Today I learned...

[Link the Writer]

Today I learned that


This was the original poster for Patty Duke's The Miracle Worker.

Quick question, if you didn't know what The Miracle Worker was about, what genre do you think that'd be in?

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Victorian Horror, if there is such a thing.

 

[Link the Writer]

Didn’t Poe write Victorian/Gothic Horror?

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Today I learned that

View attachment 649
This was the original poster for Patty Duke's The Miracle Worker.

Quick question, if you didn't know what The Miracle Worker was about, what genre do you think that'd be in?

It's very blurry. I had to zoom in to make out the bit under the picture: "A great motion picture starring Anne Bancroft and introducing Patty Duke".

It looks like a very cheap horror movie. Maybe "Blair Witch Project" kind of cheap - low budget and shaky, blurry camera.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Today I learned about the connection between the “helot” speech made by The Colonel (played by Walter Brennan) in the 1941 movie Meet John Doe - which I learned about years ago - and classical Sparta.

• Beany: What's a helot?
• The Colonel: You've ever been broke, sonny?
• Beany: Sure, mostly often.
• The Colonel: All right. You're walking along, not a nickel in your jeans, you're free as the wind, nobody bothers ya. Hundreds of people pass you by in every line of business: shoes, hats, automobiles, radios, everything, and they're all nice lovable people and they lets you alone, is that right? Then you get a hold of some dough and what happens, all those nice sweet lovable people become helots, a lotta heels. They begin to creep up on ya, trying to sell ya something: they get long claws and they get a stranglehold on ya, and you squirm and you duck and you holler and you try to push them away but you haven't got the chance. They gots ya. First thing ya know you own things, a car for instance, now your whole life is messed up with alot more stuff: you get license fees and number plates and gas and oil and taxes and insurance and identification cards and letters and bills and flat tires and dents and traffic tickets and motorcycle cops and tickets and courtrooms and lawers and fines and... a million and one other things. What happens? You're not the free and happy guy you used to be. You need to have money to pay for all those things, so you go after what the other fellas got. There you are, you're a helot yourself.

My lesson this morning began with coming across the painting below – The Stonebreaker (1857) – by Henry Wallis





The painting was inspired by Chapter IV (of Book III) - entitled Helotage - in Thomas Carlyle’s satirical novel Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh (1831). (Read online at the link).

‘Helotage’ is the word denoting the ancient Spartan system of state slavery. Helots were the subjugated peoples in Laconia and Messenia, territories ruled by Sparta.

The chapter begins this way:

At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather reverting, to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled Institute for the Repression of Population; which lies, dishonorably enough (with torn leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag Pisces. Not indeed for the sake of the tract itself, which we admire little; but of the marginal Notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand, which rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their right place here…

When The Stonebreaker was first put on display at the 1858 Royal Academy in London, a quote from Carlyle’s chapter – lamenting the intellectual starvation of the worker who lives and dies without acquiring knowledge of anything but physical deprivation and toil – accompanied it:

Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labor: and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom.

So, The Colonel’s helot speech in Meet John Doe has more ideology to it that what might first appear.

Below is the powerful final scene in the movie, with the famous last line, "There you are, Norton! The people! Try and lick that!"

 

[Iain Aschendale]

Today I learned that

View attachment 649
This was the original poster for Patty Duke's The Miracle Worker.

Quick question, if you didn't know what The Miracle Worker was about, what genre do you think that'd be in?

Martial arts, think I saw Steven Seagull do that move once.

Very slowly.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Blair Witch Project is seriously creepy, especially of one watches it as I did alone in the dark in a strange house. The whole low budget kids with a camera thing was brilliant.

Ooops. Wrote this yesterday and didn't click post, so I'm a tad behind the conversation.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I've never seen Blair Witch Project. But it sounds like someone hit upon a fantastic movie idea.

 

[Pik]

I read that absurdism and playwrights like Beckett, Ionesco and Adamov were widely acclaimed in many European countries but not as much in the US because their writing style/perspective at the time was pessimistic and cynical and in the US "the American dream was still strong", guess the Americans are somewhat more optimistic than other nations. There are, however authors such as Albee that are considered absurdist even though he is an American writer.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Today I learned that some TV stations censored "Blazing Saddles" (which meant they bleeped out the bad words and silenced the "fart scene") ... to which there is only one answer: harrumph!

I mean, seriously? Without the sound effects in that scene, all you have is a series of cowboys inexplicably rising, grimacing, and sitting back down again. So the scene is pointless - especially since immediately afterwards, you have Slim Pickens (as Taggart) approaching them, and this exchange happens:

Cowboy: More beans, Mister Taggart?
Taggart: I'd say you've had ENOUGH! Woo-wee!! *waves his hat as a fan, trying to clear the air*

Without the farts, this makes no sense. (Not to mention, since cowboys ate beans and bacon, and drank bad coffee ... well? It wasn't just for the sake of a cheap laugh, "Ha ha, he farted").
=============
I also learned (and this is my favourite bit about the film) that when Mel Brooks wrote the theme song, he wanted someone with a voice like Frankie Laine (who sang so many theme songs in previous Westerns) to sing it.

Lo and behold, Frankie got the gig -- and he sang his heart out, gave it everything. It's absolutely perfect. I'm sure he knew it was a satire of all the westerns that he sang on through his whole career, but a gig's a gig. My hat's off to Frankie for being such a good sport.

... and the rest is history. Impressed?

 

[CatrionaGrace]

The first time I saw Blazing Saddles was in the Student Union my freshman year in college. Sheltered little me was shocked to the bone but I don't think I've ever laughed so much in all my movie-going life. The last time I saw it was about a year ago, and I laughed just as immoderately as I did 50 years ago. Madeline Kahn was brilliant.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Madeline Kahn was brilliant.

Agreed, but Madeline is always brilliant. She was just as good in "Clue".

Wikipedia has an interesting bit about her role in "Blazing Saddles". To quote:

Madeline Kahn objected when Brooks asked to see her legs during her audition. "She said, 'So it's THAT kind of an audition?'" Brooks recalled. "I explained that I was a happily married man and that I needed someone who could straddle a chair with her legs like Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again. So she lifted her skirt and said, 'No touching.'"
(Source: Mel Brooks interview, 40th anniversary Blu-Ray release of Blazing Saddles)

Another interesting tidbit:
Brooks offered the role of "the Waco Kid" (ultimately played by Gene Wilder) to John Wayne. Wayne declined it, deeming the film "too blue" for his family-oriented image, but assured Brooks that "he would be the first one in line to see it."

 

[Louanne Learning]

Today I learned that Bruce Lee played ping pong with Nunchucks

 

[CatrionaGrace]

His opponents are nunchucks? Is that like saying they're dweebs?

Seriously: mad skills.

 

[Pik]

Today I learned about this recipe, could put it into practice in the next few days

 

[Naomasa298]

How many nuns could a nunchuck chuck if a nunchuck could chuck nuns? None?

 

[Link the Writer]

^ what if it were an evil nun?

Dolphins have social hierarchies.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

How many nuns could a nunchuck chuck if a nunchuck could chuck nuns? None?

What if one of them was The Flying Nun? The nunchuck couldn't chuck her, she would fly away.

But more seriously: a nunchuck could chuck no amount of nuns, since a nunchuck can't chuck nuns.

 

[Link the Writer]

Today I learned that Princess Alexandra of Britain was deaf but became a fashion icon. And Queen Victoria tried forbidding her from hunting, to which she, of course, didn't listen and hunted anyway because... she could.

 

[Catrin Lewis]

Today I learned that some TV stations censored "Blazing Saddles" (which meant they bleeped out the bad words and silenced the "fart scene") ... to which there is only one answer: harrumph!

I mean, seriously? Without the sound effects in that scene, all you have is a series of cowboys inexplicably rising, grimacing, and sitting back down again. So the scene is pointless - especially since immediately afterwards, you have Slim Pickens (as Taggart) approaching them, and this exchange happens:

Cowboy: More beans, Mister Taggart?
Taggart: I'd say you've had ENOUGH! Woo-wee!! *waves his hat as a fan, trying to clear the air*

Without the farts, this makes no sense. (Not to mention, since cowboys ate beans and bacon, and drank bad coffee ... well? It wasn't just for the sake of a cheap laugh, "Ha ha, he farted").
=============
I also learned (and this is my favourite bit about the film) that when Mel Brooks wrote the theme song, he wanted someone with a voice like Frankie Laine (who sang so many theme songs in previous Westerns) to sing it.

Lo and behold, Frankie got the gig -- and he sang his heart out, gave it everything. It's absolutely perfect. I'm sure he knew it was a satire of all the westerns that he sang on through his whole career, but a gig's a gig. My hat's off to Frankie for being such a good sport.

... and the rest is history. Impressed?

I heard Frankie Laine knew nothing about the film. He thought it was an ordinary western, and sang the theme accordingly.

No time to explain how, but Blazing Saddles was pivotal in my "conversion" from being an Art to an AArchitecture major.