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Victorian & Edwardian Actresses

Feb
2010

Your correspondent has just discovered a new favourite photographer—Mr. Alexander Bassano (1829-1913)—via a Flickr set of Victorian and Edwardian actresses collected by pufferfish_77.

One’s inner nerd can’t help but marvel at the resemblance actress Daisy Hancox seems to bear to another actress, one Carrie Fisher; albeit some forty years before there was a Carrie Fisher. Also of note is the timeless quality of the Mary Clare photograph, which seems like it could have been taken yesterday.

Daisy Hancox by Bassano 1916, originally uploaded by pufferfish_76.

Rosie Campbell by Bassano 1919, originally uploaded by pufferfish_76.

Evelyn Laye by Bassano 1917, originally uploaded by pufferfish_76.

Julia James by Bassano 1913, originally uploaded by pufferfish_76.

Mary Clare by Bassano 1914, originally uploaded by pufferfish_76.

Sheila Hayes as Moy Fah Loy in ‘The Yellow Jacket’ by Bassano 1913, originally uploaded by pufferfish_76.

You can also see literally hundreds of Bassano portraits at the UK National Portrait Gallery’s online collection.

Learn to Dance: Riverdance

by Chris Taylor

Jan
2010

I was never a big fan of “Irish dancing”, but I am little awestruck by Fintan Maher’s raw talent in an art form he has never previously studied. Here he demonstrates how a talented amateur can pull off a Michael Flatley routine in front of an audience.

Learn to Dance: Lady Gaga—Bad Romance

by Chris Taylor

Jan
2010

Your correspondent was blessed by Nature with the rhythm and raw dancing talent of a blindfolded, epileptic bull in a china shop. But I can nonetheless appreciate the grace and skill required for others to execute complex choreography; so to this end the Company will serve up an occasional series of dance lessons. Today’s lesson is fellow Canuck Laurie Ann Gibson’s cheoreography for Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, with guest performer Po, of the Teletubbies.

Also a highly faithful rendition by the very talented dancer, teacher, choreographer and law student Marissa Montanez:

London’s jazzy nightclubs

by Chris Taylor

Jan
2010

The various entertainments on offer in a London nightclub of the late 1920s or early 1930s.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there

by Chris Taylor

Jan
2010

Carmel Myers, originally uploaded by Chickeyonthego.

As I get older, I am more cognizant of the fact that the knowledge and experience that is bound up in each us is slowly but inexorably drifting toward oblivion. Even when we consciously leave echoes behind in words and images, the key to unlocking a future reader’s understanding of our times—the context—can sometimes be lost.

When I re-focused my blogging on aviation and its Golden Age (1919-1939), I began to discover patterns and mysteries that are hard for a non-contemporary of the times to grasp.

For example, when poring through images of Hollywood personalities from the 1920s and 1930s, I began to notice that there was an awful lot of promotional photographs of various actresses attired for classical ballet, complete with pointe shoes and tutus:

Mary Pickford (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Norma Shearer (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Bessie Love (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Marceleine Day (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Bernice Claire (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Polly Ann Young (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Helene Costello (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Colleen Moore (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Elissa Landi (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Then as we look at studios’ promotional images into the 1940s and 50s, it appears that actresses only appeared in ballet costumes when their performing arts background specifically included dance, such as Cyd Charisse and Vera Ellen.

Cyd Charisse (Flickr: AliceJapan)

Vera Ellen (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Ronnie Cunningham (Flickr: Chickeyonthego)

Although the popularity of dance has remained at a relatively consistent level throughout North America (and its modern/contemporary forms are even undergoing something of a surge in acceptance due to shows like Dancing with the Stars), ballet has suffered from audience neglect in recent decades.

My reading has led me to believe that its period of greatest popularity was probably during the early to mid-19th century, when Marie Taglioni’s pointe work in La Sylphide (1832) heralded the rise of willowy female dancers, pushing men into the background of what had until then been a male-dominated art. Ballet’s drawing power peaked, then waned across Europe in the late 19th century, although it remained a prominent form of entertainment in Russia and Denmark. Ballet then had a renaissance in western Europe around 1909, when Sergei Diaghilev founded Ballets Russes in Paris—which was at that time home to a large Russian expatriate community. Following that, ballet gained wider appeal with American audiences in the 1930s—the upper classes gravitating toward classical ballet, and the lower classes appreciating it in highly bowdlerised forms through Vaudeville and burlesque. (Robert Allen examines the claim that ballet desensitised American audiences to “leg shows”—which later evolved into burlesque—in Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture.) Ballet had yet another great resurgence in the 1950s and 1960s as choreographers like George Balanchine recalibrated it for mass appeal to Baby Boom audiences.

What is difficult for me—as a non-specialist—to appreciate is whether this flurry of 1920s/30s ballet costuming in studio promotions, but a relative lack of same for the 40s and beyond, is a result of:

The studio cashing in on ballet’s genuinely prominent place in the popular imagination of audiences of that time.
The studio emphasizing the dance training or natural talent of that particular actress.
The studio promoting a dance sequence in that particular film.
A limited range of roles and archetypes on offer for young actresses in the occasionally stultifying Hollywood studio system (which was only dismantled in 1946); i.e. “you can be a dancer or you can be nothing”
A clever attempt at providing more revealing “cheesecake” type shots without arousing the ire of censors.
Some artifact of little-known cultural ephemera, perhaps dance training was compulsory for the non-headline actresses in studio pictures.
Some combination of all of the above.

There are many factors to consider, and without knowing in detail the history of each actress and her skill set, it is hard to know where to begin to explore any of the possibilities. But these are the things one notices when exploring the past, and the context is hard to discover.

Tamara Toumanova and Serge Lifar in Australia, c. 1939

by Chris Taylor

Jan
2010

Prima ballerina Tamara Toumanova and premier danseur Serge Lifar, both of the Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (and its various post-1929 successor companies), goofing off while touring in Australia through 1939 and 1940.

By the Sword and the Cross

by Chris Taylor

Jan
2010

In what is surely a case of life imitating the imagination of the Flea, on New Year’s Day, Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ, announced that he is working on a symphonic metal album based on the life of Charlemagne (or Charles the Great)—King of the Franks, and foremost leader of a Frankish empire that would later become the Holy Roman Empire. The album derives its name from Charlemagne’s motto (or dictum), and is due to be released in mid-March of this year; the Manchester Guardian has more details:

“To my surprise and indeed great pleasure, I have suddenly found that there is another string to my bow,” Sir Christopher said in a video message. Due on 15 March, Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross features the 87-year-old singing and acting alongside a full orchestra, choir, and a large cast of undisclosed guest vocalists. “There’s a lot of characters in this particular album,” Lee explained. “A lot. There’s Charlemagne himself of course, which I sing, and then there’s young Charlemagne, Charlemagne’s father, Charlemagne’s brother, … [even] the Pope.”

… “It’s pretty unexpected,” Lee admitted. Although he has previously worked on metal projects – narrating several records by Italian band Rhapsody of Fire, and collaborating briefly with Manowar – he has never released an album before. This particular project resonated not just with the actor’s dark, storm-whipped soul – but with his family tree. “I am through the Carandini family [his mother's] actually descended from Charlemagne,” he revealed.

“It’s fascinating for me that at this stage in my life, people are beginning to look upon me as a metal singer,” Lee said. “When this comes out as a complete album, it’s going to be sensational.”

– Michaels, Sean. “Christopher Lee to release ’symphonic metal’ album.” Manchester Guardian, 5 January 2010.

We at the Company like to think of this as Sir Christopher’s belated apology for that whole Count Dooku thing, not to mention the last half-hour of The Man with the Golden Gun—where Scaramanga gets stupidly himself killed well in advance of the finale, and then James Bond spends a lot of time pointlessly fighting Scaramanga’s pint-sized henchman Nick Nack/Tattoo.

Here are some samples of the tracks on the forthcoming album:

RELATED: Christopher Lee singing with Italian symphonic metal band Rhapsody of Fire, on their 2005 single The Magic of the Wizard’s Dream.

Also, Cracked magazine has a pretty entertaining overview of Christopher Lee’s life and career.

The Met: Live in HD—Turandot

by Chris Taylor

Nov
2009

When my mother remarried this spring, I became part of a much larger blended family spread out across the continent. I also gained new step-siblings, which is a relatively novel situation for an only child. One of these is an award-winning younger step-brother who just made his debut performance with New York’s Metropolitan Opera last month, with my mother and stepfather in attendance.

On Saturday I had the opportunity to see my famous stepbrother in the Met’s grandiose production of Turandot, via The Met: Live in HD. Now I’ve seen him perform with the TSO and other companies before, but that was a pale shadow of the sumptuous spectacle put on by the Met. The staging, costumes and set design of Franco Zeffirelli’s Turandot are light years beyond the complexity of any other opera production I have ever seen in this country. It simply beggars belief.

The experience of watching opera at the cinema is a tad surreal. There’s the usual gaggle of teenaged ushers and attendants, and the usual refreshments (popcorn, candy, snacks) too. In many ways it feels wrong to partake of high culture in such a lowbrow venue, but it does have its advantages.

One such advantage is that the audience sees through the lens of the cameras; allowing close-ups, medium and wide shots as they best fit the dramatic conceits of the scene. And I will say that the Met’s camera work was excellent, fitting the flow of the story; only once or twice in the whole three hours did I feel that the director selected a sub-optimal shot. Another is that the cameras go backstage during the two intermissions, interviewing cast and musicians, and permitting us to watch an army of stage hands tear down the first act set and replace it with the absolutely mammoth palace courtyard set for the second act (which takes no less than 30 minutes).

Saturday’s broadcast was, however, hampered by some severe technical difficulties (repeated breaks in audio/video feeds, between 5 and 15 seconds in duration) that reportedly emanated from the Met itself. Cinema management at the location we attended smartly announced after the first act that due to the technical glitches, each patron would receive two complimentary “special event” passes, thus ensuring that we would, in all likelihood, end up using them to see two more “Met: Live in HD” performances (I’ve got my eye on Aida and Carmen).

Historically I have not been much of an opera seria enthusiast, and I tend to stay away from the sturm und drang of the Wagners—but like any kid who grew up watching Rabbit of Seville, I do have a sentimental fondness for the opera buffa genre. This may be one of the few times I have outright enjoyed a traditional grand opera; although the first act of Turandot failed to hook me, I was completely reeled in by the second act; whether that is due to Puccini’s orchestration, Zeffirelli’s lavish staging, or the magical combination of the two, who can say.

But at the end of the day, I liked it. I want to see more.

Turandot—Act II, In questa reggia (1988)

by Chris Taylor

Nov
2009

The Flappettes

by Chris Taylor

Oct
2009

Once again ‘the Internet’ proves the adage that whatever you can think of already exists one Google-search away. So I should not be surprised to learn (although I am) that an all-female Toronto dance company—known as The Flappettes—specialises in keeping the Jazz Age flapper stylings of our great-grandparents alive.