Calendar: April 21

A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of April

Weathered Log

April 21, 1868 was the birthdate of Alfred Henry Maurer, the American modernist painter.

Maurer’s 1901 oil painting “An Arrangement”, which was compared to the work of Whistler in its color sense and fluid handling of paint, made his reputation in the American art world. The painting received first prize at the 1901 Carnegie International Exhibition, whose jurors included Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer. In 1905, he won the third medal at the Liege Exposition in Belgium and a gold medal at the International Exposition in Munich.

At age thirty-six, in Paris, deviating from what everyone called “acceptable” painting styles, Alfred Maurer changed his methods sharply and from that point on painted only in a cubist or fauvist manner. His break from realism and new commitment to modernism, fostered by exposure to the art collected by his friends Gertrude and Leo Stein, subsequently cost him his international reputation. Four of his paintings from this period were included in the legendary Armory Show of 1913. He acquired esteem in avant-garde circles. He did not, however, find the popular following he needed to make a living and his father denied him any support.

For the next seventeen, increasingly depressed years, Maurer painted in a garret in his father’s house on the West Side of Manhattan and gained only limited critical acclaim. He participated in prestigious exhibitions, such as “The Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters” in 1916, a New York show which featured seventeen of the most significant native modernists of the time. He also exhibited regularly at the New York-based Society of Independent Artists and was elected their director in 1919. In 1924, the New York dealer Erhard Weyhe bought the contents of Maurer’s studio and represented the artist for the remainder of his career. The death of his mother in 1917, however, intensified his gradual withdrawal from the world.

In 1932, Alfred Maurer took his own life by hanging, several weeks after his father’s death. As the art historian Sheldon Reich observed, had Maurer been a European or remained in Europe in 1914, he would probably be discussed today in the same terms applied to Vlaminck or Derain, both principle members of the Fauvist Movement in Europe. Instead, he became a citizen of a country with very limited interest in bold artistic experimentation and took his place as part of that “tragic fraternity of artists who during their lifetimes have suffered the tortures of neglect.”

Maurer’s works are included today in the many museum collections: Carnegie Museum of Art, Chicago Art Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution, among others.

Calendar: April 20

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

The Rising of the Sun

Harold Clayton Lloyd was born on April 20, 1893 in Burchard, Nebraska.

Harold Lloyd was an American actor, comedian, director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer who is best known for his silent comedy films. He ranks alongside Chaplin and Keaton as one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent film era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and sound, between 1914 and 1947.

His films frequently contained “thrill sequences” of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats, for which he is best remembered today. Lloyd desperately hanging from the hands of a skyscraper clock high above the street in the 1923 film “Safety Last” is one of the most enduring images in all of cinema. This was achieved through using camera angles and successively taller buildings to create the illusion of distance and perspective, always keeping the street below in full view. Lloyd, however, did many other dangerous stunts in his films himself.

Harold Lloyd moved away from playing tragicomic personas; he started portraying the ‘everyman’ with that character’s unwavering confidence and optimism. The persona Lloyd referred to as his “Glass” character (often named “Harold” in the silent films) was a much more mature comedy character with greater potential for sympathy and emotional depth, and was easy for audiences of the time to identify with. To create his new character Lloyd donned a pair of lensless horn-rimmed eyeglasses but wore normal clothing.

In 1924 Harold Lloyd became the independent producer of his own films. These included his most accomplished mature features “Girl Shy”, “The Freshman” (his highest-grossing silent feature), “The Kid Brother” and “Speedy”, his final silent film. The 1929 film “Welcome Danger” was originally a silent film but Lloyd decided late in the production to remake it with dialogue. All of these films were enormously successful and profitable, and Lloyd would eventually become the highest paid film performer of the 1920s.

In the early 1960s, Lloyd produced two compilation films, featuring scenes from his old comedies, “Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy” and “The Funny Side of Life”. The first film was premiered at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, where Lloyd was fêted as a major rediscovery. The renewed interest in Lloyd helped restore his status among film historians. Lloyd was honored in 1960 for his contribution to motion pictures with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 1503 Vine Street.

Calendar: April 19

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

The Paw Print

April 19, 1946 is the birthdate of English actor and singer, Timothy James Curry.

Tim Curry’s first full-time role was as part of the original London cast of the musical “Hair” in 1968, where he first met Richard O’Brien who went on to write Curry’s next full-time role, that of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 play “The Rocky Horror Show”. Originally, Curry rehearsed the character with a German accent and peroxide blond hair, and later, with an American accent. However, he decided to play Dr. Frank-N-Furter with an English accent after deciding that the character should sound like Queen Elizabeth II.

Curry originally thought the character was merely a laboratory doctor dressed in a white lab coat. However, at the suggestion of director Jim Sharman, the character evolved into the diabolical mad scientist and transvestite with an upper-class Belgravia accent. That character carried over to the film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and made Curry a household name and gave him a cult following. He continued to play the character in London, Los Angeles, and New York City until 1975.

Shortly after the end of the “Rocky Horror Show” run on Broadway, Curry returned to the stage with Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties”, which ran in London and New York from 1975 to 1976. That play was a Broadway hit winning two Tony Awards: Best Performance by an Actor for John Wood, and Best Comedy for the play. “Travesties” also won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, and Curry’s performance as the famous dadaist Tristan Tzara received good reviews.

In 2004, Tim Curry began his role of King Arthur in Eric Idle’s “Spamalot” in Chicago. The show successfully moved to Broadway in February 2005. The play brought Curry a third Tony nomination, again for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Curry reprised this role in London’s West End at the Palace Theater, where “Spamalot” opened on October 16, 2006. He was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award as the Best Actor in a Musical for the role, and also won the Theatergoers’ Choice Award as Best Actor in a Musical.

One of Tim Curry’s best-known television roles (and best-known roles overall) is as Pennywise the Clown in the 1990 horror miniseries “Steven King’s It”. Aside from one “Fangoria” interview in 1990, Curry never publicly acknowledged his involvement in “It” until an interview with Moviefone in 2015, where he called the role of Pennywise “a wonderful part”.

Calendar: April 18

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

On a Bed with Black Pillows

The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 happened on April 18 at 5:12 AM.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of northern California on April 18 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). Heavy shaking was felt for a distance of 370 miles along the coast of California.. Devastating fires started and lasted for several days. As a result, over eighty per cent of the city of San Francisco was destroyed and up to 3000 lives lost.

The San Andreas Fault is a continental fault that forms part of the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American plate. The 1906 rupture propagated both northward and southward fo a total of 296 miles. The observed surface displacement was about 20 feet; geodetic measurements show displacements up to 28 feet. Shaking was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, and inland as far as central Nevada. Between 227,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless out of a population of about 410,000 residents.

As damaging as the earthquake and its aftershocks were, the fires that burned out of control afterward were even more destructive. It has been estimated that up to 90% of the total destruction was the result of the subsequent fires. Within three days, over 30 fires caused by the ruptured gas mains destroyed about 25,000 buildings.

Almost immediately after the quake (and even during the disaster), planning and reconstruction plans were hatched to quickly rebuild the city. Rebuilding funds were immediately tied up by the fact that virtually all the major banks had been sites of the conflagration, requiring a lengthy wait of seven-to-ten days before their fire-proof vaults could cool sufficiently to be safely opened.

The Bank of Italy had evacuated its funds and was able to provide liquidity in the immediate aftermath. Its president also immediately chartered and financed the sending of two ships to return with shiploads of lumber from Washington and Oregon mills which provided the initial reconstruction materials. In 1929, Bank of Italy was renamed and is now known ad Bank of America.

Reconstruction was swift, and largely completed by 1915, in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition which celebrated the reconstruction of the city and its “rise from the ashes”. Since 1915, the city has officially commemorated the disaster each year by gathering the remaining survivors at Lotta’s Fountain, a fountain in the city’s financial district that served as a meeting point during the disaster for people to look for loved ones and exchange information.

Calendar: April 17

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

The Seat of the Revelation

April 17, 1918 was the birthdate of William Franklin Beedle Jr., known to the public as William Holden, one of the biggest stars of the 1950s and 1960s.

William Holden’s first starring role was in the 1939 film “The Golden Boy”, costarring Barbara Stanwyck, in which he played a violinist turned boxer. He was still an unknown actor at the time, while Stanwyck was already a film star. She liked Holden and went out of her way to help him succeed, devoting her personal time to coaching and encouraging him.

Next he starred with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart in the 1939 Warner Brothers gangster epic “Invisible Stripes” followed by the role of George Gibbs in the film adaptation of “Our Town”. After Columbia Pictures picked up half of his contract, he alternated between starring in several minor pictures for Paramount and Columbia before serving as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Air Force during World War II, where he acted in training films for the First Motion Picture Unit.

Holden’s career took off in 1950 when director Billy Wilder tapped him to star in “Sunset Boulevard”, in which he played a down-on-his-heels screenwriter taken in by a faded silent-screen star, played by Gloria Swanson. Holden earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination with the part. Getting the part was a lucky break for Holden, as the role was initially cast with Montgomery Clift, who backed out of his contract.

Following this breakthrough film, his career quickly grew as Holden played a series of roles that combined his good looks with cynical detachment, including a prisoner-of-war entrepreneur in the 1953 “Stalag 17”, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. His most widely recognized role was an ill-fated prisoner of war in the 1957 “The Bridge on the River Kwai” co-starring with Alec Guinness. He also starred in John Ford’s western “The Horse Soldiers” playing an American Civil War military surgeon opposite John Wayne.

William Holden co-starred as Humphrey Bogart’s younger brother, a carefree playboy, in the 1954 “Sabrina” starring Audrey Hepburn. It was Holden’s third film with director Billy Wilder. His career peaked in 1957 with the enormous success of “The Bridge Over the River Kwai”, but Holden spent the next several years starring in a number of films that rarely succeeded commercially or critically.

By the mid-1960s, the quality of his roles and films had noticeably diminished. A heavy drinker most of his life, Holden made a comeback in 1969 when he starred in director Sam Peckinpah’s graphically violent Western “The Wild Bunch”, winning much acclaim. Holden gave two more great performances, in the 1974 “Towering Inferno” and the 1976 “Network”, until his shock death from blood loss due to a fall at his apartment while intoxicated. In 1982, actress Stefanie Powers, with whom Holden had been in a relationship since 1975, helped set up the William Holden Wildlife Foundation and the William Holden Wildlife Education Center in Kenya, an area where Holden was active in animal sanctuary.

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.