Mark Twain Part III

Twain returned to the US after his long trips to Europe and around the world.   He was getting older and his health began to decline.   He lost his daughter Susie in 1896 and a few year later his wife and other daughter Jean died, deepening his depression. He died of a heart attack in 1910.

He is remembered for his two great works of boyhood Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, which are still popular.  The first is based on his memories of childhood in Hannibal and Huckleberry Finn was based on a boy he knew back then, who was ragged and barefoot and was admired by the other kids, as being lucky enough to be able to avoid the proprieties and narrowness of small town life.

Huckleberry Finn is about slavery.  Huck as a barefoot penniless boy who is an outsider himself, but white, develops a kinship with the escaping slave Jim as they travel down the Mississippi river on a raft. Huckleberry comes to realise Jim’s humanity and to sympathise with his desire to be free.  Twain himself was an abolitionist but the novel has Huckleberry starting from a position of accepting slavery as normal and right, and coming to change his views.    It also ends with Huck wanting to escape from “civilisation” in a small town and move on out... another theme in American literature.   Twain grew more radical as he grew older, but sometimes hid his more anti-establishment beliefs, such as his feelings against organised Christianity.  He supported women’s rights... and was an Anti-Imperialist, believing that the US and other countries which interfered in the affairs of foreign countries were in the wrong, even if they claimed to have a mission of civilising or improving the lives of the people of these nations.   He was cynical about all sorts of Imperialism and hostile to almost all forms of racism... though in Tom Sawyer he seems to be rather hostile to American Indians such as “Injun Joe” who is the villain of the book.

The ending of Huckleberry Finn has Huck deciding to “light out for the territory” and get away from Tom’s aunt who wants to adopt and “civilise “him... which has been seen as the American male’s desire to escape female influence and to find freedom away from cities and society…

 

Mark Twain Part II

Mark and his wife had a son, and 3 daughters.  His son died in childhood and 2 of his daughters died as young woman.  Olivia Susan (Susy) died at 24 of spinal meningitis.  Another daughter Jean died of epilepsy. Clara Clemens, the middle daughter became an opera singer and lived to maturity, marrying twice.  HIs marriage was a happy one but the family had problems particularly due to health issues....

Mark was very interested in science, and became friends with the inventor Nikola Tesla .  He also patented inventions, and was eager to learn about science and technology.  One of his novels was “A Connecticut Yankee at the court of King Arthur”.. in which a time traveller goes back to the Middle Ages and uses his knowledge of technology to modernise life at Arthur’s court. 

Twain was torn between  a fondness for the past, and nostalgic love for his own childhood days, and a desire to improve life in the present. He was reform minded as an adult and was conscious of the wrongs of life in the past such as slavery.  But  his most admired books were popular because they were set in the past and were about childhood on the Mississippi, which was portrayed as a time of innocence and delight.

However while he was a very successful writer and made a lot of money, his dabbling in inventions led to the loss of a lot of his fortune.  He had invested a part of his wife’s fortune and his own savings in a type setting machine, but it did not do well because it was prone to breakdowns and it was soon superseded by another model.   He also tried to increase his income by founding a publishing company, which published some of his own works and the Memories of Ulysses S Grant…Although Grants memoirs sold well, and so did “Huckleberry Finn”, other books were less successful and within 10 years the firm had to declare bankruptcy.  The family were experiencing financial troubles in the early 1890s and closed their New England home to go to Europe.  Twain hoped that life in Europe would be cheaper and that he, his wife and Susy would benefit from visiting health spas on the Continent.   He still had money troubles but received financial advised from friends who were businessmen.  He declared bankruptcy but embarked on a long lecture tour to try and pay off his debts. He visited England and also lectured in America and Canada and India. 

Mark Twain Part I

Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Clemens Langhorne, who was born in Missouri in 1835.  His father was a lawyer and businessman... the family owned slaves but were never all that prosperous… He died when Samuel was about 12 and so the boy went to work as a clerk... and studied printing.  Mark loved the Mississippi river and later trained as a pilot on the steamboats that plied along the great river.   He had continued with his education during his days as a printer, studying in public libraries.  In the 1850s, he worked as a pilot, which was a well-paid and prestigious job, involving ensuring that the boats were able to navigate the river safely. However one of his brothers, Henry, who had taken a job as a general helper on one of the boats, was killed in an explosion, which traumatized Mark who had gotten him the job. (Later when he took a pen name, he used “Mark Twain” which was a cry of the pilots stating the measured river depth of two fathoms (12 feet), which was safe for a steamboat.)

Twain was a southerner and had grown up in slave states…and his great seminal works of literature, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn both were set before the Civil War and were about slavery.   It’s been said that all American literature comes from Twain’s works.  Both can be read as children’s stories but they are also adult novels.   Twain briefly joined a Confederate unit as  a volunteer, but the troop disbanded after a few weeks.   He then left and went work for his brother Orion, who was Secretary of the Nevada Territory.  He travelled west and got a job as a miner for a time, in the Nevada Silver mines. After his experiences in the west, he moved to San Francisco and became a journalist, and began to write humorous stories and accounts of his travels.   After the War, in 1868 he had an assignment to work in Europe and travelled there... He fell in love with Olivia Langdon, who was the sister of a man he met on his travels…  They corresponded for a time and finally married in 1870.  Oliva’s family was from the North and were wealthy New England liberals, and through her he met people who were left wing, idealistic campaigners for causes such as women’s rights, abolition of slavery, and socialism.  This provided him with a contrast to the southern states where he had grown up.

 

Marty Stuart short blog post

Marty Stuart is famous for being a talented country musician and singer and for being one of Johnny Cash’s many sons in law.  Johnny had 4 daughters and often worked with his girls in his singing act... When they married, he worked with their husbands….

Marty was born in Mississippi in 1958 and learned to play guitar as a child.  He joined a bluegrass band, quite young…in the 1970s when still a teenager, he worked with the musician Lester Flatt, and then when Flatt retired, he began to work with Johnny Cash’s band.   In the early 80s he married Cindy, one of Cash’s daughters…  They divorced some years later but he remained friendly with Johnny….and they continued to work together.   He cites Johnny as one of his big musical influences.  He is more of a musician than a singer or song writer...

He had his own show The Marty Stuart Show, which features traditional country music on TV and has had as a guest Hank Williams III.
Marty is well known for his love of traditional music and his collection of memorabilia, which has been shown at the State Museum.  He owns clothes and instruments used by famous country stars...

In 1997, sometime after his divorce from Cindy Cash, he married singer Connie Smith… and they are still married….

 

Marilyn Monroe Part III

Marilyn’s decade of success was the 1950s. Her free "liberated" attitude to sex was something of a double edged sword for her...  In the repressive 50s, she was noticed as being sexy and charming... and unthreatening to men.  Women were less inclined to be fans.  However it imprisoned her in a stereotype of the “dumb sexy blonde” which distressed her.  She wanted to be taken seriously as an actress and grew upset and angry that she was seen as a sex symbol with a past of multiple affairs with men... who had helped her to get a start in the business.  Marilyn was more frank about her sex life than women usually were, in the 50s, and this led to complaints bout the vulgarity of her personal life and her screen roles.   She was mocked at as the “dumb blonde” who was foolish enough to think she could ever be taken seriously…

She had a moderate talent for singing and dancing, and had several roles in musicals, including her most famous one Sugar In “Some like it Hot”, but she began to dislike this sort of work as she felt it would ruin her chances of ever playing serious roles. Marilyn had suffered from low self-esteem, fearing that all she had to offer was her sexuality and her looks... and her “sweet but silly” persona.  She feared too that she might have inherited her mother’s mental problems.   Although her career took off, she was always afraid that she would fail at her work or break down.  She used drugs and alcohol as a crutch and became increasingly addicted to pills…. This in turn began to affect her performances.  She was notoriously late on set and began to have difficulty learning her lines.....Marilyn was insecure about her talents, in spite of her desire to become a serous actress.  She grew difficult, and depended heavily on her acting coaches, Natasha Lytess and Paula Strasberg of the Actors Studio.   She irritated directors by having her coaches on set, turning to them for advice and assurance and wanting re takes if they felt that she hadn’t done a scene well.  She grew more addicted to various drugs, uppers to help her keep going and barbiturates to help her sleep and by the mid-50s she had a definite problem with these drugs.

She quarreled with Fox - and they suspended her when she refused to do “yet another sex comedy”... and in 1954, she married Joe Di Maggio, who was the most famous baseball player in the US at the time.  However while di Maggio loved her, he was an old fashioned controlling man and showed jealousy and anger at her playing in “sexy” roles. He was furious at the famous scene in Seven Year Itch, where her skirt blows up and reveals her underwear, which was a scandalously shocking scene at the time....    He began lose his temper with her and became physically abusive and the marriage only lasted 9 months.   Di Maggio did remain loyal to her and they were friends in spite of the divorce.

Marilyn continued to be at odds with her studio, so she then set up her own production company.  She left Hollywood and went to New York, where she joined the Actors Studio, hoping to improve her acting skills.  The Strasberg family, who ran the Studio, was fond of her and were flattered to have attracted such a popular sex symbol to believe in their “Method” acting.  However, when Marilyn tried to delve into her unconscious to find material for her performances, it was stressful for her.  She had had so many traumas in her life and was fearful that she had inherited her mother’s mental problems. Dwelling on her own emotions and remembering the problems of her past probably wasn’t the wisest method for her to choose, to help her acting.   She began to date playwright Arthur Miller who was seen as an intellectual… He left his wife and they planned to marry.  Miller was being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, because of supposed “communism” in his plays, and Marilyn wanted to help him.  She married Miller in 1956 and returned to film making.   She undertook a film called “Bus Stop” where she played a small time singer who dreams of stardom but falls in love with a cowboy... and goes to live with him.  She worked hard to give a convincing performance as a not very successful none too glamorous  singer, and began to impress some critics and convince them that she could act…

Beds and Blue jeans a country music story

 Beds and Blue Jeans is set in present day America.  It is about a love affair between a young couple who drift into living together and having a baby, and how they make things work

http://www.amazon.com/Beds-Blue-Jeans-everyday-mayhem-ebook/dp/B01370SMFO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1443265304&sr=8-2&keywords=nadine+sutton

Marilyn Monroe Part II

Norma Jeane grew bored with married life very soon though she was fond of James and with America at war, he joined the Merchant Marine.  He was away on active service, and she took a job in a munitions factory.  There, she was photographed by a Unit of the Air force, who were taking “morale boosting”, shots of pretty girls… Her special quality began to develop, and although they didn’t use any of her photos, it gave her confidence to quit her job and try her luck at modelling.

She dyed her brown hair blonde, and began to get work … but her husband was angry at the thought of her working in such a job.  However she was defiant and determined to get out of domestic working class life. She appeared in men’s magazines and in advertisements, and worked hard.  In 1946, she was moving towards getting into an acting career and got a contract with 20^th Century Fox.  She decided to divorce her husband who wanted her to stay at home.   When taken on by the studio, she didn’t get any acting work at first but had to study acting, singing and dancing and she was now using the name Marilyn Monroe…

She got a few bit parts but her contract was soon dropped.  She became more fiercely determined to succeed as an actress, and began to take lessons at the Actors Laboratory.  She hoped to get into stage acting but her future was to be on the screen.  She met Johnny Hyde, an older man who was Vice President of the William Morris Talent agency, and became his mistress.  It was a help towards getting work but when Hyde asked her to marry him she refused as she wasn’t in love with him.  He paid for her to have some minor plastic surgery....

She posed for some nude modelling shots... and finally in 1950 Hyde got her a long term 7 year contract….with 20^th Century Fox again.  He died shortly afterwards of a heart attack, leaving her alone and still struggling to make it.

 

Marilyn Monroe 1926-62

Today is the anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, who was one of my favourite film stars.  She wasn’t a great actress, and while pretty she wasn’t classically beautiful and her life was sadly tragic and messy.  But she had a lovable quality that helped her to light up the screen.

She had a free and easy attitude to sexuality that was unusual in the repressed 1950s, and she was willing to exploit her looks.  But she had suffered from an abusive unhappy childhood and in later life, she found that men were very willing to abuse her as well or to make money out of her sexuality.  Although she was a big money-maker for the studios, she didn’t do that well financially herself..  She was born in Los Angeles, as Norma Jeane Mortensen.  L.A was by then a film town, in June 1926.  Her mother, Gladys Baker was a girl from an impoverished background, who had married young to a man named Baker and had 2 children by him.  She divorced him later but he took her children..  Marilyn didn’t get to know her half siblings for many years.

Gladys got a job as a film cutter and then married another man, Martin Mortensen but that marriage broke up soon. 

Marilyn never knew who her real father was, but she used the names of Mortensen and Baker at various times. Gladys tried to provide a stable home for her daughter but she ha mental problems and was poor, and found life very difficult. 

Marilyn was placed with foster parents at times. But then in 1934, Gladys had a complete breakdown and had to be institutionalised. Norma Jeane was moved around, and saw little of her mother form then on.  She became the ward of her mother’s friend Grace Godard but when Goddard took her into her house, it seems that her husband molested the child… It was the first of many betrayals of her innocence.

In 1938, when she was 12, she was fostered by Grace Goddard’s Aunt, who was kind to her… She didn’t do well at school but was reasonably happy for a time.   In 1941, she had to return to the Goddards because the elderly aunt could not look after her, and then the Goddards had to leave California for a new job.  Marilyn was nearly 16 and couldn’t go with them because of child protection laws which ruled that they could not take her out of state.

Grace – trying to help, arranged a marriage for her to James Dougherty a neighbour’s son who was fond of her..  He was 21 and they had nothing in common but she wanted to escape going back to the orphanage. She dropped out of school and became a housewife.

 

Fred Astaire Part III

His return to movies also included another film with Ginger Rogers, “the Barkleys of Broadway”…where they play a dancing couple.  In 1951 he made Royal Wedding which was set in London during the marriage of Princess Elizabeth... He starred with Cyd Charisse, one of his most talented dance partners, in the Band Wagon, which is considered one of his best musicals. He later worked with her in “Silk Stockings” a musical remake of the Garbo comedy, “Ninotchka”.

In 1954 tragedy struck as his wife Phyllis became ill with cancer and died very quickly.  Astaire wanted to drop out of his current film; he was so grief stricken but was persuaded to complete the movie Daddy Long Legs.  He went on working in musicals until 1957 when he decided to give up dance roles.

His marriage had been a very happy one, lasting over 20 years…The marriage produced 2 children, Fred Junior and Ava, and Phyllis had had a son Peter by her former husband…

He had always been a very private man, enjoying the company of family and close friends and pursuing his hobbies which included playing the drums, following horse racing, and golf.   He wasn't into the Hollywood social scene.  He was devoted to Phyllis and remained single for many years after her death. Some of his best films including Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn were done in the later 1950s.

Fred Astaire Part II

 In 1933, Fred tried out in Hollywood.  A previous test had not gone well but he made his first appearance in Dancing lady with Joan Crawford…He then appeared in Flying Down to Rio, with the more experienced Ginger Rogers.    He had fourth billing but they proved a great success.

However although the 2 of them were such a popular pairing - Fred was not keen on being part of a team again...  Yet  their chemistry proved so attractive, together with Fred working on choreography with Hermes Pan, that the couple made 9 films together and they were big money makers.  Ginger was not such a talented dancer but she worked hard and was a good enough actress.  She wanted to go into dramatic acting but continued to make the films with Fred.  She found him a hard taskmaster but they became friends.

He insisted, during the 1930s in doing occasional films apart from Ginger...He had strong ideas about dancing, and he was insistent about these, throughout his career.  He wanted the dances to be integrated into the storyline... to further the plot.  He also insisted that the camera should follow him and have as few cuts as possible.  He did occasional “special effects" dances, like one where he danced on a ceiling but generally he felt that the dances should not be “fantastical” because the viewer would lose interest if the dance seemed  too much  “faked”. with camera trickery....

After several films with Ginger, she moved into more dramatic roles and during the war years, Astaire danced with other partners, including 2 films with Rita Hayworth, (which included using Latin American music and dance), also  a couple with Lucille Bremer and 2 with Bing Crosby.

However in 1946 he became increasingly worried about whether he was still able to dance to the highest quality, and he announced his retirement.   He hated the thought of being less than perfect.  He was interested in racing and he and his socialite wife Phyllis owned several horses.  He concentrated on his business interests but was persuaded back to work (when Gene Kelly hurt his ankle) to star with Judy Garland in Easter Parade….