Category: gay photography

Calendar: August 14

A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of August

Tropical Paradise

August 14, 1951 was the release date for the film “A Place in the Sun”.

“A Place in the Sun” is a 1951 American drama film based on the 1925 novel “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser. It was directed by George Stevens from a screenplay by Harry Brown and Michael Wilson. The starring roles were played by Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters; supporting actors included Anne Revere and Raymond Burr.

This noir masterpiece merges suspense and romantic tragedy with director George Stevens composing each shot and scene with an eye for detail. Montgomery Clift plays George Eastman, a financially poor but personable young man, who lands a job in his wealthy uncle’s business. He begins dating Alice, played by Shelley Winters, who works on the factory floor. Clift, however, falls in love with a beautiful socialite, played by Elizabeth Taylor, and must rid himself of the affections of Alice. Her death ensues from a boating trip and the detective, played by Raymond Burr, appears with questions.

Montgomery Clift reached the peak of his Hollywood career with Steven’s “A Place in the Sun”, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. His physical beauty and the emotional intensity of his performance as the doomed lover, especially in his scenes with costar Elizabeth Taylor, confirmed his status as a romantic screen idol. Clift’s performance is regarded as one of his signature method acting performances. He worked extensively on his character. For his character’s scenes in jail, Clift spent a night in a real state prison to seek the right mood.

Although the film was released in 1951, it was shot in 1949. Paramount Studios had already released its blockbuster “Sunset Boulevard” in 1950 when this film wrapped. The studio did not want another possible blockbuster competing for Oscars with “Sunset Boulevard” so it waited until 1951 to release “A Place in the Sun”. This wait actually pleased director George Stevens as he would use the extra time to edit the film. His painstaking methods of producing resulted in more than 400,000 feet of film to edit. Stevens and editor William Hornbeck worked on cutting the footage for more than a year.

The film “A Place in the Sun” was a critical and commercial success, winning siX Academy Awards and the first-ever Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture-Drama. However to many, the film’s acclaim did not completely hold up over time. Reappraisals of the film find that much of what was exciting about the film in 1951 is not as potent now. Critics cite the soporific pace, the exaggerated melodrama, and the outdated social commentary as qualities present in “A Place in the Sun” that are not present in the great films of the era, such as those by Hitchcock and Kazan, although the performances by Clift, Taylor, and Winters continue to receive praise.

Calendar: August 13

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 13th of August

White Roses

August 13, 1860 was the birthdate of Phoebe Ann Mosey, known to history as the American sharpshooter Annie Oakley.

Annie Oakley began trapping before the age of seven, and shooting and hunting by age eight, to support her six siblings and her widowed mother. She sold the hunted game to locals in Greenville, Ohio, such as shopkeepers who shipped it to hotels in Cincinnati and other cities. Oakley also sold the game herself to restaurants and hotels in northern Ohio; she paid off her mother’s house mortgage by the age of fifteen.

On Thanksgiving Day of 1875, the Baughman & Butler shooting act was being performed in Cincinnati, Ohio. Traveling show marksman Frank E. Butler placed a $100 bet per side with Cincinnati hotel owner Jack Frost that Butler could beat any local fancy shooter. The hotelier arranged a shooting match between Butler and the 15-year-old Annie Oakley , saying, “The last opponent Butler expected was a five-foot-tall 15-year-old girl named Annie.” After missing on his 25th shot, Butler lost the match and the bet. He soon began courting Annie and they married.

Annie Oakley and Frank Butler joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in 1885. This three-year tour only cemented Oakley as America’s first female star. She earned more than any other performer in the show, except for Buffalo Bill Cody himself. In Europe, she performed for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, King Umberto I of Italy, President Marie Francois Sadi Carnot of France and other crowned heads of state. Oakley supposedly shot the ashes off a cigarette held by the newly crowned German Kaiser Wilhelm II at his request.

Oakley promoted the service of women in combat operations for the United States armed forces. She wrote a letter to President William McKinley on April 5, 1898, offering the government the services of a company of fifty lady sharpshooters who would provide their own arms and ammunition should the U.S. go to war with Spain. Oakley’s offer was not accepted.

In 1901, Annie Oakley was badly injured in a train accident, but recovered after temporary paralysis and five spinal operations. She left the Buffalo Bill show and in 1902 began a less taxing acting career in “The Western Girl”, a stage play written especially for her. Oakley played the role of Nancy Berry who used a pistol, a rifle and rope to outsmart a group of outlaws.

Annie Oakley continued to set records into her sixties. She hit 100 clay targets in a row from 16 yards at age 62 in a 1922 shooting contest in North Carolina. Oakley also engaged in extensive philanthropy for women’s rights and other causes, including the support of young women whom she knew.  Oakley’s health declined in 1925 and she died of pernicious anemia in Greenville, Ohio at the age of 66 on November 3, 1926. Her husband Frank Butler, greatly grieved, died eighteen days later and is buried next to Annie Oakley in Brock Cemetery near Greenville, Ohio.

Marcel Proust: “He Spent Long and Charming Hours Reclining”

Photographers Unknown, Collection: Inclined to be Reclined

“He spent long and charming hours reclining and have a tete-a-tete with himself, the only guest he had neglected to ask to supper in his lifetime. He tried to adorn his suffering body, to lean in resignation on the windowsill, gazing at the sea, a melancholy joy. With ardent sadness he comtemplated the scene of his death for a long time, endlessly revising it like a work of art and surrounding it with images of this world, images that still imbued his thoughts, but that, already slipping away from him in his gradual departure, became vague and beautiful.”

-Marcel Proust, Pleasures and Days

Calendar: August 12

A Year: Day to Day Men: 12th of August

Key to Life

August 12, 1927 was the release date of “Wings”, the only silent film to win an Oscar.

The American silent war film “Wings” was a romantic action-war movie set during the First World War. It starred Clara Bow, Charles”Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen. The film was shot on location at Kelly Field, a military facility in San Antonio, Texas, from September of 1926 to April of 1927 on a budget of two million dollars.

Producers Lucien Hubbard and Jesse L. Lasky hired director William Wellman as he was the only director in Hollywood at the time who had World War I combat pilot experience. Actor Richard Arlen and writer John Monk Saunders had also served in World War I as military aviators. Arlen was able to do his own flying in the film and actor Charles Rogers, a non-pilot, underwent flight training during the course of the production, so that, like Arlen, Rogers could also be filmed in closeup in the air. Director Wellman was able to attract War Department support and involvement in the project, and displayed considerable prowess and confidence in dealing with planes and pilots onscreen.

Primary scout aircraft flown in the film were Thomas-Morse MB-3s standing in for American-flown SPADs and Curtiss P-1 Hawks painted in German livery. Developing the techniques needed for filming closeups of the pilots in the air and capturing the speed and motion of the planes onscreen took time, and little usable footage was produced in the first two months. Wellman soon realized that Kelly Field did not have the adequate numbers of planes or skilled pilots to perform the needed aerial maneuvers, and he had to request technical assistance and a supply of planes and pilots from Washington.

Hundreds of extras were brought in to shoot the picture, and some 300 pilots were involved in the filming. If possible, Wellman attempted to capture footage in the air in contrast to clouds in the background, above or in front of cloud banks to generate a sense of velocity and danger. During the delays in the aerial shooting because of weather conditions, Wellman extensively rehearsed the scenes for the Battle of Saint-Mihiel over ten days with some 3500 infantrymen. A large battlefield with trenches and barbed wire was created on location for the filming. Wellman took responsibility for the meticulously-planned explosions himself, detonating them at the right time from his control panel. At least 20 young men, including cameraman William Clothier, were given hand-held cameras to film anything and everything during the filming.

On May 16, 1929, the first Academy Award ceremony was held at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of 1927–1928. “Wings” was entered in a number of categories and was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture; Roy Pomercy, the special effects artist for the film, won Best Engineering Effects for that year. For many years, “Wings” was considered a lost film until 1992 when a print was found in the film archive of Cinémathèque Française in Paris. It was quickly copied form nitrate film to safety film stock and is shown again in theaters, sometimes accompanied by Wurlitzer pipe organs.

Orthodox Calendar

OC (Orthodox Calendar)

OC (Orthodox Calendar) is the title of wall calendars and videos first published in 2012, featuring nude and semi-nude photographs of members of the Orthodox Church. The calendar is the brainchild of a group composed mostly of Orthodox eastern Europeans of the former communist region. The primary goal was to create the very first organized global effort against homophobia in the Orthodox Region. At the same time, the calendar takes an ironic approach to the Orthodox Church itself, which in recent years has been embroiled in artist repression, questionable behavior and homophobia.

Through their unconventional and bold images, OC’s creative Team seeks to counteract the negative and outdated influences of most of the Orthodox Church leadership. While recognizing that change might not come quickly to the official Orthodox Church position, OC nonetheless believes that at least it can encourage people (believers or not) to reflect and realize that there is an urgent need for an update in values as part of the modern society.

Additional information can be found at the site: https://www.orthodox-calendar.com

Calendar: August 11

A Year: Day to Day Men: 11th of August

Smoke  in the Air

August 11, 1866 marks the opening of the first roller rink in the United States.

The four-wheeled turning roller skate, or quad skate, with four wheels set in two side-by-side pairs (front and rear), was first designed, in New York City by James Leonard Plimpton, a New York city furniture dealer, in an attempt to improve upon previous designs. Instead of being directly attached to the sole of the skate, the wheel assembly was fastened to a pivot with a rubber cushion. The pivoting action allowed the skater to skate a curve just by pressing his weight to one side or the other, most commonly by leaning to one side.

James Plimpton received a patent for the design in 1863. A modification of leather straps and metal side braces was added to the design in 1866. This addition to the quad skate allowed easier turns and maneuverability, and the quad skate came to dominate the industry for more than a century.

James Plimpton started the New York Roller Skating Association (NYRSA) and leased the The Atlantic House Hotel in Newport, converting the dining room into a skating area. On August 11th in 1866, the first roller rink opened to the public in the United States. The sport was not promoted for the masses but as an acceptable supervised activity for young ladies and gentlemen. To control the quality of his clientele, Plimpton did not sell his skates, but rented them. As rinks proliferated, James Plimpton toured them in the 1870s, giving lessons to new and current skaters for two dollars a week, which included the skate rental.

In America, roller skating was most popular first between 1935 and the early 1960s. When polyurethane wheels were created and disco music made its appearance, roller rinks were again the rage in the 1970s. Roller skating made a third resurgence with in-line outdoor roller skating, thanks to the improvement to the skates by Scott and Brennan Olson.

In 1979, seeing the potential for off-ice hockey training, the Olson brothers redesigned inline skates, made in the 1960s by the Chicago Roller Skate Company, using modern materials and attaching ice hockey boots. A few years later they began to heavily promote the skates and launched the company, Rollerblade, Incorporated. The Rollerblade skates became synonymous in the minds of many with “inline skates” and skating, so much so that many people came to call any form of skating “Rollerblading”.

Nitobe Inazo: The Sense of Honor

Photographer Unknown, (What is Life Without Honor)

‘Nitobe Inazo, “Bushido: The Soul of Japan”, 1905, G.P. Putnam’s Sons

The Eight Virtues are:  Rectitude or Justice;   Courage;   Benevolence or Mercy;   Politeness;   Honesty and Sincerity;   Honor;   Loyalty;   Character and Self-Control.

“The sense of Honor, a vivid consciousness of personal dignity and worth, characterized the samurai. He was born and bred to value the duties and privileges of his profession. Fear of disgrace hung like a sword over the head of every samurai … To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as ‘short-tempered.’ As the popular adage put it: ‘True patience means bearing the unbearable.” – Nitobe Inazo, Bushido: The Soul of Japan, Chapter 8, “Honour”

Free Ebook download:  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12096