for the film’s director to do, it would seem, would be to faithfully record what his star wanted. Not many directors would accept this arrangement, but John Adolfi, who according to Photoplay “was determined to have his own way unless he is convinced that the other fellow’s is better,” clearly had no problem with it. His first film with Arliss was The Millionaire, released in May 1931; and in the two years that followed Adolfi directed eight more features, six of which were Arliss vehicles. He had found his niche in Hollywood.

One of Adolfi’s last jobs sans Arliss was a B-picture called Central Park, which reunited the director with Joan Blondell. It’s a snappy, topical, crazy quilt of a movie that packs a lot of incident into a 58-minute running time. Central Park was something of a sleeper that earned its director positive critical notices, and must have afforded him a lively holiday from those polite period pieces for the exacting Mr. Arliss.

In spring of 1933, after completing work on the Arliss vehicle Voltaire, Adolfi accompanied Darryl Zanuck and his entourage to British Columbia to hunt bears. Arliss intended to follow Zanuck to his new company, while Adolfi in turn surely expected to follow the star and continue their collaboration. Things didn’t work out that way.

IV. The Hunting Trip

It’s unclear how long the men were hunting before tragedy struck. On Sunday, May 14th, newspapers reported that film director John G. Adolfi had died the previous week – either on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on which paper one consults – at a hunting camp near the Canoe River. All accounts give the cause of death as a cerebral hemorrhage. According to the New York Herald-Tribune the news was conveyed in a long-distance phone call from Darryl Zanuck to screenwriter Lucien Hubbard in Los Angeles. Hubbard subsequently informed the press. The N.Y. Times reported that the entire hunting party (Zanuck, Engel, Enright, Bacon, and Griffith) accompanied Adolfi’s remains in a motorboat down the Columbia River to Revelstoke. From there the body was sent to Vancouver, B.C., where it was cremated. Write-ups of Adolfi’s career were brief, and tended to emphasize his work with George Arliss, though his recent success Central Park was widely noted. John’s widow Florence was mentioned in the Philadelphia City News obituary but otherwise seems to have been ignored; the couple had no children. 

V. The Aftermath

Darryl F. Zanuck went on to found Twentieth Century Pictures, a name suggested by his hunting companion Sam Engel. One of the company’s biggest hits in its first year of operation was The House of Rothschild, starring George Arliss and directed by Alfred Werker. The venerable actor returned to England not long afterwards and retired from filmmaking in 1937. In his second book of memoirs, published three years later, Arliss devotes several pages of warm praise to Zanuck, but refers only fleetingly to the man who directed seven of his films, John Adolfi, and misspells his name.

In 1935 Zanuck merged his Twentieth Century Pictures with Fox Films, and created one of the most successful companies in Hollywood history. He would go on to produce many award-winning classics, including The Grapes of Wrath, Laura, and All About Eve. Zanuck’s trusted associates at Twentieth-Century Fox in the company’s best years included Sam Engel, Raymond Griffith, and Lloyd Bacon, all survivors of the Revelstoke trip. Personal difficulties and vast changes in the film industry began to affect Zanuck’s career in the 1950s. He left the U.S. for Europe but continued to make films, and sporadically managed to exercise control over the company he founded. He died in 1979.

In 1984 a onetime screenwriter and film critic named Leonard Mosley, who had known Zanuck slightly, published a biography entitled Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Last Tycoon. Aside from his movie reviews most of Mosley’s published work concerned military matters, specifically pertaining to the Second War World. His Zanuck bio reveals a grasp of film history that is shaky at times, for the book has a number of obvious errors. Nevertheless, it was written with the cooperation of Darryl’s son Richard, his widow Virginia, and many of the mogul’s close associates, so whatever its errors in chronology or studio data the anecdotes concerning Zanuck’s personal and professional activities are unquestionably well-sourced. 

When Mosley’s narrative reaches May 1933, the point when Zanuck is on the verge of founding his new company, we’re told that he and several associates decided to go on a hunting trip to Alaska. The location is not correct, but chronologically – and in one other, unmistakable respect – there can be no doubt that this refers to the Revelstoke trip. From Mosley’s book:

“There is a mystery about this trip, and no perusal of Zanuck’s papers or those of his former associates seems to elucidate it,” he writes. “Something happened that changed his whole attitude towards hunting. All that can be gathered from the thin stories that are still gossiped around was that the hunting party went on the track of a polar bear somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness [sic], and when the vital moment came it was Zanuck who stepped out to shoot down the charging, furious animal. His bullet, it is said, found its mark all right, but it did not kill. The polar bear came on, and Zanuck stood his ground, pumping away with his rifle. Only this time it was not ‘him or me,’ but ‘him’ and someone else. The wounded and enraged bear, still alive and still charging, swerved around Zanuck and swiped with his great paw at one of the men standing behind him – and only after it had killed this other man did it fall at last into the snow, and die itself. That’s the story, and no one seems to be able to confirm it nor remember the name of the man who died. The only certain thing is that when Zanuck came back, he announced to Virginia that he had given up hunting. And he never went out and shot a wild animal again, not even a jackrabbit for his supper.”

VI. The Coda

Was John Adolfi killed by a bear? It certainly seems possible, but if so, why didn’t the men in the hunting party simply report the truth? Even if their boss was indirectly responsible, having fired the shots that caused the bear to charge, he couldn’t be blamed for the actions of a dying animal. But it’s also possible the event unfolded like a recent tragedy on the Montana-Idaho border. There, in September 2011, two men named Ty Bell and Steve Stevenson were on a hunting trip. Bell shot what he believed was a black bear. When the bear, a grizzly, attacked Stevenson, Bell fired again – and killed both the bear and his friend.

That seems to be the more likely scenario. If Zanuck fired at the wounded bear, in an attempt to save Adolfi, and killed both bear and man instead, it would perhaps explain a hastily contrived false story. It would most definitely explain the prompt cremation of Adolfi’s body in Vancouver. Back in Hollywood Joe Schenck was busy raising money, and lots of it, to launch Zanuck’s new company. Any unpleasant information about the new company’s chief – certainly anything suggestive of manslaughter – could jeopardize the deal. A man hit with a cerebral hemorrhage in the prime of life is a tragedy of natural causes, but a man sprayed with bullets in a shooting, accidental or not, is something else again. That goes double if alcohol was involved, as it reportedly was on Zanuck’s earlier hunting trips.

Of course, it’s also possible that Adolfi did indeed suffer a cerebral hemorrhage. Like his father.

John G. Adolfi is a Hollywood ghost. Most of his works are lost, and his name is forgotten. (Even George Arliss couldn’t be bothered to spell it correctly.) Every now and then TCM will program one of the Arliss vehicles, or Sinners’ Holiday. Not long ago they showed Adolfi’s fascinating B-picture Central Park, that slam-bang souvenir of the early Depression years in which several plot strands are deftly inter-twined. One of the subplots involves a mentally ill man, a former zoo-keeper who escapes from an asylum and returns to the place where he used to work, the Central Park Zoo. He has a score to settle with an old nemesis, an ex-colleague who tends the big cats. As the story approaches its climax, the escaped lunatic deliberately drags his enemy into the cage of a dangerous lion and leaves him there. In the subsequent, harrowing scene, difficult to watch, the lion attacks and practically kills the poor bastard.

by William Charles Morrow

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My sources for this article, in addition to the Mosley biography cited in the text, include Stephen M. Silverman’s The Fox That Got Away: The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at Twentieth-Century Fox (1988), and Marlys J. Harris’s The Zanucks of Hollywood: The Dark Legacy of an American Dynasty (1989). For material on John Adolfi I made extensive use of the files of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Special thanks to James Bigwood for his prodigious research on the Adolfi family genealogy, and to Mary Maler, John Adolfi’s great-niece, for information she provided on her family.

[laufire]

Various Supernatural icons (55 in total) from Dabb’s era (season 13, part 3 of 3).

Do not edit them or claim as your own. Like/reblog if you use them or save them. Credit is appreciated. More on my icons page.

[13x12. Castiel calmly sitting inside a cell in Hell, seen through the barriers.]

[13x12. Close-up to Castiel’s face through the barriers, as he taunts Lucifer.]

[13x12. Rowena in the bunker, with a drink in her hand and a mischiveous expression.]

[13x12. Rowena biting her lip, giddy.] 

[13x12. Close-up to Rowena. She’s sitting in the back of the car, amused, looking at the Winchesters from above her sunglasses.] 

[13x12. Castiel, out of his cell, smitting a demon.] 

[13x12. Rowena with a condescending expression.]  

[13x12. Close-up to the moment Castiel stabs Lucifer in the gut, making his eyes turn red.] 

[13x12. Rowena with a forebound expression, talking with the witches she secretely used to get a book from the Winchesters.]

[13x12. Rowena inside a pentagram, breaking the chains that bound her magic. They appear as purple energy around her, and she’s surrounded by lit candles.]

[13x12. Close-up to Rowena’s spell. She is surrounded by purple light, with her mouth open in awe and pain and blood running down her eyes.]

[13x12. Close-up to Rowena’s awed expression after the spell is over. The purple light and the blood are gone.]

[13x12. Rowena after the spell, looking at the camera with bright blue eyes.]

[13x13. Anael allowing Lucifer to make a small cut in her neck so he can take just a little bit of grace, in an intimate moment.]

[13x13. Close-up to Anael outside the motel’s door, with her red hair framing her face, looking down.]

[13x14. Close-up to Jack in the Apocalypse, smiling and rising his hand to say “Hello”.]

[13x14. Jack smiling, using his hands to form shapes in the shadows to entertain some children.]

[13x14. Jack using his powers to defend the humans against the angels of apocalypse world. He has his ahnd raised and both it and his eyes shine gold.]

[13x17. Yokoth, the ancient god possessing Sandy Porter, a young blonde woman, with eyes shining purple.]

[13x17. Dean on the table about to be offered as a host for Yokoth’s made, looking at one of its tentacles.]

[13x18. Anael, in Heaven, appearing to be annoyed.]

[13x18. Close-up to a wounded Gabriel, with his eyes shining blue with grace.]

[13x18. Anael in a white couch in Heaven, annoyed, with her legs crossed.]

[13x18. Close-up to Anael in that moment, with a deadpan expression.]

[13x19. Rowena touching a portrait of a young Crowley, her Fergus Macleod.]

[13x19. Close-up to Rowena drinking a martini, with her eyes shining blue with magic.]

[13x19. Castiel, bored, sitting on the throne while he waits in Heaven.]

[13x19. Rowena with a huge grin and her eyes shining purple with power.]

[13x19. Rowena, shocked, stopping the bullet Sam shot at her with magic.]

[13x19. Rowena looking down, saddened.]

[13x19. Rowena raising a knife as a threat.]

[13x19. Rowena throwing all of her power against Billie.]

[13x19. Billie withstanding the purple rays of Rowena’s power without effort.]

[13x19. Billie putting a hand on Rowena’s chin coldly conforting her as she cries.]

[13x19. Close-up to Billie’s calm but understanding expression.]

[13x19. Rowena and Billie on the floor, close to each other, turning when Dean irrupts in the room.]

[13x19. Rowena sitting on the ground with a drink, disconsolate.]

[13x20. Jack covering Mary with the shadow of his wings during an attack, protecting her.]

[13x20. Jack with Mary unconscious in his arms after the attack.]

[13x21. Mary smiling, in the bunker, wearing a plaid shirt.]

[13x21. Castiel making a quote-unquote gesture.]

[13x21. Rowena with her head tilted seductively.]

[13x21. Rowena and Gabriel standing side by side, a little disbehelved after making out.]

[13x21. Close-up to Rowena’s grimace.]

[13x21. Rowena, with a white shirt, looking down in concentration.]

[13x21. Castiel and Gabriel walking side by side in the woods of Apocalypse World.]

[13x21. Close-up to Rowena’s enraged scoul while she looks at Lucifer.]

[13x21. Rowena stopping herself before leaving after Lucifer scapes through the portal, annoyed ath the fact that she can’t do it and save herself.]

[13x21. Sam, returning when everyone thought him dead, distraught because it was Lucifer who saved him to get access to Jack.]

[13x21. Jack’s wonder when he sees Sam alive, with Castiel shocked behind him.]

[13x22. Castiel stabbing his apocalypse world alternate self to death.]

[13x22. Sam rising his glass to Rowena, smiling.]

[13x22. Rowena rising her glass and smiling back.]

[13x23. Jack imitating the gesture of using a lightsabler, talking to Lucifer about Star Wars.]

[13x23. Apocalypse!Michael with blood running down his eyes as his vessel collapse, looking at Dean with a calculating expression when he offers himself as vessel so Michael can kill Lucifer.]

[nelson-riddle-me-this]

3, 6 and 8!

3. Put your playlist on shuffle and show the first 10 songs. No cheating.

I shuffled my laptop last time, so I’ll shuffle my desktop this time.

- “Piano Bar y coro infantil” by Alberto Iglesias, from his score to Dolor y Gloria (2019). In 2019 I made a point of getting all the film soundtracks that were shortlisted for best original score at the Oscars that year, and this was one of them.

- “Cabinessence (Track Only)” by The Beach Boys, from the compilation Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys (1993). I’m not familiar with whatever song this is a backing track for, it sounds cute and the banjo gives me Animal Crossing vibes. I love getting to hear backing tracks by themselves - makes it easier to analyze the arrangement.

- "Words” by the band Missing Persons, from a compilation entitled 80s New Wave. Never heard this song before. They really love constant 8th bass/accompaniment rhythms in 80s pop/rock, don’t they?

- “Christmas Caught Me Crying” by Jamie Cullum, off his new album The Pianoman At Christmas (2020). I love Jamie Cullum and I was looking forward to this album, so I don’t know why I only started listening to it after Christmas. Definitely putting it in the rotation at the start of the 2021 holiday season.

- “Sgt. Pepper Shoelaces” by Randy Newman, from his score to Marriage Story (2019). Okay but this follows the last track so well. They’re both intimate ‘catch you lettin’ a few tears spill out’ piano pieces. This was another album I got as part of my 2019 Oscar shortlist quest as mentioned at the beginning of this shuffle.

- “Handel: The Messiah - Hallelujah Chorus” performed by the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, off some classical sampler. I’m not big into the baroque and classical eras, or church music in general. You’ve heard this piece, and this recording is fine but there’s probably better out there.

- “Henry Eyes the Girl” by John Barry, from his score to Deadfall (1968). This is from some hard-to-find expanded edition and I can’t find it posted on YouTube, so here’s a ‘suite’ of music from the film. One of Barry’s hidden gems - complete with a dramatic title song sung by Shirley Bassey.

- “Ev’rytime” sung by Sue Raney, with Ray Anthony and his orchestra. I like Sue Raney as a 50s-60s traditional pop singer. Considering she was only about 17 when she cut this, it goes to show she was a fundamentally capable singer. That being said, this song and the arrangement are just kinda dull. Her 1957 album with Nelson Riddle When Your Lover Has Gone is a far better showcase of her singing, and her 1967 album New and Now! is a more vocally mature offering if her early breathiness bothers you.

- “Oddjob’s Pressing Engagement” by John Barry, from his score to the James Bond movie Goldfinger (1964). One of the most fun cues from an iconic score, ‘ya got an on-the-move playing of the title song with some great ‘ding-ging ga-ding ging ga-ding’ing cymbal, some suspense/danger, a lil bitta sax. Fun cue.

- “Don’t Fence Me In” sung by Ella Fitzgerald off Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook (1956). I think this was the first vocal album I ever bought for myself, as such every song on it is special to me. This one’s a fun western-themed novelty song by the always witty and tuneful Cole Porter.

6. Is there a song that you really liked as a child and don't like it as much now but would still get up and dance to it?

Maybe “Hey Ya”.

8. What is your favorite album cover art?

Here are some faves. Some I like because they’re a great match of imagery to the music contained in them, some because of interesting graphic design, use of color, good drawings, some are conceptually fun or witty. Here are 16 album covers I really like:

[blackkudos]

Willie Mays

Willie Howard Mays Jr. (born May 6, 1931), nicknamed "The Say Hey Kid", is an American former professional baseball center fielder, who spent almost all of his 22-season Major League Baseball (MLB) career playing for the New York/San Francisco Giants, before finishing with the New York Mets. He is regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of all time and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979.

Mays won two National League (NL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards, ended his career with 660 home runs—third at the time of his retirement and currently fifth all-time—and won a record-tying 12 Gold Glove awards beginning in 1957, when the award was introduced.

Mays shares the record of most All-Star Games played with 24, with Hank Aaron and Stan Musial. In appreciation of his All-Star record, Ted Williams said "They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays."

Mays' career statistics and his longevity in the pre-performance-enhancing drugs era have drawn speculation that he may be the finest five-tool player ever, and many surveys and expert analyses, which have examined Mays' relative performance, have led to a growing opinion that Mays was possibly the greatest all-around offensive baseball player of all time. In 1999, Mays placed second on The Sporting News's "List of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players", making him the highest-ranking living player. Later that year, he was also elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Mays is one of five National League players to have had eight consecutive 100-RBI seasons, along with Mel Ott, Sammy Sosa, Chipper Jones, and Albert Pujols. Mays hit over 50 home runs in 1955 and 1965, representing the longest time span between 50-plus home run seasons for any player in Major League Baseball history. His final Major League Baseball appearance came on October 16 during Game 3 of the 1973 World Series.

Early life

Mays was born in 1931 in Westfield, Alabama, a former primarily black company town near Fairfield. His father, Cat Mays, was a talented baseball player with the Negro team for the local iron plant. His mother, Annie Satterwhite, was a gifted basketball and track star in high school. His parents never married and separated when Mays was three. Mays was raised by his father growing up. His father worked as a railway porter when Mays was born, but he later got a job at the steel mills in Westfield so he could be closer to home. When two girls in Mays's neighborhood were orphaned, his father took them in. Sarah and Ernestine helped raise young Willie, who always saw these two as his aunts. His father exposed him to baseball at an early age, playing catch with his son by the time Willie was five. At age 10, Mays was allowed to sit on the bench of his father's games in the Birmingham Industrial League, which Mays remembered as attracting six thousand fans per game at times.

Mays played multiple sports at Fairfield Industrial High School, averaging a then-record 17 points a game in basketball and more than 40 yards a punt in football, while also playing quarterback. Since he started playing professional baseball while still in high school, he quit playing high school sports when he was 16. Mays graduated from Fairfield in 1950.

Professional baseball

Negro leagues

Mays' professional baseball career began in 1947, while he was still in high school; he played briefly with the Chattanooga Choo-Choos in Tennessee during the summer. Later that year, Mays joined the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. He had first caught the eye of Barons' manager Piper Davis in tenth grade, when Davis had Mays try out for the team. Davis encouraged Mays to work on hitting the curveball, coached him periodically for a couple years, and gave Mays a chance to play for the Barons starting in 1947, when Mays was just 16. When E. T. Oliver, principal at Mays's high school, threatened to suspend Mays for playing professional ball, Davis and Mays's father convinced him that Mays would still be able to concentrate on his studies. Mays helped Birmingham win the pennant and advance to the 1948 Negro League World Series, which they lost 4-1 to the Homestead Grays. Mays hit a respectable .262 for the season, but it was also his excellent fielding and baserunning that made him a standout.

Over the next several years, a number of major league baseball franchises sent scouts to watch him play. The first was the Boston Braves. The scout who discovered him, Bud Maughn, had been following him for over a year and referred him to the Braves, who then packaged a deal that called for $7,500 down and $7,500 in 30 days. They also planned to give Mays $6,000. The obstacle in the deal was that Tom Hayes, owner of the Birmingham Black Barons, wanted to keep Mays for the balance of the season. Had the team been able to act more quickly, the Braves franchise might have had both Mays and Hank Aaron in their outfield from 1954 to 1973. The Brooklyn Dodgers also scouted him and wanted Ray Blades to negotiate a deal, but they were too late. The New York Giants had already signed Mays for $4,000 and assigned him to their Class-B affiliate in Trenton, New Jersey.

Minor leagues

According to Mays, Eddie Montague had been sent to Birmingham to scout Alonzo Perry as a potential first baseman for the Sioux City Soos of the Class-A Western League, but Montague became interested in Mays instead after watching a doubleheader. Due to a scandal in Sioux City concerning a Native American's burial in a whites-only cemetery at the time, Sioux City decided not to take Mays, and he was assigned to the Trenton Giants of the Interstate League instead.

After Mays batted .353 in Trenton, he began the 1951 season with the class AAA Minneapolis Millers of the American Association. During his short time span in Minneapolis, Mays played with two other future Hall of Famers: Hoyt Wilhelm and Ray Dandridge. Batting .477 in 35 games and playing excellent defense, Mays was called up to the Giants on May 24, 1951. Mays was at a movie theater in Sioux City, Iowa, when he found out he was being called up. A message flashed up on the screen that said: "WILLIE MAYS CALL YOUR HOTEL." He appeared in his first major league game the next day in Philadelphia. Mays moved to Harlem, New York, where his mentor was a New York State Boxing Commission official and former Harlem Rens basketball legend "Strangler" Frank Forbes.

Major leaguesNew York Giants (1951–1957)

Mays began his major league career on a sour note, with no hits in his first 12 at bats. On his 13th at-bat, however, he hit a towering home-run up and over the left field roof of the Polo Grounds off future Hall of Famer Warren Spahn. Spahn later joked, "I'll never forgive myself. We might have gotten rid of Willie forever if I'd only struck him out." Mays' batting average improved steadily throughout the rest of the season. Although his .274 average, 68 RBI and 20 homers (in 121 games) were among the lowest of his career, he still won the 1951 Rookie of the Year Award. During the Giants' comeback in August and September 1951 to tie the Dodgers in the pennant race, Mays' fielding and strong throwing arm were instrumental to several important Giants victories. Mays was in the on-deck circle when Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard 'Round the World against Ralph Branca and the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the three-game playoff 2-1 after the teams were tied at the end of the regular season.

The Giants went on to meet the New York Yankees in the 1951 World Series. In Game 1, Mays, Hank Thompson and Hall of Famer Monte Irvin comprised the first all-African-American outfield in major league history four years after the color line was broken. Mays hit poorly while the Giants lost the series 4–2. The six-game set was the only time that Mays and retiring Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio (Mays's boyhood hero) would compete against each other.

U.S. Army (1952–53)

The United States Army drafted Mays in 1952 during the Korean War (1950–53) and he subsequently missed most of that season and all of the 1953 season. Mays spent much of his time in the Army playing baseball at Fort Eustis, Virginia. It was at Fort Eustis that Mays learned the basket catch from a fellow Fort Eustis outfielder, Al Fortunato. Mays missed about 266 games due to military service.

1954-57

In 1954, Mays returned to the Giants and hit for a league-leading .345 batting average while slugging 41 home runs en route to his only World Series championship. Mays won the National League Most Valuable Player Award and the Hickok Belt as top professional athlete of the year. He also became the first player in history to hit 30 home runs before the All-Star Game and was selected as an All-Star for the first of 19 consecutive seasons (20 total). Mays had 38 through July 28, but around that time, manager Leo Durocher asked him to stop swinging for home runs, explaining that the team wanted him to reach base more so run producers like Monte Irvin, Dusty Rhodes, or Hank Thompson could try to drive him home. Mays only hit five home runs after July 8 but upped his batting average from .326 to .345 to win the batting title, becoming the first Giant to lead the league in average since Bill Terry hit .401 in 1930. The Giants won the National League pennant and the 1954 World Series, sweeping the Cleveland Indians in four games. The 1954 series is perhaps best remembered for "The Catch", an over-the-shoulder running grab by Mays in deep center field of the Polo Grounds of a long drive off the bat of Vic Wertz during the eighth inning of Game 1. Considered the iconic image of Mays' playing career and one of baseball's most memorable fielding plays, the catch prevented two Indian runners from scoring, preserving a tie game. Mays said he realized as he ran that he was going to have to make a running catch, which is why he did not turn to look at it until the ball was almost at the wall. The Giants won the game in the 10th inning on a three-run home run by Dusty Rhodes, with Mays scoring the winning run. The 1954 World Series was the team's last championship while based in New York. The next time the franchise won was 56 years later when the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in 2010.

Mays went on to perform at a high level each of the last three years the Giants were in New York. In the middle of May, 1955, Durocher asked him to try for more home runs. Mays led the league with 51. In 1956, he hit 36 homers and stole 40 bases, being only the second player, and first National League player, to join the "30–30 club". In 1957, the first season the Gold Glove award was presented, he won the first of 12 consecutive Gold Glove Awards. At the same time, Mays continued to finish in the National League's top-five in a variety of offensive categories. Mays, Roberto Clemente (also with 12), Al Kaline, Andruw Jones, Ken Griffey, Jr. and Ichiro Suzuki are the only outfielders to have ten or more career Gold Gloves. In 1957, Mays became the fourth player in major league history to join the 20–20–20 club (2B, 3B, HR), something no player had accomplished since 1941. Mays also stole 38 bases that year, making him the second player in baseball history (after Frank Schulte in 1911) to reach 20 in each of those four categories (doubles, triples, homers, steals) in the same season.

San Francisco Giants (1958–1972)

After the 1957 season, the Giants franchise relocated to San Francisco, California. Mays bought two homes in San Francisco, then lived in nearby Atherton. Manager Bill Rigney wanted him to challenge Babe Ruth's single-season home run record that year and did not play Mays much in spring training in hopes of using his best hitter every day in 1958. As he had in 1954, Mays vied for the National League batting title in 1958 until the final game of the season. Moved to the leadoff slot the last day to increase his at bats, Mays collected three hits in the game to finish with a career-high .347, but Philadelphia Phillies' Richie Ashburn won the title with a .350 batting average. Mays did manage to share the inaugural NL Player of the Month award with Stan Musial in May (no such award was given out in April until 1969), batting .405 with 12 HR and 29 RBI; he won a second such award in September (.434, 4 HR, 18 RBIs). He played all but two games for the Giants, but his 29 home runs were his lowest total since returning from the military.

Owner Horace Stoneham made Mays the highest-paid player in baseball with a $75,000 contract for 1959; Mays would be the highest-paid player through the 1972 season, with the exceptions of 1962 (when he and Mickey Mantle tied at $90,000) and 1966 (when Sandy Koufax received more in his final season). Mays had his first serious injury in 1959, a collision with Sammy White in spring training that resulted in 35 stitches in his leg and two weeks of exhibition ball missed; however, he was ready for the start of the season. During a series against the Reds in August, Mays also broke a finger but kept it a secret from other teams in order to keep opposing pitchers from throwing at it. In 1959, the Giants led by two games with only eight games to play, but won just two of their remaining games and finished fourth, as their pitching staff collapsed due to overwork of their top hurlers. The Dodgers won the pennant following a playoff with the Milwaukee Braves. As he did in New York, Mays would "play around" with kids playing sandlot ball in San Francisco. On three occasions in 1959 or 1960, he visited Julius Kahn Playground, five blocks from where he lived, including one time Giant players Jim Davenport and Tom Haller.

Alvin Dark was hired to manage the Giants before the start of the 1961 season and named Mays team captain. The improving Giants finished 1961 in third place and won 85 games, more than any of the previous six campaigns. Mays had one of his best games on April 30, 1961, hitting four home runs and driving in eight runs in a 14–4 win against the Milwaukee Braves at County Stadium. Mays went 4-for-5 at the plate and was on deck for a chance to hit a record fifth home run when the Giants' half of the ninth inning ended. Mays is the only Major Leaguer to have both three triples in a game and four home runs in a game. According to Mays, the four-homer game came after a night in which he got sick eating spareribs; Mays was not even sure he would play the next day until batting practice.

Mays led the team in eight offensive categories in 1962. He hit a game-winning home run in the eighth inning against Turk Farrell of the Houston Colt .45's in the Giants' final regularly-scheduled game of the year September 30, forcing the team into a tie for first place with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Giants went on to win a three-game playoff series against the Dodgers, advancing to play in the World Series. The Giants lost to the Yankees in seven games, and Mays batted .250 with two extra-base hits. It was his last World Series appearance as a member of the Giants.

Before the 1963 season, Mays signed a contract worth a record-setting $105,000 per season (equivalent to $876,864 in 2019) in the same offseason during which Mickey Mantle signed a deal for what would have been a record-tying $100,000 per season.

In the 1963 and 1964 seasons Mays batted in over 100 runs and hit 85 total home runs. On July 2, 1963, Mays played in a game when future Hall of Fame members Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal each threw 15 scoreless innings. In the bottom of the 16th inning, Mays hit a home run off Spahn for a 1–0 Giants victory. He won his third NL Player of the Month Award in August (.387, 8 HR, 27 RBI). Normally the third hitter in the lineup, Mays was moved to fourth in the lineup in 1964 before returning to third in subsequent years. Mays took part in another long game May 31, 1964, when, after playing all nine innings of the first Game of a doubleheader against the New York Mets, he played all 23 innings of the Giants' 8-6 victory in Game 2. He was moved to shortstop for three innings of the game and grew so tired over the course of it that he used a 31-ounce bat (four ounces smaller than his standard) for his final at bat, in the 23rd inning.

A torn shoulder muscle sustained in a game against Atlanta impaired Mays's ability to throw in 1965. He compensated for this by keeping the injury a secret from opposing players, making two or three practice throws before games to discourage players from running on him. Mays won his second MVP award in 1965 behind a career-high 52 home runs. On August 22, 1965, Mays and Sandy Koufax acted as peacemakers during a 14-minute brawl between the Giants and Dodgers after San Francisco pitcher Juan Marichal had bloodied Dodgers catcher John Roseboro with a bat. Mays grabbed Roseboro by the waist and helped him off the field, then tackled Lou Johnson to keep him from attacking an umpire. Johnson kicked him in the head and nearly knocked him out. After the brawl, Mays hit a game-winning three-run home run against the Koufax, but he did not finish the game, feeling dizzy after the home run. Mays also won his fourth and final NL Player of the Month award in August (.363, 17 HR, 29 RBI), while setting the NL record for most home runs in the month of August (since tied by Sammy Sosa in 2001). On September 13, 1965, he hit his 500th career home run off Don Nottebart. Warren Spahn, off whom Mays hit his first career home run, was his teammate at the time. After the home run, Spahn greeted Mays in the dugout, asking "Was it anything like the same feeling?" Mays replied "It was exactly the same feeling. Same pitch, too." The next night, Mays hit one that he considered his most dramatic. With the Giants trailing the Astros by two runs with two outs in the ninth, Mays swung and missed at the first two pitches, took three balls to load the count, and fouled off three pitches before hitting the tying home run off Claude Raymond on the ninth pitch of the at bat. The Giants went on to win 6-5 in 10 innings.

Mays played in over 150 games for 13 consecutive years (a major-league record) from 1954 to 1966. Mays tied Mel Ott's NL record of 511 home runs on April 24 against the Astros. After that, he went nine days without a home run. "I started thinking home run every time I got up," Mays explained his slump. He finally set the record May 4 with his 512th against Claude Osteen of the Dodgers. In 1966, his last with 100 RBIs, Mays finished third in the National League MVP voting. It was the ninth and final time he finished in the top five in the voting for the award. In 1970, the Sporting News named Mays as the 1960s "Player of the Decade."

Mays had 12 home runs and 38 RBI through his first 60 games of 1967 but went into a slump after that. He came down with a fever July 14 and asked manager Herman Franks's permission for the night off but then had to play anyway after Ty Cline, his replacement, hurt himself in the first inning. Mays left the game after the sixth due to fatigue and spent the next five days in a hospital. "After I got back into the lineup, I never felt strong again for the rest of the season." In 141 games (his lowest total since returning from the war), Mays hit .263 with 83 runs scored, 128 hits, and 22 home runs. He had only 70 RBI for the year, the first time since 1958 he had failed to reach 100.

"Maybe if I played a little first base in 1968, I could keep from getting tired," Mays speculated in his autobiography, but he only played one game at the position all year. In Houston for a series against the Astros May 6, Mays was presented by Astro owner Roy Hofheinz with a 569-pound birthday cake for his 37th birthday—the pounds represented all the home runs Mays had hit in his career. After sharing some of it with his teammates, Mays sent the rest to the Texas Children's Hospital. He played 148 games and upped his batting average to .289, accumulating 84 runs scored, 144 hits, 23 home runs, and 79 RBI.

In 1969, new Giants' manager Clyde King moved Mays to the leadoff role. King explained to Mays that this was because he was not "hitting home runs like he used to." Mays did not complain about the move in public that year but privately chafed at it, saying in his 1988 autobiography it was like "O. J. Simpson blocking for the fullback." Mays hit his 600th home run off San Diego's Mike Corkins in September 1969. He said of the milestone, "Winning the game was more important to me than any individual achievements." Plagued by injuries that season, he managed only 13 home runs. Mays enjoyed a resurgence in 1970, hitting 28 homers, and got off to a fast start in 1971, the year he turned 40. He had 15 home runs and a .290 average at the All-Star break but faded down the stretch, only hitting three home runs and batting .241 for the rest of the year. One reason he hit so few home runs was that Mays walked 112 times, 30 more times than he had at any point in his career. This was partly because Willie McCovey, who often batted behind Mays in the lineup, missed several games with injuries, causing pitchers to pitch carefully to Mays so they could concentrate on getting less-skilled hitters out. Mays helped the Giants win the division title that year, but they lost the 1971 NLCS to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

During his time on the Giants, Mays and fellow player Bobby Bonds were friends. When Bobby's son, Barry Bonds, was born, Bobby asked Mays to be Barry's godfather. Mays and the younger Bonds have maintained a close relationship ever since.

New York Mets (1972–73)

In May 1972, 41-year-old Mays was traded to the Mets for pitcher Charlie Williams and $50,000 ($310,000 today). At the time, the Giants franchise was losing money. Owner Horace Stoneham could not guarantee Mays a pension after retirement and the Mets offered Mays a coaching position upon his retirement.

Mays had remained popular in New York long after the Giants had left for San Francisco, and the trade was seen as a public relations coup for the Mets. Mets owner Joan Payson, who was a minority shareholder of the Giants when the team was in New York, had long desired to bring Mays back to his baseball roots and was instrumental in making the trade. In his Mets debut on a rainy Sunday afternoon at Shea Stadium on May 14, 1972, Mays put New York ahead to stay with a fifth-inning home run against Don Carrithers and his former team, the Giants. On August 16, 1973 of the following season, in a game against the Cincinnati Reds with Don Gullett on the mound, Mays hit a fourth inning solo home run over the right-center field fence. It was the 660th and final home run of his major league career.

Mays played a season and a half with the Mets before retiring; he appeared in 133 games. The Mets honored him on September 25, 1973 (Willie Mays Night), where he thanked the New York fans and said goodbye to baseball. He considered making that his final game, but Payson convinced him to finish out the season. He finished his career in the 1973 World Series, which the Mets lost to the Oakland Athletics in seven games. Mays got the first hit of the Series, but had only seven at-bats (with two hits). The final hit of his career came in Game 2, a key single to help the Mets win. He also fell down in the outfield during a play where he was hindered by the glare of the sun and by the hard outfield. Mays later said, "growing old is just a helpless hurt." His final at bat came on October 16, in Game 3 where he came in as a pinch hitter but grounded into a force play. Mays had made his 20th and last All-Star appearance (20 seasons) and 24th All-Star Game appearance on July 24, 1973 when he was used as a pinch hitter.

In 1972 and 1973, Mays was the oldest regular position player in baseball. At age 42, he became the oldest position player to appear in a World Series game.Mays retired after the 1973 season with a lifetime batting average of .302 and 660 home runs. His lifetime total of 7,095 outfield putouts remains the major league record. Mays is the only major league player to have hit a home run in every inning from the 1st through the 16th innings. He finished his career with a record 22 extra-inning home runs. He has the third-highest career power–speed number, behind Barry Bonds and Rickey Henderson, at 447.1.

Legacy

Mays was a popular figure in Harlem. Magazine photographers were fond of chronicling his participation in local stickball games with kids. It was said that in the urban game of hitting a rubber ball with an adapted broomstick handle, Mays could hit a shot that measured "six sewers" (the distance of six consecutive New York City manhole covers, nearly 300 feet). Once he got married, Mays stopped playing stickball in order to devote more time to his family.

Sudden collapses plagued Mays sporadically throughout his career, which occasionally led to hospital stays. He attributed them to his style of play. "My style was always to go all out, whether I played four innings or nine. That's how I played all my life, and I think that's the reason I would suddenly collapse from exhaustion or nervous energy or whatever it was called."

During his career, Mays would charge a hundred dollars per on-air interview, more than the standard twenty-five dollars at the time. However, he would split the money four ways and give it to the last four players on the Giants' roster.

Post-MLB baseball

After Mays retired as a player, he remained an active personality. Just as he had during his playing days, Mays continued to appear on various TV shows, in films and in other forms of non-sports-related media. He remained in the New York Mets organization as their hitting instructor until the end of the 1979 season. It was there where he taught future Mets star Lee Mazzilli his famous basket catch.

On January 23, 1979, Mays was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. He garnered 409 of the 432 ballots cast (94.68%); referring to the other 23 voters, acerbic New York Daily News columnist Dick Young wrote, "If Jesus Christ were to show up with his old baseball glove, some guys wouldn't vote for him. He dropped the cross three times, didn't he?" In his induction speech, Mays said, "What can I say? This country is made up of a great many things. You can grow up to be what you want. I chose baseball, and I loved every minute of it. I give you one word—love. It means dedication. You have to sacrifice many things to play baseball. I sacrificed a bad marriage and I sacrificed a good marriage. But I'm here today because baseball is my number one love."

Mays took up golf a few years after his promotion to the major leagues and quickly became an accomplished player, playing to a handicap of about nine. "I realized I could use a sport to keep me active once I hung up the glove," Mays said of golf. "I approach it the same way I did baseball. I want to win." He discovered during the 1960s "that people would pay tremendous amounts of money just to play a round of golf with me. And, what the heck, I loved golf." After he retired, he played golf frequently in the San Francisco area.

Shortly after his Hall of Fame election, Mays took a job at the Park Place Casino (now Bally's Atlantic City) in Atlantic City, New Jersey. While there, he served as a Special Assistant to the Casino's President and as a greeter. After being told by Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn that he could not be a coach and baseball goodwill ambassador while at the same time working for Bally's, Mays chose to terminate his baseball relationships. In 1985 Peter Ueberroth, Kuhn's successor, decided to allow Mays and Mickey Mantle to return to baseball. Like Mays, Mantle had gone to work for an Atlantic City casino and had to give up any baseball positions he held.

At the Pittsburgh drug trials in 1985, former Mets teammate John Milner testified that Mays kept a bottle of liquid amphetamine in his locker at Shea Stadium. Milner admitted, however, that he had never seen Mays use amphetamines and Mays himself denied ever having taken any drugs during his career.

Since 1986, Mays has served as Special Assistant to the President of the San Francisco Giants. Mays' number 24 is retired by the San Francisco Giants. Oracle Park, the Giants stadium, is located at 24 Willie Mays Plaza. In front of the main entrance to the stadium is a larger-than-life statue of Mays. He also serves on the advisory board of the Baseball Assistance Team, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping former Major League, Minor League, and Negro league players through financial and medical difficulties.

Special honors and tributes

Following Mays's MVP season of 1965, Sargent Shriver, head of the United States Job Corps, and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey asked Mays to speak to kids in the Job Corps. "Willie, the kids will listen to you. All you have to do is talk to them. They look up to you," Humphrey told Mays. Set to go on a nationwide tour, Mays passed out for five to ten minutes just before a meeting in Salt Lake City. He returned to San Francisco to rest, and Lou Johnson (whom he'd battled in a brawl earlier that year) stepped in to take his place.

In 1975, Mays received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement

When Mays' godson Barry Bonds tied him for third on the all-time home run list, Mays greeted and presented him with a diamond-studded Olympic torch (given to Mays when he carried the torch during its tour through the United States). In 1992, when Bonds signed a free agent contract with the Giants, Mays personally offered Bonds his retired #24 (the number Bonds wore in Pittsburgh) but Bonds declined, electing to wear #25 instead, honoring his father, Bobby Bonds, who wore that number with the Giants.

Willie Mays Day was proclaimed by former mayor Willie Brown and reaffirmed by mayor Gavin Newsom to be every May 24 in San Francisco, paying tribute not only to his birth in the month (May 6), but also to his name (Mays) and jersey number (24). The date is also the anniversary of his call-up to the major leagues.

On May 24, 2004, during the 50-year anniversary of The Catch, Mays received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree from Yale University.

On December 6, 2005, he received the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award for his accomplishments on and off the field.

On July 30, 2006, he was the Tee Ball Commissioner at the 2006 White House Tee Ball Initiative.

On June 10, 2007, Mays received an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth College.

At the 2007 All-Star Game in San Francisco, Mays received a special tribute for his legendary contributions to the game and threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Mays into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.

On June 4, 2008, Community Board 10 in Harlem voted unanimously to give the name "Willie Mays Drive" to an eight-block service road that connects to the Harlem River Drive from 155th Street to 163rd Street, running adjacent to the Polo Grounds.

On May 23, 2009, Mays gave the commencement address at San Francisco State University and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

On July 14, 2009, he accompanied U.S. President Barack Obama to St. Louis aboard Air Force One for the Major League All-Star Game.

On March 19, 2010, he was inducted into the African-American Ethnic Sports Hall of Fame.

On May 6, 2010, on the occasion of his 79th birthday, Mays appeared on the floor of the California State Senate where they proclaimed it Willie Mays Day in the state.

On May 15, 2010, Mays was awarded the Major League Baseball Beacon of Life Award at the Civil Rights game at Great American Ball Park.

Mays has been mentioned or referenced in many popular songs. The Treniers recorded the song "Say Hey (The Willie Mays Song)" in 1955. The band Widespread Panic makes reference to Mays in the song "One Arm Steve" from their album 'Til the Medicine Takes. Terry Cashman's song "Talkin' Baseball" has the refrain "Willie, Mickey and the Duke", which subsequently became the title of an award given by the New York Baseball Writers Association. John Fogerty mentioned Mays, Ty Cobb and Joe DiMaggio in his song "Centerfield". His name was also used on the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in the song "I Shall Be Free", and in Gil Scott-Heron's song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." Chuck Prophet and Kurt Lipschutz (pen name, klipschutz) co-wrote the song "Willie Mays is Up at Bat" for Prophet's 2012 Temple Beautiful album, a tribute to San Francisco. Mays is also mentioned in "Our Song" by singer-songwriter Joe Henry from the 2007 album Civilians. He is also the subject of the 1994 Americana music song "Homerun Willie" by John Dunnigan.

Mays was mentioned numerous times in Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts. One of the most famous of these strips was originally published on February 9, 1966. In it, Charlie Brown is competing in a class spelling bee and he is asked to spell the word, "Maze". He erroneously spells it M-A-Y-S and screams out his dismay when he is eliminated. When Charlie Brown is later sent to the principal's office for raising his voice at the teacher regarding the incident, he wonders if one day he will meet Willie Mays and will have a good laugh together about the incident.

Willie Mays Parkway and Willie Mays Park in Orlando, Florida were named after Mays.

Mays also appears on Calle 13's "Adentro" music video, where he gives to lead singer, René Pérez a bag containing a pair of sunglasses, a Roberto Clemente baseball uniform, and a baseball bat signed by him, which then was used by René to destroy his own luxury car, a Maserati, in an attempt to spread a message to youth about how irresponsible promoting of ostentatious luxury excesses in urban music as a status symbol, have them all killing each other.

In the movies Major League and Major League II, the center fielder for the Cleveland Indians is named Willie Mays Hayes. He was originally portrayed by a then-unknown Wesley Snipes, but Omar Epps replaced Snipes in the sequel.

1956 Willie Mays Major League Negro-American All-Stars Tour

In 1956, Mays persuaded many of Major League Baseball's biggest black stars to go on a tour around the country after the season had ended to play exhibition games. While much of the tour was undocumented, one venue was Andrews Field, located in Fort Smith, Arkansas, on October 16. Among the players who played in that game were Mays, Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Elston Howard, Monte Irvin, Gene Baker, Charlie Johnson, Sam Jones, Hank Thompson and Joe Black.

Presidential Medal of Freedom

In November 2015, Mays was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama during a ceremony at the White House. At the ceremony Obama credited Mays' baseball career with his own success, saying, "Willie also served our country: In his quiet example while excelling on one of America's biggest stages [he] helped carry forward the banner of civil rights", adding, "It's because of giants like Willie that someone like me could even think about running for president."

Willie Mays World Series Most Valuable Player Award

In September 2017, Major League Baseball announced their decision to rename the World Series Most Valuable Player Award after Mays, and it has since been referred to as the Willie Mays World Series Most Valuable Player Award. The first recipient of the rechristened award was Houston Astros Outfielder, George Springer.

Television appearances

In addition to appearances in baseball documentaries and on talk shows, Mays has appeared in several sitcoms over the years, always as himself. He appeared as the mystery guest during different incarnations of the long-running game show What's My Line?. He was in three episodes of ABC's The Donna Reed Show: "Play Ball" and "My Son the Catcher" (both 1964) and "Calling Willie Mays" (1966). Also in 1966, he appeared in the "Twitch or Treat" episode of Bewitched, in which Darrin Stephens asks if Mays is a warlock, and Samantha Stephens replies, "The way he hits? What else?"

In 1989, Mays appeared in My Two Dads, in the episode "You Love Me, Right?", and in the episode "The Field" of Mr. Belvedere. Additionally, he performed "Say Hey: The Willie Mays Song" on episode 4.46 of the Colgate Comedy Hour in 1954. Years later, Mays made a cameo appearance on a 2004 episode of Wheel of Fortune, while the series was taping on location in San Francisco. On February 10, 2010, Mays appeared on The Daily Show, discussing his career and a new biography, Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend, by James S. Hirsch.

Mays also voiced himself in the 1972 animated film Willie Mays and the Say-Hey Kid.

Personal life

Mays married Marghuerite Wendell Chapman (1926–2010), a woman who had been married twice before, in 1956. Mays said, "We decided to get married so quickly, we had to go to Elkton, Maryland, where you didn't have to wait." They adopted a son Michael, five days after he was born in 1959. Mays remembered driving Michael around the block as an infant to put him to sleep. The couple separated in 1962, with Marghuerite taking Michael for the majority of the time. They formally divorced in 1963. The divorce hearings often took place the mornings of Giants games, once causing Mays to be late to one. Eight years later, Mays married Mae Louise Allen. Wilt Chamberlain gave Mays her number in 1961, and they had their first date in Pittsburgh when the Giants were in town for a Pirates game. They dated off and on the next several years before Mays finally proposed; they were married in Mexico City over Thanksgiving weekend in 1971. She died on April 19, 2013, after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

Following Mays's 3,000th hit in 1971, the Giants presented Michael with a four-year college scholarship.

When Mays first joined the Giants, Forbes made arrangements for him to stay with David and Anna Goosby, who lived on St. Nicholas Avenue and 151st Street. "Mrs. Goosby reminded me of my Aunt Sarah, the way she took care of me," Mays said. "Her husband was a kind man who had retired from the railroad. They made me feel at home." Just before his marriage in 1956, he bought a home near Columbia University in Upper Manhattan. When the Giants moved to San Francisco, Mays bought a house in the Sherwood Woods neighborhood adjacent to St. Francis Wood, San Francisco in 1957. However, the purchase was initially met with backlash from neighbors who urged developer Walter Gnesdiloff to reconsider the repercussions "if colored people moved in". According to Mays, when mayor George Christopher heard he had been denied housing, he offered to share his house with Mays and his wife until they could get one. Ultimately, Mays and his wife moved into the house in November of 1957, and Mays wrote that when a brick was thrown through the window, "Some neighbors actually called to ask if they could help. So I didn't feel concerned about racial tensions in my neighborhood once the [1958] season was about to start." They only lived there for two years before moving back to New York. As of 2000, Mays lived in Atherton, California, in a house he bought in 1969.

A frequent traveler, Mays is one of 66 holders of American Airlines' lifetime passes.

In 2020, Mays will publish his memoir, 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid (with John Shea; St. Martin's Press, 2020).

"Say Hey Kid" and other nicknames

It is not clear how Mays became known as the "Say Hey Kid." One story is that in 1951, Barney Kremenko, a writer for the New York Journal, began to refer to Mays as the 'Say Hey Kid' after he overheard Mays say, "'Say who,' 'Say what,' 'Say where,' 'Say hey'". Another story is that Jimmy Cannon created the nickname because Mays did not know everybody's names when he arrived in the minors. "You see a guy, you say, 'Hey, man. Say hey, man,'" Mays said. "Ted [Williams] was the 'Splinter'. Joe [DiMaggio] was 'Joltin' Joe'. Stan [Musial] was 'The Man'. I guess I hit a few home runs, and they said 'There goes the 'Say Hey Kid."

Years before he became the "Say Hey Kid", when he began his professional career with the Black Barons, Mays was called "Buck" by teammates and fans. Some Giants players referred to him, their team captain, as "Cap."

[moviereview]

Darkseid Actor Wants ‘Justice League’ Villain to Return in Future DC Movies

Darkseid Actor Wants ‘Justice League’ Villain to Return in Future DC Movies

Actor Ray Porter finds himself in the unique position of playing the role of one of the most iconic characters in all of comics in his first live-action adaptation in 2017, without anyone having actually seen his performance. Porter played the role of the dreaded villain Darkseid in 2017’s Justice League, but his role was cut from the theatrical release. Now, Darkseid will finally feature in…

[davidmann95]

Thoughts on Scott's Justice League?

So I don’t think we can discuss the current Justice League without bringing up Metal. Not just because it’s essentially the first arc, but because Justice League as a followup to that recontextualizes what it is. Metal, dearly as I love it, does very similar things to plenty of event comics over the last decade: things suddenly go completely to hell in a way that illustrates moral and philosophical failings on the part of our heroes coming to a grotesque head, and it might truly be the end this time until the champions pull through at the last, heralding a bold new age of heroism…and then everything keeps being miserable as shit and we repeat it all next year because the problem persists, still crying out for a symbolic slaying. Metal is that to a T.

Except Snyder along with Tynion actually stuck around to assure the follow-through. And while he’s moved past the sort of overt riffs that defined most of his collaborations with Capullo, what he’s done here fulfills the same promise as their Batman run: lulling a franchise into something noticeably closer to how Grant Morrison’s vision for how it should work, with Snyder’s slicker, more bombastic, action-movie commercial sensibilities succeeding at selling those ideas where Morrison didn’t. Except in this case it isn’t just that Batman’s cool and aspirational. It’s the model for the entirety of DC Comics.

I don’t know that this is the best Justice League thing. It isn’t as perfectly poppy and clever as Morrison’s own JLA or as funny and character-driven as the animated series (the two obvious influences), Orlando’s ersatz effort at handling a side book as if it were made up of A-listers yielded likely more profound results in isolation, and Priest and Woods’ immediately pre-Snyder run was pretty inarguably better put together on a nuts-and-bolts craftsmanship level while also succeeding at making it the ‘serious’ title people had been trying and failing to for years beforehand, making it the perfect final word on that era. But it’s absolutely the story that most potently synthesizes all the stuff that makes the Justice League work in the massive, iconic sense. It’s big threats, it’s inter-team bonding and drama, it’s grand spectacle and mythology and iconography, it’s puzzles the size of the world met with impossible come-from-behind victories, it’s cosmic and moral horror and shining inspiration, it’s Superman punching a fool so hard time explodes.

Let’s hover on the spirit of that last bit for a second. This is the lead book for DC as a lineup in a way Geoff Johns’ Justice League tried and failed to be (in so many ways this feels like what we would have expected a Geoff Johns Justice League run to look like once upon a time - this big loony generative fanboy thing building on the structure of existing mythology and relationships to construct a megaphone to scream the theme through), dictating the direction and tone of the entire line. And the first arc ends with a Flash-powered car driving around the Earth so fast it turns into a White Lantern; later Space Krakens get involved. When Metal came out I said it was impressive that it managed to feel like it had changed everything even though surely it couldn’t have, but now I’m not so certain; we’ve got astro-gorillas in the first issue of Bendis Superman, Morrison’s got Green Lantern, Tom King’s Very Serious Batman involves his parallel universe dad and Kite Man. The rock star spirit Snyder was heralding with Batman and trying to spread to the rest of the line with Metal has at last broken loose, and we’re back into superheroism as the world of the casual ineffable bizarre, the core of the shared DCU headspace huffing nitrous and slamming on the pedal until its heel breaks through the floor as Superman uses his X-ray vision to block an invisible evil galaxy from firing waves of pure self-loathing at Earth until Flash can stand still enough to unlock the true nature of the multiverse as he learned to do from a mean baby wielded against him by a gorilla. Justice Incarnate, this decades’ most perfect encapsulation of everything strange and wonderful about DC that was clearly NEVER going to show up again is now a semi-regular presence, and Justice Legion Alpha apparently aren’t far behind. It’s all odd and beautiful and exciting again, just like we all knew deep down it was always supposed to be.

Outside the context of the DCU as a whole, it’s still a perfect capstone to Snyder’s career. The final transfer from his initial haunted house horrors to roller coaster thrills, and the upscaling of his themes of the aspirations of our best selves vs the primal lure of our worst into the moral axis on which the entire hero/villain dichotomy of DC rests, and literally having who wins the argument determine the death or evolution of all of reality. For me, this is the best incarnation of his old saw, because when it’s framed as being directly placed in the hands of Folks Like Us which kind of world this is going to be, it asks both the moral question AND the interrogation of what kind of power fantasy we actually want the cape-and-tights crowd to represent.

It’s also a capstone in terms of seeing how many artistic prisms his sensibilities can be filtered through, utterly changing the vibe while maintaining the impact, and resulting in easily the best the main Justice League title has ever looked. Jim Cheung’s shining blockbuster theatrics; Francis Manapul’s classical statuesque bombast; Howard Porter sticking his head in as a tip of the hat to the JLA roots; Javier Fernandez’s grungy, inky, yet springy cartoon action fitting the decline of a vibrant superhero universe perfectly; the likes of Doug Mahnke, Mikel Janin, Frazier Irving, and Guillem March doing one-offs and fill-in work; Steven Segovia and Daniel Sampere’s clean, traditional superheroic lines; and the main artist and MVP, Jorge Jimenez, whose energy and acting and velocity and overtly manga-inspired flourish makes it the most purely enjoyable, exciting book about the slow agonizing end of everything that’s ever been put to paper. All fit the tone, all make it their own.

Do I have issues? Certainly. Snyder’s writerly tics are still present (though offloading a lot of the monologuing to third-person narration has I think helped enormously), giving Tynion and his more character-centric work a foothold on the villainous issues - and for that matter giving them far more standalone character pieces than the heroes - makes it unintentionally feel like their argument hold primacy, a handful of members are characterized somewhat generically (particularly Wonder Woman, which is a surprising shame given she’s who Snyder has mostly talked about writing next), and likely a few other quibbles I could think of. But by and large, this remains one of the best titles on the stands: the collective scope of the DCU, all the sprawling universe-shaking structures and dopey detritus, smashing its biggest most meaningful toys up against one another for the fate of everything but EVERYTHING, where the soul of any given schlub on the street is going to determine the destiny of the multiverse. It’s not the singular best DC (though it’s proudly part of the best-of-DC crowd), but by god, it’s going to be the singular MOST DC or it is going to burn the world down trying.

[dannyreviews]

In Memoriam 2018

Happy New Year everyone. It’s time to remember the well known icons of entertainment that we lost in 2018.

Ray Thomas - musician (The Moody Blues) (1941 - 1/4/2018)

Jerry Van Dyke - actor (1931 - 1/5/2018)

France Gall - singer (1947- 1/7/2018)

Donnelly Rhodes - actor (1937 - 1/8/2018)

Terence Marsh - production designer (1931 - 1/9/2018)

Eddie Clarke - musician (Motorhead) (1950 - 1/10/2018)

Jean Porter - actress (1922 - 1/13/2018)

Edwin Hawkins - gospel singer (1943 - 1/15/2018)

Dolores O’Riordan - singer, musician (The Cranberries) (1971 - 1/15/2018)

Bradford Dillman - actor (1930 - 1/16/2018)

Dorothy Malone - actress (1924 - 1/19/2018)

Jim Rodford - musician (The Zombies, The Kinks, Argent) (1945 - 1/20/2018)

Connie Sawyer - actress (1912 - 1/21/2018)

Hugh Masekela - musician (1939 - 1/23/2018)

Dennis Edwards - singer (The Temptations) (1943 - 2/1/2018)

John Mahoney - actor (1940 - 2/4/2018)

Kenneth Haigh - actor (1929 - 2/4/2018)

Reg E. Cathy - actor (1958 - 2/9/2018)

John Gavin - actor (1931 - 2/9/2018)

Jóhann Jóhannsson - film composer (1969 - 2/9/2018)

Vic Damone - singer, actor (1928 - 2/11/2018)

Jan Maxwell - actress (1956 - 2/11/2018)

Idrissa Ouédraogo - director (1954 - 2/18/2018)

Nanette Fabray - singer, actress (1920 - 2/21/2018)

Lewis Gilbert - director (1920 - 2/23/2018)

Bud Luckey - animator, director, actor (1934 - 2/24/2018)

David Ogden Stiers - actor (1942 - 3/3/2018)

Hubert de Givenchy - fashion designer (1927 - 3/9/2018)

Ken Dodd - actor, comedian, singer (1927 - 3/11/2018)

Stephen Hawking - scientist, personality (1942 - 3/14/2018)

Delores Taylor - actress (1932 - 3/23/2018)

Stéphane Audran - actress (1932 - 3/27/2018)

Steven Bochco - producer (1943 - 4/1/2018)

Susan Anspach - actress (1942 - 4/2/2018)

Isao Takahata - director, animator, screenwriter, producer (1936 - 4/5/2018)

Chuck McCann - actor, comedian (1934 - 4/8/2018)

Milos Forman - director (1932 - 4/13/2018)

R. Lee Ermey - actor (1944 - 4/15/2018)

Harry Anderson - actor, magician (1952 - 4/16/2018)

Verne Troyer - actor (1969 - 4/21/2018)

Michael Anderson - director (1920 - 4/25/2018)

Charles Neville - musician (The Neville Brothers) (1938 - 4/26/2018)

Lester James Peries - director (1919 - 4/29/2018)

Robert Mandan - actor (1932 - 4/29/2018)

Ermanno Olmi - director (1931 - 5/5/2018)

Anne V. Coates - editor (1925 - 5/8/2018)

Margot Kidder - actress (1948 - 5/13/2018)

Tom Wolfe - author, journalist, personality (1930 - 5/14/2018)

Joseph Campanella - actor (1924 - 5/16/2018)

Patricia Morison - actress (1915 - 5/20/2018)

Clint Walker - actor (1927 - 5/21/2018)

Philip Roth - author (1933 - 5/22/2018)

Jerry Maren - actor (1920 - 5/24/2018)

Kate Spade - fashion designer (1962 - 6/5/2018)

Anthony Bourdain - chef, personality (1956 - 6/8/2018)

Eunice Gayson - actress (1928 - 6/8/2018)

Danny Kirwan - musician (Fleetwood Mac) (1950 - 6/8/2018)

Jon Hiseman - musician (Colosseum, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers) (1944 - 6/12/2018)

Matt “Guitar” Murphy - musician (The Blues Brothers) (1929 - 6/15/2018)

XXXTentacion - rapper (1998 - 6/18/2018)

Vinnie Paul - musician (Pantera, Damageplan) (1964 - 6/22/2018)

Harlan Ellison - author (1934 - 6/28/2018)

Steve Ditko - comic book writer/artist (1927 - 6/29/2018)

Gillian Lynne - dancer, choreographer (1926 - 7/1/2018)

Robby Muller - cinematographer (1940 - 7/4/2018)

Claude Lanzmann - director (1925 - 7/5/2018)

Tab Hunter - actor, singer (1931 - 7/8/2018)

Roger Perry - actor (1933 - 7/12/2018)

Yvonne Blake - costume designer (1940 - 7/17/2018)

Mary Carlisle - actress (1914 - 8/1/2018)

Winston Ntshona - playwright, actor (1941 - 8/2/2018)

Moshe Mizrahi - director (1931 - 8/3/2018)

Charlotte Rae - actress (1926 - 8/5/2018)

Aretha Franklin - singer (1942 - 8/16/2018)

Brian Murray - actor (1937 - 8/20/2018)

Barbara Harris - actress (1935 - 8/21/2018)

Robin Leach - personality (1941 - 8/24/2018)

Neil Simon - playwright, screenwriter (1927 - 8/26/2018)

Paul Taylor - dancer, choreographer (1930 - 8/29/2018)

Carole Shelley - actress (1939 - 8/31/2018)

Jacqueline Pearce - actress (1943 - 9/3/2018)

Bill Daily - actor (1927 - 9/4/2018)

Christopher Lawford - actor (1955 - 9/4/2018)

Liz Fraser - actress (1930 - 9/6/2018)

Burt Reynolds - actor (1936 - 9/6/2018)

Mac Miller - rapper (1992 - 9/6/2018)

Peter Donat - actor (1928 - 9/10/2018)

Fenella Fielding - actress (1927 - 9/11/2018)

Marin Mazzie - actress, singer (1960 - 9/13/2018)

Dudley Sutton - actor (1933 - 9/15/2018)

Arthur Mitchell - dancer, choreographer (1934 - 9/19/2018)

Denis Norden - comedy writer (1922 - 9/19/2018)

Al Matthews - actor (1942 - 9/22/2018)

Otis Rush - musician (1934 - 9/29/2018)

Charles Aznavour - singer, actor (1924 - 10/1/2018)

Geoff Emerick - recording engineer (1945 - 10/2/2018)

Will Vinton - animator (1947 - 10/4/2018)

Audrey Wells - screenwriter, director, producer (1960 - 10/4/2018)

Montserrat Caballe - opera singer (1933 - 10/6/2018)

Scott Wilson - actor (1942 - 10/6/2018)

Peggy McCay - actress (1927 - 10/7/2018)

Arnold Kopelson - producer (1935 - 10/8/2018)

James Karen - actor (1923 - 10/23/2018)

Ntozake Shange - playwright, poet (1948 - 10/27/2018)

Raymond Chow - producer (1927 - 10/2/2018)

Roy Hargrove - musician (1969 - 11/2/2018)

Sondra Locke - actress (1944 - 11/3/2018)

Francis Lai - film composer (1932 - 11/7/2018)

Douglas Rain - actor (1928 - 11/11/2018)

Stan Lee - comic book writer, editor, actor (1922 - 11/12/2018)

Katherine MacGregor - actress (1925 - 11/13/2018)

John Bluthal - actor (1929 - 11/15/2018)

Roy Clark - country singer (1933 - 11/15/2018)

William Goldman - novelist, playwright, screenwriter (1931 - 11/16/2018)

Bernardo Bertolucci - director, screenwriter (1941 - 11/26/2018)

Stephen Hillenburg - cartoonist, animator (1961 - 11/26/2018)

Ken Berry - actor (1933 - 12/1/2018)

Philip Bosco - actor (1930 - 12/3/2018)

Pete Shelley - singer (Buzzcocks) (1955 - 12/6/2018)

Nancy Wilson - singer (1937 - 12/13/2018)

Penny Marshall - actress, director (1943 - 12/17/2018)

Donald Moffat - actor (1930 - 12/20/2018)

Amos Oz - novelist (1939 - 12/28/2018)

June Whitfield - actress (1925 - 12/28/2018)

Ringo Lam - director (1955 - 12/29/2018)

Don Lusk - animator (1913 - 12/30/2018)

Mrinal Sen - director (1923 - 12/30/2018)

[iamalivenow]

playlist for jonathan sims?

anon i know it was only supposed to be 5 but i got excited

Old Number 7 - The Devil Makes Three

wires - the neighbourhood

Friction - Imagine Dragons

Somebody That I Used To Know - Gotye

Roaring 20s - Panic! at the Disco

Rays - To Kill A King

Tiny, Little - Tub Ring

Hope of Morning - Icon For Hire

Willow Tree March - The Paper Kites

Goodbye to a World - Porter Robinson

[pujarathod]

Clinical Trial Imaging Industry Technologies and Future Scope

Clinical Trial Imaging Market Introduction & scope Market will grow in forecast periods 2022-2028.

Global Clinical Trial Imaging Market, By Product And Service (Trial Design Consulting Services, Read Analysis Services, Operational Imaging Services, Imaging Software), By End User (Pharmaceutical Companies, Medical Device Manufacturers, Academic and Government Research Institutes, Other), By Modality (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Computed Tomography, Ultrasound, Positron Emission Tomography, X-Ray, Echocardiography, Other) and opportunities and forecast 2022-2028

The Global Clinical Trial Imaging Analysis Report 2022-2028 is a factual assessment and in-depth analysis of this and future market of the trade. The Clinical Trial Imaging Market report on improvement ways that, competitive panorama, surroundings, opportunities, risks, challenges and barriers, price chain improvement, contact and gain information, technological advancements, product offerings of prime key players, and dynamic forms of the market. The market report provides rate, latest trends, and in-depth analysis of prime players in market intervals with weightless product description, business outline, and business ways that.

Scope of the Clinical Trial Imaging Market

The information about Clinical Trial Imaging market obtained from sources such as sites, annual reports of many others, journals, and also those businesses and was assessed and supported by the industry experts. The details and information are represented in the accounts with charts, diagrams, pie graphs, as well as other pictorial representations. The visual image is enhanced by this and helps in understanding the truth much better.

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Leading players involved in the Clinical Trial Imaging Market includes:

BioClinica (US),Parexel International (US),ICON PLC (Ireland),Intrinsic Imaging (US),Ixico PLC (UK),Biomedical Systems (US),Worldcare Clinical (US),Biotelemetry (US),Cardiovascular Imaging Technologies (US),Radiant Sage LLC (India)

Segmentation of Clinical Trial Imaging Market:

The analysis also divides the Clinical Trial Imaging Market on the Type:

Computed Tomography,Magnetic Resonance Imaging,Positron Emission Tomography

The analysis also divides the Clinical Trial Imaging Market on the End user:

Building,Industrial,Household

Regional Segmentation Clinical Trial Imaging Market:

·         North America (U.S., Canada, Mexico)

·         Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Russia, Spain rest of region.)

·         Asia-Pacific (China, India, Japan, Southeast Asia rest of region.)

·         South America (Brazil, Argentina rest of region.)

·         Middle East & Africa (Saudi Arabia, South Africa rest of region

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The report also focuses on competitive analysis of key players by product, price, financial position, product portfolio, growth strategy and regional presence. The report also provides PEST analysis, PORTER’s analysis, SWOT analysis to address the question of shareholders to prioritizing the efforts and investment to the emerging segment of the global Clinical Trial Imaging market in the near future.

Key Questions Answered in The Report:

What will the Clinical Trial Imaging market growth rate?

What are the key factors driving the global Clinical Trial Imaging Market Size?

Who are the Top key manufacturers in Clinical Trial Imaging market space?

What are the market opportunities, market risk and market overview of the Clinical Trial Imaging Industry?

What are sales, revenue, and price analysis of top manufacturer’s Clinical Trial Imaging market?

Who are the distributors, traders and dealers of Clinical Trial Imaging market?

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The purpose of this report is to present a comprehensive assessment of the market, including thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, industry-validated market data and forecasts, along with appropriate assumptions and methodologies. The report also helps in understanding global Clinical Trial Imaging market dynamics, structure by identifying and analyzing market segments and forecasting the global market size.