Calendar: February 10

Year: Day to Day Men: February 10

Bricks and Gecko

The tenth of February in 1939 marks the premiere of John Ford’s western film “Stagecoach” at the Lincoln Theatre in Miami Beach, Florida. The film was the first of many Westerns shot by director John Ford in Monument Valley, a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by its cluster of sandstone buttes. The site, considered sacred by its inhabitants, lies within the land of the Navajo Nation.

“Stagecoach” is Dudley Nichols’s adaptation of the 1937 short story,”The Stage to Lordsburg”, written by author Ernst Haycox, a prolific writer of Western fiction. The story follows a group of individuals, primarily strangers, who journey by stagecoach through dangerous territory ruled by Apache warriors. John Ford bought the rights to the story soon after its publication in Collier’s magazine. He presented the “Stagecoach” project to several studios in Hollywood. However, none were interested in a big-budget Western film or Ford’s placing B-film actor John Wayne in the lead role.

David O. Selznick, an independent producer with his own studio, Selznick International Pictures, agreed to finance the production of “Stagecoach”. However, he had doubts about the casting choices and was frustrated about Ford’s indecision on the initial date of shooting. Ford withdrew the film from Selznick and approached independent producer Walter Wanger about the project. Although he had reservations about the project, Wanger agreed to finance the project with a proviso. He would provide two hundred-fifty thousand dollars to finance the film. However, though Ford could still cast John Wayne in the film, he had to give the lead credit to Clair Trevor. an already established actress. 

At the time of the filming, Clair Trevor had already starred in twenty-nine films, often in the lead role or the role of the heroine. After her role in “Stagecoach”, Trevor would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the 1937 “Dead End” and win that award for her role in the 1948 “Key Largo”. John Wayne, however, had played leading roles throughout the 1930s in numerous B-movies, mostly Westerns, without achieving stardom. His role as the Ringo Kid in “Stagecoach” became the breakthrough role that began Wayne’s career as a  mainstream star. Over the course of his fifty year acting career, Wayne appeared in one hundred sixty-nine feature films and numerous documentary and television appearances. 

The film’s  supporting cast included such experienced actors as stage and screen actor John Carradine; radio and character actor Andy Devine; Thomas Mitchell, the first male actor to gain the Triple Crown of Acting- an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony Award; theatrical actress Louise Platt; stage and film actor Donald Meek; and established western film stars Tom Tyler and Tim Holt. 

Ford’s “Stagecoach” was first released in Los Angeles on the second of February in 1939. It opened in Miami Beach on the tenth of February and had its nationwide release on the third of March in 1939. Met with immediate critical praise, the film is considered one of the most influential films ever made. The roles presented in “Stagecoach” have become archetypical characters for the Western film genre.  In 1995, the United States Library of Congress considered “Stagecoach” to be culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant for preservation in the National Film Registry.  

Ian Rank-Broadley

Ian Rank-Broadley, “Heroic Torso”, Bronze, Size 1.5 m, Edition of 3

Ian Ramk-Broadley is a British sculptor, one of Britain’s foremost medallic artists.  His effigy of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II appears on all UK and Commonwealth coinage since 1998. He has recently completed work on one of the most important war memorials since WWII, the Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. .

The “Heroic Torso”, cast from bronze,  was inspired by Classical fragments but given a contemporary twist. The lizard attempts to conceal the maleness of the figure, and yet becomes the focus. This edition of the sculpture is in a private collection.

Calendar: February 9

Year: Day to Day Men: February 9

The Tufted Red Bench

The ninth of February in 1912 marks the birth date of Futabayama Sadaji, a Japanese professional sumo wrestler from the Oita Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū. He entered sumo in 1927 and became, from 1937 until he retired in 1945, the sport’s thirty-fifth yokozuna, a person of sumo’s highest rank. Futabayama won twelve yūshō, top division championships, and won sixty-nine consecutive bouts, an all-time record.

Born Akiyoshi Sadaji, Futabayama worked as a young boy on fishing boats. At the age of fifteen, he was recruitedin March of 1927 by the Tatsunami stable, one of the most prestigious in sumo. Futabayama entered the top makuuchi division at the beginning of 1932. The makuuchi is the top division of six divisions in sumo and is fixed at forty-two wrestlers ordered into five ranks according to their performance in previous tournaments. After many top division wrestlers went on strike, Futabayama was promoted from the middle of the second-ranked division, jūryō, to maegashira 4, a listing that placed him into the lowest rank of the top makuuchi division. He finished as runner-up in his second top-division tournament, proving himself worthy of his promotion.

Futabayama Sadaji is known for achieving the longest run of consecutive victories in sumo, sixty-nine victories over a period of three years, a record still standing as of 2020. This was a major achievement as a match may only last a few seconds and a wrestler’s concentration must constantly be at its highest level. During those three years, Futabayama was awarded increasingly higher rankings and finally achieved the ranking of yokozuna. On the third of January in 1939, he was finally defeated by maegashira Akinoumi Setsuo, a professional sumo wrestler from Hiroshima.

Futabayama won a total of twelve championships at a time when there were two tournaments held each year. He held the record until the number of tournaments per year were increased to six in the 1950s. Futabayama left the June 1945 tournament held in the bomb-damaged city of Kokugikan after the first day. He did not participate in the November 1945 tournament but, while attending it, announced his retirement. Futabayama had made the decision to retire a year earlier after suffering a loss to Azumafuji Kin’ichi, a sumo wrestler from Taitō, Tokyo. After his retirement, Futabayama’s victories were considered more remarkable as he revealed that he was blind in one eye.

In 1941, Futabayama Sadaji became the head of his own stable, the Futabayama Dojo, while he was still an active wrestler. Upon his retirement, he adopted the Tokitsukaze elder name and renamed his heya, Tokitsukaze stable. It became by the 1950s one of sumo’s largest stables and the source of many strong wrestlers. Futabayama was chairman of the Japan Sumo Association from 1957 and remained in charge of his stable until his death from hepatitis in December of 1968 at the age of fifty-six. 

Notes: At 1.79 meters (5 feet 10 inches) and 128 kilograms (282 pounds), Futabayama was known for his exceptional tactics in the tachi-ai, the initial phase of the sumo match. He was an expert at the gonosen no tachi-ai, the immediate countering of an opponent’s charge. Futabayama had excellent balance and was feared for his uwatenage, or overarm throw.

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Futabayama Sadaji Performing the Yokosuna Dohyō, the Ring-Entering Ceremony”, Date Unknown, Vintage Print

Ubaldo Gandolfi

Ubaldo Gandolfi, “Mercury About to Behead Argus”, 1770-1775, Oil on Canvas, 218.8 x 136.8 cm, North Carolina Museum of Art

The Gandolfi family—Ubaldo, his brother Gaetano, and his nephew Mauro—were the last great painters of the Bolognese school, which rose to international prominence at the end of the sixteenth century. The confident understanding of human anatomy demonstrated in these paintings reveals Ubaldo’s debt to the Bolognese tradition, which was firmly based on drawing from live models.

Commissioned to adorn the walls of the Marescalchi family’s palace in Bologna, this and a companion painting in the North Carolina Museum of Art collection originally formed part of a series of six works illustrating classical myths. Io was a beautiful princess seduced by Jupiter, king of the gods. To conceal his infidelity from his wife, Juno, Jupiter changed Io into a white heifer. Suspicious, Juno cunningly asked for the heifer as a gift, a request that Jupiter could not very well refuse. His wife placed the heifer under the guard of the hundred-eyed giant Argus (whom Gandolfi wisely decided to depict with only two eyes). Sent by Jupiter to recover Io, Mercury lulled Argus to sleep with music and then cut off the giant’s head.

The two paintings illustrate consecutive moments in the story. In the companion painting, Mercury, wearing a winged cap and winged ankle bracelets, puts Argus to sleep by playing his flute. Here, Gandolfi represents the imminent dispatch of Argus with a touch of humor, as Mercury gestures for the viewer to be quiet so as not to wake the sleeping giant.

Carlos Soto

Carlos Soto, “Libertad”, Linocut

Carlos Soto is a New York-based artist. Soto is a theatre maker, performer and designer concerned with the body as a site in which narrative threads of the personal, sexual, social and political become knotted; focusing on the poetics of the moving body and its opposition to language; broaching the unspeakable: absence, solitude, the monstrous, anger, horror and pleasure.

Calendar: February 8

Year: Day to Day Men: February 8

Spring’s in the Air

The eighth day of February in 1865 marks the day the House and Senate of the State of Delaware declared their unqualified disapproval of the 13th Amendment which would have abolished slavery in all the states. Despite Governor William Cannon’s recommendation for its passage, the House and Senate refused to adopt and ratify it as it was ‘contrary to the principles upon which the government was framed’.

Delaware was a slave state on the Mason-Dixon Line. This demarcation line was part of a resolution to end the border dispute between Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia which was part of Virginia until 1863. Drawn between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, it separated those states and established part of their borders. The largest portion of the line, along the southern Pennsylvania border, became informally known as the boundary between the Southern slave states and the Northern free states. 

All efforts to abolish slavery in Delaware prior to the Civil War failed due to a few politically influential Delawareans who were slave owners. As the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation only liberated slaves in the Confederate States, President Abraham Lincoln knew that an amendment to the Constitution was needed to totally abolish slavery in all the states. Thus, the proposal of the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. 

Governor William Cannon sent the 13th Amendment to the General Assembly on the seventh of February with a recommendation of approval. This occurred two months before the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. The Delaware House and Senate refused passage. Even after the end of the Civil War, Delaware took no action to make slavery unlawful. Slaves in Delaware remained in bondage until the sixth of December in 1865, when the 13th Amendment was ratified without Delaware’s approval.

In early January of 1867, the newly elected Delaware Governor Gove Saulsbury lamented, during his address to the General Assembly, the ratification of the 13th Amendment. On the sixteenth of January, the General Assembly was presented with the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. This would provide due process, equal protection, and the counting of formerly enslaved people as full persons under the law. Since the 1787 Constitutional Convention, only three out of every five slaves were counted to determine a state’s total population for taxation and legislative representation. 

On the sixth of February in 1867, the Delaware House of Representatives rejected the proposed 14th Amendment using the same language as their previous refusal for the 13th Amendment. The 14th Amendment was ratified on the ninth of July in 1868 without Delaware’s acceptance. The last of the three post-Civil War Racial Justice Amendments was the 15th Amendment which gave Black males the right to vote. Again, the Delaware General Assembly refused ratification. This Amendment was declared part of the U. S. Constitution on the third of February in 1870 without Delaware’s approval.

In January of 1901, the new Governor John Hunn called for the General Assembly to dismantle laws passed after the Civil War that impeded voting including the poll tax on voter registration. On the thirty-first of January and the sixth of February in 1901, the Delaware General Assembly dismantled previous restrictive laws and passed a joint resolution which ratified the 13th, 14th and 15th civil rights Amendments of the 1860s.