The British writer Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) had much praise for the artist Augustus John (1878 – 1961) and his skill as a portrait painter:
With his few fellows he stands apart, reminding us in the most salutary fashion that it is the gift of God, not the correct education, that produces genuine art…
Musical historian W.S.B. Mathews considers the three musical styles of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) and entirely dismisses the possibility that his deafness in later years effected his compositions not one jot.
Attached herein is the obituary of a remarkable woman and early feminist: Belva Lockwood (1830 – 1917) was the first woman lawyer to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court. A graduate of Genesee College, she was the nominee from the Equal Rights Party of the Pacific to run for President during the 1884 U.S. election.
In this letter from the artist Bernard Boutet de Monvel (1884 – 1949) the fellow explains thoroughly his thoughts and adventures as a bombardier in a Vosin bi-plane; experiences which contrast greatly with his days in the trenches and he writes well on the feelings of loneliness that an aviator can experience at 2000 feet.
For those who are interested in learning about the living conditions and daily life of World War One pilot officers this article can only help you.
The legendary sports writer, Grantland Rice
Adorned with photos of the famous movie-monster-actor mowing his lawn and kissing his wife, this COLLIER’S MAGAZINE article tells the tale of how an English boy named William Henry Pratt became a famous Hollywood actor named Boris Karloff (1887 – 1969). This piece was originally conceived in order to promote the actor’s appearance on Broadway in the roll of Jonathan in Arsenic and Old Lace. The writer makes it quite clear to all that the show-biz career did not in any way come easily to Karloff and involved years of truck driving and traveling about performing in summer-stock theaters throughout the whole of North America before he was able to make a name for himself as a bit actor in the silent films of Hollywood.
Click here to read about the vulgar side of Erroll Flynn.
Attached you will find five black and white drawings illustrating the British Army sleeve insignia worn throughout the First World War.
Written by Major E. Penberthy, former Commandant of the British Third Army Sniping School, this is an account of the training and organization of snipers as they functioned within the British Army at the time of the Great War.
In the early days of the war, when reports of German ‘sniping’ began to be published, it was commonly considered a ‘dirty’ method of fighting and as not ‘playing the game’.
This article confirms that the 3-D film format was brought into existence in 1952 for the same reasons it exists today: to get TV audiences off of their wallets and into the theaters.
If 3-D didn’t work, the producers could always attract audiences with this…
The attached essay reviews a colossal history written by a veteran of the U.S. First Infantry Division, Captain Shipley Thomas: The History of the A. E. F.
– for those who are looking for some knowledge concerning what the American Army was up to during the last six months of the War (it was bloodiest period) the review makes for a good read.
Click here to read about the high desertion rate within the U.S. Army of 1910.
Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.
In 1917 an American newspaper reported that Canada, heeding the protests of it’s most impoverished citizens, moved to restrict the flow of the immigrants to their shores:
The commissioners say that in Canada, as in Australia, there is a strong current of opposition to immigration as it is now carried on, particularly among the wage earners in the cities. It is recognized that the development of the land is of prime consideration and that the tide of immigration into the cities has created a surplus, whereas the rural communities have suffered.
KEY WORDS: Immigration History Canada,Poor Immigrants 1917,Immigration Policy Canada,Canada Immigration, Australia Immigration, History Immigration,North American Immigration History,Canadian Immigration Restrictions 1917
An interesting letter written during the opening weeks of the war by a Canadian officer stationed with a British Guard regiment. The letter is filled with earnest enthusiasm:
We are all one in aim, in spirit and in that indefinable quality of loyal co-operation which holds together the British Army fighting against enormous odds in France, as it binds together the British Empire by bonds not less strong because they are invisible.
Throughout film history there have been many men and women who have toiled in the Hollywood vineyards as art directors, but none have ever matched the level of high productivity as Cedric Gibbons (1893 – 1960). Indeed, he is remembered as the dean of art directors who stood head and shoulders above all others during Hollywood’s Golden Age; between 1912 and 1956 there were hundreds movies that bore his thumbprint – winning Oscars for 39 of them (he was also one of the aesthetes who designed that award).
Illustrated by four photographs of his sets from the early Thirties, the attached article appeared mid-way through his career:
At the Metro-Goldwyn studios in Culver City, just a few short miles from Hollywood, Mr. Gibbons rules supreme as art director. He is at the head of an intricately organized group of technical experts and artisans, numbering nearly two thousand individuals, and is responsible for the artistic investiture and pattern of some fifty or more feature films per annum.
British poet and literary critic Arthur Symons (1865 – 1945) wrote about the Nineteenth Century French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) more as a subject of art rather than an influential wordsmith:
Few modern poets have been more frequently drawn, and few have better repaid drawing, than Charles Baudelaire.
Among the list of artists who created likenesses of the poet were his fellow dandy Edouard Manet (1832 – 1883), the photographer Etienne Carjat (1828 – 1906) and an obscure sculptor named Zachari Astrue, who created the poet’s death mask.
Kate Douglas Wiggins recalled her childhood train ride in the 1840’s in which she was able to have a chat with one of her favorite author, Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870), as he traveled the United States on a reading tour.
‘Of course, I do skip some of the very dull parts once and a while; not the short dull parts but the long ones.’ He laughed heartily. ‘Now that is something that I hear very little about’ he said’.
This article originally appeared in a well-known Hollywood fan magazine and was written by Lindbergh’s pal and business partner, Major Thomas G. Lanphier (1890 – 1972). It concerns the story of how one of the most ambitious movies of all times, starring America’s hero, Charles Lindbergh, was not made. The story goes that in 1927, the Lone Eagle signed a $1,000,000.00 Hollywood contract to make a movie about the history of aviation and would not be persuaded to do otherwise by any of his flying-peers, who all tended to believe that no good could come out of it. Slim finally saw the light and was released from his contractual obligations by non other than William Randolph Hearst (1863 – 1951):
Mr. Hearst asked no questions… He brought out the contract and tore it up in Lindbergh’s presence.
You are as much a hero to me, as to anyone else in the world…
The number of movie stars who have found Los Angeles a disagreeable spot in which to live and work is a far larger number than you could ever imagine; however, for those of you who are keeping just such a list, here is proof-positive that Charlie Chaplin hated the dump, too.
