Orange Crate Art

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Hollywood and Argyle

[Click for a larger view.]

It’s the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Argyle Avenue, as seen in the opening moments of Nightfall (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1957). The Pantages Theatre stands on the south side of the Boulevard at 6233. The film is telling its audience, “This is happening in Los Angeles.”

[Click for a larger view.]

Here’s the same intersection, as seen in Google Maps (September 2017). There’s been considerable change to the northeast corner, but the Taft Building, sign and all, still stands on the north side of the Boulevard at 6280. (From this angle, the sign is obscured by palm trees.) On the south side, the Guaranty Building, minus its sign, still stands at 6331. (The Church of Scientology now owns the building.) The Hollywood Equitable Building, at 6253, is now condos. The Pantages is still a theater, though no longer one showing Serenade (dir. Anthony Mann, 1956).

The Pantages, the Pantages: and now I have a song running through my head.

A mystery actor
and a telephone EXchange name

[“DUnkirk 7–3899, that’s all we need.” Click for a larger view.]

Do you recognize the actor in that photograph? Leave your best guess in a comment. I will drop a hint if necessary.

*

11:56 a.m.: A hint: the actor is best known for playing a character whose name is also a song title.

*

1:25 p.m.: Oh well. That’s Anne Bancroft, as Marie Gardner, in Nightfall (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1957).

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

More EXchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : Chinatown : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightmare Alley : Perry Mason : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Decorum and PBS

The PBS NewsHour has too often been exceedingly decorous in its coverage of misogynistic, racist, and xenophobic remarks. No “grab them by the pussy,” no “shithole countries” on the NewsHour. I tuned in tonight expecting to hear Roseanne Barr’s vile tweet about Valerie Jarrett characterized as “controversial.” But no, there it was in Judy Woodruff’s summary of the news:

ABC Television abruptly canceled its top-rated revival of the show Roseanne today over a racist tweet by its star, Roseanne Barr.

True, Woodruff described Barr’s tweet (“muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj”) only in vague terms:

She went after former adviser to President Obama Valerie Jarrett over her politics and her looks.

But in a longer segment, the NewsHour’s William Brangham offered a frank explication of the tweet and made a passing reference to Barr’s history of “racist tweets.” And guest Eric Deggans (from NPR) spoke of ABC refusing to tolerate “open racism.” Which is something we need to speak about openly, without evasion, without regard for decorum.

The sense of wonder

Always wonder:

The unique and original relation to being that Plato calls “theoria” can only be realized in its pure state through the sense of wonder, in that purely receptive attitude to reality, undisturbed and unsullied by the interjection of the will. “Theoria” is only possible in so far as man is not blind to the wonderful fact that things are. For our sense of wonder, in the philosophical meaning of the word, is not aroused by enormous, sensational things — though that is what a dulled sensibility requires to provoke it to a sort of ersatz experience of wonder. A man who needs the unusual to make him “wonder” shows that he has lost the capacity to find the true answer to the wonder of being. The itch for sensation, even though disguised in the mask of Bohème, is a sure indication of a bourgeois mind and a deadened sense of wonder.

To perceive all that is unusual and exceptional, all that is wonderful, in the midst of the ordinary things of everyday life, is the beginning of philosophy.

Joseph Pieper, “The Philospophical Act,” in Leisure: The Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (New York: Pantheon, 1952).

As an undergrad, I heard Pieper’s book recommended many times. Now that I’ve gotten around to reading it, I feel far removed from any world in which its assumptions were common currency. But I did come away with this passage.

A related post
Powders, pencils, mountains, cigars (William Carlos Williams and Wallace Shawn)

[Theoria, θεωρία: “a looking at, viewing, beholding, observing”; “of the mind, contemplation, reflection” (A Lexicon: Abridged from Liddell and Scott's “Greek-English Lexicon”).]

Monday, May 28, 2018

History, rewritten

“The on-going protests in the U.S. lead to the end of the war and Richard Nixon securing the presidency”: from my cable provider’s description of “Fall,” the final episode of the CNN documentary series 1968.

Memorial Day 1918

[“Deck Graves Early Lest Foe Interfere: Our Troops in France Hold Services at Dawn to Avoid German Shells. Mass at the Madeleine. Cardinal Archbishop of Paris Praises Wilson in Address to Knights of Columbus. Cardinal Conducts Paris Services. Decorate Sailors’ Graves in Britain. Honors for Lusitania Dead.” The New York Times, May 31, 1918.]

Sunday, May 27, 2018

“Baby TripAdvisor”

“In the morning, we visited the table room. There were many, many tables in the table room. A button lady gave me my table and my throne too”: Rosemary Counter, “Baby TripAdvisor” (The New York Times).