Calendar: April 16

A Year: Day to Day Men: 16th of April

The Serpent

April 16, 1932 was the release date of the Laurel and Hardy short film “The Music Box”.

“The Music Box” was produced by Hal Roach and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It starred Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as delivery men attempting to deliver an upright piano up a long flight of outdoor stairs. This film won the first Academy Award for Live Action Short Comedy Film in 1932.

The stairs, which were the focal point of the movie was a steep climb of 133 steps with multiple landings. They still exist in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles, near the now Laurel and Hardy Park. The steps are a public staircase which connects Vendome Street at the base of the hill with Descanso Drive at the top of the hill. In the film, the duo of Laurel and Hardy make four attempts to get the piano to the top of the stairs. Each of the first three attempts the piano winds up rolling down the staircase. On the fourth attempt, they succeed only to find out from the local postman that they could have driven their truck up a road to the front of the house. Dutifully they carry the piano down the stairs, put it in the truck and drive it up to the house.

Hal Roach Studios colorized “The Music Box” in 1986 with a remastered stereo soundtrack featuring the Hal Roach Studios incidental stock music score conducted by Ronnie Hazelhurst. In 1997, this film was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Note; As a great fan of the old comedy team of Laurel and Hardy, two films stand out in my memory. The second film is “Sons of the Desert” in which the duo, after telling their wives that they are taking a cruise for Oliver’s health, sneak off to attend a fraternal lodge convention. While having a good time, their supposed cruise ship sinks and they are assumed dead. The rainy night scene when they are hiding from their wives in Oliver’s house attic is great. However, the film that I rank at the top of that list is “The Music Box”; its stairway struggle in this film is a comedy classic that has endured for eighty six years. A must see.

Calendar: April 15

A Year: Day to Day Men: 15th of April, Solar Year 2018

A Dash of Gray

Thomas Hart Benton, the American painter and muralist, was born on April 15, 1889, in Neosho, Missouri.

in 1907 Thomas Hart Benton enrolled at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Two years later, he moved to Paris in 1909 to continue his art education at the Académie Julian. In Paris, Benton met other North American artists, such as the Mexican Diego Rivera and Stanton Macdonald-Wright, an advocate of Synchromism.

On Benton’s return to New York in the early 1920s, Benton declared himself an “enemy of modernism”; he began the naturalistic and representational work today known as Regionalism. He expanded the scale of his Regionalist works, culminating in his “America Today” murals at the New School for Social Research in 1930-31. In 1984 the murals were purchased and restored by AXA Equitable to hang in the lobby of the AXA Equitable Tower at 1290 Sixth Avenue in New York City; in 2012 the murals were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1935, Benton settled in Kansas City, Missouri, and accepted a teaching job at the Kansas City Art Institute. This base afforded Benton greater access to rural America, which was changing rapidly. Because of his Populist political upbringing, Benton’s sympathy was with the working class and the small farmer, unable to gain material advantage despite the Industrial Revolution. His works often show the melancholy, desperation and beauty of small-town life.

In the late 1930s, he created some of his best-known work, including the allegorical nude “Persephone”. It was considered scandalous by the Kansas City Art Institute, and was borrowed by the showman Billy Rose, who hung it in his New York nightclub, the Diamond Horseshoe. It is now held by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

Benton taught at the Art Students League of New York from 1926 to 1935 and at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1935 to 1941. His most famous student, Jackson Pollock, whom he mentored in the Art Students League, founded the Abstract Expressionist movement. Benton’s students in New York and Kansas City included many painters who contributed significantly to American art: Pollock’s brother Charles Pollock, Frederic James, Reginald Marsh, Margot Peet, Jackson Lee Nesbitt, and Glenn Gant.

Calendar: April 14

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

A Man of Distinction

On April 14, 1865, the U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army, ending the American Civil War.

In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, John Wilkes Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy. Learning that Lincoln was to attend a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater on April 14, Booth masterminded the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his conspirators hoped to throw the U.S. government into disarray.

On the evening of April 14, conspirator Lewis T. Powell burst into Secretary of State Seward’s home, seriously wounding him and three others, while George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Vice President Johnson, lost his nerve and fled. Meanwhile, just after 10 p.m., Booth entered Lincoln’s private theater box unnoticed and shot the president with a single bullet in the back of his head. Slashing an army officer who rushed at him, Booth leapt to the stage and shouted “Sic semper tyrannis! –the South is avenged!” Although Booth broke his leg jumping from Lincoln’s box, he managed to escape Washington on horseback.

The president, mortally wounded, was carried to a lodging house opposite Ford’s Theater. About 7:22 a.m. the next morning, Lincoln, age 56, died–the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Booth, pursued by the army and other secret forces, was finally cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and died from a possibly self-inflicted bullet wound as the barn was burned to the ground. Of the eight other people eventually charged with the conspiracy, four were hanged and four were jailed.

On April 18, Lincoln’s body was carried to the Capitol rotunda to lay in state on a catafalque. Three days later, his remains were boarded onto a train that conveyed him to Springfield, Illinois, where he had lived before becoming president. Tens of thousands of Americans lined the railroad route and paid their respects to their fallen leader during the train’s solemn progression through the North. Lincoln and his son, Willie, who died in the White House of typhoid fever in 1862, were interred on May 4, 1865, at Oak Ridge Cemetery near Springfield.

Calendar: April 13

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

Parallel Bands of Teal

April 13, 1957 was the release date of the courtroom drama “12 Angry Men”.

The American film and television writer Reginald Rose’s screenplay for “12 Angry Men” was initially produced for television with Robert Cummings as Juror 8, the only one not voting with the majority. This teleplay was broadcast live on the CBS program Studio One in September of 1954. The success of this production resulted in a film adaption. Sidney Lumet, who produced dramatic productions for The Alcoa Hour and Studio One, was recruited by the producers Henry Fonda and Reginald Rose to direct. “12 Angry Men” was Sidney Lumet’s first feature film.

This trial film tells the story of a jury made up of 12 men as they deliberate the guilt or acquittal of a defendant on the basis of reasonable doubt, forcing the jurors to question their morals and values. In the United States, a verdict in most criminal trials by jury must be unanimous. The film is notable for its almost exclusive use of one set: out of 96 minutes of run time, only three minutes take place outside of the jury room.

The film explores many techniques of consensus-building and the difficulties encountered in the process among a group of men whose range of personalities adds intensity and conflict. It also explores the power one man has to elicit change. No names are used in the film; the jury members are identified by number. The defendant is referred to as “the boy” and the witnesses as “the old man” and “the lady across the street”. The film forces the characters and audience to evaluate their own self-image through observing the personality, experiences, and actions of the jurors.

At the beginning of the film, the cameras are positioned above eye level and mounted with wide-angle lens, to give the appearance of greater depth between subjects, but as the film progresses the focal length of the lenses is gradually increased. By the end of the film, nearly everyone is shown in closeup, using telephoto lenses from a lower angle, which decreases or “shortens” depth of field. Sidney Lumet stated that his intention in using these techniques with cinematographer Boris Kaufman was to create a nearly palpable claustrophobia.

In 2007 the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. The American Film Institute selected it as the second-best courtroom drama ever in their Top 10 List. The AFI also named Juror 8, played by Henry Fonda, in their list of 50 greatest movie heroes of the 20th century.

Calendar: April 12

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

Bruno in the Half-Light

April 12, 1484 was the birthdate of the Italian architect, Antonio de Sangallo the Younger.

Antonio Sangallo was born into a family of artists; his grandfather Vrancesco Giamberti was a woodworker, and his uncles Giuliano and Antonnio de Sangallo were noted architects of the time. The young Sangallo followed his uncles to Rome to pursue a career in architecture; he quickly became an apprentice under Donato Bramante, who introduced Renaissance architecture to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rome.

Sangallo eventually drew the attention of the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (who would later become the Pope Paul III), from whom he received a number of commissions. He designed for the Farnese family the Palace on the Piazza Farnese and the Church of Santa Maria Maddalena in the town of Gradoli. He also designed fortifications for Capo di Monte and Caprarola, which became the Farnese’s country estate.

He was one of several artists hired to design the Villa Madama by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, the future Pope Clement VII, becoming personally responsible for the final design of the building itself. Through these projects, Sangallo acquired the reputation of a master architect in the city of Rome. When his teacher Bramante died in 1514, Sangallo, along with Raphael and Giovanni Giocondo, was appointed to oversee the construction of Saint Peter’s Basilica by Pope Leo X. Sangallo was hired extensively by Leo X, not only as an architect, but also as an engineer tasked to restore and save a number of buildings.

Sangallo had maintained a good relationship with the popes, and thus was constantly involved in the designing and building process of Saint Peter’s Basilica from 1513 until at least 1536. As “capomaestro”, he was in charge of the day-to-day construction on the basilica for many years. He also created a design for the basilica, of which a wooden model exists today.

Sangallo was also a noted military architect, working on the fortifications of numerous cities such as Parma, Placenza and Ancona. In Orvieto, he was also tasked by Pope Clement VII with building a well, called Saint Patrick’s Well, noted as a marvel of engineering. Its double helix ramps around a central open shaft allowed oxen carrying water to go down via one of the ramps and up via the other without having to turn around; despite its 175-foot depth, the ramps are well lit through windows cut into the center section.

Calendar: April 11

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

A Hurried Pace

April 11, 1869 was the birthdate of Adolf Gustav Thorsen, the Norwegian sculptor.

Gustav Thorsen was sent to Oslo as a youth to learn wood carving at a local school. However, the sudden death of his father compelled him to move back to Mandal, his birthplace, to help his family. Thorsen later lived for a time with his grandparents on a farm in Vigeland. He returned to Oslo in 1888, this time determined to be a professional sculptor.

In the late 1880s, Thorsen adopted adopted the new family surname, ’Vigeland’, from the area where he and his grandparents had lived. He came to the attention of sculptor Brynjulf Bergslien, who supported him and gave him practical training. In 1889 Gustav Vigeland exhibited his first work, “Hagar and Ishmael”.

Gustav Vigeland spent the years 1891 to 1896 in several voyages abroad, which included periods at Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin and Florence. He frequented Auguste Rodin’s workshop in the French capital and experimented with ancient and Renaissance artworks in Italy. In these years the themes that would later dominate Vigeland’s inspiration, death and the relationship between man and woman, first appeared. He held his first personal exhibitions in Norway in 1894 and 1896, which received notable critical praise. By 1905 Vigeland was considered the most talented Norwegian sculptor and received numerous commissions for statues and busts of renowned compatriots.

In 1906 Vigeland proposed a chalk model for a monumental fountain. Initially, the idea of the Oslo municipality was to put the fountain in Eidsvolis Plass, the square in front of the Parliament of Norway. Vigeland’s work was generally welcomed, but the location created a dispute and the completion of the work was postponed. In the meantime He enlarged the original project plans, adding several sculpture groups and a high granite column in 1919.

Gustav Vigeland moved to his new studio on Nobels gate in the borough of Frogner during 1924. The studio was located in the vicinity of Frogner Park, which he had chosen as the definitive location for his fountain. Over the following twenty years, Vigeland was devoted to the project of an open exhibition of his works, which becam what is now known as Vigeland Sculpture Arrangement (Vigelandsanlegget) in Frogner Park. The Vigeland installation features 212 bronze and granite sculptures all designed by Gustav Vigeland. The sculptures culminate in the famous Monolith with its 121 figures struggling to reach the top of the sculpture.

Calendar: April 10

A Year: Day to Day Men: 10th of April

In Cool Water

Mount Tambora’s eruptions reached a violent climax on April 10, 1815.

Mount Tambora is on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia. It experienced several centuries of dormancy before 1815, caused by the gradual cooling of the hydrous magma in its closed magma chamber. During this cooling, crystallization of the magma occurred. resulting in an over-pressurization of the chamber and a rising of the temperature. In 1812, the volcano began to rumble and generated a dark cloud.

On the 5th of April in 1815, a very large eruption occurred, followed by thunderous detonation sounds heard in Makassar on Sulawesi 240 miles away, and as far as Ternate on the Molucca Islands 870 miles away. On the morning of April 6, volcanic ash began to fall in East Java with faint detonation sounds lasting until the 10th of April. Detonation sounds were heard on April 10th at Sumatra, more than 1,600 miles away.

At about 7 pm on April 10th, the eruptions intensified. Three columns of flame rose up and merged. The whole mountain was turned into a flowing mass of “liquid fire”. Pumice stones of up to 8 inches in diameter started to rain down around 8 pm, followed by ash at around 9–10 pm. Pyroclastic flows cascaded down the mountain to the sea on all sides of the peninsula, wiping out the village of Tambora. Loud explosions were heard until the next evening, April 11. The ash veil spread as far as West Java and South Sulawesi.

The explosion had an estimated Volcanic Explosivity Index of 7 (on a scale of 0 to 8) making it one of the most powerful in recorded history. An estimated 10 cubic miles of pyroclastic rock were ejected, weighting about 10 billion tons. This left a caldera measuring about four miles across and 2,300 feet deep. Before the explosion, Mount Tambora’s peak elevation was about 14,100 feet, making it one of the tallest peaks in the Indonesian archipelago. After the explosion, its peak elevation had dropped to 9,354 feet, about two thirds of its previous height.

The 1855 Zollinger report puts the number of direct deaths at 10,000, probably caused by pyroclastic flows. On Sumbawa island, 38,000 people starved to death; on Lombok island about 10,000 people died from disease and hunger. However, other journal reports put the combined deaths from volcanic activity and from post-eruption famine and epidemic diseases higher at 70,000 to 100,000 people. The ash from the eruption dispersed around the world, lowering global temperatures and triggering harvest failures.

Calendar: April 9

A Year: Day to Day Men: 9th of April

A Giant Among Men

On April 9, 1928, the play “Diamond Lil”, written by and starring Mae West, opened in New York City.

Mae West began writing began writing her risqué plays using the pen name Jane Mast. Her first starring role on Broadway was in a 1926 play she entitled “Sex”, which she wrote, produced, and directed. Although conservative critics panned the show, ticket sales were strong. The production did not go over well with city officials, who had received complaints from some religious groups, and the theater was raided. West was arrested along with the rest of the cast. She was taken to the Jefferson Market Court House, where she was prosecuted on morals charges, and on April 19, 1927, was sentenced to 10 days for “corrupting the morals of youth”.

Though Mae West could have paid a fine and been left off, she chose the jail sentence for the publicity it would garner. While incarcerated on Welfare Island, she dined with the warden and his wife. West told reporters that she had worn her silk panties while serving time, in lieu of the ‘burlap’ the other girls had to wear. She achieved publicity from this jail stint. West served eight days with two days off for “good behavior”. Media attention surrounding the incident enhanced her career, by crowning her the darling “bad girl” who “had climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong”

West’s next play, “The Drag”, dealt with homosexuality, and was what West called one of her “comedy-dramas of life”. After a series of try-outs in Connecticut and New Jersey, she announced she would open the play in New York. However, “The Drag” never opened on Broadway due to efforts by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice to ban any attempt by West to stage it. West explained, “the city fathers begged me not to bring the show to New York because they were not equipped to handle the commotion it would cause.” West was an early supporter of the women’s liberation movement; since the 1920’s she was also an early supporter of gay rights.

Mae West continued to write plays, which included “The Wicked Age”, “Pleasure Man”, and “The Constant Sinner”. Her productions aroused controversy, which ensured that she stayed in the news, which also often resulted in packed houses at her performances. West’s 1928 play, “Diamond Lil”, was about a racy, easygoing, and ultimately very smart lady of the 1890s. It opened on April 9th, became a Broadway hit, and cemented West’s image in the public’s eye. This show had an enduring popularity and she successfully revived it many times throughout the course of her career.

Calendar: April 8

A Year: Day to Day Men: 8th of April

The Thrill of a New Day

The Greek statue Aphrodite of Milos, known as the Venus de Milo, is discovered on April 8, 1820.

The Venus de Milo is an ancient Greek marble statue believed to depict the goddess Aphrodite. It was initially attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles; however, from an inscription on its base, it is now thought to be sculpted by Alexandros of Antioch, a wandering artist who worked on commission. Created between 130-100 BC, it is slightly larger than life and widely known for the mystery of her missing arms. The goddess originally wore metal jewelry — bracelet, earrings, and headband — of which only the fixation holes remain.

The Venus statue is generally asserted as being discovered by Yorgos Kentrotas on April 8, 1820, inside a buried niche within the ancient city ruins of Milos on the island of Milos in the Aegean Sea, which at that time was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The statue was found in two large pieces (the upper torso and the lower draped legs) along with serveral pillars topped with sculpted heads, fragments of the upper left arm and the left hand holding an apple, and an inscribed plinth. Part of an arm and the original plinth was lost following the discovery.

In 1871, during the Paris Commune uprising, many public buildings were burned. The Venus de Milo statue was secreted out of the Louvre Museum in an oak crate and hidden in the basement of Prefecture of Police. Though the Prefecture was burned, the statue survived undamaged.

In the autumn of 1939, the Venus was packed for removal from the Louvre in anticipation of the outbreak of war. Scenery trucks from the theater Comédie-Française transported the Louvre’s masterpieces to safer locations in the French countryside. During World War II, the statue was sheltered safely in the Chateau de Valençay in the province of Berry, along with the two other sculptures, “Winged Victory of Samothrace” and Michelangelo’s “Slaves”.

When the discoverer, the farmer Yorgos Kentrotas, called upon a French naval officer to help him unearth the sculpture, it began a chain of events that eventually involved the Marquis de Rivière who presented the Venus de Milo to Louis XVIII, The king donated the sculpture to the Louvre the following year 1821 where this statue, a traditional example of Hellenistic sculpture, is on permanent display at the Louvre.

Calendar: April 7

A Year: Day to Day Men: 7th of April

A Casual Pose

On April 7, 1939 David Frost, the journalist and writer, was born in Tenterdon, England.

David Frost was chosen by writer and producer Ned Sherrin to host the satirical program “That Was the Week That Was” (TW3) after Frost’s flatmate John Bird suggested Sherrin should see Frost’s cabaret act at The Blue Angel nightclub. The series, which ran for less than 18 months during 1962–63, was part of the satire boom in early 1960s Britain and became a popular program.

In 1968 Frost signed a contract worth £125,000 to appear on American television in his own show on three evenings each week, the largest such arrangement for a British television personality at the time. From 1969 to 1972, hosted “The David Frost Show” on the Group W (U.S. Westinghouse Corporation) television stations in the United States. Throughout the years of his show, David Frost, known for his personalized style of interviews, spoke with such personalities as Jack Benny, Tennessee Williams, and Muhammad Ali; he was also the last person to interview Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah of Iran following the 1979 Iranian revolution.

In 1977 “The Nixon Interviews”, a series of five 90-minute interviews with former US President Richard Nixon, were broadcast. Nixon was paid $600,000 plus a share of the profits for the interviews, which had to be funded by Frost himself after the US television networks turned down the program, describing it as “checkbook journalism”. Frost’s company negotiated its own deals to syndicate the interviews with local stations across the US and internationally, creating what filmmaker Ron Howard described as “the first fourth network.”

For the show, David Frost taped around 29 hours of interviews with Nixon over a period of four weeks. Nixon, who had previously avoided discussing his role in the watergate scandal which had led to his resignation as President in 1974, expressed contrition saying “I let the American people down and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life”.

David Frost was the only person to have interviewed all eight British Prime Ministers serving between 1964 and 2014 and all seven US Presidents in office between 1969 and 2008. He was very active with the Alzheimer’s Research Trust and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. His conversations with Nixon became the subject of Ron Howard’s 2008 film “Frost/Nixon”, nominated for five Golden Globes and for five Academy Awards. David Frost died on August 31, 2013 at the age of 74 on board the cruise ship MS Queen Elizabeth, on which he was engaged as a speaker. His memorial stone is in Poet’s Corner of the Westminster Abbey for his contribution to British culture.

Calendar: April 6

A Year: Day to Day Men: 6th of April

Wet and Heated by the Sun

On April 6, 1906 the first drawn animation film is copyrighted by J. Stuart Blackton.

J. Stuart Blackton was an Anglo-American filmmaker, co-founder of the Vitagraph Studios and one of the first to use animation in his films. ”The Enchanted Drawing” in 1900 is considered to be the first film recorded on standard picture film that included some sequences that are sometimes regarded as animation. It shows Blackton doing some “lightning sketches” of a face, cigars, a bottle of wine and a glass. The face changes expression when Blackton pours some wine into the face’s mouth and takes his cigar.

The technique used in this film was basically the substitution splice: the single change to scenes was that a drawing was replaced by a similar drawing with a different facial expression (or a drawn bottle and glass were replaced by real objects). Thus the effect is not considered animation.

Blackton’s 1906 film “Humorous Phases of Funny Faces” is often regarded as the oldest known drawn animation on standard film. He later copyrighted this film on April 6 in 1908. It features a sequence made with blackboard drawings that are changed between frames to show two faces changing expressions and some billowing cigar smoke, as well as two sequences that feature cutout animation.

Blackton’s “The Haunted Hotel” in 1907 featured a combination of live-action with practical special effects and stop-motion animation of objects, a puppet and a model of the haunted hotel. It was the first stop-motion film to receive wide scale appreciation. Especially a large close-up view of a table being set by itself baffled viewers; there were no visible wires or other noticeable well-known tricks. This inspired other filmmakers, including French animator Émile Cohl and Segundo de Chomón, to work with the new technique. De Chomón would release the similar “House of Ghosts” and “El Hotel Electrico” in 1908.

J Stuart Blackton left Vitagraph to go independent in 1917, but returned in 1923 as junior partner to Albert Smith. In 1925, Smith sold the company to Warner Brothers for a comfortable profit. Blackton did quite well with his share until the stock market crash in 1929, which destroyed his savings. He spent his last years on the road, showing his old films and lecturing about the days of silent movies. Blackton died August 13, 1941, a few days after he was hit by a car while crossing the street with his son. At the time of his death he was working for Hal Roach on experiments to improve color process backgrounds.

Calendar: April 5

A Year: Day to Day Men: 5th of April

Just Out of the Pool

On April 5, 1895, Oscar Wilde loses the libel case against the Marquess of Queensbury who accuse him of homosexual practices.

Oscar Wilde’s experience with the English legal system was calamitous given the judicial nature of his oppression. In Wilde’s case, there were three trials. The Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde’s young lover Bosie, had accused Wilde of ‘posing as a sodomite’. The Marquess of Queensbury had chased around London confronting Wilde at his home and elsewhere until the writer was driven to fight back. The form that Wilde’s retaliation took was disastrous for Wilde. He initiated Queensberry’s prosecution for criminal libel but abandoned the case when evidence incriminating him made defeat certain. It was a humiliating reversal and led to his own prosecution.

Wilde’s own performance as a witness was sparkling at first, but then not truthful. He should never have started legal proceedings, but was essentially forced into it. He couldn’t live in peace in England without rebutting Queensberry; but he was unable to rebut him. He was indeed a ‘sodomite’, and pretending to be otherwise to defeat his enemy was bound to end in failure. Trapped whichever way he turned, he chose the path of attack and was floored.

In the second and third trials, Wilde resisted charges of gross indecency. He lied about his relations with rent boys, and pleaded not guilty though he knew that he had broken the law. This led to dishonesty of presentation. The second trial ended inconclusively, the jury unable to decide on Wilde’s guilt; at the third trial the jury showed no such uncertainty and convicted him. Wilde was sentenced to two years’ hard labour, ‘hardly sufficient’, according to the judge, ‘given the seriousness of his crime’.

On his release, he went into exile and wrote nothing else of any real value. During the course of the trials, Wilde was cross-examined about his work. Asked to defend it against a charge of immorality, he insisted that art was without any ethical content. Lying about his intimacy with male prostitutes, he also misrepresented literature’s intimacy with moral discourse. His responses first entertained and then provoked, but did not educate the court; his evidence was not a lesson. It backfired, injuring him rather than the prosecution.

Wilde’s trials point to a certain connection between literary censorship and sexual oppression. Sexuality is a form of self-expression and is thus analogous to literary creativity. One might even say that our sexuality makes artists of us all. As defendant, Wilde was thus doubly, and most inclusively, representative of writers, certainly, but more widely, of everyone whose private life the State attempts to regulate.

Calendar: April 4

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

Vik in Soapsuds

April 4, 1932 was the birthdate of the American actor and singer, Anthony Perkins.

Anthony Perkins was born in New York City, the son of stage and film actor Osgood Perkins and his wife Janet Esslstyn. He was a descendant of a Mayflower passenger John Howland, who was first an indentured servant and later personal secretary to Governor John Carver of the Plymouth Colony.

Anthony Perkins received a lot of attention for his role in the film “Friendly Persuasion”, playing the son of Gary Cooper under the direction of William Wyler. The film was very successful and he received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year-Actor and an Academy Award nomination. A life member of the Actors Studio, Perkins also acted in theater. In 1958 he was nominated for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in “Look Homeward, Angel” on Broadway. He played the role of Eugene Gant.

Perkins in youth had a boyish, earnest quality, reminiscent of the young James Stewart, which Alfred Hitchcock exploited and subverted when the actor starred as Norman Bates in the 1960 film “Psycho”. The film was a critical and commercial success, and gained Perkins international fame for his performance as the homicidal owner of the Bates Motel. His performance gained him the Best Actor Award from the International Board of Motion Picture Reviewers. The role and its multiple sequels affected the remainder of his career.

“Not many people know this, but I was in New York rehearsing for a play when the shower scene was filmed in Hollywood. It is rather strange to go through life being identified with this sequence knowing that it was my double. Actually, the first time I saw Psycho and that shower scene was at the studio. I found it really scary. I was just as frightened as anybody else. Working on the picture, though, was one of the happiest filming experiences of my life. We had fun making it – never realizing the impact it would have.” – Anthony Perkins on playing Norman Bates in “Psycho”

Calendar: April 3

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

The Railroad Yard

On April 3, 1882, Jesse Woodson James was shot in the back of the head at his home.

After the failed bank robbery of the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, on September 7, 1876, only Jesse and Frank James remained alive and free, escaping to Missouri. Later in 1876 Jesse and Frank surfaced in the Nashville, Tennessee, area using the names Thomas Howard and B.J. Woodson, respectively. Frank seemed to settle down, but Jesse recruited a new gang, leading them on a spree of crimes. A law enforcement posse attacked and killed two of the outlaws but failed to capture the entire gang.

By 1881, with the local Tennessee authorities getting closer, Frank and Jesse James returned to Missouri. James moved his family to Saint Joseph, Missouri, in November 1881, not far from his birthplace. Frank made the decision to head east and settle in Virginia. Both intended to give up crime.

With his gang nearly annihilated, Jesse James trusted only the Ford brothers, Charley and Robert. For protection, he asked the Ford brothers to move in with him and his family. By that time, Robert Ford had already conducted secret negotiations with Missouri Governor Crittenden to bring Jesse in and secure the $5000 bounty reward from the railroad.

On April 3, 1882, after eating breakfast, the Ford brothers and Jesse went into the living room before traveling to a planned robbery. Jesse had learned from a newspaper of one of his gang members who was captured and had confessed to a murder. Jesse was suspicious that the Fords did not mention the news; but he did not confront them. Robert Ford believed that Jesse James had realized the Fords were about to betray him. When Jesse turned his back to them, Robert Ford drew his weapon, and shot the unarmed Jesse James in the back of the head.

The Fords acknowledged their role in Jesse James’ death; Robert wired the governor to claim his reward. The Ford brothers surrendered to the authorities and were dismayed to be charged with first-degree murder. In the course of a single day, the Ford brothers were indicted, pleaded guilty, were sentenced to death by hanging, and were granted a full pardon by Governor Crittenden. The governor’s quick pardon suggested he knew the brothers intended to kill James rather than capture him. The implication that the chief executive of Missouri conspired to kill a private citizen startled the public and added to Jesse James’ notoriety

Suffering from tuberculosis and a morphine addiction, Charley Ford committed suicide on May 6, 1884, in Richmond, Missouri. Bob Ford operated a tent saloon in Creede, Colorado. On June 8, 1892, Edward O’Kelley went to Creede, loaded a double-barrel shotgun, entered Ford’s saloon and said “Hello, Bob,” before shooting Ford in the throat, killing him instantly. O’Kelley was sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence was subsequently commuted because of a 7,000-signature petition in favor of his release. The Governor of Colorado pardoned him on the third of October in 1902.

Calendar: April 2

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

The Scarf with Fringe

On April 2, 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon first sights land in what is now the United States state of Florida.

In September 1493, some 1200 sailors, colonists and soldiers joined Christopher Columbus for his second voyage to the New World. Ponce de León was a member of this expedition, one of two hundred ‘gentlemen volunteers’. The fleet reached the Caribbean in November of 1493, and their primary destination of Hispaniola, now Puerto Rico. In 1504 the appointed governor of Hispaniola, Nicolas de Ovando, assigned Ponce de León to crush the rebellion of the native Tainos people. For this service, he was awarded a land grant and became the frontier governor of the defeated province.

Urged by King Ferdinand of Spain, Ponce de León equipped three ships with at least 200 men at his own expense and set out from Puerto Rico on March 4, 1513 in search for new lands and riches. The fleet crossed open water until April 2, 1513, when they sighted land which Ponce de León believed was another island. He named it la Florida in recognition of the verdant landscape and because it was the Easter season, which the Spaniards called Pascua Florida (Festival of Flowers). The precise location of their landing on the Florida coast has been disputed for many years.

Although Ponce de León is widely credited with the discovery of Florida, he almost certainly was not the first European to reach the peninsula. Spanish slave expeditions had been regularly raiding the Bahamas since 1494 and there is some evidence that one or more of these slavers made it as far as the shores of Florida. Another piece of evidence that others came before Ponce de León is the Cantino Map from 1502, which shows a peninsula near Cuba that looks like Florida’s and includes characteristic place names.

In early 1521, Ponce de León organized a colonizing expedition consisting of some 200 men, including priests, farmers and artisans, 50 horses and other domestic animals, and farming implements carried on two ships. The expedition landed somewhere on the coast of southwest Florida likely in the vicinity of Charlotte Harbor or the Caloosahatchee River. Before the settlement could be established, the colonists were attacked by a large party of native Calusa warriors. Ponce de León was mortally wounded in the skirmish when, historians believe, an arrow poisoned with manchineel sap struck his thigh. The expedition immediately abandoned the colonization attempt and returned to Havana, Cuba, where Ponce de León soon died of his wounds.