Calendar: August 4

A Year: Day to Day Men: 4th of August

Early Morning

August 4, 1470 was the birthdate of Lucrezia Maria Romola de’ Medici, the eldest daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Lucrezia de’ Medici was married to Jacopo Salviati, an Italian politician, in February of 1498, bringing a dowry of 2000 gold florins to the marriage. When her brothers Piero and Giovanni were exiled from Florence, she was in a bad position, as her husband Jacopo was a supporter of the newly appointed rulers of Florence. In August of 1497 Lucrezia de’ Medici spent 3000 ducats to support a plot to return her brother Pietro to power. The plot failed. Francesco Valon, the head of Florence, executed all the male participants but spared Lucrezia.

Lucrezia de’ Medici continued to build support for the rise of the Medici family. She negotiated the marriage of her niece, Clarice de’ Medici, to Filippo Strozzi the Younger, a military man and influential banker. This was done against the wishes of the current leaders of Florence. When her youngest brother Giuliano returned from his stay in Venice, he would often ask Lucrezia for advice on restructuring the Florence government.

In March of 1513, Licrezia’s brother Giovanni, then a Cardinal in Rome, was elected Pope upon the death of Pope Julius II, with the support of the younger members of the Sacred College. He was the last non-priest to be elected Pope and took the name of Leo X. The Medici family held days of celebration in Florence, giving gifts and money to the crowds outside their palace. Pope Leo appointed Lucrezia’s son Giovanni to the position of Cardinal in 1517. Lucrezia managed her son’s household and office for him, particularly while he traveled as a Papal Legate. An astute politician herself, she used her son’s influence to further Medici causes in Rome.

Pope Leo X asked his sister Lucrezia to help support convents in Florence. Lucrezia paid for a significant expansion of the convent of San Giorgio, funding new dormitories, cloisters, and workshops. She also built other chapels in 1530 in Rome. Lucrezia and Pope Leo X later worked together to pay for a chapel in Rome which would also serve as a resting place for the family.

The Medici family were again exiled from Florence in 1527. Jacopo Salviati wound up a prisoner of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Pope Clement VII, who was Lucrezia’s cousin. Lucrezia managed to gather a ransom and was able to get her husband Jacopo released. There is no exact date for Lucrezia de’ Medici’s death; but it is estimated as having occurred between the 10th and 15th of November in 1553. She was 83 years old.

Calendar: August 3

A Year: Day to Day Men: 3rd of August

Heart and Soul

August 3, 1995 marks the passing of Anglo-American actress Ida Lupino.

Dubbed “the English Jean Harlow”, Ida Lupino was discovered by Paramount in the 1933 film “Money for Speed”, playing a good girl/bad girl dual role. She was asked to try out for the lead role in the 1933 “Alice in Wonderland”. When she arrived in Hollywood, the Paramount producers did not know what to make of their sultry potential leading lady, but she did get a five-year contract.

Mark Hellinger, associate producer at Warner Bros., was impressed by Lupino’s performance in the 1939 film “The Light That Failed” and hired her for the femme-fatale role in the Raoul Walsh-directed “ They Drive by Night’, opposite stars George Raft, Ann Sheridan and Humphrey Bogart. The film did well and the critical consensus was that Lupino stole the movie, particularly in her unhinged Courtroom appearance. Warner Brothers offered her a contract which she negotiated to include some freelance rights. She worked with Raoul Walsh and Bogart again in the 1941 “High Sierra”, where she impressed critic Bosley Crowther of the New York Times in her role as “adoring moll”.

The 1949 film “Never Fear” was Ida Lupino’s first director’s credit. After producing four more films about social issues, including “Outrage”, a 1950 film about rape, Lupino directed in 1953 her first hard-paced, all-male-cast film, “The Hitch-Hiker”, making her the first woman to direct a film noir. Lupino and her husband Collier Young formed their own film studio, The Filmmakers, which produce twelve feature films. Six of these Lupino either directed or co-directed; she wrote or co-wrote five of the screenplays, of which she acted in three and co-produced one.

Lupino and Young’s studio produced films that dealt with unconventional and controversial subject matters other producers would not touch, including out-of-wedlock pregnancy, bigamy, and rape. Lupino described her independent work as “films that had social significance and were entertainment based on true stories, things the public could understand because they had happened or been of news value.” She focused on women’s issues for many of her films and liked strong characters.

Ida Lupino was the only woman working in the 1950s Hollywood studio system to become a pioneering director and producer. Her interests outside the entertainment industry included writing short stories and children’s books, and composing music. Her composition “Aladdin’s Suite” was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1937. Lupino has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for contributions to the fields of television and film.

Calendar: August 2

A Year: Day to Day Men: 2nd of August

Courthouse Park

The Marihuana Tax Act is enacted on August 2, 1937 in the United States.

Regulations and restrictions on the sale of cannabis sativa as a drug began as early as 1906. The head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J Anslinger, argued that, in the 1930s, the FBN had noticed an increase of reports of people smoking marijuana. Anslinger had also, in 1935, received support from president Franklin D Roosevelt for adoption of the Uniform State Narcotic Act, state laws that included regulations of cannabis.

The American Medical Association opposed the act because the tax was imposed on physicians prescribing cannabis, retail pharmacists selling cannabis, and medical cannabis cultivation and manufacturing. The AMA proposed that cannabis instead be added to the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act that regulated opiates and coca products. The bill was passed over the last-minute objections of the American Medical Association.

Dr. William Creighton Woodward , the legislative counsel for the AMA, objected to the bill on the grounds that the bill had been prepared in secret without giving proper time to prepare their opposition to the bill. He doubted their claims about marijuana addiction, violence, and overdosage. He further asserted that because the word ‘Marijuana’ was largely unknown at the time, the medical profession did not realize they were losing cannabis. “Marijuana is not the correct term … Yet the burden of this bill is placed heavily on the doctors and pharmacists of this country”.

The bill was passed on the grounds of different reports^[ and hearings.^.Anslinger also referred to the International Opium Convention that from 1928 included cannabis as a drug not a medicine, and that all states had some kind of laws against improper use of cannabis. By 1951, however, new justifications had emerged, and the Boggs Act that superseded the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed. In August 1954, the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 was enacted, and the Marihuana Tax Act was included in Subchapter A of Chapter 39 of the 1954 Code.

Shortly after the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act went into effect on October 1, 1937, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Denver City police arrested Moses Baca for possession and Samuel Caldwell for dealing. Baca and Caldwell’s arrest made them the first marijuana convictions under U.S. federal law for not paying the marijuana tax. Judge Foster Symes sentenced Baca to 18 months and Caldwell to four years in Leavenworth Penitentiary, a maximum-security federal prison, for violating the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act.

Calendar: August 1

A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of August

Calendar: July 31

A Year: Day to Day Men: 31st of July

Oh, Happy Day

July 31, 1901 was the birthdate of French painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet.

In 1945, Jean Dubuffet, impressed with painter Jean Fautrier’s abstract paintings, started to use thick oil paint mixed with materials such as mud, straw, pebbles, sand, plaster, and tar. He abandoned the tradition use of the brush; instead, he worked with a paste into which he could create physical marks, scratches and slashes. These impasto paintings, the ‘Hautes Pâtes’ series, he exhibited at his show in 1946 at the Galery Rene Drouin. He received some backlash from the critics but also some positive feedback as well.

Jean Dubuffet achieved rapid success in the American art market, largely due to his inclusion in the Pierre Matisse exhibition in 1946. His association with Matisse proved to be very beneficial. Dubuffet’s work was placed among the likes of Picasso, Braque, and Rouault at the gallery exhibit; he was only one of two young artists to be honored in this manner. In 1947, Dubuffet had his first solo exhibition in America, in the same gallery as the Matisse exhibition. Reviews were largely favorable, and this resulted in Dubuffet having a regularly scheduled exhibition at that gallery.

In his earlier paintings, Dubuffet dismissed the concept of perspective in favor of a more direct, two-dimensional presentation of space. Instead, Dubuffet created the illusion of perspective by crudely overlapping objects within the picture plane. Dubuffet’s “Hourloupe” style in later paintings developed from a chance doodle while he was on the telephone. The basis of it was a tangle of clean black lines that forms cells, which are sometimes filled with unmixed color. Dubuffet believed the style evoked the manner in which objects appear in the mind. This contrast between physical and mental representation later encouraged him to use the approach to create sculpture.

Between 1945 and 1947, Jean Dubuffet took three separate trips to Algeria—a French colony at the time in order to find further artistic inspiration. He was fascinated by the nomadic nature of the tribes in Algeria, particularly the ephemeral quality of their existence. The impermanence of this kind of movement attracted Dubuffet and became a facet of the new Art Brut movement.

Dubuffet coined the term art brut, meaning “raw art”, for artwork produced by non-professionals working outside aesthetic norms, such as art by psychiatric patients, prisoners, and children. He felt that the simple life of the everyday human being contained more art and poetry than did academic art, or great painting. Dubuffet found the latter to be isolating, mundane, and pretentious, He sought to create in his own work an art free from intellectual concerns; and as a result, his work often appears primitive and childlike.

Calendar: July 30

A Year: Day to Day Men: 30th of July

Reading His Messages

The first Defenestration of Prague occurred on July 30, 1419.

In the early 15th century there was a fair amount of discontent internally within the Catholic Church; in particular, regular folks were angry over the relative amount of wealth held by the clergy and nobility compared with the grinding poverty of the peasant class. As a result , reforming and sometimes radical preachers arose to protest these grievances.

Jan Želivsky was a prominent Czech priest during the Hussite Reformation which was started by reformer John Huss. Želivsky preached at Church of Our Lady of the Snows in Prague. He was one of a few moderate Utraquist priests of the reformation movement at that time and strongly influential. His sermons were noted both for their eloquence and their apocalyptic descriptions.

The first defenestration of Prague began when radical Hussites wanted to free several moderate Hussites imprisoned by the magistrates. The town council had refused to exchange their Hussite prisoners. Jan Želivsky led his congregation on a protest procession through the streets of Prague to the New Town Hall on Town Square.

While they were marching, a stone was thrown at Želivský from the window of the town hall, allegedly hitting him. This enraged the mob and they stormed the town hall. Once inside the hall, the group defenestrated the judge and council members. Some thirty radical Hussites threw the judge and seven members of the Prague Town Council out of the upper stories windows of the New Town Hall, sending them to their deaths on the pikes of the Hussite Army below. The shock of the news caused the Czech king, Wenceslas IV, to die of a heart attack.

The consequences for this defenestration of Prague’s leaders were rather severe. John Huss was burned at the stake after being betrayed with a safe conduct, setting up the tension for Martin Luther a century later under similar circumstances. After that, the rest of Europe fought a “crusade” against the Hussites, who managed to fight them off for twenty years before suffering some military defeats.

The remaining Hussites agreed to a compromise solution that ended up setting up an Utraquist rite that helped portend the Protestant Reformation and led to a complex religious situation in Bohemia. The First Defenestration of Prague could be considered a qualified success, showing the powerlessness of the Luxemburg dynasty and giving the Bohemian nobility significant freedom of religion, though short of the total liberty that many of them wanted.

Calendar: July 29

A Year: Day to Day Men: 29th of July

Stripping Among the Cattails

July 29, 1954 was the publishing date for Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Ring”.

“The Lord of the Rings” started as a sequel to J. R. R. Tolkien’s work “The Hobbit”, published in 1937. The popularity of “The Hobbit” had led George Allen & Unwin, the publishers, to request a sequel. Tolkien warned them that he wrote quite slowly, and responded with several stories he had already developed; however the publishers thought more stories about hobbits would be popular. So at the age of 45, Tolkien began writing the story that would become “The Lord of the Rings”.

Persuaded by his publishers,Tolkien started the new Hobbit series in December of 1937. After several false starts, the story of the One Ring emerged. The idea for the first chapter , which became entitled “A Long-Expected Party” arrived fully formed, although the reasons behind Bilbo’s disappearance, the significance of the Ring, and the series title “ The Lord of the Rings” did not arrive until the spring of 1938.

Originally, Tolkien planned to write a story in which Bilbo had used up all his treasure and was looking for another adventure to gain more; however, Tolkien remembered the Ring and its powers and thought that would be a better focus for the new work. As the story progressed, he also brought in elements from his “Simarillion” mythology.

Because J.R.R. Tolkien had a full-time academic position and needed to earn further money as a university examiner, his writing on the project was slow. Tolkien abandoned writing the series during most of 1943 not restarting it until April of 1944. This spate of writing became a serial for his son Christopher, who was sent chapters as they were written while he was stationed with the Royal Air Force in South Africa. Tolkien made another concerted effort in 1946, and showed the manuscript to his publishers in 1947. The story was effectively finished the next year, but Tolkien did not complete the revision of earlier parts of the work until 1949. Finished after twelve years, the original manuscript totaled 9,250 pages.

A dispute between Tolkien and his publisher George Allen and Unwin led to the book being offered to Harper Collins Publishers in 1950. After Milton Waldman, Tolkien’s contact at Collins, expressed the belief that the book urgently needing “cutting”, Tolkien demanded that they publish it in 1952, Collins did not; so Tolkien took it back to Allen and Unwin, stating that he would consider it being published in parts.

For publication, the book was divided into three volumes to minimize any potential financial loss due to the high cost of type-setting and modest anticipated sales: “The Fellowship of the Ring“(Books I and II), “The Two Towers” (Books III and IV), and “The Return of the King”(Books V and VI plus six appendices). Delays in producing appendices, maps and especially an index led to the volumes being published later than originally hoped. The first volume of the “Fellowship of the Ring” was finally published in the United Kingdom on July 29th of 1954.

Calendar: July 28

A Year: Day to Day Men: 28th of July

Coffee and Morning Treat

July 28, 1932 was the release date of the film “White Zombie”.

“White Zombie” is a 1932 American pre-Code horror film independently produced by Edward Halperin and directed by Victor Halperin. The zombie theme was inspired by Kenneth Webb’s Broadway play titled “Zombie”. Webb sued the Halperin brothers for copyright infringement, but lost the case because the screenplay was not based upon his play. The film went into development in early 1932 with the hopes to cash in on the country’s interest in voodoo at that time.

“White Zombie” was filmed in only eleven days in March of 1932 at the Universal Studios lot. Bela Lugosi, who was very popular at the time due to his role as Dracula, starred as the white Haitian voodoo master who turns actress Madge Ballamy, the film’s damsel in distress, into a zombie. Except for the addition of film star Joseph Cawthorn, the majority of the cast were silent film stars whose fame had diminished.

The music of “White Zombie” started with “Chant”, a composition of wordless vocals and drumming created by Guy Bevier Williams, a specialist in ethnic music who worked with Universal Studios. The music of the film was supervised by Abe Meyer, who had orchestras record new versions of works by Wagner, Liszt, Mussorgsky, and other symphonic composers. A piece of music expressly written for the bar room scene in “White Zombie” was a Spanish jota by arranger and band leader Xavier Cugat.

“White Zombie” was released in July of 1932 at the Rivoli Theater in New York City to many critical reviews. Most of the unfavorable reviews focused on the poor silent-era style acting, the stilted dialogue, and a story line that many found comedic instead of dramatic. Harrison’s Reports, a New York City-based motion picture trade journal, wrote that it was not up to the standards of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein”. When it was released in the United Kingdom, the film received the review of “not for the squeamish or the highly intelligent”.

The film “White Zombie”, despite the mixed box office reception and reviews, was a great financial success for an independent film at that time. Later in 1933 and 1934, the film had positive box numbers in small towns, as well as in foreign countries. “White Zombie” was one of the few American horror films approved by the Nazi party in Germany.

“White Zombie” is considered to be the first feature length zombie film and has been described as the archetype and model of all Zombie movies. Although not many early horror films followed the film’s Haitian origins style, other 1930s films borrowed themes of the zombie mythology, such as the blank-eyed stares, the voodoo drums, and zombies performing manual labor. This film, although now considered by some as a classic horror film, was not nominated for any Academy Awards.

Calendar: July 27

A Year: Day to Day Men: 27th of July

Hold

July 27, 1940 was the release date of the film “A Wild Hare”.

An early version of a Bugs Bunny-like character appeared in the 1938 “Porky’s Hare Hunt”. It was co-directed by Ben Hardaway and an uncredited Cal Dalton, who was responsible for the initial design of the rabbit. Porky Pig is cast as a hunter tracing his prey who is more interested in driving his pursuer insane rather than escaping. The white rabbit had an oval shaped head, a shapeless body, and was voiced by Mel Blanc.

This rabbit character appeared in “Prest-O Change-O”, directed by animator Chuck Jones and released in 1939. This version of the character was cool, graceful and controlled. He retained the laugh but was otherwise silent in the film. The third appearance of the rabbit was in the 1939 “Hare-um Scare-um” directed by Dalton and Hardaway. This time he was gray and had his first singing role.

“The Wild Hare” is considered to be the first official Bugs Bunny cartoon. It is the first film where both Elmer Fudd and Bugs, both redesigned by animator and developer Bob Givens, are shown in fully developed forms as hunter and tormentor. The film is the first in which Mel Blanc uses what becomes the standard voice for Bugs, and says Bugs’ famous catchphrase, “What’s up, Doc”. A huge success in the theaters, the film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cartoon Short Subject.

Since Bugs’ debut in “ A Wild Hare”, Bugs appeared only in color Merrie Melodies films, alongside Elmer and his predecessors. Bugs made a cameo in the 1943 “Porky’s Pig Feet”, but that was his only appearance in a black-and-white Looney Tunes film. He did not star in a Looney Tunes film until that series made its complete conversion to only color cartoons beginning in 1944. “Buckaroo Bugs” was Bugs’ first film in the Looney Tunes series and was also the last Warner Bros. cartoon to credit Schlesinger, who had produced the film of the original rabbit. The Leon Schlesinger Productions studio was sold to Warner Brothers in1944 after the release fo “Buckaroo Bugs”.

The cartoon 1958 “Knighty Knight Bugs”, directed by Fritz Freleng, in which a medieval Bugs trades blows with Yosemite Sam and his fire-breathing dragon, won an Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject, becoming the first Bugs Bunny cartoon to win that award. Three of Chuck Jones’ films —“Rabbit Fire”, “Rabbit Seasoning” and “Duck! Rabbit, Duck!”— compose what is often referred to as the “Rabbit Season/Duck Season” trilogy and are famous for originating the historic rivalry between Bugs and Daffy Duck.

Chuck Jones’ classic 1957 “What’s Opera, Doc?”, casts Bugs and Elmer Fudd in a parody of Richard Wagner’s opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen”. This cartoon was deemed “culturally significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1992, becoming the first cartoon short to receive this honor.

Calendar: July 26

A Year: Day to Day Men: 26th of July

The Dock of the Bay

July 26, 1895 was the birthdate of American comedian Gracie Allen.

Gracie Allen, born in San Francisco, made her first appearance on stage at the age of three and was given her first role on the radio by Eddie Cantor. She attended the Star of the Sea Convent School, at which time she became a talented dancer. She soon began performing Irish folk dances with her three sisters, billed as “The Four Colleens”. In 1909, Allen joined her sister as a vaudeville performer.

At a vaudeville performance in 1923 in Union City, New Jersey, Gracie Allen met George Burns, a vaudeville performer who usually did a comedy routine and a dance with a girl partner. The two immediately launched a new partnership called “Burns and Allen” with Gracie playing the role of the ‘straight man’ and George delivering the punchlines as the comedian. Burns knew something was wrong when the audience ignored his jokes but snickered at Gracie’s questions. Burns cannily flipped the act around.

Gracie Allen’s part was known in vaudeville as a “Dumb Dora” act, named after a very early film of the same name that featured a scatterbrained female protagonist, but her “illogical logic” style was several cuts above the Dumb Dora stereotype. She and George Burns took the act on the road, gradually building a following. The act was so consistently dependable that vaudeville bookers elevated them to the more secure “standard act” status, and finally to the Palace Theater in New York. After three years together, Gracie Allen married Burns in Cleveland, Ohio in January of 1926.

In the fall of 1949, Jack Benny convinced Gracie Allen and George Burns to join him in the move to the CBS network. The “Burns and Allen” radio show, which had run from the early 1930s, became part of the CBS lineup and a year later a television program. They played themselves, as television stars, bewildering the guest stars and their neighbors, Harry and Blanche Morton, with Gracie Allen’s illogical logic. Each show began with a brief monologue by George Burns about Gracie’s activities on that day. Audiences continued to love Allen’s character, who combined the traits of naivety, zaniness, and total innocence.

Gracie Allen retired in 1958 due to her health. She fought a long battle with heart disease, ultimately dying of a heart attack in Hollywood on August 27, 1964, at the age of 69. Her remains are interred in a crypt at the Freedom Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, California.

Gracie Allen Quotes:

“I was so surprised at being born that I didn’t speak for a year and a half.”

“I read a book twice as fast as anybody else. First, I read the beginning, and then I read the ending, and then I start in the middle and read toward whatever end I like best.”

“You speak it the same way you speak English, you just use different words.”

Calendar: July 25

A Year: Day to Day Men: 25th of July

Splashes of Light

July 25, 1870 was the birthdate of the painter and illustrator Maxfield Parrish.

Born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Maxfield Parrish was the son of painter and etcher Stephen Parrish. His parents encouraged his drawing talent and took the young Parrish in 1884 on a trip to Europe. Parrish was exposed to the architecture and the paintings by the old masters, as he toured England, Italy and France. The family returned to the United States in 1886.

Maxfield Parrish attended the Haverford School, a private school for boys, and later studied for two years at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. After graduating, he shared an art studio with his father in Annisquam, Massachusetts. A year later Parrish attended the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry.

Early in his career, Parrish did illustrations for “Harper’s Bazaar” and “The Scribner’s Magazine”. He also illustrated in 1897 the children’s book “Mother Goose in Prose”, written by L. Frank Baum, who went on to write and publish “The Wizard of Oz” three years later. By 1900, Parrish, now a member of the Society of American Artists, traveled to Europe again to visit Italy.

Parrish worked with many popular magazines throughout the 1910s and 1920s. He also created advertising artwork for companies such as Colgate and Oneida Cutlery. Parrish received an exclusive contract with Collier’s and worked for them from 1904 to 1913. By the 1920s, however, Parrish decided to concentrate on his painting and stopped his illustrative commercial work.

In his forties, Parrish did paintings for children’s books and began working on large murals. His most popular work was the painting “Daybreak” which was produced in 1923. Featuring a scene of a columned portico with two female figures, it had undertones of the now famous Parrish blue color. The print of this work is regarded as the most popular print in the American 20th century based on the number of prints sold, equal to one for almost every four households.

Parrish’s art is characterized by vibrant colors. He achieved such luminous color through the process of glazing. This process involves applying alternating bright layers of oil color separated by varnish over a base rendering, usually a blue and white monochromatic underpainting. He would often project photographs of his draped models onto the canvas, allowing him to accurately represent the distortion of patterns of the draping.

The National Museum of American Illustration in Newport, Rhode Island, claims the largest body of his work, with sixty-nine works by Parrish. However, you can also see works by Parrish at the Hood Museum of Art in New Hampshire and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Parrish’s painting “Daybreak” has changed owners several times but has always been in private collections.

Calendar: July 24

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

The Terrazzo Floor

July 24, 1952 marks the release date in the United States of the classic film “High Noon”.

“High Noon” is a 1952 American western film produced by Stanley Kramer, directed by Fred Zinnemann, and starring Gary Cooper. The plot, depicted in real time, revolves around a town marshal, who must face a gang of killers alone, torn between his sense of duty and love for his new bride. The film was mired in controversy with political overtones at the time of its release.

In 1951, during production of the film, Carl Foreman, the screenwriter of the movie, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee during its investigation of “Communist propaganda and influence” in the Hollywood motion picture industry. He was labeled an “uncooperative witness” by the committee, making him vulnerable to blacklisting, the practice of denying employment to suspected Communists.

After Carl Foreman’s refusal to name names was made public, Foreman’s production partner Stanley Kramer, the producer of the film, demanded an immediate dissolution of their partnership. As a signatory to the production loan, Foreman remained with the “High Noon” project; but before the film’s release, he sold his partnership share to Kramer and moved to Britain, knowing that he would not find further work in the United States.

Gary Cooper played the lead role of Marshal Will Kane, even doing the fight scenes, despite ongoing problems with his back. He wore no makeup, to emphasize his character’s anguish and fear, which was probably intensified by pain from a recent ulcer surgery. Grace Kelly was given the part of the marshal’s wife, Amy Fowler Kane, despite the thirty-year age disparity with Gary Cooper, after producer Stanley Kramer saw her in an off-Broadway play.

The running time of the story almost precisely parallels the running time of the film itself, an effect heightened by the frequent shots of clocks, to remind the characters, and the audience, that the villain the marshal will have to fight will be arriving on the noon train. Thus the title “High Noon”. Upon its release, critics and audiences expecting chases, fights, spectacular scenery, and other common Western film elements were dismayed to find them largely replaced by emotional and moralistic dialogue until the climactic final scenes.

“High Noon” was criticized in the then Soviet Union as “glorification of the individual”. The American Left lauded it as an allegory against blacklisting and McCarthyism, but it gained respect in the conservative community as well. Now considered a classic western, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four: Best Actor, Best Editing, Best Music Score and Best Music Song. It also won four Golden Globe Awards in the categories of Actor, Supporting Actress, Score, and Black and White Cinematography.

Calendar: July 23

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

Framing His Own Portrait

July 23, 1886 was the day that American Steve Brodie jumped (supposedly) off the Brooklyn Bridge and survived.

The Brooklyn Bridge, then known as the East River Bridge, had opened just three years before Steve Brodie’s claimed jump. A swimming instructor from Washington DC, Robert Emmet Odium, was killed while attempting the same stunt in May of 1885. Brodie, who was unemployed and aware of the publicity generated by Odium’s fatal jump, bragged to people in the Bowery section of New York City that he would take the jump. Wagers were made for and against; but Brodie never officially announced he would make the attempt.

The jump supposedly made by Steve Brodie on July 23, was from a height of 135 feet, the same height as a fourteen-story building. The New York Times in its coverage put the height at about 120 feet. The newspaper backed Brodie’s account of the jump, saying that Brodie had practiced by making shorter jumps from other bridges and from masts of ships. They also cited two witness descriptions by their reporters.

The New York Times account stated that Steve Bodie leaped into the East River, feet first, and emerged uninjured , except with a pain on his right side. Upon reaching shore, Steve Brodie was arrested by the police. The New York Times described Brodie as a newsboy and long-distance pedestrian who jumped from the bridge to win a two-hundred dollar bet. Another account that surfaced after the jump was a claim by Moritz Herzber, a liquor dealer, who said he offered to back a saloon for Brodie if he made the jump.

If true, Steve Bodie would have been the first person to survive a jump off the Brooklyn Bridge; however, his claim was disputed, which still lingers today. In 1930 it was reported that a retired police sergeant and friend of Bodie, Thomas K. Hastings, said that Steve Brodie had told him he didn’t make the jump and never said he did. In his book “The Great Bridge”, historian David McCullough said it was commonly believed by skeptics that a dummy was dropped from the bridge, and that Brodie merely swam out from shore and surfaced beside a passing barge.

After the stunt, Steve Brodie opened a saloon at 114 Bowery near Grand Street, which also became a museum for his bridge-jumping stunt. He became an actor capitalizing on his reputation, appearing in the vaudeville musicals “Mad Money” and “On the Bowery”. He later opened another saloon in Buffalo, New York. Brodie died in San Antonio, Texas in 1901; the cause of death described as either diabetes or tuberculosis. His fame persisted after his death, with the term “to do a Brodie”, meaning to take a chance, specifically a suicidal one, entered the language.

Calendar: July 22

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

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

July 22, 1947 was the birthdate of actor, comedian and producer Albert Brooks.

Albert Brooks led a new generation of self-reflective comics appearing on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson”. His onstage persona was that of an egotistical, narcissistic, nervous comic, one who tore himself down before an audience by disassembling his mastery of comedic routine. He once performed a humorless, five-minute stand up comedy routine on “The Tonight Show” in 1962 that didn’t produce a single laugh until the punchline – when he explained to the audience that he had been working as a stand up comic for five years and had run out of material. Johnny Carson swore the hilarity which followed this set-up lasted a full minute.

Brooks appeared in 1976 in his first mainstream movie role as Tom in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” , where Scorsese allowed him to improvise much of his dialogue. Brooks directed his first feature film, “Real Life”, in 1979, playing the lead role as a man obnoxiously filming a typical suburban family in an attempt to win an Oscar as well as a Nobel Prize. His film, “Lost in America”, released in 1985, was one of his best-received productions. It featured Brooks and Julie Hagerty as a couple of yuppies who drop out and travel in a motor home, meeting obstacles and disappointments in their dream.

Albert Brooks received good reviews for his films in the 1990s, showing his off-beat style and his seamless successions of shots in his filming. His “Defending Your Life” comedy with Meryl Streep portrayed an after-life trial of Brooks to determine his cosmic fate. Brooks received positive reviews for “Mother” in 1996 as a middle-aged writer moving back home to his mother, played by Debbie Reynolds. His 1999 film “The Muse” featured him as a Hollywood screenwriter who lost his edge and finds an authentic muse, played by Sharon Stone, to give him inspiration.

Brooks played an insecure, supremely ethical network television reporter in James L. Brooks’ hit “Broadcast News”. For this role he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also appeared as the vicious gangster Bernie Rose, the main antagonist in the motion picture “Drive”, a role given much critical praise and positive reviews.

Albert Brooks did voiceover work in the Pixar film “Finding Nemo” in 2003, voicing the character of Marlin, one of the film’s protagonists. He reprised the role of Marlin in the 2016 sequel “Finding Dory”. Brooks also appeared as a guest voice on “The Simpsons” five times during its run, always under the name of A. Brooks, and is particularly known for his role as super-villain Hank Scorpio in the episode “You Only Move Twice”. He later also voiced the character of Russ Cargill, the central antagonist of “The Simpsons Movie”.

Calendar: July 21

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

Gathering Apples on High

July 21, 1920 was the birthdate of Constant A. Nieuwenhuys, a painter turned architect and one of the founders of the Situationist International.

Constant Nieuwenhuys was a Dutch artist born in Amsterdam and one of the founding members of the Situationist International formed in 1957. He is also known for his utopian project, New Babylon, on which he worked for nearly twenty years starting in 1956. Constant was one of the theoretical drivers behind the Situationists alongside Guy Debord. It was a widening gulf between their two positions that eventually led Constatnt Nieuwenhuys to leave the group in 1960.

The Situationists were an overtly political group whose critique of the alienation of capitalist society has had a lasting effect on contemporary culture. They saw modern society as a series of spectacles, discrete moments in time, where the possibility of active participation in the production and experience of lived reality were eluded.

The rift between Constant and Debord focused on the structuralist tendencies of Constant. Through his exploration of “unitary urbanism”, Constant focused not only on the atmosphere and social interactions of the Situationis city, but also on the actual production of the city as a built space. His project New Babylon is today considered and exemplary expression of a Situationist city.

Designed around the abolition of work, New Babylon was a city based on total automation and the collective ownership of land. With no more work, citizens were free to move around; New Babylon being designed to facilitate a nomadic lifestyle. Divided into a series of interconnected sectors, the city operated on a network of collective services and transportation.

Through a large number of models, drawings and collages, Constant explored the various sectors, floating above ground on stilts, interconnected with bridges and pathways. Traffic flowed above and below; while the inhabitants traveled by foot from section to section. The degree to which the details of the city had been worked out and Constant’s own discourse showed that he viewed this as a concrete proposal for a future city rather than just a polemical project.

Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon focused on the social construction of space with every aspect of the city controllable by its citizens in order that they could construct new atmospheres and situations within the given infrastructure. It was a dynamic environment that could easily be adapted and changed, allowing inhabitants to explore their creativity through play and interaction. Constant, ultimately, did not see New Babylon as a city, but rather as a design of a new culture.