Piper Laurie – Happy Birthday!

Posted on January 22, 2015January 30, 2018 by James

It is hard to equate the photograph below with the puritanical character of Margaret White in Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) with her negative opinions about ‘dirtypillows.’ Today’s blog post looks at the career of Piper Laurie, who was born in Detroit on this day in 1932.

Piper Laurie making her debut in Universal’s family comedy ‘Louisa’ (Alexander Hall, 1950) in which she played Ronald Reagan’s daughter

Born Rosetta Jacobs, she moved with her family to LA when she was six, and her acting career began with a few bit parts at Universal Studios, to whom she was eventually contracted in 1949. After the studio changed her name to Piper Laurie, she had her first big success with Louisa (Alexander Hall, 1951) in which she starred opposite Charles Coburn and Ronald Reagan.

Another Universal publicity photograph

Several other supporting roles followed in the early 1950s, including pairings with the likes of Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis, but dissatisfied with the work she was getting, Piper upped sticks and moved to New York. Here, she spent three years at drama school, developing greater depth as a character actress. Her experience and maturity was further boosted by appearing on stage and in live television dramas on Playhouse 90 and Studio One.

She was lured back to Hollywood to play Paul Newman’s depressed girlfriend Sarah Packard in The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961.) Her strong performance as the tragic alcoholic short-story writer – blending sadness, bitterness, fragility and a sense of desperate inner strength – earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress – the first of three Academy Award nominations, none of which (to the everlasting disgrace of the panels) she would win.

As Sarah Packard in ‘The Hustler’ (1961)

Despite the critical success of The Hustler, Laurie stayed off the big screen for the next fifteen years, moving out to live in Woodstock with her husband – film critic Joe Morgenstern – and limiting herself to television and stage work while raising a family. She returned in 1976 with Brian de Palma’s Carrie, delivering another intensely theatrical performance that – as with Sarah Packard – gave much-needed depth and vulnerability to a character that could easily have been a two-dimensional caricature. She was nominated for an Oscar, but once again was unsuccessful, while Sissy Spacek – who played Carrie – went off with the award for Best Actress. The two actresses were reunited almost twenty years later in The Glass Harp (Charles Matthau, 1995), playing sisters Dolly and Verena Trumbo in Truman Capote’s gentle tale of small town life in the 1930s.

With Sissy Spacek in ‘Carrie’ (1976)

Unsurprisingly, offers to play maternal roles came in thick and fast after Carrie. Although some of these were for domineering or scary mothers, such the Agatha Christie mystery Appointment with Death (1988) and the giallo thriller Trauma (Dario Argento,1993), more serious work was also on offer: she got her third Oscar nomination for her performance as the mother of deaf girl Sarah Norman in Children of a Lesser God (Randa Haines, 1986.) As one might expect from a film about deafness, even though Laurie’s character can hear, she expresses an inordinate amount of meaning and emotion through subtle body language.

As Mrs Norman in ‘Children of a Lesser God’ (1986)

As the years flowed on, Laurie graduated to playing grandmothers in films such as The Dead Girl (Karen Moncreiff, 2006), Hounddog (Deborah Kampmeier, 2007) – both of which are rather too reminiscent of Margaret White repeat performances – and Hesher (Spencer Susser, 2010), as well as finding time to direct a short film, Property (2006)

Although the above survey gives some idea of the range of her talents, none of her performances was as bizarre as her role in the first two seasons of David Lynch’s television drama Twin Peaks. The first season was normal enough (relatively speaking of course – this was Twin Peaks), with her playing the part of Catherine Martell, the vengeful wife of Peter Martell (Jack Nance) who found the body of Laura Palmer. At the end of season one she disappeared in a blazing timber mill, and when the second season opened in September 1990 without Piper Laurie’s name on the credits, most people assumed her character had died and Laurie had left. However, in a characteristically Lynchian twist, kept secret from both the audience and cast, both were in fact present. On the set was an actor named Fumio Yamaguchi who spoke barely a word of English, and was playing the part of Japanese businessman Mr Tojamura. This was in fact Piper Laurie, dressed in a suit and disguised in heavy make-up including a black wig and moustache.

Twin Peaks will be back on the small screen in 2016, with stars including Kyle McLachlan and Sheryl Lee confirmed as returning for a new nine-episode series to be co-written and directed by David Lynch. There has been no mention of Piper Laurie returning, but then again – the same could be said of season two…

Many Happy Returns!

Mrs Tattershall-Dodd and the Octopus

Posted on January 21, 2015January 30, 2018 by James

One of my more interesting recent acquisitions is a 1920s scrapbook containing a diverse assortment of press-cuttings, covering topics such as Siamese twins, mysterious skeletons, local antiquities, unusual animal behaviour, freak weather and other tales of that ilk. There are several reports of odd behaviour by animals, from cannibalistic buzzards to long-lived cats, but while browsing through the pages the following story caught my eye for the simple reason that it was printed 93 years ago today. It is reproduced below without further comment.

Carte-de-visite of the week #2 Frank Meadow Sutcliffe of Whitby

Posted on January 14, 2015January 30, 2018 by James

The Water Rats (1886)

Frank Meadow Sutcliffe Hon. F.R.P.S. (1853-1941) is best known for his photographs of Whitby – views that capture the landscape, including the iconic abbey, as well as the daily life of fisherfolk and other inhabitants of the Yorkshire town. Many of these images – such as The Water Rats (below) – were widely reproduced and imitated, enhancing Sutcliffe’s reputation and attracting droves of amateur photographers to Whitby. As a sign of his high standing amongst pictorialist photographers, he was invited to join the Linked Ring shortly after its foundation in 1892.

Equally interesting to me was the back of the card – not, for once, because of the ornate detail or florid artwork, but because of the minimalist simplicity of the design:

Sutcliffe’s cards bore many designs over the years, and typically they were adorned with details of all the awards he had won, and his claim to call himself ‘Photographer to Mr Ruskin.’ By contrast, there is almost nothing here, not even an address or advertisement – just his name, town, and two little animals…

Sutcliffe’s reputation as an art photographer means that it is easy to forget he also ran a portrait studio in Whitby from 1876 to 1922. There was a tendency among pictorialists to look down upon professional photographers for reasons of both aesthetics and social class. Sutcliffe is unusual in running the two traditions in parallel for such a long time, and there is no questioning the very high quality of his portrait work. Those who sat for him would have been both locals and visitors; judging by the cut of his coat, the customer who sat for this portrait may have been a clergyman.

What sort of creature is this supposed to represent? It reminds me very much of the mythological beasts with which medieval scribes adorned the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts. Most cdv backings were designed by commercial printers, using lithography to reproduce stock images; the photographer could then choose a template onto which business particulars could be added.

In this case, however, it seems certain that the back of the cdv was created by Sutcliffe – for some personal reason that remains as yet unclear.

Carte-de-visite of the Week #1 Irma Szabó by Ludwig Faust, 1880

Posted on January 1, 2015January 30, 2018 by James

Today’s the first day of a new year, so I’m starting a new weekly blog post – Carte-de-visite of the Week – in which I’ll be showcasing some of my favourite cartes-des-visites in my collection.

Cartes-des-visites are small sepia-toned photographs, measuring around 2¼” wide by 3½” high, mounted on card that usually bears the photographer’s name and advertising material on the back. They became popular in the 1850s and were sold in huge numbers throughout the following decade. Most of these were commercial portraits, either of ordinary folk who had paid to have their portrait taken in a studio – where the carte-de-visite offered an inexpensive and handy alternative to the costly 8″ x !0″ print – or of well known public figures, such as royalty, politicians and popular performers. Tens of millions of these cards were sold every year, collected, exchanged, sent to friends or inserted into special albums. There was an extensive trade in pirated cards, copied from other carte-des-visites rather than being printed from the original collodion negative. The sheer number of these cards in circulation means that they remain easy to find today, even in car boot sales and flea markets where they can often be purchased for a few pence. The reverse of the cards is often just as interesting as the portrait on the front, if not more so, as it was used by photographers to print details about their studio, its address, significant awards or commissions, often accompanied by illustrations, fancy fonts and other gimmicks. A great deal of social history can be gleaned from collecting and studying cartes-des-visites, particularly when handwritten notes have been added.

My first photograph was taken in 1880 by Ludwig Faust, a photographer in Pressburg – modern day Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. At this time Pressburg was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, lying in the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Monarchy, and had a population of around 48,000. The small size of Pressburg is indicated by the fact that Faust gave his address on the back of the card as nothing more than ‘neben dem Theater.’

The reverse of the card also reveals that the sitter’s name was Irma Szabó, although this is written in style Szabó Irma. She appears to have been an attractive young lady…

Irma Szabó by Ludwig Faust, 1880

wearing an attractive brooch…

Reverse of the card, showing the sort of attractive design typically used by photographers to promote their work

Today’s post is fairly brief – well, it is New Year’s Day after all, and a lot of other things have been happening over the last few hours – but I intend to cover other cartes-des-visites in much more depth for future posts. Let’s hope I can stick to my New Year resolution!

Hungarian Midgets at the Half Moon

Posted on November 28, 2014January 30, 2018 by James

In my last post I posted some details of an old 1908 map of Exeter that I picked up in a secondhand bookshop in Dorset. Many landmarks featured on the map have disappeared since then, destroyed by the ravages of time, German bombers, the City Council or a combination of two or more of these. One such lost building was the Half Moon Hotel, a 17th century coaching inn which stood on the south side of the High Street on the corner of Bedford Street.

The area around Bedford Circus was badly damaged by the 1942 bombing raid and much of it now lies underneath the new Princesshay shopping centre

After posting my last blog entry on the map, I came across a photograph of the Half Moon Hotel (above) but what really caught my eye was the poster on the wall by the corner.

The Half Moon was demolished in 1912 and replaced by a single storey branch of Lloyds Bank, and this photograph must have been taken shortly before this. Ernie Leno was born in 1889, one of the sons of the famous entertainer Dan Leno (1860-1904.) Jack McLallen and May Carson were a married couple who performed a novelty act on roller skates. But the Royal Hungarian Midgets….?

These two postcards show what one might have seen on stage in Exeter one hundred or so years ago. A contemporary playbill from America advertised:

A troupe of Royal Hungarian Midgets, headed by Prince Andru, the world’s smallest man…traveling with five other midgets, Prince Andru stands twenty-seven inches tall, weighs thirty-two pounds and is twenty-two years of age. The midgets perform in a beautiful well- lighted, airy miniature canopy erected on the show’s midway, presenting a high-class program of vaudeville acts with musical numbers.

To modern sensibilities, there is something distasteful about the idea of exploiting physical irregularities, deformities or unusual features for commercial gain. Yet even if these performers were forced to market themselves using demeaning titles such as midgets, dwarves, living dolls, or bearded ladies, there is no denying that they were often able to attain a degree of financial security and social status that would have been denied them otherwise. Celebrity attractions such as Tom Thumb and Anita the Living Doll (interestingly, also said to be a native of Hungary), were introduced to the crowned heads of Europe and received visits and gifts from aristocracy, plus a weekly income far in excess of the average wage earned by their more able-bodied peers. Commenting on what they might have thought about their situation is a delicate matter, and it is difficult now in such an altered cultural and economic world to truly understand the nature of their relationship with both audiences and management. What is available in published writings and interviews typically formed part of a publicity campaign, and doesn’t really offer reliable insights into personal feelings and self-perception. On the other hand, there is concrete evidence that agents were sometimes guilty of – at the very least – financial mistreatment of the acts they represented, as this story from The Times illustrates:

Excerpt from ‘The Times’, 2 December 1913, page 4

The Hippodrome opened in 1908, which dates this poster to the four period between 1908 and 1912. Other acts that appeared there included Marie Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Ethel Bourne, Mona Garrick, Miss Mary Mayfren’s Company in The Yellow Fang (set in a San Francisco opium den), and ‘Consul’ the chimpanzee who performed in 1912 in top hat and roller blades – hence the phrase ‘variety’ entertainment! There is a distinction to be drawn, I think, between performers with musical or other talents, who happened to be of diminutive size – even if this was exploited as a novelty to gain attention – and the display of similar medical conditions in circuses and fairgrounds, where the physical features were the sole attraction of the act, and the performance consisted merely of being paraded in front of staring eyes. Such exhibitions continued in British fairgrounds right up until the 1970s, but would be found unacceptable now.

Public attitudes continue to change, and it is likely that performing animals – once inseparable from the image of a circus – will soon belong to the past. Today saw the second reading of the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill, which is being sponsored by Labour MP Jim Fitzpatrick. If passed, this will come into force in December 2015.

So, have we really moved on from a past age of cynical exploitation, when the misfortunes and sufferings of others provided a spectacle for public amusement? As I write this, I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here is screening on ITV and audiences gaze at malnourished non-entities immersing themselves in barrels of filth while eating live insects, a spectacle that would fitted in well with the Living Skeletons and rat-eating zulus of Victorian fairgrounds. Society’s treatment of those with disabilities and physical or mental illnesses may have moved on a little, but anyone who has experienced DWP assessments at the hands of ATOS will testify to fact that unseeing, unfeeling inhumanity and injustice remain very much a part of the present.