Figure 1 – Miss Genevieve Ebbets throwing out the first pitch at the opening of Ebbets field on April 5, 1913. From the Wikipedia and in the public domain in the United States because of its age.

Presidents, premiers, and kings may huff and puff, seeking relevance and immortality in every word. But history can be more subtle and fickle in its choices of what is momentous. These early days of May celebrate infamously (on the East coast) and famously (on the West) a moment of great transition in mid-twentieth century America- the fiftieth anniversary of the time when Walter O’Malley decided to move the Brooklyn Dodgers – correction Brooklyn’s Dodgers – from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Brooklyn loved its Dodgers and only a great poet like Alexander Pope could bring words apt enough of love’s tragedy to be appropriated for that both tragic and momentous event.

“WHAT dire Offence from am’rous Causes springs,
What mighty Contests rise from trivial Things,”

The Rape of the Lock

A large part of the problem in those days was the fact that while the Dodgers dominated major league baseball, there was no way to expand their smallest in the League stadium Ebbets Field. Ebbets field itself was a New York City icon, and I can recall quite vividly my father taking me to see it shortly before it was destroyed to make room for an apartment complex.

So in memory of the event, and as a nod to my love of early twentieth century images, where the women all have long beautiful hair, concealed beneath magnificent hats, (and apparently wore dead animals on their shoulders) I am offering up the image of Figure 1, which shows Miss Genevieve Ebbets, youngest daughter of Dodgers’ owner Charley Ebbets, throwing out the first pitch at the opening of Ebbets Field on April 5, 1913. She poses ever so much like Lady Liberty.

You can just make out her hair. So I am reminded again of Pope and his conclusion to that wonderful epic poem.

“When those fair Suns shall sett, as sett they must,
And all those Tresses shall be laid in Dust;
This Lock, the Muse shall consecrate to Fame,
And mid’st the Stars inscribe Belinda’s Name!“

Figure 1 – Into the maelstrom. Image of Saturn’s North Pole taken by the Cassini satellite on November 22, 2012. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute and in the public domain in the United States.

It seems appropriate to take note of the pending death of the Cassini Spacecraft, which for nearly two decades has been amazing us with photographs of Saturn and its moons. Figure 1 is a striking example of the images taken by these beautiful robot eyes. This image from NASA’s Cassini mission was taken on Nov. 27, 2012,using its narrow-angle camera. The camera was pointing toward Saturn’s North Pole from approximately 224,618 miles (361,488 kilometers).

Cassini will “not go gently into that good night.” Its final set of “low altitude” orbits of the planet are taking it within the Saturnine Ring System. Over the period of April and September 2017, Cassini will execute a series of twenty-two orbits that will dive between the planet and its rings. On its final orbit, Cassini will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, sending back data and images of its own suicide. Congratulations NASA and congratulations Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

One is tempted in writing this epitaph to say something like, who could have imagined such a thing. But the answer to that question was a boy who five decades ago sat in the cool darkness of New York’s Hayden Planetarium, watching the planetary orbs circling in mechanical precision against the stars projected upon a pitch-black darkness. The air was always cool and paradoxically there was always oxygen to breathe. He dared to imagine.

Figure 1 – Charles Ogle as Frankenstein in Thomas Edison’s kinetogram by that name, 1910. From the Wikipedia and in the public domain in the United States because of its age.

The other night I watched the Mel Brooks’ movie “Young Frankenstein.” It got me wondering about early horror movies and early monsters. This in turn raised the inevitable question of what or who was the earliest monster movies. Monsters come in many flavors and one of these is the “man monster,” like Frankenstein. One of the earliest “man monsters” was indeed Frankenstein, brought to life in 1910 by Thomas Edison in his kinetogram “Frankenstein.”  The historic photograph of Figure 1 shows Charles Ogle portraying Frankenstein’s monster in this feature. You can, in fact see the whole film on YouTube.

Now what are we looking at? Is the photograph scary? Do we want to scream and run? Probably not. Still i find my eye drawn to the monster’s left hand, a symbol of death, decay, and corruption.What we see, perhaps, is the transition from a heavily emotive stage presence of the nineteenth century to first, the heavily emotive screen presence of the silent movie era and then to the more realistic and subtle emotions of modern films.The image captures the transition.

But there is something more profound in this image. It refers back to a definition of the term monster, which is now politically incorrect. Medically the term monster used to refer to the highly deformed, the miscreated. Remember the late nineteenth century was the time when the great circuses had  “freak side shows,” where people gawked at the deformed.

To those times, “man monsters” flew in the face of the belief that man was created in the image of God. In London at the Royal College of Surgeons is the famous Hunterian Museum with its collection of “man monsters.” This is significant because in its library Darwin did some of his research on the Origin of Species. If species were immutable, never changing, how could one explain the strange variations that surrounded him in glass jars? What did it all mean?

Equally important was the point that these “man monsters” challenged our humanity in other ways. The very “man monster” Frankenstein, is such an important example. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly gave her novel the title “Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus.” Prometheus, significantly in mythology gave the human race fire. The novel was published in 1818 when the world was at the dawn of the scientific era. This would prove a time that challenged conventional views and even brought into question the deity’s role as the sole arbiter of life and death.

In the novel, the “monster” is very much the victim of the story. He is a victim that challenges his creator. In many ways he is the hero of the story.

This brings us to another “man monster” of fiction and early twentieth century film. This is Quasimodo, Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. Who can forget the great moment in Charles Laughton’s 1939 film version, when Quasimodo resumes his place beside the Gargoyles atop the cathedral and watches his beloved Esmeralda depart with Gringoire. He leans against one of these silent stone monsters and sadly says, “Why was I not made of stone like thee?“

Figure 1 – German soldiers using a field telephone during World War I. From NARA and in the public domain in the United States.

As a follow-up to my post of yesterday commemorating the US entry into World War I, I was perusing on the web today field photographs of the conflict. One sequence contained images of the technology of the day. This was a hybrid. The world was rapidly moving out of a mechanical to an electrical and electronic age. Hence, we have the image of Figure 1 that contrasts so profoundly with modern times that it looks like something out of a Flintstones cartoon. Here a German soldier speaks on a portable telephone as the soldiers with him slowly unwind the cable that presumably connects them back to base. While it may seem prosaic and archaic it truly connects us with cellphones and the internet of today. After all, fifty years previous, during the Crimean and American Civil Wars none of this was possible.

Figure 1 – Halftone color print from a photograph of President asking congress for a Declaration of War on April 2, 1917. From the Wikipedia, original in the US LOC and in the public domain in the United States.

We cannot let the date go unrecognized. One hundred years ago today, April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany and entered the terrible war. It is worth noting that in those days war was war and US presidents asked congress for a declaration. To remember the day there is this wonderful color halftone print from the collection of the United States Library of Congress showing President Wilson addressing congress to ask for the Declaration on April 2, 1917.

The simple text is:

“WHEREAS, The Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the people of the United States of America; therefore, be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government, which has thus been thrust upon the United States, is hereby formally declared; and that the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.”

Figure 1 – Harry Houdini vanishing Jennie the Elephant, 1918. Photograph by White Studio. From the Wikipedia and the US Library of Congress. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c12421, Item in McManus-Young Collection, LC-USZ62-112421 DLC (b&w film copy neg.). In the public domain in the United States.

I was reading today that Friday, March 24 marks the 143rd anniversary of the great illusionist and escape artist, Harry Houdini (1874 – 1926). His exploits have survived the century. At one point he was nicknamed Harry “Handcuff” Houdini or “The Handcuff King” because he would challenge local police to bind him in such a way that he could not escape.Even today his great escapes, which included the “Chinese water torture escape, the suspended straight jacket escape, the overboard box escape, and the buried alive escape fascinate and tillilate. Don’t try any of that at home!

There are many great photographs of Houdini that capture not only the essence of the man but also the Zeitgeist of the early twentieth century. It was a time when people liked heroes and people liked drama. Figure 1 shows Harry at the Hippodrome, in New York City vanishing an elephant named “Jennie.” Other magicians were content to make a rabbit disappear, but in 1918 the great showman took to a well-lit stage fired a gun and a five ton elephant disappeared.

Houdini is arguably most famous today for his dogged crusade to expose fraudulent spiritualists. It is here that he brushes with photography. Figure 2 is an image that Houdini took to illustrate just how easy it was to conjure up a ghost.  It shows the master reading a book to the very attentive “ghost” of Abraham Lincoln.

Figure 2 – Harry Houdini illustrating how one can create fake ghost images. Here he is seen in a self portrait reading a book to Abraham Lincoln c 1920. Image from the Wikipedia and in the collection of the US Library of Congress. In the public domain in the United States.

Figure 1 – Scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, Photographs of the filming of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, PC-RM-Curtis, courtesy, California Historical Society, PC-RM-Curtis_391.

We have spoken in the past about American photographer Edward S. Curtis, who so brilliantly chronicled the decimation of the native peoples of America. We remain perpetually haunted by these beautiful images and the stories they tell.

America today has become barraged lately with challenges to the meaning of truth. As a result, last night I was thinking about the story of Moses and the ten commandments, especially the one that states:

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”

This in turn led to my search for early photographs that depict Moses. Well, two points: first that I recognize that this is not a normal activity for a Saturday night (as in get a life, Wolf), and second that despite that we are told that “when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him,” there are no actual photographs of Moses extant. I emphasize the second point because delusion has become a theme of the day.

What I found,  in my little web search, amazed me. There were a set of beautiful cold-tone images by Edward S. Curtis of the filming of Cecille B. DeMille’s 1923 version of “The Ten Commandments.” It seems that Curtis was employed as a black and white photographer on the movie crew. These images are in the California Historical Society on The Commons and can also be seen on Flickr. I have reproduced two of them here. You see immediately the same passion of face that are in Curtis’ native American images. This mas a master of dramatic portraiture.  It is as if we are transported back to the time of the Exodus. The choice of blue-tone gives these images an other worldliness. They seem, as the commandments themselves, written in stone.

This first telling of the Exodus story by DeMille is bifurcated. It tells first the story of Moses leading the Israelites from bondage to the promised land and then it tells a modern day story of two brothers, one who follows the way of good and righteousness, the way of a loving and forgiving God, and the other who is taught by his mother to fear a vengeful God and who falls into evil ways. The evil brother becomes “a corrupt contractor who builds a church with shoddy concrete, pocketing the money saved and becoming very rich. One day, his mother comes to visit him at his work site, but the walls are becoming unstable due to the shaking of heavy trucks on nearby roads. One of the walls collapses on top of the mother, killing her. In her dying breath, she tells Danny that it is her fault for teaching him to fear God, when she should have taught him love.“

All very moralistic to be sure. For his 1956 block-buster version, DeMille abandoned the split aspect of the film in favor of what became one of the truly great epic movies of the twentieth century. This later version also featured a truly incredible cast that included Charleton Heston as Moses and Yul Brenner as the Pharoah. “Etc, etc, etc…”

Figure 2 – Scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, Theodore Roberts as Moses,Photographs of the filming of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, PC-RM-Curtis, courtesy, California Historical Society, PC-RM-Curtis_082.