#james ruggles

[handeaux]

Cincinnatian James Ruggles Created A “Universal Language” But No One Listened

Cincinnati in 1829 overflowed with excitement. Our little river town had grown to a total population of more than 24,000. General Andrew Jackson made a brief stop here as he journeyed up the Ohio River on his way to inauguration as President of the United States. Frances “Fanny” Trollope scribbled notes for what would become her scandalous exposé, “Domestic Manners of the Americans.” Over the course of a week, witnessed by thousands, Rev. Alexander Campbell of the Disciple Church defended Christianity from the assaults of Robert Owen, founder of New Harmony, Indiana, and fervid apostate, who argued that all religions were false.

Hardly noticed in all the hubbub was the publication of a slim volume by Cincinnati printer James Ruggles proposing the adoption of a universal language. In the intellectual ferment of the early Nineteenth Century, Ruggles’ proposal gained so little traction that he is all but forgotten today.

It is interesting that Ruggles had his book published by Cincinnati printers John McCalla and Samuel Davis, because Ruggles himself was a printer and a publisher himself. Born in New York in 1795, Ruggles married a woman named Henrietta Disher and relocated to Steubenville, Ohio and then moved to Cincinnati. While here, he published a magazine called Ladies’ Museum which, according to an advertisement [29 January 1831],

“Embraced in its general subjects, Original and Selected Poetry, Tales, Notices and Reviews of New Works, Natural History, Sketches of Biography and History, Reports of Fashions, occasional articles relating to the culture of Plants Fruits and Flowers, with such Intelligence, Anecdotes, chastened effusions of Wit, Sentiment, and Humor, as will impart variety and furnish an agreeable miscellany.”

Although not identified as such in the city directory, James Ruggles was also apparently a teacher of some sort, although whether he taught in a private capacity or in the nascent public schools of the city is unknown. In Isaac M. Martin’s 1900 history of the schools of Cincinnati, Ruggles is listed among the “Teachers Who Have Become Authors.”

Martin’s book lists only Ruggles’ “Universal Language” among his publications, but an 18 November 1829 advertisement in the Ohio Monitor revealed that Ruggles was trying to attract enough subscribers to publish a series of books titled “The American Literary Preceptor,” which he described as:

“A complete system of tuition for American youths, containing all the branches of learning necessary, in forming the education of an American citizen – commencing with the first rudiments, spelling, reading, &c. and including those proper, as the foundation of a complete scientific and ornamental education, suitable for fitting one to enter a profession, or any useful occupation; to be comprised in about 15 volumes.”

The advertisement for the textbook series – there is no evidence any of the books were ever published – boasted of Ruggles’ role as the author of the book on universal language.

So, what was the “universal language” developed by James Ruggles? And why was it ignored by pretty much everybody? To begin with, Ruggles’ universal language was almost impossible to read and equally impossible to pronounce. Here is a sample:

“Kertholson sjtilmagpxl fjnhxl lokzturs, deksztxns fakhornpxs, karfzturps vovszdxrap, punkzpurapsdux kirkztur, rolsilnxmszdxrapdui.”

That tangled mess of consonantal gibberish may be translated as:

“To ascertain the relative situation and size of places, references are made on maps to direction, or the points of a compass, and to latitude and longitude.”

According to Ruggles, his universal language was superior to any previously proposed because it was:

“Founded on the clearness of its combinations – the simplicity of its construction, the uniformity and invariableness of its rules – and, especially, the facility and speed with which it can be acquired, of being universally adopted by the civilized world.”

The heart of Ruggles’ artificial language was simplicity. All plurals were formed by adding an s – none of this mouse/mice, goose/geese malarkey. Each vowel and consonant was pronounced uniquely to avoid homonymic rhymes like scoff-cough. Most root words were derived from Latin, so his word for “judge” was “prqt” from the Latin praetor, and his word for “stone” was “lap” from the Latin lapis.

Despite his obsession with simplicity and uniformity, the end result was so alien and complicated that none of the many literary magazines at the time paid it the slightest attention. Part of Ruggles’ problem was marketing. He never named his invention, referring to it only as “The Universal Language.” Later creators of Volapuk and Esperanto had better luck. Ruggles sent advance copies to scholars and celebrities, none of whom had anything particularly favorable to say about his Universal Language – but he published their responses in the back of his book anyway! Typical was this polite dismissal from John Quincy Adams, who found time despite his duties as President of the United States to respond on 27 July 1827:

“Sir: I return herewith, conformably to your request, the Plan of a Universal Language, which was enclosed with your letter of 28th May. An opinion long since formed, unfavorable to all projects of this character, has perhaps influenced that formed with regard to yours. From the examination, necessarily superficial, which I have been able to give it, I consider it creditable to your ingenuity. Respectfully, your fellow-citizen. J.Q. Adams.”

In other words, “I am opposed to the whole idea of a universal language, but your scheme indicates some level of imagination.”

For reasons unknown but probably involving money or the lack thereof, Ruggles uprooted his wife and sons and left Cincinnati around 1831. He reappeared in Edwardsville, Illinois near the banks of the Mississippi River in 1838 as the editor of a local newspaper with a decidedly unusual mission. According to the 1882 “History of Madison County, Illinois”:

“The Western Weekly Mirror was established at Edwardsville by James Ruggles in May, 1838. He was editor and proprietor. The Mirror was devoted to the introduction and propagation of a universal language by which the whole human family could hold converse with one another and be understood. It was a worthy mission, but the feeble effort of its progenitor fell stillborn. It continued until the spring of 1840, when its name was changed to the Sovereign People. It continued until the summer of 1841, when it suspended.”

James Ruggles died of congestive fever on 17 October 1844 in Edwardsville. He left no will, but his wife appealed to the local authorities to become adminstratrix of his estate, which she testified amounted to less than $300.

#james ruggles #universal language #volupak #Esperanto

[letterboxd-loggd]

Yours for the Asking (1936) Alexander Hall

January 8th 2023

#yours for the asking #1936 #alexander hall #george raft #dolores costello #ida lupino #reginald owen #james gleason #edgar kennedy #lynne overman #richard powell #richard 'skeets' gallagher #groucho marx #charles ruggles #the duchess

[kemetic-dreams]

David Ruggles was born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1810. His parents, David Sr. and Nancy Ruggles, were free African Americans. His father was born in Norwich in 1775 and worked as a journeyman blacksmith. His mother was born in 1785 in either Lyme or Norwich and worked as a caterer. Ruggles was the first of eight children.

In 1826, at the age of sixteen, Ruggles moved to New York City, where he worked as a mariner before opening a grocery store. Nearby, other African-Americans ran grocery businesses in Golden Hill (John Street east of William Street), such as Mary Simpson (1752-March 18, 1836). After 1829, abolitionist Sojourner Truth (born Isabella ("Bell") Baumfree; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883) also lived in lower Manhattan. At first, he sold liquor, then embraced temperance. He became involved in anti-slavery and the free produce movement. He was a sales agent for and contributor to The Liberator and The Emancipator, abolitionist newspapers.

After closing the grocery, Ruggles opened the first African American-owned bookstore in the United States. The bookstore was located on Lispenard Street near St. John's park in what is today the Tribeca neighborhood. Ruggles' bookstore specialized in abolitionist and feminist literature, including works by African-American abolitionist Maria Stewart. He edited a New York journal called The Mirror of Liberty, and also published a pamphlet called The Extinguisher. He also published "The Abrogation of the Seventh Commandment" in 1835, an appeal to northern women to confront husbands who kept enslaved African women as mistresses.

Ruggles was secretary of the New York Committee of Vigilance, a radical biracial organization to aid fugitive slaves, oppose slavery, and inform enslaved workers in New York about their rights in the state. New York had abolished slavery and stated that slaves voluntarily brought to the state by a master would automatically gain freedom after nine months of residence. On occasion, Ruggles went to private homes after learning that enslaved Africans were hidden there, to tell workers that they were free. In October 1838, Ruggles assisted Frederick Douglass on his journey to freedom, and reunited Douglass with his fiancé Anna Murray. Rev. James Pennington, a self-emancipated slave, married Murray and Douglass in Ruggles' home shortly thereafter. Douglass' autobiography 'Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass' explains "I had been in New York but a few days, when Mr. Ruggles sought me out, and very kindly took me to his boarding-house at the corner of Church and Lespenard Streets. Mr. Ruggles was then very deeply engaged in the memorable Darg case, as well as attending to a number of other fugitive slaves, devising ways and means for their successful escape; and, though watched and hemmed in on almost every side, he seemed to be more than a match for his enemies."

Ruggles was especially active against kidnapping bounty hunters (also known as "blackbirds"), who made a living by capturing free African people in the North and illegally selling them into slavery. With demand high for slaves in the Deep South, another threat was posed by men who kidnapped free blacks and sold them into slavery, as was done to Solomon Northup of Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1841. With the Vigilance Committee, Ruggles fought for fugitive slaves to have the right to jury trials and helped arrange legal assistance for them.

His activism earned him many enemies. Ruggles was physically assaulted and his bookshop was destroyed through arson. He quickly reopened his library and bookshop. There were two known attempts to kidnap him and sell him into slavery in the South. His enemies included fellow abolitionists who disagreed with his tactics. He was criticized for his role in the well-publicized Darg case of 1838, involving a Virginia slaveholder named John P. Darg and his slave, Thomas Hughes.

Ruggles suffered from ill health, which intensified following the Darg case. In 1841, his father died, and Ruggles was ailing and almost blind. In 1842, Lydia Maria Child, a fellow abolitionist and friend, arranged for him to join a radical Utopian commune called the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, in the present-day village of Florence, Massachusetts.

Applying home treatment upon hydropathic principles, he regained his health to some degree, but not his eyesight. He began practicing hydrotherapy, and by 1845, had established a "water cure" hospital in Florence. This was one of the earliest in the United States. Joel Shew and Russell Thacher Trall (R.T. Trall) had preceded him in using this type of therapy. Ruggles died in Florence in 1849, at the age of thirty-nine, due to a bowel infection

#african #hydrotherapy #david ruggles #afrakan #kemetic dreams #brownskin #afrakans #brown skin #africans

[themadscene]

Movies I’ve watched for the first time this year:

All That Heaven Allows (1955) dir. Douglas Sirk The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk (2015) dir. Mark Rappaport Rock Hudson's Home Movies (1992) dir. Mark Rappaport Girl, Interrupted (1999) dir. James Mangold Belladonna of Sadness (1973) dir. Eiichi Yamamoto Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) dir. Agnès Varda Morocco (1930) dir. Josef von Sternberg I'm No Angel (1933) dir. Wesley Ruggles Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017) dir. Sophie Fiennes Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) dir. Peter Weir Cries and Whispers (1972) dir. Ingmar Bergman The Letter (1940) dir. William Wyler Breathless (1960)  dir. Jean-Luc Godard Babette's Feast (1987) dir. Gabriel Axel Under the Tuscan Sun (2003) dir. Audrey Wells What's Up Doc (1972) dir. Peter Bogdanovich Last Night in Soho (2021) dir. Edgar Wright Summertime (1955) dir. David Lean These Old Broads (2001) dir. Matthew Diamond Batman Returns (1992) dir. Tim Burton Roman Holiday (1953) dir. William Wyler Hanna (2011) dir. Joe Wright Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) dir. Joel and Ethan Coen Birth (2004) dir. Jonathan Glazer Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970) dir. Terence Dixon

Fire Island (2022) dir. Andrew Ahn Benediction (2022) dir. Terence Davies The Northman (2022) dir. Robert Eggers

#i've actually liked all of these

[byneddiedingo]

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)

Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robson, Fritz Feld. Screenplay: Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde. Cinematography:  Russell Metty. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase. Film editing: George Hively. Music: Roy Webb.

Although it's sometimes called the greatest of all screwball comedies, to my mind Bringing Up Baby transcends that label: It's the finest example I know of a nonsense comedy. Screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936) and Nothing Sacred (William A. Wellman, 1937) usually have one foot in the real world -- the Depression and its Hoovervilles in the case of the former, exploitation journalism in the latter. Bringing Up Baby exists only in a universe where an impossible thing like an "intercostal clavicle"* could exist. Its world is a place where nobody listens to anyone else and everyone seems to be marching to their own drummer. It's what puts Bringing Up Baby in the sublime company of Lewis Carroll's works or James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Fortunately it's more accessible than the latter and at least as much fun as the former. Nonsense is harder to bring off on film than in literature. Cinema by nature is a documentary medium -- one that's assumed to be recording reality -- and has less flexibility than words do. It's also a collaborative medium, which means that everyone involved in writing, directing, and acting in it has to be on the same wave length, or the whole thing will collapse like a soufflé with too many cooks. That's why Bringing Up Baby is almost sui generis: The only other movies that approach the sublimity of its nonsense are some of the ones with the Marx Brothers or W.C. Fields. Even Howard Hawks once admitted that he thought he had gone too far in crafting a comedy with "no normal people in it." Nevertheless, the soufflé rose, thanks in very large part to Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, whose four movies together -- the other three were directed by George Cukor: Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Holiday (1938), and The Philadelphia Story (1940) -- seem to me to demonstrate a more potent teaming than the more iconic one of Hepburn with Spencer Tracy. And then there's the sine qua non of the screwball comedy, a supporting cast of character players like Charles Ruggles, Walter Catlett, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robson, and Fritz Feld. The screenplay was put together by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde, from a magazine story by Wilde that Hawks bought and then with their help -- and doubtless much ad-libbing from the cast -- revised out of all recognition. I only hope that whoever came up with the phrase "intercostal clavicle," which Grant delivers with such delight in its rhythms, received a bonus. *In case you've never thought to look it up, "intercostal" means "between the ribs" and usually refers to the muscles and spaces in the ribcage. The clavicle, or collarbone, sits atop the ribs and therefore can't be between them.

[blinkaholik1]

Reliquary Continued

Stoneware (jasperware) gilt wooden frame The Frank W. Gunsaulus Collection of Old Wedgwood, 1912.1016 This plaque commemorates the Treaty of Versailles, signed on September 27, 1706 Apollo 1775/80 Wedgwood Manufactory (England, founded 1759) Etruria, Staffordshire Stoneware (jasperware), cut steel frame The Frank W. Gunsaulus Collections of Old Wedgwood, 1912.1239 Teapot 1775/80 Wedgwood Manufactory (England, founded 1759) Etruria, Staffordshire Stoneware (jasperware) The Frank W. Gunsaulus Collection of Old Wedgwood, 1912.1068 Wine sewer 1785/90 Wedgewood Manufactory (England, founded 1759) Etutria, Staffordshire Stoneware (jasperware) The Frank W. Gunsaulus Collection of Old Wedgewood, 1912.177 Tea and Coffee Service About 1820 Deuelle Porcelain Manufactory (Paris, 1818-29) Hard-paste porcelain, polychrome enamels, and gilding Gift of Mrs. Rudy C. Ruggles through the Antiquarian Society, 2004.43.1a-b, 2004.43.2a-b, 2004.43.3, 2004.43.4a-b, 2004.43.5, 2004.43.6a-b, 2004.43.7a-b Plate from the Arabesque Service 1785 Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory (Sèvres, France, founded 1740) Painted by Jacques Fountaine (French, 1734/35-1807) Gilded by Louis-Francois L’Ecot (French, active 1761-64 and 1772-1800) Soft-paste porcelain, polychrome enamels, and gildery Gift of the Lester B. Knight Charitable Trust through the Antiquarian Society of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2000.102 About 1780, mounts 1828 Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory (Sèvres, France, founded 1740) Mounted made by James Aldridge (English, 1768-?) Porcelain; Sèvres, France; mounts: England Hard-paste porcelain and silver gilt European Decorative Arts General Fund, 2017.3 When this porcelain cup was damaged, the great English collector. William Beckford (1760-1844) had it repaired with silver-gilt mounts that countur the theme of prunus blossoms. Sauceboat and Stand, Double Salt, Glass Cooler, and Pair of Candelabra from a service Martin-Guillaume Biennais (French, 1764-1843) Paris Silver gilt Gift of Mrs. Charles V. Hickcox, 1966.98.1a-b, 1966.98.2a-d, 1966.105, 1966.11a-b, 1966.114a-b These objects for the during table are part of a larger service made for Pauline Bonaparte (1769-1825), on the occasion of her marriage to the Roman nobleman Camilo, Borghese sixth Prince of Subriona.

[readerviews]

"The Dark Witch" by James Wood

A Dark Fantasy Romance of Battles and Hearts #books #bookreview #reading #readerviews

The Dark Witch James WoodIndependently Published (2023)ISBN: ‎ 979-8867305857Reviewed by Tammy Ruggles for Reader Views (02/2024) “The Dark Witch” (The Ebon Knight Chronicles) by James Wood, is a dark fantasy adventure you have to finish once you get started. In this exciting follow-up to book one, “The Ebon Knight,” Ava is Princess of the Dark, and she must save the mythical legend Kelso Hart,…

View On WordPress

#Book Review #James Wood #Reader Views #The Dark Witch #The Ebon Knight Chronicles

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Just Imagine

Week 6:

Film(s): Just Imagine (Dir. David Butler, 1930, USA)

Viewing Format: YouTube

Date Watched: June 19, 2021

Rationale for Inclusion:

In looking into science fiction films of the 1930s, the first one I ran across that was new to me was also the first of its genre to receive an Academy Award nomination, Just Imagine (Dir. David Butler, 1930, USA). Not surprisingly if you're up on your Oscar history, this nomination came in an aesthetic category: Art Direction. Subsequently, designers Stephen Goosson and Ralph Hammeras lost to Max Rée for the Western Cimarron (Dir. Wesley Ruggles, 1931, USA). 

Other than being a piece of Academy Award trivia, including Just Imagine in our survey made sense because it was intermixed with genres we had not seen combined with sci-fi yet: comedy and the musical. The former was rarely seen combined with science fiction in the silent era, and the latter required the innovation of synchronized sound motion pictures.

Just Imagine is the first talking picture we watched, but it was not the first sound science fiction film produced. That distinction seems to belong to the 1929 adaptation of Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island (Dir. Lucien Hubbard, USA), which was produced as a silent film with a sound sequence and synchronized music track later added. I do not recall why we opted to skip this film in our survey: whether it was an issue of outright missing its existence and availability on DVD or through Archive.org, or intentionally skipping it because we had recently watched 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Dir. Stuart Patton, 1916, USA), which included narrative elements adapted from that novel.

At any rate, for its cross-genre whimsy and Oscar nomination, I decided Just Imagine needed to be included on our survey despite viewing access being inconvenient. Despite its historic status, no mainstream media or art house distribution service has made the film available on physical media or streaming. Various DVD-R versions circulate, and it can be found in unofficial versions on YouTube (as we watched it) or Archive.org.

Reactions:

The lack of mainstream release for Just Imagine makes sense for two reasons: due to copyright issues and only being of relative niche interest, late 1920s and early 1930s films aren't as widely available on contemporary home formats in general, and the film overall is not very good.

The main weaknesses of Just Imagine come down to its plot being a weak, rote triangulated romance, mediocre songs, and emphasis on Elmer "El" Brendel's comedy. Unlike his vaudevillian and cinematic contemporaries the Marx Brothers, Brendel's Swedish immigrant archetype has not retained his appeal or cultural relevance with later generations. However, his character's fish out of water immigrant schtick works well within the character's Rip Van Winkle inspired subplot.

The Academy wasn't wrong in nominating Just Imagine for its art direction though. The futuristic art deco city of 1980 is beautiful looking, and clearly indebted to the aesthetics of Metropolis (Dir. Fritz Lang, 1927, Germany), including video phones and personal airplanes instead of automobiles traveling between skyscrapers. The laboratory equipment that brings the fifty years dead Single O (Brendel) back to life was apparently too expensive a build for just one use because it was reused to more iconic effect the following year in Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1931, USA). 

Single O's man from present day in the future storyline would be repeated in later sci-fi works, like the serial Buck Rogers (Dir. Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind, 1939, USA), movie Judge Dredd (Dir. Danny Cannon, 1995, USA), and television series Futurama (1999-2003, USA). Other genre tropes that come into play throughout the film include food in pill form, people receiving number designations, marriages being bureaucratically arranged, reproduction without the sex or body horror, and a trip to a Mars populated by Martians. None of these aspects originate with Just Imagine, just cement its genre status.

For sci-fi fans, the set pieces and tropes in play make Just Imagine worth watching at least once, if only to appreciate later, better iterations of its elements. For classic film and pre-code cinema fans, it's an interesting cultural artifact for no other reason but its cast featuring Brendel, Maureen O'Sullivan, and Joyzelle, she of the infamous "naked moon dance" in The Sign of the Cross (Dir. Cecil B. DeMille, 1932, USA).

#sci-fi saturdays #musicals #pre-code cinema

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 2.8

Beer Birthdays

Lüder Rutenberg; Beck's co-founder (1816)

A.J. Houghton (1830)

Andrew MacElhone; owner of Harry's New York Bar, Paris (1923)

Pat Mace (1960)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Samuel Butler; English poet (1612)

Charles Ruggles; actor (1886)

Joseph A. Schumpeter; economist (1883)

Bruce Timm; cartoonist, animator (1961)

Jules Verne; science fiction writer (1828)

Famous Birthdays

Brooke Adams; actor (1949)

Elizabeth Bishop; poet (1911)

Martin Buber; German writer, theologian (1878)

Richard Burton; English writer (1577)

Jim Capaldi; rock musician (1944)

Neal Cassady; writer (1926)

Kate Chopin; writer (1851)

Susan Clark; actor (1940)

Gary Coleman; actor (1968)

James Dean; actor (1931)

Edith Evans; actor (1888)

Seth Green; actor, comedian (1974)

John Grisham; writer (1955)

Bridgette Kerkove; porn actress (1977)

Robert Klein; comedian (1942)

Ted Koppel; television journalist (1940)

Alice Kramden; "Honeymooners'" tv character

Jack Larson; actor (1933)

Jack Lemmon; actor (1925)

Mathilda May; actor (1965)

Mary McCormack; actor (1969)

Audrey Meadows; actor (1926)

Dmitri Mendeleev; chemist (1834)

Buddy Morrow; bandleader (1919)

Vince Neil; rock musician (1961)

Nick Nolte; actor (1941)

Henry Roth; writer (1909)

John Rushkin; English writer, critic (1819)

Dan Seals; pop singer (1948)

William Tecumseh Sherman; Union general (1820)

Kimbo Slice; mixed martial artist (1974)

Mary Steenburgen; actor (1953)

Abi Titmuss; English model (1976)

Lana Turner; actor (1921)

Elbert King" Vidor; film director (1888)

John Williams; composer (1932)

#Birthdays

[letterboxd-loggd]

Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) Leo McCarey

December 17th 2023

#ruggles of red gap #1935 #leo mccarey #charles laughton #charles ruggles #mary boland #maude eburne #zasu pitts #roland young #lucien littlefield #leila hyams #james burke

[character-actor-tournament]

Round 1 Results

Jesse White vs Joe Besser

Ed Wynn vs Broderick Crawford

Halliwell Hobbes vs Lionel Barrymore

Charlie Ruggles vs Ernest Thesiger

Frank Morgan vs Frank Jenks - tie

Betty Garrett vs Rags Ragland

Josephine Hull vs Mischa Auer

S.Z. Sakall vs Tom Dugan

Patsy Kelly vs Al St. John

Margaret Hamilton vs Edward Everett Horton

Nella Walker vs Hans Conried

Hattie McDaniel vs Billy Gilbert

Thurston Hall vs Leonid Kinskey

Marjorie White vs Eve Arden

Edward van Sloan vs Jack Oakie - tie

Charles Winninger vs Butterfly McQueen

Alan Mowbray vs Zasu Pitts

Charlotte Greenwood vs Henry Armetta

Marjorie Main vs Pat Buttram

William Demarest vs Bert Lahr

Marie Dressler vs Beulah Bondi

Una O'Connor vs Martha Raye

Dwight Frye vs Charles Coburn

Ned Sparks vs Esther Muir

Thelma Todd vs Elisha Cook Jr.

Christian Rub vs Samuel S. Hinds

Doodles Weaver vs Gail Patrick

Sydney Greenstreet vs Alice Brady

Roland Young vs John Carradine

James Gleason vs Verna Felton

Una Merkel vs Eugene Pallette

Willie Best vs Conrad Veidt

Maude Eburn vs Scatman Crothers

Guy Kibbee vs Walter Brennan - tie

Nat Pendleton vs Clarence Kolb

Jane Darwell vs Raymond Massey

Erich von Stroheim vs Barry Fitzgerald

Eddie "Rochester" Anderson vs Jack Carson

El Brendel vs Reginald Gardiner

Joseph Calleia vs Warren Hymer

Walter Slezak vs Sam Levene

Edna May Oliver vs Richard Lane

C. Aubrey Smith vs Charles Laughton

Gabby Hayes vs Red Buttons

Franklin Pangborn vs Elsa Lanchester

Lionel Atwill vs Martha Mattox

Bill Robinson vs Jessie Ralph

Andy Devine vs Harry Davenport

Richard Carle vs Ernest Truex

Edward Arnold vs Herman Bing

Cliff Edwards vs Sterling Holloway

George Zucco vs Nancy Kulp

Warner Oland vs Jean Adair

Gregory Ratoff vs Grady Sutton

Helen Broderick vs Glenda Farrell

Lillian Yarbo vs Arthur Edmund Carewe

Marjorie Gateson vs Hugh Herbert

Phil Silvers vs Joy Hodges

Ray Bolger vs George E. Stone

George Davis vs Donald Meek

Warner Baxter vs Jerry Colonna - tie

Spring Byington vs Stuart Erwin

Felix Bressart vs Angelo Rossitto

Eric Blore vs Billy Barty

[gatutor]

Fritzi Ridgeway-Edward Everett Horton ·"Ruggles of red gap" 1923, de James Cruze.

#Fritzi Ridgeway #Edward Everett Horton #James Cruze

[classicmoviesarchive]

Charlie Chaplin. Police (1916) / Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Wesley Ruggles, James T. Kelley

#Youtube

[byneddiedingo]

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966)

I don't know if Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a great play -- I've never seen it -- but it's not a great movie, perhaps because it sticks so closely to an uncinematic source. What it does have is one great performance, Richard Burton's, and one near-great one from Elizabeth Taylor. Unfortunately, George Segal and Sandy Dennis are miscast as Nick and Honey: He's too hip and she's too rabbity for their roles to take dramatic shape. Ideally, I think, Nick and Honey should be the conventional flies lured into George and Martha's sinister web. But as Mike Nichols directs them, they don't bring enough initial squareness to their parts, so their disintegration during the game-playing of their hosts happens too swiftly. What makes Burton's performance so memorable is his ability to shift moods, from sullen to mocking, from beleaguered to triumphant, in an instant. He also quite brilliantly suggests George's only barely latent homoerotic attraction to Nick, making it clear that he's titillated by the very idea of Martha's sleeping with the younger man. Taylor falters only in letting her Martha get too shrill for too long: A slower crescendo to her shrewishness would have been welcome in many scenes. Oscars went to Taylor and Dennis, but Burton lost to Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966) and Segal to Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie (Billy Wilder, 1966). Oscars also went to Haskell Wexler for black-and-white cinematography, Richard Sylbert and George James Hopkins for black-and-white art direction and set decoration, and Irene Sharaff for black-and-white costuming. This was the last year in which these categories were divided into color and black-and-white. It's sometimes observed that except for Cimarron (Wesley Ruggles, 1931), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is the only film to have received nominations in every category for which it was eligible. But it's likely that if the color/black-and-white division had been eliminated a year earlier, the film would have been shut out of some of these categories. Though he was a noted cinematographer, Wexler doesn't do his best work on Virginia Woolf, partly because Nichols, making his directing debut, called on him to do some close-up shots that not only don't hold focus but also distract from the essence of the drama, the interplay of its four characters. Nominations also went to Ernest Lehman as the film's producer and screenwriter, Nichols as director, George Groves for sound, Sam O'Steen for film editing, and Alex North for score. Oh, and if you're wondering why the title is sung to "Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush" instead of "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", essentially killing the joke, it's because the Disney studios, who owned the rights to the tune, wanted too much money.

gif from damelizabeth

#Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? #Elizabeth Taylor #Richard Burton #Mike Nichols

[tcmparty]

@tcmparty live tweet schedule for the week beginning Monday, November 08 2020. Look for us on Twitter…watch and tweet along…remember to add #TCMParty to your tweets so everyone can find them :) All times are Eastern.

Monday, November 09 at 8:00 p.m. LOLITA (1962) This adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's racy classic focuses on an aging intellectual in love with a teenager.

Thursday, November 12 at 8:00 p.m. THE GILDED LILY (1935) A news reporter turns the woman he loves into a media star after she rejects an aristocrat's marriage proposal.   

Saturday, November 14 at 10:00 p.m. BROTHER ORCHID (1940) After a failed hit, a mob chief recuperates in a monastery.                                      

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[unateoriadegliautori]

if I had a million (1932)

#ernst lubitsch #norman taurog #stephen roberts #norman z mcleod #james cruze #william a seiter #h bruce humberstone #charles laughton #gary cooper #wc fields #george raft #jack oakie #charles ruggles #may robson