William Dieterle ~ Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1939
Noble Hunchback, brilliant Laughton…
Category: Books
Gloria*****
John Cassavetes ~ Gloria (Gena Rowlands), 1980
Gena is subtle, delicate. She’s a miracle. She’s straight. She believes in what she believes in. She’s capable of anything. It’s only because of Gena’s enormous capacity to perform that we have a movie, because a lot of people would be a little bit too thin to work on it. Gena is a very interesting woman and for my money the best player that is around. She can just play. Give her anything and she’ll always be creative. She doesn’t try to make it different – she just is – because the way she thinks is different from the way most actors think. She goes in and she says, “Who do I like on this picture? What characters do I like, what characters am I so-so about?” I picked up her script once and I saw all these notes, all about what reaction she had to the various people both in the production and the story. It was very personal to her, and I felt very guilty that I’d snooped. Then I watched her work. She sets the initial premise and follows the script very completely. Very rarely will she improvise, though she does in her head and in her personal thoughts. Everybody else is going boom! boom! boom!, but Gena is very dedicated and pure. She doesn’t care if it’s cinematic, doesn’t care where the camera is, doesn’t care if she looks good – doesn’t care about anything except that you believe her. She caught the rhythm of that woman living a life she’d never seen. When she’s ready to kill, I’m amazed at how coldly she does it.
The Making of Gloria (1979-1980)
Old Possum’s Macavity
Macavity: The Mystery Cat
Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw –
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air –
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!
Mcavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square –
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!
He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s.
And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair –
Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!
And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair –
But it’s useless to investigate – Mcavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
`It must have been Macavity!’ – but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums.
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spaer:
At whatever time the deed took place – MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!
T. S. Eliot, 1939
Cover illustration by Edward Gorey, 1982
Aphrodite’s Tears
Anemone coronaria
Diana Wells, illustrated by Ippy Patterson ~ 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names
GO! only one more week to see this great show!!!
John Chamberlain: Choices
[February 24–May 13, 2012]
Download free e-book here ➔ “Introduction and Conversation” From John Chamberlain: A Retrospective Exhibition – Diane Waldman, 1971
Lilies of the Valley Basket
August Wilhelm Holmström for the House of Fabergé, 1896
Born in Helsinki on October 2, 1829, Holmström was the son of a master bricklayer. Apprenticed to the German jeweler Herold in St. Petersburg, he became a journeyman in 1850 and a master in 1857. That same year he became principal jeweler for the Fabergé company when he bought the workshop of the master goldsmith Fredrick Johan Hammarström. Birbaum says his workshop was among the first three in the House of Fabergé, the others being those of Reimer and Kollin. Holmström worked exclusively for Fabergé. Bainbridge says he made the gold miniature of the cruiser in Memory of the Azov that was the surprise in the 1891 Tsar Imperial Easter egg. The 1892 Tsar Imperial Diamond Trellis Egg bears his mark.
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Memory of the Azov Egg
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It was in Holmström’s workshop that the famous Fabergé miniature copies of the Imperial regalia were executed. These one- to ten-scale miniatures were exhibited at the 1900 Exhibition Internationale Universelle in Paris and are now kept in the special treasury of the Hermitage Museum called the Gold Room. In his memoirs, Birbaum observes:
“The workshop was famous for its great precision and exquisite technique, such faultless gem-setting is not to be found even in the works by the best Paris jewelers. It should be noted that even if some of Holmström’s works are artistically somewhat inferior to those of Parisians masters, they always surpass them in technique, durability and finish.” (Fabergé and Skurlov, History of the House of Fabergé, 1992)
The noted Lilies of the Valley Basket presented to Alexandra Fedorovna in 1896 and now in the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection in New Orleans, Louisiana, was made in Holmström’s workshop. It is illustrated as item number 76 in Hill et al., Fabergé and the Russian Master Goldsmith (1989).
Holmström had eight children. His daughter Fanny married Knut Oskar Pihl, manager of Fabergé’s Moscow jewelry shop; his daughter Hilma alina married Vasilii Zverschinskii, bookkeeper to the firm, and she worked for the firm as a designer; and his son Albert headed the workshop after August Holmström’s death in 1903. Holmström was burried in St. Petersurg, not far from the grave of Mikhail Perkhin. Bainbridge rates him “on the very top rung of the Fabergé ladder” (Peter Carf Fabergé, 1949)
Will Lowes and Christel Ludewig McCanless
Fabergé Eggs: A Retrospective Encyclopedia
What is genius ?
Is it not both masculine and feminine ?
Are not some of its qualities instinct with manhood,
while others delight us with the most winning graces
of a perfect womanhood ? Does not genius make its
appeal as a single creative agent with a two-fold sex ?
Are not some of its qualities instinct with manhood,
while others delight us with the most winning graces
of a perfect womanhood ? Does not genius make its
appeal as a single creative agent with a two-fold sex ?
Walter Shaw Sparrow
on Ballet
Billed in Hollywood’s golden age as “the photographer to the celebrities,” Maurice Seymour was actually two brothers: Maurice (1900-93) and Seymour (1902-95) Zeldman. Born in Russia, the pair came to Chicago in 1920, and nine years later opened their own studio-Maurice Seymour-atop the St. Clair Hotel. Bestowing a dramatically highlighted glamour on the city, they photographed film, theatre, and radio stars, judges and politicians, and the international luminaries of ballet, beginning, in 1934, with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. When Seymour Zeldman moved to New York in the 1950s, both men legally changed their names to Maurice Seymour and continued to photograph into the 1970s.
1947
The Road to Reno
Inge Morath ~ Reno, Nevada, 1960
Inge Morath’s first trip across the United States followed a red grease-pencil line drawn by her traveling companion, Henri Cartier-Bresson, from New York through Gettysburg, Memphis, and Albuquerque to Reno. In 1960, the two were among 18 photojournalists commissioned by Magnum to document the Nevada set of Arthur Miller’s film The Misfits. The destination was a momentous one for Morath, both for her remarkable photographs on location as well as her initial encounter with Miller, whom she later married after his divorce from Marilyn Monroe. But it is Morath’s documentation of the 18 days in traveling to the set, collected here in both photographs and written entries, that in its casualness as a travel diary begins to unfold her carefully observed, insightful, and compassionate approach to reportage. ➔ The Road to Reno
A sense of humour
The following pictures are selected
from the two volumes of Gavarni’s
“Oeuvres Choisies” published by Hetzel,
Paris 1846-8. In choosing them the
publishers have been careful to exclude any
illustrations likely to offend English taste
or too local in interest for the allusions
to be generally intelligible.
from the two volumes of Gavarni’s
“Oeuvres Choisies” published by Hetzel,
Paris 1846-8. In choosing them the
publishers have been careful to exclude any
illustrations likely to offend English taste
or too local in interest for the allusions
to be generally intelligible.
***
Selected images from Humorous Masterpieces, No. 2
Pictures by Paul Gavarni
GOWANS & GRAY, Ltd.
1906
tout ceci est magnifique 