The Story Behind the Iconic Photograph of 11 Construction Workers Lunching 840 Feet Above New York City (1932)

in Architecture, History, Photography, Video - Arts & Culture | September 28th, 2020

Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Moth­er”…

Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-win­ning “The Ter­ror of War”…

Richard Drew’s “The Falling Man”…

Through­out the years, a num­ber of icon­ic pho­tographs have tapped into the col­lec­tive uncon­scious, shap­ing our view of his­toric events, some­times to a degree that leads to social change.

These images are not depen­dent on know­ing the sub­jects’ iden­ti­ties, though it’s always inter­est­ing when more con­text leaks out, often as the result of some seri­ous sleuthing by reporters, archivists, or oth­er inter­est­ed par­ties.

1932’s “Lunch atop a Sky­scraper (New York Con­struc­tion Work­ers Lunch­ing on a Cross­beam)” is one of the lighter-heart­ed pho­tos to cre­ate such a last­ing pub­lic impres­sion.

Eleven work­ers are depict­ed enjoy­ing their break, relax­ing on a gird­er a dizzy­ing 840-feet above New York City, unbur­dened by safe­ty har­ness­es or oth­er pro­tec­tive gear.

In the words of Rock­e­feller Cen­ter archivist Christi­na Rous­sel, who nar­rates the TIME Mag­a­zine 100 Pho­tos episode above, they are the “unsung heroes of con­struc­tion.”

The unusu­al des­ig­na­tion may lead you to rack your brains for a sung hero of con­struc­tion.

Grandpa’s cog-in-the-wheel con­tri­bu­tion to the erec­tion of an icon­ic land­mark can be a source of anec­do­tal pride for fam­i­lies, but it rarely leads to greater renown.

Loom­ing over this image is John D. Rock­e­feller, Jr, who mas­ter­mind­ed a 22 acre com­plex of 14 com­mer­cial build­ings in the Art Deco style. The project was a boost to the econ­o­my dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, employ­ing over 250,000 people—from truck­ers and quar­ry­men to glaziers and steel­work­ers and hun­dreds of oth­er jobs in between. It cre­at­ed an enor­mous amount of good­will and patri­ot­ic pride.

The Rock­e­feller orga­ni­za­tion cap­i­tal­ized on this pos­i­tive recep­tion, with a steady stream of staged pub­lic­i­ty pho­tos, includ­ing the dar­ing eleven shar­ing a nose­bleed seat on what was to become the 69th floor of the RCA Build­ing (now known as 30 Rock.)

As film crit­ic John Ander­son, review­ing the doc­u­men­tary Men at Lunch in The New York Times, wrote:

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of the pic­ture, which has been col­orized, sat­i­rized, bur­lesqued with the Mup­pets and turned into a life-size sculp­ture by Ser­gio Furnari, is part­ly about the casu­al reck­less­ness of its sub­jects: The beam on which they sit seems sus­pend­ed over an urban abyss, with the vast­ness of Cen­tral Park spread out behind them and noth­ing, seem­ing­ly below. But in fact a fin­ished floor of 30 Rock­e­feller Plaza was prob­a­bly just a few feet away.

The doc­u­men­tary helped con­firm the iden­ti­ties of sev­er­al of the men.

Irish immi­grants Mad­dy O’Shaughnessy and Son­ny Glynn hold down either end, as ver­i­fied by their sons.

William Eck­n­er, third from left, and Joe Cur­tis, third from right, were named in a sim­i­lar­ly spir­it­ed anno­tat­ed pho­to tak­en around the same time.

The man seat­ed to Cur­tis’ right may or may not be John Charles Cook of the St. Reg­is Mohawk Reser­va­tion.

The photographer’s iden­ti­ty is also debat­able. It’s most often cred­it­ed to Charles C. Ebbets but Tom Kel­ley and William Left­wich were also on hand that day, leather satchels of glass plates slung across their backs, as they, too, defied grav­i­ty, doc­u­ment­ing the com­ple­tion of archi­tect Ray­mond Hood’s mas­ter plan.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Dorothea Lange Shot, Migrant Moth­er, Per­haps the Most Icon­ic Pho­to in Amer­i­can His­to­ry

Yale Presents an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Yale Presents an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Internet Archive Hosts 20,000 VHS Recordings of Pop Culture from the 1980s & 1990s: Enter the VHS Vault

in Video - Arts & Culture | March 5th, 2020

Image by Evan-Amos, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

My neigh­bor­hood thrift store has a very large VHS wall, filled with Hol­ly­wood movies, end­less chil­dren’s videos, instruc­tion­al tapes, and best of all a box of unknown vids. Maybe they’re blank. Maybe they con­tain 6 episodes of Mat­lock. And maybe, just maybe, they have some­thing com­plete­ly nuts.

But who has time or the old tech­nol­o­gy for that, espe­cial­ly when the Inter­net Archive has recent­ly expand­ed its VHS Vault sec­tion to 20,000 dig­i­tized tapes under the (non) cura­tion of archivist Jason Scott. We make no claims for the qual­i­ty of the videos con­tained there­in, because that’s real­ly up to you. A cur­so­ry glance shows episodes of Blues Clues next to Traci Lords’ work­out tape next to Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater along­side Ger­ry Anderson’s Laven­der Cas­tle, a mix of clay­ma­tion, pup­petry, and rudi­men­ta­ry CGI.

So look: you have to go dig­ging. There’s gems among the junk. There’s That’s My Bush! the ill-con­ceived and ill-fat­ed sit­com from South Park’s Trey Park­er and Matt Stone that dis­ap­peared down the mem­o­ry hole after 9–11.

Or check out this Law Enforce­ment Guide to Satan­ic Cults, 75 min­utes of para­noid luna­cy with a halfway decent ambi­ent sound­track and some groovy visu­als. Once you hear “abnor­mal sex­ol­o­gy” you’ll be hooked!

This 1994 footage/interviews from the playa at Burn­ing Man is a fas­ci­nat­ing time cap­sule. “We have enough guns out here to start World War III,” one man says. Yep, it was cer­tain­ly a dif­fer­ent time.

You’ll also find plen­ty of just straight-up “no idea what’s on this, just hit play and record” VHS tapes, like this 4 hour block of MTV from 1995.

The Archive also serves anoth­er pur­pose: right now it acts as a kind of “safe space” from the increas­ing­ly unfor­giv­ing algo­rithms of YouTube, designed to take down any­thing its AI hears as unli­censed footage or music. It’s one rea­son for the amount of Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater episodes up here, as some can no longer be shown due to expired film rights.

And unlike YouTube, all the videos are avail­able for you to down­load, keep, remix, edit, and/or purge. You won’t have to wash your hands like after a trip to the thrift store, but your soul will feel equal­ly gross. Enjoy! Enter the archive here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Archive Is Dig­i­tiz­ing & Pre­serv­ing Over 100,000 Vinyl Records: Hear 750 Full Albums Now

The Inter­net Archive Makes 2,500 More Clas­sic MS-DOS Video Games Free to Play Online: Alone in the Dark, Doom, Microsoft Adven­ture, and Oth­ers

Watch 700 Videos Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Videos from the Ear­ly Days of MTV

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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These Boots Are Made for Walkin’: The Story Behind Nancy Sinatra’s Enduring #1 Hit (1966)

in Fashion, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | February 3rd, 2020

You put on your boots
And I’ll put on mine
And we’ll sell a mil­lion records
Any old time
- Lee Hazle­wood

Musi­cians!

Look­ing to increase your chances of a hit song, one that will worm its way into the public’s hearts and ears, earn­ing fat roy­al­ty checks for half a cen­tu­ry or more?

Try start­ing with a killer bass line.

Accord­ing to singer Nan­cy Sina­tra, song­writer Lee Hazle­wood and arranger Bil­ly Strange swung by her par­ents’ liv­ing room to pre­view a selec­tion of tunes they thought she might want to record.

The moment she heard “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ ”s mem­o­rable lick, she knew it was a win­ner.

(As did her famous father, who looked up from his news­pa­per after Hazle­wood and Strange depart­ed, to remark, “The song about the boots is best.”)

Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived of as a song from the male POV, the 25-year-old, just-divorced Sina­tra felt its mes­sage would be less “harsh and abu­sive” deliv­ered by a “lit­tle girl.”

Hazle­wood agreed, but hedged his bets by direct­ing engi­neer Eddie Brack­ett to beef up Sinatra’s vocals with some light reverb.

As biog­ra­ph­er James Kaplan describes in Sina­tra: The Chair­man, Hazle­wood also offered some dis­creet direc­tion, insin­u­at­ing that the vibe to strive for was that of “a 14-year-old girl in love with a 40-year-old man.”

When Sina­tra failed to receive his mean­ing, he shucked all pre­tense of del­i­ca­cy. Nan­cy shared his march­ing orders in her 1985 biog­ra­phy Frank Sina­tra, My Father:

…I was still singing like Nan­cy Nice­La­dy. Lee hit the talk-back switch in the booth and his deep voice blew my ears off. ‘For chris­sake, you were a mar­ried woman, Nasty, you’re not a vir­gin any­more. Let’s do one for the truck dri­vers. Say some­thing tough at the end of this one… Bite the words.’

Or some­thing to that effect…

Kaplan includes how sev­er­al sources claim that Hazlewood’s actu­al instruc­tion was to sing it like “a six­teen-year-old girl who f**ks truck dri­vers.”

(Editor’s note: instruct­ing a young woman to do that in 2020 is far like­li­er to result in a law suit than a hit record.… and giv­en that most of the sources who abide by this ver­sion of Boots’ cre­ation myth pref­ace their state­ments with the word “appar­ent­ly,” it may not have flown in 1966 either.)

The song’s immense pop­u­lar­i­ty was giv­en an assist by the 1966 Col­or-Son­ics film, above, shot in 16mm for the public’s enjoy­ment on 26-inch Sco­pi­tone juke­box screens.

It also put a match to the Amer­i­can tin­der where go-go boots were con­cerned. Young women in Britain had already adopt­ed them as the per­fect footwear to accom­pa­ny Youthquake design­er Mary Quant’s miniskirts and hot pants. Sina­tra and her maxi sweater-wear­ing back up dancers get the bulk of the cred­it on this side of the pond.

While “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” has been cov­ered by every­one from Ella Fitzger­ald and Duke Elling­ton to Bil­ly Ray Cyrus and Megadeth, the sweet­est cov­er remains song­writer Hazlewood’s, below, in which he namechecks the col­lab­o­ra­tors of his most famous hit with nary a men­tion of truck­ers or teenaged girls.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Car­ol Kaye, the Unsung Bassist Behind Your Favorite 60s Hits

How the Viet­nam War Shaped Clas­sic Rock–And How Clas­sic Rock Shaped the War

The Sex Pis­tols’ Sid Vicious Sings Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”: Is Noth­ing Sacred?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC TONIGHT, Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3, as her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Traditional Inuit Thoat Singing and the Modern World Collide in This Astonishing Video

in Life, Music, Travel, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | December 13th, 2019

Let’s just get this out of the way…

Musi­cal­ly speak­ing, Inu­it throat singing—or kata­j­jaq—is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea.

For all those who find this tra­di­tion­al form mes­mer­iz­ing, there are oth­ers who get antsy with no lyrics or eas­i­ly dis­cernible melody on which to hang their hat, or who expe­ri­ence the bleak sound of the Arc­tic wind cou­pled with the singers’ pre­lim­i­nary breath­ing as a hor­ror movie sound­track.

If, as a mem­ber of one of the lat­ter camps, you feel inclined to bail after a minute or so of Wapikoni Mobile’s Sun­dance-endorsed video above—you get it, it’s some­thing akin to Mon­go­lian or Tuvan throat-singing, it’s cir­cu­lar breath­ing, there’s a lot of pic­turesque snow up there—we beg you to recon­sid­er, on two counts.

1) In an era of auto­tuned “everyone’s‑a-star” per­fec­tion, Kata­j­jaq is a hearty hold-out, a com­mu­ni­ty-spir­it­ed singing game whose com­peti­tors seek nei­ther star­dom nor rich­es, but rather, to chal­lenge them­selves and amuse each oth­er with­out screens through­out the long win­ter nights.

Prac­ti­tion­er Evie Mark breaks it down thus­ly:

One very typ­i­cal exam­ple is when the hus­bands would go on hunt­ing trips.  The women would gath­er togeth­er when they have noth­ing to do, no more sewing to do, no more clean­ing to do, they would just have fun, and one of the ways of enter­tain­ing them­selves is throat-singing.

It goes like this. Two women face each oth­er very close­ly, and they would throat sing like this:

If I would be with my part­ner right now, I would say A, she would say A, I would say A, she would say A, I say C, she says C.  So she repeats after me.  It would be a sort of rolling of sounds.  And, once that hap­pens, you cre­ate a rhythm.  And the only way the rhythm would be bro­ken is when one of the two women starts laugh­ing or if one of them stops because she is tired.  It’s a kind of game.  We always say the first per­son to laugh or the first per­son to stop is the one to lose.  It’s noth­ing seri­ous.  Throat singing is way of hav­ing fun.  That’s the gen­er­al idea, it’s to have fun dur­ing gath­er­ings.  It is also a way to prove to your friends around you or your fam­i­ly that if you are a good throat-singer, you’re gonna win the game.

Throat-singing is a very accu­rate tech­nique in a sense that when you are singing fast, the per­son who is fol­low­ing the leader has to go in every lit­tle gap the leader leaves for her to fill in.  For instance, if I was to say 1 + 1 + 1 + 1, the ones being what I sing and the plus­es the gaps, she would go in-between the ones, singing on the plus­es.  Then, if I change my rhythm, this woman has to fol­low that change of rhythm and fill in the gaps of that new rhythm.  She has to be very accu­rate.  She has to have a very good ear and she has to fol­low visu­al­ly what I am doing.

Throat singing is not exact­ly easy on your diaphragm.  You are using a lot of your mus­cles in your diaphragm for breath­ing in and breath­ing out.  I have to find a space between sounds to breath in in order for me to throat-sing for 20 min­utes or more.  20 min­utes has been my max­i­mum length of time to throat-sing.  You have to focus on your lungs or your diaphragm.  If you throat-sing using main­ly breath­ing, you are gonna hyper­ven­ti­late, you’re gonna get dizzy and dam­age your throat.

2) The video, star­ring Eva Kaukai and Manon Cham­ber­land from Kan­gir­suk in north­ern Québec (pop­u­la­tion: 394), deflates con­ven­tion­al notions of tra­di­tion­al prac­tices as the prove­nance of some­where quaint, exot­ic, taxi­der­mied…

Begin­ning around the 90-sec­ond mark, the singers are joined by a drone that sur­veys the sur­round­ing area. View­ers get a glimpse of what their Arc­tic home­land looks like in the warm sea­son, as well as some hunters flay­ing their kill pri­or to load­ing it into a late mod­el pick up, pre­sum­ably bound for a build­ing in a whol­ly sub­ur­ban seem­ing neigh­bor­hood, com­plete with tele­phone poles, satel­lite dish­es, and—gasp—elec­tric light.

Via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Hu, a New Break­through Band from Mon­go­lia, Plays Heavy Met­al with Tra­di­tion­al Folk Instru­ments and Throat Singing

An MRI Shows How a Singer Sings Two Tones at Once (With the Music of Mozart and Bri­an Eno)

How to Sing Two Notes At Once (aka Poly­phon­ic Over­tone Singing): Lessons from Singer Anna-Maria Hefele

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC for the new sea­son of her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

 

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What It Would Look Like If Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino & Other Directors Filmed Cooking Videos

in Comedy, Film, Food & Drink, Video - Arts & Culture | July 16th, 2018

I usu­al­ly chafe when direc­tor Wes Ander­son is labelled “twee,” but as an enthu­si­as­tic, sticky-fin­gered gob­bler of bark and ash encrust­ed camp­fire s’mores, I did enjoy a rather row­dy laugh at his expense while watch­ing the above video.

Each entry in film­mak­er David Ma’s #Food­Films series starts with a hypoth­e­sis that pairs a sim­ple, famil­iar dish with a direc­tor whose visu­al style is well estab­lished.

What if Wes Ander­son made S’mores? 

Ma’s ear­ly mar­i­na­tion in the realms of food styling and adver­tis­ing is a recipe for suc­cess here.

Anderson’s beloved God shot has become a sta­ple of online cook­ing videos, but Ma’s atten­tion to sub­tler details would pass muster with a Cor­don Bleu chef.

The for­mal­ly engraved card! The rib­bon motif! The cos­tumes!

The look is more Grand Budapest Hotel than the camp-themed Moon­rise King­dom, but no mat­ter. That more obvi­ous pair­ing start­ed tast­ing a tad over-chewed around the time of the Moon­rise King­dom-inspired wed­ding pho­to shoot.

Ma’s homage to Quentin Taran­ti­no is a butch and bloody take on spaghet­ti and meat­balls.

To para­phrase Jean-Luc Godard, “It’s not blood. It’s red sauce.”

The sound­track sug­gests that Ma’s ear is just as keen as his eye.

45 sec­onds in, there’s a Part 2, as an extra treat for QT fans.

Big bud­get action king Michael Bay and a Grav­i­ty-cen­tric Alfon­so Cuarón round out #Food­Films’ four-course tast­ing menu.

How­ev­er sat­is­fied view­ers may feel with these hijinks, their appetite for the project is far from sati­at­ed. Sequel requests are pil­ing up:

What if Kubrick made Toast?

What if Tim Bur­ton made a grilled cheese sand­wich?

What if Woody Allen made piz­za?

What if Steven Spiel­berg made cup­cakes?

What if Kuro­sawa made scram­bled eggs?

What if Guy Ritchie did a Full Eng­lish Fry-Up?

Gives me a han­ker­ing to see what Sofia Cop­po­la would do with my grandmother’s favorite lay­ered Jell‑o sal­ad.

While we’re wait­ing for Ma to serve up his next dish we can tide our­selves over with some of his oth­er high­ly styl­ized recipe videos, like the Incred­i­ble Hulk’s Smashed Pota­toes.

Read­ers, what direc­tor-dish pair­ing would you order up? Let us know in the com­ments.

via W Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

For­rest Gump Direct­ed by Wes Ander­son: Here’s What It Would Look Like

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Artist with Synesthesia Turns Jazz & Rock Classics Into Colorful Abstract Paintings

in Art, Music, Neuroscience, Video - Arts & Culture | November 20th, 2017

For those in the arts, few moments are more bliss­ful than those spent “in the zone,” those times when the words or images or notes flow unim­ped­ed, the artist func­tion­ing as more con­duit than cre­ator.

Viewed in this light, artist Melis­sa McCrack­en’s chromes­the­sia—or sound-to-col­or synesthesia—is a gift. Since birth, this rare neu­ro­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non has caused her to see col­ors while lis­ten­ing to music, an expe­ri­ence she likens to visu­al­iz­ing one’s mem­o­ries.

Trained as a psy­chol­o­gist, she has made a name for her­self as an abstract painter by trans­fer­ring her col­or­ful neu­ro­log­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions onto can­vas.

John Lennon’s “Julia” yields an impas­to flame across a pale green field.

The bold daf­fodil and phlox hues of Jimi Hendrix’s “Lit­tle Wing” could have sprung from Monet’s gar­den at Giverny.

McCrack­en told Broad­ly that chromes­thetes’ col­or asso­ci­a­tions vary from indi­vid­ual to indi­vid­ual, though her own expe­ri­ence of a par­tic­u­lar song only wavers when she is focus­ing on a par­tic­u­lar ele­ment, such as a bass line she’s nev­er paid atten­tion to before.

While her port­fo­lio sug­gests a woman of catholic musi­cal tastes, col­or­wise, she does tend to favor cer­tain gen­res and instru­ments:

Expres­sive music such as funk is a lot more col­or­ful, with all the dif­fer­ent instru­ments, melodies, and rhythms cre­at­ing a high­ly sat­u­rat­ed effect. Gui­tars are gen­er­al­ly gold­en and angled, and piano is more mar­bled and jerky because of the chords. I rarely paint acoustic music because it’s often just one per­son play­ing gui­tar and singing, and I nev­er paint coun­try songs because they’re bor­ing mut­ed browns.

Her favorite kind of music, jazz, almost always presents itself to her in shades of gold and blue, lead­ing one to won­der if per­haps the Utah Jazz’s uni­form redesign has a synes­thet­ic ele­ment.

Cer­tain­ly, there are a large num­ber of musi­cians—includ­ing Duke Elling­ton, Kanye West, and Bil­ly Joel—for whom col­or and music are inex­tri­ca­bly linked.

View Melis­sa McCracken’s port­fo­lio here.

via Broad­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Syncs His Abstract Art to Mussorgsky’s Music in a His­toric Bauhaus The­atre Pro­duc­tion (1928)

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Cartoon Characters Wear Gloves: A Curious Trip Through the History of Animation

in Animation, History, Video - Arts & Culture | June 23rd, 2017

It’s rare for Dis­ney to over­look a mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. For years, Mouse Ears were the film studio’s theme park sou­venir of choice, but recent­ly the gift shops have start­ed stock­ing white four-fin­gered gloves too.

Per­haps not the most sen­si­ble choice for dip­ping into a buck­et of jalapeño pop­pers or a $6 Mick­ey Pret­zel with Cheese Sauce, but the gloves have unde­ni­able reach when it comes to car­toon his­to­ry. Bugs Bun­ny wears them. So does Woody Wood­peck­er, Tom (though not Jer­ry), and Bet­ty Boop’s anthro­po­mor­phic dog­gie pal, Bim­bo.

As Vox’s Estelle Caswell points out above, the choice to glove Mick­ey and his ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry car­toon brethren was born of prac­ti­cal­i­ty. The lim­it­ed palette of black and white ani­ma­tion meant that most ani­mal char­ac­ters had black bodies—their arms dis­ap­peared against every inky expanse.

It also pro­vid­ed artists with a bit of relief, back when ani­ma­tion meant end­less hours of labor over hand drawn cells. Puffy gloves aren’t just a com­i­cal cap­per to bendy rub­ber hose limbs. They’re also way eas­i­er to draw than real­is­tic pha­langes.

As Walt Dis­ney him­self explained:

We did­n’t want him to have mouse hands, because he was sup­posed to be more human. So we gave him gloves. Five Fin­gers looked like too much on such a lit­tle fig­ure, so we took one away. That was just one less fin­ger to ani­mate.

Caswell digs deep­er than that, unearthing a sur­pris­ing cul­tur­al com­par­i­son. White gloves were a stan­dard part of black­face per­form­ers’ min­strel show cos­tumes. Audi­ences who packed the­aters for tour­ing min­strel shows were the same peo­ple lin­ing up for Steam­boat Willie.

Com­ic ani­ma­tion has evolved both visu­al­ly and in terms of con­tent over its near hun­dred year his­to­ry, but ani­ma­tors have a ten­den­cy to revere the his­to­ry of their pro­fes­sion.

Thus­ly do South Park’s ani­ma­tors bestow spot­less white gloves upon Mr. Han­key the Christ­mas Poo.

“Amer­i­ca’s favorite cat and mouse team,” the Simp­sons’  Itchy and Scratchy, mete out their hor­rif­i­cal­ly vio­lent pun­ish­ment in pris­tine white gloves.

Clear­ly some things are worth pre­serv­ing…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dis­ney Car­toon That Intro­duced Mick­ey Mouse & Ani­ma­tion with Sound (1928)

Disney’s 12 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Ani­ma­tion Demon­strat­ed in 12 Ani­mat­ed Primers

Free Ani­mat­ed Films: From Clas­sic to Mod­ern 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, appear­ing onstage in New York City through June 26 in Paul David Young’s Faust 3. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Joni Mitchell Sings an Achingly Pretty Version of “Both Sides Now” on the Mama Cass TV Show (1969)

in Music, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | June 19th, 2017

“Records can be a bad trip. The audi­ence can play your mis­takes over and over. In a tele­vi­sion spe­cial they see you once and you work hard to make sure they’re see­ing you at your best.” 

—Mama Cass Elliot, The Argus

It’s hard to imag­ine any­one blessed with Mama Cass’ gold­en pipes being embar­rassed by a record­ed per­for­mance. A live gig, yes, though, celebri­ties of her era were sub­ject­ed to far few­er wit­ness­es.

The Inter­net was an undream­able lit­tle dream in 1969, when the sole episode of The Mama Cass Tele­vi­sion Show aired. The for­mer singer of the Mamas and the Papas died five years lat­er, pre­sum­ably unaware that future gen­er­a­tions would have knowl­edge of, let alone access to, her failed pilot.

She may have described her vari­ety show as “low key” to the Fre­mont, Cal­i­for­nia Argus, but the guest list was padded with high wattage friends, includ­ing come­di­an Bud­dy Hack­ett, and singers Mary Tra­vers and John Sebas­t­ian. Joni Mitchell, above, deliv­ered an above-reproach per­for­mance of “Both Sides Now.”

Lat­er, Mitchell and Tra­vers joined their host­ess for the heart­felt ren­di­tion of “I Shall Be Released” below, a per­for­mance that is only slight­ly marred by Elliot’s insane cos­tume and an unnec­es­sar­i­ly syrupy back­ing arrange­ment of strings and reeds.

Those who can’t live with­out see­ing the com­plete show can pur­chase DVDs online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Video of Joni Mitchell Per­form­ing in 1965 — Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

Watch 1970s Ani­ma­tions of Songs by Joni Mitchell, Jim Croce & The Kinks, Aired on The Son­ny & Cher Show

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’ll is appear­ing onstage in New York City through June 26 in Paul David Young’s polit­i­cal satire, Faust 3. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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