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bestblogmedia · 17 days

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Film Review: The Godfather (16)

The Godfather is a 1972 crime film directed by Italian American Francis Ford Coppola. It is adapted from a novel of the same name authored by Italian American novelist Mario Puzo. The film is known for starring now-legendary actors like Marlon Brando and Al Pacino and was shot by cinematographer Gordon Willis. It chronicles the rise to power of family outsider Michael Corleone as he becomes the Don of the Corleone family.

The movie uses visually dark, shadowy scenes to symbolize the morally dark doings of the various crime families of New York, particularly the Corleones and the Tattaglias. For example, most of the defining scenes of the movie are set at nighttime. Another way the film uses the element of sight is to contrast otherwise peaceful, mundane occurrences with the activities of the Corleones. For example, the film contrasts the wedding of Connie to Carlo with Vito accepting requests as the Don, as well as the baptism of Michael as godfather to his sister's baby with the murders of the other families' heads on his orders. The movie uses the element of sound to enhance certain scenes. For example, it uses a build-up from silence to the film's main theme to dramatically reveal the head of Jack Woltz’s horse lying in his bed and the sound of the baby crying during Michael's baptism as godfather to foreshadow the murders of the other families’ heads. It also uses the sound of a train whistle to build tension before Michael kills Sollozzo and McCluskey. In terms of color, the film uses earthy, muted tones, evoking a nostalgic feel and solidifying the setting as post-World War II America. It also uses the color orange to symbolize death, as Vito Corleone dies of a heart attack with a piece of orange in his mouth, and a basket of oranges is nearby when he is gunned down earlier in the film. In the movie, the camera evokes motion as it zooms out and pans, following and focusing on the principal characters. For example, in the opening scene alone, the camera zooms out from Bonasera, the undertaker, to reveal one of the main characters, Don Vito Corleone. The film also uses the element of emotion by allowing the audience to feel the way the characters are feeling through their lines. For example, Vito expresses his grief for his son Santino's murder with the line "Look how they massacred my boy."

Something that made this film interesting to watch for me was the perspective it offered. Instead of framing the Mafia as the antagonistic force, The Godfather portrays it in a more sympathetic light, bringing up themes of loyalty and family. Also worth noting is that at least to me, the film subtly warns against government corruption - an example being minor antagonist Mark McCluskey, a corrupt police officer, and the brief mention given to many influential figures apparently under the Corleones' control.

In my opinion, the film should have given minor characters Fredo Corleone, Luca Brasi, and Johnny Fontane more significant roles to play in the story. Other than that, I am unsure if the film could be improved.

The film's message to me was a warning: "If you get into crime, it is hard to get out. Crime hardens the kindest of men." When I saw that Michael could so casually lie to his sister and his wife about murdering his brother-in-law upon ascending to the position of Godfather, I realized just how ruthless he had become.

All in all, I would recommend the film to others, provided they are of appropriate age and mental maturity. Watching The Godfather requires attention to detail and focus to appreciate, traits slowly disappearing in a world that runs on instant gratification.

#media literacy #essay #film analysis

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diamondstuddedflunkies · 1 year

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Who do you think was more evil? Jack Woltz or Luca Brasi?

This hurts to think about, they're both so despicable. I just want to preface that they're both the same amount of evil, in different ways. But judging by actions alone, Luca killed the newborn he fathered, possibly raped a teenager, and has killed multiple people. But Woltz is a known child rapist and pedophile, which is also really evil. I'm gonna go puke now...

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brody75 · 6 years

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The Godfather (1972)

#the godfather #john marley #jack woltz #francis ford coppola

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kevrocksicehouse · 2 years

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Notes on The Godfather – 50 years later.

A breakdown of one of cinema’s greatest achievements half a century later.

1) “I believe in America.” Such an audaciously pretentious opening line and it takes all of one shadowy conversation to make it perfect. The darkness. The undertaker’s anguish only barely hiding his condescension. The Don’s old world courtliness expressing contempt at the man’s naivete – only a fool believes in America.

2) The Wedding. One sixth of the three-hour movie, this introduces the Corleones – volatile Sonny (James Caan), quiet thoughtful Michael (Al Pacino), spoiled princess Connie (Talia Shire), weak and stupid Fredo (John Cazale), and adopted consigliore Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) -- and we see them literally in their best light, in the glow of a raucous Italian wedding reception. We see them as a close-knit family. We also see Michael tell his girlfriend Kay (Diane Keaton) gruesome stories about what his family has sanctioned and when he goes too far, says “That’s my family Kay – it’s not me,” another badly portentous line that Pacino injects with just enough self-doubt to make it seem poignant.

3) Pacino vs. Brando. It’s generally accepted these days that Brando’s Best Actor Oscar nomination (and win) and Pacino’s Best Supporting nom should be reversed. Brando’s screen time is considerably smaller (he spends most of the movie’s middle third in a hospital bed) and Michael’s acceptance of his family and rise to power is the movie’s main arc. But Brando’s performance suffuses the movie with the Don’s world view, his ethics (such as they are) regrets and defiance set against the newer, more ruthless (or at least less romanticized) criminal world that encircles them and that will engulf Michael. Brando’s old world courtliness seduces us into the Corleones world while Pacino carries Michael’s own seduction as the film’s tragedy. Which actor is better is ultimately a dull question as the transition of the film from one to the other is one of the greatest achievements of movie acting in film history.

4) The horse’s head. Tom is dispatched to Hollywood to fulfill a request for Johnny Fontane (Al Martino), a Sinatra-like crooner being denied a plum acting role by blustery studio head Jack Woltz (John Marley). In a small short story within the movie Duvall and Marley play out a drama pitting Hagen’s bland, corporate dispassion against the mogul’s coarse irascibility as the lawyer makes him an offer he doesn’t know he can’t refuse. Part of the film’s seduction of us is that Woltz is so crassly off-putting that we see Hagen as a reasonable man, and even seeing the act of horrific violence that ends the sequence (and gets Fontane the part) we half-buy the movie’s mantra: It’s just business, not personal.

5) Luca Brasi. The Corleones are being muscled by New York’s other four families into dealing drugs and the Don’s refusal may threaten war, so he asks the thuggish Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana) to feign treachery and infiltrate a rival gang. What looks like a major subplot is soon revealed as a red herring. The violence was a big deal (and a big selling point) at the time and watching it we understand. It’s not gory, but shocking and sudden.

6) The Bells of St Mary. Michael and Kay come out of a movie theater talking about the film, and let’s just enjoy for a second the last moment either of them will have a moment’s peace.

7) The Hospital. After Vito is hit, Michael rushes to see him in the hospital to find it almost deserted and his father unguarded. Coppola lets us put together what happens as Michael does and his quick thinking (which also calls in a wedding favor) saves Vito from a hit and cements his loyalty to the family (“I’m with you now”). That his conversion occurs in a moment that justifies his paranoia will color Pacino’s performance in the sequel.

8) Michael’s choice. After Michael comes out of the bathroom he takes his sweet time making a choice which will decide the rest of his life. If he’d waited any longer we might have suffocated.

9) The news. Two of the greatest moments in Brando’s career involve Vito getting the news about his sons – when one of them is killed and when one has returned to the fold. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is the cause of more grief.

10) Sicily. Michael, hiding out, falls in love and gets married in the film’s second wedding. This time we see the ceremony. Only one of each married couple will live past the movie.

11) Sonny. Santino was a bad Don because he took everything personally and his enemies knew how to exploit that, and for all his infidelities and his monster of a temper he was the fullest human being in the film. When James Caan leaves the movie something vibrant is gone and the rest of the film follows the machinations of hushed, closed-in men.

12) The Peace. The Don half-capitulates on drugs and of all the lines quoted in the films, I rarely hear “They’re animals anyway, let them lose their souls”, spoken by Don Giuseppe about the decision to “keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds.” Aside from the casual racism of the statement it is the only time it is inferred that the gangster’s “business” impacts innocent people. There’s never any mention of the rent money thrown away by gamblers or the corruption of the labor unions the mob controls. At the time there were a steady stream of Blaxploitation movies that flowed from the Harlem drug scourge that would come from that decision – and its reasons. What if that line had been spoken by Vito? Or by Michael?

13) Vegas. The first humiliation of Fredo which would have disastrous consequences in the next film. And Moe Green (Alex Rocco), ditto.

14) The Orange Peel. Almost entirely improvised by Brando and one of the great death scenes. An old man playing with his grandson succumbs almost peacefully in a beautifully shot garden on a sunny day. Who wouldn’t want to go that way?

15) “Today I settle all family business”. The baptism of Connie and Carlo’s firstborn child, intercut with repeated assassinations of all the other Dons, along with Moe Green (you don’t say no to the Corleones). Michael caps it all by browbeating a confession for setting up Sonny’s murder, promising to let him live and then almost immediately having him garroted to death. We’ve seen why these men deserve their death but as Michael renounces Satan as his men kill repeatedly from his orders his hypocrisy, and our implication in it, are laid bare.

16) Michael lies. Confronted by Connie about the murder of her husband Michael lies about it and when Kay calls him out he says that “This one time, this one time, I’ll let you ask me about my affairs.” Then he lies about everything and then shuts his door on her. Fade to black. Credits. The scene echoes the last shot of John Ford’s the Searchers but where John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards closes the door to exile himself from a community he is unworthy of, Michael shuts out Kay, the world, us to retreat into a darkness he will not escape. If a blockbuster film has ever had a more disturbing ending I can’t think of it. And I believe in America.

#the godfather #martin scorsese #marlon brando #al pacino #50 years #kevrock #analysis

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panic-in-needle-park · 3 years

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How did Jack Woltz sleep through someone putting a dead ass horse head in his bed

I sleep heavy but that's taking it a bit too far 👁👄👁

#the godfather #like how ??#mine #im just confusion #i did sleep through fire alarm #so i get it ish but ITS A HEAD

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downwithpeople · 3 years

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one problem with mario puzo is that he’s very enamored of the idea of great men. the godfather is full of strong men, men of willpower, men who have fought their way through life to get to where they need to be, as if there is some inherent quality to their souls which allows them to attain their lofty positions in society. even jack woltz is romantically portrayed as this vigorous and virile self-made man, though the closest living example of his breed is fucking harvey weinstein. the idea that this is all purely happenstance is just completely out of the question. considering puzo’s background as a pulp writer for those men’s life magazines that featured exaggerated accounts of allied bravery in WW2 this isn’t surprising.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Salma Hayek in Savages is One of the Most Underrated Movie Gangsters

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“You thought I wouldn’t notice,” cartel boss Elena Sánchez (Salma Hayek) demands of her loyal caporegime Ludo (a physically and emotionally imposing Benicio del Toro). The brutal and effective killer does not defend himself when the head of his family, and boss of bosses, slaps him with the force of a bull whip. He doesn’t even flinch. That would mean death. Oliver Stone’s Savages may not be his most renowned mob movie offering, but Hayek’s drug lord is one of cinema’s most groundbreaking gangsters.

Stone is no stranger to iconic gangsters. He wrote the screenplay for Brian De Palma’s Scarface, which brought Al Pacino’s coke-fueled Cuban political asylum seeker, Tony Montana, into celluloid’s perennial rogue’s gallery. For his 2012 cartel twist of a gangster film, Savages, Stone let Hayek reset the template. Her Elena Sánchez is street smart, tech savvy and a wiz at business. Her venture is so cut-throat, her underlings sever heads in their enthusiasm. Sánchez commands that much loyalty. Her gang decapitates wayward members, rivals and other stray wolves to bring lambs into the fold. They capture the proceedings on video which they send as messages in introductory offers of hostile takeovers.

Our ostensible heroes in this environment are Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch), who’ve been friends since high school. Ben went to Berkeley and took botany classes; Chon went into the military and took seeds. The latter’s tour of duty in Iraq left him seething with trauma but well-trained tactically. His tour in Afghanistan left him tactless, but introduced him to the finest marijuana in the known world. The pair now run a multimillion-dollar cani-business in the era when the plant was on the verge of becoming legalized on the West Coast. They, and their mutual live-in girlfriend O (Blake Lively), are idealists, using their new wealth to invest in philanthropy. Sánchez’s cartel wants them to join the “family.” It is a renowned and venerable matriarchy.

Sánchez’s enterprise is larger than Vito Corleone’s in The Godfather, but then she is a wise and tough-nurturing godmother. Nicknamed La Reina, the boss of the Mexican Baja Cartel doesn’t merely conquer her competitors, she destroys idealism. To get the thing she wants, Elena kidnaps the thing Ben and Chon love most, O. This is a talent, discovering the things which people most treasure. When Tom Hagen reported back to his don in The Godfather, the family father discerned the Hollywood bigshot Jack Woltz loved his prized racehorse more than any other thing on earth. He sent a message.

Elena’s most potent message is a niche-meme of sorts. While streaming live footage of O in tortuous circumstances, she cuts to an animation of O’s head popping off, leaving an ever-increasing stain of blood which ultimately covers the screen. That’s her horse’s head. This is a message movie and that’s “the word.” Hayek is a versatile performer. She brought black comedy subtlety to her roles in The Faculty and Dogma; sensual earth tones to Frida; and romantic fantasy into Once Upon a Time In Mexico. She ratted out her gangster boss in Everly, but made her bones as an assassin in The Hitman’s Bodyguard. Hayek has also proven herself a master thief, stealing From Dusk Till Dawn with one scene which she shared with George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, and a snake. In Savages, Hayek is allowed to be something female characters are routinely denied: ruthless, amoral, and savage.

Hayek presents a straightforward boss with strong family values. Elena Sánchez took over the cartel after the deaths of her husband and twin sons, but there is no room for irony for the Black Widow character. Hayek expertly balances public bravado and private sorrow. Elena is wise, like someone who paid attention to the lessons of different generations. Warnings about getting high on your own supply, and underestimating the other guy’s greed, would sound perfectly natural coming out her mouth. She’s the antithesis of her prisoner, whom she calls Ophelia after sensing the young woman exudes the need for a mother’s accumulated knowledge. Elena’s own actual daughter similarly rejects the past in the movie, but this is a gangster film tradition, sadly. Every mob boss wants their children to move into a thriving legitimate world. Elena says her daughter is “ashamed of me and I’m proud of her for it.”

The gangland dictator’s only vulnerability is her teenage daughter. It is also Elena’s strength. A mob godfather chalks blood up as an expense. Elena, the mother, is not only capable of doing anything for her children, but also justifying any action because it is done for her children. She only took over the cartel because her son was weak and would have been killed. This makes her character fearless.

Regardless of the hard-bodied eye candy, Taylor-Johnson, Kitsch, and Lively are bland next to Hayek and del Toro, who see entitlement and philanthropy as disgusting conceits of wealth and soft privilege. Lively’s Ophelia is not a deep, William Shakespeare tragic figure. She’s Paris Hilton in a hemp halter top, a seeming trophy for the nouveau stoner rich. O neither shocks nor impresses the crime queen, whose got hideaways and mansions scattered internationally for whim or lam.

“There’s something wrong with your love story, baby,” wise mob boss Elena notes like she’s doling out favors at her daughter’s wedding. “They may love you but they will never love you as much as they love each other. Otherwise they wouldn’t share you, would they?” Their ménage a trois relationship is also seen as absolutely savage to del Toro’s Lado.

The Mexican gang think the gringos lack dignity, tradition, family, and honor. The Californians are appalled by the brutality of the narco-traffickers from south of the border where torture is a routine cost of doing the business. Local D.E.A. agent Dennis (John Travolta) puts his trust in graft. He skims profit from Elena, accepts bribes from her rival El Azul, as well as Lado, and Ben and Chon. Yet he is surprised when he gets bit on the hand at feeding time. “You stabbed a federal agent,” he moans as his faith is shaken in a scene reminiscent of the death of Mel Bernstein in Scarface. Sadly, it only expands Dennis’ jurisdiction.

It is noted in the film that Elena is counting on the reelection of a specific mayor to retain her power base in Mexico. Stone directed the 2009 documentary South of the Border, which presented the untold histories of leftist Latin American presidents. Savages, a commercial film, presents the cultural relationship between Anglo-Americans and Latinos in a way mainstream Hollywood films rarely attempt. Most of this is done through normalizing sequences which act as allegorical bridges, such as when Elena flips back and forth between English and Spanish when chastising Lado and the high-ranking cartel accountant Alex Reyes (Demián Bichir). She is as much a mob representative as when Lado greets Ben with a warm “Welcome to the barrio” as he lets him into his Tijuana hotel suite.

Elena brings an entirely new and unique reworking of the South American narco boss cliché. This is best illustrated with the most subtle of the film’s social commentary, delivered by del Toro, who’d previously won an Oscar for his role in the drug war film Traffic. When Lado drops by Dennis’ house, he’s backed by a landscaping crew packing chainsaws.

Savages is an adaptation of Don Winslow’s pulp fiction novel but only hints at the violence journalist Ioan Grillo wrote about in the book El Narco. The film is set in Southern California’s Laguna Beach, which is close to the province of the Sinaloa Cartel. The film says Elena heads the Baja Cartel, which has operated in the U.S. for years. Sandra Avila Beltran was known as La Reina del Pacifico, but Elena’s circumstances more loosely resemble Veronica Mireya Moreno “La Flaca” Carreon, the first known female leader of the Los Zetas gang of San Nicolas de los Garza near northern Mexico.

The authentic blend of known crime figures brings an immediacy to the character. Hayek’s realism registers subconsciously, adding shades to the gangster persona which blur into a real person. It also instills a real sense of peril. We worry about the antihero.

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But never forget, Elena is a badass. Savages reflects the violence of the then-ongoing drug wars in Mexico. It looks real and feels painful. The first shot the audience gets of the cartel is a blood-slicked concrete floor, headless bodies and decapitated heads, and Lado in a Lucha Libre freestyle wrestler mask. Elena’s crew is one of the most efficiently lethal in the business. Anything less is unacceptable. Lado calls in a debt on lost years from a former attorney by shooting him in both knee caps. He retires Esteban, the henchman who watched over Ophelia while she was in captivity, because he is too soft.

One thing which separates Savages from the many drug war genre films is how Stone mixes media. He artfully moves through visual formats, color schemes, black and white grit, webcam and cell-phone video pixelation, though all of this is restrained when compared with Natural Born Killers. In that film, the villains were strong but powerless, hurled by forces beyond their control. In Savages, Elena exudes authority. “We didn’t make you an offer to hear a counteroffer,” she explains confidently, turning the screw on mere offers you can’t refuse. “We made you a deal to which we expected compliance.”

Stone is as fascinated by power as he is repelled by it. Like many gangster and Stone films, the mobsters at the center of Savages are allegories. Stone took on financial criminals in Wall Street, and here Elena’s cartel is likewise a modern corporation of sorts, putting the squeeze on the little guy. It’s the same thing real-life Bronx bootlegger Dutch Schultz did when he took over the Harlem numbers racket. The Sánchez expansion is the same as when the Corleone family moved in on Las Vegas. Elena muscles in during negotiations, dropping golden parachutes with balloon interests, percentages, sliding scales over three years, and other buzz-killing business school collateral damage. Even as talks deteriorate, Sánchez keeps a cooler head than Tony Montana and is able to strategize in the long term.

Her operations are brazen. When negotiations aren’t being carried out via computer, business is conducted in public, under the protective shield of a small squadron of snipers. Her hackers are as expert as Ben and Chon’s. All of this was within state of the art, real-time operations, which further solidifies Sánchez’s bona fides. Stone spent 15 months of combat duty in Vietnam, and assigned Kitsch to train with a Navy SEAL advisor during filming. Blakely told Collider she “met a little girl who had been kidnapped by the Mexican drug cartel. We met people in, of all areas, the marijuana field.” Hayek spoke with members of drug gangs.

“I actually talked to some people involved in the cartel that described, on two different occasions, women that have gotten quite high in the cartel,” Hayek told Collider. “As a matter of fact, they are incredibly efficient, much more so than men… The women are actually colder. The guy gets angry and thinks he has to do something, and the women are not like that. They are all about the business. They’re not about the vendetta, or who is more macho. They’re about getting things done.”

Elena Sánchez gets things done, and she does it with style. This is a real gangster policy which goes all the way back to Arnold Rothstein, who cleaned up street thugs like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, put them in suits, and taught them which forks to use at dinner. Dutch Shultz laid out a small fortune to outfit his outfit in the latest fashion. In Dead End, Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart) shows off his silk suit, tailor-made. The gangsters in Sergio Leone’s mob masterpiece Once Upon A Time in America wore wingtip collars. In American Gangster, Denzel Washington’s Frank Lucas blows his cover to drape himself in a chinchilla coat.

Hayek set Elena’s style in stone, wearing the same diamond necklace and silken black wig in every scene. “These women know they are going to be an icon and they create a character,” she told THR. “These women design themselves. They don’t want to be versatile. They want you to always remember them.”

Elena Sánchez may only remember Ben and Chon by their nicknames, “Nothing Personal” and “Eat Shit Caviar,” but Salma Hayek presents an unforgettable cinematic crime boss. Savages lives up to its title because Hayek cultivates the untamed natural state with unnatural ease. Sánchez knows enough not to keep too high a profile on “most wanted” lists, but as a gangster, she should never be underestimated.

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randomgodfatherthoughts · 1 year

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"Hagen sighed. There would be no way to “handle” Jack Woltz. He opened his briefcase and tried to get some paper work done, but he was too tired. He ordered another martini and reflected on his life."

From The Godfather novel by Mario Puzo

#I share Tom's approach to paperwork #Fuck this shit #It's martini time #Well I would if I drank alcohol #But I'm definitely in the fuck this paperwork camp #and also Camp Procrastination #Tom Hagen

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 1, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

In honor of this year's Kentucky Derby (won today by Medina Spirit), I'm posting a piece my friend Michael S. Green and I wrote together a number of years ago on Ten Famous American Horses. It has no deep meaning... it's just fun. It remains one of my favorite things I had a hand in writing, and I'm pleased to have an excuse to share it.

I'll be back on the usual beat tomorrow.

1) Traveller

General Robert E. Lee rode Traveller (spelled with two Ls, in the British style) from February 1862 until the general’s death in 1870. Traveller was a grey American Saddlebred of 16 hands. He had great endurance for long marches, and was generally unflappable in battle, although he once broke both of General Lee’s hands when he shied at enemy movements. Lee brought Traveller with him when he assumed the presidency of Washington and Lee University. Traveller died of tetanus in 1871. He is buried on campus, where the safe ride program still uses his name.

2) Comanche

Comanche was attached to General Custer’s detachment of the 7th Cavalry when it engaged the Lakota in 1876 at the Battle of Little Bighorn. The troops in the detachment were all killed in the engagement, but soldiers found Comanche, badly wounded, two days later. They nursed him back to health, and he became the 7th Cavalry’s mascot. The commanding officer decreed that the horse would never again be ridden, and that he would always be paraded, draped in black, in all military ceremonies involving the 7th Cavalry. When Comanche died of colic in 1891, he was given a full military funeral (the only other horse so honored was Black Jack, who served in more than a thousand military funerals in the 1950s and 1960s). Comanche’s taxidermied body is preserved in the Natural History Museum at the University Of Kansas.

3) Beautiful Jim Key

Beautiful Jim Key was a performing horse trained by formerly enslaved veterinarian Dr. William Key. Key demonstrated how Beautiful Jim could read, write, do math, tell time, spell, sort mail, and recite the Bible. Beautiful Jim performed from 1897 to 1906 and became a legend. An estimated ten million Americans saw him perform, and others collected his memorabilia – buttons, photos, and postcards – or danced the Beautiful Jim Key two-step. Dr. Key insisted that he had taught Beautiful Jim using only kindness, and Beautiful Jim Key’s popularity was important in preventing cruelty to animals in America, with more than 2 million children signing the Jim Key Band of Mercy, in which they pledged: “I promise always to be kind to animals.”

4) Man o’ War

Named for his owner, August Belmont, Jr., who was overseas in WWI, Man o’ War is widely regarded as the top Thoroughbred racehorse of all time. He won 20 of his 21 races and almost a quarter of a million dollars in the early twentieth century. His one loss – to “Upset” – came after a bad start. Man o’ War sired many of America’s famous racehorses, including Hard Tack, which in turn sired Seabiscuit, the small horse that came to symbolize hope during the Great Depression.

5) Trigger

Entertainer Roy Rogers chose the palomino Trigger from five rented horses to be his mount in a Western film in the 1930s, changing his name from Golden Cloud to Trigger because of his quick mind and feet. Rogers rode Trigger in his 1950s television series, making the horse a household name. When Trigger died, Rogers had his skin draped over a Styrofoam mold and displayed it in the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in California. He also had a 24-foot statue of Trigger made from steel and fiberglass. One other copy of that mold was also made: it is “Bucky the Bronco,” which rears above the Denver Broncos stadium south scoreboard.

6) Sergeant Reckless

American Marines in Korea bought a mare in October 1952 from a Korean stable boy who needed the money to buy an artificial leg for his sister, who had stepped on a land mine. The marines named her Reckless after their unit’s nickname, the Reckless Rifles. They made a pet of her, and trained her to carry supplies and to evacuate wounded. She learned to travel supply routes without a guide: on one notable day she made 51 solo trips. Wounded twice, she was given a battlefield rank of corporal in 1953 and promoted to sergeant after the war, when she was also awarded two Purple Hearts and a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal.

7) Mr. Ed

Mr. Ed was a talking palomino in a 1960s television show by the same name. At a time when Westerns dominated American television, Mr. Ed was the anti-Western, with the main human character a klutzy architect and the hero a horse that was fond of his meals and his comfortable life, and spoke with the voice of Allan “Rocky” Lane, who made dozens of “B” westerns. But the show was a five-year hit as it married the past to the future. Mr. Ed offered a gentle homely wisdom that enabled him to straighten out the troubles of the humans around him. The startling special effects that made it appear that the horse was talking melded modern technology with the comforting traditional community depicted in the show.

8) Black Jack

Black Jack, named for John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, was the riderless black horse in the funerals of John F. Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and Douglas MacArthur, as well as more than a thousand other funerals with full military honors. A riderless horse, with boots reversed in the stirrups, symbolized a fallen leader, while Black Jack’s brands – a US brand and an army serial number – recalled the army’s history. Black Jack himself was buried with full military honors; the only other horse honored with a military funeral was Comanche.

9) Khartoum

Khartoum was the prize stud horse of Jack Woltz, the fictional Hollywood mogul in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. In one of the film version’s most famous scenes, after Woltz refuses requests from Don Vito Corleone to cast singer Johnny Fontane in a movie, Woltz wakes up to find Khartoum’s head in bed with him… and agrees to use Fontane in the film. In the novel, Fontane wins the Academy Award for his performance. According to old Hollywood rumor, the story referred to real events. The rumor was that mobsters persuaded Columbia Pictures executive Harry Cohn to cast Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity. As Maggio, Sinatra revived his sagging film career and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

10) Secretariat

Secretariat was an American Thoroughbred that in 1973 became the first U.S. Triple Crown winner in 25 years. His records in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes still stand. After Secretariat was stricken with a painful infection and euthanized in 1989, an autopsy revealed that he had an unusually big heart. Sportswriter Red Smith once asked his trainer how Secretariat had run one morning; Charlie Hatton replied, “The trees swayed.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Derby Day #horses #history

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architectnews · 3 years

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Beverly House For Sale, Southern California

Beverly House For Sale, Luxury Southern California Home, Real Estate, US House Photos

Beverly House For Sale in Beverly Hills

Apr 13, 2021

Beverly House For Sale

Historic Hearst Mansion Back On Market At Reduced Price!

Location: Beverly Hills, Southern California, USA

Source: TopTenRealEstateDeals.com

Located in the heart of Beverly Hills, the fabled Beverly House, the showplace of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, is back on the market at a reduced asking price of $89.75 million – down from $185 million in 2016.

One of California’s most historic homes, Marion Davies, Hearst’s girlfriend, purchased the house in 1946 as a gift for Hearst. The couple moved there from the Hearst Castle, where they had been living in another historic California mansion, and stayed until William’s death in 1951.

Beverly House is most well known for its memorable movie scenes in The Godfather, where Hollywood movie producer Jack Woltz woke up to a bloody horse head in his bed, and the glamorous estate where Whitney Houston’s character lived in The Bodyguard.

The mansion was also a favorite of the Kennedy family, where John and Jackie spent part of their honeymoon in 1953, and later became the West Coast presidential election headquarters for JFK’s 1960 presidential campaign. In 2018, Beyoncé filmed part of her groundbreaking visual album Black Is King on the grounds, and in 2019, Adel held her 31st birthday party there.

Designed in 1927 by Gordon Kaufmann, the architect who did the Hoover Dam, Hollywood Palladium, Los Angeles Times building and the Santa Anita Racetrack, Hearst’s Beverly House is the quintessential emblem of Hollywood’s Golden Era.

The estate is well known for its H-form architecture characterized by long colonnades, wide balconies, arched floor-to-ceiling windows and its spaciousness.

Some of the spaces include a stunning two-story library with hand-carved paneling and a wraparound walkway; a formal living room with its 22-foot-high, hand-painted, arched ceiling; a state-of-the-art spa; a billiards room with herringbone parquet floors and an intricately designed ceiling and carved fireplace – both from the Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

The main-level hallway is a staggering 82 feet up to the 32-foot billiard room, which is open to the main hallway for a total of 114 feet visible upon walking into the entry. The grand upstairs hallway is more than 102 feet long and features a 40-foot wide, nearly 9-foot-tall Dennis Abbe mural that was commissioned by Hugh Hefner. The gardens, designed by landscape architect Paul Thiene, are a focal point including cascading waterfalls to the pool. The main house and two guest houses sit on 3.5 acres.

The Beverly House listing agents are Anthony Marguleas of Amalfi Estates in Los Angeles, Gary Gold of Hilton & Hyland in Beverly Hills and Zizi Pak of Rodeo Realty in Beverly Hills. The property is listed by order of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

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YouTube Credit: Sean Evans, @evvo1991 backtothemovies.com/

Photography: Jim Bartsch

Beverly House For Sale, Southern California images / information received 130421

Location: Beverly Hills, California, USA

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