Charles Ludlam: Film and Theater History

Photographer Unknown, “Charles Ludham and Ridiculous Theatrical Company”, 1970, Production of “Bluebeard”, Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Born at Northport, New York in April of 1943, Charles Ludlam was a prominent American actor, director and playwright known for his significant avant-garde contributions to Off-Broadway theater and his role in the development of gay and lesbian performance art. Ludlam also founded the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, which became renowned for its innovative productions.

One of three children born to Joseph William Ludlam and Marjorie Braun, Charles Ludlam was raised in Greenlawn, a rural hamlet of Huntington, Long Island. Interested in theater from an early age despite his parents’ discouragement, he directed, produced and performed plays during his senior year in high school. Works by such playwrights as Eugene O’Neill, Kan Kikuchi, and John August Strindberg were performed by local students in their “Students Repertory Theatre”, a small loft space in Northport’s Posey School of Dance.

Ludlam studied at New York’s Hofstra College in Hempstead as an openly gay individual and received his Bachelor of Arts in Dramatic Literature in 1964. After settling in New York City’s Greenwich Village area, he joined the Playhouse of the Ridiculous in 1966. This theatrical company, under the direction of John Vaccaro, was founded the year before by actor and director Ronald Tavel. Inspired by Hungarian producer and dramatist Martin Esslin’s book “Theater of the Absurd”, Tavel’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous set aside naturalistic acting and realistic settings, employed a broad acting style and surrealistic stage settings, and introduced bawdy elements of both queer and camp performance to experimental theater.

In 1967 at the age of twenty-four, Charles Ludlam decided to found his own theatrical group, The Ridiculous Theatrical Company, for which he would act as producer, director and playwright until his death. Though sometimes on welfare, Ludham wrote at least one play a year and raised enough money to keep his company alive. Early shows moved from one venue to another, until the company found a permanent home in a former nightclub at One Sheridan Square in late 1967. Ludham’s company soon found an appreciative audience with such productions as “Conquest of the Universe/When Queens Collide” (1968) and “Bluebeard” (1970), an adaptation of Well’s 1896 “The Island of Dr. Moreau”.

Ludlam’s works gradually became more structured plays that imitated a variety of sources from gothic novels and old movies to literary works by Shakespeare and operas by Richard Wagner. Using traditional approaches to comedy, these works were unconventional with humor but also conveyed serious undertones. Ludlam’s plays often contained sarcasm, cross-dressing, double-entendre, and melodramatics. He acted in many of his plays and was noted for his female roles. The only member of the theatrical company who surpassed Ludlam in the number of roles was his fellow Hofstra student and close friend Susan Carlson, also known as Black-Eyed Susan,

Over his career as a playwright, Charles Ludlam wrote twenty-nine theatrical plays for the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. His best known work is the three-act 1984 “The Mystery of Irma Vep”, a satiric blend of theatrical, literary and film genres that included such works as “Penny Dreadful”, “Wuthering Heights” and Hitchcock’s 1940 “Rebecca”. Titled with an anagram of the word ‘vampire’, the play has only two actors of the same sex, who cross-dressing into different costumes, between them play eight roles, The two-hour show has a large number of special effects and props as well as thirty-five costume changes. Opening off-Broadway in Greenwich Village, “The Mystery of Irma Vep” featured Ludlam and Everett Quinton, Ludlam’s lover, in the lead roles; both actors won the 1985 Obie Award for Ensemble Performance.

In film, Ludlam was involved in ten productions from 1971 to 1983. Among these were: his acting role in director James Bidgood’s 1971 experimental erotic art film “Pink Narcissus”; a role in German director and queer activist Rosa von Praunheim’s 1976 New York underground documentary “Underground and Emigrants”; screenplay and directorial work on his silent 1987 short “Museum of Wax”; a role in Jim McBride and Daniel Petrie Jr’s 1986 neo-noir romantic thriller “The Big Easy”; and a role in Andrew Horn’s 1983 tribute to old school Hollywood melodrama, “Doomed Love”.

Highly regarded as an instructor, Charles Ludlam taught or staged productions at New York University, Yale, and Carnegie Mellon University. He was awarded fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. Ludlam won six Obie Awards over the course of his career and the 1986 Rosamund Gilder Award for distinguished achievement in theater.

Charles Ludlam was diagnosed with AIDS in March of 1987 and died in May at the age of forty-four from pneumocysttis pneumonia (PCP) at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in New York. His obituary appeared on the front page of the “New York Times” newspaper; an essay on Ludlam’s life and art by American novelist and writer Andrew Holleran appeared in the gay-oriented newspaper “Christopher Street”. Charles Ludlam was interred at Saint Patrick’s Cemetery in Huntington, Suffolk County, New York.

Notes: Everett Quinton, Charles Ludlam’s lover, inherited the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. A January 2023 memorial article by Thomas Keith on the company and its history can be found at the American Theatre website: https://www.americantheatre.org/2023/01/30/everett-quinton-humble-hard-working-never-less-than-fabulous/

An excellent April 2013 article entitled “Your Primer on the Great Charles Ludlam” can be found on WordPress’s “Travalanche” site: https://travsd.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/on-charles-ludlam/

The WarholStars organization’s website has an article written by Gary Comenas on the history of Theater of the Ridiculous and its connections to Ronald Tavel, John Vaccaro and Charles Ludlam at: https://warholstars.org/ridiculous.html

The LiteraryWorld website has an article on Charles Ludlam and the theatrical productions of the Theater of the Ridiculous at: https://literaryworlds.coas.wmich.edu:7000/4034/

An Interview with Charles Ludlam with New York writer and queer theater scholar Don Shewey can be found at Shewey’s website: https://www.donshewey.com/theater_articles/charles_ludlam_CITA.html

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Charles Ludlam”, circa 1970s, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Charles Ludlam, “Stage Blood”, 1974, Evergreen Theatre, Publicity Poster, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Jack Robinson, “Charles Ludlam in Long Robe and Floral Headdress”, December 21 1970, Gelatin Silver Print, Jack Robinson, Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Fourth Insert Image: Charles Ludlam, “Big Hotel- A Farce”, 1968, Vintage Poster, Tambellini’s Gate Theater, Designer Jack Smith, 36 x 21 cm, Private Collection.jpg

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Charles Ludlam”, circa 1970-1980, Gelatin Silver Print

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 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

Christopher Cox: “A Key West Companion”

Photographers Unknown, A Key West Companion

I had met Doris on an earlier trip. She approached me in the supermarket and told me to put back the papayas I’d piled into the shopping basket. “Come over and pick them off the ground outside my fence. I’ll be glad to get rid of them. Take some sapodillas too.” Now she appeared behind the wrought-iron fence with a mild hello, released a tabby cat from her arms, and led me down a narrow brick path into the cool dark garden where hundreds of parakeets and canaries fluttered in several mesh-covered gazebos, each chirping in a different key.

Doris is a wiry woman with white hair who must be in her mid-eighties. She was wearing a turquoise artist’s smock with both the sleeves torn off at the shoulders. Her eyes were a similar blue. “I’ve been here I don’t know how long,” she said. “I came from South Carolina after World War II. I was a WAVE.” Since then she has been involved in various jobs and projects around the island, mostly in connection with the tourist trade. At present she’s creating a Key West historical museum in her back yard.

In the center of the garden Doris had built an Indian chickee, a hut made of thatch and berm (local mud) and encircled by a jagged stick fence. “The abode of the southeast Indians,” she announced. “I’m building a miniature in one of my bungalows, with little Indians and itty bitty pigs turning on spits. It’s for my Indian exhibit.”

There are several bungalows around the garden, each of which will house an exhibit based on a different period of Key West history. But the Indian comes first. Doris pointed to the “historically accurate” piles of coral rock that were arranged near the Indian chickee, then to a huge gooseberry tree that shaded the entire garden. “I grew this tree from two seeds I brought back from Katherine Mansfield’s house in the South of France.” she said. “Mouton, Mentone—I don’t remember the name. Don’t ask me any questions; it’s so long ago. All I know is that it’s never produced gooses or berries.” She laughed at her own joke and then stopped for a moment to perk up the purple orchids, vermilion and staghorn fern that grew on the dark trunk of the tree.

Christopher Cox, The Indians in Doris’s Garden, A Seaport Town, A Key West Companion, 1983, St. Martin’s Press, New York

Born at Gadsden, Alabama in August of 1949, Christopher Cox, birth name Howard Raymond Cox Jr., was an author, editor, director and producer. Along with his position as senior editor of Ballantine Books, he is known for his collaboration within The Violet Quill, a group of seven gay male writers whose work established gay writing as a literary movement.

One of four children born to prominent banker Howard Cox and Dorothy Trusler, Christopher Cox received his elementary education at the local Emma Sanson High School. In 1966 at the age of sixteen, Cox was given a summer job in Washington D.C. as a page for Alabama Senator John Sparkman. After his high school graduation, he returned the following summer season to work for Alabama Representatives George Andrews and Armistead Selden. Cox attended the University of Alabama for two years befor moving to New York for a possible career in the theater.

In the fall of 1969, Cox studied acting at director Herbert Berghof and actress Uta Hagen’s HB Studio in New York City. His first role was as understudy for the Mute in a production of “The Fantasticks”. Using Christopher Cox as his professional name, he performed, directed and wrote both plays and lyrics. Cox was the director of the New Play Series and the Writers Workshop at the Joseph Jefferson Theatre Company for which he produced a dozen works between 1974 and 1976. Cox performed during the 1970s in both Off-Broadway and Broadway productions, including Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona”. During the 1980s, he changed his focus to writing, editing and photography.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, Christopher Cox was affiliated with the Violet Quill, also known as the Lavender Quill. This group of seven writers are regarded as one of the strongest collective voices of the gay male experience in the post-Stonewall era. Cox, Robert Ferro, Andrew Holleran, Michael Grumley, Felice Picano, Edmund White and George Whitmore met several times between 1975 and 1981 to read aloud and discuss their works in progress. The agenda of the Violet Quill also included working together to promote the recognition, acceptance and publication of gay literature beyond the boundaries of their own community.

As a writer, Cox’s memories of Alabama and its people appeared regularly as central themes in his stories. Significant events in his life, such as the suicide death of his uncle Ray in 1956 and his mother’s death from cancer in 1975, became focal points for his writing. From March of 1975 to 1977, Cox served as secretary to composer Virgil Thompson for whom he arranged and catalogued correspondence and music manuscripts before their transfer to Yale University. This position gave Cox access to Thompson’s circle of people as well as his neighbors in Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel, which included such notables as Dylan Thomas, Leonard Cohen, Arthur Miller and Robert Mapplethorpe. Cox’s 1978 video piece “Neurotic Moon” is a semi-autobiographic work that describes his role as secretary putting together pieces of a famous composer’s life.

In the 1980s, Christopher Cox worked for publishing firms, most notably E.P. Dutton and Ballantine. He wrote freelance articles and reviews for several papers and magazines, including New York City’s weekly alternative “Soho Weekly News” during its run from 1973 to 1982. Cox published his “A Key West Companion” through St. Martin’s Press in 1983 and, in 1987, his monograph on photographer Dorothea Lange through the fine art photography periodical Aperture.

In the spring of 1986, Cox met his lifetime partner William R. Olander, an art historian, critic, and curator of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.. Christopher Cox died in New York from AIDS-related complications on September 7, 1990 at the age of forty-one. His death was preceded by the death of William Olander, also from AIDS-related complications, on March 18, 1989 at the age of thirty-five.

Notes: After internships at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Toledo Museum of Art, William “Bill”Olander held the position of curator of modern art at the Allen Memorial Museum at Oberlin College from 1979 to 1984. He became the Allen Museum’s acting director for his last two years. The co-founder of the Visual AIDS art project, Olander was known for his work with ACT UP/ NY (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, New York).

Both Christopher Cox and William Olander’s writings, personal papers and correspondence files are contained in the Yale Collection of American Literature Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The collection overview for this material can be found at: https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/caoSearch/catalog/cty-br_beinecke-coxc#summary

The Aperture Foundation’s “Dorothy Lange: Masters of Photography, No. 5”, which contains Christopher Cox’s essay on Lange and forty-three black and white images by Lange, can be found in its entirety on the (SCRIBD) website at: https://www.scribd.com/document/514781915/Aperture-Masters-of-Photography-Linda-Gordon-Dorothea-Lange-Dorothea-Lange-Aperture-2014

Second insert Image: Christopher Cox, “A Key West Companion”, January 1, 1983, Paperback Edition, St. Martin’s Press, New York City

Third Insert Image: “Dorothea Lange: Masters of Photography, No. 5”, 1987, Essay by Christopher Cox, 43 Black and White Images by Lange, Aperture Foundation, Millerton, New York

Robert Reed: Film History Series

Amos Carr, “Robert Reed”, circa 1955-1960, Gelatin Silver Print, Collection of Jan Green

Born at Highland Park, Illinois in October of 1932, Robert Reed was an American film and television actor who is best known for his role as the patriarch in American Broadcast Company’s 1969 sitcom “The Brady Bunch”. A three-time Primetime Emmy nominee for his television work, Reed was also a stage actor who performed in Shakespearean productions.

Robert Reed, birth name John Robert Rietz Jr, was the only child of Helen Teaverbaugh and John Robert Rietz, a government employee who was stationed throughout the Mid-West. Reed received his elementary education in Des Plaines, Illinois until 1939 at which time the family moved to Navasota, Texas. The family relocated twice more before settling in Muskogee, Oklahoma where Reed’s father worked at a turkey and cattle farm. Reed was a member of the local 4-H agricultural club and exhibited the calves he had raised; however, his primary interests laid in music and theater.

While attending Muskogee’s Central High School, Reed participated in its theater productions; he also worked as a radio announcer at local radio stations for which he wrote and produced dramas. Enrolled in 1950 as a drama student at Northwestern University, Reed appeared as a lead character in eight plays, several of which where under the direction of the university’s celebrated drama coach Alvina Krause. After graduating, he traveled to London where he studied for a term at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Reed returned to the United States and performed in summer stock productions in Pennsylvania and later joined New York City’s off-broadway ensemble “The Shakespeare-wrights” and Chicago’s Studebaker Theater Company.

In the late 1950’s, Robert Reed moved to Los Angeles to continue his acting career. His first guest-appearance in an 1959 episode of the television family comedy “Father Knows Best” led to guest roles on the sci-fi series “Men into Space” and the western series “Lawman”. Reed’s first credited film role was Johnny Randall in director Ralph Brooke’s 1961 horror thriller “Bloodlust!” for Crown International Pictures. His first starring television role was defense lawyer Kenneth Preston, playing alongside actor E. G. Marshall, in the CBS popular courtroom drama “The Defenders”, a twenty-two time nominee for the Primetime Emmy Awards and winner of two Outstanding Drama Series Awards.

While filming “The Defenders” in its 1964 third-season, Reed made his Broadway stage debut in the role of Paul Bratter, replacing Robert Redford, in Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park”. In 1968, he performed in the Booth Theater production of playwright Samuel Taylor’s comedy “Avanti!” and appeared in director Robert Wise’s biographical musical “Star!”, which starred Julie Andrews as the British performer Gertrude Lawrence. In the latter part of the 1960s, Reed had guest roles in such series as the sitcom “Family Affair”, the detective shows “Ironside” and “The Mod Squad”, and episodes of the anthology series “Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater”.

Due to his successful performances in “Barefoot in the Park”, Robert Reed was signed in 1968 to both Paramount Pictures and the American Broadcast Company (ABC). Paramount gave him the lead role as the patriarch Mike Brady in series’ creator Sherwood Schwartz’s new sitcom “The Brady Bunch”, a family comedy in which a widowed man with three boys marries a woman with three girls. This five-season series starred Florence Henderson as Carol Brady, the wife, and comedic actress Ann Bradford Davis as the maid Alice Nelson. A favorite series of the 1970s, “The Brady Bunch” went into syndication and spawned several other series, two television reunion films, and two parody films.

Throughout the production of “The Brady Bunch”, Reed was not excited about the role. He often felt that the show was beneath his level of training as a serious Shakespearean actor. Reed frequently made suggestions in an effort to make the sitcom more realistic; however, most of these were ignored. Occasionally Schwartz, now executive producer, would allow Reed to direct an episode in order to relieve the tension between them. Schwartz eventually decided to replace Reed for the sixth season of the series but the show was canceled before production. Despite his problems with Schwartz, Reed became friends with his co-stars Florence Henderson and Susan Olsen who played Carol Brady’s daughter, Cindy.

Robert Reed, while filming “The Brady Bunch”, also had a recurring role of Lieutenant Adam Tobias on the Columbia Broadcasting Company’s detective television series “Mannix” which starred Mike Connors. He appeared in three to five shows on each of the eight “Mannix” seasons. Beginning in 1974, Reed made guest star appearances on series and movies produced for television. His 1975 role as doctor Pat Caddison, who eventually disclosed an identity as transgender in a two-part episode of “Medical Center”, earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Reed also appeared in the 1975 “Secret Night Caller”; the 1976 “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble” and “Rich Man, Poor Man”; and the 1977 miniseries “Roots”, among others.

Reed returned to the character of Mike Brady for several spin-offs and sequels throughout his remaining career. This included the 1976 variety show “The Brady Bunch Hour” which allowed him opportunity to sing and dance; the 1988 television film “A Very Brady Christmas”; the 1989 episode, entitled “A Very Brady Episode”, for the NBC sitcom “Day by Day”; and finally the 1990 short-lived drama series “The Bradys”. Reed’s last onscreen appearance was the April 1992 episode “Ain’t Misbehavin’” for the CBS crime drama “Jake and the Fatman” which starred William Conrad.

In the last years of his life, Robert Reed taught classes on Shakespeare at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also performed alongside actress Betsy Palmer on the touring stage production of Albert Ramsdell Gurney Jr.’s 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist “Love Letters”. Tested positive for HIV, Robert Reed passed away from a rare form of colorectal cancer at the age of fifty-nine in Pasadena, California in May of 1992. He is interred at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie, Illinois.

Notes: Robert Reed was married for five years to fellow Northwestern University student Marilyn Rosenberger. Before the divorce in 1959, they had one child, a daughter Karen Rietz. Reed kept the fact that he was gay a close secret, as public knowledge of his sexual orientation would have damaged his career and caused the demise of “The Brady Bunch” show. Several years after his death, Reed’s “Brady Bunch” co-stars, notably Florence Henderson and Barry Williams who had the role of Greg Brady, confirmed Reed’s sexual orientation and revealed that the entire cast and crew of “The Brady Bunch” had been aware of it at the time of production.

Northwestern University drama coach Alvina Krause was the life-long partner of Bloomsburg State College physical education teacher Lucy McCammon. After her retirement as Professor Emeritus in 1963, Krause gave private instruction for master-drama classes as late as 1977. She moved to Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania in 1971, where she shared a house with McCammon. Beginning in 1978, Krause was the artistic advisor, and later the artistic director, of the Bloomsburg Theater Ensemble founded by her former master-class students. Alvina Krause passed away on the 31st of December in 1981 at the age of eighty-eight; her partner Lucy McCammon passed on the 19th of December in the same year.

A short biography of Robert Reed can be found at the Oklahoma Historical Society site located at: https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=RE041

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Robert Reed in Barefoot in the Park”, Gelatin Silver Print, New York Public Library

Second Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Robert Reed”, circa 1950s, Gelatin Silver Print, Collection of Jan Green

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Robert Reed”, Date Unknown, Autographed Studio Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm, Private Collection

Fourth Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed”, 1961, “The Defenders” Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print, CBS Television

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Robert Reed”, 1990, CBS Television Promotion Photo, Gelatin Silver Print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm, Private Collection

Peter Glenville: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Peter Glenville”, Date Unknown, Publicity Shot, Gelatin Silver Print

Born Peter Patrick Brabazon Browne at Hampstead, London in October of 1913, Peter Glenville was a British actor and distinguished director of both theater and film. He was born into the Irish-Catholic theatrical family of Shaun Glenville (née John Brown), one of the prominent comedic pantomime performers of British music halls, and Dorothy Ward, an English pantomime actress of a successful fifty-two year career.

While his parents’ act toured England’s theaters, Peter Glenville attended some of the country’s preeminent boarding schools, including the Jesuit-operated Stonyhurst College, a structured institution that encouraged both excellence and devotion in its students. Excelling in music, religious doctrine and his academic studies, Glenville played on the college’s rugby team, sang in the choir, and was president of its debating society. Drawn to the theater from an early age, he performed his first theatrical role in the school’s 1923 production of “The Last Practice”.

In 1932, Glenville entered Christ Church College, Oxford, as a law student; however, he spent most of his time in its theater department. Glenville became a member of the Oxford Union, the university’s debating society, and the youngest president to have served on the prestigious Oxford University Dramatic Society, the OUDS. After his time at Oxford, Glenville relocated to London where he began his acting career. He joined the leading Shakespearean company and performed at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and London’s Old Vic, the Royal Victoria Hall.

During the years of World War II, Peter Glenville remained in London during the Blitz bombings to perform at West End theaters opposite such stars as Vivien Leigh. He appeared in various leading roles in such productions as Edgar Wallace’s Chicago-gangland play “On the Spot” in London’s West End, and Mary Hayley Bell’s horror thriller “Duet for Two Hands” at London’s Lyric Theatre. Glenville, in addition to his acting, started overseeing performances and was eventually appointed Director of the Royal Victoria Hall.

Established as a prominent West End director by the mid-1940s, Glenville worked with such notable writers as Tennessee Williams, Jean-Paul Sartre, Graham Greene, and Terence Rattigan. In 1945, he met theatrical producer Hardy William “Bill” Smith who became both his professional and intimate life partner. In 1949, Glenville and Smith relocated from London to New York City where they continued their work in theater; Smith would produce his partner’s plays in both London and New York. Glenville made his New York directorial debut in October of 1949 with Terence Rattigan’s “The Browning Version” at the Coronet Theatre. In London and Manchester, he later directed Rattigan’s 1954 two one-act plays, collectively entitled “Separate Tables”, that starred Margaret Leighton and Eric Portman.

Peter Glenville followed his debut with several notable productions on Broadway and in Europe. From 1949 to 1973, he directed twenty-one Broadway productions. Among these are playwright William Archibald’s 1950 “The Innocents” based on “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James; Broadhurst Theatre’s 1951 production of “Romeo and Juliet” that featured Olivia de Havilland’s Broadway debut; Bridget Boland’s 1954 “The Prisoner” with Alec Guinness, staged at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theater and London’s Globe Theater; and Michael and Fay Kanin’s 1959 “Rashomon”. Performed at New York’s Music Box Theatre, “Rashomon” received three Tony Award nominations, one of which was Best Direction for Glenville.

In 1959, Grenville’s adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!” was presented as a musical entitled “Take Me Along”. For his performance as Sid Davis, Jackie Gleason received the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. Glenville directed the first production in English of Jean Anouilh’s 1959 “Becket or the Honour of God” in 1960. Starring Lawrence Olivier and Anthony Quinn, this play was nominated for five Tony Awards and won four, including Best Play and Best Actor for Anthony Quinn. Glenville continued his Broadway success with other award-winning musicals, comedies and serious dramas.

In the prime of his career, Peter Glenville began to work in the Hollywood film industry with many of the studios’ major stars. His first film with Columbia Pictures and BD Film Corporation was the 1955 psychological thriller “The Prisoner” with Alec Guinness and Jack Hawkins. Glenville stayed with Columbia Pictures for his second film, the the 1958 “Me and the Colonel”, a Golden Globe winning comedy with Danny Kaye. In addition to his directorial work, Glenville had an uncredited acting role in this production. His 1961 drama “Summer and Smoke” for Paramount Pictures received five nominations for the Academy Awards; Glenville was also nominated for a Directors Guild of America Award and the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion.

Glenville directed four more films for various studios, among which were the 1966 British comedy “Hotel Paradiso” for Metro Goldwyn Mayer that starred Alec Guinness and Gina Lollabrigida, and the 1967 American political drama “The Comedians”, an all-star production, although poorly received, that featured Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Lillian Gish, Peter Ustinov and upcoming actors Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones. Most notable of Glenville’s films was the 1964 British historical drama “Becket”, an adaptation of Anouilh’s 1959 play that starred Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud. Released by Paramount Pictures, the film was well received at the box office and earned multiple Academy Award nominations, winning the Best Screenplay. This film also won awards from the British Film Academy and British Society of Cinematographers, among others.

Following a Broadway production of Tennessee William’s “Out Cry” in 1973, Peter Glenville retired from active theatrical and film work due to the change in cinema towards violence and method acting. He and “Bill” Smith eventually moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where they developed a notable estate. They spent their final years entertaining their longtime friends and major political figures including heads of State and former Presidents. Peter Glenville died on the third of June in 1996 in New York City from a heart attack at the age of eighty-two.

Notes: Hardy William Smith was born in England on the first of December in 1916 and served in the United States Navy during World War II. After his discharge from service, he remained in England and began a career in the London theater. In 1945, Smith met Peter Grenville and began their long relationship. According to records, Smith resided in New York City and later at White Plains, New York, most probably after Glenville’s death in 1999. Hardy William Smith passed away on the third of October in 2001 at the age of eighty-four. His body is interred at the Gates of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

Smith was Grenville’s directorial assistant on his 1951 Broadway production of “Romeo and Juliet” at the Broadhurst Theatre. He also produced three other Broadway shows for Grenville: playwright Ugo Betti’s 1955 drama “Island of Goats” at the Fulton Theatre; Feydeau and Desvallierès’s 1957 comedy “Hotel Paradiso” at the Henry Miller’s Theatre; and Michael and Fay Kanin’s 1959 crime drama “Rashomon” at the Music Box Theatre.

The Peter Glenville Foundation’s online site is located at: https://peterglenville.org

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin is the repository of Peter Glenville’s correspondence, business records, clippings, appointment books and personal records that span the years from 1914 to 2001. A complete inventory of his papers can be found at: https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00395

Second Insert Photo: Photographer Unknown, “Richard Burton, Peter Glenville, Elizabeth Taylor”, 1967, Film Set of “The Comedians”, Cinematography Henri Decaē, Metro Goldwyn Mayer

Third Insert Image: Peter Glenville, “Becket”, 1964, Film Poster, Cinematography Geoffrey Unsworth, Paramount Pictures

Fourth Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Peter Glenville and Peter O’Toole”, 1963-64, “Becket” Film Set, Cinematography Geoffrey Unsworth, Paramount Pictures

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Peter Glenville”, 1963-64, “Becket” Film Set, Cinematography Geoffrey Unsworth, Paramount Pictures

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

Jimmy Daniels

Carl Van Vechten, “Jimmy Daniels”, July 11th 1940, Gelatin Silver Print, Library of Congress

Born in Laredo, Texas in November of 1907, James Lesley Daniels was an actor, cabaret singer and nightclub host during the Harlem Renaissance that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. He spent his early years in Little Rock, Arkansas, before moving to New York City in the 1920s. Daniels studied at Bird’s Business College in the Bronx and became acquainted with many members of the Harlem Renaissance, particularly jazz and blues singer Alberta Hunter, whom he assisted in her elder years.

After graduating, Jimmy Daniels returned to Little Rock where he became the secretarial assistant to Aldridge E. Bush, the founder and president of Little Rock’s Century Life Insurance Company. Desiring a career in acting, he returned to New York in 1928. Through noted stage actress Katherine Cornell’s stage manager, Daniels was able to get a part in Cornell’s 1930 Broadway hit “Dishonored Lady”. Following this role, Daniels performed in the 1931 ”Savage Rhythm” at Broadway’s Elysee Theater and in productions staged by the Chamberlain-Brown Stock Company in Mount Vernon, New York.

Leaving Broadway theater, Daniels found his first professional singing position at Hot Cha, a Harlem nightclub on 7th Avenue where Billie Holiday often performed. He quickly achieved recognition and soon became part of the European music scene. By the summer of 1933, Daniels was performing in Monaco at Monte Carlo’s Summer Sporting Club. At the end of 1933 and into 1934, he accompanied British jazz pianist Reginald Foresythe at the Ciro’s nightclub in London.

Jimmy Daniels, upon his return to New York, became the premier entertainer at Marian Cooley’s Sunday night suppers at Le Ruban Bleu, a Parisian-styled nightclub on 56th and Fifth Avenue. In 1935, he sponsored, for three seasons, a series of parties at the Bronze Studio Catering Hall on Lenox Avenue in Harlem. During these parties, Daniels met Herbert Jacoby who convinced him to perform in his Paris nightclub, Reuban Bleu, in 1936 and 1937. Daniels later performed at Jacoby’s newly opened New York City nightclub and, in 1938, sang for a second time at the Parisian club

Established as a singer in both New York and Europe, Daniels opened the Jimmy Daniels’ Nightclub in 1939 at 114 West 116th Street in Harlem. An instant hit, the nightclub attracted a long list of both black and white, gay and straight, notables, including European royals and aristocrats. Among the clientele were British society photographer Olivia Wyndham; actors Burgess Meredith and Diana Barrymore; British art patron Harold Jackman; photographer Carl Van Vechten; sculptor Richmond Barthé; poet Claude McKay; and heavyweight champion Joe Louis. Daniels owned and operated the nightclub until 1942 when he entered military service for World War II.

Returning to New York, Jimmy Daniels became the host in 1950 at the chic supper club Bon Soir on West 8th Street. Known as a place where everyone was welcome regardless of race or sexual orientation, Bon Soir was a balance of elegant, intimate, risqué and respectable ambiance. As host, singer and emcee, Daniels was a popular figure at Bon Soir for ten years. The club hosted a variety of rising entertainment stars, including Phyllis Diller, Kaye Ballard and Barbara Streisand; the Bon Soir was Streisand’s first New York engagement. Bon Soir actually lost business when Daniels left in 1960 after his ten year stay.

Beginning in 1960, Daniels hosted a series of “supper soirees” at Lower Manhattan’s L’Etang Supper Club. Real estate owner Jimmy Merry hired Daniels at this time to manage the Tiffany Room, now the Ice Palace, in Cherry Grove, Fire Island. He also performed briefly at the Blue Whale Bar in Fire Island Pines. Daniels continued to perform at various New York City parties, festivals and clubs until his death. After suffering a stroke, James Lesley “Jimmy” Daniels died at the age of seventy-six in June of 1984 just a few days after performing at the Kool Jazz Festival’s “Evening of the Music of Harold Arlen” at Carnegie Hall.

Notes: In 1934, Jimmy Daniels met prominent architect Philip Johnson and began a relationship, his first serious one, that lasted from 1934 to 1936. He later met filmmaker Kenneth Macpherson who at that time was married to English heiress and novelist Annie Winifred Ellerman, known by her pen name Bryher. She commissioned sculptor Richmond Barthé, a regular patron of the Jimmy Daniels’ Nightclub, to create a marble bust of Daniels. In the 1950s, Daniels shared a home with award-winning fashion designer Rex Madsen.

The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project has an 2023 article written by project manager Amanda Davis on the Jimmy Daniels’ Nightclub. The article is located at: https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/jimmie-daniels/

On the “Medium” story site, writer Michael Henry Adams has an article on the lives of historic, gay African-American artists and performers, a section of which discusses Jimmy Daniels. The article also covers the intolerance shown to LBGTQ people despite the apparent advancement in legislation. Michael Adams’s article is located at: https://medium.com/@michaelhenryadams/raising-the-questions-who-is-gay-who-cares-why-it-still-matters-4166a5442ec8

Top Insert Image: Carl Van Vechten, “Jimmy Daniels”, 1933, Color Print, Van Vechten Trust

Second Insert Image: George Platt Lynes, “James Leslie Daniels”, 1937, Duotone Photo Engraving, 22.9 x 27.9 cm, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Carl Van Vechten, “Jimmy Daniels with Bust by Richmond Barthé”, December 21st 1938, Gelatin Silver Print, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Bottom Insert Image: Carl Van Vechten, “Jimmy Daniels”, circa 1933, Color Print, Van Vechten Trust

James Searle Dawley: Film History Series

James Searle Dawley, “Snow White”, 1916, Silent Fantasy Film, Cinematographer and Producer H. Lyman Broening, Running Time 63 Minutes, Starring Marguerite Clark and Creighton Hale, Production Company Famous Players Film Company

Born at Del Norte, Colorado in October of 1877, James Searle Dawley was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, stage actor and playwright. During his career, he directed over three-hundred short films and fifty-six features with such actors as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Harold Lloyd, and John Barrymore. Dawley also wrote several Broadway productions as well as plays for repertory companies.

The youngest of three sons born to James Andres Dawley and Angela Searle, James Dawley received his initial education in Denver and later attended the city’s Saxton College of Oratory. As a child, he permanently lost the vision in his right eye, an injury which challenged his later career as actor and film director. At the age of seventeen, Dawley had his first stage performance as François in the Lewis Morrison Company’s 1895 New York City production of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s “Richelieu”. Three years later, now billed as J. Searle Dawley, he served both as performer and stage manager for the Morrison Company’s productions.

Dawley left the Morrison Company and performed on the vaudeville circuit from 1899 to 1902. He returned to the theatrical stage as a member of the Edna May Spooner Stock Company based in Brooklyn. Actress and playwright Edna May Spooner and her family were a fixture in Brooklyn’s theater life and operated its Bijou Theater for several years. Recognized for his past production experience, Dawley both performed on stage and managed the company’s productions. He also wrote and produced fifteen plays during his five years with the company.

In May of 1907, J. Searle Dawley made the decision to start a career in the rapidly expanding motion-picture industry. He was hired by Edwin Porter, the production head at Edison Studios, to serve as director for the company’s main film facilities in the Bronx, New York. His first project as director was the now-lost 1907 comedy “The Nine Lives of a Cat”. After experiencing some initial frustrations, Dawley quickly established himself as a reliable director who could produce a wide range of releases, often two or more films in a single week. Through his career with Edison Studios, he directed over two-hundred single-reel films. Among these were “Bluebeard”, adaptions of both “Michael Strogoff” and “Faust”, and “Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest”, noteworthy for its special effects and an early screen appearance by film director D. W. Griffith.

By 1910, Dawley was directing increasingly elaborate productions for the Edison Company. Although they were still one-reel films, they included the 1910 Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” and two presentations of historic naval battles: “The Stars and Stripes”, a depiction of John Paul Jones’s victory in 1779, and “The Battle of Trafalgar”, the story of British Admiral Lord Nelson’s 1805 triumph over the French and Spanish warships. In both of these productions, Dawley oversaw the creation of large maritime sets inside Edison’s Bronx studio, construction of the ships’ decks, and simulated views of the battles using small-scale models and silhouettes.

In 1910, J. Searle Dawley was screenwriter and director for the longer running (fourteen minute) silent horror “Frankenstein”, the earliest known screen adaption of Shelley’s novel. Staged and filmed in three days at the Bronx studio in mid-January, Dawley used special effects for the creation of the monster. A burning papier-mâché human figure was shot on red film, separately and in reverse, and then spliced into the master negative for the final print. This reverse action produced a creation scene in which the monster forms slowly as it rises from a cauldron of blazing chemicals.

In the same year, Dawley traveled to California and set up Edison Studios at Long Beach. This new arrangement required him to write more screenplays and direct film productions on both coasts. Dawley made several attempts to create films longer than the fifteen-minute one-reel film; however, Edison had little confidence in the attention span of the audience. In 1913, Edwin Porter hired Dawley to work with him at Adolph Zuckor’s new studio, Famous Players Film Company. Dawley directed its first thirteen releases, among which was the romantic comedy “An American Citizen”, the first feature film for actor John Barrymore.

After leaving Famous Players in May of 1914, James Searle Dawley, along with Frank L. Dyer and J. Parker Read Jr, established the film company Dyreda. In the fall of 1914, arrangements were made with World Film Corporation to distribute their releases; Dyreda would later merge with Metro Pictures, a forerunner of Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Dawley returned in 1916 to Famous Players, later Paramount Pictures, for two years. During this period, he directed over a dozen films, including “Mice and Men” and “Snow White”, both in 1916; two 1917 films “”Bab’s Diary” and “The Seven Swans”; and the 1918 “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, a five-reel film produced by Adolph Zucker and Jesse L. Lasky.

Dawley freelanced as a director for several years before joining Fox Films in 1921. The last feature film he directed was the 1923 drama “Broadway Broke”, produced by Murray W. Garsson and distributed by Lewis J. Selznick. Months later, Dawley made his final directorial works in collaboration with the inventor of the first practical electronic amplifier Lee de Forest. Their two experimental sound films, “Abraham Lincoln” and “Love’s Old Sweet Song”, were both released in 1924. Dawley worked through the late 1920s and 1930s in radio broadcasting, journalism, and sound-film technologies.

James Searle Dawley married Grace Owens Givens in June of 1918; the couple remained together over thirty years until Dawley’s death, at the age of seventy-one, in March of 1949. He died of undisclosed causes at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. Dawley’s ashes were interned in the columbarium at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory. Silent film star Mary Pickford and director Walter Lang spoke at the service. Dawley’s personal papers, scrapbooks and several Edison production scripts are housed in the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California.

Note: Dawley’s 1916 “Snow White” was considered a lost-film destroyed in a vault fire. A substantially complete print with Dutch subtitles, albeit missing a few scenes, was located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1992. It was subsequently restored through the work of the George Eastman House, the world’s oldest museum dedicated to photography.

Second Insert Image: James Searle Dawley, “The Harvest Moon”, 1920, Film Poster, Six-Reel Silent Film, Cinematographer Bert Dawley

Third Insert Image: James Searle Dawley, “Frankenstein”, 1910, Film Poster, One-Reel Silent Film, Cinematographer James White

Fourth Insert Image: James Searle Dawley, “A Virgin Paradise”, 1921, Film Poster, Eight-Reel Silent Film, Cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg and Bert Dawley

Bottom Insert Image: “Marguerite Clark and Creighton Hale”, Silent Film Clip Photo, “Snow White”, 1916, Five-Reel Silent Film Director James Searle Dawley, Cinematographer H. Lyman Broening

Mime Misu: Film History Series

Mime Misu, “In Nacht und Eis (In Night and Ice)”, 1912, Written and Directed by Mime Misu, Film Runtime 42 Minutes, Continental-Kunstfilm, Berlin, Germany,

Remastered with English Subtitles and Score by Swiss Composer Christophe Sturzenegger

Born in January of 1888 at the county seat of Botosani in the northern part of Romania, Misu Rosescu was a pantomime artist, ballet dancer, film actor and director. He was nephew to the prominent writer Rahel Levin Varnhagen whose home became a center for the intellectual and political figures of German culture. Born into a family of musicians, artists and performers, Rosescu made his stage debut as a child performing ballet and pantomime.

Rosescu’s many talented performances were recognized and gained him free entrance into the Bucharest Art Academy. During his studies, he was assigned to the Royal National Theatre in the capital city of Bucharest. After his graduation with honors, Rosescu began a successful career appearing in theatrical performances at the provincial theaters of Romania. After his performance at the 1900 World Fair in Paris, Rosescu established his own theatrical production company and toured Berlin, Budapest, Vienna and London.

Misu Rosescu, now using the name Mime Misu, entered into the growing film industry. In Paris, he was initially employed by Lux, a film production company located in the 14th arrondissement, and later at Pathé Frères which was becoming the world’s largest film equipment and production company. In 1912, Misu signed with Berlin’s newly established Continental=Kunstfilm which had just begun to release a mix of comedies, melodramas and documentaries. mis

Through Continental-Kunstfilm, Mime Misu wrote and directed three films in his first year. The 1912 silent film “Das Gespenst von Clyde (The Ghost of von Clyde)” was a media story of Count Arthur Hamilton who died in the British Castle of Clyde under mysterious circumstances. Misu’s 1912 “In Nacht und Eis (In Night and Ice)” was a silent adventure-disaster film depicting the recent sinking of RMC Titanic. Having achieved some success with his drama-documentary narrative style, Misu made the 1912 “Das Mirakel (The Miracle)”. Based on the thirteenth-century temptation legend of Sister Beatrice, the film later appeared under the title “Das Marienwunder: Eine alte Legende (The Miracle of Mary: An Old Legend)” due to legal rulings in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Misu made one more film in Germany, the 1913-1914 “Der Excentric Club”, for Projektions-AG Union, a Frankfurt film production company that soon moved to Berlin, the new center of the German film industry. He traveled to the United States where he made one film, the 1914 “Money God”, under his personal production company Misugraph-Film. Lacking support in the United States just as the First Great War began, Misu returned to Europe and settled with his new wife, Bertha, in Berlin’s inner-city district of Wilmersdorf. In 1915, he directed in the Netherlands his last film, a disaster film of a sinking ship entitled “Ontmaskerd (Unmasked)”; the credits list his birth name, Misu Rosecu, as director.

Mime Misu traveled to the United States every year from 1915 to 1917. He maintained office space in Berlin for his production company Misugraph-Film until 1921. There is, however, no record of any artistic activity from 1915 to 1921. In 1921, Misu apparently misrepresented himself as to his involvement with the Famous Players Film Company, a film venture owned by Paramount Pictures’ founder Adolph Zukor. This led to the publishing of their exchanged letters in Berlin’s film journal Fil-Kurier. An accomplished stage performer and director of six films, (Mime) Misu Rosescu died in Antwerp, Belgium in the summer of 1953.

Among the films in his career, Mime Misu’s best known work is the 1912 “In Nacht und Eis’, the earliest surviving film depiction of the RMS Titanic disaster. Camera work was done by Willy Hameister, Emil Schünemann and Victor Zimmermann. Most of its footage was shot in a glasshouse studio inside the courtyard of Continental-Kunstfilm’s offices at 123 Chausseestrasse. Other footage was shot in Hamburg and, possibly, aboard the Hamburg-docked German ocean liner Kaiserin Auguste Victoria.

At a running time of thirty-five minutes, “In Nacht und Eis” was shot in black and white with various scenes tinted to increase their impact. The film starred actors Waldemar Hecker as the telegrapher, Otto Rippert as the Captain, and Ernst Rückert as the First Officer. The Berlin Fire Department provided the flood waters necessary for the scenes of the Titanic’s sinking. “In Nacht und Eis” was considered a lost film until February of 1998. At that time, the German film archivist Horst Lange, after reading an article discussing this loss, informed the newspaper that he possessed a print of the film.

Note: The above video of “In Nacht und Eis” is from the Titanic Officers site which contains a multitude of articles on the ship’s officers and other aspects of the Titanic and its sinking. The Titanic Officers website can be found at: https://www.titanicofficers.com/articles.html

For those film buffs who are purists, there is a restored silent version, sans soundtrack, on the Internet Archive. This slightly shorter film with a runtime of thirty-four minutes is located at: https://archive.org/details/silent-in-nacht-und-eis

Top Insert Image: Mime Misu, “Das Mirakel”, 1912, Publicity Photo on Cardstock

Bottom Insert Image: Mime Misu, “In Nacht und Eis”, 1912, (Otto Rippert and Ernst Rüchert) Film Clip Photo

Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne: Film History Series

Born in the West Midland city of Coventry in April of 1929, Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne was an English stage, television and film actor. Among the many honors for his work, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1987 New Years Honors List, which highlights the good works by citizens of the Commonwealth.

Hawthorne was later knighted in the 1999 New Years Honors List for services to Theater, Film and Television.

The second child of physician Charles Barnard Hawthorne and his wife Agnes Rosemary Rice, Nigel Hawthorne was three years old when the family moved to the Gardens district of Cape Town, South Africa. He attended Cape Town’s St. George’s Grammar School and later its Christian Brothers College. Hawthorne enrolled at the University of Cape Town where he acted in plays with fellow student Theo Aronson, who became biographer to England’s royal family and partner of historian Brian Roberts. Hawthorne’s professional theatrical debut was the character Archie Fellows in the 1950 Cape Town production of British playwright Edward Percy Smith’s 1940 thriller “The Shop at Sly Corner”.

Dissatisfied with life in South Africa, Hawthorne relocated to London where he pursued a career in acting. Through his performances, he gradually gained recognition as one of London’s great character actors. Starting in the late 1950s, Hawthorne appeared in various character roles in British television series. Seeking opportunities in the United States, he traveled to New York City where, in 1974, he was cast as Touchstone in Broadway production of Shakespeare’s comedy “As You Like It” at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. Through the persuasion of British stage actors Ian McKellen and Judi Dench, Hawthorne joined the Stratford-upon-Avon based Royal Shakespeare Company in the mid-1970s.

In 1980, Nigel Hawthorne began his most famous television role of Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Administrative Affairs, in the BBC2 political satire series “Yes Minister” which ran from 1980 to 1984. He later portrayed the character of the Cabinet Secretary in its sequel “Yes Prime Minister”. For this role, Hawthorne won four British Academy Television Awards for Best Light Entertainment Performance.

Hawthorne appeared as Mr. Kinnnoch in Richard Attenborough’s long delayed 1982 historical film “Gandhi”, which became the winner of eight Academy Awards and the third highest grossing film in the world for 1982. In the same year, he appeared as dissident Russian scientist Dr. Pyotr Baranovich in Clint Eastwood’s cold war thriller “Firefox”. Hawthorne returned to the New York stage in 1990 to appear as British writer C. S. Lewis in the Broadway production of William Nicholson’s “Shadowlands” performed at the Brooks Atkinson Theater. For that role, Hawthorne won the 1991 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.

In 1991, Nigel Hawthorne played his most famous theatrical role, King George III, in playwright Alan Bennett’s fictionalized biographical study “The Madness of George III”. Bennett’s play toured the United Kingdom and the United States before returning to London’s Royal National Theater in 1993. For this role, Hawthorne won a Best Actor Olivier Award. He also appeared in the same role for the 1994 film adaption of the play, entitled “The Madness of King George”, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Best Actor.

Hawthorne followed this success with the role of George the Duke of Clarence, playing opposite his friend Ian McKellen, in Richard Loncraine’s 1995 British period drama “Richard III” adapted by McKellen and Loncraine from Shakespeare’s play. He won his sixth BAFTA award for his role in the 1996 television mini-series “The Fragile Heart” and also drew praise for his role of Georgie Pillson in the London Weekend Television series “Mapp and Lucia”, based on the three 1930s novels by Edward Frederic Benson. Hawthorne next appeared in the film role of U.S. President Martin Van Buren in director Steven Spielberg’s 1997 historical drama “Amistad”, a story based on the 1839 events aboard the Spanish slave ship La Amistad and the legal battle that followed.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Nigel Hawthorne began work as a voice actor and appeared in several animated films. In 1978, he was cast as the voice of Campion in Martin Rosen’s “Watership Down”, a British animated adventure-drama film based on Richard Adams’s 1972 novel. Hawthorne was also cast in two Disney films: the voice of Ffiewddur Fflam in the 1985 dark fantasy “The Black Cauldron” and Professor Porter in the 1999 “Tarzan”, the first animated version of the novel.

In 1968, Hawthorne met his life-long partner Trevor Bentham who at that time was the stage manager for the Royal Court Theater in the West End of London. Bentham later became a scriptwriter and wrote for John Irvin’s 1995 romantic comedy “A Month by the Lake” and “The Clandestine Marriage”. From 1979 until Hawthorne’s death, the couple lived together and acted as fundraisers for the North Hertfordshire Hospice and other local charities.

In 2001 after undergoing several surgeries for diagnosed pancreatic cancer, Nigel Hawthorne was discharged from the hospital in time for the Christmas holidays. On the twenty-sixth of December in 2001, he died at the age of seventy-two from a heart attack at his home. His funeral, attended by many of his fellow actors, was held at St. Mary’s, the Parish Church of Thundridge, Hertfordshire; Trevor Bentham served as one of the pallbearers.

Notes: Nigel Hawthorne completed his autobiography just before he died. “Straight Face”, which covered his ambition to be an actor, his career, and his battle with cancer, was published posthumously in 2002 by Hodder & Stoughton.

An interview with Sir Nigel Hawthorne and film critic Dan Lybarger, in which Hawthorne discussed King George III, director David Mamet, and the film “The Big Brass Ring”, can be found at the Lybarger Links website located at: http://www.tipjar.com/dan/hawthorne.htm

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nigel Hawthorne”, Studio Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: “Derek Fowlds, Nigel Hawthorne and Paul Eddington”, circa 1980, “Yes Minister”, Television Series Studio Shot, BBC2

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nigel Hawtorne”, Studio Publicity Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Fourth Insert Image: “Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren”, 1994, “The Madness of King George”, Film Clip Shot, Director Nicholas Hylner, Cinematographer Andrew Dunn

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Nigel Hawthorne and Trevor Bentham”, Date Unknown, Gelatin Silver Print

Anton Walbrook: Film History Series

Born in Vienna in November of 1896, Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbrück was an Austrian actor who settled in the United Kingdom under the name Anton Walbrook. He was descended from ten generations of actors, although his father, Adolf Ferdinand Wohlbrück, broke from the tradition and became a well known and successful stage clown. At the age of seven, his family relocated to Berlin. Wohlbrück left school in 1911, at the age of fifteen, to train as an actor under the prominent theater and film director Max Reinhardt.

Wohlbrück’s talent was quickly recognized and he was given a five-year contract to work with the Deutsches Theater. Still under contract, he enlisted and fought on both the western and eastern fronts before he was captured in France in 1917 to spend the rest of the war as a prisoner. After his return home, Wohlbrück met actress and director Hermine Korner who became a lifelong mentor and co-actor in several highly-praised stage productions. Although he enjoyed the classics, he also appeared in new stage productions and became drawn to the rapidly expanding German film industry.

In the early 1930s, Adolf Wohlbrück was cast in some exceptional movies among which were the 1933 cross-dressing musical comedy “Viktor and Viktoria” and the international 1934 Austrian operetta film “Masquerade” which later won the Best Screenplay at the Vienna Film Festival. Wohlbrück’s character in the 1934 film was Ferdinand von Heidenick, a charming, rather well-mannered, and slightly dangerous man. His following was built on films with such a character role; however, he also succeeded in other diverse roles in such films as the 1935 thriller “I Was Jack Mortimer”, director Arthur Robison’s 1935 German horror film “The Student of Prague”, and the 1936 action-packed historical drama “The Czar’s Courier”, based on Jules Verne’s novel “Michael Strogoff”.

Widely known and respected as an actor in both theater and film, Wohlbrück built up his career and appeared alongside some of Germany’s best leading ladies. In 1936, he traveled to Hollywood to reshoot dialogue for the 1937 multinational film “The Soldier and the Lady”, director George Nichols Jr’s American version of “Michael Stogoff”. It was during this period in Hollywood that Wohlbrück changed his name to Anton Walbrook. Rather than return to Germany where, under the government’s law, he risked persecution due to being a homosexual and a person of mixed race in the first degree due to his mother being Jewish, Walbrook decided to settle in England. He continued acting in England and appeared in many European-continental character roles.

In the first six years of his film work in Britain, Anton Walbrook appeared in many film studies of men struggling to find their identities in a foreign land. These displaced person roles included Prince Albert in the 1937 “Victoria the Great” and its sequel, the 1938 “Sixty Glorious Years”; the role of Polish pilot and composer Stefan Radetzky in the 1940 “Dangerous Moonlight”; and the foreign domestic despot Paul Mallen in Thorold Dickinson’s 1940 version of the psychological thriller “Gaslight”. Walbrook also appeared on stage in the role of Otto in the first London production of “Design for Living” in January of 1939 playing opposite Diana Wynyard and Rex Harrison.

Walbrook appeared in several more film roles in England during the late 1940s, including the dashing “good” German officer Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff in the 1943 “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and the tyrannical impersario in Michael Powell’s 1948 ballet film “The Red Shoes”, which received many nominations, a Golden Globe and two Academy Awards. One of Walbrook most unusual films of this time was the 1949 Gothic thriller “The Queen of Spades” in which he co-starred with Edith Evans. This fantasy-horror film, based on a short story by Alexander Pushkin, used sets from original baroque designs by English stage designer Oliver Messel. Some critics considered it one of the true classics of supernatural cinema.

After the end of the war, Anton Walbrook returned to his homeland Germany and accepted stage work in Munich. His most notable film performances for this early-1950s period are the two movies he did for German-French director Max Ophüls: the 1950 French film “La Ronde”, nominated for two Academy Awards and originally classified by New York film censors as immoral, and the 1955 historical romance film “Lola Montès”, the last completed film of Max Ophüls. Walbrook’s final film role was the duplicitous French army officer Major Esterhazy in the 1958 Dreyfus Affair dramatization “I Accuse!”, directed by José Ferrer.

After his last film, Walbrook performed in stage productions, both in Britain and Germany, often with appearances in comedies and musicals. He continued acting until his death of a heart attack in Feldafing, Bavaria, Germany in August of 1967. In accordance with his last testament, Walbrook was cremated and his ashes were interred in the churchyard of St. John’s Church, Hampstead, London.

Note: In 2020, author and archivist at the University of Exeter’s Special Collections Department James Downs published his monograph “Anton Walbrook: A Life of Masks and Mirrors”, the first Walbrook biography. Downs had previously written and presented conference papers on Walbrook and had curated the 2013 exhibition “Anton Walbrook: Star and Enigma” at the Bill Douglas Cinema Theater in Exeter, United Kingdom. More information on the biography can be found at: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1058817

Top Insert Image: JDA Riga, “Anton Walbrook as Michael Strogoff, The Czar’s Courier”, 1936, Bromide Postcard Print, 13.7 x 8.6 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Second Insert Image: Anton Walbrook in “The Man from Morocco”, 1945, Director Mutz Greenbaum, Cinematographer Basil Emmett and Geoffrey Faithfull

Third Insert Image: Angus McBean, “Rex Harrison, Diana Wynyard, Anton Walbrook”, 1939, Gelatin Silver Print, 20.2 x 25.3 cm, Harvard Theater Collection, Harvard University

Fourth Insert Image: “Anton Walbrook as Jean Boucheron,The Rat”, “The Rat”, 1937, Director Jack Raymond, Cinematographer Freddie Young

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Anton Walbrook”, Date Unknown, Studio Photo Shot, 15.2 x 10.2 cm, Private Collection

Orla Muff

Orla Muff, “Nana”, 1934, Oil on Canvas, 45.1 x 55.3 cm, Private Collection

Born in April of 1903 in Copenhagen, Orla Andreas Heinrik Jacobsen was a Danish painter and illustrator. From 1917 to 1921, he received his formal art education at the Copenhagen Technical School under Carl Lund, the leading theatrical artist of the time. In 1917, he adopted a change in name to Orla Muff.

In 1918, Muff was awarded a distinguished seat at the Day’s Drawing Concourse, an event held by Children’s Aid, and had his first drawing printed on a postcard. In the same year he drew one hundred different illustrations depicting gnomes for a series of postcards, which was released in large editions several times. Muff’s illustrations for the early postcards were signed with an intertwined O and J standing for Orla Jacobsen. He continued to design postcards until the late 1960s; these later works were signed with Orla Muff.

After his studies with Carl Lund, Orla Muff began a period of travel through Europe where he studied in Sweden, Holland, France and Germany. He achieved acclaim early in his career as a designer of elaborate Art Deco styled sets for prominent European revues and theatrical productions. Included among these designs were sets for performances at Copenhagen’s Folk Theater, Austrian-born theatrical producer Max Reinhardt’s Theater in Berlin, and Norway’s Mayol Theater in Oslo.

In addition to his set designs, Muff began easel painting in the early 1930s; he created portraits, figurative works, and abstract paintings. His work is characterized by a refined sophistication and a predominantly light-toned color scale. Muff’s abstract compositions, executed in the styles of the Art Deco and Cubist movements, often contain mythologically inspired figures set in largely monochromatic backgrounds.

Painted in his early thirties, Orla Muff’s 1934 “Nana” is an Art Deco derived, Expressionist oil portrait of a young, high-spirited woman, shown smoking a cigarette and set against a mottled turquoise background. Muff’s use of strong lighting effects produced a dramatic and psychologically penetrating portrait of this young woman.

During the course of his career, Orla Muff exhibited successfully in many European exhibitions and was the recipient of juried awards and prizes. Among his notable works are “Leda and the Swan” exhibited in 1940; the 1940 oil on canvas “Tropical Jungle Women”; a 1947 series of wooden sculptural figures based on Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales; a 1957 series of illustrations from the Bible for use in films; and posters, costume designs, and theater decorations executed in 1921 and 1922 for performances of Anderson’s tales at the Mayol Theater in Oslo.

Orla Muff died in the city of Copenhagen in December of 1984. A small collection of personal correspondence from Orla Muff to Dr. Raymond Piper, as well as a photo of the artist and photos of Muff’s artwork, can be found in the Special Collections of the University of West Georgia.

Notes: An extensive collection of Orla Muff’s illustrated postcards can be found at the Danish Postcard Artists site located at: https://www.piaper.dk/postkortkunstnere/Postkortkunstnere/Orla_Muff/Orla_Muff.htm

A collection of fifty-five images of Orla Muff’s music sheet covers is located at the online Illustrated Sheet Music site: https://www.imagesmusicales.be/search/illustrator/Muff/11874/ShowImages/80/Submit/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Orla Muff”, Date Unknown, Collection of the Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen

Second Insert Image: Orla Muff, Music Sheet Cover for “Smaragden”, Composer Einar Cronhammer, 1923

Third Insert Image: Orla Muff, Music Sheet Cover for “Han är Söt och Rar”, Composer Harald Mortensen, 1925

Bottom Insert Image: Orla Muff, Music Sheet Cover for “Femina”, Composer Sven Rüno, 1923

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.

John Kingsley Orton: “Ordinary Decent People”

Photographers Unknown, Parts and Pieces Making a Whole: Set Thirteen

Sir- As a playgoer of forty years standing, may I say that I heartily agree with Peter Pinnell in his condemnation of ‘Entertaining Mr Sloane’. I myself was nauseated by this endless parade of mental and physical perversion. And to be told that such a disgusting piece of filth now passes for humor! Today’s young playwrights take it upon themselves to flaunt their contempt for ordinary decent people. I hope that the ordinary decent people of this country will shortly strike back! Yours truly, Edna Welthorpe (Mrs)

—John Kingsley Orton, Letter Sent for Publication under the Alias of Edna Welthorpe

Born in Leicester, England in January of 1933, John Kingsley Orton, known under the pen name of Joe Orton, was a working-class, gay playwright whose outrageous black comedies shocked, outraged, and amused theatre audiences in the 1960s.

After attending secretarial classes at Clark’s College in Leicester from 1945 to 1947, Joe Orton worked as a junior clerk for three pounds a week. He began performing in theater productions beginning in 1949 and joined several groups, including the Leicester Dramatic Society. Orton was accepted for a scholarship at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in November of 1950; however, due to appendicitis, his entrance was delayed until May of 1951. It was at the Royal Academy that Orton met the seven-year older Kenneth Leith Halliwell, who also was a struggling actor and writer. After moving into a West Hampstead flat, they quickly formed a strong relationship and became lovers.

After graduation, Orton and Halliwell collaborated on writing several novels, which were unsuccessful at publishing. Due to a lack of serious work, they began to amuse themselves with pranks and hoaxes. From January 1959 to May of 1962, Orton and Halliwell removed books from several local public libraries and began to modify the blurbs and cover art. One volume of poetry by writer and broadcaster John Betjeman was found with a new dust jacket featuring a photograph of a nearly naked, tattooed middle-aged man. Discovered by the authorities in May of 1962 and later found guilty of five counts of theft and malicious damage to seventy books, the two men served six months in prison. A collection of these altered book covers are now housed in the Islington Local History Center.

In 1959, Joe Orton wrote his only novel, which was posthumously published as “Head to Toe”, and soon began to have success in his plays’ productions. His first play “Fred and Madge” was written in 1959; and “The Visitors” followed two years later. In 1963 the BBC purchased Orton’s radio play “The Ruffian on the Stair”, which was broadcast on August 31st of 1964 and, later in 1966, adapted as a stage play.

By the end of August, Orton had also completed his play “Entertaining Mr. Sloane”, which premiered on May 6th of 1964 to reviews which ranged from praise to outrage. Although it lost money on its short run, the play tied for first in the Variety Critics’ Poll for Best New Play, and Orton came second in the category for Most Promising Playwright. By 1965, “Entertaining Mr. Sloane” was being performed in Spain, Israel, Australia, and New York, as well as being adapted into both a film and television play.

Written between June and October of 1964, Joe Orton’s next play was “Loot”, a wild parody of detective fiction, which added the blackest farce and jabs at established ideas on death, the police, religion, and justice. It underwent sweeping rewrites before it was judged fit for the West End. “Loot” was first staged in London on September 27th of 1966 to rave reviews. In November the play moved to the Criterion Theater where it ran for three hundred forty-two performances, won several awards and firmly established Orton’s fame.

Orton, over the next ten months, revised his “The Ruffian on the Stair” and his “The Erpngham Camp” for the stage as a double play entitled “Crimes of Passion”. He also wrote his television play “Funeral Games”, the screenplay entitled “Up Against It” for the Beatles music group, and his final full-length play “What the Butler Saw”, a play of seduction, blackmail, and cross-dressing, which came to the West End stage in 1969, eighteen months after Orton’s death.

On the 9th of August of 1967, John Kingsley Orton was bludgeoned to death by Kenneth Halliwell at their home in Islington, London, killed by nine hammer blows to the head. Halliwell then committed suicide with an overdose of Nembutal. Later evidence showed that Orton had earlier confided to a friend that he wanted to end his relationship with Halliwell; and it also showed that Halliwell had spoken to his psychiatrist three times on the day of the murder. Halliwell had felt increasingly threatened and isolated by Orton’s success, and had come to rely on barbiturates and antidepressants. The bodies, along with Halliwell’s suicide note, were found on the morning of August 10th by a chauffeur who had arrived to transport Orton for a meeting in London.

The body of Joe Orton was brought into the chapel of London’s Golders Green Crematorium to a recording of the Beatles’ song “A Day in the Life”. Playwright and director Harold Pinter read the eulogy. After Orton’s cremation, his ashes and Halliwell’s ashes were mixed together and scattered in a section of the Garden of Remembrance at Golders Green; no marking memorial stone is erected there. A statue of Joe Orton was later installed in the city of Leicester and, in 1987, a film adaption of John Lahr’s 1978 biography of Orton was released under the title “Prick Up Your Ears”.

Note: For those interested in theater and gay history, an interesting article is Greg Buzwell’s 2019 “Homosexuality, Censorship, and British Drama During the 1950s and 1960s” located at the British Library site: https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/homosexuality-censorship-and-british-drama-during-the-1950s-and-1960s

Virgilio Pinera: “The Waves of Music We Made”

Photographers Unknown, The Waves of Music We Made

Can it be they are going to kill?
Will they pierce the heart with a huge knife?
And with the sharpest scalpel empty the eyes?
And with the steeliest chisel break the skull?
And with the most hammer of hammers crush the bones?

Can it be that on the exotic table
–table of sex, table of love–
my love, you and I,
being startled one night
your heart spoke
when you were under my blood?
Can it be the same as it was
when it was an oath, and even more so,
your work, your word bled,
soaked by the soft perfume of kisses,
so as not to deny, to be one indivisible?
And can it be so blindly believed,
so blindly, that all the suns go dark forever
while the soul travels in darkness?
Can it be there never was a soul despite the waves of music
we made?
Soul that never was though you might be for an instant?

Renenber that instant when you were a soul and adored
me,
and then your own monster came suddenly
to take you to the place where being you were?

Can it be that after you are no longer,
when not being is merely a mound of dried out kisses,
you wil be by not being, instead of being love?

Virgilio Pinera, Poem to be Said in the Midst of a Great Silence, The Weight of the Island, 1967

Born in Cárdenas, Matanzas, Cuba in 1912, Virgilio Piñera was an author, playwright, poet, and essayist known for his avant-garde work, caustic wit, acid tongue, and bohemian lifestyle. He lived under the dual repression of the Catholic church and reactionary government leaders such as Argentina’s Juan Perón and Cuba’s Fulgencio Batista. Piñera’s homosexuality and non-conformism led to his marginalization during a well-documented period of Cuban history when homophobia and petty bureaucracy stifled creative freedom

An avid reader from an early age, which included works by Marcel Proust and Herman Melville, Piñera drew his inspiration from different genres, a foundation which became fundamental to his distinctive work with its combination of Cuban vernacular and more refined language.At the age of thirteen, Piñera’s family moved to Camagüey, a municipality located in central Cuba, where he earned his high school diploma. After settling in Havana in 1938, he received his Doctoral Degree in philosophy from the University of Havana in 1949.

Piñera published in his poems in Havana’s literary magazine “Espuela de Plata” and, in 1941. wrote his first poetry collection, “Las Furias (The Furies)” and his most famous play “Electra Garrigó”, which featured the choral structure of a Greek tragedy alongside distinctive Cuban elements. Staged both before and after the revolution of Castro and Guevara, this play later became a powerful symbol of the Revolution and was consciously performed before foreign and notable public figures as being emblematic of the transformed nation.

Following his founding of the magazine “Poeta” in 1942, Piñera wrote his collection of poems entitled “La Isla en Peso (The Weight of the Island)”. Drawing upon episodes in his personal life as well as the social interactions occurring inside Cuba, he explored the nebulous regions between sadness and beauty, and disillusion and reality. Published posthumously after Piñera’ death in 1979, “The Weight of the Island” was initially scorned by some poets and critics; however, the collection is now regarded as one of the classics of Cuban literature.

In 1944, Virgilio Piñera, along with writer José Lezama Lima and editor and critic José Rodríguez Feo, founded the prestigious literary and arts review “Origenes”, which provided a focal point for promising poets and critics in Cuba during the 1940s and 1950s. The journal published short stories, poetry, and critical essays on art, literature, music and philosophy. Among Piñera’s contributions were several poems, an essay on Argentinian literature, and an 1945 essay entitled “El Secreto de Kafka”, a work in which Piñera developed his theory on the creation of images into a literary surprise.

Piñera lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for a twelve year period from 1946 to 1958; it was during this stay that he developed his voice as a writer. He worked as a translator and proofreader at the Cuban Embassy and became friends with writers Jorge Luis Borges and essayist José Bianco, who would write the forward to Piñera’s collection of short stories “El que Vina a Salvarme (The One Who Came to Save Me)”. Along with other writers, Piñera worked on the translation of Polish author Witold Gombrowicz’s 1937 controversial novel “Ferdydurke” into Spanish.

Virgilio Piñera wrote two plays in Buenos Aires, “Jesús” and “Falsa Alarma”, a fast paced, absurdist play of humor and anguish, to which he lengthened with dialogue for a later 1957 staging. His first novel, entitled “La Carne de René (René’s Flesh)”, was published in 1952 and told the dark story of a twenty-year old protagonist forced into a merciless life. After the closure of his literary review “Origenes” and the founding of his final magazine “Ciclón (Cyclone)”, Piñera left Argentina in 1958 to settle permanently in Cuba, where he arrived shortly before the Revolution. His work appeared in the newspaper “Revolución” and other numerous journals. In 1962, with the Cuban revolution in full motion, Piñera’s most autobiographical play, “Airo Frio (Cold Air)”, a very personal celebratory work supporting the ouster of dictator Batista’s police and army, opened in Havana.

Shortly after the opening of “Airo Frio”, Fidel Castro’s government made the decision that there was no room for any views other than those completely sympathetic to the Revolution. Intellectuals and other luminaries, as well as the religious and those youths not conforming to the revolution, were to face persecution. Virgilio Piñera, although never public about his homosexuality, was arrested under the revolutionary government’s clampdown on the prostitutes, pimps and homosexuals. By 1971, he was ostracized by the Cuban government and the literary establishment. As his career declined into obscurity. Piñera continued to write at n increased rate; however, his plays were no longer performed.

In 1968, Piñera received Latin America’s most prestigious literary prize, the Premio Casa de las Américas, for his play “Dos Viejos Pánicos (Two Old Panics)”. Despite the award and acclaim, the play would not have its first performance in Cuba until the 1990s. Leaving behind more than twenty plays, three novels, volumes of short stories and a vast number of poems, Virgilio Piñera, who lived the last years of his life in poverty, died of a cardiac arrest on the 18th of August in 1979, without any official recognition of his death. He is buried in his native town of Cárdenas.

As a way to redress some of the wrongs committed against Piñera in the past, Cuba declared the year 2012 as “El Añ0 Virgiliano”. In the month of June, a group of thirty researchers from countries, such as the United Kingdom, Mexico, Spain and the United States, came together in Havana to discuss the life, work and legacy of Virgilio Pañera, one of Latin America’s prominent writers. His two best known plays, “Airo Frio” and “Dos Viejos Pánicos”, were performed and a new ballet by choreographer Iván Tenorio, entitled “Virgiliando”, had its premiere.

Note: The University of Miami Libraries contains the digital Cuban Heritage Collection which includes material on Virgilio Piñera. Included in the material are correspondence exchanged between Piñera and Adolfo de Obieta during the 1940s and 1950s, as well as a typescript of Piñera’s play “Una Caja de Zapatos Vacía” that he sent to his friend Luis F. González-Cruz, who published it in Miami in 1986. This material can be found at: https://merrick.library.miami.edu/cdm/search?collection=chc5278