A Year in Books/Day 141: Silent Players

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  • Title: Silent Players A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses
  • Author: Anthony Slide
  • Year Published: 2002 (The University Press of Kentucky)
  • Year Purchased: 2010
  • Source: Half Price Books
  • About: Most of the stars profiled in this book were forgotten within a few years of the end of the silent era; the rest-the lucky few- are mere by-words for Old Hollywood, names disconnected from faces. Leftovers from our great-Grandparents’ childhoods. Anthony Slide, over the course of a couple of decades, had the pleasure or the privilege to have met the majority of entertainers featured in this volume. Thus, Silent Players is not dry biography or weak conjecture, nor is it pure scholarship (although it has a foundation of extensive research); it is alive with personal experiences and revealing reminiscences. His passion for his subjects shines through his clear, yet keen writing. A must-have for anyone interested in silent cinema and those who graced it with their magic.

    Publicity photo of Mae Marsh from Stars of the...

    Publicity photo of Mae Marsh from Stars of the Photoplay (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  • Motivation: Many of my favourite film performers appeared in silent movies. I write on the subject. A lot. In fact, silent movies are one of my biggest passions!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 127: “The number of Hollywood extras is probably in the hundreds of thousands. As early as November 1934, Photoplay reported some 17, 541 individuals registered as extras with Central Casting. Among the number of small part and bit players available at that time were former stars, including Monte Blue, Betty Blythe, Mae Marsh, and Dorothy Phillips, and silent directors, including Francis Ford, Frank Reicher and George Melford. One-time stars might become extras, but the only extra to ever be accorded the celebrity and fame of stardom is Bess Flowers.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++

The Dead Writers Round-Up: 23rd-27th May

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  • Henrik Ibsen died on 5/23/1906. “Do not use that foreign word “ideals.” We have that excellent native word “lies.””
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on 5/25/1803. “A great man is always willing to be little.”
  • Madame de La Fayette died on 5/25/1693. “Never refuse any advance of friendship, for if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you.”
  • Maxwell Bodenheim was born on 5/26/1892. “Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.”
  • Dashiell Hammett was born on 5/27/1894. “I deserve all the love you can spare me. And I want a lot more than I deserve.”
  • Rachel Carson was born on 5/27/1907. “Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth, are never alone or weary of life.”

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A Year in Books/Day 140: Evelyn Waugh

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  • Title: Evelyn Waugh The Later Years 1939-1966
  • Author: Martin Stannard
  • Year Published: 1992/This Edition: 1994 (W.W. Norton & Company)
  • Year Purchased: 2000?
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: I’m currently on a Bright Young Things reading binge; although it focuses on Waugh’s mature years, this book almost instantly came to mind. It is one of the better biographies present on my sagging shelves. A potent reminder that he was more than just the writer of Brideshead Revisited (which, if it came down to that, wouldn’t be such a bad thing), Stannard succeeds in making the complex yet usually unapproachable Waugh, for good and bad, seem human. It is a masterly work.
  • Motivation: I collect dead writer biographies like kids collect toys.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 170: “The delay in departure was all Waugh needed to fire his imagination. There was, he felt, a story in this about everything that had troubled him since leaving the army, and Scott-King’s Modern Europe was to be his revenge on his hosts.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    Portrait of Evelyn Waugh

    Portrait of Evelyn Waugh (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 139: Schott’s Original Miscellany

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  • Title: Schott’s Original Miscellany
  • Author: Ben Schott
  • Year Published: 2003 (Bloomsbury)
  • Year Purchased: 2004/2005
  • Source: Bas Bleu
  • About: If I decided to write a reference book, it would be in this mould: eccentric, far-reaching and a treat to read. The entries are ridiculously fun yet still informative (as, of course, all such books should be): Eponymous Foods, Hampton Court Maze, Public School Slang, The Language of Flowers, Churchill & Rhetoric, Proverbially You Can’t, Super Bowl Singers, George Washington’s Rules and The Bond Films are just a few. It is a little treasure of a volume, and one that suits those of us for whom so-called useless knowledge is one of life’s great enjoyments.
  • Motivation: We all know that I LOVE reference books. Of any kind. I also hanker after eclectic knowledge because, well, why not?
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover:1/As reference tool: countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page 5: “An encyclopedia? A dictionary? An almanac? An anthology? A lexicon? A treasury? A commonplace? An amphigouri? A vade-mecum? Well…yes. Schott’s Original Miscellany is all of these and, of course, more.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10++

Voices from the Grave #20: Leonard Woolf Speaking on Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf

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This is a rare recorded interview of Leonard Woolf speaking about his wife, Virginia, and their friends and fellow artists in that loose, non-movement called the Bloomsbury Group. It is nearly ten minutes long but is well worth your time. It was recorded in May 1964, when Leonard was 83.

 

 

[20 May 2012] This Week’s Lessons in Reading and Writing

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  • My ideal non-fiction to fiction reading ratio is 4 to 1.
  • There are certain writers-as in certain foods-I just do not like. But it is still important to take them for a spin every couple of years to see if that has changed. You never know, I love mushrooms now.
  • I can go a week without reading a magazine-any magazine-and not explode.
  • The only way that I will devote time to fiction crafting is to firmly write it in, using indelible marker. Works every time. You’d think I would do that more often.
  • I should pay more attention to contemporary fiction (that actually has a contemporary setting.).
  • No matter how organized I am in other areas of my life (which is to say, I am usually HIGHLY organized) it is hard to apply that to my business for any extended period of time.

AND A LESSON RE-LEARNED:

  • Know your strengths and use them to move or alter creative boundaries.

Daily Diversion #9: Emily Dickinson

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I'm nobody, who are you?

I’m nobody, who are you?

This literary paper doll was a birthday gift from my mom about 5 years ago. She lives on a shelf in my studio, staring at me from behind a glazed ceramic urn full of Tardis dessert flags.

Beauty is not caused. It is.

Beauty is not caused. It is.

Her deceptively simple poetry quickens the mind, the heart, the blood, the creativity that dwells within us all, hidden yet frantic to escape.

 

A Year in Books/Day 138: Fanny Stevenson

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  • Title: Fanny Stevenson Muse, Adventuress & Romantic Enigma
  • Author: Alexandra Lapierre
  • Translator: Carol Cosman
  • Year Published: 1995/This Edition: 1996 (Fourth Estate)
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: This book was my introduction to Fanny Stevenson, the wife and widow of Robert Louis Stevenson. Lapierre’s wonderful, detailed and complex biography neatly answers two questions: Why did the great Scots writer fall in love with, and sacrifice so much for, this unknown, controversial American woman? Who, exactly, was Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne? In order to explicate on the great mystery that is the former, Lapierre goes to impressive lengths of research to figure out the latter. In answering these questions, it is obvious that the subject and her extraordinary life would have been worth the resultant biography even had she never met and married the writer of the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island and Kidnapped. As a plucky, resourceful, intelligent, resilient and talented woman, she emerges as much more than just a ‘great man’s’ muse.

    Fanny Osbourne, shortly before her meeting wit...

    Fanny Osbourne, shortly before her meeting with Robert Louis Stevenson. Français : Fanny Osbourne, peu de temps avant sa rencontre avec Robert Louis Stevenson. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  • Motivation: I love obscure artistic ladies, especially when they are armed with an excessive amount of fighting spirit and intelligence.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 272: “Fifteen years later, on the eve of his own death, Robert Louis Stevenson described his wife to one of his friends: Hellish energy relieved by fortnights of entire hibernation…Doctors everybody, will doctor you, cannot be doctored herself.“
  • Happiness Scale: 10