Calendar: June 20

A Year: Day to Day Men: 20th of June

Double Eagles

June 20, 1833 was the birthdate of French painter Leon Joseph Florentin Bonnat.

Leon Bonnat was born in Bayonne, southwest France; but in his teen years he lived in Madrid where his father had a bookshop. While tending the shop, he copied engravings of works by the Old Masters, developing a passion for drawing. In Madrid, Bonnat studied and trained at the atelier of Realistic painter Raimundo Madrazo. Traveling to Paris, he developed a reputation as a portraitist and was given many commissions. Bonnat’s portraits show the influence of the Spanish painter Velázquez, and Van Dyke and Titian, whose works he studied in the Prado.

Bonnat received a scholarship from his native Bayonne, enabling him to live independently in Rome from 1858-1860. It was there he became friends with Edgar Degas, Gustave Moreau and the sculptor Henri Chapu. Bonnat won the Grand Officer of the Legion d’honneur and became a professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1882. He was quite popular with the international students, being able to speak his native French, as well as Spanish, Italian and English. In May of 1905 Bonnat became director of the Ecole des Beauz Arts.

The vivid portraits of contemporary celebrities are Bonnat’s most characteristic works; but his powerful religious scenes are arguably his most important works. His “Christ on the Cross” is now in the Musee du Petit Palais in Paris, his “Job” is in the Musee Bonnat, and the “Saint Vincent Taking the Place of Two Gallery Slaves” is at the Church of Saint Nicholas des Chanps in Paris. Bonnat, however, received few commissions in his life for religious or historical paintings. Most of his work is consists of portraits.

Leon Bonnat was an academic painter following the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism. He had a quest for truth to nature, a pursuit for accuracy. On of his students, Gustof Cederstrom said that Bonnat was a scientific observer of the real world who measure the heads and distances between the facial features of his sitters as if he were a scientific researcher. Bonnat went to great effort to capture the realism of his model, sometimes requiring his subjects to sit fifty or more times before completing portraits.

Students chose Bonnat’s atelier over others for a few reasons and a focus on painting was one of them. Though Bonnat always maintained that drawing was important, a student went to his atelier not to learn how to draw but how to paint. His atelier differed from most of its contemporaries in another way: paint mixing. Rather than prepare a set palette before the sitting, Bonnat taught his students to mix their colors directly, in front of the model.

Calendar: June 19

A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of June

The Sky Encompassing the Earth

On June 19, 1603, Merga Bien, a citizen of the town of Fulda, Germany, was arrested and accused of witchcraft.

Merga Bien was a German woman born in the town of Fulda Germany. She was married three times and was the heiress of her first two husbands upon their deaths. In 1588, she married Blasius Bien and moved from the city; but they returned to Fulda after a conflict with her husband’s employers.

At that time, Prince Abbot Balthasar von Dembach, a Benedictine monk born into a family of knights, returned to power in 1602 after a long exile. Twenty six years earlier he had been forced to abdicate by an alliance of magistrates and knights against his religious prosecutions of the Protestant movement. Upon his return, Balthasar continued his policy of counter-reformation and achieved a complete restoration of Catholicism in the city and the principality.

Starting in 1602, Balthasar von Dembach ordered an investigation of witchcraft in the city and started trials which were presided over by Balthasar Nuss, who had attached himself to the abbot during his exile and was now appointed judge. In March 1603, the first arrests of suspected witchcraft practitioners occurred in the city. On 19 June of that year, Merga Bien was arrested and put in jail.

Her husband protested before the High Judge in Speyer, a city at the center of the Reformation movement, and pointed out that she was pregnant; but Merga Bien was not released. In jail, Merga Bien was forced by coercion to confess to the murder of her second husband and her children with him and one member of the family of her husband’s employers, and that she had taken part in a sabbath of Satan.

Merga Bien’s pregnancy was considered an aggravating circumstance; she and her husband had had no children although they had been married for fourteen years. She was forced to confess that her current pregnancy was the result of intercourse with the Devil.

Merga Bien was judged guilty of witchcraft and was burned alive at the stake in Fulda in the autumn of 1603. The Fulda witch trials continued from 1603 until 1605, resulting in the deaths of approximately 250 people. After Balthasar von Dembach’s death in 1606, the presiding judge Nuss was arrested by the new Prince-Abbot and spent 12 years in prison before being beheaded in 1618.

Calendar: June 18

A Year: Day to Day Men: 18th of June

Not Clark Kent

June 18, 1969 was the release date of Sam Peckinpah’s western “The Wild Bunch”.

In 1967, Warner Brothers-Seven Arts producers Kenneth Hyman and Phil Feldman were interested in having Sam Peckinpah rewrite and direct an adventure film. At the time, William Goldman’s screenplay “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” had recently been purchased by 20th Century Fox. It was quickly decided that “The Wild Bunch”, which had several similarities to Goldman’s work, would be produced in order to beat “Butch Cassidy” to the theaters.

Peckinpah’s epic work was inspired by his hunger to return to film work, the violence seen in 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde”, America’s growing frustration with the Vietnam War, and what he perceived to be the utter lack of reality seen in Westerns up to that time. He set out to make a film which portrayed not only the vicious violence of the period, but as well the crude men attempting to survive the era. Multiple scenes involving slow motion action sequences inspired by Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”, characters leaving a village as if in a funeral procession, and the use of inexperienced locals as extras, would become fully realized in “The Wild Bunch” film.

The film was shot in the anamorphic format, a technique of shooting a widescreen picture on a standard 35 mm film. This arose from the desire to maximize the overall image detail while retaining the use of standard cameras and projectors. Telephoto lenses were used by cinematographer Lucien Ballard to compress foreground and background images in perspective. The editing of the film is notable in that shots from multiple angles were spliced together in rapid succession, often at different speeds, placing greater emphasis on the chaotic nature of the action and the gunfights.

Peckinpah would film the major shootouts with six cameras, operating at various film rates, from 24 frames per second stepping up to 120 frames per second. When the scenes were eventually cut together, the action would shift from slow to fast to slower still, giving time an elastic quality never before seen in motion pictures up to that time. By the time filming wrapped, Peckinpah had shot 333,000 feet of film with 1,288 camera setups. Editor Lou Lombardo and Peckinpah remained in Mexico for six months editing the picture.

The violence that was much criticized in 1969 remains controversial. Peckinpah noted it was allegoric of the American war in Vietnam, the violence of which was nightly televised to American homes at supper time. He tried showing the gun violence commonplace to the historic western frontier period, rebelling against sanitized, bloodless television Westerns and films glamorizing gunfights and murder: “The point of the film is to take this façade of movie violence and open it up, get people involved in it so that they are starting to go in the Hollywood television predictable reaction syndrome, and then twist it so that it’s not fun anymore, just a wave of sickness in the gut … it’s ugly, brutalizing, and bloody awful; it’s not fun and games and cowboys and Indians.”

Calendar: June 17

A Year: Day to Day Men: 17th of June

Perched for the Dive

June 17, 1631 marks the passing of Mumtaz Mahal, the Empress consort of the Mughal Empire.

Arjumand Banu was born to a family of Persian nobility in Agra, India. She was the daughter of Abu’l-Hasan Asaf Khan, a wealthy Persian office-holder in the Mughal Empire, and Nur Jahan, the chief wife of Emperor Jahangir. She was married at the age of nineteen in April of 1612 to Prince Khurram, later known by his regnal name Shah Jahan. The marriage, though arranged, was a love-match.

After their wedding celebrations, Shah Jahan gave her the title “Mumtaz Mahal” Begum meaning “the Exalted One of the Palace”. By all accounts, Shah Jahan was so taken with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with his two other wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. The intimacy, deep affection, attention and favor which Shah Jahan had for Mumtaz exceeded what he felt for his other wives.

Mumtaz travelled with Shah Jahan’s entourage throughout his earlier military campaigns and the subsequent rebellion against his father. She was his constant companion and trusted confidant, leading court historians to document the intimate and erotic relationship the couple enjoyed. Shah Jahan consulted Mumtaz in both private matters and the affairs of the state, and she served as his close confidant and trusted adviser.

At Mumtaz’s intercession, Shah Jahan forgave enemies or commuted death sentences. His trust in her was so great that he gave her the highest honor of the land — his imperial seal, the Mehr Uzaz, which validated imperial decrees. Mumtaz patronized a number of poets, scholars and other talented persons. She also provided pensions and donations to the daughters of poor scholars, theologians, and pious men.

Mumtaz Mahal died from postpartum hemorrhage in city of Burhanpur on June 17, 1631 while giving birth, after a prolonged labor of approximately 30 hours. She had been accompanying her husband while he was fighting a military campaign in the Deccan Plateau. Her body was temporarily buried at Burhanpur in a walled pleasure garden known as Zainabad originally constructed by Shah Jahan’s uncle. The emperor was reported as being inconsolable; he went into secluded mourning for a year.

In December of 1631 her body was transported in a golden casket escorted by her son Shah Shuja back to Agra. After concluding an existing military campaign, Shah Jahan began planning the design and construction of a suitable mausoleum and funerary garden in Agra for his wife. It was a task that would take 22 years to complete. The Taj Mahal is seen as an embodiment of undying love and marital devotion; the beauty of the monument is taken as a representation of Mumtaz Mahal’s beauty. The body of Mumtaz and later that of Shah Jahan were placed in a relatively plain crypt beneath the inner chamber with their faces turned to the right and towards Mecca.

Calendar: June 16

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

Beachwear

June 16, 1924 was the birthdate of Faith Marie Domergue, the American television and film actress.

While just a sophomore at high school, Ann Marie Domergue signed a contract with Warner Brothers and made her first on-screen appearance as a walk-on in the 1941 “Blues in the Night”. After graduating high school in 1942, Domergue pursued her career in acting; but after sustaining injuries in a near fatal automobile accident, she put her plans on hold. While recuperating, she attended a Howard Hughes yacht party.

Howard Hughes, emanored with her, bought her contract from Warner Brothers and signed her to a three picture deal with RKO Pictures. She was cast as the lead in the 1950 thriller “Vendetta”. The film had a four year troubled production period and, after its release in 1950, was dismissed as a trivial, slow paced period piece. After the film release, Domergue separated from Hughes and freelanced as an actor.

Domergue played a femme fatale in the 1950 film noir “Where Danger Lives”, opposite Robert Mitchum and Claude Rains. Signing a contract with Universal Pictures in 1953, she appeared opposite Audie Murphy in the western adventure “The Duel at Silver Creek”. In 1955, she appeared in another western, “Santa Fe Passage” playing Aurelie Saint Clair, an ammunition retailer on a wagon train, opposite John Payne and Rod Cameron.

Domergue then appeared in a series of science fiction films which earned her the reputation as an early “scream queen”, the films’ damsel in distress. The first was the “Cult of the Cobra” released in 1955 where airmen discover a cult of snake worshippers. Faith Domergue played the female lead role of the cult leader who transforms herself into a deadly cobra.

The next role was in the now famous sci-fi movie “It Came from Beneath the Sea” produced by Columbia Pictures. This 1954 film about a giant octopus was a major commercial success, grossing almost two million dollars at the box office and later becoming a cult classic. She played marine biologist Lesley Joyce who helped destroy the creature with an atomic torpedo. The following year, Domergue starred in the first color sci-fi film “This Island Earth”, which received praise for its writing and inventive special effects.

By the late 1960s, Domergue was appearing mainly in low-budget “B” horror movies and European productions. She relocated to Europe permanently in 1968, moving from Rome to Geneva, Switzerland, and Marbella, Spain. Her final film credit was for the 1974 “The House of Seven Corpses”, an independent horror film shot in Salt Lake City. Faith Domergue spent her later years in retirement in Palo Alto, California. She died on April 4, 1999, of unspecified cancer at the age of 74.

Calendar: June 15

A Year: Day to Day Men: 15th of June

Black and Yellow Plaid

On June 15, 1878, photographer Eadweard Muybridge used high-speed photography to capture a horse’s motion.

Former California Governor Leland Stanford was an imperious, headstrong captain of industry who had helped build the transcontinental railroad and would later found the university that bears his son’s name. He retired to the life of a country horse breeder; and he wanted proof of what his eyes told him: that a horse has all four feet in the air during some parts of his stride.

Many photographers at that time were still using exposures of 15 seconds to one minute. Automatic shutters were in their infancy: expensive and unreliable. Eadweard Muybridge, a successful landscape photographer at that time, devised more-sensitive emulsions and worked on elaborate shutter devices. He also rigged a trip wire across a racetrack, letting the horse’s chest push against the wire to engage an electric circuit that opened a slat-shaped shutter mechanism to make the exposure.

This system produced an “automatic electro-photograph” on July 1, 1877. It showed Occident, a Stanford-owned racehorse, seemingly with all four feet off the ground. The press and the public failed to accept this as proof, however, because what they actually saw was obviously retouched. (The photo had been reproduced by painting it, then photographing the painting, then making a woodcut of the photo for the printing on paper.)

Muybridge continued his labors with the engineering help of Stanford’s Central Pacific Railroad. They installed 12 evenly spaced trip wires on Stanford’s Palo Alto racetrack. When a horse pulled a two-wheeled sulky carriage over the wire, the wheels depressed the wire, pulling a switch that opened an electrical circuit that used an elastic band to open a rapid-fire sliding shutter mechanism in the side of a purpose-built shack. Inside the shack, behind a row of 12 shutters, was a row of 12 cameras. Opposite the shack was a white wall with vertical lines matching the distance of the trip wires and cameras.

So, on June 15, 1878, before assembled gentlemen of the press, Stanford’s top trainer drove Stanford’s top trotter across the trip wires at about 40 feet per second, setting off all 12 cameras in rapid succession in less than half a second. About 20 minutes later, Muybridge showed the freshly developed photographic plates. The horse, indeed, lifted all four legs off the ground during its stride. Remarkably, this was not in the front-and-rear-extended “rocking-horse posture” some had expected, but in a tucked posture, with all four feet under the horse.

Muybridge refined his invention, increasing the cameras from one to two dozen, and developed an electromagnetic timer that opened shutters independently of any trip wires. That allowed him to study the nonlinear motions of other four-footed animals, human athletes, a nude descending a staircase and even birds. Muybridge went on to publish a series of finely printed, large-format books of his stop-motion photographs.

Calendar: June 14

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

The Toucan in the Forest

June 14, 1933 was the birthdate of Józef Lewinkopf, a Polish-American novelist known by the name Jerzy Kosinski.

Józef Lewinkopf was born to Jewish parents in Lodz, Poland. As a child during World War II, he lived in central Poland under a false identity, Jerzy Kosinski, which his father gave to him. A Roman Catholic priest issued him a forged baptismal certificate, and the Lewinkopf family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who offered assistance, often at great risk. After the war ended, Kosinski and his parents moved to Jelenia Góra, in southwestern Poland.

By the age of twenty-two, Jeerzy Kosinski had earned graduate degrees in history and sociology at the University of Lodz. He became an associate professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In order to immigrate to the United States in 1957, he created a fake foundation, which supposedly sponsored him. In the United States Kosinski worked odd jobs to get by, eventually graduating from Columbia University. He became an American citizen in 1965.

Kosinski’s first novel was the controversial “The Painted Bird”, published in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. The story originally introduced as being autobiographical was the story of a World War II boy wandering around Eastern Europe. Assumed by reviewers to be a memoir of a Jewish survivor to the Holocaust, the book received enthusiastic revews. However, within twenty years it was discovered to be fictional. The book was banned in Poland from its publication until the fall of the communist government in 1989. When it was finally printed in Poland, thousands of Warsaw residents waited as long as eight hours for an autographed copy.

Kosinski’s 1970 novel, “Being There” was one of his most significant works. It was a satirical view of the absurd reality of America’s media culture. It is the story of Chance the gardener, a man of few distinctive qualities who emerges from nowhere and suddenly becomes the heir to the throne of a Wall Street tycoon and a presidential policy advisor. His simple and straight forward responses to popular concerns are praised as visionary despite the fact that no one actually understands what he is really saying. “Being There” was made into a movie in 1979 and starred Peter Sellers as the gardener Chance and Shirley MacLaine as Eve Rand, the wife of the business tycoon who advises the President..

Kosiński suffered from multiple illnesses toward the end of his life, and he was under attack from journalists who accused him of plagiarism. By his late 50s, he was suffering from an irregular heartbeat, as well as severe physical and nervous exhaustion. He committed suicide on May 3, 1991, by ingesting a lethal amount of alcohol and drugs, and wrapping a plastic bag around his head, suffocating to death. His suicide note read: “I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity.”

Calendar: June 13

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

Woodland Path

On June 13, 1881 the USS Jeannette, under the command of George W. De Long, sank after being trapped in the ice.

James Bennett, the owner of the ship Jeannette, had a plan was to sail a vessel through the Bering Strait on the theory that the warm Pacific Ocean current known as the Kuro Siwo would provide a “thermometric gateway” whereby a suitable ship might reach the North Pole. This was the primary objective, but the ship was also equipped for scientific observation. By agreement with the US Department of the Navy, Bennett would finance the expedition, but would sail under naval laws and discipline, and would be commanded by a naval officer, George W. De Long.

The Jeannette departed San Francisco on July 8, 1879. She sent her last communication to Washington from Saint Lawrence Bay, Siberia, on August 27. Shortly afterwards she encountered ice, of increasing severity as she pushed her way forward to Herald Island. On September 7 she was caught fast in the ice.

For the next 21 months, Jeannette stuck in the ice drifted in an erratic fashion, generally to the northwest but frequently doubling back on herself. In May 1881, two islands were discovered, which De Long named Henrietta Island and Jeannette Island. On the night of June 12, the pressure of the ice finally began to crush the Jeannette. De Long and his men unloaded provisions and equipment onto the ice, and the ship sank the following morning.

The expedition began the long trek to the Siberian coast, hauling their sledges loaded with boats and supplies. After reaching the New Siberian Islands and gaining some food and rest, the party took to their three boats on September 12 for the last stage of their journey to the Lena Delta, their planned landfall. As a violent storm blew up, one of the boats (with Lt. Charles W. Chipp and seven men) capsized and sank. The other two craft, commanded by De Long with fourteen men and Chief Engineer George Melville with eleven men, survived the severe weather but landed at widely separated points on the delta.

The party headed by De Long began the long march inland over the marshy, half-frozen delta to hoped-for native settlements. After much hardship, with many of his men severely weakened, De Long sent the two strongest, William Nindemann and Louis P. Noros, ahead for help; they eventually found a settlement and survived. DeLong and his eleven companions died of cold and starvation.

In the meantime, on the other side of the delta, George Melville and his party had found a native village and were rescued. Melville persuaded a group of locals to help him search for his commander. He succeeded in finding their landing place on the delta, and recovered De Long’s logbook and other important records but returned without locating the De Long group. In the following spring, Melville set out again, and found the bodies of De Long and his companions on March 23, 1882.

Calendar: June 12

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

Another Room Painted

June 12, 1890 was the birthdate of the Austrian painter and graphic artist, Egon Schiele.

In 1906 Egon Schiele applied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Vienna, where Gustav Klimt had studied. Later that year he was sent to the more traditional Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 1907 Schiele sought out Gustav Klimt, who at that time mentored younger artists. Klimt accepted him for training and introduced Schiele to the Wiener Werkstatte, the arts and crafts workshop associated with the Vienna Succession.

Schiele’s early work from that period between 1907 and 1909 shows a strong influence by Klimt and the Art Nouveau style. In 1909, free of the constraints of the Academy’s conventions, he began to explore not only the human form, but also human sexuality. Schiele’s work was already daring, but it went a bold step further with the inclusion of Klimt’s decorative eroticism and with what some may like to call figurative distortions, that included elongations, deformities, and sexual openness. Schiele’s self-portraits helped re-establish the energy of both genres with their unique level of emotional and sexual honesty and use of figural distortion in place of conventional ideals of beauty.

In 1910, Schiele began experimenting with nudes. His 1910 “Kneeling Nude with Raised Hands” is considered among the most significant nude art pieces made during the 20th century. Schiele’s radical and developed approach towards the naked human form challenged both scholars and progressives alike. This unconventional piece and style went against strict academia and created a sexual uproar with its contorted lines and heavy display of figurative expression. At the time, many found the explicitness of his works disturbing.

In 1913, the Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich, mounted Schiele’s first solo show. Another solo exhibition of his work took place in Paris in 1914. During the war Schiele’s paintings became larger and more detailed, when he had the time to produce them. By 1917, he was back in Vienna, able to focus on his artistic career. His output was prolific, and his work reflected the maturity of an artist in full command of his talents.

Schiele was invited to participate in the Secession’s 49th exhibition, held in Vienna in 1918. He had fifty works accepted for this exhibition, and they were displayed in the main hall. He also designed a poster for the exhibition, which was reminiscent of the “Last Supper” with a portrait of himself in the place of Christ. The show was a triumphant success, and as a result, prices for Schiele’s drawings increased and he received many portrait commissions.

In the autumn of 1918, the Spanish flu pandemic that claimed more than 20,000,000 lives in Europe reached Vienna. Edith, his wife whom he married in 1915 and who was six months pregnant, succumbed to the disease on October 28th. Egon Schiele died, at the age of twenty-eight, only three days after his wife.

Calendar: June 11

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

The Sun King

June 11, 1936 was the opening day of the International Surrealist Exhibition.

The International Surrealist Exhibition was held from June 11 to July 4, 1936, at the New Burlington Galleries in London’s Mayfair, England. The exhibition was marked both by the high quality of the exhibits and by the fact that Andre Breton, Salvador Dali and many another European Surrealists came over for the occasion. The opening day stopped the traffic on Piccadilly due to the swell of the crowds and, over the weeks that followed, it forced the British arts establishment to reappraise what art actually was as well as what an exhibition could be.

Surrealism’s main flag bearer in Britain was Roland Penrose, a wealthy young artist. A meeting on the Rue de Tournon took place between him and a precocious young poet called David Gascoyne, who had become passionate about surrealism, and had just completed a book about it. The two men got talking about how extraordinary it was that, while Paris was undergoing a seismic art revolution, a few hundred miles away in London no one knew anything about it. They decided to change all that, with a show to jump-start the British imagination.

In the end, some 392 paintings and sculptures were assembled at the New Burlington Galleries. True to the surrealist notion of “objective hazard” (a random but ultimately fortuitous happening), the show was beset by problems which, added to the planned surprises, made it a veritable festival of the best that surrealism had to offer. First, there was the business of transporting the art: two days before the opening, a consignment was seized by Customs and two pieces – one by Wilhelm Freddie showing the naked bodies of dead soldiers, another by the Argentinian Leonor Fini showing young men dancing naked in the twilight – were turned back on grounds of decency. The hanging of the show happened just hours before the opening, only to be rearranged once again at the last minute.

The painter Sheila Legge showed up dressed in a long, white satin gown, her face obscured by roses and holding an artificial leg wearing a silk stocking. The poet Dylan Thomas offered the guests teacups full of boiled string. Andre Breton gave the opening speech dressed entirely in green. Salvador Dali gave his lecture wearing a diving suit with helmet. During the lecture, it became apparent that he was slowly suffocating inside his helmet; it had to be pried off to save him. He continued the lecture with a slide show, with the slides presented upside down.

Calendar: June 10

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

A Scattering of Suds

June 10, 1971 marks the passing of the English actor, Michael Rennie.

A meeting with a Gaumont-British Studios casting director led to Michael Rennie’s first acting job, a stand-in for Robert Young in the 1936 film “Secret Agent” directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He put his film career on hold for a few years to get some acting experience on the stage, working mostly in repertory theater in Yorkshire. Rennie eventually became a lead actor with the York Repertory Company.

Rennie played minor roles in films during this period including “Conquest of the Air” in 1937, “Bank Holiday” in 1938 and the 1939 “This Man in Paris”. After the outbreak of war in September of 1939, he began to receive offers for larger film roles, in particular Leslie Howard’s 1941 anti-Nazi thriller “Pimpernel Smith” which became one of the most valuable films of British war propaganda.

With the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Rennie was given his first film break, when cast alongside Margaret Lockwood, who was at the peak of her popularity, in the 1945 musical “I’ll Be Your Sweetheart”, for Gainsborough Studios. Rennie was billed below Lockwood and star Vic Oliver and given an “introducing” credit; but his character was the actual protagonist of the film. Although the movie was not a large hit, Rennie received excellent notices for his perfomance.

After moving to Hollywood in 1950, Rennie was signed to a 20th Century Films contract by studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. In 1951, Robert Wise became the director of the first post-war, large budget science fiction film “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, Originally cast with Claude Rains in the lead, Rennie received top billing when Rains turned down the role. The film was a serious, high-minded exploration of mid-20th century suspicion and paranoia, combined with a philosophical overview of humanity’s coming place in the larger universe. Rennie’s portrayal of the spaceman Klaatu is arguably his most popular role and a classic in the science fiction genre.

After the film’s release, Rennie worked as a supporting actor for eight years until his return to England in 1959. At that time, he took the lead role of Harry Lime in the 1959 television series “The Third Man”. Throughout his career, Rennie made numerous guest appearances on television, particularly on American programs. He completed what amounted to guest roles in two films, “The Power” and “The Devil’s Brigade”, both filmed in 1968, before moving to Switzerland in the latter part of that year. Rennie’s final seven feature films were filmed in Britain, Italy, Spain and, in the case of the film “Surabaya Conspiracy”, the Philippines.

Michael Rennie journeyed to his mother’s home in Harrogate, Yorkshire, following the death of his brother. It was there that he died suddenly in June of 1971 of an aortic aneurysm almost two months before his 62nd birthday. After his cremation, Rennie’s ashes were interred in Harlow Hill Cemetery, Harrogate, England.

Calendar: June 9

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

Visualizing the Source of the Sea

On June 9, 1909. twenty-two year old Alice Huyler Ramsey leaves home to drive across the United States coast to coast.

Alice Taylor Huyler was the daughter of John Huyler, a lumber dealer, and Ada Mumford Farr. She attended Vassar College from 1903-1905. In 1906 she married congressman John Ramsey of Hackensack, New Jersey and settled in that town. They had two children; John Jr. born in 1907 and Alice born in 1910.

After receiving a new Maxwell runabout as a gift from her husband in 1908, Alice Ramsey became an avid driver and entered the 1908 American Automobile Association’s endurance race, being one of only two women to participate. During that event, Carl Kelsey, who was a publicity man for the Maxwell-Briscoe company, proposed that Alice Ramsey attempt a transcontinental journey with the company’s backing. It was to be a publicity stunt with the company providing a new 1909 Maxwell touring car for the journey and all parts and assistance as needed. This journey was part of a marketing strategy to encourage women to drive cars.

On June 9th, Alice Ramsey, twenty-two years old and now a mother of one, began the journey from Hell Gate in Manhattan, New York to San Francisco in a green Maxwell 30. She was accompanied by 16-year old Hermine Jahns and two older sisters-in-laws, none of whom could drive. They used maps from the AAA for guidance in their journey. Only 152 miles of the 3,600 mile trip were paved. The women mostly navigated by following telephone poles, using the poles with the most wires as the guide to where they hoped would be a town.

Over the course of the journey, Alice Ramsey cleaned spark plugs, repaired a broken brake pedal, changed eleven flat tires, and slept with the others in the car when stuck in the mud, a common occurrence. The journey took 59 days to drive coast to coast across the United States at that time in history. They arrived in San Francisco amid great crowds on August 7, 1909, about three weeks later than originally planned.

Alice Huyler Ramsey was named the “Woman Motorist of the Century” by the American Automobile Association in 1960. In her later years, she lived in California, where in 1961 she wrote and published her book “Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron”, the tale of her transcontinental adventure. Always an enthusiastic driver, Ramsey drove across country more than thirty times between 1909 and 1975, by which time she was 79 years old. She became, on October 17, 2000, the first woman inducted into the Automobile Hall of Fame.

“Good driving has nothing to do with sex. It’s all above the collar.”- Alice Huyler Ramsey, Ms. Magazine, February 1975

Calendar: June 8

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

Decorative Art

June 8, 1933 was the birthdate of American actress and comedian, Joan Rivers.

Joan Rivers was one of America’s first successful female stand-up comics in an aggressive tradition that had been almost exclusively the province of men. She would take the stage in a demure black sheath dress and ladylike pearls, a tiny bouffant blonde with a genteel air of sorority decorum. Then her biting and edgy stream-of-consciousness take on national heroes and sacrosanct cultural idols would begin.

Joan Alexandra Molinsky was born in Brooklyn on June 8, 1933, to immigrants from Russia. Her father, a doctor, did comic impersonations of patients. Her mother insisted on piano lessons and private schools for Joan and her sister, Barbara, who grew up in Brooklyn and Larchmont. Joan attended Adelphi Academy in Brooklyn, Connecticut College for Women and Barnard College. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, she graduated in 1954 with a degree in English.

Joan Rivers struggled for years, taking small parts off Off-Broadway and working in grimy cafes and small clubs. She made her breakthrough as a guest in 1965 on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show”. Over the next two decades she became a regular guest host on the show, a Las Vegas headliner and a television star. In 1986, Rivers hit the big time with a $10 million contract as host of the new Fox network’s weeknight entry, “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers,” competing directly with Carson, her old benefactor. After less than a year on the air, she was fired by Fox when her ratings slumped.

For years Joan Rivers marketed her lines of jewelry and fashion on shopping channels. In the mid-1990s, she turned up at the Grammys, Golden Globes and Academy Awards, first for E! Entertainment network and then for the TV Guide Channel, poking a microphone into the faces of the stars on red carpets. In 2010 she became star of the E! show “Fashion Police,” where she and a panel gleefully critiqued celebrities’ wardrobes.

Joan Rivers weathered 50 years in show business, appeared in thousands of TV shows, more than a dozen films and many nightclubs; written twelve books; raised millions for causes including AIDS, Guide Dogs for the Blind and cystic fibrosis; and amassed about $290 million. She won a Daytime Emmy for her talk show “The Joan Rivers Show” and was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the title role of Lenny Bruce’s mother in “Sally Marr …and Her Escorts”. She died in 2014 at Mount Sinai Hospital after going into cardiac arrest; she was 81.

Calendar: June 7

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

The Toss of a Shirt

The Day of the Tiles occurs on June 7, 1788 in the town of Grenoble, France.

Grenoble was the scene of popular unrest due to financial hardship from the economic crises. The causes of the French Revolution affected all of France, but matters came to a head first in Grenoble. Cardinal Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne attempted to abolish the provincial appellate courts in order to enact a new tax upon the people. Tensions caused by poor harvests and high costs of food increased when the privileged classes insisted on retaining the right to collect feudal royalties from their peasants and landholders.

A meeting was held prior to the 7th of June in 1788 calling together at Grenoble the judges of the old Estates to discuss reforms. The government responded by sending troops to the area to put down the movement. In the morning of June 7th, merchants closed their shops; groups of 300-400 men and women formed, armed with stones, sticks and axes. They rushed the city gates to prevent the judges at the Grenoble meeting from leaving the city. The cathedral was seized and the bells rung, calling neighboring peasants into the city.

The Regiment of the Royal Navy was the first to respond to the growing crowds, and was given the order to quell the rioting without the use of arms. However, as the mob stormed the hotel entrance, the situation escalated. Soldiers sent to quell the disturbances forced the townspeople off the streets. During an attack, Royal Navy soldiers injured a 75 year old man with a bayonet.

At the sight of blood, the people became angry and started to tear up the streets. Townspeople climbed onto the roofs of buildings around the Jesuit College to hurl down a rain of roof tiles on the soldiers in the streets below, hence the “Day of the Tiles”. Many soldiers took refuge in a building to shoot through the windows, while the crowd continued to rush inside and ravage everything.

A noncommissioned officer of the Royal Navy, commanding a patrol of four soldiers, gave the order to open fire into the mob. One civilian was killed and a boy of 12 wounded. To the east of the city, the Royal Navy soldiers were forced to open fire in order to protect the city’s arsenal, fearing that the rioters would seize the weapons and ammunition.

Meanwhile, Colonel Count Chabord began deploying his regiment of Australasia troops to aid and relieve the Royal Navy soldiers. At six o’clock in the evening, a shouting crowd estimated at ten thousand people forced the judges to return to the Palace of the Parliament of Dauphine. It wasn’t until the 14th of July that order was fully restored.

The Day of the Tiles was one of the first disturbances which preceded the French Revolution. Some historians have used that day to demonstrate the worsening situation in France in the buildup to the Revolution of 1789. Others have credited it with being the beginning of the revolution itself. Six outbreaks of rioting occurred in the city that day, leading to the Assembly of Vizille, which passed resolutions demanding reforms be made by the king.

Calendar: June 6

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

Heaven with Cerulean Fields

On June 6, 1683, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England opens as the world’s first university museum.

The Ashmolean Museum came into existence when Elias Ashmole, a weathy collector of rare books, gifted his collection to the University in 1682. He did so ‘because the knowledge of Nature is very necessary to human life and health.’ It opened as Britain’s first public museum, and the world’s first university museum on June 6, 1683. Though the collection has evolved considerably, the founding principle remains: that knowledge of humanity across cultures and across times is important to society.

Elias Ashmole acquired his collection from John Tradescant, father and son, both gardeners. The Tradescants were no ordinary gardeners; they were employed by the wealthy Earl of Salisbury. The Tradescants voyaged overseas, traveling the known world and shipping back new and exotic plant specimens for the Earl’s gardens. In the course of their travels they also acquired a remarkable collection of curiosities that included botanical, geological and zoological items as well as man-made objects.

When Elias Ashmole gifted this collection to the University, it was combined with an older University collection. The original Ashmolean Museum opened on Broad Street in Oxford in 1683, in the building that is now the Museum of the History of Science. Members of the public were admitted to the Ashmolean Museum from the outset- which was a controversial policy in the 17th century. Alongside the collection, this building was designed to house a chemistry laboratory and rooms for undergraduate lectures.

In 1823 the Ashmolean collection came under the reforming stewardship of brothers John and Philip Duncan – John was appointed as Keeper in 1823 and succeeded by Philip in 1829. In 1826 an “Introduction to the Catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum” was published, which proposed a detailed consideration of prevailing taxonomic systems of object organization. A full catalogue of the collections was completed in 1836 by Philip Duncan. These documents reveal the extent that the Duncan brothers, and the donors they attracted, transformed the collections with fresh specimens.

Sir Arthur Evans became Keeper of the Ashmolean in 1884. Sir Arthur was an Oxford scholar, traveller, and son of a famous academic of prehistory. In his 24-year keepership he transformed the museum by acquiring an archaeological collection and establishing the museum as a first-rate research institution. In 1908 the Ashmolean Museum and the University Art Galleries combined to create the current Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology.