A Christmas Cornucopia Part I: R. O. Blechman and Victorian Voices

As we close out our holiday week, I thought I would add some holiday cheer with smaller stories before posting a special Christmas message.  (Be sure to read it on the 25^th!)  And so, with no further ado:

Vintage Holiday Greetings From R. O. Blechman

Jade Sphinx readers of a certain age surely remember a period before cable television when national networks created simple, heart-felt holiday messages at this time of year.  Though such a gesture would be unthinkable in these rather hard and uncharitable times, these spots brought home simple messages of charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence. 

The CBS network excelled at these messages, and the most famous were created in 1966 by celebrated cartoonist and animator R. O. Blechman (born 1930).  Blechman is perhaps best remembered for his amusing, simply-drawn cartoons for The New Yorker, but is also a champion author of children’s books, including The Juggler of Our Lady (1953).

Robert Oscar Blechman was born in Brooklyn, New York, and attended the High School of Music and Art.  He worked for animation studio Terrytoons (home of Mighty Mouse), winning a BAFTA for his animated version of The Juggler of Our Lady, narrated by Boris Karloff (1887-1969).

In 1977, Blechman produced a holiday special animating his drawings, along with segments by Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) and Seymour Chwast (born 1931), and it was narrated by Colleen Dewhurst (1924-1991). 

These moving stories are simply too good to be missed, and here are links.

Simple Gifts can be seen here (the first of seven parts): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2tbVaDqHXA.

One of his CBS holiday greetings can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFixiBGmskI

Your Correspondent’s favorite holiday message can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUWMjUjit_U

That last piece has haunted me for years, so thank heavens for Youtube!

Victorian Voices at Christmas and All The Year Round

For many (myself included), Christmas means A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  But for writer, archivist and cat-lover Moira Allen, the Victorian world is an endless feast of articles, stories and dispatches, all lovingly culled from the hundreds of periodicals printed during the era. 

Allen has created an indispensable resource for neo-Victorians, an entire Website devoted to reproductions of Victorian-era magazine articles.  Each and every month the indefatigable Allen sends out a collection, and the December number is filled with treats.  You can find the current issue (and hundreds of archived pieces) here: http://www.victorianvoices.net/index.shtml.

Better, still, Allen also has a deluxe paperback collection called A Victorian Christmas Treasury, also available on her site.  We got this book last year and have been paging through it this season with great satisfaction.

Serious historians, lovers of the Victorian ethos, designers, Christmas buffs – there is something here for everyone who is keenly aware of the past.  Be sure to check out Moira Allen’s site, and be remember to say that The Jade Sphinx sent you!

More Christmas dispatches tomorrow!

Egyptomania, by Bob Brier

Many know Bob Brier (television’s Mr. Mummy) through his many televisions appearances, as well as through such best-selling books as The Murder of Tutankhamen, The Daily Life of the Ancient Egyptians and The Secret of the Great Pyramid.  We were lucky enough to do an extensive interview with Bob that will run soon in these pages, but, for now, let’s look at his latest book, Egyptomania.

If we at The Jade Sphinx have a taste for all things Egyptian, we are the merest pikers compared to Bob Brier (born 1943).  He has coined the word Egyptomania to cover everything from a passion for exquisite antiquities to a taste for Egyptotrash.  In his book Egyptomania, he charts a course of the West’s love of all things Egyptian starting with the Roman invasion all the way through to the Napoleonic wars that brought scores of artists and scholars to the region, and the bursts of King Tut craziness that erupted with the discovery of his tomb and through the revival of interest in the 1970s.

It is all much of a muchness to Brier, whose enthusiasm is boundless and indiscriminate.  More important, he manages to bring a remarkable variety of things to life, from shipboard explosions during the English attack on French forces during the Battle of the Nile, to the sometimes bizarre juxtaposition of various ancient cultures on cigarette boxes in the 1920s.  (Some of these images, despite their inherent silliness, are wonderfully evocative Art Deco and Art Nouveau compositions.)  Brier has written a book that is completely accessible to all ages, and can be read with satisfaction by adults or presented to younger readers who are cultivating their own interest in Ancient Egypt.

Brier wonders aloud why Ancient Egypt has such a grip on our imaginations, and not, say, Ancient Mayans or the Babylonians.  He believes that it is an odd mixture of the familiar and the exotic: while believing in jackal-headed gods and the actual physical resurrection of the body, the Egyptians also had a surprising modernity in medical research, statesmanship and religious philosophy.  They are different… but not enough to be completely alien. 

Equally important, an enthusiasm for Ancient Egypt has a wonderful zest and, well… zaniness that makes King Tut breakfast cereal possible, along with scholarly research on hieroglyphs.

Brier’s book makes many interesting side-trips, among them the various engineering feats that made the transportation of Egyptian obelisks possible to Rome, London and New York.  The stories of these three voyages are book-worthy in themselves, and Brier does a terrific job of maintaining a zippy narrative while keeping track of all the moving parts. 

Also delicious is Brier’s argument that the start of Egyptomania was during the Ancient World.  The Romans were enthralled by the hieroglyphics they could not read; while Alexander the Great (who nearly conquered all of the known world), wanted to become an immortal pharaoh.  He also relates how Emperor Hadrian built Antinopolis as a memorial to his lover, the beautiful Antinous.  We have never fully recovered.

As we grew up on Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Christopher Lee emerging from behind Egyptian pillars to put the whammy on various reincarnated loves, Brier’s Egyptomania was catnip to us.  We highly recommend his book to anyone with even a passing interest in the subject.

Egyptomania Hits the Dahesh

Yesterday the Dahesh Museum Gift Shop in Hudson Square played host to a capacity crowd for the debut of Bob Brier’s new book, Egyptomania.  Brier is, of course, the celebrated egyptologist who has written eight books, including The Murder of Tutankhamen, and was host of television’s The Great Egyptians and The Mummy Detective. 

Though an academic with multiple degrees (including actually getting a medical degree to better understand the underlying cause of death of the mummies he has examined), Brier brings to his field of expertise an infectious sense of fun and a true sense of wonder.  Rarely have I laughed so much at a lecture, nor can I remember having been regaled with stories by an expert who is as much entertainer as academic. 

Brier’s book chronicles our three thousand year obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, and provides a wonderful juxtaposition between the learned (his chronicle of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, complete with a retinue of savants to provides what might be history’s first ethnographic study) and the commercial, cataloging “mummy” sheet music, Cleopatra cigarettes and mummy movies featuring everyone from Boris Karloff to Peter Cushing.

Brier argues that no ancient civilization compares to Egypt for its romantic hold on our imagination.  He thinks this is a mixture of our fascination with mummies (here – easily recognizable – are human beings who walked the earth thousands of years ago); the art of Egyptian hieroglyphics; and, of course, what he calls “the Indiana Jones effect.”  Egypt has inspired exotic adventure fiction from pens as diverse as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sax Rohmer and H. Rider Haggard – and this touch of exotica continues in the films of Steven Spielberg and Stephen Sommers.

Your correspondent had the pleasure of interviewing Brier at his home in the Bronx, which is crammed with enough Egyptian artifacts to gladden the heart of Indiana Jones.  That interview, along with a more detailed review of his book, will follow in a few weeks.

In other Dahesh news, the country’s premiere museum-without-walls, has taken the remarkable step of purchasing Frederic, Lord Leighton’s imposing Star of Bethlehem, to expand the scope of the current exhibition, Sacred Visions: Nineteenth-Century Biblical Art from the Dahesh Museum Collection, on view until February 16, 2014 at the Museum of Biblical Art.  Curators and directors from each institution immediately agreed to add the painting to the current installation, as this presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the Leighton alongside other like-themed treasures.  The exhibition traces the renewed interest in Biblical myths following the expansion of biblical archeology and the advent of photography, which produced travel books with pictures of the Holy Land.

Curator Alia Nour said last night, “We decided to remove two smaller paintings to make room for this very large one and started to work on a new label. We deemed it worthwhile to give visitors access to one of the most powerful biblical works Leighton produced during the 1860s.”

New Yorkers who have not yet seen the show now have added impetus, and those who have already seen it an added reason to see it once again.  The Museum of Biblical Art is at 1865 Broadway at 61st Street, and admission is free.  For more information, call 212.408.1500.

The Card Players by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier (1872)

We continue our look at some of the work by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891) with The Card Players, painted in 1872.  This is a smallish picture, 12x15, and it possesses all the Meissonier trademarks of wit and technical wizardry.

People looking to learn more about Meissonier would do well to read The Judgment of Paris, by Ross King.  (We positively reviewed King’s Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling some time back.)  While pointing out that Meissonier was one of the great losers in art history because his reputation suffered drastically following the rise of Impressionism, Modernism and other “progressive” modes of art that ultimately proved to be our aesthetic, intellectual and cultural downfall, King also rendered the painter as sympathetic and unjustly neglected (and denigrated) by later generations of art historians. 

Here is how King opens his book:  One gloomy January day in 1863, Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier, the world’s wealthiest and most celebrated painter, dressed himself in the costume of Napoleon Bonaparte and, despite the snowfall, climbed onto the rooftop balcony of his mansion in Poissy… Ernest Meissonier had occupied the Grande Maison for most of the previous two decades.  In his forty-eight year he was short, arrogant and densely bearded: “Ugly, little and mean,” one observer put it, “rather a scrap of a man.”  A friend described him as looking like a professor of gymnastics, and indeed the burly Meissonier was an eager and accomplished athlete, often rising before dawn to rampage through the countryside on horseback, swim in the Seine, or launch himself at an opponent, fencing sword in hand.  Only after an hour or two of these exertions would he retire, sometimes still shod in his riding boots, to a studio in the Grande Maison where he spent ten or twelve hours each day crafting on his easel the wonders of precision and meticulousness that had both made his reputation and his fortune.

Makes the contemporary art world of Damien Hirsts and Tracey Eims seem bloodless and pusillanimous by comparison, doesn’t it?  Ah, at one time the romance of being an artist!

Today’s picture, The Card Players, shares many of the same virtues as yesterday’s picture, The Sergeant’s Portrait.  Both take place in front of brick buildings, complete with windows that are rendered in astonishing detail and realism.  (I especially like the open window, visible through the length of the building from the foreground window!)  Note, too, the ornate carving of the chairs, the tabletop and supports, and the careful delineation of the window shutters and sills.

Again, Meissonier takes particular delight in the clothing of his figures.  Folds of garment, buttons, gauzy cravats and boots are all depicted with great virtuosity and realism without seeming fussy or showy.

But again where Meissonier triumphs is in directing his actors of paint and canvas.  It is clear that that hatless figure on the left has not only lost this game of cards, but that he has lost a great many others previously.  He looks at his opponent with disbelief, sullen resentment and resignation.  Meissonier also places a glass beside him, and a tankard near his hat – implying that he was drinking, as well.  (Is it my imagination, or does resemble the late Boris Karloff?)

His opponent has clearly had better luck with the cards, and gleefully is about to splay them upon the table.  And look at his face:  not only a note of triumph, but the gloating that often comes when we have someone in our power.  It is not a pretty picture of human nature, but it is a masterful painting.

More Meissonier tomorrow!

  

Disney’s The Lion King: God Help Us

Before you doubt that your correspondent suffers so you don’t have to, remember this: I went to see Disney’s The Lion King on Broadway.  I am still recovering, and any small votive lit for my complete recuperation is deeply appreciated.

The Lion King makes for a completely wretched evening of theater.  One arrives at the Minskoff Theater on West 45 prior to curtain – only to have all bags and some pockets checked by security thugs right out of central casting.  At $155 for Mezzanine seating, one can only imagine that the Minskoff people are expecting the better class of terrorist. 

Patrons are then herded like cattle by ushers more at home on the Old Chisholm Trail, who hector and insult customers already turning off cell phones a good 15 minutes before curtain.  (Not that the patrons on hand deserved better treatment; dressed as if for a hockey game and behaving much like people waiting on line in Costco, one wonders where they thought they were.)

And please never for a moment believe that the Minskoff is a theater … it is not.  It is an auditorium.  If you are interested in serious theater, you are in the wrong place, physically and aesthetically.  Vast and drafty, with practically no proscenium and, if I recall correctly, no orchestra pit, this is a space better suited for proletarian joys like rock concerts and revival meetings. 

Which, in all honesty, is pretty much what one gets with the now-congealing mess that is The Lion King.  To “bring to life” various jungle animals and rain forest locales, director Julie Taymor had Disney’s bottomless coffers at her disposal.  Sadly, all of Taymor’s directorial decisions were wrong.  First off, this adaptation of the Disney cartoon is completely devoid of actors.  Yes, there are performers onstage, but all wear body microphones since they can project neither speaking voice nor song.  (One wonders why they bother … there would be no difference if the poor saps on stage merely moved their lips to a recording.)  Worse still, the actors are all heavily burdened with pounds of puppetry to simulate animal life – it is impossible to connect with any of them in any human way.  Imagine wanting to be an actor and becoming, instead, a walking special effect.

The internal politics of The Lion King are also of special interest.  The entire enterprise is infused with a faux-African PC chic, as if the doings of jungle fauna represented a great cosmology of the universe.  The sole non-African accent on hand is that of Patrick R. Brown, who plays the villain Scar.  (Naturally.)  Imagine, if you would, a lisping Boris Karloff aping Quentin Crisp and you get the idea.  No doubt oceans of self-loathing Upper West Siders nod in appreciation and abnegation; I merely shrugged in disbelief.

The book, by Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi, jumps (literally) all over the place.  I had a thought for many of the screaming children careening through the aisles, wondering how they would understand anything that was going on.  Then, I realized that was never the intention – the real plan was simply to overwhelm them with noise.

Noise, of course, is probably the best word to describe the score by Elton John and Tim Rice.  I cannot say if the score is consistently wretched throughout, but what I did hear sounded rather like subway drummers pounding on plastic paint cans.  After sitting through such first act numbers as Chow Down, Be Prepared and I Just Can’t Wait to Be King, the audience was treated to the big first act curtain number, Hakuna Matata.  I think Hakuna Matata was probably Ugandan for “please be sure to visit our gift shop,” but I never waited to find out.  As the curtain fell, I fled for the nearest exit.  The second act of The Lion King will forever remain a mystery to your correspondent.

Clearly we were not the only sufferers.  Several ushers congratulated us on our sound judgment as we made for the doors, hurrying away from hoards of singing lions, dancing chimps, wailing children and suffering parents.

The Pearl and the Pumpkin – A Forgotten Halloween Classic

Your correspondent remembers a time when Halloween was a holiday primarily celebrated by children.  As I dimly recall that era, we kids purchased some great, inexpensive costumes, or, better yet, made our own.  We would trick-or-treat after school and then, if we were especially lucky, television would make the day perfect with a vintage monster movie, preferably something starring Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) or Boris Karloff (1887-1969).

Things have changed quite a bit.

Today, one would be hard pressed to find children celebrating the holiday at all.  Misguided, unimaginative parents fear something “unwholesome” about Halloween, and church leaders and other professional blue noses prate piffle about “satanic influences.”  As if wearing a Capt. America costume before eating a pound of licorice was the fast road to perdition...

But worse than disenfranchising children from the holiday, adults have coopted it as their own, making what was once a childish frolic of skeletons and ghost stories into a sort of demented Mardi Gras.  As if the Baby Boomer generation was not sufficiently infantilized, it continues to make matters worse by taking the very stuff of childhood and perverting it into an extended flight from adulthood.  If your children are home while you are in a Halloween party … then something is seriously wrong.

Not that adulthood means leaving behind the fun of Halloween completely.  Many of the great classics of English literature are ghost stories (Hamlet, anyone?), and the shudder tales of M. R. James and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remain champion reading.  And if, like your correspondent, you have an interest in the children’s literature of the past century, you could do much worse than finding a copy of The Pearl and the Pumpkin by Paul West and W. W. Denslow.

Denslow (1856-1915) is, of course, remembered primarily as the first illustrator of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in 1900.  Denslow was considered to be one of the major contributors to the success of the book, as his illustrations were applauded by critics and children alike.  Baum and Denslow would work on several other books, including Father Goose: His Book, and Dot and Trot of Merryland; jointly holding the copyrights of their collaborations.

However, things went sour when the Wizard of Oz was adapted for the stage.  Baum wrote the show and Denslow designed the sets and costumes – but the two would quarrel when Denslow insisted on 50 percent ownership of the show.  It would be the last time the two worked together – though Denslow earned so much from the book and the show that he was able to buy an island off of Bermuda and crown himself King Denslow I.

Baum would, of course, go on to write 13 more Oz books, and dozens of other classic children’s tales.  Illustrating the Oz stories fell to John R. Neill (1877-1943) who, to this viewer’s eye, surpassed Denslow’s conception to become the finest illustrator of the Oz corpus.

Immediately following the windfall of the Oz book and stage play, Denslow sought to duplicate its success.  He worked with writer Paul West to create The Pearl and the Pumpkin in 1904.  (It would go on to become a successful show in 1905, running in Boston and New York before touring the country.)

For sheer audacious invention, it would be hard to beat The Pearl and the Pumpkin.  The story begins on a farm in Vermont, where Joe Miller has perfected a method for growing perfect pumpkins.  He and his cousin, Pearl, are all set to celebrate Halloween when they are visited by the Ancient Mariner (complete with albatross and crossbow), who contrives to learn the secret of perfect pumpkins because the pirates down in Davy Jones’ Locker (including Long John Silver, Balckbeard, and Capt. Kidd) are hungry for pumpkin pie.

Before too long, Joe is turned into a giant pumpkin boy by a sprite called the Corn Dodger, and they (along with a baker and professional canner) all end up under the sea, battling pirates and contriving to get Joe back to normal. 

The book was clearly designed with a stage extravaganza in mind (the Glinda-like figure, Mother Carey, even has a bevy of chorus girls behind her), but the joyous energy, high spirits and bright good humor make the book a unique experience.  Denslow created illustrations for every page – including some spreads that straddled both open pages.  Fortunately, the book was available in a facsimile of its 1904 edition from Dover Books, and can be found in places like New York’s Books of Wonder.

I could think of no better way to celebrate Halloween.