tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22155532029782844682024-03-14T09:23:24.454+00:00THE GRØNMARK BLOGScott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.comBlogger2873125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-51459079520592268932021-12-24T17:06:00.001+00:002021-12-24T17:09:45.948+00:00Scott Grønmark - Eulogy<p><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(For anyone who wants to skip straight to the eulogy: </span><a href="https://scottgronmarkeulogy.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://scottgronmarkeulogy.com/</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) </span></i></p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-px_i90liiQ4PD3-W47Gl8n0Kxf0DTV8zKrHMvCEbX4p-V9GedB2lnvYgNqJf8MXwqBdmZmXRqA2CqKSZMew-6Yp7wMZPDTjRJKgCJZ6nTto-Ig5DM4PBSd6e2mfnhD4TvhBuWBQZiKnwXgWTXEV-ysO90qFhxH67VD5wQ7I1u2lwaXVaquT_M8jU=s496" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="383" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-px_i90liiQ4PD3-W47Gl8n0Kxf0DTV8zKrHMvCEbX4p-V9GedB2lnvYgNqJf8MXwqBdmZmXRqA2CqKSZMew-6Yp7wMZPDTjRJKgCJZ6nTto-Ig5DM4PBSd6e2mfnhD4TvhBuWBQZiKnwXgWTXEV-ysO90qFhxH67VD5wQ7I1u2lwaXVaquT_M8jU=s320" width="247" /></a></i></div><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></i><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-bbb9588a-7fff-bc28-b213-8a0ed9cca48c"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hello,</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is Alex Grønmark, Scott’s son. In June 2020, my father passed away after a protracted battle with pancreatic cancer.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He remained jovial, inquisitive, and a thoroughly decent human being right until the end.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Memories of my father range from an austere paternal figure, always ready to dispense advice, to an eternally boyish joker who knew how to find humour in whatever life threw at him.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(My earliest memories of dad are of him making other adults laugh uproariously around dining room tables…)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My father was, to me, two things:</span></p><br /><ul style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-inline-start: 48px;"><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A man with an encyclopedic knowledge of world history, politics, music, art, and philosophy (who would complain vociferously whenever Jeremy Paxman asked questions about science or maths — the only ones he couldn’t answer)</span></p></li><li aria-level="1" dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><p dir="ltr" role="presentation" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A man in his 60s who emailed me at least two videos per week of baby bears playing in the snow, orangutans making faces at each other, fluffy kittens, or a dog (his favourite animal) doing just about anything</span></p></li></ul><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As his son, I got to see a side of Scott known well by his closest friends: funny, caring, and passionately opinionated about the world around him.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My mother, Sara, is an unsung hero in the story. She remained a vigilant and consistent help right until the end — selflessly providing for dad when things became difficult.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, Scott has been excellently eulogised by his lifelong friend Roderick Conway Morris. The full transcript, with pictures, can be found at the following address:</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><a href="https://scottgronmarkeulogy.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://scottgronmarkeulogy.com/</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With much love and best wishes to all his friends, this is Alex, signing the Grønmark blog out for the last time.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">P.S. we’re going to keep the Grønmark blog up as a memorial to my father’s thoughts. The opinions expressed may or may not reflect the beliefs of the management, but they certainly reflected Scott (a staunch opponent of cultural marxism, the decay of western civilisation, and Diane Abbott)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">P.P.S. to anyone who’s been commenting on Scott’s blog, I will try and work through your messages and get them up on the site. When my father became too unwell to update it, he made the wise choice to switch comments to manual approval to avoid egregious SPAM.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-32146574074846147372019-05-02T17:34:00.000+01:002019-05-02T17:34:26.055+01:00How the CIA used the 1939 comedy film "Ninotchka" to stop Italy turning communist<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhqlX-wre5KypSaqKaO6_k9IxOCtHaQdFax3UonQ2CySzVo33B1_zhbwJAHJg6U9mhMq2RYBcEIZVwH8hyqsBA4te-lCLV0_J8KHTDwYM3Xvu21yiPvG_REBr4WmhTJzU3Oewi1z-4h-k/s1600/GHOST.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="256" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhqlX-wre5KypSaqKaO6_k9IxOCtHaQdFax3UonQ2CySzVo33B1_zhbwJAHJg6U9mhMq2RYBcEIZVwH8hyqsBA4te-lCLV0_J8KHTDwYM3Xvu21yiPvG_REBr4WmhTJzU3Oewi1z-4h-k/s320/GHOST.jpg" width="204" /></a>I'm currently reading <i>The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton</i> by Jefferson Morley. As I wrote <a href="https://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2015/04/ill-end-weekend-with-my-favourite-scene.html">here</a>, I've long believed that<i> Ninotchka</i> is the best anti-communist film ever made, so I was delighted to find the following in Morley's book (the background to the story is that there was a genuine danger of the Communist Party winning the 1948 Italian elections):<br />
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'Angleton... interrupted one embassy meeting in Rome in early 1948 to ask Ambassador James Dunn if he might offer an idea...</blockquote>
<a name='more'></a>"I thought," he began mischievously, "we might take advantage of one of America's greatest natural resources: Greta Garbo...I realise she once belonged to another country," Angleton said, "but I believe by now we're justified in claiming her as our own. So I suggest we import one of her best pictures. " he paused. "I'd like to expose the Italians to <i>Ninotchka</i>."...<br />
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<i>Ninotchka</i>... was a comedy in which Garbo spoofed Stalinist Russia. The ambassador ratified Angleton's proposal on the spot. Actually, Angleton wasn't the only wise guy with this idea. The Hollywood studios had printed extra copies of <i>Ninotchka</i> and made special arrangements to show the film in Italy as a way of contrasting golden America with ravaged Russia. At the end of the meeting, Agleton supposedly quipped , "Miss Garbo will prove a most lethal secret weapon."</blockquote>
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And so she did. The Christian Democrats emerged from the election of April 1948 with 48% of the vote and an absolute majority in parliament."</blockquote>
I've no idea if any of this is true, but it's a nice story. I've posted enough clips from <i>Ninotchka, </i>so I've opted for a couple from <i>Silk Stockings</i>, the 1957 remake - one of MGM's last great musicals - which starred Fred Astaire in the Melvyn Douglas role, and the stunningly lovely Cyd Charisse replacing Garbo in the title role. Miss Charisse was no great shakes as an actress, but her facial immobility actually suited the part of a frozen-faced commie enforcer perfectly. In this first clip, she discovers the delights of feminine apparel (the censors insisted she hid behind a chair, which, of course, made the scene seem rather suggestive):<br />
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Here, Ninotchka and her comrades, who have been recalled to Moscow, perform the "Red Blues":<br />
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(Memo to self:<i> Do not start reading a fascinating book on a fascinating subject at two o'clock in the morning. Idiot!)</i></div>
Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-11269874972347231792019-04-23T20:45:00.000+01:002019-04-23T20:45:30.535+01:00Sleazy, sweaty, brassy... the music behind noir movies<div style="text-align: left;">
I'll start with Henry Mancini's "Main Title" from Orson Welles's <i>Touch of Evil </i>(1958):</div>
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Here's Duke Ellington's wonderfully swaggering"Upper and Outest" from Otto Preminger's <i>Anatomy of a Murder </i>(1959):</div>
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Back to Henry Mancini, with the main theme from Blake Edward's brilliant late noir thriller, <i>Experiment in Terror</i> (1962):</div>
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Anthony's North's "French Quarter" from Elia Kazan's <i>A Streetcar Named Desire</i> (1951) may be the sleaziest slice of music I've ever heard:</div>
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Mind you, the great Elmer Bernstein runs that pretty close, sleaze-wise, on "Goodbye Baby Blues" from Alexander Mackendrick's <i>Sweet Smell of Success </i>(1957):</div>
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And "The Street" from <i>Sweet Smell of Success</i> demonstrates the undeniable fact that nobody did Big City Swagger better than Bernstein:</div>
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I watched Don Siegel's <i>Private Hell 36</i> (1954) for the first time last week. Not bad - and the same can be said of "Daddy Long Legs" by Leith Stevens and His Orchestra, which was used in the film:</div>
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The TV series,<i> 77 Sunset Strip </i>was hardly film noir - but that's not going to stop me including The Warren Barker Orchestra's "Caper at the Coffee House" in this post:</div>
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I'll end with my favourite piece of film noir music - Elmer Bernstein's "Frankie Machine" from Otto Preminger's <i>The Man with the Golden Arm</i> (1954). I've always found the film unwatchably depressing, but I'm happy to listen to the theme music any time:</div>
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The image for that last video was from the cover from <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Noir-3CD-Box-Set/dp/B00Q34WUN2/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=jazz+noir&qid=1556048596&s=gateway&sr=8-1">the <i>Jazz Noir, </i>3-CD</a> set which I bought recently, and which contains most of the music featured in this blog. Odd choice for a man who has always claimed to hate jazz, but there you go.</div>
Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-50782590891249040592019-04-23T19:25:00.001+01:002019-04-23T19:25:10.970+01:00Titania McGrath's "Woke: A Guide to Social Justice" made me weep with laughter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Why should you read it? Titania McGrath explains early on in the book:<br />
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"Activists such as myself are spearheading a new culture war, sniffing out prejudice like valiant bloodhounds of righteousness, courageously snapping at the heels of injustice. To give a tangible example of our achievements, consider how the definition of the word 'Nazi' has been successfully broadened to include anyone who voted for Brexit, has ever considered supporting the Conservative Party or who refuses to take the <i>Guardian </i>seriously. Although this is a great victory for the progressive cause, it does mean that there are now more Nazis living in modern Britain than even existed in 1930s Germany. This makes <i>Woke: A Guide to Social Justice</i> not only timely but essential."</blockquote>
She goes on to confront her horrific upbringing...<br />
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<br />"I was the only child of two barristers. I learnt early on that my private education and frequent family holidays to Montenegro and the Maldives were merely a ruse by which my parents could distract me from my oppression." </blockquote>
As for her monstrously insensitive mother...<br />
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"I had been breastfed for the first six months of my life. Did my mother not realise that I was a vegan? Did she even care? Either way, this was abuse."</blockquote>
<i>Woke</i> is brimming with uncomfortable truths regarding, for instance, racism:<br />
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"We need to challenge the lazy assumption that people aren't racist just because they never say or do racist things."</blockquote>
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"...sometimes the opinions of all black people are best expressed by white celebrity millionaires."</blockquote>
And Islamophobia:<br />
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"Unconscious bias against Muslims is particularly rampant. Studies show that 96 per cent of respondents would run away if they heard someone shouting 'Allahu Akbar' in a public place."</blockquote>
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"Recently, beauty queen Sara Iftekhar broke new ground by wearing a hijab in the final of the Miss England competition. She had already been voted the most attractive woman in Huddersfield, which admittedly is a bit like winning an arm wrestle in a hospice."</blockquote>
The true role of the university:<br />
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"A university is hardly the appropriate place for exploring alternative ideas."</blockquote>
Misogyny:<br />
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"If women choose to sacrifice the prospect of a career in order to breed, that is of course up to them. By doing so, however, they are embodying all that is rotten in patriarchal society. They have internalised their misogyny to such a degree that they genuinely believe that raising a child is more important and rewarding than earning money."</blockquote>
Transphobia, Gender Fluidity and Misgendering:<br />
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"In any case, if it is true that men are superior at sports, why is it that transgender athletes tend to win more medals <i>after</i> they transition to female?"</blockquote>
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"Note, for instance, that historians tend to refer to King Henry VIII as a 'he'. But why? Do they ever stop to think that Henry might have preferred a nonconformist pronoun? There is nothing particularly male about having a huge beard, broad shoulders and a massive cock. My friend Belinda is hung like a shire stallion. This doesn't make her any less feminine." </blockquote>
And the importance of supporting disadvantaged artists:<br />
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"I only like music if it is produced by artists from marginalised groups. Def Leppard is a good example, because the drummer lacks an arm. Then there is Gabrielle, who is black, female and missing an eye. Lily Allen is another sound choice because she is clearly retarded."</blockquote>
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"[Andrea] Dworkin was a genius of the highest calibre who produced some of the most perspicacious feminist writing of the twentieth century and was a key activist in the anti-pornography movement. And she managed to achieve all this with a total lack of charm and a face like a robber's dog. A true inspiration."</blockquote>
Titania McGrath is a genius and if <i>Woke: A Guide to Social Justice </i>isn't this year's bestselling book, it will be because of racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and Brexit. It's available at all good bookshops and from Amazon, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Woke-Social-Justice-Titania-McGrath/dp/1472130847/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=15ROIJC5O7CU5&keywords=woke+titania+mcgrath&qid=1556043661&s=gateway&sprefix=Woke%2Caps%2C451&sr=8-1-fkmrnull">here</a>.<br />
<br />Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-31362012592353488752019-04-23T18:22:00.000+01:002019-04-23T18:22:29.276+01:00I recently saw the 1949 British film "The Queen of Spades" for the first time: what a masterpiece!<div style="text-align: center;">
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I ordered the DVD for Christmas, and was waiting for a rainy Sunday afternoon to watch it with my wife, who remembered seeing part of it in on television a few years ago. I'd read the short story, but had never heard of the film, until coming across it in a handful of "Must Watch" movie lists...</div>
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...towards the end of last year. I've seen a lot of surprisingly good vintage British films in the past two years, but I didn't expect to encounter anything quite as earth-shakingly brilliant as this extraordinary interpretation of Pushkin's famous supernatural tale of a Russian officer determined to extract the formula for winning at Faro (a variant of Snap) from a crotchety, aged countess, rumoured to have sold her soul to the devil in return for the Secret of the Cards. </div>
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The film seems to support the <i>auteur</i> theory, which maintains that every film worth its salt is the result of a single creative force, i.e. the director. <i>The Queen of Spades</i> is such a coherent aesthetic whole that it must represent the vision of one creator, who must have nurtured it from inception to birth. Except that the director Thorold Dickinson was drafted in five days before shooting was due to start, when the original director left the production (either through ill health or disagreement, or both). If Dickinson hadn't been available, the film would probably have been cancelled. To make Dickinson's job even harder, his three main actors were the notoriously prickly Anton Walbrook (a half-Jewish, homosexual, Viennese thespian who had wisely left Austria in 1936 to settle in England, and had even more wisely changed his first name from Adolf to Anton), and Edith Evans and Yvonne Mitchell, neither of whom had ever made a film before.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yvonne Mitchell and Anton Walbrook</td></tr>
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Dickinson - who immediately set about rewriting parts of the script - had directed Walbrook in <i>Gaslight</i>, the superb 1940 adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's play, which might partly explain Walbrook's fully-committed performance here. Had he played the part of Captain Herman Suvorin in a typically muted British style, it's doubtful the film would have worked. Instead, Walbrook throws himself at the role in the <i>bravura </i>manner, moving through the gears from skulking mysteriously in the background while richer officers lose and win fortunes at cards to full, shrieking over-the-top, <i>Grand Guignol</i>, nutsoid ranting. Never has an actor ssssounded more ssssibilantly ssssnake-like. His magnificently unbridled approach is matched by the sets, the costumes, the script, the cinematography, the direction, the editing and the lighting. As for his ingenue co-stars, it's almost impossible to believe that they had never acted in a film before: the fact that the film is is so theatrical may, I suppose, have helped the two stage actresses triumph in what was for them a new medium. But this is undoubtedly Walbrook's film - I'm not sure I've ever seen a performance which so clearly announces, "There's nothing I won't do to make this bloody film work!" (That determination extended to his off-camera behaviour: Yvonne Mitchell later said that he spent a lot of time being kind, calming her nerves and banishing her self-doubt.)<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anton Walbrook and Edith Evans</td></tr>
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The reward for all this effort was general critical and public lack of interest. In particular, European critics - then under the spell of Italian neo-realism - dismissed it as hopelessly old-fashioned. The movie fell into such neglect that it was considered a lost film for many years, until it was rediscovered and eventually re-released in cinemas in 2009 and on DVD in 2010. It is now widely recognised as a masterpiece of supernatural cinema - deservedly: the scene in which Captain Suvorin is visited in his dingy rooms by the dead countess's unseen spirit is masterfully creepy. In fact, it's widely recognised as a masterpiece of cinema, full stop.</div>
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I realise I probably sound as over-the-top as Anton Walbrook in the movie, but <i>The Queen of Spades</i> (which displays the sort of febrile, half-mad, mystical energy to be found in some Powell-Pressburger classics) caught me completely by surprise. The horror director Wes Craven places it sixth in his personal list of great British films: I certainly wouldn't disagree.<br />
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<i>The Queen of Spades</i> is available <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Queen-Spades-DVD-Anton-Walbrook/dp/B002V8FSBU/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+queen+of+spades&qid=1556038555&s=gateway&sr=8-1">from Amazon on a DVD </a>with some excellent extra features thrown in. </div>
Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-88356445841299059602019-04-17T19:54:00.001+01:002019-04-17T19:54:11.678+01:00Hollywood classics: The Story of G.I. Joe, Dodsworth, Ceiling Zero, You Only Live Once and Little Women<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6QiqSfYfcYWjVIY6f-fsyR5glJDrAMhvp0biRrmc-57v8tQM51kcjNlD8k2K4FYz16ZwWj_uA3MsNIe7IguhgqYISUWTf6dbrPbDnuDRwZRgf4TxW6FphdqtmdODIZnQXT1gp9EeduE4/s1600/HOLLYCLAASIX+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="268" data-original-width="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6QiqSfYfcYWjVIY6f-fsyR5glJDrAMhvp0biRrmc-57v8tQM51kcjNlD8k2K4FYz16ZwWj_uA3MsNIe7IguhgqYISUWTf6dbrPbDnuDRwZRgf4TxW6FphdqtmdODIZnQXT1gp9EeduE4/s1600/HOLLYCLAASIX+-+1.jpg" /></a>I'd imagined <i>The Story of GI Joe</i> (1945) to be a morale-raising, rip-roaring, hairy-chested, WW2 shoot-'em-up: it was, after all, directed by William "Wild Bill" Wellman, and starred Robert Mitchum. it turned out to be a sensitive, almost wistful salute to the ordinary American infantryman. The film's actual title was <i>Ernie Pyle's Story of GI Joe</i>. Ernie Pyle was a war correspondent who accompanied American troops as they slogged through Tunisia and Italy. The film is based on stories and dialogue from his war-time reports, which were printed in 400 daily and 300 weekly newspapers...<br />
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...There aren't any heroics, as such. There's a small-scale gun battle in a bombed-out monastery, but the film focusses on the daily grind of soldiers as they trudge through mud, celebrate Christmas, get married (after the exhausted GI marries his Italian bride and they retire to a caravan on their wedding night, he immediately falls asleep), miss their loved ones (one soldier spends most of the film trying to find a record player so he can hear his infant son talking on a disc sent to him by his wife), go mad, and get killed.<br />
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The film's two outstanding performances are provided by Robert Mitchum - then practically unknown (see the contemporary poster below) - as Lt. Bill Walker (what a superb actor he was, given the right material and the right director) - and the equally wonderful Burgess Meredith, as the 44-year old journalist, who died in action just before the film was released. I found this self-explanatory letter while reading about Pyle on the web:<br />
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My father took a photograph of Ernie Pyle in the Pacific in 1945, shortly before Pyle was killed. At the time Pyle was surrounded by a mob of admiring G.Is. You'd have thought they were in the presence of Bettie Grable or Rita Hayworth rather than a short, balding, middle aged newspaper-man. When Pyle was killed in action a few days later while accompanying the infantry, the solders erected a monument at the place where he died. On it were engraved the words, "On this spot the 77th Division lost a buddy."</blockquote>
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The <i>Story of GI Joe</i> was a box-office success, as was <i>A Walk in the Sun</i>, a similarly understated movie about ordinary US infantrymen in the Italian campaign, released six months later. Burgess Meredith was instrumental in getting that film made (it was based on a novel written by an American journalist), and he provided the voice of the narrator.<br />
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If you want to see <i>The Story of GI Joe</i>, you'll either have to wait for it to turn up on the TCM channel or <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-G-I-Joe-DVD/dp/B00B9GKA8G/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+story+of+GI+Joe&qid=1554740958&s=gateway&sr=8-1">buy it on DVD.</a><br />
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I recently bought a Spanish DVD of <i> Dodsworth</i>, the 1936 film version of a Sinclair Lewis. Directed by William Wyler, it stars Walter Huston as a wealthy industrialist who, restless, sells his company and heads for Europe with his snobby wife, Ruth Chatterton, who, afraid of growing old, longs for glamour, class and culture. She immediately embarks on a series of affairs, starting with David Niven on board the ship taking them to Europe, while Mr. D strikes up a platonic friendship with fellow-passenger, Mary Astor.<br />
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The Dodsworths drift apart and agree to divorce: waiting for it to become final, he wanders unhappily around Europe until he bumps into Mary Astor again in Naples, and she invites him to stay at her idyllic, rented home by the sea, while the wife plans to marry a young Austrian nobleman. The nobleman's mother refuses to agree to the marriage, and Ruth Chatterton contacts Walter Huston and suggests a reconciliation, to which he agrees out of a sense of duty, much to Mary Astor's sorrow. When the Dodsworths board the ship back to the States, the husband realises what a terrible mistake he has made, disembarks, and heads back to Mary Astor. It's a superb film, beautifully written, directed and acted (particularly by Walter Huston), and handsomely mounted.<br />
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By way of contrast, the same year saw the release of <i>Ceiling Zero</i>, directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Pat O'Brien as the operations manager of an airline company, and his war-time buddy James Cagney as a devil-may-care, womanising pilot. The film practically invented a new Hollywood genre - the non-genre picture: there's drama, comedy, romance, adventure, a closely-knit group of professionals doing a dangerous job, there's a tough gal involved, and everyone talks twice as fast as anyone does in real life (Pat O'Brien might well hold the world record for the speed with which he delivers his lines in this film - to the point where I found some of the exchanges incomprehensible).<br />
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Cagney and O'Brien are superb at this sort of stuff, and Cagney proves once more that he could portray a character who's a selfish shit, while somehow retaining our affection: Cagney, anxious to chase a young female would-be pilot, gets another pilot to take his place on a flight, the weather turns ugly, and the pilot dies (don't worry, the film ends with Cagney sacrificing himself to make up for his bad behaviour). Many of <i>Ceiling Zero</i>'s elements reappear in Hawks's great hit, <i>Only Angels Have Wings </i>(1940), and there's another 1940 film, <i>Torrid Zone, </i>directed by William Keighley, again starring O'Brien and Cagney, which is practically a remake. Great fun.<br />
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Another classic I could only find on DVD was Fritz Lang's <i>You Only Live Once</i> (1937), a very early example of film noir. For some incomprehensible reason, nice girl Sylvia Sidney has got herself mixed up with jailbird Henry Fonda. The film opens as he's leaving prison after serving a third term, and ends in disaster as he tries to shoot his way out of prison while waiting for his death sentence to be carried out. It's one of the most beautifully put-together films I've ever seen - there's a shot of Henry Fonda in his multi-barred death cell, and one of Sylvia Sidney's highlighted face appearing in a door hatch through which she has to speak to her lover in prison which both took my breath away, and there's a magnificently-realised scene in which a gang of robbers wearing gas masks swarms over an armoured car which they've bombarded with tear gas which made me want to applaud. But the film's outlook is so unrelentingly liberal that it made me want to throw up. I presume that the Great Depression made it easier for audiences to sympathise with criminals who "never had a break", but the idea that Fonda's character was doomed from the moment when, as a kid, he was sent to reform school for beating up another kid who was maltreating an animal struck me as a ludicrously inadequate excuse. I spent most of the film looking forward to Fonda getting his well-deserved comeuppance for being such a whining, self-pitying, chance-spurning sad sack. Despite that, it's a brilliant piece of film-making.<br />
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I'll end with George Cukor's 1933 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's <i>Little Women</i>, which is available of Amazon Prime. I watched it as a duty, because it appears on so many lists of all-time great films - and adored every minute of it. It's visually gorgeous, the clothes and the interiors in particular (the March home was apparently an exact reconstruction of Louisa May Alcott's house in Massachusetts) - and the acting is magnificent. Katharine Hepburn's performance occasionally teeters on the edge of self-parody, but in the end is an absolute triumph. Sheer Hollywood Golden Age perfection. It won the academy award for best-adapted screenplay - but how it lost out to <i>Cavalcade</i> for Best Picture and Best Director is anybody's guess.<br />
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-80869270200693155202019-04-01T19:31:00.000+01:002019-04-01T19:33:58.758+01:00Brexit - "Are we there yet?" No, of course we aren't!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My main aim this year was to still be here for Brexit Day - i.e. 29th March. Last Thursday. Well, I made it, but - as you may have noticed - no Brexit. Thank you, Theresa May. I don't have the strength - or, to be honest, the inclination - to follow the current comic...<br />
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...shitstorm in detail. That may be why I find the choice facing this abysmal government on 12th April so blindingly obvious. Stewart Jackson expresses it perfectly:<br />
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There is now no conceivable way for the government to keep Britain in the EU or to "leave" the EU while remaining subject to its rules and diktats without it resulting in a crushing defeat at the next election. The only way for the Conservatives to retain power and to stop a gang of anti-Semitic communists from taking over is to <i>genuinely</i> leave the EU on 12th April. The government has the power to do this. A failure to do so would represent a betrayal of the Conservative Party, its members, the British electorate as a whole, the country, and democracy. </div>
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<i>What is the fucking problem??? </i>Fear of upsetting people like this?:</div>
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It really is time for the worst Prime Minister in British history to listen to one of the very best:</div>
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Being the miserable, cowardly, befuddled, political pygmy that she is, Mrs May won't. How very depressing. </div>
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On the basis that I'll happily listen to the Labour MP Kate Hoey on the subject of Brexit, even though she belongs to a party run by economically illiterate Jew-haters who despise this country, I'll also happily listen to Alice Weidel, the co-leader of Germany's AfD, addressing the Bundestag on the same subject:</div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-57051465710977793962019-04-01T18:27:00.000+01:002019-04-01T18:27:10.268+01:00President Trump responds to the Mueller Inquiry non-findings, Michael Avenatti's arrest - and Joe Biden's hint that he might run against him in 2020<div style="text-align: center;">
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One of the highlights of my year so far was undoubtedly BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel's demeanour as he...</div>
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...reported that the 22-month inquiry by former FBI Director Robert Mueller into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election had failed to reveal any collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign. I stopped following the whole Mueller saga early on, because the stench of bullshit that results from a constant diet of sour grapes was overpowering. As with Britain's Remainiacs, many American Democrats simply couldn't bear to admit that they lost a crucial vote because of their own mistakes and the lack of appeal of their candidate/message. Sopel, who has spent Trump's presidency treating the man as if he were a pathetic joke, eagerly trying to convince viewers that every anti-Trump snippet portended the The Donald's enforced departure from the White House within a matter of days, if not hours, looked distinctly green about the gills as he almost angrily admitted that his Democratic Party chums had lost the Russia-collusion battle, and that flogging a dead horse by trying to keep the story running - as many of them seemed determined to do - would simply piss off American voters and help Trump triumph once more in 2020. </div>
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<i>Bliss!</i></div>
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The end of the Mueller Inquiry was followed rapidly by the news that Michael Avenatti - the "creepy little porn lawyer" who had represented porn star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against Donald Trump - had been arrested for allegedly attempting to extort up to $25m from Nike by threatening to reveal damaging claims about the company. </div>
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As if all that wasn't enough to make Trump happy, "Creepy Uncle" Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton's running mate in 2016, dropped a hint that he might be willing to stand against Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Now, Americans - as we all know - are a lot more touchy-feely than most North Europeans, i.e. far more willing to express their feelings towards other people physically. Even as we Yurpeens shrink from hugs and extended hand-clasps and arms slung around our shoulders, we tend to feel as embarrassed by our own inhibitions as we are by the emotional openness of Americans: I, for one, admire Americans' readiness to display affection, and sometimes wish I could be a little less inhibited. I also worry that the MeToo movement and perfectly understandable concerns about adults getting too huggy with other people's children will soon make it impossible for any adult to physically express any affection for anyone other than their own spouse and/or children. But, given all that, I still find myself cringing whenever I see Joe Biden clawing women and children, sniffing their hair, or whispering intimately to them. I make no assumptions regarding his motives - but it just looks and feels <i>wrong, </i>and it evidently creeps out some of the women and kids subjected to his over-warm personality. Trump has said some disgusting things about clutching women's private parts and about wanting to date his own daughter(!) - but just imagine the sort of fun his campaign team would have highlighting Creepy Uncle Joe's seemingly endless displays of inappropriate behaviour:</div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-21834283177217384612019-04-01T16:47:00.001+01:002019-04-01T16:47:29.819+01:00The extraordinary life of Doc Pomus - polio victim, white blues singer, and a truly great songwriter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Between the end of the first wave of genuine, raucous, gutbucket, rootsy Rock and Roll (1959) and the British Invasion (1963), most decent pop songs were written by fourteen Jews (eleven men, three women) working out of two office blocks on New York's Broadway - the Brill Building at 1619, and one that didn't have a name at 1650. At the time, the only one of these writers known to the public was Neil Sedaka, who recorded his own songs and who - despite being a pudgy little dweeb with a somewhat mincing manner - scored a large number of hits with expertly-crafted musical lollipops such as "Oh! Carol", "Calendar Girl" and "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen". Another - Carole King - would go on to record <i>Tapestry</i>, of the biggest-selling albums of the '70s. But the four greatest songwriters working out of these two buildings were undoubtedly Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman...</div>
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...four Jews who basically self-identified as black, and who (certainly in the case of the first three) were steeped in the traditions of black Rhythm and Blues and Rock and Roll.</div>
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When I use the word "steeped", I'm not joking. Leiber and Stoller (who I wrote about <a href="http://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2011/09/so-farewell-then-jerry-leiber-greatest.html">here</a>) weren't appropriating an alien culture - they actually composed classics such as Wilbert Harrison's sublime "Kansas City", Big Joe Turner's "Chicken and the Hawk" and Big Mana Thornton's "Hound Dog" (they hated Elvis Presley's version, until the royalty cheques started arriving). Doc Pomus (born Jerome Solon Felder, he adopted a stage name so his mother wouldn't find out what he was up to) went one step further: while still a teenager, he hoisted himself up on crutches made necessary by a severe attack of polio when he was nine, and hollered the blues in black clubs, released a string of R&B records, some of which were pretty good (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkI3dkoaW-U">"Send for the Doctor"</a>), and wrote songs for Big Joe Turner, Laverne Baker, and the magnificent "Lonely Avenue" for Ray Charles:</div>
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...and that glorious slice of street life, "Young Blood", for The Coasters:</div>
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Feeling that his age and background made it hard for him to connect with white teenage record-buyers, Pomus teamed up with the inexperienced but hip Mort Shuman and spent a year teaching him how to write songs. Together, they went on to compose some fairly crappy hits for manufactured teen idols such as Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon and Fabian (!), as well as many of the greatest pop songs of the late '50s and early '60s, including:</div>
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"This Magic Moment", The Drifters</div>
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"A Mess of Blues", Elvis Presley</div>
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"Save the Last Dance for Me", The Drifters</div>
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"I Count the Tears", The Drifters</div>
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"Surrender", Elvis Presley</div>
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"Little Sister", Elvis Presley</div>
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"His Latest Flame", Elvis Presley</div>
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"Sweets for My Sweet", The Drifters</div>
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"Here Comes the Night", Ben E. King</div>
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"Suspicion", Elvis Presley</div>
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"Seven Day Weekend", Gary US Bonds</div>
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"Can't Get Used to Losing You", Andy Williams</div>
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"Viva Las Vegas", Elvis Presley</div>
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(In case anyone is wondering what Mort Shuman brought to the party, he eventually decamped to Europe, where he co-wrote "Little Children" for Billy J. Kramer, "Sha La La La Lee" for the Small Faces, the R&B classic "Look at Granny Run, Run" for Howard Tate, and a brilliant English-language version of Jacques Brel's "Jackie" for Scott Walker - before becoming a much-loved solo singer in France - singing in French!)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Y-AueiIvwy8T_2AevLLagpaFGuwzdk5bF4RwIuDAVGbljbu2mwLL5LLgQysRIcVWzWnFQnGP1F42dyStZk_hWXB3oevYaAjTmt1oUviixfAgUUBAfRAmybuYoyZNOCyWLGQXGWHxha8/s1600/POMUS+-+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="878" data-original-width="564" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5Y-AueiIvwy8T_2AevLLagpaFGuwzdk5bF4RwIuDAVGbljbu2mwLL5LLgQysRIcVWzWnFQnGP1F42dyStZk_hWXB3oevYaAjTmt1oUviixfAgUUBAfRAmybuYoyZNOCyWLGQXGWHxha8/s320/POMUS+-+2.jpg" width="205" /></a>I've just finished a splendidly informative book about the writers and producers who created the "Brill Building Sound" - <i>Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era</i>, by Ken Emerson (available <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Always-Magic-Air-Brilliance-Building/dp/1841157287/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=always+magic+in+the+air&qid=1554132622&s=gateway&sr=8-1">here</a>). Like many of the Brill songwriters, Pomus's career was all but destroyed by the British Invasion and the resulting shift to performers writing their own material (Leiber and Stoller's response was to set up their own label, Red Bird Records, and to concentrate on production). By the '70s - mainly driven by the need to pay for his children's private schooling - Pomus, a largely forgotten figure in the music business, made a living running a regular poker game out of his two-room Manhattan hotel apartment. (The death of Elvis Presley provided an unexpected financial boost, thanks to Pomus's songs appearing on a flood of Elvis compilation albums.) Now confined to a wheelchair and enormously fat (he'd given up cigarettes, didn't take drugs, and barely drank, but made no attempt to control his appetite for rich food), Pomus enjoyed a well-deserved musical renaissance in the '80s: his later songs were recorded by, among others, Willy DeVille, B.B. King, Irma Thomas, Marianne Faithfull, Charlie Rich, Ruth Brown and Dr. John, and his 60th birthday party was rammed with eminent performers. In his later years, he put a lot of effort into helping old blues performers who'd fallen on hard times, including Big Joe Turner and Jimmy Scott. </div>
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There's a superb documentary about Doc Pomus available for free on YouTube - <i>AKA Doc Pomus</i> - which I can't recommend highly enough. Hell of a life, hell of a nice bloke - and what a songwriter!:</div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-66027031305364054762019-03-22T17:36:00.001+00:002019-03-22T17:47:24.739+00:00I second the suggestion that Dominic Frisby's brilliant song should be the UK's next Eurovision Song Contest entry<div style="text-align: center;">
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<i>Yup!</i> Being a Brexit supporter with Theresa May in charge reminds me...</div>
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...of being a Manchester United fan when José Mourinho was the coach - just as The Special One evidently didn't have a clue what the club stood for, Mrs. May evidently doesn't have a clue what the Brexit vote was actually about. All that's missing from current Brexit news reports are the sort of sound effects used in British comedy films in the 1950s. </div>
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I'm going to leave you with an extremely entertaining edition of Peter Whittle's new YouTube show, <i>So What You're Saying Is..., </i> in which he interviews Rod Liddle (who should probably think about laying off the pies for a bit):</div>
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You might also enjoy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDgG3-g78x0&t=3s">this interview</a> with James Delingpole. I was astonished to learn that Delingpole's classic book, <i>How To Be Right</i>, was first published twelve years ago - seems like yesterday. It's still relevant, and very funny, and required reading in a week that saw the Home Office turn down an asylum application from an Iranian Christian woman because her claim that the Bible was peaceful was - they claimed - false (they quoted <i>The Book of Revelation</i> back at her, for God's sake!), and in which Cambridge University rescinded their offer of a visiting fellowship to Dr Jordan Peterson on the grounds that he might upset some of their precious little snowflakes, who are apparently so fragile that they need to be protected from ideas they don't agree with. Fucking cowards. </div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-26711293867168701352019-03-22T16:43:00.000+00:002019-03-22T16:43:31.191+00:00Sweden seems to be suffering a particularly virulent attack of "J.K. Rowliing Syndrome" <div style="text-align: center;">
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-30829323957515968742019-03-19T17:55:00.000+00:002019-03-19T17:55:17.514+00:00Henri-Georges Clouzot, the French director who rivalled Hitchcock as the master of suspense<div style="text-align: center;">
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I'm even slower on the uptake these days than I used to be, so it wasn't until after I'd watched the splendidly nasty...</div>
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...1943 French mystery film, <i>Le Corbeau</i> (translated as <i>The Crow</i> or <i>The Raven</i>) that I realised it was by the director responsible for possibly the greatest thriller/suspense movie of all time, <i>The Wages of Fear </i>(which I recently wrote about <a href="http://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2019/01/five-great-vintage-french-films.html">here</a>), and for possibly the greatest "gaslighting" film of all time, <i>Les Diaboliques</i>. Not only was Henri-Georges Clouzot responsible for that trio of unpleasant masterpieces, he also directed <i>Quai des Orfèvres </i>(1947) a superbly atmospheric police procedural I watched for the first time six weeks ago. What a talented chap!</div>
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The plot of <i>Le Corbeau </i>concerns a spate of poison-pen letters sent to just about anyone who is anyone in a sunlit French provincial town. As with all successful campaigns of this sort, the allegations are either spot on or contain a grain of truth. The chief target appears to be a doctor suspected of deliberately killing babies during childbirth, of conducting a number of affairs, and of not being who he claims to be: the first charge is entirely false, but the next two are accurate. The atmosphere throughout is unsettlingly febrile, and reminded me strongly of the later classic British murder mystery, <i>Green for Danger </i>(1946), but without the presence of Alastair Sim to lighten things up, and with a<i> </i>lot<i> </i>more sex. Judging by all the '40s and '50s French films I've seen recently, the contemporary British view that the French were obsessed with sex and were all bonking away like billy-ho appears to have been accurate. <i>Le Corbeau</i> got Clouzot into trouble: it was made during the German Occupation with backing from a German company. While the film's themes are evidently universal, it doesn't present a particularly flattering view of French provincials, who come across as a bunch of vindictive hypocrites. There were (unsubstantiated) claims that the film was shown in Germany in order to demonstrate France's lack of moral fibre, and, after the liberation, Clouzot was convicted of being a collaborator and banned from making films for the rest of his life (ironic, considering that he'd been sacked from his job as a scriptwriter at UFA Studios in Berlin for having Jewish friends). Following a campaign by other French directors and public intellectuals, the ban was reduced to two years.</div>
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<i>Quai des Orfèvres </i>is set in the world of Parisian music halls. An ambitious singer married to a jealous husband/accompanist visits a rich businessman who fancies her, and can help her career. He is later found dead. Who killed him - wife or hubby? A cynical, weary, crumpled-looking police detective (a single parent with a mixed-race son) hunts the culprit. But the plot barely matters - again, atmosphere and attitude are everything: you can smell the cheap perfume, the body odour, the stale wine, the <u><i>Gitanes</i></u>, the desperation and the moral corruption. I can't find any clips with subtitles on YouTube, so if, like me you can't understand French, you'll just have to soak up the atmosphere in this one, in which the<i> flic</i> interviews his chief suspect:</div>
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<i>Les Diaboliques </i>is simply magnificent. The setting is a provincial school, and the main characters are an unpleasant headmaster (Paul Meurisse), his mistress (Simone Signoret, naturally) and his wife (who has a weak heart and who was played by the director's own wife, Véra Clouzot). The question is - who's trying to kill who? It contains one of the creepiest scenes in all cinema, involving a fully-dressed, supposedly dead man rising like a zombie from a bathtub filled with water: once seen, impossible to forget. Here's a trailer for the film:</div>
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If your interest has been piqued, you can see the whole wonderful thing, with subtitles, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66gU9prCeM&t=719s">here</a>. It's interesting to see that the trailer ended with the warning that nobody would be admitted after the start of the film - a device which Alfred Hitchcock used five years later when advertising <i>Psycho.</i> After the release of <i>The Wages of Fear</i> and <i>Les Diaboliques</i>, film critics started referring to Clouzot as the Master of Suspense - a title they'd previously conferred on Hitchcock. As the latter entertained the world with a series of what he called "technicolor baubles", critical acclaim for the two Clouzot films grew, and it's widely believed that Hitchcock made <i>Psycho </i>partly in order to regain the suspense crown from his rival, the French Pretender. (I've no idea if this is true, but it's a nice story, and the two directors were certainly great fans of each other's work.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxbFZBvJJ0lqP83zbazVXouN3WGaxIGpEbSXGljZ3nOyc6HYmKJzPpkxPUjIiNQ3wXA29ymGaATmIJ7-Nolr4Xi4pkWzKFL8FQ03MfCYtidmaq-_mrb4NKSv9KPm-YoLPNwjggSPZfBvA/s1600/CLOUZOT+-+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="550" height="375" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxbFZBvJJ0lqP83zbazVXouN3WGaxIGpEbSXGljZ3nOyc6HYmKJzPpkxPUjIiNQ3wXA29ymGaATmIJ7-Nolr4Xi4pkWzKFL8FQ03MfCYtidmaq-_mrb4NKSv9KPm-YoLPNwjggSPZfBvA/s400/CLOUZOT+-+2.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
Clouzot's reputation suffered for many years following the arrival of the <i>Nouvelle Vague - </i>but having recently forced myself to watch <i>Jules et Jim </i>and Godard's ghastly <i>Vivre sa vie</i>, Clouzot's movies (and those of Jean Renoir and the films directed by the German-born Max Ophüls in France) strike me as superior to <i>anything</i> produced by the pseuds of the New Wave.<br />
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Clouzot spent nearly five years bedridden in a Swiss sanitarium after being diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1935, and suffered from ill health for the rest of his life. On the one hand, it's sad to think how many more films he might have directed had his health been more robust - on the other, as he spent those five years reading, learning, and refining his storytelling techniques, his ill health may have actually contributed to the sheer brilliance of the handful of masterpieces he did manage to produce. </div>
Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-56693641798444286012019-03-18T16:28:00.001+00:002019-03-18T16:28:38.655+00:00SNL's "Can I Play That?" <div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="285" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sYSbk_tTsjk" width="500"></iframe></div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-43636783592034228702019-03-10T18:01:00.000+00:002019-03-10T18:01:05.138+00:00LP covers, film posters, magazine covers, vintage adverts - and how to avoid waking up gay in the morning!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ld8N-37WJNbi0Rxvxop0KYUiBlJ3qVaKnTkO2uTWoFmALJRimDz6p441ofFuLd4D30AHF5Z6xxMx2Mb43k19wLsoZ7eHKh6MWyDsc1SFPvuo6xQ8cKSxujzn42qca14S8ODm4GKoal4/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="765" data-original-width="500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ld8N-37WJNbi0Rxvxop0KYUiBlJ3qVaKnTkO2uTWoFmALJRimDz6p441ofFuLd4D30AHF5Z6xxMx2Mb43k19wLsoZ7eHKh6MWyDsc1SFPvuo6xQ8cKSxujzn42qca14S8ODm4GKoal4/s640/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+14.jpg" width="418" /></a></div>
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Not to be confused with...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZb9FxXFS5nET79U_RsmfKRulLPzeGC7BJwbYk27ytoXmGx4-Ctlv-e_ZouKG3wAvTyh-alUQHjDsMS3Nj7g-AmXCpeoXvFacKOXkj69spjtv7Wm3Yo5HhgwL-y-5HizEYOhpkCFayuoI/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="481" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZb9FxXFS5nET79U_RsmfKRulLPzeGC7BJwbYk27ytoXmGx4-Ctlv-e_ZouKG3wAvTyh-alUQHjDsMS3Nj7g-AmXCpeoXvFacKOXkj69spjtv7Wm3Yo5HhgwL-y-5HizEYOhpkCFayuoI/s400/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+21.jpg" width="255" /></a></div>
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In case you don't fancy waking up to discover that your sexual orientation has changed (not, of <i>course</i>, that there would be anything in the least wrong with that)...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvBAGjI8yFuGpq_QgRuhlzHKkTcejsfQclgwn-qxPy8cAlMXGwsoeJjdJaxO559tkhQkcmpmBhDv6CCvTi8KaIG6Eu-A4oFdJts1ENTAeggM0uYNdHjc3euTwUgn-dl585wkDvPpoMycw/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="722" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvBAGjI8yFuGpq_QgRuhlzHKkTcejsfQclgwn-qxPy8cAlMXGwsoeJjdJaxO559tkhQkcmpmBhDv6CCvTi8KaIG6Eu-A4oFdJts1ENTAeggM0uYNdHjc3euTwUgn-dl585wkDvPpoMycw/s400/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+4.jpg" width="298" /></a></div>
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...you should probably avoid Ovaltine, and start reading magazines for Real Men (although, come to think of it, this chap looks like he might be struggling with a few sexual issues):</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkafMz7mqxE81i4WZAjU-4ra34sS6le5FMWys0v5CgJFc2AIuEgia2_nCBky7Yp-4XqCy6NIQSQIWY9n7i8n6UFdY2PC8RdufwDuut05QLNvqpomCzp_MzDA2FSySK4NNo4ScdlTyCn6E/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="564" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkafMz7mqxE81i4WZAjU-4ra34sS6le5FMWys0v5CgJFc2AIuEgia2_nCBky7Yp-4XqCy6NIQSQIWY9n7i8n6UFdY2PC8RdufwDuut05QLNvqpomCzp_MzDA2FSySK4NNo4ScdlTyCn6E/s640/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+9.jpg" width="499" /></a></div>
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Well, this sort of good, healthy stuff then:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4mCv-b2x9vPWbxto1ogHpwAzSlolv_pi8oDQitP5VuDx7Z47-DNCPVLqFPOo5d0E_9n474Kf6d_C1uGZQm-m5KJlGoaOZh-cJVHApAFXd7FXUh8mps2eks1P_AKkabsnUHVeGX7wE6s8/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="475" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4mCv-b2x9vPWbxto1ogHpwAzSlolv_pi8oDQitP5VuDx7Z47-DNCPVLqFPOo5d0E_9n474Kf6d_C1uGZQm-m5KJlGoaOZh-cJVHApAFXd7FXUh8mps2eks1P_AKkabsnUHVeGX7wE6s8/s640/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+10.jpg" width="473" /></a></div>
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And it might help if you started smoking a pipe and wearing unambiguously manly clothes:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcJO77oaNvjjWOT8fUQPucoZPIQ2IyMcye43pOf6EDGdFLhom_udW1Q3Elv-Xf5qVdtJcVpdd-lLeLr_d7rbK6fz8uuddiJlQLazEG3dlPWz5gW4MR_gltccZpvn-P1uckzQU5GK7s-TE/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="305" data-original-width="236" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcJO77oaNvjjWOT8fUQPucoZPIQ2IyMcye43pOf6EDGdFLhom_udW1Q3Elv-Xf5qVdtJcVpdd-lLeLr_d7rbK6fz8uuddiJlQLazEG3dlPWz5gW4MR_gltccZpvn-P1uckzQU5GK7s-TE/s400/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+17.jpg" width="309" /></a></div>
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A reasonable display of nasal hair would probably help to underline your heterosexuality - but avoid overdoing it:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPPVgsrpx5StT7jvMASm_tUPTRERmwzzv3kHQbQFY5l27xFUaqs2QSOCM1jJuXqPVhxAS1OVIJftn3cFnQ3JAddA6MhUNz21_dCqTrw872kvj1NzokEywabDZXVbJ4jMfj_gv-wIH7CGc/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="697" data-original-width="564" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPPVgsrpx5StT7jvMASm_tUPTRERmwzzv3kHQbQFY5l27xFUaqs2QSOCM1jJuXqPVhxAS1OVIJftn3cFnQ3JAddA6MhUNz21_dCqTrw872kvj1NzokEywabDZXVbJ4jMfj_gv-wIH7CGc/s400/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+26.jpg" width="322" /></a></div>
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But - whatever you do - avoid acquiring one of these:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfRkpzNjYgQ9qsdEAiNYzRkPtp4VMQB2pUcV0ov8K7mOw-V21NaOZfrqxTIpkLRb87q2RD7Ih0-8Dhpy7IM95mOTzkgCibg9re3fiKdAcCmTqbkZCR4rrgoZnY49QMyexJdoXChyphenhyphen_aCw4/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="296" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfRkpzNjYgQ9qsdEAiNYzRkPtp4VMQB2pUcV0ov8K7mOw-V21NaOZfrqxTIpkLRb87q2RD7Ih0-8Dhpy7IM95mOTzkgCibg9re3fiKdAcCmTqbkZCR4rrgoZnY49QMyexJdoXChyphenhyphen_aCw4/s640/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+25.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>
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Generally, it's best to avoid modern films, because - let's face it - you never know who's going to start snogging who. For instance, you can't go far wrong with Abbott and Costello movies:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSt96MAZi-6wYn3mGq4qH8LPVEMbO_mkPaPFGPRuOYhgKIF_y5WqN5tvFwgAN7jITRlnu2kn2FTEmjtKXRo662WgMMOhvOodVuVbibosj4pHXyp-O6Ngj6wRiisHqr0IczPxoLpjNNqaM/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="236" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSt96MAZi-6wYn3mGq4qH8LPVEMbO_mkPaPFGPRuOYhgKIF_y5WqN5tvFwgAN7jITRlnu2kn2FTEmjtKXRo662WgMMOhvOodVuVbibosj4pHXyp-O6Ngj6wRiisHqr0IczPxoLpjNNqaM/s640/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+13.jpg" width="290" /></a></div>
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Actually, that looks a bit too close for comfort, lads! But, whatever you do - as I recently warned you - keep away from vintage male underwear adverts:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy8uoaefjwJnLWcB8U_eMn-RCsCm8eynn3Sd9Qa5Aic8-ao0Y8fMujTIjnu4nZDMR6muMwzjLXy2CgMLtPDvi2jHVqQPWDSbq3McIQDveOlvfq5P5jAJfsigXBh1yQ4JI9uOwkkOyM9Tk/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="564" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy8uoaefjwJnLWcB8U_eMn-RCsCm8eynn3Sd9Qa5Aic8-ao0Y8fMujTIjnu4nZDMR6muMwzjLXy2CgMLtPDvi2jHVqQPWDSbq3McIQDveOlvfq5P5jAJfsigXBh1yQ4JI9uOwkkOyM9Tk/s640/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+6.jpg" width="360" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSobYNZhwcsUXHwP-ge8xwMotODhpW__Q7tOxPTpq0OSJv1GTSBuuEwk8-c1G7PFy3tv6L4EqCDTCGLj9LnEyy0VnXa2OM7-4bFjHsG8Ri3hZX3WKT3BRVi-Jzv1S3h8_wGqtroQ9HvMU/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1149" data-original-width="564" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSobYNZhwcsUXHwP-ge8xwMotODhpW__Q7tOxPTpq0OSJv1GTSBuuEwk8-c1G7PFy3tv6L4EqCDTCGLj9LnEyy0VnXa2OM7-4bFjHsG8Ri3hZX3WKT3BRVi-Jzv1S3h8_wGqtroQ9HvMU/s640/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+3.jpg" width="314" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3FE4qry-tSbUvlHLWrrgERt4dPHTyLmka1LZILq4EtT89TTN6cD3zd-vkPnqmURM_H4hpykclG9nVHG8N2z3IRBpnSEHW7qpysOVtyJA4oJ-HrqBuELpaLCDlKggk_cDY9YbYBwaT-44/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="405" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3FE4qry-tSbUvlHLWrrgERt4dPHTyLmka1LZILq4EtT89TTN6cD3zd-vkPnqmURM_H4hpykclG9nVHG8N2z3IRBpnSEHW7qpysOVtyJA4oJ-HrqBuELpaLCDlKggk_cDY9YbYBwaT-44/s400/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+7.jpg" width="323" /></a></div>
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(I wonder what a "no-tare fly" is, or why you'd need one?)</div>
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Am I alone in thinking it might have better if trumpeter Eddie Calvert had...er... rearranged himself <i>before</i> the photo-shoot?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8vZPeFY0Q8qoRR-yHqRSngyDREWumlSrZilr1COjsVSXluy9cm4eZuXcjdzOVhT1gRmnxPMAuaY76b8UAFh0B2mVr-EGq1iYgdn7uVKJ8RbaJUHDrtzxWJbPoudVLdYm4xiOuZ4u26us/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8vZPeFY0Q8qoRR-yHqRSngyDREWumlSrZilr1COjsVSXluy9cm4eZuXcjdzOVhT1gRmnxPMAuaY76b8UAFh0B2mVr-EGq1iYgdn7uVKJ8RbaJUHDrtzxWJbPoudVLdYm4xiOuZ4u26us/s400/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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How could I possibly have missed these great-looking albums when they were released? </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKmNPPrbfc0YlbT1TzXf_l1fwy2bVn3OfGF0TNBYbHpjaY7xlwKpJTk2dHl_O8xaoHXU6-_WzVhSWMgoC3f2c3OeycvCGgsrxmC8LhoJXPHUWvzoRbTFa1xwK1HAI1ezI8b-7xuhBNy5g/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKmNPPrbfc0YlbT1TzXf_l1fwy2bVn3OfGF0TNBYbHpjaY7xlwKpJTk2dHl_O8xaoHXU6-_WzVhSWMgoC3f2c3OeycvCGgsrxmC8LhoJXPHUWvzoRbTFa1xwK1HAI1ezI8b-7xuhBNy5g/s400/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+20.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0y95rO_K4gfL05LHZjfadl8fwpAwD_DV-IJNhKq79nZvFcpZIIsYBC2s4dPi4Yh9zCMeQH6krmHqGjTkiY2wKzzVG2WH9haAogcaqSfLYEh_nwonmsIYlofWyIA8l8XMAivjPOJv5kes/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="550" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0y95rO_K4gfL05LHZjfadl8fwpAwD_DV-IJNhKq79nZvFcpZIIsYBC2s4dPi4Yh9zCMeQH6krmHqGjTkiY2wKzzVG2WH9haAogcaqSfLYEh_nwonmsIYlofWyIA8l8XMAivjPOJv5kes/s400/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+24.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Or Sir Adrian Boult's recording of <i>The Planets,</i> especially given its extremely tasteful cover? </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw1Vj_1Azl-nZBtNhp5oM1EXzgIgEkSSOnslTXuj4clyU0wJwTeXfjlm_l9pwUlVCYd1S1VnFpO13gYz57VjYH9Ze0JAwmb0cEfwZzO4qTFxg6LuJoUGEhoG-DylKbVbn5TzlIsBOrIs4/s1600/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="564" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw1Vj_1Azl-nZBtNhp5oM1EXzgIgEkSSOnslTXuj4clyU0wJwTeXfjlm_l9pwUlVCYd1S1VnFpO13gYz57VjYH9Ze0JAwmb0cEfwZzO4qTFxg6LuJoUGEhoG-DylKbVbn5TzlIsBOrIs4/s400/MARCH2019FUNNIES+-+23.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I'll end with this extraordinarily prescient 1965 DC Comics cover, evidently warning us what would happen if we failed to ban fast food adverts on the Underground! </div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-15084663661905412342019-03-09T20:10:00.003+00:002019-03-09T20:12:12.609+00:00Twenty 20th Century intellectual heroes, Part 2: from Eric Hoffer to Colin WilsonYou can find the first part of this post - "Twenty 20th Century intellectual heroes, Part 1: from Jung to C.S. Lewis" - <a href="https://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2019/03/my-twenty-20th-century-intellectual.html">here</a>.<br />
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11. <b>Eric Hoffer</b><br />
A self-taught San Francisco longshoreman who wrote <i>The True Believer </i>(1951), an astonishingly insightful book about why some (mostly young) people become fanatical members of violent cults, sects and political organisations - and why they become more fanatical and violent over time. I wrote about Eric Hoffer <a href="http://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2016/07/please-please-please-would-everyone.html">here</a>.<br />
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12. <b>Simone Weil</b><br />
I've recently been re-reading the American modernist poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955). I tend to dip in...<br />
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...every few years, and I'm not sure why, because - besides his philosophical obsession with our inability to experience things as they are <i>in themselves</i>, rather than <i>as they</i> <i>appear to us</i> - it's often hard to make sense of his work. Nevertheless - apart from appreciating the sheer beauty of much of his verse - some of his poems seem to make some sort of sense to me at a subconscious level. I feel much the same way about the epigrammatic writings of the French, Jewish, Christian, left-wing activist, thinker and mystic, Simone Weil, who essentially starved herself to death while in exile in London in 1943, working for the Free French cause. According to taste, contemporaries thought she was either a saint or a lunatic (her boss, Charles de Gaulle, thought she was mad). Similarly, her books - of which my favourite is <i>Gravity and Grace</i> - are by turns infuriating and intellectually and spiritually exhilarating. One brief example of her style will have to serve as an illustration: “The capacity to drive a thought away once and for all is the gateway to eternity. The infinite in an instant.” That's twaddle, of course - but it's also one of the truest things I've ever read.<br />
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13. <b>Thomas Merton</b><br />
Merton was an American Trappist monk whose spiritual autobiographical, <i>The Seven-Storey Mountain</i>, caused a flood of applications to monasteries from the writer's young countrymen. It didn't have quite as strong an effect on me when I first read it a quarter of a century ago - but his experiences as a Cambridge undergraduate somehow made sense of my own. Apart from the New Testament itself, when in need of spiritual sustenance, I've turned to Merton's books more than to those of any other writer (despite his penchant for social activism and his distressing habit of using the word "interiorly" instead of "inside").<br />
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14. <b>F. R. Leavis</b><br />
Yes, he could be humourless, dogmatic, personally vicious and puritanical, and one often wishes he could have loosened his corsets occasionally to enjoy some light reading (finally deciding that Dickens was acceptable was about as far as he went in that direction), but, when I made an effort in my twenties to get to grips with "serious" literature, <i>The Great Tradition</i> and <i>The Common Pursuit</i> proved superb guides.<br />
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15.<b> Whittaker Chambers</b><br />
Chambers was one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th Century - a committed communist for much of the '30s, he spied for the Soviets against America, saw the light, went into hiding after refusing an order to visit Moscow (where he would have been executed), became a farmer, then a senior editor at <i>Time, </i>testified against the State Department traitor Alger Hiss, and wrote <i>Witness, </i>an account of his experiences which had a great influence on America's burgeoning post-war conservative movement, which eventually reached its apogee with the election of Ronald Reagan as president. I wrote about Chambers and <i>Witness </i>- a frightening, emotional and touching work as weighty and powerful as Old Testament prophecy - <a href="http://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2013/12/whiitaker-chambers-1952-autobiography.html">here</a>.<br />
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16. <b>Tom Wolfe </b><br />
The father of "gonzo" journalism whose ironic demolition of the attitudes of America's silly and dangerous left-wing cultural establishment in the late '60s and early '70s gave heart to at least one young conservative.<br />
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17. <b>Auberon Waugh</b><br />
Not an intellectual - not even a coherent political thinker - but a savagely funny and fearless opponent of Britain's left-liberal establishment in the '70s and early '80s, until Ian Hislop took over <i>Private Eye </i>and reduced it to "an old bitch gone in the teeth". Much as Michael Wharton (in the guise of the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>'s Peter Simple) had done earlier, Waugh helped convince those of a conservative or right-wing disposition that we were not alone, and that the silly, pompous, self-regarding, left-liberal wankers (whose ranks in the '70s, as now, included practically the whole of the Parliamentary Conservative Party) who were squeezing the life out of the country really were as ridiculous and deserving of our contempt as we suspected. <i>Waugh! thou shouldst be living at this hour! </i><br />
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18. <b>Robert Conquest</b><br />
It's astonishing to reflect that when Conquest's <i>The Great Terror: Stalin's Purges of the 1930s </i>was published in 1968, many members of the left-liberal establishment refused to accept its findings - Conquest, they insisted, was nothing but a right-wing propagandist! This sceptical attitude trickled down to would-be members of that establishment - I remember fellow-undergraduates spouting the same nonsense at me as late as 1972. But then the publication of a book in 1973 by a Russian, crammed with testimony from hundreds of eyewitness accounts from other Russians, revealed Conquest - an Anglo-American academic and poet who wrote a dozen books about Russia in total - as a lone voice crying in the wilderness, acting as a sort of John the Baptist figure for the next hero on my list...<br />
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19. <b>Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn</b><br />
Under impossible circumstance, suffering extraordinary hardship and constant danger, and displaying unimaginable courage and determination, he risked everything to reveal the horrific cruelty and sheer madness of communism as a system of government. It's interesting to speculate on the significance of the role played by <i>The Gulag Archipelago</i> in enabling Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II to destroy the Soviet regime. (And, of course, Solzhenitsyn also wrote some of the greatest novels of the 20th Century, which are being airbrushed from our collective consciousness by the West's cultural establishment because, of course, Solzhenitsyn was both a conservative and a Christian, and therefore morally reprehensible and On The Wrong Side of History.<br />
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20. <b>Colin Wilson</b><br />
Wilson was a figure of fun to the cultural establishment for most of his life. He brought much of that on himself through a somewhat inflated view of his own significance, and some of his obsessions (alien invasion and the existence of Atlantis, for starters). But he had a lively intellect, a wide range of interests (including wine, music and murder), had an unrivalled ability to explain difficult concepts clearly (if not always strictly accurately), and wasn't part of the country's intellectual mainstream: as a thinker, he was very much his own man. No doubt he was helped in this by being an autodidact. By the simple expedient of not attending a British university, he was never taught to think the right things about the right things. He was important to me for two reasons : he introduced me to the work of many writers, thinkers and ideas I would otherwise never have been exposed to, and his outlook was essentially optimistic - despite having suffered any number of setbacks before and after a brief period of success following the publication of <i>The Outsider</i> when he was 24, he rejected the fashionable pessimistic view that it was the role of society and politicians to make us happy. For all his interest in weirdos and his belief that most of our life is lived robotically, Wilson believed it was <i>our</i> duty to wake ourselves up and move on to another, higher level of consciousness - to put it crudely, it was our personal responsibility to take charge of our lives and make ourselves more cheerful rather than to passively accept that life is a vale of tears and it's somehow society's job to sort it out. I was a somewhat miserable bleeder in my twenties and his views bucked me up tremendously. I wrote a longish tribute to Colin Wilson <a href="http://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2010/04/colin-wilson-self-proclaimed-genius.html">here</a>.Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-78525126962563837862019-03-09T19:34:00.001+00:002019-03-09T20:12:57.224+00:00Twenty 20th Century intellectual heroes, Part 1: from Jung to C.S. LewisI started thinking about this list while watching all those Bryan Magee interviews with philosophers I wrote about<a href="http://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-tribute-to-brian-magee-superb.html"> in a recent post</a>. The main criterion for inclusion was that thinker had in some way affected the way I look at the world. The fact that many of them suffered professionally for swimming against the intellectual tide isn't necessarily germane, but I do tend to admire people who actually risk something in order to express their views: it strikes me that the reputation of many widely-admired public intellectuals these days rests on their willingness to boldly trumpet opinions that will do nothing but enhance their popularity and their careers - a phenomenon which seems to have turned British and American "satirists" into a pack of lickspittle establishment toadies. One more point before I start listing - including someone on the list doesn't remotely imply that I agree with everything they believe or believed (for example, I find Orwell's views on economics almost simple-minded).<br />
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1. <b>Carl Gustav Jung </b><br />
The great Swiss antidote to Freud's unhealthy obsession with sex as the underlying motivation for everything we do: we're a lot more interesting and complex than that. The Jungian theories that have most affected me are those concerning the archetypes of the collective unconscious, that our subconscious isn't our enemy, and that dreams are its was of trying to help us, that we project those aspects of ourself we refuse to acknowledge onto others (The Shadow), and that a belief in God can be valid, rather than the result of ignorance and superstition (I've just finished reading Jung's <i>Answer to Job</i>, which, despite its reputation for obscurity and impenetrability, I found to be one of the most stimulating - if unorthodox - books about Christianity I've ever read). Freud was undoubtedly a better writer than Jung - but Jung was a more profound thinker. I started by reading Freud (who depressed me), before turning to Jung, who taught me that the subconscious isn't a toxic cesspit comprised of our mental waste products.<br />
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2. <b>Thomas Sowell</b><br />
One of the greatest American minds of the last century, and an endless source of wisdom on a whole range of key topics, including economics, politics and race. His pithily-expressed view that left-wing intellectuals (i.e. the vast majority of Western academics) support harmful policies not because they think they will improve lives but because doing so makes them feel morally superior to the rest of us, explains why so many clever people say and believe such evidently stupid things, and why left-liberal policies almost invariably harm the very people they're supposed to help. As a working-class American black man raised in Harlem who became a Marxist before morphing into a committed right-winger, Sowell is a perfect example of a courageous academic who decided to speak the truth - based on his own experience and plain, undeniable, unemotional <i>facts</i> - rather than to advance his career and reputation by keeping quiet and toeing the establishment line.<br />
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3. <b>Friedrich Hayek</b><br />
The antidote to Keynesianism and socialist economics and their adherents, the greatest economist of the last century, and a believer in free markets whose fundamental criticisms of the idea of centrally-planned economies (i.e. that they invariably fail because they cut themselves off from the informational feedback loop provided by the market - see Venezuela) is unanswerable. <i>The Road to Serfdom</i> says it all.<br />
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4. <b>George Orwell</b><br />
An essentially patriotic and socially conservative left-winger whose experiences in the Spanish Civil War revealed to him the terrible, inhuman reality of Communism, and whose courage and contempt for fellow-travellers (including those ensconced at the BBC) led him to write two hugely influential novels and numerous articles warning against the evils of left-wing totalitarianism, even though doing so earned him the enmity of many fellow-leftists. (And his essays on popular culture - from the tradition of reading about juicy murders in the News of the World to the world of children's comics - were, of course, a delight.)<br />
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5. <b>Roger Scruton</b><br />
A philosopher whose career has suffered because of his unrelenting espousal of traditional conservative values, and one of the few right-wing academics willing to fight their corner in public. (He'd be on this list even if he hadn't been my supervisor at university for three years.)<br />
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6. <b>Ludwig Wittgenstein</b><br />
There can't be many academics who spend the second half of their life repudiating the philosophical system they created during the first half. <i>Philosophical Investigations </i>may not now be held in such high regard as it was when I studied it at university, but its revolutionary view of how language actually works makes it the most intellectually stimulating work of 20th Century philosophy I have read (with his thoughts on subjects such as aesthetics and religion - mainly cobbled together from students' and colleagues' notes - not far behind). If I had a pound for every time I've heard a politician or political commentator commit a category mistake...<br />
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7. <b>J. L. Austin</b><br />
Operating in roughly the same field as Wittgenstein, this Oxford philosopher, wittily and with a bracing dollop of Anglo-Saxon common sense, fought back against the pernicious, reductionist logical positivist view that only statements which could be proved to be true or false had any meaning. While A.J. Ayer and his ilk were merrily dismissing all discussion of, for instance, religion, ethics and aesthetics - i.e. the stuff that really matters - as pointless, Austin was busily restoring its status. <i>Sense and Sensibilia</i> and <i>How to Do Things with Words</i> are both worth reading. (Tragically, Austin died at the age of 48.)<br />
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8. <b>R.G. Collingwood</b><br />
I should have read this Oxford philosopher when I was a student, but I'm pleased I finally got round to <i>The Principles of Art </i>(1938) a few years ago, because it defined (to my satisfaction, at least) the difference between art proper, pure entertainment, and craft - not, perhaps, a crucial issue for most people, but I've been worrying away at it for 45 years, on and off! <i>An Autobiography</i> (1939) and <i>Idea of History </i>(published posthumously in 1946) are also excellent - and writing this has reminded me I need to find time to squeeze <i>Idea of Nature in </i>at some stage.<br />
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9. <b>Karl Popper</b><br />
I was a young man when I first read <i>The Open Society and its Enemies - </i>a magnificent defence of democracy written while Popper languished in obscurity in New Zealand during the Second World War - and it had as profound an effect on my political views as <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i>. I wrote about Popper at some length <a href="http://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2015/01/as-yet-another-wave-of-fascist-thugs.html">here</a>.<br />
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10. <b>C. S. Lewis</b><br />
The leadership of the Church of England doesn't seem particularly interested in religion these days, preferring to pontificate on the evils of Brexit, the gender pay-gap, racial inequality and, of course, the all-important issue of transgenderism. What any of these things have to do with God, I'm not sure. During periods when clergymen have become more obsessed with the gospel of progressivism than the actual Gospel, laymen and women have taken up the cudgels to keep the Christian faith alive - people like Dorothy L. Sayers, Malcolm Muggeridge and, most notably, C. S. Lewis. Lewis's works of Christian apologetics - e.g. <i>Mere Christianity, Christian Reflections, The Problem of Pain</i> and <i>Reflections on the Psalms </i>- have done more for my faith than everything said by every Archbishop of Canterbury during my lifetime times ten<br />
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Part Two of this post is available <a href="https://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2019/03/twenty-20th-century-intellectual-heroes.html">here</a>.Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-84415331339490853662019-03-08T13:26:00.000+00:002019-03-08T13:26:50.618+00:00Andrew Wyeth, a major 20th Century American artist loved by the people, loathed by the art establishment<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Christina's World</i> (1948), Andrew Wyeth</td></tr>
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I was recently trawling through Pinterest, looking for work by 20th Century American artists - preferably ones I'd previously been unaware of. I recognised <i>Christina's World...</i><br />
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...and the name of the artist rang a bell. Dozens of paintings by Andrew Wyeth subsequently appeared on my timeline, and their quality made me realise they were the work of a truly gifted painter. Why, I wondered, was he never mentioned in television documentary surveys of "modern" American artists, alongside the inevitable Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein?<br />
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I meant to read up on the artist, but got distracted, so when I recently saw a new Sky Arts documentary entitled <i>Wyeth </i>on the EPG, I recorded it. It tells a fascinating story. Andrew Wyeth was born in 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. His father was a well-known illustrator (sufficiently eminent to receive visits from the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Mary Pickford) who took a keen interest in his five children, forever feeding their creative imaginations - three of them became artists, one was an inventor, and one a composer. N.C. Wyeth's seemingly obsessive interest in his children's development was especially important to Andrew, who, as a sickly child, was mostly home-schooled. In his teens, he began painting illustrations in his father's studio (and in his father's name). He didn't want to be an illustrator, being more interested in landscape, portraiture and interiors, and spent the rest of his somewhat insular life painting in these genres. He was 31 when the Museum of Modern Art in new York bought Christina's World (a haunting image of a severely disabled neighbour, who, refusing to use wheelchairs, had literally crawled out of her house - the one she's looking back at). Here's a portrait of an alcoholic local whom Wyeth befriended.<br />
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Within a few years, Wyeth had become the richest artist in America, and fans lined up around the block whenever he mounted a new exhibition. This was too much for the art establishment, which had initially clasped him to its collective bosom. Wyeth's crimes included being too darned accessible, too popular, and too independent: after all, what's the world coming to when a contemporary artist doesn't require the patronage of the intellectual elite - especially when his work doesn't need self-appointed "experts" to explain what it means, and when the approval of the critics isn't necessary to his continuing success? Panicked by their irrelevance, they punished the upstart by suddenly deciding that he was in fact a minor regional artist whose daubs were examples of inauthentic, emotionless kitsch.<br />
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Wyeth's reaction to this furious onslaught was to turn his back on the metropolitan art world. He spend the rest of his long life obsessively producing haunting, emotionally-charged, symbol-laden, totally unkitsch paintings in and around his family's home in Pennsylvania and a summer place in Maine. </div>
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The Sky documentary paints a portrait of a decidedly odd, solitary, secretive man. Wyeth had a habit of making himself part of his neighbours' lives in a borderline-creepy way: in at least two instances - the Olsens in Maine and the Koerners in Pennsylvania - he befriended families living nearby, kept turning up at their houses, and then basically moved in with them, painting them and their houses, coming and going as he pleased. One of the families actually allowed him to use an upstairs room to work in.</div>
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But perhaps the oddest episode in Wyeth's life involved German-born Helga Testorf, whom he met at the Koerners' farm. Without the knowledge of his wife (who acted as his extremely efficient business manager) or Helga's husband, Wyeth produced 247 unsentimental, unidealised studies of her in a fourteen year period up to 1985. The first anyone knew about it was when he sold all of the paintings (apart from a few he had given to friends - including, bizarrely, one entitled <i>Lovers</i> to his wife) to a businessman, who put them on show in 1987, and then sent the collection on tour. (The critics reacted with their customary generosity). </div>
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As I said, an odd man. Here are two of the Helga paintings:</div>
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If you have access to Sky, the Wyeth documentary is <a href="https://www.sky.com/watch/title/programme/b724caf2-0bd6-4ef6-a51f-1b34da077f2e/wyeth">still available</a>. If you can't, here's a 2018 BBC documentary about the painter presented by Michael Palin:</div>
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="285" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jNuGbKIoUds" width="590"></iframe></div>
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I'll end with some more of my favourite Wyeth paintings:</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Distant Thunder </i>(1961)</td></tr>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-86646482043295548052019-03-06T11:37:00.004+00:002019-03-06T11:37:59.944+00:00The cinemas of Old Wimbledon (and Raynes Park and Putney) - hat/tip: R. MurphyAn old friend, who, like me, arrived in Wimbledon in 1959, send me an email yesterday, crammed with images of the Wimbledon cinemas of our youth. The two main ones (as far as I was concerned, at least) were to be found practically across the road from each other on Wimbledon Broadway. The first (on the left as you headed toward South Wimbledon) was the Odeon:<br />
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Lord, what an ugly building! Still, it did a nice line in hotdogs and cokes...</div>
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... It began life as The Regal in 1933, and was taken over by Odeon in 1936, but called the Gaumont, because they already owned an Odeon cinema nearby. The Broadway cinema was renamed the Odeon in 1962. It was closed in 2002, and demolished the following year to make way for an office block. I seem to remember the Odeon specialised in more upmarket, prestige productions. This is what it looked like before the name-change - which explains why I've always imagined the name of the cinema was the Gaumont-Odeon. More information available <a href="http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/16639">here</a>:</div>
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The cinema across the road from the Odeon opened as The Elite Picture Palace in 1920. It was taken over by Associated British Cinemas in 1935, and was known as the Elite until 1964, when it was completely refurbished, reopening as the ABC. It lasted until 1983 (the last picture shown was <i>Officer and a Gentleman</i>), and was eventually demolished in 1985. I seem to remember this was the cinema where my brother, on an outing with my mother and I, strode down the aisle during <i>Operation Crossbow </i>to ask a gang of yobs to pipe down. After they had indicated a distinct reluctance to comply with his request, my brother slapped the ringleader's face, and received a round of applause from the other patrons. We watched the rest of the film in blissful silence. The ABC (correct me if you remember otherwise) tended to show livelier, rather more downmarket films than its main competitor, but I'm pretty sure I remember my father taking me to see <i>Ben Hur </i>there. (You can read more about the cinema's history <a href="http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/16651">here</a>.)</div>
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The Odeon and the ABC were relatively plush affairs, with seating for over 1000 customers. The nearest flea pit, at the corner of Pepys Road and Coomb Lane, opened as the Raynes Park Cinema in 1921. In 1933, it was given a new facade, and renamed the Rialto Cinema. It was delightfully run-down, and tended to show re-runs (<i>Dr. No, </i>when this photo was taken), and was right next door to a tiny newsagents which sold American magazines you couldn't get in WH Smith's at the time, e.g. <i>Famous Monsters of Filmland </i>and <i>Rolling Stone</i>. (More information <a href="http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/31265">here</a>.)</div>
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I feel a bit guilty calling the Rialto a fleapit, because the manageress was the mother of a classmate at school, and because I only learned what a <i>real</i> fleapit was like when I eventually got round to visiting The Globe in Putney. This opened as the Putney Electric Cinema c. 1910, and was renamed as the Globe Kinema in 1929. When I got to know it, it was like the dilapidated picture palace in <i>The Smallest Show on Earth. </i>I remember watching <i>Psycho</i> there on a stormy afternoon (I was 12, but my height allowed me to pass for 16), with rain pattering down from a number of holes in the roof, which certainly added to the atmosphere. My other favourite memory of the place was going with a friend from the year above to see a double bill consisting of the Hammer versions of <i>Dracula </i>and <i>Frankenstein</i>: I found the opening of the first so scary, my companion had to clamp his hand on my arm to stop me bolting. I remember we bought a couple of skinny cigars from a nearby tobacconist and smoked them on the top floor of the bus back to Wimbledon. (More information about the Globe <a href="http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14973">here</a>.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1wQuAT0l0j2u6m4gWQZW5gw8gcvLcM0iQXPaBJ9Zrrr93O_rLzV-uGmZhUQ4ipXSXflYiQEaIBIWEX3r9dE0CsMrRJZQtDTt1H5OjOBhM1radsGPwVnDcaV0YJO8QDeXucVOzHDBs9ZU/s1600/WIMBLEDONCINEMAS+-+11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="533" height="390" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1wQuAT0l0j2u6m4gWQZW5gw8gcvLcM0iQXPaBJ9Zrrr93O_rLzV-uGmZhUQ4ipXSXflYiQEaIBIWEX3r9dE0CsMrRJZQtDTt1H5OjOBhM1radsGPwVnDcaV0YJO8QDeXucVOzHDBs9ZU/s400/WIMBLEDONCINEMAS+-+11.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The only other cinema around Wimbledon I suppose I might have visited was the Odeon, 19 Worple Road, but as I was only seven when it closed in 1960, I doubt if I ever did (my friend saw <i>League of Gentlemen</i> there). It's now a Macdonald's, apparently.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgueUpGhduCMfsjJQ_UO7mZEoCXZc7xnz3pZ9E96e3Pb9e4pj7s62cskKxegOldN1Ydr3u96xGLjBoGwMrTphDpquri0ZzWdFDu-A22Yw_E_ChW0rposxMPW6AZwnHZHwTTxI6QUOr2zOg/s1600/WIMBLEDONCINEMAS+-+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="434" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgueUpGhduCMfsjJQ_UO7mZEoCXZc7xnz3pZ9E96e3Pb9e4pj7s62cskKxegOldN1Ydr3u96xGLjBoGwMrTphDpquri0ZzWdFDu-A22Yw_E_ChW0rposxMPW6AZwnHZHwTTxI6QUOr2zOg/s400/WIMBLEDONCINEMAS+-+8.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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My thanks to R. Murphy for bringing back many happy memories.</div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-51820463269552805172019-02-21T16:51:00.000+00:002019-02-21T16:55:36.864+00:00So, farewell Swiss actor Bruno Ganz - thank you for the Hitler meme and the glorious "Wings of Desire"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGPJ6PX4I-6o_CVCvwOlGQYA11l2JsgBOAqbDN89hojOF_3lwChd9ProgMcnGtVFiyMqZrJ9S5sb5neP21Xkx8WPSwEy52xoWEXZvrdAUR5sR2K62QY2rb9u9o6lbY1lh24EEx0nFI_LQ/s1600/GANZ+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="720" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGPJ6PX4I-6o_CVCvwOlGQYA11l2JsgBOAqbDN89hojOF_3lwChd9ProgMcnGtVFiyMqZrJ9S5sb5neP21Xkx8WPSwEy52xoWEXZvrdAUR5sR2K62QY2rb9u9o6lbY1lh24EEx0nFI_LQ/s400/GANZ+-+1.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Until a few weeks ago, I only knew Bruno Ganz from a handful of appearances in American films - e.g. <i>The Boys from Brazil</i> and <i>The Reader</i> - and his memorable portrayal of Hitler in <i>Downfal</i>l (and the endless internet memes it spawned)...</div>
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...A few weeks' ago, I watched and enjoyed the charming 1941 film, <i>Here Come Mr. Jordan, </i>in which Robert Montgomery plays a boxer who, due to angelic incompetence, dies in a plane crash 50 years ahead of his allotted span. Because the boxer has been cremated, the wrong can't be righted by returning him to his own body, so he has to don the body of a recently deceased banker who had been swindling people by selling worthless securities. The boxer - accompanied by an angel in the form of Claude Rains (Mr. Jordan) - sets about putting things right. It's a delightful slice of Golden Age Hollywood hokum and it left me wanting more of the same.<br />
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Unfortunately, I'd already seen many of the more worthwhile old-timey "angel" films - e.g. <i>The Passing of the Third Floor Back, It's a Wonderful Life, The Bishop's Wife, Heaven Only Knows, A Matter of Life and Death, Carousel</i> and <i>Heaven Can Wait</i> (which almost fits the mould) - as well as Irwin Allen's <i>The Story of Mankind </i>(1957), undoubtedly one of the worst properly-financed films I've ever seen. As I searched the web for other angelic productions, I kept coming across <i>Wings of Desire,</i> and, guiltily aware that the only Wim Wenders films I'd seen were <i>Paris, Texas</i> (which I loathed) and the documentary <i>Buena Vista Social Club</i> (which I enjoyed), that I hadn't seen Bruno Ganz in any German-language film other than <i>Downfall</i> - and intrigued by the appearance of Peter Falk in the cast list - I decided to give it a go:<br />
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Bruno Ganz is one of the unseen angels who watch over the people of Berlin, comforting the lost, the lonely, the dying and the suicidal as best they can. He falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, and starts to wonder what it would be like to be mortal, human, to feel everything we feel:<br />
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Here, Ganz "meets" Peter Falk (playing himself - he's making a film in Berlin), who - we learn in this scene - was an angel who decided to become mortal:<br />
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When Ganz finally makes the decision to renounce his angelhood and becomes human, the film forsakes its beautiful, dreamy, subdued black-and-whiteness and bursts into almost shocking, noisy, in-your-face colour, following the template set by Powell and Pressburger in <i>A Matter of Life and Death, </i>where Heaven is black-and-white, while Earth is in glorious technicolour.<br />
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I know many people find this sort of fantasy film hard to take, but, as the film was released two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, they can amuse themselves by deciphering allegorical messages about the divide between East and West, capitalism and communism etc. And - who knows? - they might even find themselves won round by Wim Wenders' masterly direction, Henri Alekan's stunning cinematography, and Bruno Ganz's truly wonderful performance, which provides us with a powerful, heartening reminder that, while life is fraught with pain, it can also be a source of wonder and delight.<br />
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If you ever get a chance to see <i>Wings of Desire</i>, I urge you to grab it.Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-16684567700901337122019-02-17T14:27:00.000+00:002019-02-17T14:33:12.643+00:00Is it just me, or is there something distinctly homo-erotic - or just plain weird - about these vintage American adverts?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSBVkG01i7gDTdbTnhdN1JdarlzsfzLu7CxAPMZLDAw97rM-RWBwXnJeiMAxUgWuuSHiksFBEeSSVwBHFKzhWLqaLljlq0iRlOv3DabOkSF-Khqf74sUBkznU7CkHCWB6lWr79isj3hxc/s1600/UNDIES+-+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="635" data-original-width="453" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSBVkG01i7gDTdbTnhdN1JdarlzsfzLu7CxAPMZLDAw97rM-RWBwXnJeiMAxUgWuuSHiksFBEeSSVwBHFKzhWLqaLljlq0iRlOv3DabOkSF-Khqf74sUBkznU7CkHCWB6lWr79isj3hxc/s640/UNDIES+-+5.jpg" width="456" /></a></div>
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Well, <i>they</i> certainly look like they're having fun! So do these fine young roister-doisters...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYKzJ8yLt9K18GbvLDtotRWAQNub9SZbiAR2rxzGx8Leb5bUx9rjqd4xdJ1pjc8D5o8LpFEJqBl79STbLAwhjpQvNIT6wXZVhAZg5-kHpONFoGkEKfNFBiYtkndgMZdCEjZ_NFdFEIDK0/s1600/UNDIES+-+16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="440" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYKzJ8yLt9K18GbvLDtotRWAQNub9SZbiAR2rxzGx8Leb5bUx9rjqd4xdJ1pjc8D5o8LpFEJqBl79STbLAwhjpQvNIT6wXZVhAZg5-kHpONFoGkEKfNFBiYtkndgMZdCEjZ_NFdFEIDK0/s640/UNDIES+-+16.jpg" width="374" /></a></div>
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"We'd rather paddle freshmen who squirm"??? There seems to have been a lot of it about...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwz7IBMIxqajPs9fM610R7bWyXw1dt_RVd7wwPvXljD-iRwIvjYgs2xsxL75R4ruPeyO6qYaNz6t5m4P-PLaxjDyqsVVgy9VfjNI3tuenT8Uwl6kg5vn_cnTG89wqRwOhO7ctb_1wClSw/s1600/UNDIES+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="341" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwz7IBMIxqajPs9fM610R7bWyXw1dt_RVd7wwPvXljD-iRwIvjYgs2xsxL75R4ruPeyO6qYaNz6t5m4P-PLaxjDyqsVVgy9VfjNI3tuenT8Uwl6kg5vn_cnTG89wqRwOhO7ctb_1wClSw/s640/UNDIES+-+1.jpg" width="339" /></a></div>
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It's a bit like those endless contemporary television adverts which suggest that British families enjoy nothing quite so much as spending their weekends lolling around on sofas in vast furniture emporiums, laughing their heads off and generally having a whale of a time. And while I don't think these next two ads are homo-erotic, they're definitely strange on a number of levels - for a start, I can't remember my own father ever giving <i>me</i> a lecture about underpants:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixJxSXbwPU2qOC2RbBqSyW86t9gJMdKxmEFemGLmCEWBm2SmEUWXub_pZWP3seJ1AAqGu-2cqRY4RK9-_3oOvtjjwIwso3vUQTuP06yaNTKyKycO2rI-tRFye0yaII43CUUlhgv6u0jIk/s1600/UNDIES+-+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="286" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixJxSXbwPU2qOC2RbBqSyW86t9gJMdKxmEFemGLmCEWBm2SmEUWXub_pZWP3seJ1AAqGu-2cqRY4RK9-_3oOvtjjwIwso3vUQTuP06yaNTKyKycO2rI-tRFye0yaII43CUUlhgv6u0jIk/s640/UNDIES+-+7.jpg" width="254" /></a></div>
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As for this bizarre scenario - does anyone have a clue what it all means? And why Dad and Junior are hanging around outside the house in their underwear? Or why they've put their shoes on before donning trousers?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg73hzHaAc4IUs2NrgUMBZhxWctyG6gBY2ljid5QDU-SuOq4fZ7XxOmlQsPyttvn-vj6jtmCjKB6tFlojJ-B4c38Bfbq2oy9OUKpTQon30q30Pmb6wajqFFal1raS50K48WTIjzAlDpAM/s1600/UNDIES+-+12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="439" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg73hzHaAc4IUs2NrgUMBZhxWctyG6gBY2ljid5QDU-SuOq4fZ7XxOmlQsPyttvn-vj6jtmCjKB6tFlojJ-B4c38Bfbq2oy9OUKpTQon30q30Pmb6wajqFFal1raS50K48WTIjzAlDpAM/s640/UNDIES+-+12.jpg" width="274" /></a></div>
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And I certainly don't remember my dad "without a care strolling round in his underwear". Was this a normal activity in American homes at the time?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggaReF2D6kW5KwCGxobpzNFMmU9N39o2JjUIq0Bk1I5oNsHO0shyphenhyphenXP8iZObqNO3Ng2HrgM4JHNEe6FuBtCnD_SBDXpKGnOCPWAYFMIsoZcnYkt6kNFiu-rktqn9BQryKOUBbXPhjFqF3E/s1600/UNDIES+-+11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="456" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggaReF2D6kW5KwCGxobpzNFMmU9N39o2JjUIq0Bk1I5oNsHO0shyphenhyphenXP8iZObqNO3Ng2HrgM4JHNEe6FuBtCnD_SBDXpKGnOCPWAYFMIsoZcnYkt6kNFiu-rktqn9BQryKOUBbXPhjFqF3E/s640/UNDIES+-+11.jpg" width="388" /></a></div>
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As for this manly pair, one can only assume they were in a "stable relationship".</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDVFrti_lzfx9r68V3ooS-Gx2VBvw1NcPNpUSV_MVq1CoRTummuxlYDUzML68XxHjcKX_Gmr9OrpzFKje-UoVHVca4u6iD6Oy5_c0ptWkqqAVhr_tBWozz0qA0mP0cJoePpfdIQWAF3Qs/s1600/UNDIES+-+15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="277" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDVFrti_lzfx9r68V3ooS-Gx2VBvw1NcPNpUSV_MVq1CoRTummuxlYDUzML68XxHjcKX_Gmr9OrpzFKje-UoVHVca4u6iD6Oy5_c0ptWkqqAVhr_tBWozz0qA0mP0cJoePpfdIQWAF3Qs/s640/UNDIES+-+15.jpg" width="294" /></a></div>
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Ditto this sporty couple, who'll end up with pneumonia if they're not careful:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3SBoE5hNH4LkGWgjxl2FtECz3lhC7zGjfWUvR0lmYD9o9Zvu4b1I_Rc0ce7KwkbEjBynwBvUQT-vdHKAnwnyu8VH4qVVZTPo7QKMR3SYdC9_BHqWKhh7zApBHLABqFAdF_Q2yPFCfP5Y/s1600/UNDIES+-+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="308" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3SBoE5hNH4LkGWgjxl2FtECz3lhC7zGjfWUvR0lmYD9o9Zvu4b1I_Rc0ce7KwkbEjBynwBvUQT-vdHKAnwnyu8VH4qVVZTPo7QKMR3SYdC9_BHqWKhh7zApBHLABqFAdF_Q2yPFCfP5Y/s640/UNDIES+-+3.jpg" width="262" /></a></div>
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Why would anyone imagine this was an effective way of advertising towels?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ZYvQSBNtzz1JMs8zv7XMgqveBVrgnxbt4aVrVXIb4iKZbaQeNu8BGvofeNke83POe62RrqOqM9jvIOyCrZr87MhPBFrIVJzB8ceev6_m4xnFNUfIM20QIZPpx6Vp5akZSd1SW5Mgf6I/s1600/UNDIES+-+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="775" data-original-width="564" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9ZYvQSBNtzz1JMs8zv7XMgqveBVrgnxbt4aVrVXIb4iKZbaQeNu8BGvofeNke83POe62RrqOqM9jvIOyCrZr87MhPBFrIVJzB8ceev6_m4xnFNUfIM20QIZPpx6Vp5akZSd1SW5Mgf6I/s640/UNDIES+-+8.jpg" width="464" /></a></div>
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Are we to assume that they've all gone "commando"?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyDzQ3ndKP98Nm3pcbhhw5WA2p1G4c-oXQhHeGR32IbdyoKTeRtP9dWiKdeiQqj4iY93YC2_3XeYm6L6FeyC2xDWIfTTQ63P8mMtF569zWDUzI2pprAWpjZVV9xynwZGC3xJ6jXiVrFbs/s1600/UNDIES+-+9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="737" data-original-width="564" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyDzQ3ndKP98Nm3pcbhhw5WA2p1G4c-oXQhHeGR32IbdyoKTeRtP9dWiKdeiQqj4iY93YC2_3XeYm6L6FeyC2xDWIfTTQ63P8mMtF569zWDUzI2pprAWpjZVV9xynwZGC3xJ6jXiVrFbs/s640/UNDIES+-+9.jpg" width="488" /></a></div>
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Back to undies - aren't they all standing a bit close? And, given the circumstances, isn't the arm draped over the other bloke's shoulder a trifle... intimate? </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsoFFexJ00cKb4bl2IKtzalt3hbH4ll3jrJ5Kl2e9KZEak-VE_ZYWRtYKfHEsx3tKnyLSW4H8A0Dh2xiJwQJfzKA_04S0J6tG7Pr8Dc80QzFbuVLT-wfQJOrcuXgj0f6fqnI4BK0p7bOA/s1600/UNDIES+-+10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="815" data-original-width="564" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsoFFexJ00cKb4bl2IKtzalt3hbH4ll3jrJ5Kl2e9KZEak-VE_ZYWRtYKfHEsx3tKnyLSW4H8A0Dh2xiJwQJfzKA_04S0J6tG7Pr8Dc80QzFbuVLT-wfQJOrcuXgj0f6fqnI4BK0p7bOA/s640/UNDIES+-+10.jpg" width="442" /></a></div>
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At least there's some sort of excuse for this last one, as it's an advert for a group shower. But who is it meant to appeal to? Did women buy group showers back then? Or did <i>gays</i>? I'm genuinely mystified.</div>
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Whatever's going on, The Grønmark Blog says "Ban This Filth!"</div>
Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-92030455220105857392019-02-17T12:06:00.002+00:002019-02-17T12:06:18.208+00:00The BBC has announced a successor to Gary Lineker<div style="text-align: center;">
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In a series of further announcements, the BBC...</div>
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...confirmed that it had drafted in Gina Miller to oversee its editorial coverage between now and so-called Brexit Day on 29th March to ensure that it meets the highest possible standards of impartiality, while Jussie Smollett, a star of Fox's TV series, <i>Empire, </i>who last week walked into a Chicago police station with a noose around his neck claiming to have been attacked by two white Trump supporters, has been appointed as the Corporation's new Anti-Fake News Tsar. (You can read about Mr. Smollett's horrifying ordeal in the BBC Online News item, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47269827">"Jussie Smollett 'paid Nigerian brothers to attack him'"</a>, posted earlier today.)</div>
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The BBC refused to confirm rumours that a replacement for its veteran political presenter, Andrew Neil, will be chosen from a short-list of four candidates consisting of Owen Jones, Laurie Penny, Polly Toynbee and Diane Abbott. But it did confirm three new documentary series: <i>Why Christianity Is Crap</i>, to be written and presented by Professor Richard Dawkins; a six-part history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, <i>The Jews Are to Blame for Everything</i>, to be presented by Roger Waters; and a one-off special, <i>Churchill: The Wickedest Man Who Ever Lived</i>, to be fronted by noted historian John McDonnell.</div>
Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-91367132512968117672019-02-14T19:32:00.000+00:002019-02-14T19:32:02.014+00:00A tribute to Brian Magee, superb broadcaster and philosophy's great late 20th Century populariserOne of the unintended benefits of television being so monumentally lousy at the moment - and the fact that, no matter how hard I try, I can't find a single "original" film, drama series or documentary on Netflix or Amazon Prime I have any desire to watch - is that, apart from vintage films, most of my time slumped in front of the TV in recent weeks has been spent watching 20 to 30-year old BBC programmes featuring one very clever man discussing philosophy with even cleverer men, without the aid of graphics or filmed inserts or CGI or anyone dressing up in wigs and historical costumes or hilarious contributions from stand-up comics or a voiceover telling us "Time's running out - our two contestants have less than five minutes to sort out the mind-body identity problem!" An odd way to spend one's time, you might think - but, I assure you, most of these one-on-one interviews are <i>rivetting</i>. The very clever man is always Brian Magee...<br />
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an erstwhile right-wing Labour MP, broadcaster, academic and prolific author who (I was pleased to learn the other day) is still with us at the age of 87, and the even cleverer men he's interviewing include some of the most eminent philosophers of the 20th Century - e.g. Isaiah Berlin, A.J. Ayer and Willard Van Orman Quine.<br />
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The programmes I've been enjoying are from either <i>Men of Ideas</i>, first broadcast by the BBC in 1978, or <i>The Great Philosophers</i>, which went out in 1987. It's hard to believe that the broadcaster which has just given us a two-part "history" programme called <i>Right Royal Family</i> hosted by the <i>Eastenders</i> actor, Danny Dyer, used to broadcast serious discussions about some of the most intellectually-challenging ideas ever tackled by human beings - but it's true! I actually saw most of the <i>Men of Ideas</i> series when it first went out. One could argue that spending the licence fee on the sort of stuff that would have baffled 90% of the people who paid for it was a grotesquely elitist act - but I would argue that spending the licence fee on the sort of programmes that commercial providers are perfectly capable of churning out is more difficult to defend: if there's <i>any</i> role for the BBC these days, it would be to produce the sort of culturally nourishing programmes that the likes of ITV and Sky can't or won't. (Anyway, that's a discussion for another day.)<br />
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I studied philosophy at university, so I come to the Magee discussions with a smattering of knowledge - and, because there is no attempt to dumb down by the programme-makers, I sometimes have to rewind and listen to parts of the argument again. I have no idea how difficult it would be for someone who was new to the concepts under discussion to follow them. Fortunately, Brian Magee is a superb, sympathetic guide: he starts each programme by giving us a quick overview of what's going to be discussed, he regularly summarises what he and his guest have been talking about, and he is gentle but ruthless in keeping the discussion on track ("We'll be covering that particular topic a little later, but what I'd like us to concentrate on now is..."). If he's unclear as to what his interviewee is saying, he admits it and always manages to tease out a clearer formulation. And while Magee is happy to disagree with his interlocutor (he's a professional philosopher with his own distinct opinions), he neither pretends to be an intellectual equal - one of his great regrets is that he doesn't have a truly first-rate mind - nor he indulge in for any Uriah Heepish false modesty. Finally, one of his great strengths as an interviewer is that he never treats the discussion as a contest - his role is to illuminate his interviewees' thinking so that the audience can understand it, not to score cheap debating points.<br />
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Philosophy was lucky to have someone as superbly professional as Brian Magee as its chief late-20th Century populariser - his 1997 intellectual autobiography, <i>Confessions of a Philosopher, </i>is one of the most enjoyable books about philosophy I've ever read, and I say that as someone who has little time for Magee's great hero, that arch-pessimist Schopenhauer, and who is most interested in the philosophy of language, which Magee loathes.<br />
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It's hard to know which of the Magee programmes to recommend, as that would depend on your interests, but here are my five favourites out of the ones I've watched so far:<br />
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I have absolutely no interest in medieval philosophy, but I enjoyed this interview with Anthony Kenny:<br />
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Here's my old professor, Bernard Williams, on linguistic philosophy:<br />
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John Passmore, talking about David Hume:<br />
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John Searle on the Philosophy of Language:<br />
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And the rather stern J.P. Stern on Nietzsche:<br />
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As I said, I don't agree with Bryan Magee on philosophy, and I certainly don't agree with him on politics: he is nevertheless one of my intellectual heroes. I'm sorry his chief regret is not being clever enough to be a true front-line philosopher - but, if he had been, he wouldn't have been half as effective at introducing philosophical ideas to the public.<br />
<br />Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-73775542043626655022019-02-14T17:13:00.001+00:002019-02-14T17:13:21.809+00:00Christian Krohg, a great Norwegian realist painter who should be better knownIf you want a self-portrait of an artist with a stonking hangover, ask a Norwegian...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMzuRgAhNcZp2c28GY8TvN2P4-8U4llhiuQe9aoic-2caudRIsH6KZkYlC2ui8UizfJuk6rOIl3q5HMMHxH-h2EaMV57otTwDFCC-joEPofUChgyBzy9Pd1zrkQNYrSPtIHL6_ut6pBcI/s1600/KROHG+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="934" data-original-width="800" height="560" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMzuRgAhNcZp2c28GY8TvN2P4-8U4llhiuQe9aoic-2caudRIsH6KZkYlC2ui8UizfJuk6rOIl3q5HMMHxH-h2EaMV57otTwDFCC-joEPofUChgyBzy9Pd1zrkQNYrSPtIHL6_ut6pBcI/s400/KROHG+-+1.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
Similarly, if you fancy a painting of fishermen in action...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjagkm7kutSHe8P1x-itHNajpuc-kXY28mTJKxpYxY41MOLV6ufbs8RGyC_PFeuojVOivB5f4GF2B1tTD5TzEjIK-Hzn31gSRyGO33TtCHh4K91YUGVHgg1rvU-aaBjbQ2deD7idwJdeDI/s1600/KROHG+-+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="874" data-original-width="1280" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjagkm7kutSHe8P1x-itHNajpuc-kXY28mTJKxpYxY41MOLV6ufbs8RGyC_PFeuojVOivB5f4GF2B1tTD5TzEjIK-Hzn31gSRyGO33TtCHh4K91YUGVHgg1rvU-aaBjbQ2deD7idwJdeDI/s400/KROHG+-+3.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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A sick child?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj92pMX0E0Zs4ZA6nPwDd2ADdI_7AySV5bcDAU2J96xL1h6NVcQRtCA_4rpFNwhSX5xYznzvrkPE3pdVm_ZSutPX4FI4LPwoTgrq67GOVIlI-H_XkWRMMRoj-TNyg65OLAoQw0Y9jV_DhU/s1600/KROHG+-+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="374" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj92pMX0E0Zs4ZA6nPwDd2ADdI_7AySV5bcDAU2J96xL1h6NVcQRtCA_4rpFNwhSX5xYznzvrkPE3pdVm_ZSutPX4FI4LPwoTgrq67GOVIlI-H_XkWRMMRoj-TNyg65OLAoQw0Y9jV_DhU/s640/KROHG+-+7.jpg" width="374" /></a></div>
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An exhausted mother?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxaoQBJNuOuOAi39vGwsIDK5lyCN9JBculHcZnh5RHZhA-2lT8H8CdFDB9JLCDSSyNbjUrxUxxhPwg1PvMRn-Qgck4DdpIPuq8KRx_Ot6oSGYroh1OWF5YLKeHlyq2QFAMLON0Km8ffGo/s1600/KROHG+-+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="617" data-original-width="564" height="550" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxaoQBJNuOuOAi39vGwsIDK5lyCN9JBculHcZnh5RHZhA-2lT8H8CdFDB9JLCDSSyNbjUrxUxxhPwg1PvMRn-Qgck4DdpIPuq8KRx_Ot6oSGYroh1OWF5YLKeHlyq2QFAMLON0Km8ffGo/s400/KROHG+-+5.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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I've always been slightly annoyed by the adulation accorded to Edvard Munch, whose undoubtedly striking art has always struck me as excessively morbid, when there are other fine - albeit less original or revolutionary - Norwegian artists who deserve a critical look-in. Peder Balke (1804-1887), whose mysterious, threatening shorescapes (which I wrote about <a href="http://scottgronmark.blogspot.com/2011/08/forget-about-munch-peder-balke-was.html">here</a>) are as psychologically unsettling as anything produced by Munch, is one. The robustly realist painter Christian Krohg (1852-1925) is another. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF2nsDzbpP3pcNH0RWcLCrUWq6vBCsbAwUZH3w0UkBKGupYJAr6aEI7tTQj-I-VS7YllI0ZjvTFsGsuyIzFyyBlmov-BrfL_pvWIgCUzgn8Hofq70j9eXKGoy6TYsUQIJVCm996F6ld7M/s1600/KROHG+-+15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="550" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF2nsDzbpP3pcNH0RWcLCrUWq6vBCsbAwUZH3w0UkBKGupYJAr6aEI7tTQj-I-VS7YllI0ZjvTFsGsuyIzFyyBlmov-BrfL_pvWIgCUzgn8Hofq70j9eXKGoy6TYsUQIJVCm996F6ld7M/s640/KROHG+-+15.jpg" width="412" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Ivan Wolkof with his balalaika</i></td></tr>
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It's not that Krohg is forgotten in his own country - there's a dirty great statue of him in Karl Johans gate in Oslo - it's just that he's practically unknown outside Norway. Given his now unfashionable naturalist style, it's liable to remain that way, which is a shame. I don't think Krohg was a towering genius, but there's a vigour, strength, humour, tenderness and humanity to his work - an engagement with real life - whether his subjects are prostitutes, seafaring folk, mothers with their children, errand boys or hungover artists, which makes his paintings memorable:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfxnxdZc5BmF7Sjg47l3hrTNeb-FjNYOnvmE9ADs4exh6GDhWAM64DsxE91yyHdeecxATZVvxed_wQlN0VRjNGYbmxkto1KJtd-aqpQBZOLWV_JHdGNaX-3EQtsCIofO_eBYEYg_ZMYyE/s1600/KROHG+-+23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="572" data-original-width="500" height="585" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfxnxdZc5BmF7Sjg47l3hrTNeb-FjNYOnvmE9ADs4exh6GDhWAM64DsxE91yyHdeecxATZVvxed_wQlN0VRjNGYbmxkto1KJtd-aqpQBZOLWV_JHdGNaX-3EQtsCIofO_eBYEYg_ZMYyE/s640/KROHG+-+23.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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Krohg, born into a middle class family in what is now part of Oslo, became a qualified lawyer to please his father, while simultaneously studying art. His father died the year Krohg became a law graduate, and Krohg went on to study art in Berlin, and made his living as an artist in Paris for two years. He wrote a novel about prostitution, which created a scandal and was confiscated by the police (his paintings of prostitutes from a social issue point of view - they're totally untitillating - were among his best known), worked as a journalist on an Oslo newspaper for 20 years, and was associated with the journal <i>Politiken</i> for two years. He taught art in Paris for seven years until 1909, returning home to become professor and director of the Norwegian Academy of Arts. A busy old life, which included marriage to the artist Oda Krohg:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA4ih2OCUZs3MNsIndwfgVSfgh1ON4uOHOEJ1wbedbDY-uhyphenhyphenQWJQ_mPn9-ke5_wPbexPnMm_hC7cVW4kckEy6Bs9bZcIxUKhiPKvcjuJF5G3pdSBFn-j1F1_oftGopSrtLapbdgFAoD-4/s1600/KROHG+-+10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="365" data-original-width="236" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA4ih2OCUZs3MNsIndwfgVSfgh1ON4uOHOEJ1wbedbDY-uhyphenhyphenQWJQ_mPn9-ke5_wPbexPnMm_hC7cVW4kckEy6Bs9bZcIxUKhiPKvcjuJF5G3pdSBFn-j1F1_oftGopSrtLapbdgFAoD-4/s400/KROHG+-+10.jpg" width="257" /></a></div>
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I'll end with a random selection of other paintings by the great man, starting with this self-portrait, in which he wields a truly impressive pipe!:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiceYwFUGq6ZyeLdauE35Q8FDWOFa5FZHw_V06YfW72S2LDcrIC_Q1KxAnPPxXhLOMr-0l4ZokzMIdWvOwrX_vEf25GuLqrzPEVNxMAUnLj4szNDhxUwdOliN8NBErHzTEO8QoqxHENVOE/s1600/KROHG+-+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiceYwFUGq6ZyeLdauE35Q8FDWOFa5FZHw_V06YfW72S2LDcrIC_Q1KxAnPPxXhLOMr-0l4ZokzMIdWvOwrX_vEf25GuLqrzPEVNxMAUnLj4szNDhxUwdOliN8NBErHzTEO8QoqxHENVOE/s400/KROHG+-+2.jpg" width="295" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvrxTXA0hLr8PdzdMeNLVyID1uBVy2U8Z8TqWveuYn9JyGk3CDcE1MhFZjvPoY9gz1dNTUgE7XA6ZfBUXLdZjMMSnOB9CpBBB7WaCuGmEFUO0wVH_BAu2bOukkzlITQQPqdm3YFXnJZLI/s1600/KROHG+-+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="379" data-original-width="563" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvrxTXA0hLr8PdzdMeNLVyID1uBVy2U8Z8TqWveuYn9JyGk3CDcE1MhFZjvPoY9gz1dNTUgE7XA6ZfBUXLdZjMMSnOB9CpBBB7WaCuGmEFUO0wVH_BAu2bOukkzlITQQPqdm3YFXnJZLI/s400/KROHG+-+6.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-50248342469449477392019-02-09T18:18:00.000+00:002019-02-09T18:18:55.180+00:00Sheer enjoyment movies: St.Martin's Lane, The Suspect, Unfaithfully Yours, House by the River, Ladies in Retirement and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3_GYs0FFEp7-6lqO7sA4UYhUo_sQGiaCk4v_lED8J_Ssubsx51D7b5O_J-KqLSfEvH4vaXGE-m0gL7hUwix-VdkrQgKrt3sHeeio1UXG3NJNPp_orjH91TeVAx5Dr4dLXA26aXcOtO1U/s1600/ST+MARTIN%2527S+LANE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="297" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3_GYs0FFEp7-6lqO7sA4UYhUo_sQGiaCk4v_lED8J_Ssubsx51D7b5O_J-KqLSfEvH4vaXGE-m0gL7hUwix-VdkrQgKrt3sHeeio1UXG3NJNPp_orjH91TeVAx5Dr4dLXA26aXcOtO1U/s320/ST+MARTIN%2527S+LANE.jpg" width="212" /></a><i>St. Martin's Lane</i> (aka <i>Sidewalks of London</i>) is a 1938 British film starring Charles Laughton as the leader of a troupe of buskers, Vivien Leigh as a pickpocket he takes under his wing, and Rex Harrison as a successful songwriter who introduces her to the theatrical big time. Okay, it isn't a great film, but it's a lively celebration of the sort of busking that was still thriving in the West End in the early and mid-sixties when I used to queue to get into picture palaces in Leicester Square, it crackles with energy, and Laughton is quite splendid as the talentless ham who loses his heart to the lovely Miss Leigh (which he didn't do in real life - the two didn't get on, and the shoot was complicated by Laurence Olivier hanging around on days when Viv was scheduled to perform love scenes with Sexy Rexy). Well worth a Sunday afternoon wallow, and...<br />
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... it's available free on YouTube:<br />
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Charles Laughton also starred in the 1944 American noirish film, <i>The Suspect</i>, set in 1902 London. Laughton (under)plays a kindly, mild-mannered, Crippenesque accountant married to a truly ghastly wife, whose fate is sealed when he meets a lovely young woman played by the extremely attractive Ella Raines. Directed by noir-specialist Robert Siodmak, it's a cracking little film (if you can get used to all the supposed Londoners talking in American accents), and it's also available on YouTube:</div>
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I'll mention in passing another 1944 Siodmak film, <i>Christmas Holiday</i>, based on a Somerset Maugham story. Despite its cheerful title, despite starring two musical comedy greats, Deanna Durbin (who deserves to be better known) and Gene Kelly, and despite the lovely Deanna performing a few songs (as a night-club singer), it's a sinister noir murder thriller, and the killer is none other than... well, you can confirm your suspicions by watching it on YouTube, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBVWLwwkt3I">here</a>. (There's an excellent performance by Gale Sondergaard as Gene's mum.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifEpcP4Bzr6kZg_NNo4Ji6EaZThFu3NWjC7Som7pCN9UZInFzgDHvQtt1sxnISZMehywxsOUK39c15wfs_vqRvPuoDyGy3_kA2ki6ui5N_9MMFr_6z65leCrhFDg4ERS56JgBQ8xmGiiY/s1600/ENJOY+FILMS+-+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifEpcP4Bzr6kZg_NNo4Ji6EaZThFu3NWjC7Som7pCN9UZInFzgDHvQtt1sxnISZMehywxsOUK39c15wfs_vqRvPuoDyGy3_kA2ki6ui5N_9MMFr_6z65leCrhFDg4ERS56JgBQ8xmGiiY/s1600/ENJOY+FILMS+-+6.jpg" /></a>Just as eighteen months of intensive film-viewing have convinced me that Charles Laughton was a far more subtle and versatile actor than he's normally given credit for, I've also warmed to Rex Harrison, who can be enjoyed as a British classical music conductor in <i>Unfaithfully Yours</i>, a 1948 comedy written, produced and directed by Preston Sturges, whose spectacularly successful career as the King of Screwball Comedy had recently suffered a few knocks. This film, which was admired by the critics, should have restored Sturges's reputation, but failed with the public, and his career went into terminal decline.</div>
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It's hard to know why the film failed at the box office. Perhaps the subject - a conductor suspects his young wife is having an affair with his handsome personal secretary, and decides to bump her off - was just too dark (the scene where he imagines carrying out the first of his plots, which involves a cut-throat razor, is certainly strong meat); or maybe it was the upmarket setting and too much classical music; or perhaps the lead characters were just too unsympathetic for American tastes. Whatever the reason, it's failure was a shame, because it's a cracker - not as good as the following year's equally black-humoured British classic, <i>Kind Hearts and Coronets, </i>certainly - but well worth watching. Rex Harrison is in terrific, irascible form, and the sequence where he tries to implement his main scheme is a comic masterpiece - especially the bit involving a piece of "fool-proof" cutting-edge voice-recording technology. I know Surges isn't to everyone's taste, with his penchant for slapstick and exaggerated "comic" sound-effects, but even if you sat stony-faced through <i>Miracle of Morgan's Creek</i> and <i>Hail, the Conquering Hero!, </i>I recommend<i> </i>giving this one - which is also available for free on YouTube - a try:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVBFJPfy6fXjevJ1ppATIdpWiws0Yyn6JeKUMzk4p_8GoymRVTVyvAEQe0Qc5pn89FWgEF8VrnP_33s1Nxe6JKVzVB-C4mYwaGf5ER3014nYbFAJk1nsSsOcSN9Fys4RoqiANYNgPqCtU/s1600/ENJOY+FILMS+-+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="848" data-original-width="564" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVBFJPfy6fXjevJ1ppATIdpWiws0Yyn6JeKUMzk4p_8GoymRVTVyvAEQe0Qc5pn89FWgEF8VrnP_33s1Nxe6JKVzVB-C4mYwaGf5ER3014nYbFAJk1nsSsOcSN9Fys4RoqiANYNgPqCtU/s320/ENJOY+FILMS+-+5.jpg" width="212" /></a>After the commercial failure of his decidedly weird, self-produced 1948 noir film, <i>Secret Beyond the Door</i>, Fritz Lang found himself on Poverty Row in 1950, working for Republic Pictures, directing yet another noir film, <i>House by the River. </i>Set in Victorian times, it centres on a feckless, unsuccessful novelist husband who, his wife being away for the day, makes a clumsy pass at their maid, who vigorously resists his advances. Alarmed that her cries will be overheard, he inadvertently kills the poor girl. Luckily, his brother - a strait-laced, crippled accountant who is forever getting his useless younger brother out of scrapes - turns up a few minutes later and is yet again persuaded to help out, for the sake of his lovely sister-in-law. They truss the dead maid up in a sack, row out to the middle of the river at the end of the garden, weigh the sack down with an anchor, and toss it in... only for it to surface a few weeks' later. All the evidence points to the respectable brother as the murderer - an impression the actual killer is keen to foster. Made on a shoe-string, and with a decidedly unstarry cast, Lang's moody, atmospheric direction and a great performance by the British actor Louis Hayward as the increasingly deranged killer result a near-masterpiece: not well received at the time, its reputation has deservedly grown over the years. Here it is: </div>
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While we're on the subject of Louis Hayward (an actor whose looks, voice and mannerisms make him seem - to me, at least - a pint-sized version of Orson Welles), let me recommend another slice of period Gothic noir - 1941's splendidly unpleasant <i>Ladies in Retirement. </i>Ida Lupino is a housekeeper/companion to a wealthy former chorus girl (of doubtful virtue) in an isolated, mist-shrouded house surrounded by marshes (why the old girl has chosen to retire there rather than to, say, Brighton, is never explained). Ida has dedicated her life to looking after her two crazy sisters. When she learns that they have been kicked out of their lodging house in London, she asks her employer, Miss Creed, if she can fetch them to stay for a short holiday. While she's off in London, a distant relative of Ida's, played by her then-husband, Louis Hayward, a cheeky young ne'er-do-well, turns up and scrounges a few pounds from Miss Creed before melting into the surrounding mists. Ida returns with her nutty siblings (one of whom is Elsa Lanchester), but they rapidly wear out their welcome and Miss Creed orders them to leave. Unbeknownst to the maid, Ida' sisters, or two nosey nuns who keep turning up, Ida murders Miss Creed by strangling her. As if covering up her deed isn't difficult enough, her annoying male cousin returns and soon guesses what has happened. Although by no means comic, it's great, grisly, fun - and one incidental pleasure is the fact that, as it's set in England, and a majority of the cast are are English, they can relax and stop trying to sound American:</div>
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I'll end with W.C. Fields's last film, <i>Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941),</i> which was heavily recut by his studio Universal, who also took the opportunity to let him go. As he was a sick, drink-sodden 61 at the time, I'd assumed it would be a rather depressing reminder of past glories. Not a bit of bit of it: in fact, it's the most wildly, surreally inventive of any of the Fields films I've seen, and contains several laugh-out-loud, vintage sequences:</div>
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Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-68893939121231609442019-01-31T18:29:00.000+00:002019-01-31T18:29:42.149+00:00The 25 greatest comedy performance by actresses in films<b>1. Carole Lombard</b> in <i>20th Century</i> (1934) - I could have chosen her performance in <i>My Man Godfrey</i> or <i>Nothing Sacred</i>, but this is the film which invented the screwball comedy heroine. In order to liberate Lombard's inner comedienne, director Howard Hawks told her a lie - that John Barrymore didn't rate her performance - then told her to go on set and give her co-star an unscripted kick up the arse:<br />
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<b>2. Edna May Oliver</b> (as Betsey Trotwood) in <i>David Copperfield</i> (1935)...<br />
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<b>3. Irene Dunne</b> in <i>The Awful Truth</i> (1937) - in what may be the greatest screwball comedy performance by any actress, Irene Dunne (in the middle) deliberately embarrasses the hell out of her soon-to-be ex-husband in front of his snooty fiancée:<br />
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<b>4. Wendy Hiller</b> in <i>Pygmalion</i> (1938)<br />
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<b>5. Greta Garbo</b> in <i>Ninotchka</i> (1939) - who knew the gloomy Swede had it in her?<br />
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<b>6. Katharine Hepburn</b> in <i>The Philadelphia Story</i> (1940):<br />
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<b>7. Rosalind Russell</b> in <i>His Girl Friday</i> (1940) - her strident cynicism could be wearing, but here she gets it spot on:<br />
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<b>8. Jean Arthur</b> in <i>The More the Merrier</i> (1943) - flatmate Charles Coburn (who been locked out) is the man desperately trying to attract her attention:<br />
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<b>9. Beatrice Lillie</b> in <i>On Approval</i> (1944) - waspish perfection:<br />
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<b>10. Judy Garland</b> in <i>Easter Parade</i> (1948) - here, she tries to convince Fred Astaire that she's pretty enough to draw admiring glances from passers-by:<br />
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<b>11. Judy Holliday</b> in <i>Born Yesterday</i> (1950) - the not-so-dumb blonde gets the better of her gangster boyfriend:<br />
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<b>12. Margaret Rutherford</b> in <i>The Happiest Days of Your Life</i> (1950):<br />
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<b>13. Marilyn Monroe</b> in <i>Monkey Business </i>(1952) - her classic "dumb blonde" role was relatively small, but she was never funnier:<br />
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<b>14. Joyce Grenfell</b> in <i>The Belles of St. Trinian's</i> (1954):<br />
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<b>15, Katie Johnson</b> in <i>The Ladykillers</i> (1955):<br />
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<b>16. Irene Handl</b> in <i>I'm All Right Jack</i> (1959):<br />
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<b>17. Liz Fraser</b> in <i>I'm All Right Jack</i> (1959):<br />
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<b>18. Elaine May</b> in <i>A New Leaf </i>(1971) - she also wrote and directed this understated comedic gem:<br />
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<b>19. Madeline Kahn</b> in <i>Blazing Saddles</i> (1974) - some aspects of the film have dated badly, and the urban smugness grates after a while, but Madeline Kahn's performance as tone-deaf German singer Lili Von Shtupp remains as funny as ever:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibEDbWB4_P-JGsZqmCeEqc6Il1pKo0QwvJfbKIXYa8ekOV70csXDn2CWG44vJxZ394PqPeXf58nRaaEEeEy0-TR5GmWIPm41GOS_y5fgyuTcfkYAJx9j4bfTbtfm4wY2PnZjQKrug5ZoU/s1600/FUNNY+ACTRESSES+-+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="462" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibEDbWB4_P-JGsZqmCeEqc6Il1pKo0QwvJfbKIXYa8ekOV70csXDn2CWG44vJxZ394PqPeXf58nRaaEEeEy0-TR5GmWIPm41GOS_y5fgyuTcfkYAJx9j4bfTbtfm4wY2PnZjQKrug5ZoU/s400/FUNNY+ACTRESSES+-+5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>20. Cloris Leachman</b> in <i>Young Frankenstein</i> (1974) - "Say it! Say it! He. Voss. My. BOYFRIEND!":<br />
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<b>21. Bernadette Peters</b> in <i>Silent Movie</i> (1976):<br />
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<b>22. Julie Hagerty</b> in <i>Airplane!</i> (1980):<br />
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<b>23. Holly Hunter</b> in <i>Broadcast News</i> (1987):<br />
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<b>24. Catherine O'Hara</b> in <i>Beetlejuice</i> (1988) - Geena Davis and Winona Rider were also superb, but Catherine O'Hara's turn as a selfish, humourless, pretentious, talentless virago is very special:<br />
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<b>25. Frances McDormand</b> in <i>Fargo</i> (1966) - funny and immensely touching:<br />
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And a special mention for<b> Jamie Lee Curtis</b> in <i>Freaky Friday</i> (2003) - no, honestly! I knew she could be funny (<i>A Fish Called Wanda, Trading Places</i>), but her performance in this age-swap comedy was a revelation:<br />
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A word of explanation about some of my surprising omissions. Rightly or wrongly, I've divided actresses who've been outstanding in comedy films into two categories - (1) those who are natural comediennes and are able to generate their own laughs, and (2) actresses who aren't naturally funny in themselves, but are expert at coaxing great comic performances out of other actors. For instance, Barbara Stanwyck isn't innately funny, but in <i>The Lady Eve</i> she managed to tease out a superb comedy performance from her co-star Henry Fonda (of all people!), just as she did with Gary Cooper in <i>Ball of Fire</i>. The actresses I think I may have been unfair to are Myrna Loy, who appeared in some genuinely funny films - e.g. <i>The Thin Man</i> and <i>Libeled Lady</i> - but whose main function seems to bring out the best in the naturally comedic William Powell, and Claudette Colbert (<i>It Happened One Night, Midnight</i> and <i>The Palm Beach Story</i>).<br />
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I'm sure I've left out some performances that should have been on the list (I realise that my knowledge of films made in the last ten years is distinctly patchy) - please let me know if you think I have.Scott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.com3