Who Is Your Santa, Part I: The Santa Claus of Rankin/Bass

Because we spend so much time on Christmas here at The Jade Sphinx, I was recently asked by a waggish fellow if I believed in Santa Claus.

Well, to the disappointment of many of you, I have to confess, that, yes, I do believe in Santa Claus.  Always have, always will.  Deal with it.

Let me be clear here – this is not errant whimsicality, nor is it a touch of seasonal madness.  No, I emphatically and completely believe.  I believe in the North Pole workshop, the elves, Mrs. Claus (a shadowy figure, though), and in his Christmas Eve ride.

Before some of my more conservative readers call for the local giggle wagon, let me point out that eight in 10 Americans believe completely and absolutely in angels.  Personally, a belief in Santa Claus makes infinitely more sense.  There is less dogma, fewer conscriptions and, frankly, the message is more positive.  I have a Santa pin on my lapel, much as many sport an angel at this time of year, and I cannot help but think I am ahead in the game.

Of course, the belief in Santa offers a variety of interpretation.  Just as the Gospels contradict themselves, so the story of Santa and his origin differ depending on who is telling the tale.

While nursing a cold this weekend, I spent several hours in the delightful company of my DVD player, re-watching many of the Christmas specials produced by Rankin/Bass.  Surely you remember them – they were animated puppets, often with charming musical numbers, and a sense of interwoven mythology.

The puppet animation was called AniMagic, but actually is was stop-motion animation, much as it was practiced (more expertly) by the late Ray Harryhausen.  The Rankin/Bass animation was always a mixed bag, but the charm of the story and the communal sense of holiday cheer did much to improve it.

I was thinking about their representation of Santa Claus after watching two of the best Rankin/Bass holiday specials, Santa Claus is Coming To Town (1970) and The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974).  Santa Claus is Coming To Town was narrated by the great Fred Astaire (1899-1987), with Mickey Rooney (born 1920) providing the voice of Santa.  The second, The Year Without a Santa Claus, was narrated by Shirley Booth (1898-1992) as Mrs. Claus, with Rooney returning as Santa.  Many of the other voices were provided by a single actor, the great voice actor Paul Frees (1920-1986).

In Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Santa is a foundling, left in the care of the government; specifically local official the Burgermeister Meisterburger.  But Meisterburger has no interest in the people under his care, and has the child sent to the orphan asylum.  Fortunately, the baby Claus is lost in a storm and ends up in the home of elves, the Kringles, who raise him as one of their own.

The Kringles are toymakers, and their isolation from society is a great thing for the baby, whom the name Kris.  He is taught by the Kringles, but also by the forest animals.  When he travels to Sombertown to distribute toys, he has no idea what he is stepping into.

Because years ago, the Burgermiester Meisterburger outlawed toys.  When Kris comes to Sombertown to do good, he is actually breaking the law.  During a run-in with school-teacher Jessica (who later becomes Mrs. Claus), he cautions about a toy, “careful, that toy is a hardened criminal.”

Of course, the Burgermeister Meisterburger does his best to keep Kris from distributing his toys.  Corrupt officials and an out-of-control police break into homes without warrant to search for toys.  Fortunately, Kris invents new stratagems (leaving them in stockings) to avoid detection, but eventually he, the Kringles and their friend, the Winter Warlock (Keenan Wynn – another star from the MGM-era), are all arrested and thrown into prison.

Jessica breaks them out of stir with some flying reindeer engineered by the Winter Warlock, and Kris becomes an outlaw – with wanted posters everywhere.  He grows a beard to escape detection.

In time, Kris becomes a beloved figure of children everywhere, and the Burgermeister Meisterburger, and his laws, are relegated to the dust heaps of history.

This is, of course, a radical telling of the Santa Claus origin story – and one that could only have been possible after the tumultuous, anti-establishment 1960s.  Santa’s nemesis is not a figure of fantasy or magic, but government control run amuck, unjust laws and political leaders who have broken their covenant with the people.  While watching it, I found the whole thing eerily prescient, as if I were looking at a parable on the ruinous and unjust US “War on Drugs (Terror/Whatever),” or a fantasy version of the New York City Police Department under Ray Kelly (born 1941).  It is not too huge a leap to see Santa as the heroic Edward Snowden (born 1983) and the Burgermeister Meisterburger as our current Imperial President.

In The Year Without a Santa Claus, Santa and Jessica are now quite elderly and secure in their fame and position in the world.  However, the older Santa has come down with a bad cold and his doctor tells him that no one cares if he comes or not, and that the Christmas Spirit no longer exists.

Mrs. Claus then sends two elves, Jingle and Jangle, down to the American South (Southtown, to be precise) to look for holiday cheer to convince Santa to make his annual Christmas trek.  They are promptly given a ticket by an overzealous cop (for, among other things, dressing “funny”), and their reindeer is carted off to the dog pound.

Of course Santa must don his civilian clothes (a fetching red bowler hat, deep red vest and red-and-white striped pants) and set things right.  At the same time, Jingle and Jangle manage to get the Mayor of Southtown to declare a national holiday for the ailing Santa by – essentially – bribing him with a snowstorm.

What is fascinating here is that Santa often rails about conditions “down there,” meaning the real world of ours.  What both specials tacitly imply is that Santa Claus is a figure that cannot function in the real world.  His heart is too warm and too open, his point of view too alien, and his sense of right-and-wrong often at odds with laws, regulations and political ambitions.  It is not that he could only function in a fairyland; no, indeed, he can only successfully function in a world of his own creation.  Santa’s home in the North Pole is alternately seen as a castle, a factory, and a nascent city of his own design.  In his own element and at a remove, without the taint of the everyday world, Santa can continue to do good for the children of the world.

 

The Santa of Rankin/Bass is a Santa too good for this world of ours, one who must butt heads against authority, unjust laws, callus cruelty and down-home stupidity simply by being who he is.  It is, of course, a late 20^th Century construct, and the Santa of my imagination is very often the rebel of Rankin/Bass.

Tomorrow: Santa goes anti-corporate in Miracle on 34^th Street.

Christmas Comes to Loew’s Jersey City

Perhaps part of the reason there are so many bad films today is because we have so degraded the experience of going to the movies.  It’s important for everyone hustled into small, cramped theaters, looking at tiny screens, or gagging on trailers to remember that going to the movies was once serious business.

People dressed to go the movies.  Often, live performances would accompany a film, either with film stars making personal appearances or bandleaders playing before and after the show.  And because movies were so plentiful and affordable, people went all the time.  While these days barely 75 major films are released a year, in the 1930s and 1940s, some 500 films would be released.  Yes, that number was 500!

And movie-going was the great American secular religion.  It made gods out of names that still resonate mightily: John Wayne (1907-1979), Fred Astaire (1899-1987), Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957), Judy Garland (1922-1969), Bette Davis (1908-1989) and Greta Garbo (1905-1990), for example.  And, like most religions, it demanded the right ambiance for the sacrament to take place.  And that … led to the creation of Picture Palaces.

There are very few of them today, but movie theaters were often built along the lines of cathedrals.  They were filled with grand (or simply ornate) architecture, they were constructed on colossal scale and they were designed to be a sacred space.  Entering a Picture Palace of old was to enter another realm – where dreams came true, good triumphed over evil, and movies were worthwhile.

Most of these Picture Palaces did not survive the change in the movie business that started in the 1950s and lasted through the 1970s.  In the 50s, movies faced stiff competition from television, and as fewer movies were produced, more and more Picture Palaces found that the economics of supporting such a vast piece of real estate was no longer feasible.  Most went under the wrecking ball, to survive only in cherished memories, while some smaller movie houses were sub-divided into multiplexes. 

Fortunately for New York-area readers, one Picture Palace still remains, and is the focus of a volunteer-supported base of film and live-performance buffs.  The Loew’s Jersey City first opened in September 1929, one of five “Loew’s Wonder Theatres” that opened during 1929-1930.  At that time, Journal Square in Jersey City was a popular entertainment and shopping destination.  Loew’s Jersey City cost $2 million 1929 dollars to build – and ticket prices were first 35 cents. 

The initial plan for Loew’s was to run live theatre performance as well as films.  The stage of the theatre was equipped with a full counterweighted fly system with the 50'-0" wide screen rigged to be flown in and out. In front of the stage, a three segment orchestra pit was installed. One segment, on left side of the pit as viewed from the audience, contained the pipe organ console. The organ lift could rise independently and rotate. The remaining width of the orchestra pit could also rise, lifting the orchestra up to the stage level. The third segment was an integrated piano lift in the center of the orchestra lift that could either rise independently or with the orchestra lift.

Loew’s hit its nadir in the 1980s; the last first-run film to play there was Friday the 13^th Part VI: Jason Lives.  Plans were soon announced to demolish the building, but it subsequently sold to the city of Jersey City, after which volunteers began the restoration project.  The house had been broken into a multiplex, and volunteers restored mechanical systems while the Garden State Theatre Organ Society acquired a sister pipe organ to the match the original.

This wonderland echoes with memories.  I know people who were there for live performances of Frank Sinatra, Martin and Lewis, Abbot and Costello and Kirk Douglas.  I first went to Loew’s in the early 1990s for a screening of This Island Earth (1955).  Volunteers had just begun to reclaim this lost treasure, and the film was actually shown in the lobby.  Since then, the theatre auditorium proper has been largely restored, creating a premium theatre experience.  In the past few years, your correspondent has seen films as diverse as A Christmas Carol (1951), March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934), Pearl of Death (1944), Jason and the Argonauts (1963) – with Ray Harryhausen in attendance, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Psycho (1960) and many others.

This Christmas, the Friends of Loew’s (as the volunteers are called) have several special treats in store.  On Saturday, December 14, Santa Claus will appear in the lobby from Noon till 3:00 PM.  The visit with Santa is free, and digital photos are available for only $4.  Visitors who bring a new hat, scarf, pair of gloves or warm socks for the Winter Warmth Drive for the Homeless can have their picture for free.

That evening starting at 6:30, Loew’s hosts a concert and sing-along of popular holiday music, performed by Taresa Blunda, Howard Richman, the Choir of St. Dominic’s Academy and the Brass Ensemble of the JC Arts High School with Bernie Anderson at the Wonder Organ.  And that treat is followed by a screening of the original Miracle on 34^th Street, starring Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O’Hara and Natalie Wood.  Tickets for both the concert and film are only $14 for adults and $7 for children and seniors.

The Friends of Loew’s have been working for nearly two decades to both restore this theater to its former glory, and to establish it as a premiere revival house and performance space.  But they can’t do it alone.  Readers are encouraged to go to events held at Loew’s, or to provide support in terms of work or donations.  You can get more information at www.loewsjersey.org, or by calling (201) 798-6055.

For those of you who will be joining me on Saturday, Loew’s Jersey City is located at 54 Journal Square, Jersey City, right across from JFK Blvd and the PATH Station.

Merry Christmas!

The World Loses Ray Harryhausen, Part II

Behold the Ymir!

We continue looking at the work of the late Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013), the man who put the “special” in “special effects.”  Harryhausen used the technique called Stop Motion Animation, where he would articulate a puppet (usually about 12 to 18 inches tall) against a miniature backdrop, and move them incrementally while photographing them … one frame at a time.  It was an exacting, exhausting, isolating craft, but one that he mastered in the course of a distinguished career. 

I was lucky enough to be acquainted with Harryhausen, and had met him or wrote to him on-and-off for the last 25 years or so.  My fondest memory of him was when we were invited to join he and his wife, Diana, for a private tour of the Smithsonian’s dinosaur collection provided by paleontologist Michael Brett-Surman, an avowed Harryhausen fan.  Harryhausen was delighted to be accorded such an honor, and the thing I most remember is that he was as excited as a young boy about it all, though he was then a man in his 70s.  (When done, we all went out for hamburgers, which, after dinosaurs, monsters and his wife Diana, seemed to be the great love of his life.)

I think it was this sense of wonder that is the signature note of Harryhausen’s work.  Unlike most grim and gritty fantasy fare today, Harryhausen showed audiences the fantastic, and made it fun.  He was also keenly aware that stop motion animation did not have the “realism” of later techniques, such as Computer Generated Images (CGI) used today.  But Harryhausen always maintained that special effects were a tool, and not an end to themselves.

He also thought that special effects had no obligation to look “real.”  Movies – particularly movies about dinosaurs and aliens, Moon people and mythical gods – are fantasies.  And if a special effect seems in some way other worldly, then all the better.  He was creating visions and illusions, not recreating life.  In that, Harryhausen worked with an artist’s touch, pursuing a personal vision until he realized it fully.  One has the sense that Harryhausen would’ve made films in his basement if he had not achieved success in Hollywood.

A genial, even-tempered and sweet man, Harryhuasen was also something of a loner.  Though he sometimes used assistants, he most frequently worked alone.  He was just so deeply involved in his vision that I think he had difficultly articulating what he wanted, and how he wanted it done, to fellow stop motion animation artists.  He was also very protective of America’s cinematic history, and had little taste for ironists or revisionists.  I well recall someone calling the original King Kong “campy,” and Harryhausen explaining with strained patience that acting, screenwriting and special effects techniques do change, but that in no way negates the quality of the work.  (I often have the feeling that, to many people, anything made without irony is “camp” – a particularly virulent intellectual conceit that diminishes what’s left of our critical faculty.)

Harryhausen was no mean draughtsman, and drew the storyboards for all of his films, as well as making various drawings of fantastic and science fiction images for his own amusement.

Harryhausen Concept Art

For those who wish to sample the best of Harryhausen, below are your correspondent’s five favorite Harryhausen films, along with one bonus picture.  All of them are available on DVD, at your local library, or on Netflix.  See one or all of them – you will not be disappointed.

Mighty Joe Young (1949) was made in collaboration with Harryhausen’s mentor, the great stop motion animator Willis O’Brien (1886-1962), the brilliant special effects pioneer who created King Kong.  Mighty Joe Young was produced by the same team that had created Kong 16 years earlier, and there is a similar vibe to the film, though Mighty Joe Young is a much gentler story with a happy ending.  In short, a producer (played by King Kong alum Robert Armstrong) comes to Africa looking for attractions, only to find an enormous ape that has been raised by a young girl (Terry Moore).  He takes girl and ape back to New York, where poor Joe performs in various seedy nightclubs.  Of course, Joe goes on a rampage, and, after the city issues an order of extermination, the producer, girl, and their cowboy friend (Ben Johnson in his first film role -- I kid you not), plot to get him back to Africa.  The dazzling finale has Joe rescuing children from a burning orphanage.  I know how this all sounds, but … trust me.  It is a spectacular and remarkable moving movie. 

Loosely (very loosely!) adapted from a short story by Harryhausen’s friend, Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) was the  first live-action film to feature a giant monster awakened or brought about by an atomic bomb detonation to attack a major city.  The Beast was a tremendous commercial success, spawning an entire genre of giant monster films, including Gorgo (1961), Godzilla (1954), and Them! (1954). In brief: atomic testing awakens a long-dormant prehistoric beast frozen in the Artic Circle.  The monster makes its way to New York, and is finally killed within the framework of the rollercoaster at Coney Island.  For this film, Harryhausen created his own dinosaur, the Rhedosaurus, and it is an incredible conception.  At one moment, the beast knocks down a Manhattan building and the dust rises around him.  It’s a throw-away moment, but it’s a moment filled with magic.

With 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), Harryhausen once again creates his own creature, the Ymir, a denizen of Venus.  When a US spaceship on a secret mission from Venus crash lands off the coast of Italy, an egg with an embryonic alien washes ashore.  Growing at an alarming rate, the Ymir escapes and wreaks havoc amongst the ruins of Rome.  Tremendous visuals and great fun.

Many consider Jason and the Argonauts (1963), where Harryhausen was associate producer as well as the master of visual effects, to be his masterpiece.  Retelling the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Harryhausen pulls out all of the stops, animating giant statues, many-headed snakes and his great achievement, a sword fight among Jason and his comrades with an army of skeletons.  I was fortunate enough to see this in the ruins of the great picture palace, Loew’s Jersey City, with Harryhausen in attendance.  The film is a great crowd-pleaser, and I strongly recommend you watch it with a young person to appreciate the full effect.

Jason Concept Art

My personal favorite Harryhausen film is First Men in the Moon (1964), where he again served as associate producer and special effects artist.  This film is an adaptation of the 1901 novel by H. G. Wells, with a screenplay by science fiction veteran Nigel Kneale.  The film opens with a breath-taking conceit: contemporary (1960s) astronauts land on the moon, only to find evidence of a prior visitation … made during the Victorian era!  Representatives from NASA and the media descend upon an aging, frail rascal currently residing in a nursing home, who details in flashback how he got there first, more than 60 years earlier.  For this film, Harryhausen animated the insect like Moon men, giant caterpillar-like Moon calves, and the Great Luna – the controlling intelligence of the planet.  The film is whimsical, thrilling, spectacular and sweetly nostalgic.  It is, in short, a masterpiece.  If you only see one Harryhausen film, make it First Men in the Moon.

One to grow on – though not a “good” film in the traditional sense, I have a remarkable affection for The Valley of Gwangi (1969), another film he produced as well as led the special effects effort.  Gwangi was originally planned as a vehicle for his mentor, Willis O’Brien.  How to describe Gwangi?  Well … cowboys in the Old West find a lost valley, complete with the last surviving dinosaurs.  They capture an Allosaurus and bring it back to tour in a Wild West Show … in short, we have King Kong in the Old West.  I find the mix of cowboys, show business and dinosaurs to be too delicious to miss, and Gwangi ends up in my viewing queue every couple of years.  The film climaxes with a breath-taking tussle between Gwangi and a circus elephant – and includes some of Harryhausen’s finest work.

We are all diminished by the loss of Ray Harryhausen, but his works remains to lighten up the dark corners of our imagination.

The World Loses Ray Harryhausen, Part I

Harryhausen animating the skeleton in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad

It’s just about one month shy of the first anniversary of the passing of Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) one of the Great Men of American Letters.  Sadly, we now mourn the loss of one of the great visionaries of American Cinema, Bradbury’s friend Ray Harryhausen.

In an age when the cinema is glutted with fantasy and science fiction films bloated by special effects, it’s perhaps difficult to remember that genre films were the exception to the rule, and that special effects were once, well …, special.

Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013) was born and raised in California, where he became friends with young Ray Bradbury, a fellow science fiction fan.  Like many of an entire generation of science fiction and fantasy buffs, the release of the original King Kong in 1933 was a seminal event in his life.  The mighty Kong fell not only from the Empire State Building, but he fell on Harryhausen as well, metaphorically smothering the boy and making him and a fan of stop motion animation.

The young Harryhausen went Kong-Krazy, and did all he could to learn how the effects of Kong were achieved.  It was then that he learned of Stop Motion Animation, a process by which models were filmed – literally one frame at a time – with slight alterations in posing.  When played sequentially, the animation effect simulated life – making steel-skeleton puppets covered with rubber, fur and miniature costumes come alive.  Harryhausen started building models and making amateur films while in his teens.  Footage of these early films still exists, including one where the young animator has envisioned the world of Venus.  A story that has passed into Harryhausen lore is that he appropriated his mother’s fur coat to create the model of a mastodon….

Harryhausen, in many ways, resembled the great studio painters of yore in that after showing early aptitude, he got to apprentice with an established master.  A friend arranged for Harryhausen to meet Willis O’Brien (1886-1962), the brilliant special effects pioneer who created King Kong.  O’Brien was impressed by Harryhausen’s experimental films, and urged him to take drawing and sculpture courses to hone his craft. 

Harryhausen started his professional career animating short films for science fiction auteur George Pal (1908-1980); the series was called Puppetoons, and specialized mostly in fairy tales.  He also worked with Frank Capra during World War II, mostly as a camera assistant.

After the war, Harryhausen went to work with his mentor, O’Brien, and together they made one of the most impressive fantasy films of the 1940s, Mighty Joe Young (1949).  The film won O’Brien his long over-due Academy Award, which is ironic in that Harryhausen did most of the actual animation while O’Brien focused on solving technical problems.

After that, there was no stopping Harryhausen, and he went on to create the special effects for some of the most celebrated and best-loved fantasy and science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s: It Came from Beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth, and Mysterious Island. He also produced many of his own films (such as Jason and the Argonauts and the original Clash of the Titans), and was always the guiding vision behind each and every film on which he worked.  This led to a unified body of work, similar in tone, outlook and depth of feeling.  No ironist and blessed with a sense of adventure and optimism, Harryhausen opened a world of the imagination to generations of movie goers and future film-makers.  When Harryhausen was honored with a special Academy Award, actor Tom Hanks told the audience, "Some people say Casablanca or Citizen Kane...I say Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made!"

Like painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), there is little “color” or drama to Harryhausen’s life.  If Sargent’s epitaph was “he painted,” then Harryhausen’s could well be, “he created.”  He married late in life (in 1963), to Diana Livingston Bruce, and lived quietly in London and Spain, tirelessly breathing life into his magical puppets, and consequently bringing a little magic into the lives of all of us.  Ray Harryhausen loved fantasy, science fiction, hamburgers, his fans, and Diana.  His passing is a great loss to anyone who loves the world of the imagination.

Tomorrow: The Essential Ray Harryhausen Film List

Ray Animated an Elephant and Dinosaur for the Climax of

The Valley of Gwangi

The World Loses Ray Bradbury, Part II

Yesterday, we were talking about Ray Bradbury and love.  His heart was huge and copious – it had room for Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, and Capt. Ahab and Shakespeare.  As with all great lovers, Bradbury was somewhat indiscriminate, but his passion could not be faulted.

Because of his love, others found love, too.  The artists inspired by Ray Bradbury in one way or another would read like a list of some of the most popular voices of the past several decades: Stephen Spielberg, Stephen King, William Joyce, Rod Serling, Robert McCammon and Michael Chabon.  All of these writers/filmmakers have mined that deep vein of American nostalgia laced with science-fantasy, a cornerstone of the American literary voice.

Bradbury loved the movies, writing several himself.  His screenplay for Moby Dick (1956), directed by John Houston (1906-1987), is a masterpiece of concision and a model of adaptation.  His screenplay for his own novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), is something of a disappointment, as he felt the need to make changes to the plot.  These changes (including a whole reinterpretation of the Dust Witch, one of his greatest characters) greatly hampered the finished product, though it still has much to commend it.

In fact, much of Bradbury’s post-1960s work is a mixed-bag.  In The Bradbury Chronicles: The Lift of Ray Bradbury, Predicting the Past, Remembering the Future, biographer Sam Weller sums up Bradbury’s life from 1974 to the present in a scant 30 pages.  It’s possible that Bradbury, incredibly prolific and certainly promiscuous with his gifts, wrote himself out by the time he was 55 or so.  Sadly, the great man sought to sometimes go back to earlier masterpieces and ‘improve’ them, like a master craftsman handling his own work with wet varnish on his fingers.

But there was much to savor, still, in the later Bradbury.  Indeed Bradbury, always more of a short story writer than a novelist, actually started working seriously in the long form, producing some interesting work.  Perhaps the most interesting things about Bradbury’s later work was his persistent wish to rewrite his own life story.

A Graveyard for Lunatics, written in 1990, is a journey in nostalgic re-writing.  In this novel, young screenwriter Bradbury teams up with young stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen (both long-time real-life friends since adolescence) to solve a crime in a movie studio.  Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) rewrites his own experience working with Houston in Ireland on Moby Dick, and is a diverting fictional memoir.  From the Dust Returned (2001) is his homage to friend Charles Addams (creator of The Addams Family), inspirited by an Addams illustration intended for one of his books, but never subsequently used.  His two mysteries – Death is a Lonely Business (1985) and Let’s All Kill Constance (2002) – take him back to the Venice, California of his youth.

In 2006, Bradbury wrote a coda to what his perhaps his finest work, Dandelion Wine, called Farewell Summer.  In this slim book his protagonist, Douglas Spaulding (a thinly veiled Bradbury) experiences his own sexual awakening.

As the world mourns the loss of Ray Bradbury, perhaps it’s best to remember the things most notable about him: his gifts as a stylist, his love for all the artifacts of the great American Century, his central role as the bridge between High and Popular Art.  But more important, to your correspondent, is the man’s temperament.  Bradbury had a sense of wonder, and he wrote with a boy’s touch.  It was this eternal youth and strong sense of optimism that I think the world will miss the most.  Bradbury himself expressed this perfectly when, in an interview to have been published in The Paris Review, Bradbury spoke of the difference between himself and Kurt Vonnegut.

He couldn’t see the world the way I see it. I suppose I’m too much Pollyanna, he was too much Cassandra. Actually I prefer to see myself as the Janus, the two-faced god who is half Pollyanna and half Cassandra, warning of the future and perhaps living too much in the past—a combination of both. But I don’t think I’m too overoptimistic … It’s the terrible creative negativism, admired by New York critics, that caused [Vonnegut’s] celebrity. New Yorkers love to dupe themselves, as well as doom themselves. I haven’t had to live like that. I’m a California boy. I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

I was lucky enough to meet Bradbury several times.  Each and every time I did, I made sure to tell him that he had a profound impact on my life and that I loved him dearly.  Today, I’m so happy to have had that chance.

The World Loses Ray Bradbury Part I

The world lost one of its most haunting, poetic voices when Raymond Douglas Bradbury died on Tuesday, June 5^th.  We are all diminished by his death.

The steady stream of obits and accolades over the past several hours have all read something along the lines of: “the first writer of literary science fiction,” or, “made science fiction respectable.”  He was compared in these notices to his contemporaries, Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), Robert Heinlein (190701988) and Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007).

This simplifying of the story is expected in our media, but it does a great disservice to Bradbury.  Despite the relative merits of the gentlemen named above, they were not prose stylists as lyric, distinct and evocative as Bradbury.  Bradbury’s brand of American lyrical fantasy has more in common with Our Town and You Can’t Take it With You than the baroque excesses of Stranger in a Strange Land or Breakfast for Champions.  To capture the real flavor of Bradbury’s literary contribution, it makes more sense to compare him to Thornton Wilder (1897-1975), William Saroyan (1908-1981) or Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) than Heinlein or Clarke.

Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1920. It was a particularly American time and place, a moment that would be memorialized in the art of such painters as Norman Rockwell.  The impact of his birthplace on Bradbury’s art is remarkable: it laid a foundation of small-town American sweetness, optimism and community under much of his work.  These qualities are found in abundance in two of Bradbury’s novels, Dandelion Wine (1957) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).  Both books are, in your correspondent’s estimation, two of the finest American novels of the 20^th Century.

There are two overarching characteristics to Bradbury’s corpus – love and its blessed accomplice, enthusiasm.  Both are expressed through a deep vein of nostalgia – nostalgia for a lost past and an unforgotten childhood.

Bradbury was a man in love – in love with the pop culture of the American Century, in love with writing, and in love with the world.  When he was a boy, Bradbury met a carnival magician named Mr. Electrico, an encounter that would change his life.  Here’s the exchange, in Bradbury’s own words, from December 2001:

Back when I was twelve years old I was madly in love with L. Frank Baum and the Oz books, along with the novels of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and especially the Tarzan books and the John Carter, Warlord of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I began to think about becoming a writer at that time.

Simultaneously I saw Blackstone the Magician on stage and thought, what a wonderful life it would be if I could grow up and become a magician.

In many ways that is exactly what I did.

It was an encounter with another magician that changed my life forever.

During the Labor Day week of 1932 a favorite uncle of mine died; his funeral was held on the Labor Day Saturday. If he hadn't died that week, my life might not have changed because, returning from his funeral at noon on that Saturday, I saw carnival tent down by Lake Michigan. I knew that down there, by the lake, in his special tent, was a magician named Mr. Electrico.

Mr. Electrico was a fantastic creator of marvels. He sat in his electric chair every night and was electrocuted in front of all the people, young and old, of Waukegan, Illinois. When the electricity surged through his body he raised a sword and knighted all the kids sitting in the front row below his platform. I had been to see Mr. Electrico the night before. When he reached me, he pointed his sword at my head and touched my brow. The electricity rushed down the sword, inside my skull, made my hair stand up and sparks fly out of my ears. He then shouted at me, "Live forever!"

I thought that was a wonderful idea, but how did you do it?

The next day, being driven home by my father, fresh from the funeral, I looked down at those carnival tents and thought to myself, "The answer is there. He said 'Live forever,' and I must go find out how to do that." I told my father to stop the car. He didn't want to, but I insisted. He stopped the car and let me out, furious with me for not returning home to partake in the wake being held for my uncle. With the car gone, and my father in a rage, I ran down the hill. What was I doing? I was running away from death, running toward life.

When I reached the carnival grounds, by God, sitting there, almost as if he were waiting for me, was Mr. Electrico. I grew, suddenly, very shy. I couldn't possibly ask, How do you live forever? But luckily I had a magic trick in my pocket. I pulled it out, held it toward Mr. Electrico and asked him if he'd show me how to do the trick. He showed me how and then looked into my face and said, "Would you like to see some of those peculiar people in that tent over there?"

I said, "Yes."

He took me over to the sideshow tent and hit it with his cane and shouted, "Clean up your language!" at whoever was inside. Then, he pulled up the tent flap and took me in to meet the Illustrated Man, the Fat Lady, the Skeleton Man, the acrobats, and all the strange people in the sideshows.

He then walked me down by the shore and we sat on a sand dune. He talked about his small philosophies and let me talk about my large ones. At a certain point he finally leaned forward and said, "You know, we've met before."

I replied, "No, sir, I've never met you before."

He said, "Yes, you were my best friend in the great war in France in 1918 and you were wounded and died in my arms at the battle of the Ardennes Forrest. But now, here today, I see his soul shining out of your eyes. Here you are, with a new face, a new name, but the soul shining from your face is the soul of my dear dead friend. Welcome back to the world."

Why did he say that? I don't know. Was there something in my eagerness, my passion for life, my being ready for some sort of new activity? I don't know the answer to that. All I know is that he said, "Live forever" and gave me a future and in doing so, gave me a past many years before, when his friend died in France.

Leaving the carnival grounds that day I stood by the carousel and watched the horses go round and round to the music of "Beautiful Ohio." Standing there, the tears poured down my face, for I felt that something strange and wonderful had happened to me because of my encounter with Mr. Electrico.

I went home and the next day traveled to Arizona with my folks. When we arrived there a few days later I began to write, full-time. I have written every single day of my life since that day 69 years ago.

I have long since lost track of Mr. Electrico, but I wish that he existed somewhere in the world so that I could run to him, embrace him, and thank him for changing my life and helping me become a writer.

More Bradbury tomorrow!

The Doom Fulfilled by Edward Burne-Jones

It was such a pleasure to close last week with artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) that I decided to spend this week with him, as well.

We have established that the Victorian mind found solace, inspiration and identity in a robust nostalgia.  This was not a personal nostalgia as much as a national depth of feeling: by looking at myths of the past, the Victorians sought to remake themselves in a more heroic manner.

Burne-Jones was commissioned to paint a series of pictures depicting the feats of the mythological hero Perseus by conservative politician (and Prime Minister) Arthur Balfour (1848-1930).  Burne-Jones created several large-scale paintings in the series, but, alas, did not finish the entire cycle.  The completed paintings can be found in Stuttgart’s Staatsgalerie.

For inspiration, Burne-Jones turned to another artist: William Morris (1834-1896).  Morris, aside from starting the Arts and Crafts Movement (and, hence, aestheticism), was also an instrumental force in the creation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  Morris was also a poet and medievalist.  His most celebrated work was The Earthly Paradise (1896), a collection of poems bound in a leather strapbound book.  The Earthly Paradise chronicled a group of medieval wanderers who set out to search for a land of everlasting life.  At length, they come upon a colony of ancient Greeks, still alive, who tell them a series of stories, including the myth of Perseus.

The Doom Fulfilled details a later moment in the sequence.  As you may remember, Perseus rescues his lover, Andromeda, from a sea monster called the Kraken.  Most artists go overboard in depicting this undersea threat, creating monsters 50 feet tall and looming like one of Ray Harryhausen’s creatures.  (Indeed, Harryhausen had a crack at the Kraken himself with his Clash of the Titans in 1981 – one of the most enjoyable bad movies ever made.)  Here, Burne-Jones creates a Kraken that is more bejeweled anaconda than giant sea monster.

Let’s look at this remarkable picture.  Burne-Jones had a wonderful and subtle gift – to render figures in action in attitudes of repose.  Look at most of his corpus and you will find figures engaged in physical activity (or about to engage in it), but delineated in a manner that is almost dream-like.  This gives much of his work an other-worldly quality, almost as if he were painting pictures first seen in our subconscious.

Burne-Jones stages his spectacle in a stony grotto, placing Andromeda on her own pedestal and creating a pyramid around Perseus and the Kraken in order focus attention on them.  The cool blue of both Perseus and the Kraken keep them in the background, while the bright flesh tones of Andromeda push her closer to us.  It is curious to me that both Perseus and the Kraken are the same shade of blue.  Perhaps Burne-Jones thought, if Andromeda was merely a prize, that there was little difference between Perseus and the Kraken. 

While Perseus cuts a heroic figure in his blue armor, Burne-Jones does not create a muscled man-god out of Michelangelo.  Rather, the heroic contours of his body are created by the armor he wears.  Perseus’ face is like many of those you will find in Burne-Jones’ work – introspective, intent, and locked in the gaze cast upon someone else.  Look at The Beguiling of Merlin from last week – rarely has an artist ever been so effective in exchanging charged emotions between subjects through the power of a glance.

Andromeda is beautifully drawn and painted.  Could she, too, have been modeled by his lover, Maria Zambaco (1843-1914)?  Possibly.  The Andromeda of Burne-Jones is not a screaming hysteric; instead, she watches the battle of Perseus and the monster with a cool detachment.

“Cool detachment” may be the perfect way to describe the Perseus series.  I am filled with admiration for the mastery of Burne-Jones, but it strikes me as a cold genius.  There is passion but no mess, lots of fire but little heat.  It is a genius that chills the intellect – a wintry blast of virtuosity that is just what is needed in the dog days of summer.

Tomorrow – more of Perseus!

The Man in the Moon by William Joyce

Last night your correspondent had the pleasure of attending the launch party for the new picture book by William Joyce, The Man in the Moon, held at Books of Wonder, one of the premiere independent book stores in New York City.  This is great news for fans of illustrated books and connoisseurs of children’s literature, as Joyce is a major talent who has been absent from the publishing world for too long, devoting his time and creative energies to movies like Toy Story (1995), Robots (2005) and Meet the Robinsons (2007).

Before looking at The Man in the Moon, first a brief word about Books of Wonder.  Located at West 18^th Street in Chelsea, Books of Wonder has been an oasis for book lovers for over three decades.  I have been able to find everything and anything on their shelves, from magnificent facsimile editions of L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz books (complete with color plates), to opulent editions of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, to Edward Bloor’s masterful London Calling.  In addition to books, there is a gallery in the back of the shop, complete with original works and limited-edition lithographs, a vast selection of vintage books and even an (under renovation) coffee shop.  Anyone with a love of books, children’s lit or illustration will find Books of Wonder a must-go destination.  Their Web site is:  www.booksofwonder.com.

The Man in the Moon is Joyce’s first picture book since Big Time Olie in 2002 and the first non-Rolie Polie Olie book since The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs in 1996.  Before my uninitiated readers blanch at such titles, let me state unequivocally that Joyce produces pictures books and children’s lit of an exceptionally high caliber, celebrated for his wit, his stylish watercolors and pencil drawings, and his infectious sense of the ridiculous.  His 1993 book Santa Calls is an Art Nouveau fantasia celebrating the Santa Claus myth with the most perfectly idealized Toyland to ever find itself in the pages of a book, and A Day With Wilbur Robinson (1990) is, in many ways, a sun-kissed Art Deco rift on You Can’t Take It With You.  And his hilarious Dinosaur Bob and His Adventures with the Family Lazardo (1988) might be best described as Nick and Nora Charles and their pet dinosaur.

If I sound besotted by Joyce’s work, I confess that I am, gloriously so.  The arrival of The Man in the Moon is an occasion for handsprings, unbridled kazoo playing and infectious hilarity.  And the news that The Man in the Moon is the first of an extended series, The Guardians of Childhood, including both picture books and prose novels, might inspire back flips, cartwheels and street-corner harmonizing.  Let the revels begin.

As is fitting for the first book in a series, The Man in the Moon is an origin story.  It tells how the Man in the Moon got there, and outlines his conception of those mythical beings who would watch over the children of the world.  These Guardians would later evolve into Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Mother Goose, the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy.  The first prose novel in the series, Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King will be available in bookstores in about two months.

Joyce has lost nothing of the richness of his illustrative style during his long hiatus from books.  Most devotees treasure his incandescent watercolors because of their distinctive sparkle inspired by a 1930s sensibility.  Like the best 1930s patter, Joyce draws on the balls of his feet, and his art is nimble, freewheeling and somehow screwball.  His books have a distinctive rhythm, much like a Little Rascals short or a classic screen comedy. 

There is much of that in Man in the Moon, but also something more.  Here, while Joyce delivers some pages with his customary Art Deco glow, much of the book harks back to a more Eastern European tradition.  There is almost a Russian folk art quality to many of the illustrations, with brings an unusual gravitas to the proceedings.  This is completely in keeping with the text of the story, which perhaps carries greater emotional and thematic depth than his previous work. 

Of course, one of the secret pleasure s of reading Joyce is looking at his illustrations and wondering at their inspiration.  A Baby Boomer steeped in a glorious period of American pop culture, Joyce’s memory seems to be housed in his eye as much as his brain.  The origin of the Man in the Moon (or MiM, as he’s called) calls to mind Superman comics as much as Moses.  Once on the Moon, he sees starfish that look for all the world like the Disney version of Capt. Nemo’s Nautilus, and it’s only after looking at the giant caterpillar on the moon that astute readers wonder … is Joyce channeling Ray Harryhausen’s Mooncalf from First Men in the Moon?

As the series progresses, both picture books and prose novels will detail how MiM created the Guardians of Childhood and also relate individual adventures.  One cannot help but wonder at the audacity of the conception.  What Joyce is undertaking is a remarkable feat of imaginative creation.  Much like C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien – though with a lighter touch and greater wit – Joyce has promised to create his own cosmology.  His goal is not only to recreate St. Nick, Mother Goose, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Sandman, but to weave them into an interconnected narrative that is the basis of a new myth.  Where it will all end and what shape his final cosmology will take are now unknown, but Joyce has never failed to delight, amuse and enchant this reader, and I know that the Guardians of Childhood are in good hands. 

The Guardians of Childhood

William Joyce Display at Books of Wonder