THE GREAT GRETA GARBO

This is all about one of my favorite actresses: the infinitely mysterious and intriguingly unknowable Greta Garbo. For years I only knew her through "Ninotchka" and "Queen Christina," which are fine films, but are not the ones you want to see if you want to understand the famous Garbo mystique.

If you want to understand the mystique, if you want to know why she was the subject of so many caricatures and parodies, you'll have to dig deeper than Ninotchka. 

You'll have to watch films like "Romance," "Grand Hotel," "Anna Christie," and "Camille."

Garbo was one of a kind, but she wasn't always like that. When she started she was just another pretty face who could act a little. When she came to Hollywood from Sweden she paniced because she realized the studios were loaded to the gills with pretty faces, who would all be obsolete the day they flashed their first wrinkle.

A documentary I saw credited her manager with the breakthrough idea that she should separate herself from the pack by carving a niche for herself as a mysterious vamp. I think a manager might have helped Marylin Monroe to create her identity. Boy, the right manager is worth his weight in gold!

 





She began to dress differently than the other girls, even differently than the other vamps. She picked a hair style that would emphasize her big forehead, rather than compensate for it. 

It was a big risk. If she failed she wouldn't even get the pretty young thing roles. 

Early on she developed the idea that she looked good in aspirational poses, and she liked to be photographed looking up, into the light. 

Somewhere along the line she got the idea that she looked good when brooding, so she brooded and brooded. She brooded so much that whole of Sweden started to brood in imitation. The Swedish film director, Ingmar Bergman made a career out of brooding. Now everybody expects Swedes to brood, and are disappointed when they discover they're mostly happy. 

I love her brooding poses.  She was the first of the great brooders like Peter Lorre and Brando. 

The idea is that life is pointless and horrific, and can only be answered with silent anguish. Garbo raised brooding to an art form.

Her look seemed to say, "How shallow happy people are! Look at them all, running around and laughing!! If they had any brains, if they realized how stupid the world really is, they'd brood just like I do!"

Actually she wasn't quite as one-dimensional as I portray her here. Her films are full of exquisitely happy moments too, even if the happiness is always crushed. 

Sometimes her brooding made her look sickly. Maybe that's what got her cast in the ultimate sickly film...



..."Camille!" Camille is a film about a dying woman who heroically declines to tell her fiance about her condition, for fear of depressing him.

She was always collapsing in his arms, and he thought she was just being emotional.

No matter how many times she dropped her food and fell like a rag doll to the floor, he thought it was because she was being refined and lady-like. Her boyfriend wasn't the brightest bulb in the box. 

Sickly and heroic: stars love roles like that! As Jennifer said in the comments, this is a flawed film that's only good when Garbo is in it. Even then, she was a little too restrained, a little too reluctant to take it over the top. I'll bet that was the director's doing. I like the film because I can easily imagine the performance that might have been, and because the plot is one of the funniest I've ever seen. I'd love to do a short cartoon parody of this!

Garbo also experimented with roles where the girls were too existential, too serious to dally with the silly men who pursued them.



At first Garbo preferred that her leading men take her in their arms and give her "The Look." Eventually she decided that it was better if she took them in her arms, and gave them the look!

Yes, Garbo picked her men! Unfortunately as she neared retirement she started to lose her confidence in the persona she'd so carefully cultivated, and attempted to play more conventional, less over-the-top roles.  Peter Lorre did the same thing. I wonder what it is about age that makes actors do that?

I NEED A REST, SO THIS IS MY LAST POST FOR A FEW DAYS. I'LL BE BACK FRIDAY NIGHT! SEE YOU THEN!!!!

TWO GUILTY PLEASURES: STELLA AND CALDER

People are going to hate me for this. I'm about to admit to a guilty pleasure that for most of my friends is the equivalent of dog torture or child molesting.  That guilty pleasure is the painting and sculpture of abstract expressionist Frank Stella.

To be honest, I don't know why I like it. I admit up front that it sometimes seems uncomfortably safe and and restrained, the kind of thing you'd see in banks and dentist offices.  You don't get the feeling that some rebellious genius worked on it.  And yet....

 


I have to admit that some of Stella's older pictures haven't aged well.  Like everybody else at the time I thought the picture above was a profound and dazzling revelation when I first saw it. Now it seems like a logo for a bus company. 

So why do I like this stuff? Maybe because it makes me think. I get ideas every time I look at it. It's all about order in the middle of chaos.  Other artists manage to juggle a few incongruities and make them work...Stella manages to take a really large number of them and not only make them work, but actually find meaning in it all. And life is a jumble isn't it? I spend an enormous amount of time trying to figure it out, and so does Stella, only he does it better than I do. 

Stella's work is an interesting blend of the intuitive and the intellectual.  It's very human in that respect. It seems to me that a real understanding and enjoyment of life requires that we use intellect and intuition simultaneously. When I walk down the street I, and probably everybody else, take in both kinds of information. I'm amazed that the brain can process all that, and still allow us to count our change at the grocery store. Actually, the job might be too big for our brains because few of us ever come to a conclusion about the things we see, but you get the feeling that agonizing over it is somehow good for us. Stella seems to understand that.

 

Here (above) he seems to have been influenced by Hockney, or maybe it was Hockney that was influenced by Stella. Very happy and pretty.

In recent years Stella's gotten interested in architecture. He does a lot of sculptures that seem like they could be buildings. The idea isn't to create finished models of workable buildings, rather it's to provoke the viewer to come up with his own ideas. For example, what do you see in the picture above? Me, I see a dark matrix that contains a house made of glass walls, and even glass floors.  Then again, I sometimes think of the matrix itself as the building. It's one continuous skyscraper, a city-size building that snakes along, and has offshoots that take different paths.

Even this sculpture (above) seems architectural to me. I don't know why, because there's no hint of walls or a roof.  I usually don't like Frank Gehry-type architecture that looks like sculpture blown up large. It wastes space, and often has disappointing interiors. In spite of that, I like Stella when he does the same thing in miniature. Maybe it's because Stella doesn't attempt to force his design solutions on us. He's just asking questions.



Above is what looks like the love child of a bag of fish tails with a stationary store.  I don't don't know why I like it, but I do. 

I wish I had a poster-size picture of this (above) abstract chaos for my bedroom wall.

On a completely different subject, let me ask if you've seen this book (above) yet. It's way overpiced, but it contains a lot of Calder's best wire caricatures.

 





Imitating Caulder, I did some of these myself and hung them in windows. It's a great effect because the wire is so thin and delicate that you're not even aware it's there at first. It's a treat for people who randomly happen to change their focus while looking out the window, and are rewarded with seeing a face that no one else sees. 

The trick is to use one continuous piece of wire. 

Here's (above) a student effort. Not bad, huh?

PARIS CIRCA 1900

I just bought my kid a book on Paris circa 1890 to 1920, and I thought I'd excerpt a few pictures here. My intention was to focus on the mean streets of turn-of-the-century Paris, the places where you could get killed after dark, but my computer wouldn't accept the pictures I scanned (probably they need to be reduced in size, a big task given the number of pictures), so I'm putting up mostly pictures I got off google. That's OK, I can still write about the subject, and the pictures here aren't bad.

How do you like this (above) hillside street? Boy, Paris was covered with advertising, even back then. The narrow, twisting street is in perfect proportion to the surrounding buildings, and the cobblestones give the street a texture, which is sadly missing from modern streets.



Here's (above) the same street, side by side with the street as it looks today. The modern version's been gentrified. Gone are the posters, the cobblestones, & some of the shops and street level doors and windows. I like shops. Without them buildings are featureless and boring at the street level. Why were they taken away?

The windows that remain are mostly shutterless now, and have arid, post-modern frames. Pretty rectangular windows have been replaced by ones that are more square, and out of sync with the shape of the building. And what happened to the nice-looking propane tank with the posters on it? What happened to the raised platform it was on? That was important to the composition! The people who own these houses should be slapped.

Here's (above) a picture I published a long time ago. I love the way old craftsmanship wraps around the side of a building, and nearly butts up against a blank wall on the right. Strangely, I don't mind. The blank wall makes you appreciate the detail on the other side. How do you like the way the way the high building on the right comes in at an oblique angle and cuts everything off?  I wonder where that tunnel leads to? If it goes clear to the next street, then my admiration for the builder knows no bounds.

The poor people of Paris, including artists and writers, just about owned the hills (above) in the old days. This street is pretty much the same nowadays, except it's been cleaned up and gentrified. They should have kept it shabby.

Here's a modern picture of a beautiful intersection. Where is this?

Here's (above) a ledge running under the flying buttresses of a cathedral. A good city has lots of interesting out-of-the-way spots like this. Every artist should be permitted access to the ledge, so we can risk our lives running along it, and feeling the delicious spaces and volumes. 

It's great to glimpse churches at the end of twisting, cobblestoned streets. My guess is that the building on the left has been altered from its original design. Good grief! People were gentrifying things even a hundred years ago!  If only I could have seen this city before the re-construction in the 1860s! I like the way the church comes in at an oblique angle.

Amazing! All that stonework and sculpture above an intriguing tunnel!

You have to click to enlarge this picture (above) to see why it's so special.  The morning dew sits on the silent streets and spaces. The heavy, classical buildings sit on the ground like sleeping dinosaurs (that's intended to be a compliment). This scene reminds me of London and I half expect to see Eliza Dolittle selling flowers here.


I imagine workman who lived on the hill got plenty of use out of these steps. They'd have had to walk to work, even if that work was miles away.  When I see this I imagine that I'm a dish washer in one of the big downtown hotels, and if I'm late for work the boss will boot me into the street and keep my pay. Disputes like this could only be settled with a knife!

Wow! A nice building (above)! I'll bet it's still there!

The building on the right (above) is suspiciously featureless, but I already made my point about things like that.  Paris has convinced me that every street should end facing an oblique or perpendicular street. 

I think I published this doorway (above) twice already, but I can't help doing it again. Now that's a doorway!

WHAT KILLED NEWSPAPERS?

A long time ago I wrote about this subject, and I might even have used some of the same Weegee pictures to illustrate it. If so, don't worry because I have a lot more to say about the subject now, and I don't think anyone will be bored. The subject is newspapers.

The question I want to ask today is, who killed the newspapers? Did the internet do it? Everybody seems to think so, but surprisingly the answer is no, it didn't. The short explanation is that newspapers were dying before the internet got anywhere near as big as it is now. What killed newspapers was TV news, which offered news in film clips for free, and which was more current in its updates.  Advertisers who could afford it simply moved to TV. 

What short memories we all have! This problem was much discussed at the time. I could say more about this, but I have bigger fish to fry here. Remember, this was the short explanation. There's a longer and much more interesting one.

What really killed the newspaper was its inability to adapt to changing times. When the whole population moved to a counter-culture, "Rolling Stone" sensibility in the 1970s, the newspapers retained the same stolid feel that they had in the Civil War. I'm no supporter of the counter-culture, and I almost admire editors for resisting it, but change was in the air and the newspaper people seemed to be clueless about it. Where previous generations could rely on newspapers to reflect some of the sensibility on the street, the 70s generation turned to magazines to do that, and used papers only for the hard news and sports.


I know what you're thinking. It was the fragmentation of America, the lack of consensus, that drove people to the magazines, but that's only partly true. There's no reason why newspapers couldn't have have offered articles catering to different ideas in the same volume. Actually they eventually did that, and it wasn't uncommon to see liberal and conservative columnists on the same editorial page. Really, the whole problem was bigger than simple political diversity. It had to do with the feel of the paper.

Newspapers felt irrelevant. While magazines were talking about The Playboy Philosophy, radical politics, libertarianism, rock and roll, sex & drugs, flying saucers, Small Is Beautiful, talking to the dolphins, the new conservatism, levitating gurus, Black Power, hippie pads, high and low fashion, underground comics, science fiction, the New Journalism, feminism, caricatures, gossip about movie stars, etc., etc....newspapers simply fell back on hard news and sports. What a disconnect! The times were interesting but the newspapers weren't. 

You don't have to be sympathetic to any of these new ideas in order to talk about them, but you'd have hardly known they existed if your only source had been the newspapers. And the format...people after the 60s wanted more intimacy, more pictures. Where were the pictures? 

Clearly by the mid-seventies the newspapers suffered from a severe lack of imagination. Actually the rest of society did too, but we're talking about newspapers here. Did the unions kill the papers by making it difficult to take on new blood? Did dwindling circulations make them timid about experiment? Were newspapers increasingly owned and run by committees? Were the editors too hidebound? How about tax and corporation laws that put boards in charge of companies that were previously run by one risk-taking individual? Did lawyers deliver the deathblow by suing over everything in the paper? Were their human resource departments weeding out aggressive and gifted people who didn't happen to have college degrees? What accounts for the shocking lack of imagination in this field, a field that once included some of the best minds of their generation? Somebody in the know should attempt to answer this.

The pictures I put up here are by a famous newspaper photographer of the 40s and 50s named Weegee. A lot of them were rejected by the papers so he put them in books.  You can see how stupid the newspapers were for rejecting these. This kind of intimate material was exactly what newspaper readers craved, but could only find in magazines. All the newspapers had to do was pay attention to what the magazines were doing to please the public, but they stubbornly refused.  Would this have diluted the news? Not in the least! It's possible to have serious news on page 20 and gossip about movie stars on page 30. There's no contadiction.

Newspapers killed themselves. It was a case of unnecessary death from severe lack of imagination.

COMIC STRIPS THAT DIDN'T MAKE THE CUT

It's amazing how many many good comic strips just never caught on with the public, maybe because  they didn't contain appealing regular characters. Sometimes it seems like people would rather see the blandest treatment of a regular character, than the most creative treatment of one they see only once.  I feel that way myself sometimes. I should be slapped for it, and so should the public. 

Anyway, here's some worthy strips that got the axe. All are from the indispensable "Stripper's Guide", which is on my list of links.

Hardy Hirah (above) is beaten up, first by a hen, then by her kids. Hiram's a bit grotesque but I still like him.


Slightly primitive drawing (above), but the artist has good ideas!

Early Herriman (above). Man, that guy could draw funny! How do you like the title?

The Bud Smith strip (above): can you believe how much work artists used to put in on these strips? And this was the day before syndication was widespread,  meaning the artist probably had to live on what he got from one just one newspaper!

Herriman did this strip (above)for the Shriners magazine. Good old Herriman, a real aristocrat of the cartoon world!

Mrs. Fret-Not (above): slightly primitive drawing but the figures are graphic and unrealistic, the way all good newspaper characters are. How do you like the body bend in the next to last panel?

One of Swinnerton's Embarrassing Moment cartoons (above): I like to see crowds in strip cartoons (but never in animation)!

Herriman again (above): Sigh! A genius at work!

Still more Herriman (above). 

The Boys' and Girls' Page (above). Why did something drawn this funny ever get nixed?

The weird strips (above) were among the first to go.

I threw this in just for fun. It's odd to see humans imitating the stance of cartoon characters!

NOEL COWARD & GERTRUDE LAWRENCE

That's Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence above. If you ever read a Noel Coward play, you might have come away wondering what all the fuss was about. The plays are good, but not great. Why, you might have wondered, was the man so famous? Come to think of it, why was his actor/singer friend Gertrude Lawrence so popular?

Thanks to YouTube we have an answer. YouTube won't allow the clip to be embedded, so I can't put it up here, but here's the next best thing: a link to a five-minute clip from Coward's play "Private Lives," recorded in 1931. Watch it now, then come back for commentary!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wme86SsWYJw

Wasn't that great!!!!!!!!????? Coward was a genius, but he wrote for his own unique performance style, and in the hands of anyone else the plays may come off as flaccid. You can't make those lines work unless you're willing to commit to style and go way over the top with them. Coward himself found that hard to do as the years wore on. I don't think the middle-aged Coward could have pulled it off, even with the help of Lawrence.

The reason I put this up is to underline the point that style and technique is everything in entertainment. The most professionally useful quote I've ever encountered came from Paul Fussell, who was talking about poetry when he wrote (paraphrase):  "you'll never be a poet unless you love words more than content. How you say something is even more important than what you say." That goes for cartooning and animation too. Content is important but technique trumps content.

More Coward and Lawrence above. For contrast here's how modern actors Alan Rickman ("Snape" in the Harry Potter films) and Lindsay Duncan handle the same play:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt-xYlkWoSQ&feature=related

If the link doesn't work, you can find the piece on YouTube under the title: "Noel Coward: Private Lives (Interviews)."

They 're proud that they do the piece without style, searching instead for the truth in their parts. Honestly, truth is over-valued in the theater. What we need now is less truth and more technique.

Stephen, a commenter, provides us with these additional links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp8pCpQJOLM

(YouTube title: NoelCoward in New York - I went To a Marvelous Party)

http://www.noelcoward.net/html/stephenfry.html

(Stephen Fry's address to the Noel Coward Society)