Category: film

Film History: Alan Ladd

Director Frank Tuttle, “Alan Ladd as Philip Raven”, 1942, “This Gun for Hire”, Cinematography John Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Born at Hot Springs, Arkansas in September of 1913, Alan Walbridge Ladd was an American actor and film producer who found success with portrayals in film noir, war movies and Westerns in the 1940s and early 1950s.

The only child born to freelance accountant Alan Ladd and English-born Ina Raleigh, Alan Walbridge Ladd was four years old at his father’s death of a heart attack. He and his mother moved to Oklahoma City where she married house painter Jim Beavers. The family relocated to California and eventually settled in the San Fernando Valley where Beavers was given a position at the silent film studio FBO Pictures (Film Booking Offices of America).

Ladd enrolled at North Hollywood High School where, despite his small stature, he became a swimming and diving champion in his teen years. In his senior year, he also participated in the high-school’s theatrical productions, one of which included his role as the comic Ko-Ko in “The Mikado”. After graduating in February of 1934, Ladd worked in various jobs including gas station attendant, lifeguard and hot dog vendor. His first employment in the film industry was a two-year position as a grip at the Warner Brothers studios. 

After appearing in several stage productions for the Ben Bard Theater in Hollywood, Alan Ladd appeared in an uncredited role in director David Butler’s 1936 musical football-comedy “Pigskin Parade”. Although able to get short-term work at MGM and RKO, he was signed later that year by radio station KFWB as its sole radio actor, a position he held for three years. Ladd’s work as multiple characters was noticed by actress and talent agent Sue Carol who began to promote him for films and radio. Ladd’s first role through Carol was a credited role in director Frank Lloyd’s 1939 historical drama “Rulers of the Sea” with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Margaret Lockwood. 

Over the next few years, Ladd had several small roles in films, among these were the 1940 “Green Hornet” serial,  the 1941 comedy horror “The Black Cat”, and an uncredited role as a newspaper reporter in “Citizen Kane”. He gained some recognition for his featured role as a Royal Air Force pilot in the 1942 RKO Radio Pictures war film “Joan of Paris”, a critical success that featured the U.S. screen debuts of Paul Henried and Michèle Morgan. Ladd was given a contract with Paramount Pictures and, after a successful audition, the role of Raven, a paid killer with a conscience in director Frank Tuttle’s 1942 crime film “This Gun for Hire”. Although he had only received fourth billing, Ladd was made a star due to critical praise and fan reaction.  

Paramount recognized that Alan Ladd was a potential star and immediately signed him for the adaptation of detective-novel writer Dashiell Hammett’s “The Glass Key” released in October of 1942. This was Ladd’s second pairing with Veronica Lake, who had co-starred with him in “This Gun for Hire”. He followed “The Glass Key” with the 1942 all-star musical “Star Spangled Rhythm” and two films released in 1943, “Lucky Jordan” with Helen Walker and “China” with Loretta Young. 

Although classified as unfit for military service due to stomach issues, Ladd enlisted in January of 1943, briefly serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces’ First Motion Picture Unit. He attained the rank of corporal but was given a honorable medical discharge at the end of October due to a stomach disorder complicated by influenza. When Ladd returned to Paramount, he was given the 1944 drama film “And Now Tomorrow”, a melodrama that co-starred Loretta Young. He next acted in the leading role for John Farrow’s historical adventure film “Two Years before the Mast”, which became one of the most popular films in the United States after its belated release in 1946. 

In 1945, Paramount Pictures bought American-British detective fiction writer Raymond Chandler’s first original film screenplay “The Blue Dahlia” as a vehicle for Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and William Bendix. Shot quickly by director George Marshall, the film ranked among the most popular films at the British box office in 1946. Chandler was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay; Ladd was noted for his role as a tough guy in what became known as the film noir genre.

Ladd appeared in several films of mixed critical and commercial reception in 1949 and 1950. These include the 1949 “The Great Gatsby”, “Chicago Deadline”, “Appointment with Danger”, and two Westerns, the 1950 “Branded” and the 1951 “Red Mountain”. These dynamic action-packed roles were followed by Ladd’s most memorable performance as the drifter Shane, an honest character troubled by conflicting emotions. The role of Shane became the highpoint of Ladd’s film career. Directed by George Steven, the 1953 Western “Shane” won an Academy Award for its Technicolor cinematography and became a critical as well as commercial success for Paramount Pictures.

Alan Ladd entered independent film making in 1954 through the founding of  Jaguar Productions, a Hollywood production company that released films through Warner Brothers. His first film, the 1954 Western “Drum Beat” was successful and was followed by the 1955 “Hell on Frisco Bay” with Edward G. Robinson, and the 1957 Western “The Big Land” in which he acted opposite Virginia Mayo. In the following year, Ladd acted with his eleven-year old son David and co-star Olivia de Havilland in the 1958 Technicolor Western “The Proud Rebel”, a Michael Curtiz film produced by Samuel Goldwyn Jr. 

Ladd continued his acting with films for United Artist, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox Studios. He also starred in directors Ferdinando Baldi and Terence Young’s 1961 “Duel of Champions”, an epic Roman adventure film shot in Italy. In 1963, Ladd accepted his last film role, the former gunslinger turned actor Nevada Smith, for director Edward Dmytryk’s drama “The Carpetbaggers”. This film adaptation of Harold Robbins’s novel was released to financial success in April of 1964, three months after Ladd’s death. 

Alan Ladd was recuperating after knee injuries at his Palm Springs house in January of 1964. He had been suffering badly from insomnia and found solace in sedatives and an increasing dependence on alcohol. The butler saw Ladd on his bed in the morning of the twenty-ninth of January; upon his return in the afternoon, the butler found Ladd dead on the bed. The death was officially ruled accidental. Alan Ladd died at the age of fifty due to cerebral edema caused by acute overdose of alcohol and a mixture of tranquilizers. Ladd was interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale California. 

Notes: The CMG Worldwide website has a page on Alan Ladd which includes a biography and a complete filmography: http://www.cmgww.com/stars/ladd/

The Hollywood’s Golden Age website has an extensive biography on Alan Ladd at: http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com/actors/alan_ladd.html

Writer, critic and performer Trav S.D. has an excellent 2020 article on his WordPress site “Travalanche” entitled “The Short Life of Alan Ladd” at: https://travsd.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/the-short-life-of-alan-ladd/

An extensive article entitled “The Dynamic Duos Blogathon: Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake” can be found on the “ShadowsandSatin” WordPress site: https://shadowsandsatin.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/the-dynamic-duos-blogathon-alan-ladd-and-veronica-lake/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Alan Ladd as Philip Raven”, 1942, “This Gun for Hire”, Publicity Photo, Paramount Pictures 

Second Insert Image: Film Poster, “Captain Carey, U.S.A>”, 1950, Director Mitchell Leisen, Cinematography John F. Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Alan Ladd”, Paramount Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Fourth Insert Image: Film Poster, “the Blue Dahlia”, 1946, Director George Marshall, Cinematography Lionel Lindon, Paramount Pictures, 76 x 102 cm, Private Collection 

Fifth Insert Image: Eugene R Richee, “Alan Ladd”, 1941, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Film Poster, “Calcutta”, 1947, Director John Farrow, Cinematography John F. Seitz, Paramount Pictures

Theda Bara: Film History Series

Orval Hixon, “Theda Bara”, 1921, Publicity Photo

Born at Cincinnati, Ohio in July of 1885, Theda Bara, née Theodosia Burr Goodman, was an American silent film and stage actress who, known for Photographer Unknown, "Theda Bara as Carmen", 1915, "Carmen", Written and Directed by Raoul Walsh, Cinematography Georges Benoit and George Schneiderman, Fox Studio her femme fatale roles, became one of the more popular actresses of the silent era. One of the early stars of the newly founded Fox Studios, Bara became its biggest star and one of cinema’s early sex symbols.

One of three children born to prosperous Jewish tailor Bernard Goodman and Swiss-born Pauline Louise Françoise de Coppett, Theda Bara moved with her family in 1890 to Avondale, a suburb of Cincinnati with a large Jewish community. Upon graduating high school, Bare dyed her blonde hair black and began to pursue her teenage dream of a career in theater. After two years at the University of Cincinnati, she started acting in local theater productions in 1905.

Bara relocated to New York City and made her Broadway debut in playwright Ferenc Molnár’s 1908 “The Devil”, acting under the name Theodosia de Coppett. The play opened in August of 1908 at the Garden Theatre and finished its run at the New Victory Theatre in June of 1909. Beginning in 1911, Bara became part of a theatrical touring company for three years. She sought work at various casting offices after her return to New York City in 1914 and was chosen for a role in director Frank Powell’s 1914 silent film “The Stain” for Pathé Exchange. Acting under the name Theodosia Goodman, Bara played the role of a gangster’s female companion.

Having become known for her ability to take direction, Theda Bara was given her first lead role as the predatory woman (“vampire”) in Powell’s next film, the 1915 “A Fool There Was”, for the newly formed Fox Studios. This role was a major breakthrough for Bara as she was nearing thirty-years old, at a time when lead roles were always given to younger women. To increase the allure of star and movie, Fox Studios gave its lead actress the name Theda Bara (an anagram for Arab Death) for the film’s press releases. She was described as the Egyptian daughter of an artist and Arabian princess, and was endowed with mystical powers.

Bara, now contracted with Fox Studios, was living with her parents in New York City and traveling to Fort Lee, New Jersey where Fox Studios’s film industry was based. Her second film role with the studio was the character Celia Friedlander in director Herbert Brenon’s 1915 silent film “Kreutzer Sonata” based on a play of the same name written by Jacob Gordon. Bara, now a rising star, made six more films in 1915, the last of which was the lead role in director Raoul Walsh’s “Carmen”. The next year was even busier; theater audiences attended eight new Theda Bara films, all of which made substantial profit for Fox Studios. 

In 1917, Theda Bara traveled with Fox Studios to California where, finding the climate more hospitable for filmmaking, it had built new West Coast production facilities in Hollywood. She starred in director J. Gordon Edwards’s 1917 silent historical drama “Cleopatra”. With its huge sets, over two thousand horses and fifteen thousand extras, the film, although costly to produce, became a mega-hit for Bara and the studio. Soon after, Bara appeared in the lead role of Lisza Tapenka for Edwards’s 1917 silent drama “The Rose of Blood”. In 1918, Bara received the opportunity to be both screenwriter and lead actor for director Edwards’s silent romance film “The Soul of Buddha”. 

Bara appeared in seven films in 1919, the last of which was the role of social-climbing stenographer Olga Dolan in Edmund Lawrence’s silent drama “Lure of Ambition”. At the end of 1919, Bara’s contract with Fox Studios terminated and her film career faded from the phenomenon it had once been. Seeking a return to the theater, she  appeared on Broadway as Ruth Gordon in George V. Hobart and John Willard’s 1920 four-act play “The Blue Flame” at the Shubert Theatre. Reviewers criticized the play and its plot as well as Bara’s acting. Her recognition as a film star, however, drew large crowds and the play was a commercial success, breaking attendance records at some venues during its forty-eight show run.. 

In 1921, Theda Bara married British-born film director Charles Brabin and retired from acting. She made a brief comeback in what would be her last film, directors Stan Laurel and Richard Wallace’s 1926 short silent comedy “Madame Mystery” for the Hal Roach Studio. After finishing the film, Bara, now forty-one, permanently retired from film acting. Although she continued though the 1930s to try stage acting, there was little success. In 1936, Bara did a radio broadcast version of the “The Thin Man”, alongside William Powell and Myrna Loy for the Lux Radio Theatre. 

After a lengthy stay at California Lutheran Hospital, Theda Bara died of abdominal cancer in April of 1955 at the age of sixty-nine at Los Angeles, California. Her body was cremated and inurned, under the name Theda Bara Brabin, in the Great Mausoleum at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, California.

Notes: A 1937 fire at the Fox Studio nitrate-film storage vaults in New Jersey destroyed most of the studio’s silent films produced before 1932. Theda Bara made forty-three silent films between 1914 and 1926. Of these, complete prints of only six still exist. Two films are partially lost and thirty-five are completely lost. Those nitrate films that were housed in Bara’s own personal archive were discovered in 1940 to have disintegrated when she took some reels out to show a friend.

The Golden Globes website has a short article written by actress Meher Tatna entitled “Forgotten Hollywood: Theda Bara, Queen of the Vamps” at: https://goldenglobes.com/articles/gotten-hollywood-theda-bara-queen-vamps/

The Readex Report has an excellent article by Vanda Krefft, Biography Fellow at the City University of New York, on William Fox, the founder of Twentieth Century Fox, that discusses Theda Bara’s early relationship with Fox Studios: https://www.readex.com/readex-report/issues/volume-5-issue-1/searching-forgotten-movie-mogul-william-fox-founder-twentieth 

Once Upon A Screen, a classic film and tv blog, has an article on William Fox which discusses Theda Bara’s time with Fox Studios: https://aurorasginjoint.com/2015/06/26/the-mightiest-of-all-william-fox-sets-up-shop-in-fort-lee-a-hundred-years-ago/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Theda Bara as Carmen”, 1915, “Carmen”, Written and Directed by Raoul Walsh, Cinematography Georges Benoit and George Schneiderman, Fox Studio 

Second Insert Image: Photographer Unkown, “Theda Bara as Salome”, 1918, Film Publicity Photo, Director J. Gordon Edwards, Cinematography John W. Boyle, Fox Film Corporation

Third Insert Image: Underwood & Underwood Studios, “Theda Bara”, 1918, “The She-Devil”, Publicity Photo, Director J. Gordon Edwards, Cinematography John W. Boyle and Harry Gerstad, Fox Film Corporation

Bottom Insert Image: Jack Freulich, “Theda Bara as Rosa”, 1915, “Sin”, Director Herbert Brenon, Cinematography Phil Rosen, Fox Film Corporation

Tod Browning, “The Mystic”: Film History Series

Ira H. Morgan, “Actress Aileen Pringle as Zara”, Todd Browning’s 1925 silent “The Mystic”, Costume by Roman Petrovich Tyrtov (aka Erté)

“The Mystic” was a 1925 silent drama film directed by Tod Browning for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The script was co-written by Browning and Waldemar Young, who over the course of his career wrote screenplays for over eighty films. The film was produced by Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg who, two years before, had finished production on a drama film starring Lon Chaney, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. Although Chaney was Browning’s immediate choice for the role of Michael Nash, he was unable to hire Chaney for “The Mystic” due to scheduling issues. 

“The Mystic” starred Aileen Pringle, a stage and film actress who had worked previously with Rudolph Valentino in the 1920 “Stolen Moments” and with Conrad Nagel in the 1924 adaptation of Elinor Glyn’s romance novel “Three Weeks”. Her co-star was Conway Tearle, who began his career as a stage actor in London and later on Broadway. Over his thirty-six year career, he appeared in over ninety films and, at one point, was thought to be the highest-paid actor in America.  

The cinematography was done by Ira H. Morgan who later successfully transitioned from silent to sound films. He worked extensively over his long career with major studios including Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Morgan’s credits included Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times”, George W. Hill’s “Tell It to the Marines”, Sam Katzman’s East Side Kids “Bowery Champs” and the Screen Gems television series “The Adventures of Rin-Tin-Tin”, among others. 

The gowns in “The Mystic”, worn by Aileen Pringle in her role of the gypsy Zara, were created by the well-known Russian-born French artist and designer Roman de Tirtoff, known to the world as Erté. Brought to the United States by Louis B. Mayer, Erté first designed the sets and costumes for the 1925 silent film “Paris”. He later did designs for such MGM silent films as “Ben-Hur”, “The Comedian” and “Dance Madness”, as well as William Randolph Hearst’s 1920 silent drama “The Restless Sex”. 

Released in September of 1925, one print of “The Mystic” has survived. It has a running time of seventy minutes and has English inter-titles. It is available as a web file at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Mystic_(1925)_by_Tod_Browning.webm

Bottom Insert Image: Ira H. Morgan, “Aileen Pringle and Conway Tearle”, 1925, Film Still from “The Mystic”, Director Tod Browning, MGM

Derek Jarman: Film History Series

Derek Jarman, “Caravaggio”, 1986, Film Scene Gifs, Cinematography Gabriel Beristain, Cinevista (USA)

Born in Northwood, Middlesex in January of 1942, Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English artist, film maker, costume and stage designer, writer and poet, and gay rights activist. His film career began with experimental Super 8mm shorts and developed into such mainstream films as the 1986 historical drama “Caravaggio” and the 1989 “War Requiem”, that featured Laurence Olivier’s last screen performance.

As an author, Jarman published several works: a poetry collection entitled “A Finger in the Fishes Mouth”; two diaries, “Modern Nature” and “Smiling in Slow Motion”; two treatises on his art and films, “Chroma” and “The Last of England (aka Kicking the Pricks)”; and the 1984 “Dancing Ledge”, an autobiography of his life until the age of forty.

The son of Royal Air Force officer Lancelot Elworthy Jarman and Elizabeth Evelyn Puttock, Derek Jarman received his elementary education at the preparatory Walhampton School and Dorset’s Cranford School, a progressive boarding and day institution. Beginning in 1960, he studied Art and English at King’s College, London, which was followed in 1963 by four years of study at University College London’s Slade School of Fine Art. In the 1970s, Jarman embraced his homosexuality and became a public figure for the gay rights campaign. 

Jarman’s first venture in film making was a series of experimental shorts filmed with Super 8mm film, a format he used frequently throughout his career. Among these films are the 1984 “Imagining October, an examination of art and politics at the end of the Cold War; 1985 “The Angelic Conversation”, an arthouse drama of homoerotic images combined  with Judi Dench’s readings of Shakespeare sonnets; and 1990 “The Garden”, an arthouse allegory that examined the suffering and ostracism of a gay male couple during the AIDS crisis. “The Garden” was entered in 1991 into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival.

As a stage set and costume designer, Derek Jarman did the design work for the 1968 Sadler’s Wells Opera production of “Don Giovanni” at London’s newly renovated Coliseum in the West End. He was chosen as the production designer for director Ken Russell’s 1971 historical horror-drama “The Devil’s”, a controversial film for which Russell received the Best Foreign Director Award at the 1972 Venice Film Festival. Jarman’s work with this film, as well as his work on Russell’s 1972 “Savage Messiah”, gave him a transition into mainstream narrative filmmaking.

Jarman’s debut film was the 1976 “Sebastiane”, a story spoken in ancient Latin dialogue about the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. This film featured some of the first positive images of gay sexuality in British films. “Sebastiane” was influenced by films from the Italian arthouse oeuvre, particularly the cinematic style of Frederico Fellini. In 1977, Jarman began shooting scenes for the 1978 “Jubilee”, a heavily punk-influenced film that transports Queen Elizabeth I forward in time to an England troubled by the unemployment and rising inflation of the 1970s. Now considered a cult classic, the film was adapted in 2017 as a play for the Manchester Royal Exchange Theater.

After several years of preparation, Derek Jarman directed his next film, the  1979 adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. His original adaptation was intended for a stage play; however, he ultimately decided to proceed with a film adaptation. Seeking a balance between the aspects of theater and film, Jarman reworked the text so it would capture the mystery of the original without the theatrics. Inspired by films produced by Hammer Film Productions, Jarman utilized voice-over narration, costumes from muliple eras, sounds of heavy breathing, and blue camera filters to create a film that was well received upon its release.

Jarman learned his HIV-positive diagnosis on the twenty-second of December in 1986. An outspoken advocate of gay rights, he openly spoke publicly about his condition and his struggle with the virus. Despite his illness, Jarman continued making both mainstream films and Super 8mm shorts. In 1987, his arthouse film “The Last of England” was released. This film dealt with the loss of English culture in the 1980s and the formation of the Section 28 Local Government Act that banned any “promotion” or discussion of homosexuality and thus stifled LGBT support groups.

Derek Jarman’s 1989 “War Requiem”, produced by Scottish novelist and director Don Boyd, brought Laurence Olivier out of retirement for his last screen appearance. For its soundtrack, the film used noted composer Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem”, a work he wrote for the consecration of the Coventry Cathedral. Violent war footage and poetry written by war hero Wilfred Owen were overlaid on the score. While filming his 1990 “The Garden”, Jarman became seriously ill but managed to complete the work. This arthouse film was loosely based on Christ’s crucifixion; however, the film’s protagonist is a gay male couple whose idealistic existence is interrupted by arrest, humiliation, torture and death.

Now working in a simpler format due to his failing health, Jarman directed his 1991 “Edward II”, a romantic historical drama based on Christopher Marlowe’s 1594 play of the same name. This was followed by the 1993 experimental comedic-drama “Wittgenstein” based on the life of philosopher and professor Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose life and career were affected by periods of depression. By 1993, Jarman was dying of AIDS-related complications that had already rendered him partially blind and only able to see in shades of blue. 

Despite his advancing illness, Derek Jarman completed his 1993 “Blue”, a single screenshot of saturated blue color with a background soundtrack by Simon Fisher Turner. Over the soundtrack, Jarman and some of his long-time collaborators described Jarman’s life and artistic vision. “Blue” made its debut at the 1993 Venice Biennale and later became part of the collections at the Centre Georges Pompidou, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Collection, and the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis. Jarman’s final film was the 1994 “Glitterbug”, a documentary of his life as seen through home movies, that was posthumously aired on BBC Two’s episodic television show “Arena”.

Jarman died on the nineteenth of February in 1994 at the age of fifty-two at London’s St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. His body is interned in the graveyard at St. Clement’s Church, Old Romney, Kent. A blue English Heritage plaque honoring Derek Jarman’s  life was placed at the site of his live-in studio at London’s Butler’s Wharf in 2019. 

Notes: After his HIV-positive diagnosis, Jarman made the decision to leave London for a period and bought a small fisherman’s cabin, Prospect Cottage, on the beaches of Dungeness, Kent, with an inheritance received from his father. Using his creative energy, Jarman created a sculpture garden from discarded metal engine parts and local coastal plants. After his death, Prospect Cottage was purchased in 2020 through an Art Fund campaign and is now a public site overseen by the UK charity Creative Folkestone. Jarman’s archives from the cottage were placed on a long-term loan to the Tate Museum Archive. 

An 2023 article by artist and curator Robert Priseman for “ART UK”, entitled “Derek Jarman’s Garden: A Heart of Creativity”, examines Jarman’s life at Prospect Cottage: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/derek-jarmans-garden-a-heart-of-creativity

“FILM London” has a short 2024 article on Jarman’s life and the Jarman Award for emerging artist filmmakers that was instituted in 2008: https://filmlondon.org.uk/flamin/about-derek-jarman

Alastair Curtis wrote an excellent 2023 article for “FRIEZE’ magazine on Derek Jarman’s final film “Blue” and its adaptation into a stage production: https://www.frieze.com/article/derek-jarman-blue-now-2023

Top Insert Image: Trevor Leighton, “Derek Jarman”, 1990, Bromide Fibre Print, 36.7 x 29 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Second Insert Image: Derek Jarman, “Caravaggio”, 1986, Cinematography Gabriel Beristain, Cinevista (USA), Umbrella Entertainment (Australia)

Third Insert Image: Steve Pyke, “Derek Jarman”, 1983, Bromide Print, 37.6 x 38 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Fourth Insert Image: Derek Jarman, “Sebastiane”, 1976, Cinematography Peter Middleton, Cinegate Ltd

Fifth Insert Image: David Thompson, “Derek Jarman”, 1992, Toned Archival Print on Kentmere Paper, 34.5 x 27.7 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Bottom Insert Image: Derek Jarman, “Jubilee”, 1978, Cinematography Peter Middleton, Cinegate Ltd

Tony Azito: Film History

Photographer Unknown, “Tony Azito”, 1978, Publicity Photo Card, The AIDS Memorial, New York City

Born Antonio Zito in New York City on the eighteenth of July in 1948, Tony Azito was an American dancer and actor in both film and theater. After attending an audition in 1968 with friends at the Juilliard School, New York City’s performing arts conservatory, he was granted a full scholarship and became one of the first acting students to study under its director John Houseman. Influenced by the work of dancer and choreographer Anna Sokolow, Azito began to study modern dance, an unusual art form for a person of his height- six feet, three inches (190 cm).

Azito left the Juilliard School without finishing his degree, partly as a result of an argument with director Houseman, and performed with Anna Sokolow’s Theatre/Dance Ensemble for two years under the name Antonio Azito. He returned to drama in the 1970s and worked in off-Broadway productions, including several at the East Village’s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club headed by director Wilford Leach. In 1971, Azito performed in John Dillon and Eric Bentley’s “The Red, White and Black”, a collaborative effort between La MaMa and the Columbia University School of the Arts. 

In 1973, Tony Azito appeared in two productions, one of which was Wilford Leach and John Braswell’s production of the 1872 Gothic vampire novella “Camilla”. After appearing in the 1974 production of Nancy Fales’s “Ark”, he performed with the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company in Leach’s 1974 “C.O.R.F.A. X. (Don’t Ask)” that toured Europe throughout remainder of the year. Azito’s debut on Broadway was as Samuel, a dancing role created especially for him, in avant-garde playwright Richard Foreman’s revival of “The Threepenny Opera” for the 1976 New York Shakespeare Festival. Azito continued his theater work with a role in Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s 1977 three-act musical “Happy End” at Broadway’s Martin Beck Theatre and Chelsea Theatre Center.

Azito’s next and best known role was the Sergeant of Police in theatrical producer Joseph Papp’s 1981-1982 modernized version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance” staged at New York City’s Uris and Minskoff Theatres. Azito’s performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and a Drama Desk Award in the same category. This Broadway version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s play ran for seven hundred and eighty-seven performances and won both a Tony Award for Best Revival and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical. 

Tony Azito appeared once more with the New York Shakespeare festival, this time as Feste, the fool in the house of Countess Olivia, in William Leach’s 1986 production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”. He continued working in theater with performances at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum at the city’s Music Center, and with the American National Theater Company at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center. Azito’s final Broadway role was Mr. Nick Cricker in William Leach’s 1988 musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”.

Walking back from a theater performance of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”, Azito was struck by a New York City taxi that left the scene. Both his legs were badly broken and it took several years until he could walk again. Azito’ss return to the stage was in the 1990 summer stock revival of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s musical “She Loves Me” in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He later appeared in Edgar Gorey’s two-act revue “Amphigorey: A Musicale” staged in Boston as well as several productions of playwright Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties”.

For his first film role, Tony Azito was given the lead in Howard Goldberg’s 1975 gangster fantasy “Apple Pie”, now considered a musical cult classic. In 1980, he appeared in Mark Reichert’s neo-noir crime mystery “Union City”. Azito’s most memorable film role was a recreation of his Broadway role in Wilford Leach’s 1983 comedic film version of “The Pirates of Penzance”. He appeared in several more films including George Bowers’s 1985 comedy “Private Resort”, Norman Jewison’s 1987 romantic comedy “Moonstruck” and Howard Brookner’s 1989 “Bloodhounds of Broadway”. After a cameo as party dancer Digit Addams in the 1991 “The Addams Family”, Azito’s final film appearance was as the Librarian in the 1993 H.P. Lovecraft horror anthology “’Necronomicon: Book of the Dead”. 

During his stay in the hospital after the hit and run taxi accident, Azito was diagnosed with cancer and had tested positive for HIV. He made the decision to fight the cancer with chemotherapy; however, it weakened his immune system to such an extent that his HIV infection became full-blown AIDS. Azito continued his performances in regional theater and appeared in several films before his retirement in 1994. Tony Azito died at the age of forty-six from AIDS on the twenty-sixth of May in 1995 at Manhattan’s Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center. He was survived by his partner Frederick Bertolt Fritz Richter. 

Notes:  John Towsen’s “All Fall Down: The Craft & Art of Physical Comedy” has a short posting on Tony Azito that contains film clips from a live stage performance at New York’s Delacorte Theater as well as a scene from the 1984 ”Chattanooga Choo-Choo” : http://physicalcomedy.blogspot.com/2011/07/happy-birthday-tony-azito.html

A trailer for the 1975 cult class “Apple Pie” which showcases Tony Azito’s unique dancing style can be seen at the IMDB site: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1287302169/?ref_=tt_vi_i_1

A musical number with Tony Azito from Wilford Leach’s 1983 film version of “The Pirates of Penzance” can be found at the Free Social Encyclopedia for the World: https://alchetron.com/Tony-Azito

There is a memorial Facebook page for Tony Azito that contains many images, anecdotes, film trailers and Azito’s 1972 “Sing Jumbalaya Sing” song published through Epic Records: https://www.facebook.com/p/Tony-Azito-100063528963851/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Tony Azito, New York City”, The AIDS Memorial, NYC

Second Insert Image: Al Hirschfeld, “Tony Azito (Study for The Pirates of Penzance)”, Ink on Paper, 27.9 x 21.6 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Tony Azito as Sergeant of Police”, Joseph Papp’s “The Pirates of Penzance”, 1981-1982, Gelatin Silver Print 

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Tony Azito”, Date Unknown, Color Print

Stellan Rye and “Der Student von Prag”: Film History Series

Josef Fenneker, Lithograph Film Poster for Arthur Robison’s 1935 Version of “Der Student von Prag”, Deutsche Kimemathek, Museum für Film and Fernsehen, Berlin

Born in July of 1880 at the Danish city of Randers, Stellan Rye was a film director and screenwriter active during the early twentieth-century. In his short career, he wrote and directed three productions: the 1913 “Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague)”; the 1914 “Der Flug in die Sonne (The Flight into the Sun)”; and the 1914 “Ein Sommernachtstraum in Unserer Zeit (A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Our Time)”, co-written with German actor and horror novelist Hanns Heinz Ewers. 

Rye joined the Reichsheer, the German Army, at the onset of World War I. Taken prisoner almost immediately, he died as a prisoner of war in France on the fourteenth of November in 1914 at the age of thirty-four. 

Stellan Rye is best known for the 1913 German silent horror film “Der Student von Prag”, considered to be the first German art film, a pioneering work that raised cinema from its fairground origins to a viable art form. The film is loosely based on several literary works: Alfred de Musset’s poem “The December Night”, Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “William Wilson”, and the German legend of the Renaissance alchemist and magician Johann Georg Faust. 

“Der Student von Prag” featured German actor Paul Wegener in his debut film role as the poor university student Balduin. He acted alongside Austrian actor John Gottowt in the role of Scapinelli, and Austrian-German actress Grete Berger as Balduin’s love interest Countess Margit. “Der Student von Prag” was art director and set designer Robert A. Dietrich’s first production in a career that spanned more than a hundred films. The film was shot on locations around Prague and at the Babelsberg Studios, now the oldest large-scale film studio in the world, having produced films since 1912.

In this horror story, poverty stricken Balduin signs a contract with the diabolical Scapinelli that will award Balduin one hundred-thousand gold pieces in exchange for any item in his lodgings. Scapinelli, dressed in all black, chooses Balduin’s reflection in the mirror and takes it away. During his courtship of Countess Margit, Balduin and Magrit are terrorized by his mirror double. Magrit, too frightened by the sudden appearances of the double, discontinues the courtship. Depressed, Balduin shoots his double with a pistol and it vanishes. However, Balduin himself becomes stricken and falls dead. The evil Scapinelli arrives, tears up the contract and departs happily.

German cinematographer Guido Seeber employed new technical camera effects of seamless double exposures to create one of his most notable accomplishments, the doppelgänger image of Balduin’s mirror double. An accomplished technician and a pioneer in his field, he also employed chiaroscuro, sharp contrasts between light and shadow, to create distinct areas on the sets. Hungarian composer and pianist Josef Weiss wrote the historic piano score that accompanied “Der Student von Prag”; it was the first film score written for a German language film.

Stellan Rye’s “Der Student von Prag” was both a critical and commercial success. The film tapped into the real sense of dissociation and alienation that was prominent in a society struggling with the collapse of the German Empire. The themes of the film became a major influence on German cinema produced during the years of the Weimar Republic. The insecurity and social changes that followed the deaths and devastation of the first World War became major themes for post-war German film makers.

Expressionism, developed as an avant-garde style before the war, remained popular during the Weimar Republic and extended to a wide range of the arts, including music, literature, dance and architecture. Stellan Rye’s “Der Student von Prag” was remade twice: Austrian Expressionist director Henrik Galeen’s 1926 version with Conrad Veidt, and German director Arthur Robison’s 1935 version with Austrian actor Anton Walbrook. Other notable films produced during this time period included Robert Wiene’s 1920 “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and two films by Fritz Lang, the two-part 1922 “Dr. Mabuse”, and the 1927 “Metropolis”.

Notes: All insert images are film stills from the original 1913 “Der Student von Prag”, directed by Stellan Rye, that featured Paul Wegener, John Gottowt and Grete Berger.

A full-length version, with subtitles, of Stellan Rye’s “Der Student von Prag” can be found on the Internet Archive site located at: https://archive.org/details/der-student-von-prag-1913

Actress Grete Berger, born Margarethe Berg into an Austrian Jewish family, began her career in 1904 at the Deutsches Theater under prominent film and theater director Max Reinhardt. She was cast in several films directed by Stellan Rye or Paul Wegener, among which was her role in the 1913 “Der Student von Prag”. After the accession of power by the National Socialists in 1933, Berger fled with her husband to Italy where in April of 1944 they were arrested by the German occupational authorities. She was transferred, along with Austrian-Hungarian actor Jacob Feldhammer, in May of 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp where they were murdered on the twenty-third of May in 1944.

An 2023 article on Anton Walbrook, who performed the role of Balduin in Robinson’s 1935 version of “Der Student von Prag”, is located in the Film History Series of this site. A well known German actor who acted alongside some of Germany’s leading ladies, Walbrook, who was homosexual and the son of a Jewish mother, left Germany in 1936 to work for many years in the United States and England.

 

Dirk Bogarde: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Sir Dirk Bogarde”, circa 1950s, Studio Portrait, Gelatin Silver Print, The Rank Organization, London

Born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde at West Hampstead, London in March of 1921, Dirk Bogarde was an English actor, screenwriter and novelist. After becoming a matinee idol through his work in such films as the 1954 “Doctor in the House” and 1958 “A Tale of Two Cities”, he made a bold and provocative career decision to accept those challenging roles that pushed the scope of cinema. 

Dirk Bogarde was the eldest of three children born to Ulric van den Bogaerde, the art editor of London’s “The Times”, and former Scottish actress Margaret Niven. When living conditions became crowded at the family’s north London home, he lived for a period with relatives in Scotland where he attended Glasgow’s University College School and Allan Glen’s High School of Science. Under a 1937 scholarship, Bogarde completed a two-year study of commercial art at the Chelsea College of Art where he attended classes led by draftsman and sculptor Henry Moore.

Bogarde worked as a commercial artist and set designer in the late 1930s. Interested in acting, he apprenticed with Sally Latimer and John Penrose’s Amersham Repertory Players and made his acting debut, albeit with only one line, at the small, independent Q Theater in west London. Bogarde’s stage debut in London’s West End occurred a few months later in John Boynton Priestley’s 1939 comedic drama “Cornelius”. In the same year, he made his film debut as an uncredited extra in Anthony Kimmins’s 1939 musical comedy “Come On George!” which starred George Formby and Patricia Kirkwood. 

After Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, Dirk Bogarde joined the Queen’s Royal Regiment in 1940 as an officer in the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit. He eventually achieved the rank of Major and, in his five years of active duty, was awarded seven medals for his service. In addition to his military duties, Bogarde painted and wrote poetry during the war; his paintings of England’s war effort are housed in London’s Imperial War Museum. As a member of the Photographic Intelligence Unit, Bogarde, at the age of twenty-four, was at the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, an experience that had a profound, lasting effect on him. 

Bogarde returned to acting after the war and made his first appearance, under the stage name of Dirk Bogarde, in the 1947 BBC studio production of Michael Clayton Hutton’s “Power Without Glory” held at London’s Fortune Theater. After signing a contract in 1947 with the entertainment conglomerate The Rank Organization, he was given the role of a police radio caller in John Carstairs’s 1947 film noir “Dancing with Crime”. His first credited role was that of the sweet-talking footman William Latch in Ian Dalrymple and Peter Proud’s 1948 drama “Sin of Esther Waters”. Initially given a supporting role in this proposed Stewart Granger film, Bogarde was chosen for the lead role after Granger left the production. His acting skill opposite Kathleen Ryan in this 1948 film led to a long-term contract with the Rank studio.

After three years as an apprentice Rank actor, Dirk Bogarde was given the role of a young criminal in Basil Dearden’s 1950 crime thriller “The Blue Lamp”. The film became the most successful feature of the year and established Bogarde as an actor of note. His role as the cop killer Tom Riley was the first of many intense but fascinating villains he would play. A few years later, Bogarde became one of the most popular British actors in the 1950s through his role as a medical student in Ralph Thomas’s 1954 light comedy “Doctor in the House”. One of the most successful films in the Rank Organization’s history, the comedy spawned six sequels and both a television and radio series. . 

After meeting black-listed American expatriate director Joseph Losey, Bogarde appeared as convict Frank Clemmens in Losey’s successful 1954 crime film noir “The Sleeping Tiger”. Their association would result in several important films a decade later, most notably the 1963 chilling British  drama “The Servant” and the 1967 Cannes Film Festival Special Jury winner “Accident”. Bogarde starred in over a dozen films during the 1950s including Philip Leacock’s successful 1956 “The Spanish Gardener”, Ralph Thomas’s 1958 adaptation of “A Tale of Two Cities”, and Anthony Asquith’s 1959 “Libel”, in which Bogarde played three different roles opposite Olivia de Havilland. 

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Bogarde acted alongside many renowned stars and under many talented directors. He played the decadent valet Hugo Barrett in Losey’s 1963 “The Servant” which earned him a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award. Bogarde starred as a German industrialist in Luchino Visconti’s 1969 “The Damned” which also featured Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin. Two years later, he portrayed Gustav von Aschenbach in Visconti’s adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novel “Death in Venice”. For the Charles Vidor/George Cukor 1960 biographical romance film “Song Without End”, Bogarde portrayed Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt; his co-stars were French actresses Capucine and Genevière Page.

Dirk Bogarde left acting in 1977 and began a second career as an author. The first work published was a memoir that described his childhood and early career as an actor entitled “A Postillion Struck by Lightning”. Highly literate with an elegant and thoughtful style, Bogarde wrote over his twenty-year literary career fifteen best-selling books of which nine were memoirs and six novels. He was also the author of numerous essays, reviews and poems for print publications.

Bogarde had a minor stroke in November of 1987. Nine years later, he underwent angioplasty and suffered a major stroke following the operation. Although paralyzed on one side and his speech affected, Borgarde completed the final volume of his autobiography and also published an edition of his journalism. In 1992, he was created a Knight Bachelor in the United Kingdom. On the eighth of May in 1999 at the age of seventy-eight, Sir Dirk Bogarde died in his London home from a heart attack. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at his former estate, Le Pigeonnier, in Grasse, southern France. 

Notes:  Dirk Bogarde was in a life-long relationship with English actor Anthony Forwood, who was born Ernest Lytton Leslie Forwood in October of 1915 as a descendent of the Forwood Baronetcy, an English landed-gentry family. After Borgarde had gained success in his acting career, he moved to a cottage at the Forwood family home, Buckinghamshire’s Bendrose Estate. Bogarde eventually bought the adjoining estate where he and Forwood lived in its renovated main house until 1960. After residing in both France and Italy for many years, they returned to London in early 1988. Anthony Forwood, who had been previously diagnosed with liver cancer and Parkinson’s disease, passed away at the age of seventy-two in May of 1988. 

An extensive history of Dirk Bogarde’s film career, written by feature correspondent Sophie Monks Kaufman for the BBC, is located at: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210322-why-dirk-bogarde-was-a-truly-dangerous-film-star

The official website of the Dirk Bogarde Estate, which contains his book illustrations, personal recordings and home movies, is located at: https://dirkbogarde.co.uk

The Key Military website has a 2021 biographical article in its “Britain at War” series, written by Ellie Evans, on Dirk Bogarde’s service during World War II:  https://www.keymilitary.com/article/military-man-behind-matinee-idol

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Sir Dirk Bogarde”, circa 1950s, Studio Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Basil Dearden, “Dirk Bogarde as Matt Sullivan”, 1952, “The Gentle Gunman”, Cinematography Gordon Dines, Ealing Studios

Third and Fourth Insert Image: Director John Schlesinger, “Dirk Bogarde as Robert Gold”, 1965, “Darling”, Cinematography Kenneth Higgins, Vic Films Production, Appia Films, and Joseph Janni Production 

Fifth Insert Image: Director Basil Dearden, “Dirk Bogarde as Melville Farr”, 1961, “Victim”, Cinematography Otto Heller, Rank Film Distributors

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Dirk Bogarde and Anthony Forwood”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print, Dirk Bogarde Estate

Massimo Girotti and “Ossessione”: Film History Series

Luchino Visconti, “Ossessione (Obsession)”, 1943, Film Gifs of Massimo Girotti as Gino Costa, Cinematography Aldo Tonti and Domenico Scala, Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane

Born at the Macerata city of Mogliano in May of 1918, Massimo Girotti was an Italian film and stage actor whose career spanned seventy years. A swimmer and polo player, he was brought to the attention of film writer and director Mario Soldati who gave him a small part in his 1939 comedy “Dora Nelson”. Girotti began to be taken seriously after his appearances in Alessandro Blasetti’s 1941 adventure film “La Corona di Ferro (The Iron Crown)” and Roberto Rossellini’s 1942 war drama “Un Pilota Ritorna (A Pilot Returns)”. His rise to fame began with his role opposite Clara Calamai in Luchino Visconti’s 1943 crime drama “Ossessione”.

After the war years, Girotti was starring in several movies each year, among which were Roberto Rossellini and Marcello Pagliero’s 1946 melodrama “Desire” and Pietro Germi’s 1949 Mafia drama “In Nome dell Legge (In the Name of the Law)”, co-written by Federico Fellini. In 1950, Girotti starred in Michelangelo Antonioni’s first full-length feature, “Cronaci di un Amore (Story of a Love Affair)”. After playing Spartacus in Riccardo Freda’s 1952 “Spartaco”, he rejoined Visconti for the 1954 “Senso”, a historical melodrama co-written by Visconti, Suso Cecchi d’Amico and Tennessee Williams.  

In the following years, Massimo Girotti worked with several directors including Mauro Bolognini, best known for his 1960 drama “Il bell’Antonio (Handsome Antonio)” written by Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Mario Alberto Lattuada who co-directed Federico Fellini’s 1950 “Luci del Varietà (Variety Lights)”. Girotti starred with Terence Stamp and Silvana Mangano in Pasolini’s 1968 surrealist psychological drama “Teorema (Theorem)”. He was cast two years later for Pasolini’s “Medea” in which he played opposite opera soprano Maria Callas. 

In 1972, Girotti had the role of Marcel in Bernardo Bertolucci’s erotic drama “Last Tango in Paris”, which starred Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. Although he appeared mainly in character roles for the next thirty years, Girotti was in such notable films as Joseph Losey’s 1976 mystery drama “Monsieur Klein” nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as Visconti’s final film, the 1976 period drama “The Innocent”, an adaptation of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s novel “The Intruder”. 

Massimo Girotti had a starring role in Turkish-Italian director Ferzan Özpetek’s 2003 mystery drama “La Finestra di Fronte (Facing Windows)”. After completing the filming of his role, Massimo Girotti unexpectedly died of a heart attack in Rome on the fifth of January in 2003. “La Finestra di Fronte” was released at the end of February. For his role in the film, Girotti won the David di Donatello Award for Best Actor given by the Academy for Italian Cinema. 

The 1943 “Ossessione” is an Italian crime drama directed and co-written by Luchino Visconti for his directorial debut. Considered by some critics as the first Italian neorealist film, it was an unauthorized and uncredited adaptation of James M. Cain’s 1934 novel “The Postman Always Rings Twice”. Inspired by the details of the 1927 Ruth Snyder-Judd Gray case, the novel was adapted seven times as a film, twice as a play, and once as an opera and radio drama. Visconti’s unauthorized version was the second time as a film adaptation and followed French director Pierre Chenal’s 1939 “Le Dernier Tournant (The Last Turn in the Road)”.

“Ossessione” starred actress Clara Calamai as Giovanna Bragana, the ill-fated protagonist; Juan de Landa as Giovanna’s older husband Giuseppe Bragana; and Massimo Girotti as Gino Costa, the wandering tramp who begins an affair with Giovanna at the couple’s petrol station. This film became a turning point in Girotti’s film career as a serious actor and rising star; Clara Calami’s portrayal as the femme fatala, who conspired to murder her husband, became her most remembered role.  

Luchino Visconti’s film was made during the years of dictator Benito Mussolini’s far-right Fascist government which exerted censorship over many aspects of Italian life. Visconti originally sought to use an adaptation of a story by Italian realist writer Giovann Verga; however, that project was denied by the Fascist authorities who worried that its subject matter of bandits in Italy would tarnish the country. Visconti eventually collaborated with several filmmakers and writers, including Gianni Puccini and Giuseppe De Santis, to adapt a French translation of James Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice”.

Stark realism was one of the prominent aspects of the 1943 “Ossessione”. Visconti chose realistic Italian locations that were specifically rural and for the most part unromantic. His film did not idealize its characters; each character’s temperament and daily routines were captured through incisive glimpses. Visconti employed medium and long shots for nearly the whole story, with close-ups used only at those moments of intense emotion. Filming all the characters together as a complex larger cast, he used focus depth to highlight the variety of action occurring in the frame.   

“Ossessione” was competed and released in 1943; however, it was  not the innocent murder mystery that the authorities were expecting. After several screenings in Rome and northern Italy, outraged reactions from both Fascist and Church authorities led to the banning of the film and ultimately its destruction. All current prints of the film were made from a duplicate negative that Visconti had kept. As Visconti had never obtained the rights to film Cain’s novel and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer decided to produce its own authorized adaptation in 1946, Visconti’s “Ossessione” was not released in the United States until 1976. The Italian Ministry of Culture later placed Visconti’s film version on its preservation list of one hundred Italian films produced between 1942 and 1978. 

Notes: A biographical article on Massimo Girotti with film scenes from “Senso” and “La Finestra di Fronte” can be found at the European Film Star Postcards site located at: https://filmstarpostcards.blogspot.com/2019/09/massimo-girotti.html

In his screenplay of “Ossessione”, Luchino Visconti followed the general outline of Cain’s novel; however, he added an interlude segment in which Gino Costa is befriended by a street performer known as Io Spagnolo, the Spaniard. This role was played by Italian actor Elio Mancuzzo. An article on Mancuzzo’s life and his role in “Ossessione” can be found at: https://godsandfoolishgrandeur.blogspot.com/search?q=ossessione

Top Insert Image: Italian Postcard, “Massimo Girotti in La Corona di Ferro (The Iron Crown)”, Balleri & Fratini, Florence, Italy

Second Insert Image: Luchino Visconti, “Massimo Girotti as Gino Costa”, 1943, “Ossessione”, Cinematography Aldo Tonti and Domenico Scala, Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane  

Third Insert Image: Luchino Visconti, “Massimo Girotti and Clara Calamai”, 1943, “Ossessione”, Cinematography Aldo Tonti and Domenico Scala, Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane  

Fourth Insert Image: Luchino Visconti, “Massimo Girotti and Juan de Landa”, 1943, “Ossessione”, Cinematography Aldo Tonti and Domenico Scala, Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane  

Bottom Insert Image: Italian Postcard, “Massimo Girotti”, Publicity Card for Lux Film, Private Collection

Richard Cromwell: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Richard Cromwell”, circa 1930s, Publicity Photo Shoot, Columbia Pictures

Born in Long Beach, California in January of 1910, Richard Cromwell was an American film, stage and television actor. Hardly recognized today for his film work, he enjoyed a rapid rise to stardom that, accompanied with radio and personal appearances, culminated in a White House invitation from President Herbert Hoover.

Born LeRoy Melvin Radabaugh, the second of five children to inventor Roy Ralph Radabaugh and Euphame Belle Stocking, Richard Cromwell received his initial education at the Long Beach public schools. In 1918, his father died suddenly, one of the many who perished from the Spanish Flu pandemic. As an artistically creative teenager, Cromwell enrolled through a scholarship at Los Angeles’s Chouinard Art Institute. His oil painting and mask-making were impressive and led to commissions from such film legends as Colleen Moore, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead, Beatrice Lillie, and Greta Garbo. 

Cromwell opened his own art studio in Hollywood; however, his interest in the theater eventually led him into an acting career. He initially worked as a scenery set designer for community theater productions and quickly acquired acting roles. Cromwell’s first film role was a walk-on cowboy in the “Song of the Dawn” number of directors John Murray Anderson and Walter Lantz’s 1930 “King of Jazz” for Universal Pictures. Encouraged by friends, he auditioned for lead role in Columbia Studio’s 1930 remake of Henry King’s 1921  classic silent film “Tol’able David”. Despite the lack of a resume, Cromwell won the role and, given the screen name Richard Cromwell by Columbia’s Harry Cohn, was heavily supported by the studio’s publicity department.

Richard Cromwell’s successful role as David, played alongside actors Noah Beery Sr. and John Carradine, led to a multi-year contract with Columbia Studio. Between 1931 and 1932, he had roles in three films for Columbia and one film “The Age of Consent” for RKO Radio Pictures. With the assistance of award-winning actress Marie Dressler, Cromwell was given the lead role opposite Dressler in Metro Goldwyn Mayers’ 1932 comedy-drama “Emma”. Now an actor in demand, he began a series of roles as the sensitive hero in predominately melodramatic films such as Cecil B. DeMille’s 1933 “This Day and Age” and Albert S. Rogell’s 1934 “Among the Missing”. 

In 1935, Cromwell appeared in seven films, two of which were particularly noteworthy. In director George Marshall’s 1935 drama, “Life Begins at 40”, he played ex-convict Lee Austin opposite bank manager Kenesaw H. Clark, played by actor and social commentator Will Rogers in his final film role. For director Henry Hathaway’s 1935 adventure film “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer”, Cromwell played the role of the young Lieutenant Donald Stone alongside actors Gary Cooper and Franchot Tone. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning the Assistant Director Award with nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. 

Departing from films for a period, Richard Cromwell made his Broadway stage debut in the 1936 “So Proudly We Hail”. As his popularity in films began to fade, he acted in supporting roles in William Wyler’s 1938 “Jezebel”, playing opposite Henry Fonda and Bette Davis, and John Ford’s 1939 biographical drama “Young Mr. Lincoln”, playing the defendant Matt Clay who is represented by lawyer Abe Lincoln, played by Henry Fonda. In the early 1940s, Cromwell acted in several enemy agent and crime films including the 1942 “Baby Face Morgan” until his service with the United States Coast Guard during the last two years of World War II.

After his return to California at the war’s end, Cromwell found roles to be sparse and retired from film work. His last acting role was in Edward L. Cahn’s 1948 crime drama “Bungalow 13” for 20th Century Fox which starred British detective-actor Tom Conway. By chance, Cromwell met promising actress Angela Lansbury, sixteen years his junior, with whom he eloped and married in September of 1945. The marriage was short, however; they separated within a few months and were divorced by the end of the year. The main cause was Cromwell’s latent homosexuality, verified years later by Lansbury. After the divorce, Lansbury and Cromwell maintained a sincere friendship until his death. 

Richard Cromwell settled comfortably into his artwork. Retuning to his birth name of Roy Radabaugh, he built a studio on his property and became an established potter and ceramicist, especially admired for his creative tile designs. Cromwell signed in July of 1960 with producer Maury Dexter for 20th Century Fox’s production “The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come” which starred singer Jimmie Rodgers. Diagnosed with liver cancer a few months later, Cromwell withdrew from production and was replaced by character actor Chill Wells. 

After a career that spanned thirty-nine films, Richard Cromwell died from liver cancer in Hollywood on the eleventh of October in 1960 at the age of fifty. His body is interred at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California. Cromwell has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame within walking distance of Angela Lansbury’s star. Materials relating to his radio performances are housed at the Thousand Oaks Library. Cromwell’s memorabilia and ceramic work are housed at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills. 

Notes: Roy Ralph Radabaugh, Richard Cromwell’s father, was an inventor whose claim to fame was his patented invention, the “Amusement Park Swing” ride, also known as the “Monoflyer”. Variations of the amusement park ride can still be seen in use at most carnivals today. 

Top Insert Image: George Hoyningen-Huene, “Richard Cromwell”, 1934, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Roy William Neill, “That’s My Boy”, 1932, Cinematographer Joseph H, August, Columbia Pictures

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Franchot Tone, Richard Cromwell, and Gary Cooper”, Film Location of “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer”, 1934, Director Henry Hathaway, Cinematography Charles Lang, Paramount Pictures

Fourth Insert Image: Henry Hathaway, “The Lives of a Bengal Lancer”, 1935, Cinematography Charles Lang, Paramount Pictures

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Richard Cromwell”, circa 1935-1950, Publicity Photo

Albrecht Becker: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Albrecht Becker”, circa 1930, Vintage Bromide Print

Born in 1906 at Thale, a town in Imperial Germany, Albrecht Becker was a German photographer, actor, and film production designer. Imprisoned in 1935 by the National Socialist regime on the charge of homosexuality, he was one of the few Germans to survive the Second World War and present testimony as a gay man for the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive. 

The youngest of three sons born to a baker, Albrecht Becker was encouraged by his father towards a career in textiles. He studied through an apprenticeship in Thale and, upon graduation at the age of eighteen, moved to Würzburg where he could live more freely as a gay man. Although Paragraph 175 of the German code had been active since 1871, this code outlawing homosexual acts between men was not consistently enforced at this time. Becker began work in Würzburg as a department store sales clerk but, after showing talent as a window display designer, the store made arrangements for his studies at a design school in Munich. 

Becoming financially secure at the store, Becker bought his first Leica camera and saved money for trips outside of Germany. He traveled with his camera to Spain and later to Italy where he met Wenderer Brown, an American of the same age. During a trip to France, Becker met Brown in Paris where they were able to see both Maurice Chevalier and Josephine Baker on stage. Although the distance between their homes hindered regular meetings, their romantic friendship turned out to be fortuitous as Becker sent all the photos he had taken to Brown at the outset of the Second World War; Brown returned these safely stored photos to Becker in 1945.  

Albrecht Becker’s first long-term relationship was with Joseph Arbert, a professor twenty years his senior, who was Würzburg’s Director of the State Archive. During this ten year relationship, Becker was introduced to the art and literature circles of the city. In August of 1934, he traveled to the United States for a one month visit with his friend Wenderer Brown. Becker, still feeling secure as a gay man in Würzburg,  returned to Germany at the end of his visit. However, the Night of the Long Knives in June of 1934 had changed the atmosphere in Germany. The power struggle between Ernst Röhm,the commander of the Sturmabteilung (SA),  and Adolph Hitler resulted in the murder of hundreds of Hitler’s political enemies including the openly gay Ernst Röhm. As a result of Hitler’s consolidation of power, Nazi Germany became a dangerous environment for homosexuals and others. 

At the beginning of 1935, Becker was summoned to the police station, arrested and three months later tried under Paragraph 175. He did not contest the charges which ironically saved his life, Instead of being sent to the Dachau concentration camp, Becker was sentenced to three years in the Nuremberg prison. After serving his term, he was able to return to his position at the department store in Würzburg. Near the end of the war, he served in the Wehrmacht and was sent to the Russian Front where he served until 1944 in the radio corps at a distance from the front lines. 

Wounded by shrapnel on the army’s retreat through Ukraine, Albrecht Becker was transferred first to Vienna and then back to Germany where the American forces used him as a translator until 1947. After his release, Becker was offered a position with film production designer Herbert Kirchhoff that altered his life forever. After relocating to Hamburg, the two men collaborate on several films with Becker acting as set designer. His work on these films give Becker a place in the industry that eventually allowed him to work on other independent projects, including theater and opera.

Over the course of his career as art director or production designer, Becker worked on over one hundred-twenty productions in film, television episodes and television movies.. Among his early productions were Hungarian director Sándor Szlatinay’s 1951 musical romance “Woe to Him Who Loves”; German director Ulrich Erfurth’s comedies, the 1953 “Not Afraid of Big Animals” and 1954 “Columbus Discovers Kraehwinkel” that starred Charlie Chaplin’s sons, Charles Jr. and Sydney Chaplin; Hungarian director Paul Martin’s 1955 musical comedy “Ball at the Savoy” with stage and film actor Peter W. Staub; and Hungarian director Ákos Ráthonyi’s 1961 comedy cruise film, “Beloved Imposter”, filmed aboard the Hamburg Atlantic Line steamship T.S. Hanseatic.

In his later years, Albrecht Becker devoted himself to his photography and produced artistic images as well as commercial work for magazines and newspapers. While living in Vienna and Freiburg, he exhibited his photography and received private commissions. Becker’s photography cover a wide range of eclectic subjects from ushers at the Vienna Opera and Augustinian monks to Berlin gravediggers and ruins of the razed city of Küstrin in western Poland. 

Becker published his memoir, “Fotos sind Mein Leben (Photos Are My Life) in 1993 through the publisher Rosa Winkel. In 1997, he gave testimony on his life and experiences as a gay man in Germany for the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive. Becker later told of his experiences during World War II for Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s 2000 documentary “Paragraph 175” produced through Channel Four Films. Albrecht Becker died of natural causes in Hamburg, Germany, in 2002 at the age of ninety-five. His private photo collection is now housed in Berlin’s Schwules Museum, founded in 1985 as a home for the history, culture and narratives of the LBGTQ community. 

Notes: The USC Shoah Foundation has an article with two interview clips entitled “Under the Shadow of Paragraph 175: Part 1: Albrecht Becker” located at: https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2015/03/8843-under-shadow-paragraph-175-part-1-albrecht-becker

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s biography on Albrecht Becker can be found at: https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/albrecht-becker/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Albrecht Becker”, circa 1930s-1940s, Vintage Print

Second Insert Image: Gustav Ucicky, “Zwei Blaue Augen (Two Blue Eyes)”, 1955, Cinematographer Ekkehard Kyrath, Production Design Albrecht Becker, Real-Film GmbH

Third Insert Image: Eugen York, “Die Letzte Nacht (The Last Night)”, 1949, Cinematographer Willy Wintestein, Production Design Assistant Albrecht Becker, Real-Film GmbH

Fourth Insert Image: Hans Deppe, “Die Freunde Meiner Frau (My Wife’s Friends)”, 1949, Cinematography Heinz Schnacketz, Production Design Assistant Albrecht Becker, Real-Film GmbH

Bottom Insert Image: Rinaldo Hopf, “Albrecht Becker and Friend”, circa 1980s-1990s, Color Print

Clifton Webb: Film History Series

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana in November of 1889, Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck, known professionally as Clifton Webb, was an American actor, dancer and singer. He is known for his roles in films, his Broadway appearances in successful musicals, and for his stage appearances in the plays of English playwright and actor Sir Noël Coward.

Clifton Webb was the only child of Jacob Hollenbeck, a ticket-clerk for the Indianapolis- St. Louis Railroad, and Mabel Parmelee, the daughter of a railroad conductor. In 1891, the couple separated and Mabel took young Webb with her to New York City in 1892. After the divorce was finalized, Mabel married Green B. Raum, Jr., a copper-foundry worker and the son of a former U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue; the new family settled in New York City on West 77th Street. 

Webb, at the age of five, began dancing lessons; two years later, he made his official debut in Carnegie Hall as a member of the Children’s Theater in a performance of Canadian author Palmer Cox’s children series “The Brownies”. This was followed with a vaudeville tour in which Webb appeared in “The Master of Charlton Hall” and performed as Oliver in “Oliver Twist” and as Tom Sawyer in “Huckleberry Finn”. As a young teenager, he studied painting with Realist artist Robert Henri, a pioneer of the Ashcan School, and music with French operatic baritone Victor Maurel. His studies with Maurel led to Webb’s debut in 1906 with Boston’s Aborn Opera Company’s production of Ambroise Thomas’s “Mignon”.

Returning to New York, Clifton Webb teamed with Mae Murray in a ballroom dance act; they toured a chain of vaudeville theaters known as the Keith Circuit and performed in Manhattan restaurants. Webb had his Broadway debut in April of 1913 with the premiere of “The Purple Road” at the Liberty Theater, in which he played the role of Bosco for one hundred-thirty six performances. Between 1913 and 1917, Webb was continually on the Broadway stage and appeared in such vehicles as Sigmund Romberg’s “Dancing Around”, Ned Waybum’s all-star revue “Town Topics” , and Cole Porter’s comic opera “See America First”. 

In 1917, Webb was the sensuous dancing star of “Love O’Mike”, a musical comedy produced by Lee Shubert and Elisabeth Marbury, a theatrical agent who lived in an open relationship with actress and famous interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe, also known as Lady Mendl. By the middle of the 1920s, Webb was one of Broadway’s highest-paid stars and reached his apex with the 1930 “Three’s a Crowd” and the very successful 1933 “As Thousands Cheered”, which featured the steamy torch song “Moanin’ Low” sung by Webb and actress Libby Holman. 

In 1935, Webb relocated to Hollywood where Metro Goldwyn Mayer, who hoped to make Webb a successful dancing star like RKO’s Fred Astaire, gave him an eighteen-month contract at three-thousand dollars a week. He was to star opposite Joan Crawford in a musical entitled “Elegance”; the picture was abandoned, however, Webb was paid all his money. For the next eighteen months, he was not offered any work but made many high-profile social appearances. He  often appeared wearing white gloves and a top hat, with his mother Mabel on his arm and his poodle Ernest, after Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest”, trailing behind on a leash.  

In 1938, Clifton Webb returned to New York’s Broadway in “You Never Know”, written by his longtime friend Cole Porter. The stage version of “The Man Who Came to Dinner”, starring the stage and film actor Monty Woolley, premiered in the fall of 1939. Webb was cast as the acidic character Sheridan Whiteside for its touring version, a role in which he remained for eighteen months. In 1941, he played the character Charles Condomine, a successful novelist curious about seances,  in the initial performances of Noël Coward’s comic play “Blithe Spirit”. 

Webb is probably best known today for his many film appearances. In his mid-fifties, he was chosen by director Otto Preminger, despite objections from 20th Century Fox’s Darryl Zanuck who though Webb too effeminate, to play the evil radio columnist Waldo Lydecker in the 1944 film noir “Laura”. Webb’s performance won him wide acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The Fox Studio signed him to a long-term contract, which provided Webb with work for the rest of his career. His first role under contract was as a suave villain in Henry Hathaway’s 1946 film noir “Dark Corner”. This was followed with his role of elitist Elliott Templeton, playing opposite Gene Tieeney, in the 1946 “The Razor’s Edge” for which he received another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. 

Clifton Webb achieved stardom with his role of Mr. Belvedere, a snide know-it-all babysitter with a mysterious past, in the 1948 comedy film “Sitting Pretty”, based on the 1947 novel “Belvedere” by Gwen Davenport. This role became so popular that it was followed with two sequels: the 1949 box office success “Mr. Belvedere Goes to College” and the 1951 “Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell”.  In 1950, Webb and actress Myrna Loy played the roles of efficiency experts Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, the parents of twelve children, in the film “Cheaper by the Dozen” which made Webb one of the biggest stars in the United States. 

In addition to these comedic films, Webb played more serious character roles for 20th Century Fox. He starred in the 1952 Technicolor film biography of bandmaster John Phillip Sousa entitled “Stars and Stripes Forever”. Webb’s most dramatic role was the brave but doomed husband of Barbara Stanwyck’s Julia Sturges in the 1953 “Titanic”, the winner of the 1954 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The following year, he appeared as the novelist John Frederick Shadwell in the romance film “Three Coins in the Fountain”. Webb appeared in the 1956 British war film “The Man Who Never Was”, based on the Allied invasion of Sicily in World War II, and as a sarcastic but self-sacrificing Catholic priest in the 1962 “Satan Never Sleeps”, his final film role. 

Clifton Webb was one of the few gay actors to appear in decidedly heterosexual character roles, most notably the devoted husband who fathered twelve children in “Cheaper by the Dozen”. Obsessively proper, correct and well-mannered, he lived his bachelor life as close to being openly gay as any leading actor in Hollywood could be. Although he lived with his mother until her death in 1960, Webb threw lavish parties and enjoyed the company of young men who gathered poolside at his pink stucco house in Beverly Hills. His friends included many member of the gay circles in the film industry: Noël Coward, Cole Porter, actor Monty Woolley, director George Cukor, stage and costume designer Oliver Messel, film director Irving Rapper, actors William Hanes and Jimmie Shields, among others.

Due to health issues, Webb spent the last five years of his life as a recluse at his home in Beverly Hills. He suffered a fatal heart attack, at the age of seventy-six, at his home on the 13th of October in 1966. He is interred in a crypt in the Abbey of the Psalms at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, alongside his mother. For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Webb was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6850 Hollywood Boulevard. An archive of his papers, including typed manuscripts, notes, correspondences, financial records and Webb’s last will and testament, is housed at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences.

Note: Clifton Webb’s portrayal of the character Mr. Lynn Belvedere was the model for the “Mr. Peabody” character in the animated cartoon series “Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends”, which ran from November of 1959 to June of 1964.

McDermott & McGough: Film History Series

McDermott & McGough, “If You Had Been the Moon”, April 2009, 10:16, Directed by Peter McGough, Starring Michael  Kavalus, Bryan Deckhart, Claybourne Elder, Christopher Le Rude, Alex Michael Stoll, and Andrew Lord

The art collective McDermott & McGough consists of the contemporary artists David McDermott and Peter McGough who are known for their work in sculpture, painting, film and photography. Their work examines such issues as religion, popular culture and art, medicine, advertising, fashion, and sexual behavior. McDermott and McGough are best known for their gay-themed paintings and the use of historical processing techniques in their photographic work, which includes film development with palladium, gum bichromate, salt, platinum, and carbon black.

Born in Hollywood, California in 1952, David McDermott studied at Syracuse University in New York from 1970 to 1974. He moved to New York City where he became famous in the downtown area for his odd manners and outdated formalwear, such as detachable collars, cummerbunds, and top hats. Born in Syracuse in 1958, Peter McGough studied at Syracuse University in 1976. He relocated to New York City where he briefly studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology. After dropping out from the Institute, McGough was employed to sell tickets at Danceteria, a famous, albeit illegal, nightclub with several locations in the city.

Peter McGough met David McDermott in a Manhattan theater at the end of the 1970s. As David kept Peter company during the early club hours before sunrise, a strong relationship developed between them  that also included an artistic alliance which would last forty years. In the 1980s, the gay couple became known in New York’s East Village art scene for their immersion in the Victorian era. McDermott and McGough questioned the ideas of nostalgia; they pursued an art form and lifestyle narrative of reorienting the past for the future. Dressed and living as early 1900s dandies with an air of erudition and impertinence, their lives and art became an exploration of time and history, as well as, a challenge to the boundaries of art history and cultural identity.

McDermott and McGough’s collaborative output was expressed through a proliferation of drawings, paintings, film and photographs, and architectural interiors. Their photographs and films, which appropriated images and objects from the late 19th century to the style of the 1930s, explored contemporary cultural issues but produced them through vintage materials and techniques. McDermott and McGough’s obsession with the past is reflected in the styles and subjects they resurrect; many of their works are titled with fictional dates that reference the latter years of the 1800s. 

The later work of McDermott and McGough was inspired by advertising motifs, Hollywood cinema, and the comic books of the 1950s and 1960s. They reinvented major works of twentieth-century photography, Pop Art icon images, and produced photo-realistic paintings of vintage film stars. During the 1980s when their work was selling well, McDermott and McGough were a major part of the downtown New York scene, where the attended clubs and mingled with Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol. They bought three properties including a 1860s French Second Empire style bank, owned horses and vintage automobiles, hosted lavish baroque parties, and bestowed expensive gifts to friends.

 In 1992, the art market began to feel the effects of the stock market crash of October 1987. Out of all the paintings McDermott and McGough had on  exhibit at the Armory Show, only one small painting sold. Their debts, which included framing costs for their exhibitions, came due; many of these debts were paid through the transfer of their existing artwork to galleries and other debtors, among whom was the Internal Revenue Service. Eventually everything the couple had was auctioned off except for a few pieces they managed to save and later shipped to the docks of Dublin, Ireland. David McDermott relocated to a small  rental house near Ballsbridge, Ireland, and in 1995 McGough reunited with him. 

McDermott and McGough started painting and soon were able to rent a small art studio in Temple Bar in downtown Dublin. Through Swiss art dealer and gallery owner Bruno Bischofberger, they received many silhouette commissions. With the assistance of the gallery’s director Andrea Caratsch, McDermott and McGough had an exhibition in 1998 entitled “The Lust That Comes from Nothing” at Paris’s Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont.

McDermott and McGough’s previous exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial, New York, in 1987, 1991 and 1995, and a mid-career retrospective at the Provincial Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Oostende, Belgium. In 2017, their work was the subject of the exhibition “I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going’ held at the Dallas Contemporary Museum in Texas. Other solo and group exhibitions include such institutions as the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Centre Pompidou in Paris, New York City’s Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone, and the Frankfurter Kunstverein in Germany. 

McDermott and McGough’s work is represented in numerous collections including the International Center of Photography in New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence; Tampa Museum of Art in Florida; Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center; and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, among others.

Notes: In 2017, David McDermott and Peter McGough opened the Oscar Wilde Temple, a non-secular sacred space for LGBTQ people in a chapel at the Church of the Village located in New York City’s Greenwich Village. It is both an art exhibition space and a place for marriages; donations go to homeless LBGTQ youth. A second location at the gallery Studio Voltaire in London was opened in October of 2018.

In 2019, Peter McGough published his memoir “I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going There” through Penquin Random House. Set in New York’s Lower East Side, the memoir chronicles his life withDavid McDermott during the 1980s and mid-1990s.

Top Insert Image: David McDermott and Peter McGough, “Portrait of the Artists, 1928, 1990”, Palladium Print on Paper, 35 x 26.5 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: David McDermott and Peter McGough, “Love is Gone- So What Can Matter? 1966, 2008”, Oil on Linen, 152.4 x 122.2 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: McDermott and McGough, “Joel at Lower Baldonell House, Dublin, 1910, 2003”, Palladium Print on Paper, 50.8 x 40.6 cm, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: McDermott and McGough, “The Annointed”, 1991, Photographers and Friends Against AIDS Exhibition, Palladium Print on Paper, 16.5 x 11.8 cm, Private Collection

Fifth Insert Image: McDermott and McGough, Title Unknown (Reading Comics), Image from the “Detroit, 1958” Series,  2007, Carbro Print, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: McDermott and McGough, “Portrait of the Artist (With Top Hats) 1865”, 1991, Palladium Print on Paper, Collection of the Artists

James Broughton: ‘Luncheon Had Made Us Hungry”

James Broughton, “The Pleasure Garden”, 1953, Screenwriter and Director James Broughton, Running Time 38 Minutes, Winner of the Prix de Fantasia Poetique at Cannes 1954, Released in the United Kingdom

Luncheon had made us hungry
for one another
After the curry and fried bananas
we added our own heat to
the hot afternoon
simmering in sweat and coconut oil
as our two humidities rose
high   higher                     Bang!
outside the window        Bang!Bang!
and the houseboy’s laughing shout

He had been tossing firecrackers
at the roof
to dislodge itinerant pigeons
But at his feet had fallen
a passing oriole
shocked into gape      beak ajar

Hurrying from the bedroom
half-saronged
we saw him kneel to the yellow bird
fondle      cajole      kiss it      offer it
back to the day
Still it sat rigid in his hand

Chuckling then      you said
Is this a golden trophy of
our shooting match?
At which the oriole blinked
stretched and puffed
spurted into the air
vanished beyond the pawpaw tree

James Broughton, Afternoons in Ceylon I, Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry, 2000

Born to affluent parents in Modesto, California in November of 1913, James Broughton was a poet and filmmaker. He was a member of the San Francisco Renaissance movement, a 1950s collective of American avant-garde poets which included such poets as Kenneth Rexroth, Madeline Gleason, Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer, among others. Known best for his cinematography, Broughton made poetic experimental films, both in color and black and white, throughout his career.

After the death of his father in the deadly 1918 influenza epidemic, James Broughton spent his early years in San Francisco. He started his formal education at a military school; however, at the age of sixteen after having an affair with a classmate, he was expelled. Broughton pursued a career in writing at Stanford University until 1935, at which time he relocated to New York City and became a theater critic. Through his written work, Broughton met artist Sidney Peterson, who would later establish San Francisco Art Institute’s Workshop 20, the first college program to teach filmmaking as art.

After he moved back to San Francisco, Broughton wrote and produced the play “Summer Fury”, for which the Stanford Dramatists’ Alliance gave him the 1945 Alden Award for Original Screenplay. In 1946, a collaboration between Broughton and Sidney Peterson produced the 16mm film “The Potted Palm”, a depiction of Freudian desires that combined the erotic with the decaying. Broughton later credited his working with Peterson on this film as the influence that led him to experimental filmmaking.

James Broughton’s early 16mm short films, which ran from nine to thirty-eight minutes, covered a wide range of genres, including personal journals, comedy, music, theater, and queer stories. Broughton’s first solo film was the 1948 avant-garde classic “Mother’s Day” which dealt with human pain and lack of emotion. He followed this film’s success with five more films between 1950 and 1953, among which was the 1953 “The Pleasure Garden”, a collaboration with partner Kermit Sheets. Made in England, the film was successful only in Europe where it received several awards including one at the Cannes Film Festival presented byJean Cocteau.

In 1953, Broughton stopped his filmmaking to concentrate more fully on his writing which, through his career, totaled more than twenty published works. His poetry collection “True & False Unicorn”, poems of Broughton’s complex search for his true self, was published in 1955 and later choreographed on stage by Jergen Verbruggen. Broughton’s autobiographical prose poem collection “The Androgyne Journal”. published in 1977, was a strongly personal book about breaking creative boundaries.

James Broughton published two retrospective collections of his poetry: “A Long Undressing: Collected Poems 1949-1969”, published in 1971 by Jargon Society Press, and “Packing Up for Paradise: Selected Poems 1946-1996” published in November of 1997 by Black Sparrow Press. In 1993, Broughton published his memoir, an autobiography entitled “Coming Unbuttoned”, which documented his eighty-year artistic journey in life through the famous and infamous circles of 1930s New York to the avant-garde culture of San Francisco in the 1960s and 70s.

Starting in the late 1960s, James Broughton returned to filmmaking and produced both short and full length films. His first film was the 1968 “The Bed”, which won prizes at many film festivals. Containing a highly energetic musical score by Warner Jepson, it featured ground-breaking full-frontal, yet innocent, nudity of male and female figures gathered around the same bed. Broughton’s later poetic films include such works as the 1972 “Dreamwood”, a story of one man’s journey to a mysterious island: “The Water Circle”, a 1975 poetic homage to sage Lao-tsu on the world’s bodies of water; the 1979 “Hermes Bird”, a celebration of the transformative power of the phallus; and the 1988 “Scattered Remains”, one of six films created with his partner Joel Singer, in which Broughton acts out his verses in unlikely situations.

Broughton’s honors include a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and an American Film Institute Award for Independent Film and Video Artists. He was an early poet member of the Radical Faeries, a counterculture movement that redefined queer consciousness through secular spirituality, and a member of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a protest and street performance group that used drag and religious imagery to call attention to sexual intolerance. Broughton also taught at both San Francisco State University and San Francisco’s Art Institute.

James Broughton had relationships with both men and women. He lived briefly with film critic Pauline Kael, with whom he had a daughter in 1948. At the age of forty-nine, Broughton married Suzanne Hart, with whom he had two children. In 1973, he met Joel Singer, a twenty-five year old student at one of his San Fransisco Art Institute classes, and began both a strong personal relationship and a lengthy film collaboration. In 1989, Broughton and Singer moved to Port Townsend, Washington, where they lived until Broughton’s death, at the age of eighty-five, in May of 1999.

“The quietest poetry can be an explosion of joy. True delicacy is not a fragile thing. The most delicate and yielding of our necessities, water, can be the most powerful destroyer, swallowing everything.

True delicacy is indestructible. Take Shelley, Dickinson, Firbank, Basho. I like things which appear fragile but are tough inside. In the long run the deadly can outmaneuver the brute, the bird is more resourceful than the rhino.” – James Broughton

Note: A remembrance on the life of James Broughton by Martin Goodman as well as an except from Goodman’s interview with Broughton can be found at: http://www.archipelago.org/vol4-1/broughton.htm

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “james Broughton and Joel Singer”, Photo Shoot from “Devotions”, 1983, Gelatin Silver Print

Third Insert Image: Imogen Cunningham, “The Poet and His Alter Ego (James Broughton)”, 1962, Gelatin Silver Print, New Orleans Museum of Art

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “james Broughton and Joel Singer in “Devotions”, 1983, Gelatin Silver Print

Nils Asther: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Nils Asther”, July of 1932, Publicity Shot for Cine-Mundial, A New York-based Spanish Magazine

Born in Copenhagen in January of 1897, Nils Anton Althild Asther was a Swedish gay actor who was active in Hollywood from 1926 until the mid-1950s. He was the son of Anton Andersson Asther and Hildegard Augusta Åkerlund, who had accepted his father’s proposal but was unwed at the time of Nils’s birth. Asther spent his first year as a foster child and rejoined his parents after their marriage on May 29th of 1898 in the city of Malmö. He grew up in a deeply religious Lutheran home, where homosexuality was considered a sin by the church and viewed as a disease by Swedish society.

Nils Asther, still a young man, moved to Stockholm where he studied acting under the tutelage of Swedish silent-film and stage actress Augusta Lindberg. Through the endorsement of his teacher, he received his first theatrical engagement at Lorensbergsteatern, the art performance theater in the city of Gothenburg. Asther performed in several productions in Stockholm which included two plays in 1923, “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “ The Admirable Crichton”, and the 1924 production of “Othello” at the Royal Dramatic Theater. 

In 1916 at the age of nineteen, Asther was cast by the pioneer Swedish film director Mauritz Stiller for his silent film “Vingarne (The Wings)”. This production was based the novel “Mikaël” by the internationally recognized Danish author Herman Bang. It starred silent-film actors Egil Eide, Lars Hanson, and Lill Bech, with Nils Asther in a supporting role. Besides being an early gay-themed film, it is recognized for it innovative use of a framing story, a main narrative which is divided into a set of shorter stories, and for its use of flashbacks as the primary plot source. Although only thirty minutes of its seventy-minute length survived, a 1987 restoration used still photos and title cards to bridge the missing sections. 

Now residing in Copenhagen, Nils Asther received support from actor Aage Hertel, a member of the Royal Danish Theater and a leading actor at Nordisk Film. Between 1918 and 1926, Asther appeared in a number of film roles in Denmark, Sweden and Germany. After being approached by a representative from United Artists, he traveled to Hollywood  where he was given the role of  George Shelby in director Delmer Lord’s “Topsy and Eva”, a 1927 silent drama produced by Feature Productions. By 1928 Asther’s suave appearance placed him in leading roles; he soon played opposite such stars as Marion Davies and Joan Crawford.  

Asther appeared in director Harry Beaumont’s 1928 “Our Dancing Daughters”, a silent drama depicting the dangers of loose morals among the young. The film cast included John Mack Brown and Joan Crawford; it was this film role of Charleston-dancing, Prohibition-era drinking Diana Medford that launched Joan Crawford’s career. Asther was next given the leading role of handsome Prince de Gace, who played opposite Greta Garbo’s role of Lillie Sterling, in director Sidney Franklin’s 1929 drama “Wild Orchids”. Though often listed as a silent film, it was released as a non-talking film with orchestral score, sound effects, and title cards for dialogue. Asther had previously known Garbo in Sweden and would continue to be close friends; they appeared together in a second film of the same year, the MGM romantic drama “The Single Standard”. 

With the arrival of sound in film, Nils Asther began voice and diction lessons to minimize his Nordic accent. Due to his accent, many of his early roles in sound films were characters of foreign origins. Asther appeared with Robert Montgomery and, once again, with Joan Crawford in Clarence Brown’s 1932 drama “Letty Lynton”, which recounts the historical murder allegedly committed by nineteenth-century Glasgow socialite madeleine Smith, played by Crawford. In 1933, he was given the role of General Yen in Frank Capra’s drama war film “The Bitter Tea of General Yen”, where he  played opposite Barbara Stanwyck and, after its premiere, received good reviews for his portrayal.

After an alleged breach of contract led to a studio-based blacklist, Asther was forced to work in England between the years 1935 and 1940. He made six films in England before his return to Hollywood. Upon his return, Asther made nineteen more films before 1949; however, he was mostly given small supporting roles from which his career never returned to its former height. During the early 1950s, Asther attempted to revive his career with appearances on television which was becoming a rapidly growing phenomenon in the United States. Managing only to secure roles in a small number of minor television series, he decided in 1958 to return to Sweden. Asther had four film roles and an engagement with a local theater before 1963, at which time he retired from acting and devoted himself to painting. 

Nils Asther passed away on the 13th of October in 1981, at the age of eighty-four, at the Farsta Hospital in Stockholm. He is buried in the village of Hotagen, located in Jämtland, Sweden. Asther was inducted in 1960 into the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry; his star is located at 6705 Hollywood Boulevard. 

Asther was a gay man in a time when it was both a personal and professional social stigma. Although the film industry in the 1920s accepted gay actors with little reservation, the actors had to remain discreet about their sexual orientation. In August of 1930, Asther entered into a lavender marriage with Vivian Duncan, one of the his costars from the 1927 “Topsy and Eva”. This turbulent marriage produced one daughter and resulted, after much media discussion, in a divorce in 1932. 

Nils Asther’s memoir, “The Road of the Jester: Not a God’s Tale: A Memoir”, was published posthumously in 1988 in Stockholm. In this volume, he mentions relationships he had in the 1930s with director Mauritz Stiller and Swedish author Hjalmar Bergman. Asther also had a long-term relationship with actor and stuntman Ken DuMain, whom he met on Hollywood Boulevard in the early 1940s. 

Top Insert Image: George Hurrell, “Nils Asther”, circa 1930s, MGM Publicity Still, 25.4 x 33 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nils Asther and Greta Garbo”, 1929, MGM Publicity Shot

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nils Asther”, French Postcard by Europe, No. 909, MGM Studio Publicity Shot, Date Unknown

Fourth Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nils Asther”, Date Unknown, Publicity Shot, John Kobal Foundation, Getty Images

Bottom Insert Image: George Hurrell, “Nils Asther and Joan Crawford”, 1932, MGM Publicity Shot

William Haines: Film History Series

Photographers Unknown, “William Haines”, Date Unknown, Studio Publicity Shot, Gelatin Silver Print

Born in Staunton, Virginia in January of 1900, Charles William Haines was an American actor and interior designer. He was the third child of seven siblings, two of which died in infancy, born to George Adam Haines, a cigar maker, and Laura Virginia (Matthews) Haines. He became fascinated at an early age with motion pictures and stage performances. 

At the age of fourteen, William Haines ran away from home accompanied by an unidentified young man. They both gained employment at the DuPont factory in Hopewell, Virginia, where they earned fifty dollars a week producing nitrocellulose which in its finished form is used for photography. Tracked by the police, Haines made an arrangement with his parents where he could remain in Hopewell and, with his earnings, send support to his family. The two boys remained in Hopewell until the 1915 fire which destroyed most of the city. 

Haines relocated to New York City until 1917, when a family crisis caused him to move to his family’s new home in Richmond, Virginia, to lend financial and emotional support. With the family’s recovery in 1919, Haines returned to New York City and settled in the growing gay community of Greenwich Village. He worked at various odd jobs and eventually gained employment as a model. Haines entered the Goldwyn Pictures’s contest, “New Faces of 1922”, and was discovered by Bijou Fernandez, a silent film actress and theatrical agent. Signed to a forty dollar per week contract with Goldwyn Pictures, he traveled to Hollywood in March of 1922 along with fellow contestant Eleanor Boardman.

William Haines initially played uncredited roles; his first significant casting was a high-profile role in director King Vidor’s 1923 silent drama “Three Wise Fools”, for which he received positive notices in reviews. This was followed in the same year by another significant role in Fox Studios’s silent western “The Desert Outlaw”. In 1924, MGM lent Haines to Columbia Pictures for a five-picture deal. The first of these films, the 1924 crime film “The Midnight Express” received excellent reviews. 

Haines had his first major personal success with the starring role in MGM’s 1926 silent drama “Brown of Harvard”. The character he played, a young arrogant man later humbled, was a role he would repeat for the next several years. On a publicity trip to New York City in 1926, Haines met James Shields. He convinced Shields to move to Los Angeles and promised to secure him work as an extra in films. Haines and Shields began living together and saw themselves as a committed couple. Although many actors in the film industry knew of their commitment, Haines never publicly affirmed his sexuality and there was no mention of their relationship in the press.

William Haines next appeared in two successful films, the 1925 comedy-drama “Little Annie Rooney”, co-starring with Mary Pickford, and the 1926 comedy “Show People”, co-starring with Marion Davies. He was one of the top five box-office stars from 1928 to 1932. With the advent of sound in film, Haines was able, with elocution lessons, to make the transition and maintain his star status. His first starring role in a full-sound film was the 1929 romance  “Navy Blues” for MGM; this was followed by the 1930 western parody “Way Out West”. At this point in his career, Haines was listed as the top box-office attraction in the country. 

Haines’s films began to drop at the box-office by the late 1930s. MGM canceled his contract in 1931 and, later, brought him back to the studio as a featured player with a reduced salary. Haines next starred in the film, “Just a Gigolo”; but that production failed to turn his slipping ratings. The MGM Studio finally terminated Haines’s contract with the studio in early 1933. 

The termination of Haines was the result of multiple factors.  With the depression, studios were very concerned about their films’ profit margins; Haines was aging and had not successfully completed his transition from his early “Brown of Harvard” persona; and Haines, despite not affirming his sexuality publicly, did not agree to a studio-supported lavender marriage as other gay actors had done. The impending Hays Production Code and the decreasing profits from Haines’s films put pressure on the studio and made it difficult for MGM to continue placing him in starring roles.

William Haines’s final two films were produced in 1934 by Mascot Pictures, a studio known for producing serials and B-movies. The first was the romantic comedy “Young and Beautiful”, which starred Haines opposite actress Judith Allen, and the second was a war-romance film “The Marines Are Coming”, in which Haines played opposite Conrad Nagel and Esther Ralston. Although Haines still received offers from minor studios, he made the decision to retire from acting and commit himself to his and Shield’s interior design business. Over his acting career, Haines had appeared appeared in fifty-four films, the majority of which were in starring roles.

In 1930, William Haines and James Shield had begun a successful dual career as interior designers and antique dealers. Hand-painted wallpaper, ottoman tables, and low to the ground sitting rooms became signature pieces of their work. Their antiques and artwork were loaned for film stage sets, including Haines’s personal paintings for Tara’s interior walls in “Gone With the Wind”. Among their clients were friends such as Gloria Swanson, George Cukor, Carole Lombard, and Joan Crawford.  In 1937, Haines was hired to decorate the estate of studio executive Jack L. Warner.  In the late 1930s through an introduction made by Joan Crawford, Haines and Shield decorated Villa Valentino, a secluded estate owned by Tom Lyle Williams, the founder of Maybelline Cosmetics, and his life-long partner Emery Shaver.

Haines and Shield settled in the Hollywood community of Brentwood and, except for a brief period of Haines’s service during World War II, they remained together and ran their prosperous business. By the time of their retirement in the early 1970s, their clients included socialite and philanthropist Betsy Bloomingdale and Governor Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan. Haines was also hired to redecorate London’s Winfield House, the official United States embassy residence, by the U.S. Ambassador Walter Annenberg.

William Haines and James Shield remained together in a relationship for forty-seven years. They enjoyed a high position in Hollywood for decades, supported by many loyal friends. On December 26th of 1973, William Haines died, at the age of seventy-three, from lung cancer in Santa Monica, California. Shortly afterward on March 6th of 1974, James Shield, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, dressed in Haines’s pajamas, wrote a note about his loneliness, and took an overdose of sleeping pills. They are interred side by side in Santa Monica’s Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery. For his contribution to the motion-picture industry, William Haines has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at number 7012.

Third Insert Image: Nick Grinde, Edward Sedgwick and Malcolm St. Clair, “Remote Contol”, 1930, Promotional Window Card, Cinematographer Merrit B. Gerstad, Metro Goldwyn Mayer