Garbo to Astaire: Films of the Thirties

  

This is the time of the year when various top ten film lists appear. Coincidentally, there was an article in the paper today claiming that most older people do not go to the movies anymore. Blame was placed on the pandemic but most senior citizens, like myself, cannot watch or even follow today's movies with rapid cutting and computer special effects. So, here is a list of films that I have watched this year from the 1930s that have more than withstood the test of time. They not only bring me back to the world of my parents and grandparents, but I think my  own children and grandchildren would enjoy them as much as I still do.

Greta Garbo

Grand Hotel: This 1932 film stars the legendary Greta Garbo in her greatest role. The silent screen actress from Sweden did not miss a beat with the coming of sound. In a world reeling from the Great Depression, she plays a famous Russian ballerina who just wants to be alone. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer put together a huge production set in a posh Berlin hotel with spectacular photography, and an all-star cast that included John and Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, and a young Joan Crawford. It was a huge box office success and won the Academy Award for best picture.

It Happened One Night: Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert starred in this 1934 romantic “road” comedy about two strangers from completely different worlds who meet on a bus traveling from Florida to New York.  Neither star wanted to be in this film, but under the guidance of director Frank Capra, they both turned in the most memorable performances of their careers. The film is filled with iconic scenes: bus passengers giving a rousing rendition of “the Man on the Flying Trapeze;” Colbert adjusting her stocking to hitch a ride; and Gable undressing in a motel cabin with only a blanket hung on a rope separating the two strangers. This sleeper film swept all the Academy Awards for 1934. 

Dodsworth. Director William Wyler brought Sinclair Lewis’ best-selling 1929 novel to the screen in 1936. Walter Huston, in what some consider to be his finest performance, plays a wealthy industrialist who sells his business and sets off with his wife of 20 years to discover Europe, and re-discover themselves. Co-star Ruth Chatterton gives a powerful performance as a wife seeking more than wealth, and Mary Astor gives one of her usual fine performances. Selected as one of the most important films of all time by the Library of Congress, Dodsworth surpasses the book on which it is based. 

                                    

Pygmalion. George Bernard Shaw wrote the screenplay adaptation of his own stage masterpiece about linguistics professor Henry Higgins’s wager to turn a low-class flower vendor into a “lady”. This 1938 film starred Leslie Howard, at the height of his career, before his untimely death in WWII, and Wendy Hiller, who would go on to become one of Great Britain’s greatest actresses. The film was later adapted into the famed musical, “My Fair Lady.”

The Petrified Forest. Leslie Howard stars in this 1936 adaptation of Robert Sherwood’s hit play. Bette Davis co-stars and demonstrates all the qualities that would make her a huge star. Also, Humphrey Bogart has a break-out role as Duke Mantee, a killer on the lam, who holds hostages in a bleak diner on the edge of the Arizona desert. Unfortunately, Bogart’s success led him to be typecast as a gangster for the next few years until he emerged as a leading man in 1941  with unforgettable films like the Maltese Falcon, and Casablanca.

Our Town: Thornton Wilder’s play about ordinary people and ordinary life in a small New England town at the beginning of the twentieth century, was an immediate success when it first appeared on stage in 1938. It won a Pulitzer prize and has become an enduring favorite. It was turned into a fine film in 1940 but poor DVD copies make it hard to watch today. For modern viewers I suggest a filming of a stage version originally performed in 2003 at the Westport Country Playhouse, and subsequently aired on PBS. This version stars Paul Newman as the stage manager.  Newman, a Westport resident, was at the end of his career, but was coaxed to return to the stage after a long absence. His performance, supported by a cast of relative unknowns, matches anything he did in his illustrious career.

Sons of the Desert: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are regarded as the greatest comedy team in film history. They began during the silent era with some of its greatest comedy shorts, and became huge stars in the Thirties where, in addition to shorts, they appeared in a number of full-length classics. The best of these is the 1933 film, Sons of the Desert.  The boys  vow to attend the annual convention of their fraternal order, the Sons of the Desert, but they are opposed by their dominating wives , one carrying a shotgun over her arm on her return from duck hunting, and the other, played by Mae Busch, brandishing a large kitchen knife like an accomplished fencer.  One gag follows another in this classic comedy that includes a charming rendition of the song, “Honolulu Baby.”

 

Swing Time: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are universally regarded as the greatest dance team of all time. Starting with their first appearance in Flying Down to Rio where they danced the Carioca, they appeared in a series of films whose dance numbers  have never been equaled. No one else danced together as a team as they did. My personal favorite is Roberta, but Swing Time is generally regarded as their greatest film. It includes “Pick Yourself Up,” the most popular of all their numbers; the effervescent “Waltz in Swing Time;” the dramatic finale “Never Gonna Dance;” and the solo “Bojangles of Harlem,” Astaire’s spectacular homage to the great black dancer Bill Robinson. (click on the link, or view the brief video below. "Sheer Heaven."

Bonus pick. Woody Allen’s Radio Days is set in 1940 on the eve of the Second World War. It brings to life the world of the thirties as few films have done. The world is seen through the eyes of a young boy, obviously Allen, growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in Queens. The cast of characters  is excellent, and the soundtrack is filled with the music of the day. This film is a perfect way to usher in the New Year.

Happy New Year!!!

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Christmas History

The birth of Jesus is recorded on the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but they only have one fact in common: that the Holy Family was in Bethlehem, the birthplace of King David, when Jesus was born.

Nevertheless, scholars now agree that the accounts have a firm basis in history and complement each other. Modern biblical scholars argue  that the birth occurred in what we  call 7 B.C. The gospel of Matthew says that Jesus was born during the reign of King Herod who died in 4 B.C. The gospel of Luke states that the birth occurred during a Roman census ordered when Quirinus, a Roman official, was governor of Syria. This official was governor in 6 A.D. but now we know that he was also governor between 10 B.C. and 7 B.C. During both terms he ordered a census.

The date Is also confirmed by astronomy. It appears that the star followed by the Three Kings or Magi is no pious fiction. There is no record of a comet or super nova in 7 B. C.,  but in the seventeenth century, famed astronomer  Johannes Kepler claimed that there had been a conspicuous conjunction of the two largest planets, Jupiter and Saturn, in the area of the constellation Pisces visible for months in 7 B.C. Only in the twentieth century did scientists confirm Kepler’s observation.

What about the Magi? Historians now doubt that they were kings but claim that they were astrologers (scientists) who were keen observers of the stars and planets. In fact, scholars now believe that they were Jewish astrologers living in the large Jewish community in Persia who were continually searching the skies for signs of the coming Messiah. 

What about Bethlehem? Joseph would have been required to travel with his wife the 70 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the hometown of his family to register for the census. The small town situated on a hill six miles from Jerusalem would have been crowded with others coming for the census. It would have been very likely that they would have had to stay in a stable or cave used to shelter animals.

There were certainly grazing fields around the town where shepherds could be watching their flocks, but scholars now believe that the flocks would not have been grazing at the onset of winter. The gospel accounts do not specify an exact date, and it seems most likely that December 25 is a later addition to the story.

Nevertheless, after all these years, it is hard to imagine a better date to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Winter is coming on, and we are faced with three months of cold and gloom. What’s wrong with a ray of light to pierce the darkness?

The birth of Jesus 2028 years ago was an actual event that took place in a specific time and place. It is confirmed by historians and scientists. No matter what you believe, you cannot doubt that it changed the world forever.

Maybe we still have not achieved peace on earth and goodwill toward men, but we can always hope. Years ago I heard this lovely rendition of "Peace on Earth" by famed country singer Vince Gill, and his daughter Jenny, now a star in her own right. Click on this link or view the video below.

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Note: The image above is a painting by the Venetian Renaissance artist Giorgione. It is usually called The Three Philosophers, but I agree with those who believe it depicts the Magi when they first behold the star.

Deanna Durbin: America's Sweetheart

Deanna Durbin’s beautiful singing voice catapulted her to stardom during Hollywood’s Golden Age. From her film debut in 1936 at the age of 15 to her retirement in 1949, her charming personality and singing voice made her America’s sweetheart, as well as one of the highest paid actresses in the movies, something that made her one of the highest paid women in the world

Born in Canada, her parents moved to Los Angeles when she was little more than a toddler. By the age of ten she became the star pupil of one of Hollywood’s top vocal instructors. Her beautiful soprano led to a screen test and she was signed to a movie contract in 1936 at the age of 15.

Her first full-length film, Three Smart Girls, was so popular that many more light-hearted romantic teen musicals followed as quickly as possible. All of them featured at least two or three Durbin’ solos ranging from pop to operatic areas.  It is said that the success of these light comedies saved Universal Studios from bankruptcy. 

As she matured, she tired of the frothy comedies that had made her famous and wanted better material. She got one chance in 1944 when she played the lead in Christmas Holiday, a film adaptation of a novel of the same name by famed British author, Somerset Maugham. 

The novel has very little to do with Christmas. Set in the 1930s, it is the story of a young Englishman from a respectable middle-class family who has completed his schooling, and is about to enter the family business. Before doing so, his father treats him to a holiday in Paris over the Christmas holidays. It is to be a typical middle-class excursion where he will see all the sites, visit the art museums, and attend various concerts including a Midnight Mass celebration, a major Parisian event. 

On arrival in Paris, he meets up with an old friend, now a typical 30s radical, who takes him to a high-class bordello, where he meets a beautiful Russian émigré prostitute. When she discovers that he plans to attend Midnight Mass, she begs him to let her join him. During the service in a packed cathedral, she breaks down in hysterical sobbing. Over the next few days, she tells him her tragic story, and introduces him to a side of life that he has never experienced or even imagined. In Maugham’s words, the bottom falls out of his life.

The Hollywood Production Code required major changes in the film adaptation. Even without the Code, Deanna Durbin’s persona would never have allowed her to play a prostitute on screen. Instead, she plays a singer in a dance hall dive that is a thinly disguised bordello. The young Englishman is transformed into a newly commissioned, young American army officer whose fiancée has jilted him for another man. The locale has been shifted to New Orleans, where the officer’s flight home has been forced to land during a storm. The free-thinking friend has become a sleazy newspaper reporter who doubles as a pimp for the New Orleans dive where Durbin’s character works.

Despite these changes the film is remarkably true to Maugham’s novel with its emphasis on tragic love, sin, suffering, and  redemption. Christmas Holiday is a dark film superbly directed by Robert Siodmak, one of the great masters of what would later become known as film noir. The writer, Herman Mankiewicz of Citizen Kane fame, produced a brilliant script full of rare depth and meaning. The screen play is supported by a musical score created by Austrian Hans Salter that ranged from Durbin’s rendition of Irving Berlin’s ballad, Always, to a version of Wagner’s Liebestod performed in a packed concert hall, and at the film’s finale. 

Speaking of the finale, the film’s creators dramatically changed what I consider to be Maugham’s very weak and ambiguous ending. The film ending is still somewhat ambiguous but like the rest of the film, the direction, the acting, the writing, and the musical score transcend the novel on which it is based.

Deanna Durbin regarded Christmas Holiday as her best performance. She certainly demonstrated that the child singer had become a fine mature actress. In my opinion, most of her other films, despite their great popularity, are hard to watch today. One exception is It Started with Eve, a charming 1941 romantic comedy in which she stars along with Charles Laughton and Robert Cummings. 

In this "screwball" comedy her youthful charm and vivacity, as well as her singing revive a dying old man, played superbly by Laughton. When she accompanies herself on the piano with a spirited version of “When I Sing,” set to the music of  Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Waltz, you can see how she revived American audiences during the Great Depression and the war years. 

Deanna Durbin’s fame did not last unlike that of Judy Garland's, another teenage singer who became a huge star. Despite her box office success, Durbin never appeared in any immortal film musicals like the Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Easter Parade, or A Star is Born. Perhaps even more important was the fact that she decided to quit show business in 1949 at the age of 28. After two failed marriages, she married a Frenchman who had directed one of her last films. They decided to quit Hollywood and move to a farm in France where she spent the rest of her life until her death at the age of 91 in 2013. When one considers the tragic life of Judy Garland, who can say that Durbin made the wrong decision? 

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Note: Christmas Holiday can be found on DVD, or viewed on YouTube where many of her songs may be found. Here is a link to her first number in the film,  "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year." Or view the brief video below.

Mollie Hemingway: Rigged

  

In a post written in March 2021 I wrote: 

“President Trump did not lose the election, the Democrats won it. How they won it, with the most lackluster candidate in memory, is a story that remains to be told.”

Molly Hemingway’s “Rigged” a well-documented and carefully researched book on the 2020 Presidential election goes a long way toward telling the story. Early in the book she states her thesis by referring to a Time magazine article published on 2/4/2021 shortly after the inauguration of President Joe Biden.

 “Without irony or shame, the magazine reported that “[t]here was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes” creating an extraordinary shadow effort” by a “well-funded cabal of powerful people” to oppose Trump. Corporate CEOs, organized labor, left-wing activists, and Democrats all worked together in secret to secure a Biden victory. For Trump, these groups represented a powerful Washington and Democratic establishment that saw an unremarkable career politician like Biden as merely a vessel for protecting their self-interests.” [36]

I recall that shortly after the election some news sources admitted that there had been fraud but claimed that it wasn’t enough to change the results.  Then, we were told that there was no evidence of “widespread” fraud. This latter claim soon became a kind of mantra even in respected newspapers like the Wall Street Journal.

But Mollie Hemingway’s book demonstrates that the fraud did not have to be widespread to steal the election. On the contrary, the efforts were targeted at a handful of key swing states with pinpoint accuracy. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona, key states that Trump had won in 2016, were the prime targets.

Hemingway describes the efforts of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to pour millions of dollars into these key states to generate votes in targeted Democratic districts under the guise of supporting increased voter participation.  Private organizations were set up to embed their operatives into the election process and even take charge of the processing and counting.

In Wisconsin, Hemingway notes that “After the Wisconsin legislature passed a bill banning private funding of election operations by a 60-36 margin in the state assembly and by an 18-14 margin in the state senate, Governor Tony Evers vetoed the ban. Without tech oligarchs buying the administration of the state’s elections, Democrats stand to lose.“ [222]

In Georgia, despite a Republican governor and secretary of state, the voting and counting in Fulton county with 1 million voters was controlled by Democrats. In chapter 10, entitled “The Trouble with Fulton County, “ Hemingway describes  the goings on in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena where hundreds of thousands of  absentee ballots were to be counted. She quotes a tweet from David Shafer, the chairman of the  Georgia Republican party.

“Fulton County elections officials told the media and our observer that they were shutting down the tabulation center at State Farm Arena at 10:30 p.m. on election night only to continue counting ballots in secret until 1:00 a.m. No one disputes that Fulton County elections officials falsely announced that the counting would stop at 10:30 p.m. No one disputes that Fulton County elections officials unlawfully resumed the counting of ballots after our observers left the center.” [290]

Here are some quotes from Hemingway’s account of  the election in Pennsylvania, a state with a rabidly anti-Trump governor, and a history of election fraud.

“In 2020, South Philadelphia judge of elections Dominick DeMuro pleaded guilty to taking bribes to stuff the ballot box in multiple elections.“ [252]

“Nearly $35 million in Zuckerberg funds flowed into government offices in Democratic strongholds of Pennsylvania to assist Democrats with their mail-in-voting push.” [256]

“The Democrats in Philadelphia did not have to allow the Trump campaign any observation of the vote counting. “ [260]

“That court’s ruling was overturned by the liberal Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which admitted that the ballots were violations of the election code but said that they should be counted in any case. “ [263]

According to Hemingway, Pennsylvania was crucial not only in the election but in the aftermath. She blames the Trump team for concentrating on minor issues like the thousands of dead voters on the registration rolls when it should have concentrated on the way in which voters and votes were treated differently in different parts of the state. This failure had great significance.

“By wasting time on less relevant claims, an important lawsuit failed. It had catastrophic effects for the remaining legal battles. Pennsylvania could have been the first domino to fall for the Trump campaign in a sequence of tightly contested courtroom victories. Instead, it was the beginning of the end for the campaign’s effort to hold Democrats accountable for foul play. It also had a ripple effect throughout the legal community. The media were soon dismissing all legal challenges as baseless attempts to prove widespread fraud ignoring more substantive claims. The avalanche of bad publicity scared off credible lawyers from participating in further election challenges on behalf of the Trump campaign, and it made judges inclined to view any such challenges, no matter how merited, with suspicion. [275]

Even the influential Wall Street Journal, my favorite newspaper, showed a reluctance to investigate claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Its news department, which has been leaning left in recent years, never did an independent investigation of the charges. The more conservative editorial page now just continually refers to charges of fraud as dubious. 

Now, charges that the election was rigged or stolen are regarded as unpatriotic or even treasonous. Former President Trump is routinely blamed  for continuing to dispute the legitimacy of the election, despite the fact that subsequent disclosures have backed him up. A court had ordered Pennsylvania  to remove over 200000 deceased persons from its voter rolls before the election, but the state only did so months after the election. Only after the Biden inauguration did the Washington Post admit that it had mis-quoted President Trump’s now famous phone conversation where he supposedly insisted an election official in Georgia find thousands of votes.

In a brief epilogue entitled, “Consent of the Losers,” Hemingway points out that consent of the losers to the result of an election is important in a democracy. However, she details have over the past few decades Democrats have repeatedly claimed that Republican presidential victories were illegitimate. The 2000 Bush-Gore contest is a case in point, but how can anyone seriously blame President Trump when Democrats from Hillary Clinton on down still refuse to accept the legitimacy of the 2016 election even after multiple investigations have shown that the Russia collusion charge was a hoax inspired by the Democratic party itself.*

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*Hemingway's sources and notes take up almost 100 pages. 

Thanksgiving: Then and Now

  

                                            

 

To say I was born and raised in New York City would be a little misleading because in my memories of New York in the 40s and 50s, the city was a collection of small towns or villages. I was born in Woodside, a section of the borough of Queens, and the skyscrapers and streets of Manhattan were as remote for me as China would be to my grandchildren today.

Because of our insularity I can’t be sure if a Thanksgiving custom we had back then was unique to Woodside or whether it could have been found elsewhere throughout the great metropolis. Anyone else I’ve mentioned it to had never heard of it including my wife who was born a little bit north of the City in White Plains, the hub of Westchester county.

Anyway, on Thanksgiving morning the children in our neighborhood would dress up as bums or hobos. It didn’t take much since back then we would usually wear our clothes until they literally fell apart. We would take our most worn and tattered clothing and rip and tear them a little more. Then, we would blacken a cork over a candle and smear it over our faces to simulate dirt. I remember my grandmother giving me a little pouch with a drawstring, or was it a pillowcase, that we hobos could sling over our shoulders.

Then, we were ready to make the rounds of our neighbors to ask, “anything for thanksgiving.” Inevitably, they would answer our plea with some of the bounty from the meal they were preparing. Usually it would be apples, or walnuts, or sometimes a few pennies. Don’t laugh. Twenty pennies were enough to buy a Spalding (Spaldeen), the elite of bouncing rubber balls used by us in so many street games.

I don’t know where the “anything for thanksgiving” custom came from. We lived in a small neighborhood that seemed to have been mainly Irish with a mixture of Italians. In my nearby Catholic school the majority of the kids seemed to have Irish names. There were Ryans, Regans, Dunphys, Moylans, and Healys. However, A few blocks down busy 69^thStreet were the Napolitanos who ran the grocery store. In the other direction lived the dreaded Gallos whose kids were the toughest in the school. 

But I’m not sure that “anything for thanksgiving”  was an ethnic custom. We were a predominately Catholic neighborhood and the idea of thanksgiving was part of our religious heritage even though none of us knew that the word “Eucharist” meant “Thanksgiving.” On the other hand, it could have been a peculiarly American response to the end of the Great Depression and the Second World War. Nothing had marked the depression so much as homeless men on bread lines or riding the rails. These were the hobos that we children imitated. Even though most of us could be considered poor, at least we and our neighbors would be able to sit down that afternoon in our homes to the best meal of the year. We did have a lot to be thankful for. The Depression was over, the men had returned from the terrible war, and the NY Yankees were on the verge of recovering their past glory.

Over 70 years have passed since those childhood years but I can truly say that my wife and I have much to be thankful for. Our grandparents came to this country from Italy with nothing but their own traditions, customs, and religion. Like most children of immigrants our parent came to love America and worked hard to provide for their children and give them a standard of living that is still the envy of the world. 

Even today, after a pandemic and one of the most divisive political campaigns in U.S. history, there is more reason to hope than to fear. I would just like to end this post with George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789. Thanksgiving did not become a National holiday until after the terrible Civil War, but Washington’s words are as meaningful today as they were in 1789.  

Thanksgiving Proclamation
Issued by President George Washington, at the request of Congress, on October 3, 1789

 


Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:”



Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favor, able interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.



And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.



Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.


 

Go. Washington 

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A Wonderful Life: Part II

Last week I republished a 2013 interview with a local reporter who was interested in my work at the Fairfield Senior center. Here is the second part of that interview. Eight years have gone by and though I no longer teach courses at what is now known as the Bigelow Senior Center, I continue to present films in the Lifelong Learners program, the Foreign Film Festival, and the Monday series of American film-noir classics from Hollywood's Golden Age.

Q. You are one of several highly respected teachers whose brief teaching stints, several times a year, for the Fairfield Senior Center‘s Lifelong Learners Program make you a valuable commodity. What is it about teaching Seniors that you enjoy?

A. I have always been interested in learning, and the best way to learn is to try to teach something. It is especially rewarding to teach in the Lifelong Learners program at the Fairfield Senior center. It is obvious just looking at the people in class that they are intelligent, educated, well traveled, and motivated. In my very first class on Renaissance art I asked if anyone had been to Florence, and practically everyone raised their hand.

So I get a chance to explore subjects that interest me with 40 or 50 people who really want to learn, and who also have a wealth of life experience that they can bring to class.

Cong. James Himes with Fairfield Seniors

Q. Do you enjoy traveling? What are your favorite places? Are they stuff for the New York Times travel section?

A. Linda and I have traveled frequently to Italy since 1997 when we visited our youngest daughter, an NYU student taking a summer program in Florence. Since then we have gone back practically every year. It was because of these trips that I began at series of talks at BACIO, an Italian-American organization founded by Leonard Paoletta, the former mayor of Bridgeport. *

In the talks I tried to discuss the history and the culture and the art of some of the places we had visited. Most of the world’s great art comes from Italy. These talks led me deeper and deeper into Art History until the subject became a passion even before I retired.

Incredibly, this interest led me to a great discovery. One of the most beautiful and mysterious paintings of the Italian Renaissance is the “Tempest” by Giorgione, the greatest of all Venetian artists who died at about the age of 33 in 1510, more than 500 years ago. Not as well known as Michelangelo and Raphael, Art historians place Giorgione along side them in the Renaissance pantheon. To this day scholars, while universally admiring the Tempest, his most famous painting, cannot agree on what it's all about.

Giorgione: The Tempest, Venice 1509

I believe that I have identified the subject of the painting. A short version of my interpretation was published in the Masterpiece section of the Wall St. Journal in 2006, and I have been developing the thesis ever since. I have developed a website on Giorgione and also blog about the Venetian Renaissance at Giorgione et al...

Q. I see that you are a member of the Renaissance Society of America. What is that all about?

A. The Renaissance Society of America is an organization of scholars from all over the world who share an interest in the renaissance in learning and art that took place roughly from 1400-1650. They publish a quarterly journal of articles and reviews, and hold an annual meeting. In 2010 the meeting was held in Venice. At that meeting I presented my paper on the “Tempest.” 

Q. What do you particularly enjoy teaching at the Senior Center?

A. My course on the art of the Italian Renaissance, “A Tale of Four Cities,” is my favorite because of my interest in Renaissance Italy and its Art. This Spring I will repeat my “Italian Dreams” course which used four great Italian films to understand the reasons for the great migration of Italians to America. Next Fall, I will present a new course on four eighteenth century revolutions. The course is entitled “England and America in the Age of Revolution.”

Q. Do you feel that you have a following? That you have developed a rapport with your students?

A. All the classes have been very well attended. I believe that we have developed a following for the Foreign Film Festival, which I launched in 2009. The films are shown at 12:15 on the second Friday of the month. In our second season we showed  “Bakhtiari Alphabet,” a film about an Iranian tribal people and their adaptation to the modern world. The film’s producer and co-director, Dr. Cima Sedigh of Sacred Heart University, was on hand to discuss it with the attendees. We are also fortunate to have our China expert, Dr. Richard DeAngelis from Fairfield University, on hand to lead discussion of a number of films from China including the award winning “To Live.” In April we will feature Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in “Too Bad She’s Bad,” a wonderful early Italian comedy.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni

Q. When we watched Pagliacci, Tuesday morning, you asked your students to watch the faces of the adults and children in the operatic foreground? Why was it important that they look at the faces do you think? Did you get any feedback on that specific request?

It is very difficult for us to imagine our own parents and grandparents as young vibrant people with real emotions. Looking at those young faces watching the clowns makes me think of my own grandparents back in Italy before they came to America. Also, a good film is a work of Art. From my Art history study I have come to realize that you must try to see everything in a painting, not just the main figures. Franco Zeffirelli, the director of “Pagliacci,” put those images on the screen for a reason.

Q. What question would you care to ask that hasn’t been asked?  Why don’t you answer it?

A. It seems that I have said enough for now, but you might have asked, “Why do you do it?” When I used to counsel my clients on retirement planning, I liked to stress that retirement was not the end but the beginning of a new career. It was sad when people told me that they had no interests beyond work. Linda and I both believe that it’s important to keep active and continue to grow and learn. 

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*We made our last trip to Italy in 2017. It was kind of a farewell tour, and we had a great time visiting Venice, Milan, Florence and Rome. But even before the pandemic we realized that we had reached the age where foreign travel, like many other things, was getting too difficult.

A Wonderful Life

 

I've been publishing The Weekly Bystander for about ten years and thought that it might of interest to new as well as old readers to repeat a post from 2013 containing an interview I did back then for a local newspaper. It is in question and answer form and will be presented in two successive posts.

Q. Let’s start with some background. Where were you born? Where did you go to secondary school? What did you like about going to school? Was there a favorite teacher? Why did you decide to go to Fordham? What was special about your undergraduate work?

A. I was born in 1939 and raised in NYC in the borough of Queens. My parents were second generation Italian Americans and we lived right next door to my paternal grandparents who were both born in Italy.

In 1953 I went to Power Memorial Academy, one of the many Catholic High Schools in NYC. It was an all boys school located in a very tough West Side neighborhood that was subsequently razed to make way for Lincoln Center. The school was run and staffed by Irish Christian Brothers although there were a few laymen on the faculty. A favorite teacher was the Brother who taught the Senior Honors Literature course. I was always an avid reader but he imparted a sense of the importance and value of the study of great literature.

I went to Fordham on a full scholarship provided by the Bulova Watch Company, my father’s employer. This competitive scholarship would have paid tuition and room and board at any college of my choice. Initially, I was going to Syracuse for Engineering but probably decided on Fordham because I was uncertain about a career path, and it was closer to home. Since Fordham’s Bronx campus was only about an hour and a half away by bus and subway, I didn’t see any need, in my naiveté, to live on campus even though the scholarship would have paid for it. There was no one to advise me since I was the first in my family to attend college, and my mother had died when I was 11. Like many other things in my life, it worked out for the best since NYC itself, with its theaters, sports, nightclubs, museums, and libraries, became my campus.

Even though I had been a top student at Power, I was not prepared for the rigors of a Jesuit education at Fordham. In 1957 Fordham was probably the best Catholic institution of higher learning in the country, and the class of ’61 was probably its best ever. Even though I was only an average student I was in a great learning environment. I say average but looking back I realize that the curriculum was broad and comprehensive including four years of Theology and Philosophy, as well as two years of Latin and French as requirements.  I majored in History, a subject which I had loved since grade school. There was nothing special about my work at Fordham. Nevertheless, even though I had only average grades, I aced the graduate record exams and was accepted in the MA program at Columbia. Finally, in my last year at Fordham I met my future wife, Linda Gardella, a nursing student at Cornell University Medical center in Manhattan.

Q. You have a PhD. What was your Master’s in? Did you have to write a Master’s thesis and what was it? Were your orals tough? And your Doctorate? That was in History. What was your thesis? Did you enjoy writing it? Might it have been what led you to teach at the college level?

A. I went to Columbia on a NY State Teaching fellowship. I guess it was then that I really began to think that I wanted to become a college professor. But just as at Fordham I found myself way over my head at Columbia, a world-class institution with an internationally renowned faculty. 

I decided to specialize in 18^th century British politics primarily because I was always interested in the American Revolution, and also because I had taken a wonderful course in British politics in my Senior year at Fordham with a really great professor. My Master’s thesis was on the political career of a British general and politician who was very active in the opposition to the War with America. After completing my Masters at Columbia I went back to Fordham to continue my studies in British politics under the mentorship of my old professor, Dr. Ross Hoffman. 

It took almost 10 years to complete my PhD dissertation on the political career of General Henry Seymour Conway. I loved working on the dissertation but it was really hard work. During that time Linda and I married and began a partnership based on mutual love and respect that has continued to this day. 

I taught in a Catholic High School for a year and then she worked as a public health nurse while I took a year off to complete my course work at Fordham. After a brief stint of government work with the Federal Aviation Agency in NY, I got a call for an interview at the brand new Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. 

Q. You still enjoy teaching, why did you leave it?

I taught History for seven years at SHU from 1965 to 1972.  Linda and I bought a house in Fairfield and began a family. I was teaching as well as doing research on my dissertation and thoroughly enjoyed both.  But the Vietnam era was tumultuous for America. As the war came to an end, enrollment at the University began to decline and in 1972 the University began to retrench. I was one of the faculty up for tenure that year and none of us had our contracts renewed. In the same year that I got my PhD from Fordham, I found myself out of a job with a wife and five small children.

Nevertheless, it again turned out for the best. I got a job in the Financial Services industry and managed with Linda’s support to survive the very difficult early years. Over the years I was able to build up a very successful career as a Financial Advisor before retiring in 2008. 

to be continued...

Election Humor 2021

 

While watching the reports of the election results Tuesday, I felt that political commentators on both sides were missing a very important reason for the Republican surge. Of course, dejected liberal pundits were hard pressed to come up with an explanation, but even the zealots on Fox news, who repeatedly recited a litany of unpopular progressive positions, missed the point. Democratic politicians and their media allies seemed to be totally lacking in a sense of humor. 

In Virginia the Democrats brought in all their big guns in support of Terry McAuliffe, and all seemed to be deadly serious, and totally lacking in humor. Despite his declining poll numbers, smiling President Biden appeared twice but who, even in the friendly media, pays attention to his boring speeches except to listen for the inevitable gaffes or failures of memory.

 

Vice President Kamela Harris appeared and gave her usual impression of a scolding school marm as she warned, in deadly seriousness, about the importance of the election for the 2022 and 2024 national elections. She predicted that as Virginia goes, so goes the nation. I suppose she will now go back into hiding but it would have been nice to hear her exhibit a little deprecatory humor while she ate crow after the Republican victory. 

 

The Democrats even brought in former President Obama, the most sanctimonious politician of all, from his multi-million-dollar sanctuary on Martha’s Vineyard. Does anyone outside of the inner sanctum of Democratic politicians pay any attention to Obama? Is it possible to listen to his teleprompter speeches? The McAuliffe campaign must have paid him a bundle to appear, but the money was obviously wasted. 

 

Worst of all was the Democratic candidate himself.  In his non-concession speech Terry McAuliffe was pathetic as he tried to cover up his impending defeat. There was no hint of humility or self-deprecation. His introduction of his family was embarrassing to watch, and his stupid little victory dance made him look like an unfunny clown.

 

Switching around the channels I found the same total sanctimony and seriousness among the panel on CNN, as well as in the demeanor of obviously disappointed Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. Most pathetic of all was a clip of joyless Joy Reid when she exclaimed, in all earnestness, that the Republicans were very dangerous people. Wasn’t she aware that a couple of days before the election, Democratic supporters had staged a fake Republican white supremacist rally?

 

Where has political humor, especially satire, gone? Why have liberals, who once were the champions of political satire abandoned it? The opportunities for satire today are greater than ever. Consider, the following op-ed by Paul Levy that recently appeared in a Wall Street Journal about Biden’s position at the University of Pennsylvania, entitled “Professor Biden and His Ambassadors.” 

 

 

"Amy Gutmann, Penn’s president, awaits Senate confirmation as U.S. envoy to Germany, and David L. Cohen, until July chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees as ambassador to Canada. 

 

Ms. Gutmann isn’t a donor. Mr. Cohen and his wife, Rhonda, gave more than half a million dollars to Democratic campaigns and political causes between 2017 and 2020…

 

After Mr. Biden left the vice presidency in 2017, Penn created the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global engagement and appointed Mr. Biden to the bespoke position of Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor. Mr. Biden was paid personally for this job--$371,159 in 2017 and $540,484 in 2018 and early 2019 before launching his campaign,

 

The Philadelphia Inquirer… described Mr. Biden’s position as “a vaguely defined role that involved no regular classes and around a dozen public appearances on campus, mostly in big ticketed events.”

 

A letter writer in today’s WSJ quipped that the description seemed to fit Biden’s current position.

 

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Quote of the day: "Round up the usual suspects!" Claude Rains in Casablanca.

Inflation 2021

 

The other day my wife came home with some shocking news. She had been to the supermarket where she found that the price of Shredded Wheat,  the cereal that I have every day for breakfast, had risen to $4.00 a box. For as long as she could remember, it had been about $3.20 a box. The eighty-cent increase might not seem like much, but it is actually an increase of 25%.

 

What could have caused such a dramatic increase? The box and its contents have not changed. I don’t think that there has been a substantial increase  in demand that would cause the producer to jack up prices since Shredded Wheat  does not fly off the shelves like Cheerios.

 

Some think that supply issues might be the cause. Shipping and transportation tie-ups are in the headlines. Nevertheless, the increase in price of my favorite cereal would seem to be due to inflation. My wife tells me that everything has gone up in price in the supermarket.

 

Recent news items confirm my wife’s observations and indicate that inflation is indeed with us. Gasoline prices have risen sharply at the pump, and there is even talk that Social Security benefits will increase next year by about 6%. These increases are signs of inflation, but they are not the cause of inflation.

 

Another way to look at price inflation is to realize that it is not the value of particular products or services that has gone up, but that the value of the dollars we use to buy them has gone down. In the case of Shredded Wheat, it now takes four pieces of paper rather than three to buy a box.

 

Fifty-five years ago, we bought our first home in Fairfield for $20000. It was a modest home in a nice neighborhood. Eleven years later, the increasing size of our family led us to sell it for over  $60000, more than triple what we paid for it. Today, it is worth about $600000. The neighborhood is about the same, and even though succeeding owners have made some improvements; it is basically the same house.  The value of a dollar has so shrunk in the past 65 years that it now takes 600000 of them  rather than 20000 to own that home.

 

Economists disagree over the causes of inflation, but there is obviously a monetary component. A substantial increase in the supply of any commodity, whether it is coffee or oil, will inevitably cause its price to drop. Why shouldn’t the value of our currency decline, if the government substantially increases the printing of money, especially if it is deeply in debt to begin with?

 

The stimulus checks we received during the pandemic put dollars in our pockets, but the dollars we received were obviously a factor in the inflation we are now experiencing. After all, the Federal government did not have the stimulus money in some kind of rainy-day account. It had to print and borrow. In a way, it is like those people who max out their credit card, and then use another one to pay it off.  Instead of looking to the Federal government to deal with inflation, we should realize that our government  is largely the cause of rising prices.

 

The new multi-Trillion spending package that Democratic and Progressive politicians are trying to push through Congress will inevitably lead not only to higher taxes, but also to more inflation. Whatever the size of the final package, only a small percentage will go to real infrastructure improvements.

 

 A greater amount will certainly go to shoring up the almost bankrupt pension funds of Blue states whose Democratic politicians have based their careers on pandering to the demands of public service unions, their main source of political contributions. Injecting billions of dollars in these pension funds may avoid bankruptcy but the resulting inflation will eventually erode the spending power of the actual pensions these retirees receive. 

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Note: Here is assessment of inflation by Henry Hazlitt whose 1946 book, Economics in One Lesson, is a revered classic. It was revised and updated in 1979.

 

Inflation itself is a form or taxation, which usually bears hardest on those least able to pay. On the assumption that inflation affected everyone and everything evenly (which, we have seen, is never true), it would be tantamount to a flat sales tax of the same percentage on all commodities, with the rate as high on bread and milk as on diamonds and furs. Or it might be thought of as equivalent to a flat tax of the same percentage, without exemptions, on everyone’s income. It is a tax not only on every individuals expenditures, but on his savings account and life insurance. It is, in fact, a flat capital levy, without exemptions, in which the poor man pays as high a percentage as the rich man. (p. 176)

Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples Day

As Columbus Day morphs into Indigenous Peoples Day in parts of the USA, it is ironic that many of the people calling for the removal of statues of Columbus, or for his elimination from our school history books are people that now call themselves Hispanics.*

 

Who do these people think were on the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria back in 1492? Other than Columbus, they were all from what is now called Spain. Columbus, the leader of the expedition, came from Genoa which is now part of Italy. The Spanish crew, especially the Pinzon brothers who captained the Nina and the Pinta, disliked and distrusted Columbus despite his obvious seamanship and great experience on the high seas. 

 

Once they landed on an island off what Columbus  thought was Asia, he had an extremely difficult time controlling the cruelty and rapacity of his crew in their dealing with the natives they found there. 

 

 

The indigenous islanders themselves were not much better. Modern feminists might be surprised to discover that native men freely shared their women with the new arrivals. After all, what was a woman for, except work, sex, and childbearing? Indeed, indigenous people from other islands often took women captive to breed them so they could feed on their infants.

 

Anyway, in subsequent voyages thousands of Hispanics, the ancestors of today’s protestors, came to the New World and increased the level of cruelty and brutality. It is true that Columbus, participated in this ill-treatment, especially after he found that the settlers he had left behind on his first voyage had all died in suspicious circumstances. Eventually, Columbus lost control over the situation and on one trip was even arrested by the Spanish governor and sent back to Spain in chains.

 

Despite the efforts of Queen Isabella who insisted that the natives of the islands were her subjects, and therefore could not be slaves, the practice of slavery and colonial brutality grew worse. The story was told long ago  by Bartolomeo del las Casas, an early settler who became a priest, gave up his own slaves, and worked for the rest of his life to protect the natives from the ravages of the colonizers. 

 

The efforts of Las Casas were mirrored a couple of centuries later when Junipero Serra, another Franciscan friar, built a mission system in California in the eighteenth century to protect the  natives from the brutality and rapacity of Hispanic colonizers. Only after the Mexican government shut down the missions in the nineteenth century were the natives thrown to the wolves. For his efforts, the Catholic church has canonized Fr. Serra, but protestors now vandalize and tear down commemorative memorials. 

 

The ancestors of these Hispanic colonizers can still be seen today as they brandish AK 47s, and brutally herd thousands of immigrants from Central American through Mexico to the American border. 

 

Although I am dismayed by the hypocrisy of modern Hispanic protestors, I do not want to single Hispanics out as particularly evil. Slavery has been practiced all over the world by all kinds of people. Before African slaves could be sent to the New World, they had to be captured and chained by black tribal leaders and Moslem slave traders. Only then could European slave traders transport them to the Americas. Even indigenous American Indian tribes owned black slaves. 

 

Where did this evil come from? In the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers wrote that all men were created equal, but they did not believe that all men wound up equal. They meant that all humans had the same nature. We are all human despite our gender, or the color of our skin. 

 

In the eighteenth century there was a great debate about human nature among intellectuals. A few novel thinkers rejected the time-honored idea that all humans are imperfect; that we could be capable of great things but that there was a flaw in our nature that could lead us to do wrong or evil. Christian theologians called it original sin and believed we had all inherited it from our first parents.

 

The new thinking of the so-called Enlightenment rejected the notion of original sin and claimed that we are all created perfect or good. The evil in the world could then be traced somehow to corrupt social norms or traditions. The cure for evils like slavery would then lie not in perfecting human weakness, but in reforming society and ridding it of its various ills. 

 

Along with this new theory came a new myth, the myth of the “Noble Savage,” that believed that the indigenous peoples of the New World lived in a state of nature where all was happiness, peace, and serenity. Only when Europeans brought their civilization to America with all its social ills, including religion, was the paradise of the noble savage corrupted and destroyed in the same way that the serpent corrupted Adam and Eve in the biblical story.

 

The myth of the noble savage was not based on any real historical evidence. The proponents of the idea despised and ridiculed the primitive peasants of their own countries but praised the primitive indigenous people of the New World whom they had never seen.

 

Nevertheless, the myth of the noble savage has become pervasive in our own time. So, instead of a human being, capable of good and evil like the rest of us, Columbus has become an evil agent of white supremacy, the man who destroyed the pristine paradise of the New World.

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*Note: I do not understand why I, a descendant of immigrants from Italy, am considered "white" and inherently a "white supremacist," while the descendants of immigrants from Spain are not considered "white" and therefore free of any taint of white supremacy. 

COVID deaths: Who's to Blame?

  

     

 

In the Presidential debates last year candidate Joe Biden blamed President Trump for the deaths of 225000 Americans during the Covid pandemic. To my mind it was the lowest point in Biden’s long lackluster career in politics. In fact, his charge, echoed by his running mate, Kamala Harris, and many other prominent Democrats, could easily make the top ten list of dirty, despicable campaign smears in American history.

 

Typically, neither Biden nor Harris blamed Democratic governors like New York’s now disgraced Andrew Cuomo for the high death rates in their states. Even now, they still refuse to blame Cuomo after it was revealed that his administration fudged the death figures to avoid looking bad. Nevertheless, Democratic New York and New Jersey still lead the nation in deaths per million. New Jersey is the leader with 3077 deaths per million, and New York is second with 2863. 

 

During 2020 I kept close count of the coronavirus figures and even ran a spread sheet that compared state by state results, as well as country by country results. I put a couple of posts on this blog to show that it would be hard to blame individual politicians. Other factors were more relevant. After election day, I stopped counting. Perhaps, I sensed that the figures would no longer matter.

 

Last week, the death toll from Covid climbed to over 700000 in this country. When President Biden took office in January 2021, the death toll was 400000. But who blames President Biden? Who blames the President for the recent surge that thankfully seems to be abating? The blame has been shifted to anti-vaxxers. Speaking of vaccines, neither Biden nor Harris has ever given President Trump any credit for the incredible and speedy work on the vaccines that has been labelled one of the marvels of medical history. Kamala Harris was the original anti-vaxxer when she insisted that she would never take a vaccine developed during the Trump administration.

 

Out of curiosity I took a look at the figures at the end of September. In the United States so far there have been about 43.3 Million people who have tested positive for the coronavirus. The death toll of about 711000 is 1.62% of those who have tested positive. The death rate is well below the world average of 2.05%, especially when you consider that the USA results help considerably to bring down the world average.

 

The USA figure also compares very well with countries like the United Kingdom and Italy with national health systems. In the UK there have been 7.8 Million cases and 136741 deaths for a death rate of 1.75%. In Italy there have been 4.9 Million reported cases and 130807 deaths for a death rate of 2.79%.

 

From the beginning scientists have argued that the number of people actually infected must be significantly higher than the reported cases. I have seen all sorts of multipliers but the latest seems to indicate that the number of cases should be multiplied by 2. In other words, at least 80 Million Americans have been infected and over 79 Million have survived. 

 

A columnist in my local newspaper recently reported on his bout with Covid. He had been vaccinated but thought little of it when he developed symptoms of a postnasal drip. However, he decided to get tested after spending time with a granddaughter who subsequently tested positive. Sure enough, he tested positive and even though his symptoms did not get worse, he made a brief trip to the hospital to get antibody treatment because he had certain co-morbidities. That was it. He quickly recovered and went about his business when doctors told him he could not infect anyone after 14 days. He became one of the more than 99% of Americans who survived Covid infection.

 

Of those who have not survived, the great majority were elderly or laden with co-morbidities like diabetes or obesity. Newspapers and other media can always feature exceptional anecdotes, but the data has always suggested that the young and healthy are not at any more risk than during a normal flu season.

 

In the past I have refrained from blaming anyone for what is a world-wide pandemic, but Joe Biden was wrong to blame President Trump back in 2020 and he is equally wrong in not giving him any credit now for initiating Operation Warp Speed that produced the vaccines in record time.   

 

 

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