Month: February 2018

George Grosz

George Grosz, “Der Vergiftete”, Watercolor

George Grosz was a German artist known for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920′s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic. He emigrrated to the United States in 1933 and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. He exhibited reguarly and taught for many years athe the Art Students League of New York. In 1956 he returned to Berlin where he died.

Reblogged with thankks to https://k250966.tumblr.com

Calendar: February 21

A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of February

Formation of a Decision

The first International Pancake Race was held on February 21, 1950 in Liberal, Kansas.

A Shrove Tuesday competition began February 21, 1950, between people in Liberal, Kansas, and Olney, Buckinghamshire, England, creating International Pancake Day. Each year the communities hold a 415-yard race to determine the fastest runner who can also flip a pancake.

Commemorated elsewhere as Mardi Gras, Pancake Day, and Carnival, Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a 40-day fasting period in preparation for Easter. The verb “shrove” is Old English and relates to judgment or penance in preparation of Lent. Observers of Lent traditionally quit eating richer foods with ingredients such as eggs, milk, and sugar.

The Olney, England tradition dates to around 1445. Legend holds that a woman in Olney was making pancakes when the church bells began ringing to announce the service. Carrying her frying pan and wearing an apron, she raced to arrive at church on time. In subsequent years, others in the community joined in the race. The prize was the “Kiss of Peace” from the verger, or bell ringer.

The Liberal/Olney competition began when members of the Liberal Junior Chamber of Commerce learned about the Olney race and proposed a friendly competition with the English community. The contest, which continues today, requires that runners wear a traditional apron and scarf and carry a frying pan in which they toss a pancake at the beginning and ending of the race. The event concludes with presentation of awards and a church service.

A competitor from Liberal, Kansas, has won the 2018 International Pancake Day Race against the top runner from Olney, England. Gaby Covarrubias of Liberal ran the course on Shrove Tuesday with a time of 1:08.85, about 2.5 seconds faster than Olney’s Katie Godof at 1:11.4. It’s Liberal’s first win in the annual contest since 2015; Liberal now leads the all-time series 38-29.

Time on His Hand

The Ginger Guy with the Hand of Time

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it.”  – Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Screenplay

Calendar: February 20

Year: Day to Day Men: February 20

This Old House

The twentieth of February in 1906 marks the birth date of American character actor Gale Gordon. He had a long and prolific career in both radio and television series. Gordon’s portrayal of grumpy and arrogant characters made him the comic foil on “Our Miss Brooks” and three Lucille Ball series.

Born Charles Thomas Aldrich Jr. in New York City, Gale Gordon was the son of vaudevillian Charles Thomas Aldrich and English actress Gloria Gordon. His first appearance on radio broadcast was the roles of Mayor La Trivia and Foggy Williams on the 1935 “Fibber McGee and Molly”. Gordon was the first actor to play the role of Flash Gordon on the 1935 radio serial “The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon”. 

From 1937 to 1939, Gordon starred as The Octopus in the “Speed Gibson” radio series. During the years of World War II, he enlisted in the United States Coast Guard where he served for four years. At the end of the war, Gordon returned to radio and played the role of Rumson Bullard on “The Great Gildersleeve”, one of the earliest spin-offs in the entertainment industry. In 1946, he had one of his most dramatic roles on radio, the bachelor amateur detective Gregory Hood on the popular 1946-1947 “The Casebook of Gregory Hood”. The series was originally just a summer replacement for the canceled “The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”; the network had failed to reach a contractual agreement with the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate.

In 1950, Gale Gordon played John Granby, a former city dweller turned farmer, in the radio series “Granby’s Green Acres”, which was the model for the 1960s television series “Green Acres”. He created the role of principle Osgood Conklin on the 1948 radio series “Our Miss Brooks” and later carried the role to the 1952 television series. Gordon also worked at this time on the radio show “My Favorite Husband” in which he played Rudolph Atterbury opposite Lucille Ball as Liz Cugat. He and Ball had previously worked together from 1938 to 1939 on “The Wonder Show” with actor and singer Jack Haley, later known as the Tin-Man in “The Wizard of Oz”

Gordon was the first choice for the role of Fred Mertz on the 1951 television situation comedy “I Love Lucy”. However, he had made a commitment to his role in “Our Miss Brooks”, in addition to his other concurrent radio shows. Gordon did appear in two guest roles on “I Love Lucy” as Ricky Ricardo’s boss, Alvin Littlefield, the owner of the Tropicana Club. In the late 1950s, he was a regular on the 1957 NBC sitcom “Sally” and also appeared on ABC’s “The Real McCoys” with Walter Brennan and Richard Crenna. Other appearances included a guest role on the 1960 ABC “Harrigan and Son” and roles in two episodes of “The Donna Reed Show” and seven episodes of “The Danny Thomas Show”.

Lucille Ball created “The Lucy Show” in 1952 and planned to hire Gale Gordon for the role of the banker Theodore J. Mooney. However, after the death of actor Joseph Kearns who played George Wilson on “Dennis the Menace”, Gordon had signed a contract to play John Wilson on the show. When “Dennis the Menace” ended its run in the spring of 1963, Gordon joined “The Lucy Show” for the 1963-1964 season. After the sale of Desilu Studios in 1968, Lucille Ball discontinued the show and remade it into “Here’s Lucy” with herself as producer and distributor. Gordon took on the role of her boss, Harrison Otis. 

When “Here’s Lucy” ended in 1974, Gordon basically retired from acting. His friend and acting cohort, Lucille Ball persuaded him to take a role in her new series “Life with Lucy”, which ran for three months. Gordon’s final acting appearance was a 1991 reprise of Mr. Mooney for the first episode of”Hi Honey, I’m Home”, a thirteen episode television comedy.

Gale Gordon and his wife Virginia Curley lived on a 150 acre ranch he had helped construct in Borrego Springs, California. Gordon wrote two books in the 1940s: “Leaves from the Story Trees” and “Nursery Rhymes for Hollywood Babies” and two one-act plays. He was also one of the few carob growers in the United States. Gordon’s wife of nearly sixty years died in May of 1995; he died of lung cancer one month later on the thirtieth of June. Gordon was inducted posthumously into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1999 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Second Insert Image: Publicity Photo, Gale Gordon and Eve Arden, “Our Miss Brooks”, September 1955

Third Insert Image: Publicity Photo, Gale Gordon and Jay North, “Dennis the Menace”, circa 1962-1963

Lone Wolf

Photographer Unknown, (Lone Wolf)

“To run with the wolf was to run in the shadows, the dark ray of life, survival and instinct. A fierceness that was both proud and lonely, a tearing, a howling, a hunger and thirst. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst. A strength that would die fighting, kicking, screaming, that wouldn’t stop until the last breath had been wrung from its body. The will to take one’s place in the world. To say ‘I am here.’ To say ‘I am.”
― O. R. Melling

Calendar: February 19

Year: Day to Day Men: February 19

The Coffee Table Book

The nineteenth of February in 1913 marks the birth date of Francis Frederick von Taschlein who was an American animator and filmmaker. Best known as Frank Tashlin, he worked on the Warner Brothers Studio’s series of animated shorts, “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies”, as well as many successful comedy feature films.

Born in Weehawken, New Jersey, Frank Tashlin left high school at the age of thirteen and began working through a series of various jobs. In 1930, he started working as a animator for film director John Foster on the “Aesop’s Fables” cartoon series. Tashlin joined producer Leon Schlesinger’s cartoon studio at Warner Brothers in 1933 as an animator; the studio had achieved its success with the production of the “Looney Tunes” and later “Merry Melodies” series of shorts.

Tashlin worked with Schlesinger for one year before he joined the Ub Iwerks studio in 1934. Iwerks had worked as a character designer for Walt Disney and refined Disney’s sketch for Mickey Mouse; he would do much of the animation on Disney’s “Silly Symphony” cartoons which included “Steamboat Willie” and “The Skeleton Dance”. Tashlin stayed with Iwerks until 1934 and then worked for one year with Hal Roach’s studio. 

In 1936, Frank Tashlin returned to Schlesinger as the head director for the animation department at Warner Brothers. With his knowledge of the industry and his diverse interest in animation, he brought a new understanding of camera techniques to the department. Animated shorts began to use montages, vertical and horizontal pan shots, and shots taken from different camera angles. From 1936 to 1938, Tashlin directed almost twenty shorts. After an argument with studio manager Henry Binder, he resigned and worked for a few years in Disney’s story department. 

Tashlin joined Columbia Pictures’s Screen Gems animation studio as production manager in 1941. He was effectively in charge of the studio and hired many former Disney artists who had left as a result of the Disney animators’ strike over pay inequities and unionization efforts. Tashlin launched one of the better products of the studio, “The Fox and Crow” series which ran until the studio closed in 1946. His stay at Columbia lasted only one year as he was fired after an argument with Columbia executives. 

In 1942, Frank Tashlin rejoined the Warner Brothers animation studio as a director. Among the cartoon shorts he directed were “Porky Pig’s Feat” in 1943 and two Bugs Bunny features, the 1945 “Unruly Hare” and 1946 “Hare Remover” which was Tashlin’s last credited film at Warner Brothers. Tashlin worked on the studio’s wartime shorts during the years of World War II. Before he left Warner Brothers, he directed some stop-motion puppet films for producer John Sutherland. Tashlin’s 1947 puppet animation film “The Way of Peace” was selected in 2014 for entry into National Film Registry.

From 1946 until 1951, Tashlin became a gag writer for such comedians as Lucille Ball and the Marx Brothers; he also worked as a screenwriter for Bob Hope and comedian Red Skelton. Tashlin began his career as a director of feature films when he was asked to finish directing Bob Hope’s 1951 “The Lemon Drop Kid”. His successful streak of box-office successes began in 1956 with “The Girl Can’t Help It” starring Jane Mansfield and Tom Ewell. This was followed by the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis 1956 “Hollywood or Bust” and the 1957 “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter” that starred Jane Mansfield, Tony Randall, Betsy Drake and Joan Blondell. Tony Randall received a Golden Globe nomination for his role and the film was selected in 2000 for entry into the National Film Registry. 

Frank Tashlin was the director for six of Jerry Lewis’s early solo films, among which were the 1958 “The Geisha Boy”, the 1960 “Cinderfella”, and “The Disorderly Orderly” in 1964. He also directed the 1965 “The Alphabet Murders” and the 1966 “The Glass Bottom Boat’ with Doris Day, Rod Taylor, Arthur Godfrey, Paul Lynde, and Dom DeLuise. Tashlin’s last directorial work was the 1968 comedy “The Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell” with Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller and Jeffery Hunter.

Over the course of his career, Tashlin worked on four dozen animated shorts, including a dozen of Porky Pig’s earliest appearances, and forty-four feature films, either as director, writer, or producer. Frank Tashlin was stricken with a coronary thrombosis in his Beverly Hills home on the second of May in 1972. He died three days later on the fifth of May at Los Angeles’s Cedar-Sinai Medical Center at the age of fifty-nine. Tashlin is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

 

Tam Van Tran

Tam Van Tran,  “Beetle Manifesto XII”, 2006, Sculpted Paper, Chlorophyll, Spirulina, Acrylic, Staples, Aluminum Foil

Tam Van Tran (b. 1966) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Tran received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1990 from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. He later attended the Graduate Film and Television Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 1996.

Tran is the recipient of the 2001 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the 2000 Pollock Krasner Fellowship, the 1993 Ucross Artists Residency, and the 1991 Creative Fellowship in the Visual Arts, Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities.

“In the last ten years, my work has focused on ideas of personal transformation in a dialogue with nature and culture. I use organic vegetable matters such as spirulina, chlorophyll and food materials like cabbage and carrots, which are mixed with acrylic paints to form a biodegradable soup and drafted onto paper as a drawing. In all my work and the 3-dimensional paper ‘beetle manifestos’ series, the circle shapes are printed by bottle caps referencing the negative space of bottles, and punch holes are used as way to create lines and zeros. Staples provide shimmer as well as structural support of the layered paper.

I transform ordinary materials into objects of abstraction that touch on how a painting is put together with lines, mark making, and surface tension. I’m interested in beauty as an abstract experience, free of subject and object, beyond the generalization of language. This is related to how perception is spatially experienced through cause and effect of actions of the body, speech, and mind.” – Tam Van Tran