#the lost weekend by charles r jackson

[mourningmaybells]

The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson / The Exorcist By William Peter Blatty / Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[mrmousetolliver]

The Lost Weekend (1944) by Charles R. Jackson Often seen as the seminal addiction memoir in American literature, the story is a semi autobiographical account of a five day binge of a writer named Don Birnam. The book has also been noted for having homosexual overtones with a strong implication that Don Birnam, just like Charles Jackson, is bisexual. The book was adapted into an Academy Award winning film starring Ray Milland and directed by Billy Wilder. The movie had a more optimistic ending and all inferences to homosexuality are omitted.

[thebestestwinner]

Top two vote-getters will move on to the next round. See pinned post for all groups!

[togansweep]

thank you for the tag @georgeromerosanalcavity <3

Last song: Lover Leave Me Drowning by Blitzen Trapper. discovered this band last weekend, good stuff.

Last movie: this is embarrassing, but I have absolutely no idea. I don't watch nearly enough movies tbh

Reading: I just finished The Midnight Bell by Patrick Hamilton this morning. I liked it, but it wasn't nearly as good as Hamilton's Hangover Square. that book was just... yes. incredible showstopping amazing etc. I already want to reread it and I finished it less than 2 months ago... I need to pick a new book to read now, I'm thinking about either The Lost Weekend by Charles R. Jackson or Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (what can I say, I like bleak novels). oh and I'm always reading the succession scripts inbetween stuff! I'm currently at the end of s3

Watching: Ripper Street, which I would highly recommend if you enjoy watching matthew macfadyen cry. or beaten up. or covered in blood.

Consuming: gonna make myself a cappuccino after I post this & have a piece of white chocolate to go with it

Craving: tommy milk

tagging @tomwambsmilk, @wambsgender, @lastfridgemagnetleft, @eastgaysian and anyone else who wants to do this!

[byneddiedingo]

Ray Milland and Howard Da Silva in The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder, 1945)

Cast: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Philip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling, Frank Faylen. Screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, based on a novel by Charles R. Jackson. Cinematography: John F. Seitz. Art direction: Hans Dreier, A. Earl Hedrick. Film editing: Doane Harrison. Music: Miklós Rózsa. 

If such a thing as conscience could be ascribed to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it might be said that giving The Lost Weekend and director Billy Wilder the best picture and best director Oscars was an attempt to atone for its failure to honor Wilder's Double Indemnity with those awards the previous year. (The awards went to Leo McCarey and his saccharine Going My Way.) The Lost Weekend is not quite as enduring a film as Double Indemnity: It pulls its punches with a "hopeful" ending, though it should be clear to any intelligent viewer that Ray Milland's Don Birnam is not going to be so easily cured of his alcoholism as he and his girlfriend, Helen St. James (Jane Wyman), seem to think. But the film also lands quite a few of its punches, thanks to Milland's Oscar-winning performance and the intelligent (and also Oscar-winning) adaptation of Charles R. Jackson's novel by Wilder and co-writer Charles Brackett. For its day, still under the watchful eyes of the Paramount front office and the Production Code, The Lost Weekend seems almost unnervingly frank about the ravages of alcoholism, then usually treated more as a subject for comedy than for semi-realistic drama. The Code prevented the film from ascribing Birnam's drinking to an attempt to cope with his homosexuality, but in some respects this can be seen today as a good change made for the wrong reason, since the roots of addiction to alcohol are far more complicated than any simplistic explanation such as self-loathing. The Code was also powerless to prevent Wilder and Brackett from finessing the suggestion that the friendly "bar girl" Gloria (Doris Dowling) is anything but an on-call sex worker. Increasingly, post-World War II films would treat audiences like the adults the Code administration wanted to prevent them from being. Wyman's Helen is a bit too noble in her persistent support of Birnam's behavior -- she moves from ignorance to denial to enabling to self-sacrifice far too swiftly and easily. But in general, the supporting cast -- Phillip Terry as Birnam's brother, Howard Da Silva as the bartender, Frank Faylen as the seen-it-all-too-often nurse in the drunk ward -- are excellent. The score by Miklós Rózsa is laid on a bit too heavily, especially in the use of the theremin to suggest Birnam's aching need for a drink. 

[matrakcsi]

“The Lost Weekend” (1945)

[joneswuzhere]

hello join me in thinking about some books and authors that are, or might be, part of s5′s intertextuality

5.10 in particular offered specific shout outs, and also u know i’m always wondering what might be ahead so i have some ideas on that:

- first, as mentioned in a previous ask post, i know i wasn’t alone in keeping an eye out for 5.10 parallels to the lost weekend (1945) the film that gave episode 1.10 its name and several themes - or to the 1944 book by charles r jackson which the film is based on

- s5 has not been shy about revisiting earlier seasons, especially s1. altho i feel that 1.10′s parallels to the lost weekend centered characters other than jughead (mostly betty), a 1.10-5.10 connection involving jughead and themes from jackson’s story (addiction, writers block, self reflection) seemed v possible if not inevitable

- but like,, , for a hot minute after the ep, i was really stumped on understanding how anything from the book or film could apply, even tho the pieces were almost all there

- jackson’s protagonist don birnam goes thru and comes out the other side of a harrowing days-long drinking binge that could be compared to jughead’s one-night hallucinogenic writing retreat

- but jughead is struggling primarily with traumatic memories, not addiction and self control like birnam. and tho drinking activates birnam’s creativity, it paralyzes his writing as he gets lost in fantasies; he’s never published anything. jughead’s drug trip recreates circumstances that already helped him write one successful book. even the rat that startles him mid-high doesn’t line up with birnam’s withdrawal vision of a dying mouse, symbolic of his horror at his own self-destruction thru alcohol

- and maybe the most visible discordance: in the film there’s a romantic motif around a typewriter. first it’s an object of shame; birnam’s failure to write, tied up with his drinking, makes him flee his relationship. he tries to pawn the typewriter for booze money and finally a gun when shooting himself feels easier than getting sober. but with the help of relentless encouragement from girlfriend helen, he quits drinking, commits to her, and focuses on typing out the story he’s dreamt of writing. rd goes so far to avoid setting any comparable scenario that jughead has brought a wholeass printer into the bunker so there can still be a physical manuscript to cover in blood by the end, even without his own typewriter. the subtle detail of his laptop bg image is a little less noticeable than his avoidance of betty’s gift

- tabitha might be closer to a parallel than jughead is, but she’s still no helen. both refuse to take advantage of the inebriated men in their care, but birnam takes advantage of helen, financially and emotionally. jughead refused a loan from the tate family and now has resolved to deal with his shit before he considers a relationship with tabitha. instead of helen’s relentless and unwelcomed attempts to get birnam sober, tabitha reluctantly agrees to help jughead trip safely bondage escape notwithstanding. she even helps him get the drugs.

- whatever potentials exist for parallels to jackson’s story, they were not explored for this episode. ok so why tf am i even talking about this? what was there instead?

-  i have arrived at the point

- s5 has been revisiting s1, not directly but with a twist. and jughead’s agent samm pansky is back. u may recall, pansky is named for sam lansky

- jughead’s trip-thru-trauma is a story device tapped straight from lansky’s book ‘broken people’

- lansky is like if a millenial john rechy wrote extremely LA-flavored meta but just about himself no jk very like a modern successor to charles r jackson. both play with the boundary between memoir and fiction. lansky is gay; jackson wrote his lost weekend counterpart as closeted and remained closeted himself until only a few years before his death. both write with emotional clarity and self-scrutiny on the experiences of addiction, sobriety, and the surrounding issues of shame and self worth

- i feel like a fool bc after this ep i had been thinking about de quincey and his early writings on addiction (c.1800s), but i failed to carry the thought in the other direction, to contemporary writers in the genre, to make this connection sooner

- lansky’s second book, broken people, follows narrator ‘sam’, mid-20s, super depressed, hastled by his agent to write a decent follow-up to his first book, but too busy struggling with his self-worth and baggage from several past relationships. desperate, he takes up an offer to visit a new age shaman who promises to fix everything wrong with him in a matter of days. not to over simplify it but he literally spends a weekend doing psychedelics and hallucinating about his exes. jughead took note

- unless u want me to hurl myself into yet another dissertation about queer jughead, i think his parallel to sam - who, unlike jughead, has considerable financial privilege and whose anxieties center on body dysmorphia, hiv scares, and his own self-centeredness - pretty much ends there

- But,, the gist of the book could not be more harmonius with a major theme shared by the 2 films that inform the actual hallucination part of jughead’s bunker scene: mentally reframing past relationships to get closure + confronting trauma head-on in order to move forward

- so that’s neat. what other book and author stuff was in 5.10?

- stephen king and raymond carver get name dropped. i’m passingly familiar with them both but u bet i just skimmed their wiki bios in case anything relevant jumped out

- like jughead, carver was a student (later a lecturer) at the iowa writers workshop. also the son of an alcoholic and one himself

- i recall carver’s ‘what we talk about when we talk about love’ is what jughead was reading in 2.14 ‘the hills have eyes’ after he finds out about the first time betty kissed archie (at that time he does not respond as would any of carver’s characters)

- this collection of carver stories deals especially with infidelity, failings of communication, and the complexities and destructiveness of love. to unashamedly quote the resource that is course hero, ‘carver renders love as an experience that is inherently violent bc it produces psychic and emotional wounds.’ very fun to wonder about the significance of this collection within the s2 episode and in jughead’s thoughts. and maybe now in the context of the s5 state of relationships. or, at least, the state of jughead’s writing as seen by his agent

- anyway pansky doesn’t want carver, he wants stephen king

- i have too much to say about gerald’s game in 5.10, that’s getting its own post someday soon

- lol wait king’s wife is named tabitha uhhh king’s wiki reminded me of his childhood experience that possibly inspired his short story ‘the body’ (+1986 movie ‘stand by me’) when he ‘apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train tho he has no memory of the event’

- no mention of that in this rd episode but memories of a train could be interesting to consider with the imagery that intrudes on jughead’s hallucination. i still feel like it was a truck but the lights and sounds he experiences may be a train

- ok now we’re in the speculation part of today’s segment

- if jughead’s traumatic memory involves trains, then it’s possible this plot will take influence from la bête humaine <- this 1938 movie is based on the 1890 novel by french writer émile zola. this story deals with alcoholism and possessive jealousy in relationships, sometimes leading to murder. huh, kind of like carver. zola def comes down on the nature side of the nature-vs-nuture bad seed question (tho i should say he approaches this with great or maybe just v french compassion). also i can’t tell if this is me reaching but, something about la bête humaine reminds me of king’s ‘secret window’ which we’ve observed to be at least a style influence on jughead post time jump

- but wow a late-19th century french writer would be a random thing to drop into this season, right? then again zola also wrote about miners, which we’ve learned are an important part of this town’s history + whatever hiram is up to this time.  and most notably, zola wrote ‘j’accuse...!’ an open letter in defense of a soldier falsely accused and unlawfully jailed for treason: alfred dreyfus. archie’s recent army trouble comes to mind.

- since the introduction of old man dreyfuss (plausibly Just a nod to close encounters actor richard dreyfuss, but also when is anything in this show Just one thing) i’ve been wondering if these little things could add up to a season-long reference to zola’s writings. but i had doubts and didn’t want to speak on it too soon bc, u know, it’s weird but is it weird enough for riverdale??

- however,,,

- (come on, u knew where i was going with this)

- a24′s film zola just came out. absolutely no relation to the french writer, it’s not based on a book but an insane and explicit twitter thread by aziah ‘zola’ wells about stripping and? human trafficking?? this feels ripe for rd even outside the potentials here for the lonely highway/missing girls plot.

- that would add up to a combination of homage that feels natural to this show

- anyway pls understand i’m just having fun speculating, most of this is based on nothing more concrete than the torturous mental tendril ras has hooked into my skull pls let go ras pls let go

[alystayr]

Playlist musicale 2019 (2/2)

Liste des chansons (playlist 2019 - part. 2)

Mise à jour : 31 décembre 2019

playlist 2019 (part.2), playlist 2019 (part. 1)

playlist 2018 (part. 2), playlist 2018 (part. 1)

playlist 2017 (part. 2), playlist 2017 (part. 1)

playlist 2016 (part. 2), playlist 2016 (part. 1)

playlist 2015

0-9 #

16 Horsepower - American Wheeze (1996)

A

AaRON - Blouson Noir (2015)

Abd Al Malik - Le jeune noir à l’épée (2019)

The Afghan Whigs - Algiers (2014)

Air - Alpha Beta Gaga (2004-2016)

Alabama Shakes - Don’t Wanna Fight (2015)

Alice In Chains -  Rainier Fog (2018)

Angels of Light - Dawn (2005)

Aphrodite’s Child - Rain and tears (1968)

Archive - Erase (2019)

Louis Armstrong - St. James Infirmary (1928)

B

The B52's - Planet Claire (1979)

The Beatles - All You Need Is Love (1967)

Beck - Saw Lightning (2019)

Belle and Sebastian - Sister Buddha (2019)

Bénabar - Y'a une fille qu'habite chez moi (2001)

The Beta Band - Dry The Rain (1997)

Björk - Declare Independence (2008)

The Black Keys - Go (2019)

Blue Oyster Cult - (Don't Fear) The Reaper (1976)

Blur - There’s No Other Way (1991)

Joe Bonamassa - Lonesome Christmas (2016)

David Bowie - When I'm Five (1967)

Georges Brassens - Les copains d'abord (1964)

Jacques Brel - Mathilde (1963)

John Butler Trio - Bully (2017)

C

Cage The Elephant - Shake Me Down (2011)

Calexico - The Ballad of Cable Hogue (2000)

Calogero - En Apesanteur (2002)

Captain Kid - We & I (2012)

Johnny Cash (cover Nine Inch Nails) - Hurt (2002/1994)

Chloé - One in other (2010)

The Clash - White Riot (1977)

Johnny Clegg & Savuka - Asimbonanga (1987)

Eddie Cochran - Summertime Blues (1958)

Cocoon - Back To One (2019)

Cold War Kids - Passing the Hat (2006)

Chris Cornell - Seasons (from Singles) (1992)

Cypress Hill (feat. Chino Moreno and Everlast) - (Rock) Superstar (2000)

D

Dead Kennedys - Kill The Poor (1980)

Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence (1990)

dEUS - Instant Street (1999)

Dolly - Comment taire (2002)

The Doors - Love Street (1968)

Dr. John - Right Place Wrong Time (1973)

Bob Dylan - Hurricane (1975)

E

Eels - You Are The Shining Light (2018)

Eiffel - Cascade (2019)

Lisa Ekdahl (cover Betty Hutton) - It's Oh So Quiet (1997/1951)

Eminem - Venom (2018)

Eurythmics - Here Comes The Rain Again (1983)

F

Mylène Farmer - Des larmes (2018)

Les Fatals Picards - La Sécurité de l'Emploi (2007)

Fine Young Cannibals - Johnny Come Home (1985)

Florence + the Machine - Jenny of Oldstones (from Game of Thrones) (2019)

Foals - What Went Down (2015)

Foo Fighters - Best Of You (2005)

Foster The People - Pumped up Kicks (2011)

Future Islands - Fall From Grace (2014)

G

Peter Gabriel - Shock The Monkey (1982)

Liam Gallagher - One Of Us (2019)

Jean-Jacques Goldman - Je marche seul (1985)

The Good, The Bad & The Queen - Gun To The Head (2019)

Kim Gordon - Sketch Artist (2019)

Gossip - Standing In the Way of Control (2006)

Gravenhurst - The Collector (2007)

Juliette Gréco (cover Léo Ferré) - Jolie Môme (1961)

Grinderman - Man In The Moon (2007)

H

Nina Hagen - African Reggae (1979)

Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite - The Bottle Wins Again (2018)

PJ Harvey - Rid Of Me (1993)

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Purple Haze (1967)

Kristin Hersh - The Cuckoo (1994)

Jacques Higelin - Paris-New York, New York-Paris (1974)

I

Interpol - The Weekend (2019)

Iron Maiden - Flight of Icarus (1983/2019)

Izia - Hey Bitch (2009)

J

Julia Jacklin (cover The Strokes) - Someday (2019/2001)

JAY-Z - Marcy Me (2017)

Joy Division - New Dawn Fades (1979)

Judas Priest - Breaking The Law (1980)

K

Kaiser Chiefs - Don't Just Stand There, Do Something (2019)

Kings of Leon - Family Tree (2013)

Mark Knopfler - Redbud Tree (2012)

L

Mark Lanegan Band - Stitch It Up (2019)

Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want To Have Fun (1983)

Bernard Lavilliers & Catherine Ringer - Idées Noires (1983-2014)

Led Zeppelin - No Quarter (1973)

The Lemonheads - Alison’s Starting To Happen (1992)

Linkin Park - Breaking The Habit (2003)

Little Eva - The Loco-Motion (1962)

Luke - Hasta Siempre (2004)

M

Scott McKenzie - San Francisco (1967)

Marcela Mangabeira (cover Michael Jackson) - Human Nature (2008/1982)

Loreena McKennitt - The Lady of Shalott (1991)

Marilyn Manson - God’s Gonna Cut You Down (2019)

Marilyn Manson (cover The Doors) - The End (1967-2019)

Massive Attack - Protection (1994)

Metallica - Seek and Destroy (1983)

Midnight Oil - Forgotten Years (1990)

Eddy Mitchell - Sur la route de Memphis (1976)

Modest Mouse - Lampshades on Fire (2015)

Gary Moore - The Loner (1987)

Moriarty - Isabella (2011)

Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy (1955)

N

The National - Hey Rosey (2019)

Nirvana - Come As You Are (1992)

Nirvana - Negative Creep (1991)

Noir Désir - Bouquet de nerfs (2001)

O

Les Ogres de Barback - Si tu restes (2019)

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (1973)

OrelSan - Dis moi (2018)

P

Vanessa Paradis - Ces mots simples (2018)

Charles Pasi - A Man I Know (2014)

Pearl Jam - Jeremy (1991)

Pink Floyd - Money (1973)

Pixies - Hey (1989)

Placebo - Battle For The Sun (2009)

Iggy Pop - Run Like A Villain (1982)

Portishead - Misterons (1994)

The Pretenders - Middle of the Road (1984)

Q

Queens Of The Stone Age - Regular John (1998)

R

The Raconteurs - Help Me Stranger (2019)

Radiohead - Street Spirit (Fade Out) (1995)

Ram Jam - Black Betty (1977)

Red Hot Chili Pepper - Under The Bridge (1991)

Renaud - Fatigué (1985)

Calvin Russell - Soldier (1992/2011)

S

Saez - Germaine (2019)

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Constipation Blues (1969)

Screaming Trees - Nearly Lost You (1992)

Seasick Steve - Hobo Low (2006)

Shaka Ponk - My Name Is Stain (2011)

William Sheller - Maintenant Tout Le Temps (1994)

Alan Silvestri - Retour vers le Futur (from Back to the Future) (1985)

Simon & Garfunkle - El Condor Pasa (1970)

Slaves - The Velvet Ditch (2019)

Smoke City - Underwater Love (1997)

Sonic Youth - Bull In The Heather (1994)

Joss Stone (cover The Dells) - The Love We Had (Stays On My Mind) (2012)

Alain Souchon - Presque (2019)

Soundgarden - The Day I Tried To Live (1994)

Supertramp - Give A Little Bit (1977)

T

Taj Mahal - Ain't That A Lot Of Love (1968)

Tame Impala - Patience (2019)

Tarmac - Tu semblante (2001)

Taxi Girl -   Cherchez le Garçon (1980)

Tindersticks - For The Beauty (2019)

Tool - Fear Inoculum (2019)

Tricky (feat. Marta) - Makes Me Wonder (2019)

The Twilight Singers - King Only (2000)

U

U2 - Mysterious Ways (1991)

U2 - Pride (In The Name Of Love) (1984)

Ugly Kid Joe - Cats In The Cradle (1992)

UNKLE - The Lost Highway (2019)

V

Volbeat - Still Counting (2008)

W

Tom Waits - I hope I don’t fall in love with you (1973)

Les Wampas - Ce Soir C'est Noël (1990)

Les Wampas - Chirac En Prison (2003)

The War on Drugs - Pain (2017)

Emily Jane White - Dark Undercoat (2007)

Jim White - Bluebird (2004)

The Who - Behind Blue Eyes (1971)

Wilco - Everyone Hides (2019)

John Williams - Star Wars Main Theme (1977)

Shannon Wright - These Present Arms (2019)

X

Y

Yodelice - Wake Me Up (2010)

Thom Yorke - Not The News (2019)

Z

Zebda - Le Bruit Et L'Odeur (1995)

Rob Zombie - Dead City Radio And The New Gods Of Supertown (2013)

[filmandtvhistory]

November 29, 1945 - The Lost Weekend premieres in Los Angeles.

The film is based on Charles R. Jackson’s 1944 novel of the same name. It was directed by Billy Wilder who also co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Brackett. It starred Ray Milland and Jane Wyman.

It ended up winning four Academy Awards...Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay). In 2011, it was added to the National Film Registry for being “ culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

[mourningmaybells]

there’s 2 bisexual male protagonists in the entire noir genre, and I’m just surprised we even got one

[newstodayreader]

Chelsea Hotel tenants feud over mold, extortion For 145 years, the Chelsea Hotel has been a scene of artistic greatness — Arthur C. Clarke wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” there — and tragedy, including the deaths of Nancy Spungen and “The Lost Weekend” writer Charles R. Jackson. But never has the Chelsea seen a war like what’s now taking place. On one... Source link

[bm2ab]

Arrivals & Departures 22 June 1906 – 27 March 2002 Celebrate Samuel ‘Billy’ Wilder Day!

Billy Wilder (/ˈwaɪldər/; German: [ˈvɪldɐ]; born Samuel Wilder, 22 June 1906 – 27 March 2002) was an Austrian-born film director and screenwriter whose career spanned more than five decades. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of the Hollywood Golden Age of cinema. With The Apartment, Wilder became the first person to win Academy Awards as producer, director, and screenwriter for the same film.

Wilder became a screenwriter in the late 1920′s while living in Berlin. After the rise of the Nazi Party, he left for Paris, where he made his directorial debut. He moved to Hollywood in 1933, and in 1939 he had a hit when he co-wrote the screenplay for the romantic comedy Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo. Wilder established his directorial reputation with an adaption of James M. Cain's Double Indemnity (1944), a film noir. Wilder co-wrote the screenplay with crime novelist Raymond Chandler. Wilder earned the Best Director and Best Screenplay Academy Awards for the adaptation of a Charles R. Jackson story, The Lost Weekend (1945), about alcoholism. In 1950, Wilder co-wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Sunset Boulevard, as well as Stalag 17 in 1953.

From the mid-1950′s on, Wilder made mostly comedies. Among the classics Wilder created in this period are the farces The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959), and satires such as The Apartment (1960). He directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-nominated performances. Wilder was recognized with the American Film Institute (AFI) Life Achievement Award in 1986. In 1988, Wilder was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

[naomidryden-smith]

North Country Gentleman

NORTH COUNTRY GENTLEMAN – by Dermott Ryder (taken from Solstice Sunset – Features From Folk Odyssey)

This tribute to Colin Dryden, first published to the on-line magazine Folk Odyssey as ‘Echoes of a North Country Trilogy’ has gained a title change.  Within days of publication Folk Odyssey received several emails suggesting that the final line in the endnote ‘Appreciation’ could provide an alternative title.  Then, at a social gathering, a truculent woman with piercing eyes accosted the mild-mannered editor and virtually ordered the change, the editor, an affable individual, acquiesced.

Colin Dryden was born to John and Doreen Dryden on July 23rd 1942 in Bradford, West Yorkshire.  He was the second of four children.  He had an older brother, Donald, and two younger sisters, June and Christine.  He was a war baby and, on the way through boyhood to youth he experienced the post war austerity years of the late nineteen forties and fifties.

The great Yorkshire conurbation was a tough industrial environment. Daily working life there presented a history of hardship and struggle.  The ‘dark satanic mills’ of the industrial revolution still cast a long shadow.  The war memorials standing in every village and town square, with weathered names in one panel and freshly carved names in another, were a constant reminder the of the tragedy and loss of the two world wars.  The betrayal and defeat of the general strike and the haunting recollections of the Great Depression were never far from memory.

Colin Dryden’s boyhood world was a world recovering from the rigours of the Second World War and at the same time battling rationing, savage winters, nationalization, factory closures and unemployment.

He attended junior school and later Lepage Secondary School in Bradford. After finishing school, being strong and fit and not afraid of hard work, he had a number of very physical jobs with International Harvesters, a local tractor company. When not working for a living he worked at life.  He loved the outdoors, particularly camping, walking and climbing, east of the Pennines in the Yorkshire Dales and far west of the Pennines in the Lake District of North West Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmoreland.

As he grew through and out of his teen years music became his greatest and most enduring passion.  His early influences included Bill Broonzy, Huddie Leadbetter and Django Rhinehart; later influences Davy Graham and John Renbourn were largely inescapable. He was a totally self-taught guitar and fiddle master and he played at every opportunity.

Although extremely important, music was not his only diversion.  In the early nineteen-sixties he followed his actor director brother Donald and turned to acting for a while.  He appeared in several plays, including Under The Milkwood by Dylan Thomas and, with Bradford Civic Playhouse Drama School, Green Fingers productions, the Mad Woman of Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux, Knit Yourself A Lost Weekend by David Climie, and Working to Rule by Michael P Walker at the Bradford Playhouse, now The Priestley.

He was naturally adventurous, questing almost, and when the opportunity to travel to Australia came to him he accepted the challenge with some enthusiasm. Colin Dryden departed the United Kingdom by air on May 20th 1965. He travelled as a ten quid tourist under the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme, and he brought with him to Australia his observations and experiences of working life in the North of England, and his talent as a songwriter and musician.

One of his earliest recorded involvements with the popular folk movement in Sydney, in the middle nineteen sixties, was with the Friday Night ‘Sydney Folk Song Club’ at the Hotel Elizabeth, a small agreeable hostelry near to central Sydney’s green and pleasant Hyde Park.  There, for a while at least, he performed and he shared the organizational load with Mike and Carol Wilkinson and Mike Ball.

The Wilkies build a reputation for their English folk song harmonies, for their uncompromising attitudes towards material presented at their folk club, and for Carol’s occasionally incendiary letters to various folk publications. The influential and renowned Mike Ball, concertina virtuoso and fine singer, claimed a place in folk-time for his intuitive musical setting of Charles Causley’s evocative poem, ‘Timothy Winters’.  In time Wilkie, Wilkie and Ball moved back to Old Albion, the Albonian’s gain was our loss. Colin Dryden, however, soldiered on in the antipodes.

For a time, after the departure of the peripatetic three, there was a slight hiatus in smooth running but there were willing workers to help bridge the Friday Night gap until expatriate Liverpudlian and expatriate Highland Scot Morag Chetwyn joined Colin Dryden on the all-singing, all-playing management team.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday Night at The Hotel Elizabeth, the irrepressible Australian Irish tidal wave ebbed and flowed in rebellious sheep shearing chorus.  The Wednesday Night had several organizers; they came and went, some like lions and some like lambs.

It was about this time that ‘The Leaf – The Sydney Folk Song Magazine’ made a brief but interesting appearance.  Colin Dryden wrote the editorial, a couple of articles and a couple of record reviews, Keith Finlayson wrote about Huddie Leadbetter and Derrick Chetwyn of the Sydney Folk Song Club, John Francis of the Jug of Punch Folk Club and G R Tomkinson of the Bower Folk Club, Bankstown, provided activity reports and comments on their neck of the woods.  It was a good read, pity it didn’t run to a second edition.  Too many other interesting things to do, I suppose.

The Chetwyn, Chetwyn, Dryden team eventually made way for another expatriate Englishman, the highly focused Mike Eves.  Under his direction the club consolidated Friday Night and expanded into Saturday Night.  He proved to be one of the most able folk club organizers in the western spiral arm of the galaxy.  He was also one of the prime movers of the 1970 Port Jackson folk festival.

A name that resonates across the years from that formidable festival is ‘Extradition’ – Colin Dryden, now at rest in Bradford, Yorkshire, UK, Colin Campbell, now residing in England, and Shayna Carlin, now in transit – were at that time far ahead of their time.  All I can say is ‘Hush’ you had to be there.  

Colin Dryden rejoiced in both the traditional and contemporary songs he had learned from others but told a much more personal series of stories in the songs of his own devising.  For ease of identification I have taken to describing three of his songs as a North Country Trilogy.  I list them as Sither, Factory Lad and Pit Boy because in this order they came to me.

The trilogy captures enduring impressions of the industrial North of England.  The cotton mills, coalmines, terraced houses, cobblestone streets, and clogs, are all here.  He has captured an echo of race memory and recorded a culture and lifestyle fast fading into history.

In the nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, Colin Dryden had a voice among voices. His interpretation of folksong, both traditional and contemporary, made him a leading folk activist of the day.  Working alone, with a partner or in a group, in a great hall or small folk club he had the power to charm and capture an audience and keep it working with him from introduction to encore.

Colin Dryden’s North Country Trilogy has a readily definable place in the common stock of Australian singers singing on.  The songs pass from one to another, in the main, b oral transmission or by hastily scribbled notes.  Some singers aim at an accurate performance of a known writer’s works, in text, tune and style.  Others add their own stamp of individuality to tune and style.  That is the nature of things.

The folk process in its way a force of nature, is always with us and a few word changes have occurred in some performances over the past thirty years or so. Even in the presentation of the songs by the most diligent of singers.

Transcription errors, copious quantities of amber fluids or the ravages of time and the failing of memory account for minor accidental changes. The only changes that I have encountered, that I find worthy of comment, are those where the delicate and contemplative North Country ‘were’ is replaced by the harder antipodean ‘was’.  To me, at least, the ‘was’ accidental modification disrupts the flow and diminishes the strangely ethereal qualify of the original words of one particular song.

The words, structure and order of verses of the three songs as written down here come from direct contact with Colin Dryden and have been tested for accuracy against the aging audiocassettes of his recorded singing.

So…moving right along, there I was, sitting at what became my favourite table in the Sydney Folk Song Club, otherwise known as the upstairs lounge of the Hotel Elizabeth, in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, one surprising Saturday evening early in nineteen seventy.  Mike Eves started the entertainment, as usual, and we all joined in with Three Score and Ten, Poverty Knock and Rough Tucker Bill.  The Port Jackson Folk Festival was still resonating in the background and there was an air of excitement around all things folk, especially at the Sydney Folk Song Club.

I was there to hear and enjoy everybody but I had a particular interested in Colin Dryden.  I had met him at the festival, at an impromptu session after a riveting Sunday night concert.  On stage his songs of choice were: Lord Franklin, Lassie With The Yellow Coatie, High Germanie, and Silver In The Stubble. Maintaining an after-part song list was too hard.

Performing alone or in a group, on stage or in the corner of a noisy, smoky, boozy room Colin Dryden was impressive.  His appearance at the Sydney Folk Song Club was my first opportunity to hear him in such an intimate venue.

Colin Dryden, introduced by Michael Eves, came to the small stage and sat for a moment in silence. Then, in his characteristically unhurried way, he told a story.  He checked the tuning on his guitar as he spoke, quite softly.  The good audience listened attentively.  Everybody laughed in the right places.  His first song, Pleasant And Delightful, selected to allow the audience to share the moment, and a chorus, worked well, then he introduced Sither.

This is a song in which he remembers, with obvious affection his paternal grandfather, James Dryden.  It tells a simple and engaging story of the old man’s retirement from full time work in the mill. It bears, as title, his grandfather’s nickname.  Sither, or Zither, translated perhaps as ‘see thee’ or ‘look here’ was the name the family used for James Dryden because it was one of his catch phrases.

SITHER Colin Dryden © The Dryden Estate

Forty years in the mill, your day’s near done, but it’s going still. Time to be thinking o’ makin’ your will, for you’ve nowhere to go, no intentions.

Weft and weave it was your game, ten thousand hours upon the frame, then walking home in the driving rain, with a brand new watch and a pension.

Time now to bide, to sit and to dream, on bygone days and the changes you’ve seen, in coal and in diesel, the power of steam, black shawls, coal stockings and courting.

Clogs on the frost on a cold winter’s morn, the smell of the grease and oil on the loom, and the wife wi’ the kids by the gateway at noon stand waiting for your wages on Friday.

Six in the morn and it’s time to rise, sleep on, old man, you’re weary and wise, to the ways of the mill, aye, and all of the tries for a part time job in the doffing.

Puffin’ and pantin’ past the mill, up to the local to get all your fill, though you’ve only got enough brass for a gill, there might be a job in the offing.

But the shuttles have flown, it’s time to roam, back to the armchair and fire at home, and leave all the mill hands and weavers alone  to their beer and their laughter and joking.

But many’s the time when you’ve stood with the best, although the looms have near turned you deaf, they’ve all got a few miles of weaving as yet before they’ll have bested old Sither.

If Sither records working life as observed from the outside, by a grandson perhaps, then Factory Lad describes working life experienced from the inside. Cold early mornings in winter, the cruel demands of the alarm clock, the desire to remain warm and snug in a cocoon of blankets are experiences shared by many.  The early shift at the engineering workshop or factory is calling and you have to go.  Travelling to work at dawn, on shank’s pony, bicycle, or double-decker bus, hurrying to clock-on almost before waking up is a way of life, if not a rite of passage. These may be memories best forgotten but they can’t be.  

           Here too, indelible and indestructible, is the manufacturer’s mark made by the mind-numbing and soul-destroying ordeal of bondage in the factory system.  So many people who have shared this song can say ‘been there done that’.  Others, of a different generation perhaps, can enjoy the song and gain some insight into the work-a-day life of a fitter and turner. Although this begs the questions: Who would want to, and why?

           Factory Lad surfaced, for me at least, at a fairly quiet drink, chat and sing a round night in a cockroach castle in Chippendale in May or June 1970. I can date the event with reasonable ease because I had recently received the first ever copy of the New South Wales Folk Federation newsletter.  It was a masthead, in small print under the larger print of the main title, ‘incorporating the Port Jackson Folk Festival Committee’.

           We discussed it at length.  It contained as much useful event information, local and interstate, that a journal that size could.  Very useful, we decided unanimously.  However, the editorial was a little disturbing in one respect.  There was an aura of ‘we’ve done good and are on our way to glory’ leeching out of the page.  ‘Big is good and bigger is better’ we inferred.  A dark omen indeed, we agreed.  The curse of the folk scene, we decided was the ambitions of some people to tur a popular music movement into a three-ring circus.  Time, we prophesied, will tell.  Then we consumed a little herbal tobacco, made several jokes about camels being horses designed by committees and got back to singing and drinking or was it drinking and singing?

           Colin Dryden sang Factory Lad.  He didn’t say as much but I gained the impression that it was a relatively new song that had been some time in the growing and cone to a performable completion during his Kings Cross sojourn during 1969.  In any event it achieved instant acclaim and there was something of a scramble to get the words. Factory Lad entered the song stock and became a favourite and the ‘Turning Steel’ chorus always gets a powerful response.

FACTORY LAD Colin Dryden © The Dryden Estate

You wake up in the morning and morn’s as black as night. Your mother’s shouting up the stairs, And you know she’s winning the fight. So you venture out of the bed, me lad, for you know it’s getting late, and it’s down the stairs and up the road, and through the factory gate.

Turning steel, how do you feel as in the chuck you spin If you felt like me you’d roll right out and never roll back in.

Sleet and dark the morning, as you squeeze in through the gate, as you clock in aye yon bell will ring, eight hours is your fate. Off comes the coat, up go the sleeves, and “right lads” is the cry, with an eye on the clock and t’other on your lathe, you wish that time could fly.

Turning steel, how do you feel as in the chuck you spin? If you felt like me you’d roll right out and never roll back in.

But time can’t fly as fast as a lathe, and work you must, the grinding, groaning, spinning metal, the hot air and the dust, and many’s the time I’m with me girl and I’m walking through the park, whilst gazing on the turning steel or the welder’s blinding spark.

Turning steel, how do you feel as in the chuck you spin? If you felt like me you’d roll right out and never roll back in.

Well old Tom left last week, his final bell did ring, with his hair as white as the hair beneath his oily sunken skin. Well he made his speech and bid farewell to a lifetime working here, but as I shook his hand I thought of hell as a lathe and forty years.

Turning steel, how do you feel as in the chuck you spin. If you felt like me you’d roll right out and never roll back in.

So, when my time comes as come it must, I’ll leave this place. And I’ll walk right out past the chargehand’s desk and never turn me face, out through the gates into the sun and I’ll leave it all behind, with one regret for the lads I’ve left to carry on the grind.

Turning steel, how do you feel as in the chuck you spin? If you felt like me you’d roll right out and never roll back in.

Pit Boy, the third song in my ordering of the trilogy, is evocative and lyrical, a song at the edge of memory.  I can only recall Colin Dryden sing it ‘live’ twice. The first time was in the winter of 1970 at a Sydney Folk Song Club Saturday night after-party at a very interesting house in Cambridge Street, Paddington.  The second occasion was at the Sydney Folk Song Club a year or so later.

           The Cambridge Street after-party had a very special resonance.  Colin Dryden hadn’t appeared at the club that night, even though he was expected, but he had a sixth sense when it came to party locations. He arrived just after midnight with a tall fair-haired girl from a different planet and a guitar swathed in a tartan car rug, because it was bloody cold out there.

           He was in good spirits, and in good voice and sang several songs.  Lark In The Morning, Cocaine and Pit Boy come to mind. Time, I regret to say has hidden the others.

PIT BOY Colin Dryden © The Dryden Estate

The times are hard, the days are long, I wish I were a farmer’s son – out in the green fields all day long – away from the dark of the day.

When the sun is hanging in the sky, the days are long, long are the sighs, down in the darkness, where we bide, passing our lives away.

And if I were a robber bold I’d rob the rich of all their gold. And if I were caught, well I’ve been told it’s better down Botany Bay.

When the sun is hanging in the sky, the days are long, long are the sighs, down in the darkness, where we bide, passing our lives away.

And if I were a sailor, I’d sail the main, and robs the ships of France and Spain. Now if we lost perhaps we’d gain for the French might raise our pay.

When the sun is sagging in the sky, the days are long, long are the sighs, down in the darkness, where we bide, passing our lives away.

Like pit ponies, down the mine going blind without the shine – though if we do we’ll never mind – ‘cos we’ll never want the sun no more.

When the sun is hanging in the sky, the days are long, long are the sighs, down in the darkness, where we bide, passing our lives away.

In terms of performance by others of a North Country Trilogy – in total, Sither, Factory Lad and Pit Boy – the only Sydney folk activists I can recall singing all three songs at one time or another are the late David Alexander and the encyclopaedic Robin Connaughton. However, I have encountered several other singers and groups of singers presenting one or other of these eminently singable songs on numerous occasions stretching over thirty years.

           Only one performance caused me to recoil with horror.  That was at a chorus cup session, when a gathering of ponderous choristers managed to turn Factory Lad into a turgid facsimile of a high church hymn.  It was the dark side of harmony singing.  Choirs, I thought, belong in far distant cathedrals, with the doors locked and bolted on the outside.

           The clock’s ceaseless ticking counted the folk at the Hotel Elizabeth on a pace through the early and into the middle nineteen seventies.  Changing fortunes hurried the departure of the Irish Musicians club and brought a new team, David Alexander and Keri Levi, to the Wednesday Elizabeth.  Within weeks they made way for Darts Kelimocum – Dermott and Alison Ryder, Tony Suttor, Maureen Cummuskey, with Keri Levito to ease the changeover.  Competing ambitions saw Mike Eves, a most able man, move on from the Friday and Saturday ‘Sydney Folk Song Club’, and the merging of the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday operations under the Darts Kelimocum banner as the ‘Elizabeth Folk Club’.

           Folk organisations always suffer the attrition of competing objectives; Keri Levi’s stay was short, and later Tony Suttor and Maureen Cummuskey sought different roads to travel.  That left yours truly and partner to run the three nights a week ‘Elizabeth Folk Club’. It was a time consuming, challenging, rewarding experience.

           A significant event in the folk lifestyle of Sydneysiders, Andrew Saunders reminded me of it, was the closing down of Tommy and Joan Doyle’s pub, the Westworth Park Hotel in Ultimo, an inner city suburb of Sydney.

           This ever-hospitable couple had made the pub a home from home for folk musicians for eight years or, as Declan Affley put it on several occasions, from time immoral.  The last Saturday, 27th November 1976, at Tommy Doyle’s was an almighty wake. The pub actually closed on the following Tuesday, many of the Saturday revellers were still there.  The Wentworth Park Hotel, and Tommy and Joan Doyle, had a mother and a father of a send off.  One of Colin Dryden’s contributions on the Saturday evening of the event was an English folk song that seemed to fit the passing of an era wonderfully well.

WHAT’S THE LIFE OF A MAN English – Traditional

As I was a-walking one morning at ease, A-viewing the leaves as the hung from the trees, They were all in full motion or seeming to be, And those that had withered, they fell from the tree.

What’s the life of a man, any more than the leaves? A man has his seasons, so why should he grieve? Even though in this wide world he seems bright and gay, Like the leaves he shall wither and soon fade away.

Did you not see the leaves but a short time ago? How lovely and green they all seemed to grow, When a frost came upon them and withered them all, Then a storm came upon them and down they did fall.

What’s the life of a man, any more than the leaves? A man has his seasons, so why should he grieve? Even though in this wide world he seems bright and gay, Like the leaves he shall wither and soon fade away.

If you look in the churchyard there you will see Those who have passed like the leaves from the tree. When age and affliction upon them did call, Like the leaves they did wither and down they did fall.

What’s the life of a man, any more than the leaves? A man has his seasons, so why should he grieve? Even though in this wide world he seems bright and gay, Like the leaves he shall wither and soon fade away.

 Russ Herman and Tom Zurycki captured that historical folk event at the Wentworth Park Hotel on half-inch reel-to-reel video p/pack film and later transferred it to VCR when they discovered that only one machine in the known universe could lay it.  It was sad to say farewell to Tommy Doyle’s but the legend lives on.

           Community access FM radio arrived in Sydney in 1975 and in early 1976 folk musicians were performing ‘live’ on 2MBS-FM on a regular basis.  The programme ‘Burn The Candle Slowly’, a magazine in pages broadcast from Tuesday midnight until 6:00am every week.  One of the pages, ‘Looking at it Sideways’ later became ‘Ryder Round Folk’.

           Derrick Chetwyn of Liverpool UK, then Sydney, later Brisbane, performed Colin Dryden’s songs Sither and Factory Lad live to air on the 2MBS-FM programme ‘Looking At It Sideways’ in September 1976.  Pit boy, performed by Colin Dryden and recorded live at The Elizabeth Folk Club, also appeared in that programme.  Recorded for posterity, and for playing in the car on the way to reunions, this moment in radio history can be found on the 2004 Screw Soapers Guild project CD, On This Michaelmas Even, SSG-sideway-760928-Z41020.

           Sither, performed live to air by Robin Connaughton on the 2MBS-FM programme ‘Ryder Round Folk’ in July 1983 generated a spirited listener response. The programme segment also included Sandy Hollow Line by Duke Tritton and Sergeant Small by Tex Morton with a tune by Brad Tate.  It was rebroadcast several times and also found a home on the 2002 Screw Soapers Guild project CD, Cross-Section of Connaughton, SSG-RRF-830723.

           Factory Lad has become, over the years, the most performed, and recorded, of the songs.  In 1977 Sydney singer Andrew Saunders, late of Folk’sle, Steamshuttle and later of the Larrikins, Balmain Light Haulage and The Symbolics, recorded it for the concept album, On My Selection, Larrikin LRF 017.  In 1982 the Melbourne group Cobbers included it on their album, By Request, Festival L37919.

           The producers of Dave Alexander’s late nineteen nineties posthumous CD, Singer At Large, DAS27/24H selected Factory Lad as the first track.  In live performance, Andrew Saunders included Factory Lad in his set at the Screw Soapers Guild 2003 Christmas convocation. Robin Connaughton of Roaring Forties, in 2004, still sings it occasionally.

           Pit Boy is also part of Robin Connaughton’s song stock.  He remembers that he first heard Colin Dryden sing it at one of the Newcastle folk festivals in the early nineteen seventies.  A short time later, in 1972 perhaps, on Connaugton’s entry into Sydney’s big city society, he heard him sing it at the Red Lion Folk Club in the Red Lion Hotel in Sydney.  There he got the words directly from the singer.  He started singing the song almost immediately and has sung it ever since. He presented it in his set at the Screw Soapers Guild 1997 Christmas convocation.

           This performance, including Old Ben by CJ Dennis and Monday Morning by Cyril Tawney, appears on the Screw Soapers Guild 2002 Limited Edition CD, Another Saturday, SSG-collect-070.  Sadly, Pit Boy and Sither are finding quiet times now.  I am hoping for a renaissance.

           Colin Dryden popularised his own songs, and others, during the nineteen sixties and seventies.  His strong, rich voice, his skill as an entertainer, his musicianship and his easy-going personality made him a popular addition to any folk club night.  Then our world moved on, tick tock.

           I have a theory, one of many, that older singers singing Colin Dryden’s songs can still hear Colin Dryden singing them, and that younger singers singing his songs wish that they could hear him singing too.

           Colin Dryden, in failing health, returned to the United Kingdom in 1986. He and his family were fortunate enough to be able to spend some valuable time together.  He died very suddenly of an aneurysm on July 28th 1988. He has found a lasting peace at Lidget Green in Bradford, Yorkshire.

Resting there, safe, home at last, a travelling bard of the hero caste, in gentle sunlight, in soothing rain, in whispering winds he’ll sing again.

People of my generation remember Colin Dryden for his personal warmth, his good companionship, his generosity, his free spirit, his delicate touch on the acoustic guitar, and for his singing of those songs we will always think of as a North Country Trilogy.

An Appreciation

Folk Odyssey – The Magazine and Dermott Ryder take this opportunity to thank the Dryden Family of London, Bradford and Newark in the United Kingdom for the help freely given in the writing of this short personal tribute to Colin Dryden [1943-1988].  He was to all that knew him, a North Country Gentleman.

FAREWELL SHANTY English Traditional

It’s time to go now, haul away the anchor. Haul away the anchor.  It’s our sailing time

Get some sail upon her. Haul away your halyards. Haul away your halyards. It’s our sailing time.

Set her on her course now, haul away your fore sheets.  Haul away your fore sheets, it’s our sailing time.

Waves are surging under, haul away down channel. Haul away down channel, on the evening tide.

When my days are over, haul away for heaven. Haul away for heaven, God be by my side.

Dermott Ryder

[nightingveilxo]

The Lost Weekend - Directed by Billy Wilder

Alcoholism & Homoerotic Subtext

TPLOSH wasn’t the only film that Wilder made, straddling what was acceptable by the Production Code. He also made The Lost Weekend, the original novel which helped WWII veterans, but fell short in establishing the character from the novel of the same name as being bisexual.

Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. Not to be confused with John from S4 wearing a coat like Sherlock.

We’ve already seen metas and discussions about how John drinks whenever he’s feeling emotion, especially about Sherlock. We have the infamous Moffat quote about the amount he drinks:

SUE: That’s a huge glass of wine [John’s] having there, isn’t it?

BENEDICT: I think that’s a whisky, isn’t it? You wouldn’t put wine in a glass like that.

STEVEN: If you watch this show carefully, there is a subtext about John drinking. John’s just hammered by every midnight!

(Like Sherlock, “he does all that anyway”.)

BENEDICT: Come on – it’s New Year’s Eve!

MARK: Even he forgets the names of his girlfriends, and that’s why!

(Umm???)

BENEDICT: Has that glass changed shape, or is that just me?

STEVEN: I think it’s just you. I don’t think he’s capable of doing that. Many and great are his powers; however … ( x)

This continues to happen, and arguably gets worse, through S4. (Consider the number of bottles of alcohol in the kitchen of John’s flat.)

How are the two related?

The Lost Weekend is a serious, painful and uncompromising, frank look at alcohol addiction that follows almost five days ('one lost weekend') in the life of a chronic, tortured alcoholic, and failed writer. The dark-tempered,  melodramatic social-problem film was both a critically- and financially-successful endeavor. This was Billy Wilder's fourth directorial effort, after The  Major and the Minor (1942), Five Graves to Cairo (1943), and the    classic film noir Double Indemnity (1944). The film was given a subtitle for its British release: The Lost Weekend: Diary of a Dipsomaniac.

It was also a revolutionary, ground-breaking motion picture - because it was the first time that Hollywood had seriously tackled the taboo subject and created social awareness of alcoholism as a modern illness. Previous   films had only made fun of drunks and lushes (e.g., The Thin Man series, or W.C. Fields' films). Its release was threatened when the alcohol industry offered to purchase the film's negative and remove it from circulation, but then praised and supported the film following its popular release (and critical success).

Audiences, critics and the studio (before its release) viewed the film's subject matter as sensational, controversial, daring, and starkly real. The drab, gritty black and white cinematography of the expressionistic film emphasized the menacing, warping, and harrowing power of alcohol, as some of the booze-soaked scenes were shot through or in the presence of numerous whiskey bottles and shot glasses. The main character, an alcoholic writer, loses his money, his freedom, and his sense of reality when confined in an alcoholic ward.

Miklos Rozsa's eerie score featured the first use in a feature film of electronic music - from an instrument called a theremin that produced oscillating, wailing, other-worldly sounds to express the drinker's distorted perceptions of reality during the nightmarish sequences.

The film's screenplay (by director Billy Wilder and screenwriting partner     Charles Brackett) was based on Charles R. Jackson's 1944 best-selling novel     of the same name, although its unconvincing, rehabilitative 'happy ending'     conclusion was more optimistic, upbeat and hopeful than the one in the novel.  The novel also changed the protagonist's troubled bi-sexuality and confused     sexuality to frustrations due to creative writer's block.

The film was nominated for seven Academy Award nominations and received     four major accolades: director Billy Wilder scored a double-win, both as    Best  Director (Wilder's second directorial nomination and his first Oscar    win),  and co-writer of the Best Screenplay (his fifth screenwriting nomination    and  first win). Popular matinee idol Ray Milland, cast against type, won    the Best  Actor award for his greatest career role as the hopelessly-obsessed    drunkard,  and the film also captured the Best Picture Oscar, defeating nominees    including  Hitchcock's Spellbound and Leo McCarey's The Bells of    St. Mary's    (both with Ingrid Bergman), Michael Curtiz' Mildred Pierce, and the musical Anchors Aweigh. Its other three nominations  were Best Score (Miklos Rozsa), Best Film Editing (Doane Harrison), and Best B/W Cinematography (John F. Seitz). Jane Wyman also was cast in a different role than her normal characterizations as a bright, loving, patient and happy screen ingenue. It was the first  Best Picture Oscar winner to also win the Cannes Film Festival's top prize, now known as the Golden Palm (Palme d'Or).

The film had enormous impact, especially upon returning combat-fatigued GIs from WW II who were adjusting and struggling with their own difficulties in civilian life and often turning into alcohol dependents. In fact, its success  spurred further black and white, post-war dramas dealing with social-problems, e.g., returning war veterans in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), anti-Semitic prejudice in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), treatment of the mentally-ill in The Snake Pit (1948), and political demagogues in All The King's Men (1949). ( x )

In Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of Charles Jackson (2013) Blake Bailey recounts Jackson’s life and analyzes his soaked literature, revealing his bisexuality and wounded narcissism. Jackson’s idols were Shakespeare and Fitzgerald, and he saw himself destined for literary glory, “a kindred of Poe and Keats and Chatterton.” “Don is both tragic clown and audience staring back at the performer in silent contempt and ridicule, while hovering above is the triumphant novelist –Jackson – and hence the implicit irony of Don’s self-loathing,” muses Bailey. Every chapter in his book (“The Start,” “The Wife,” “The Joke,” “The Dream,” “The Mouse,” “The End”) is equally persistent narrating Don’s fight against “the old Demon of Ennui,” frantically approaching his conflicted concept of suicide: “a refusal to submit, to conform, a demonstration that the spirit with honor is unwilling to go on except in its own way… Romantic rubbish! An end like this was abject, immoral, worse than unmanly.” ( x )

[robinallender]

Reading List 2017

I’ve decided to do things a little differently this year. Blogging about (almost) every book started to feel a bit like homework last year! So for 2017, I’m going to keep it simple and just do a wee Instagram post (which will feed through to this blog) with a choice quote (if the mood takes me) about each book I read. 

To start with, here are the ten I didn’t finished from last year’s list:

Light Years – James Salter Ground Control: Fear and happiness in the twenty-first century city – Anna Minton Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception – Claudia Hammond The Wake – Paul Kingsworth The Rings of Saturn – W. G. Sebald The Lie – Alberto Moravia The Reflection – Hugo Wilcken The Sea – John Banville Riddley Walker – Russell Hoban

And here’s another bunch I will never get round to finishing. I might end up adding to this as the year progresses (like a mad idiot!). Some of them are books I want to re-read – when I first read Zona (Geoff Dyer’s book about Tarkovsky’s Stalker) I hadn’t seen the film, so that should be interesting. Joyce’s Portrait is always worth a re-visit, especially in the Oxford edition (edited by Jeri Johnson, a seriously dope Joycean). A few of these (the ones involving pubs) have been recommended to me by my friend John Robins: Hangover Square, The Old Devils, The Ginger Man etc. I wish myself luck!

The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis The Story of a New Name – Elena Ferrante The Outrun – Amy Liptrot The Book of Disquiet – Fernando Pessoa A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing – Eimear McBride Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Katherine Boo Respectable: The Experience of Class – Lynsey Hanley Ready Player One – Ernest Cline The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House – Kate Summerscale All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr Grief is the Thing with Feathers – Max Porter A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara A Man in Love – Karl Ove Knausgaard Red Seas Under Red Skies – Scott Lynch White Sands – Geoff Dyer The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man – James Joyce How to Be Both – Ali Smith The Stories of John Cheever – John Cheever What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – Raymond Carver Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room – Geoff Dyer Pretentiousness: Why It Matters – Dan Fox The Lost Weekend – Charles R. Jackson The Ginger Man – J. P. Donleavy Mothering Sunday – Graham Swift The Way the World Works – Nicholson Baker Rabbit, Run – John Updike Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris And When Did You Last See Your Father? – Blake Morrison Romany and Tom – Ben Watt Girl in a Band – Kim Gordon  The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity – Julia Cameron Right Ho, Jeeves – P. G. Wodehouse Leadville – Edward Platt My Name is Lucy Barton – Elizabeth Strout First Love – Gwendoline Riley Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders Priestdaddy – Patricia Lockwood Sympathy – Olivia Sudjic  Seven Brief Lessons on Physics – Carlo Rovelli Tom’s Midnight Garden – A. Philippa Pearce Ghosts and Journeys – Robert Westall Conversations with Friends – Sally Rooney Ulverton – Adam Thorpe The Lonely City – Olivia Laing Night Sky With Exit Wounds – Ocean Vuong Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov I Hate the Internet – Jarett Kobek Autumn – Ali Smith The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré These Darkening Days – Benjamin Myers For Esmé with Love and Squalor – J. D. Salinger This Is Memorial Device: An Hallucinated Oral History of the Post-Punk Music Scene in Airdrie, Coatbridge and environs 1978–1986 

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Best Billy Wilder Movies According to IMDB

Billy Wilder was an Austrian-born American screenwriter and film director, who worked in the industry for five decades. He is still regarded as one of the versatile and brilliant directors in the industry. Modern casual movie fans might not know him or his work. Wilder’s film The Apartment was the first movie for which he won Academy Awards as a screenwriter, director, and producer. In the 1920s he wrote his first screenplay in Berlin. Then he made his directorial debut in Paris. He first co-wrote the screenplay for a comedy film Ninotchka, featuring Greta Garbo. He did his first direction for a crime drama, which was an adaptation of James M.Cain’s Double Indemnity. From the mid-50s, he mostly made films in the comedy genre.

All of Wilder’s movies were different from each other. At the same time, some could not differ in terms of the film’s tone or story. His brilliant writing skills and unique filmmaking style could be witnessed in many fantastic movies. In this article, we will talk about some of his creations according to the ratings on IMDB.

Sabrina (1954)- IMDB 7.7

Sabrina is a 1954 American romantic comedy-drama, adapted from Samuel A. Taylor and Ernest Lehman’s play Sabrina Fair in 1953. In the cast Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, and Audrey Hepburn played their respective characters perfectly. The film was also Wilder’s last released film by Paramount Pictures.

In this movie, Sabrina was the young daughter of the Larrabee family. She had a massive crush on David Larrabee for all her life. David, on the other hand, was a three-time married playboy, to try to impress almost all beautiful women. But David never paid attention to Sabrina, because for him she was still a child. In one evening, there was a party in Larrabee mansion, where Sabrina noticed David was enticing yet another woman. She was filled with anger and wrote a suicide note to his father. Fortunately, when she was trying to kill herself, David’s older brother Linus interrupted and saved her. Sabrina then sailed to France for her education. When she came back from France, she had transformed into a sophisticated and attractive woman. After that, the story was all about whether Sabrina succeeded to impress David or not?

Wilder’s lively and funny love triangle was unusual to watch on the big screen. The movie got nominations for 14 different Award categories. However, it won 5 of them, including Academy Awards for Best Costume Design-Black-and-White, Golden Globe Awards for Best Screenplay-Motion Picture, National Board of Review Awards for Top Ten Films and Best Supporting Actor, and Writers Guild of America Awards for Best Written American Comedy.

One, Two, Three (1961)- IMDB 7.9

One, Two, Three is a 1961 American comedy film written and directed by Wilder. It is based on the 1929 Hungarian one-act play named Egy, ketto, harom by Frenc Molnar, and the plot was also partly taken from Ninotchka. In the cast, there were some fine actors like James Cagney, Horst Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin, Lilo Pulver, Arlene Francis, and Leon Askin. McNamara is in a high-ranking post in the Coca-Cola Company in West Berlin. After working on an arrangement to introduce Coke into the Soviet Union, Mac received a call from his boss, Scarlett Hazeltine. And the story grows from there. The movie made $1.6 million from the box office release. The film was re-released in 1985 in France and became a box office hit in West Berlin. The movie got four nominations in Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Laurel Awards, and Writers Guild of America Awards.

The Lost Weekend (1945)- IMDB 7.9

The Lost Weekend is an American film starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman directed by Wilder. The story was based on the novel of the same name by Charles R. Jackson in 1944. The movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four of them. They were Best Director, Best Actor, Best Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2011, The Lost Weekend was added to the National Film Registry as “historically, aesthetically, and culturally” significant. On Rotten Tomatoes the film got a 100% approval rating based on 33 reviews, which makes it an 8.32 rating.

The story started on Thursday, the alcoholic writer Don Birnam, who lived in New York was packing for a weekend vacation with brother Wick. When Don’s girlfriend, Helen showed up with two concert tickets he suggested Wick join Helen for the show. After they left, Don found ten dollars that Wick left, he took the money and headed for the bar to catch Wick. But he lost track of time due to drinking, and when reached Wick was leaving. Don quickly sneaked into the flat and hid the bottles. The whole drama is about alcoholism and addiction, which was not a common subject at that time.

Stalag 17 (1953)- IMDB 8.0

It was a fantastic masterpiece then. Stalag is a comedy-drama war film set during World War II prisoner camp. The movie was an adaptation from the Broadway play of the same name, which is based on prisoners in Stalag 17B in Austria. The film starred William Holden, Robert Strauss, Peter Graves, Richard Erdman, and Otto Preminger.

The movie began in 1944, on the longest night of the year. Harvey, the cook, narrated the story. The rest of the film depicted the terrible life in the prisoner camp.

The film received an Academy Award for Best Actor. Holden gave the shortest Oscar acceptance speed on stage (“thank you, thank you”). On the other hand, Wilder was nominated for the Best Director.

The above are the few examples of Billy Wilder’s masterpieces. He was a great filmmaker of his era, and will always be remembered. I hope this was an informative article for you.

Alessia Martine is a self-professed security expert; she has been making the people aware of the security threats. Her passion is to write about Cybersecurity, cryptography, malware, social engineering, internet, and new media. She writes for Microsoft products at office.com/setup.

Source: https://4offise.com/best-billy-wilder-movies-according-to-imdb/