Month: April 2018

Calendar: April 24

A Year: Day to Day Men: 24th of April

A Lavish Display

April 24, 1944 was the release date of the thriller movie “Double Indemnity”.

The movie “Double Indemnity” is a 1944 film noir, co-written by Billy Wilder and detective fiction writer Raymond Chandler. The screenplay was based on the novella of the same name by James M. Cain which was originally presented as an eight-part serial. The term ‘double indemnity’ refers to a clause in certain life insurance policies that doubles the payout in rare cases when death is caused accidentally, such as while riding a railway.

The film starred Fred MacMurray as the insurance salesman, Edward G Robinson as the insurance claims adjuster who job is to find phony claims, and Barbara Stanwyck as a housewife who wishes her husband were dead. Fred MacMurray is infatuated with Barbara Stanwyck and devises a plan to make the murder of her husband appear to be an accidental fall from a train, thus triggering the double indemnity clause in the husband’s insurance policy.

The story began making the rounds in Hollywood shortly after it was published as a serial in 1936. Its author James Cain had already made a name for himself the year before with the “Postman Always Rings Twice”, a story of murder and passion between a migrant worker and the unhappy wife of a café owner. Cain’s agent sent copies of the novella to all the major studios and within days, all were competing to buy the rights for $25,000. Then a letter went out from Joseph Breen at the Hays Office, the enforcers of the 1930 Production Code, saying the story was unacceptable. All the studios withdrew their bids.

Eight years later, Paramount resubmitted the script to the Hays Office, but the response was nearly identical to the one eight years earlier. The studio then submitted a film treatment crafted by Wilder and his writing partner Charles Brackett, and this time the Hays Office approved the project with only a few objections: the portrayal of the disposal of the body, a proposed gas-chamber execution scene, and the skimpiness of the towel worn by the female lead in her first scene.

Praised by many critics  when first released, “Double Indemnity” was nominated for seven Academy Awards but did not win any. Widely regarded as a classic, it is often cited as a model for the film noir style and as having set the standard for the films that followed in that genre. Wilder himself considered “Double Indemnity” his best film in terms of having the fewest scripting and shooting mistakes and always maintained that the two things he was proudest of in his career were the compliments he received from James Cain about “Double Indemnity” and from Agatha Christie for his handling of her “Witness for the Prosecution”.

Andres Barbiani

Andres Barbiani, “Stairway”

Andres Barbiani is a photographer from Venado Tuerto, Santa Fe, Argentina. In 2008 he started his photographic work with his friend Federico Luppi. At the end of 2009, one of his words was awarded a Jury Mention in a national contest of two thousand entries. Barbiani had an exhibition of photographs entitled “El Berretin de Lee Debord” in the city of Venado Tuerto during the month of February 2010. In August of 2010 one of his photographs was selected for the book “En Blanco y Black” by the Spainish publisher ArtGerust.

Philip Dunne

Watercolors by Philip Dunne

Phil Dunne is an illustrator from Dublin, Ireland, where he lives and works. He received his degree in Visual Communications in 2003 at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin. After graduating he started to build his portfolio with work on his clients’ projects.

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

Calendar: April 23

A Year: Day to Day Men: 23rd of April

The Observer

The Cath Chluain Tarbh, the Battle of Clontarf, took place on April 23, 1014.

The Battle of Clontarf took place at Clontarf, near Dublin, Ireland pitting the forces of Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, against a Norse-Irish alliance comprised of forces of the Kings of Dublin and Leinster and an external Viking contingent. It lasted from sunrise to sunset and ended in a rout of the Viking and Leinster forces.

It is estimated that between seven to ten thousand men were killed. Although Brian Boru’s forces were victorious, Brian Boru was himself killed, as were his son Murchad and his grandson Toirdelbach, leaving no heirs to the throne. The Leinster King Mael Morda and the Viking leaders were also slain. After the battle the the Kingdom of Dublin was reduced to just a secondary power.

Brian’s body was brought to Swords, north of Dublin. There it was met by the coarb of Patrick, the traditional head of the church in Ireland, who brought the body back with him to Armagh, where it was interred after twelve days of mourning. Along with Brian were the body of his son Murchad and the heads of Conaing, Brian’s nephew, and Mothla, King of the Déisi Muman. Máel Sechnaill, then King of Mide, was restored as High King of Ireland, and remained secure in his position until his death in 1022.

The battle was an important event in Irish history and is recorded in both Irish and Norse chronicles. In Ireland, the battle came to be seen as an event that freed the Irish from foreign domination, and Brian was hailed as a national hero. This view was especially popular during English rule in Ireland; it still has a hold on the popular imagination.

In modern times there has been a long-running debate among historians, which is now 250 years old, about Ireland’s Viking age and the Battle of Clontarf. The standard view, and the popular view, is that the battle ended a war between the Irish and Vikings by which Brian Boru broke Viking power in Ireland. However revisionist historians see it as an Irish civil war in which Brian Boru’s Munster forces and its allies defeated Leinster and Dublin, and that there were Vikings fighting on both sides.

Il Sole Sale al Centro dell’ Uomo

Photographer Unknown, (The Sun Ascends the Center of Man)

“The sun,–the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man–burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Antoine Malliarakis Mayo

Antoine Malliarakis Mayo, “La Vie Augmente Toujours (Life Always Evolves”), Oil on Canvas, 1970,   81 x 65cm

Antoine Malliarakis Mayo is a Greek painter of French culture. He is generally classified as a surrealist, a movement in which he participated actively but never officially joined. Received at the Beaux Arts in Paris in 1924, Mayo took part in the Surrealist meetings and became friends with Desnos and Prévert.

In the 1940s May created costumes and sets for theater and for the cinema with increasing success. After having made the costumes for Marcel Carné’s masterpiece  “Les Enfants du Paradis”, he designed the costumes for: “The Beauty of the Devil” and “The Golden Helmet (The Land of the Pharaohs)” by Howard Hawks.

The paintings of Mayo revolved around the common themes of sensuality and eroticism which took different forms within his oeuvre. In particular after the 1960s, Mayo would paint the hands, then the bird nests – which for him housed and protected the root of life – followed by the egg, as these common themes reached a pinnacle within his scope of work.

The egg for Mayo represented the principle of life, rebirth and the fruit of life. “La Vie Augmente Toujours”, painted in the later part of Mayo’s artistic career is an exceptional work weaving through this visual language created by Mayo incorporating the vegetal life, the egg, the stones and the male figure.

Bernard Perlin and Wilbur Pippin

Photographer Unknown, Bernard Perlin and Wilbur Pippin, Fire Island, New York, 1948

“Bernard Perlin led a fearless and sometimes dangerous life as a full-time artist and man who sought deep connection. As a propaganda artist and war artist-correspondent, he produced many now-iconic images of World War II. His portrait clients included many well known figures in arts and politics; his most intimate companions were such luminaries as Vincent Price, George Platt Lynes, Glenway Wescott, Paul Cadmus, Leonard Bernstein, and Truman Capote.

Perlin believed that his sexual drive and his artistic drive were linked, and that is quite evident in his art and his daring sexual life in the underground gay bars of Paris and Rome in the 1940s and the gay cruising scene of the 1950s in the bars and bathhouses of New York City’s Greenwich Village.

Perlin was an emancipated man who lived a life against the grain, both in his love and sex life and his figurative art, which defied the juggernaut of abstract expressionism. Perlin’s life serves as an inspiration of sexual bravery and as an art and social history lesson of the times.”

–Michael Schreiber, One Man Show: The Life and Art of Bernard Perlin, Bruno Gmünder Publishing House

Calendar: April 22

A Year: Day to Day Men: 22nd of April

Piercing Eyes

The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 began on April 22.

On March 3, 1889, U. S. President Harrison announced the government would open the 1.9 million-acre tract of Unassigned Lands in Oklahoma for settlement precisely at noon on April 22. Anyone could join the race for the land. With only seven weeks to prepare, land-hungry Americans quickly began to gather around the borders of the irregular-shaped rectangle of territory. By the appointed day more than 50,000 hopeful settlers were living in tent cities on all four sides of the territory.

The events that day at Fort Reno on the western border were typical of events that happened in other places of the border. At 11:50 a.m., soldiers called for everyone to form a line. When the hands of the clock reached noon, the cannon of the fort boomed, and the soldiers signaled the settlers to start. With the crack of hundreds of whips, thousands of settlers streamed into the territory in wagons, on horseback, and on foot. All told, from 50,000 to 60,000 settlers entered the territory that day. By nightfall, they had staked thousands of claims either on town lots or quarter section farm plots.

By the end of the day of April 22, towns like Norman and Kingfisher had sprung into being almost overnight. Both Oklahoma City and Guthrie had established cities of around 10,000 people in literally half a day. The story that ran in the Harper’s Weekly, a New York based political magazine read: “At twelve o’clock on Monday, April 22d, the resident population of Guthrie was nothing; before sundown it was at least ten thousand. In that time streets had been laid out, town lots staked off, and steps taken toward the formation of a municipal government”.

Many settlers immediately started improving their new land or stood in line waiting to file their claim. Many children sold creek water to the new homesteaders waiting in line for five cents a cup, while other children gathered buffalo dung to provide fuel for cooking. By the second week, schools had opened and were being taught by volunteers paid by the pupils’ parents until regular school districts could be established. Within one month, Oklahoma City had five banks and six newspapers.

On May 2, 1890, the Oklahoma Organic Act was passed creating the Oklahoma Territory.  This act included the panhandle area of Oklahoma within the territory. It also allowed for central governments and designated the city of Guthrie as the territory’s new capitol. By 1907, the area once known as Indian Territory entered the Union as a part of the new state of Oklahoma.