How Audrey Hepburn Risked Death to Help the Dutch Resistance in World War II

in History | September 12th, 2024

Audrey Hep­burn may not have had the most pro­lif­ic Hol­ly­wood career, but a fair few of her char­ac­ters still feel today like roles she was born to play. Per­haps the same could have been true of the part of Anne Frank, had she not refused to take it up. When Anne’s father Otto Frank inquired about it, one might imag­ine that Hep­burn felt like she did­n’t have the right expe­ri­ence to play that young woman, now long regard­ed as the embod­i­ment of the vic­tims of the Holo­caust. In fact, for the actress who would be remem­bered as Princess Ann and Hol­ly Golight­ly, it was too close to home: Hep­burn could remem­ber all too well her own har­row­ing wartime expe­ri­ence in the Nether­lands, com­ing to the point of star­va­tion while hid­ing from the Nazis.

Born in Bel­gium, the young Hep­burn went to board­ing school in Eng­land in the mid-nine­teen-thir­ties. At the end of that decade, with the out­break of the war, she went with her moth­er to live in the Nether­lands. A stu­dent of bal­let, she danced for audi­ences that includ­ed Nazi par­ty mem­bers — an unavoid­able fact of which much has been made — but she also danced, secret­ly, for the resis­tance. As biog­ra­ph­er Robert Matzen writes, “Audrey’s celebri­ty as a bal­le­ri­na for near­ly four years at the Arn­hem city the­ater made her tal­ents valu­able to Dr. Viss­er ’t Hooft,” one of that move­men­t’s lead­ers, who put on “ille­gal musi­cal per­for­mances at var­i­ous by-invi­ta­tion-only loca­tions” meant to earn artists mon­ey “after they had been forced out of the Dutch main­stream by the Nazi union of artists, the Kul­tu­urkamer.”

Hep­burn her­self dis­cuss­es this peri­od in the inter­view clip at the top of the post. As time went on, Matzen writes, “Dr. Viss­er ’t Hooft sent her at one point dur­ing this peri­od to take a mes­sage, and per­haps food, to one of the downed fliers. Her qual­i­fi­ca­tions were sim­ple: She spoke Eng­lish flu­ent­ly where­as oth­er young peo­ple with­in easy reach in the vil­lage did not.”

In the autumn of 1944, “she and her fam­i­ly kept a British para­troop­er in their base­ment, the lat­est act in a series of defi­ances,” writes Den of Geek’s David Crow. “By the fol­low­ing win­ter, they too would be liv­ing down there, wary to even crawl out of ‘bed’ as the bombs fell on their small Dutch vil­lage of Velp.” Even­tu­al­ly, “after what was left of their food was deplet­ed, they ate tulip bulbs. When those were gone, they ate the weeds.”

Endured at such a young age, this ordeal had last­ing effects. “The depri­va­tions would haunt Audrey the rest of her days, inform­ing her svelte frame and, Matzen argues, pos­si­bly her ear­ly death from appen­diceal can­cer.” No won­der, then, that she remained fair­ly tac­i­turn about her war even after becom­ing an inter­na­tion­al­ly famous actress (an alter­na­tive to her first dream of danc­ing). Hence the for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge laid before Matzen in the research that went into what became Dutch Girl: Audrey Hep­burn and World War II, which you can hear him dis­cuss in the Sto­ry­tellers’ Stu­dio video just above. Her sto­ry turned out dif­fer­ent­ly from Anne Frank’s — which itself, as Matzen argues, beset her with a kind of “sur­vivor’s guilt” — but now, both of them live on as icons of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry at its light­est and dark­est.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Audrey Hepburn’s Mov­ing Screen Test for Roman Hol­i­day (1953)

How Two Teenage Dutch Sis­ters End­ed Up Join­ing the Resis­tance and Assas­si­nat­ing Nazis Dur­ing World War II

Albert Camus, Edi­tor of the French Resis­tance News­pa­per Com­bat, Writes Mov­ing­ly About Life, Pol­i­tics & War (1944–47)

Col­or Footage of the Lib­er­a­tion of Paris, Shot by Hol­ly­wood Direc­tor George Stevens (1944)

Cha­rade, the Best Hitch­cock Film Hitch­cock Nev­er Made. Stars Cary Grant & Audrey Hep­burn

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Why You Can Never Tune a Piano

in Music, Science | September 11th, 2024

Grab a cup of cof­fee, put on your think­ing cap, and start work­ing through this video from Minute Physics, which explains why gui­tars, vio­lins and oth­er instru­ments can be tuned to a tee. But when it comes to pianos, it’s an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry, a math­e­mat­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty. Pianos are slight­ly but nec­es­sar­i­ly out of tune.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How the Clavi­chord & Harp­si­chord Became the Mod­ern Piano: The Evo­lu­tion of Key­board Instru­ments, Explained

What Does the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Piano Sound Like? Watch Pianist Give a Per­for­mance on a 1720 Cristo­fori Piano

The Mak­ing of a Stein­way Grand Piano, From Start to Fin­ish

Death: A Free Online Philosophy Course from Yale Helps You Grapple with the Inescapable

in Online Courses, Philosophy, Yale | September 10th, 2024

It pays to think intel­li­gent­ly about the inevitable. And this course taught by Yale pro­fes­sor Shelly Kagan does just that, tak­ing a rich, philo­soph­i­cal look at death. Here’s how the course descrip­tion reads:

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will exam­ine a num­ber of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mor­tal­i­ty. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that death may not actu­al­ly be the end is con­sid­ered. Are we, in some sense, immor­tal? Would immor­tal­i­ty be desir­able? Also a clear­er notion of what it is to die is exam­ined. What does it mean to say that a per­son has died? What kind of fact is that? And, final­ly, dif­fer­ent atti­tudes to death are eval­u­at­ed. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is sui­cide moral­ly per­mis­si­ble? Is it ratio­nal? How should the knowl­edge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

Major texts used in this course include Pla­to’s Phae­do, Tol­stoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, and John Per­ry’sA Dia­logue on Per­son­al Iden­ti­ty and Immor­tal­i­ty. Kagan also lat­er pub­lished a com­pan­ion book–simply called Death–which can be pur­chased online.

You can watch the 26 lec­tures above. Or find them on YouTube and iTunes in video and audio for­mats. For more infor­ma­tion on this course, includ­ing the syl­labus, please vis­it this Yale site.

This course has been added to our list of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley, Dying of Can­cer, Left This World Trip­ping on LSD (1963)

Alan Watts Explains Why Death is an Art, Adven­ture and Cre­ative Act

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How, Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion, He Recit­ed a Line from the Bha­gavad Gita: “Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds”

Zen Mas­ter Alan Watts Dis­cov­ers the Secrets of Aldous Hux­ley and His Art of Dying

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

James Earl Jones (RIP) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

in Literature, Poetry | September 10th, 2024

Note: With the sad pass­ing of James Earl Jones, at age 93, we’re bring­ing back a post from our archive–one fea­tur­ing Jones read­ing two great Amer­i­can poets, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whit­man. These read­ings first appeared on our site in 2014.

For all its many flaws the orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy nev­er strayed too far afield because of the deep well of grav­i­tas in James Earl Jones’ voice. The omi­nous breath­ing, the echo effect, and that arrest­ing baritone—no amount of danc­ing Ewoks could take away from his vocal per­for­mance. And though Jones’ expres­sive face has also car­ried many a film, his unmis­tak­able voice can give even the sil­li­est of mate­r­i­al the weight of an oil tanker’s anchor. So then imag­ine the effect when Jones reads from already weighty lit­er­a­ture by Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whit­man? “Chills” only begins to describe it. Just above, hear him read Poe’s “The Raven,” a poem whose rhymes and sing-song cadences con­jure up the mad obses­sion that mate­ri­al­izes as that most por­ten­tous and intel­li­gent of all the winged crea­tures.

While Vad­er and Poe seem like nat­ur­al com­pan­ions, the read­ing by Jones above of selec­tions from Whitman’s “Song of Myself” also makes per­fect sense. As com­fort­able on the stage as he is before the cam­eras, Jones has an excel­lent ear for the Shake­speare­an line, clear­ly good prepa­ra­tion for the Whit­man­ian, an “oper­at­ic line,” writes The Bro­ken Tow­er, “due to its brea(d)th.” In the truth Whit­man sings in his expan­sive tran­scen­den­tal poem, “the body, the body politic, and the nation’s body, are all lit­er­al­ly the stuff of the uni­verse, star­dust smat­tered and strewn from the uni­fy­ing explo­sion of our shared ori­gin.” There are few read­ers, I aver, who could hold such “stuff” togeth­er with the strength and depth of voice as James Earl Jones. The record­ing above, of sec­tions 6–7 and 17–19, comes from a read­ing Jones gave in Octo­ber of 1973 at the 92nd St. Y. Below, hear the com­plete record­ing, with sev­er­al more stan­zas. Jones begins at the begin­ning, rum­bling and bel­low­ing out those lines that trans­mute ego­tism into mag­is­te­r­i­al, self­less inclu­siv­i­ty:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fred­er­ick Douglass’s Fiery 1852 Speech, “The Mean­ing of July 4th for the Negro,” Read by James Earl Jones

Darth Vader’s Voice: The Orig­i­nal Voice Ver­sus the Vocals of James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones Reads Oth­el­lo at White House Poet­ry Jam

Watch Stars Read Clas­sic Children’s Books: Bet­ty White, James Earl Jones, Rita Moreno & Many More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Big Map of Who Lived When Shows Which Cultural Figures Walked the Earth at the Same Time: From 1200 to Present

in History, Maps | September 9th, 2024

We could call the time in which we live the “Infor­ma­tion Age.” Or we could describe it more vivid­ly as the era of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, Mar­tin Scors­ese and Steven Spiel­berg, Oprah Win­frey and Martha Stew­art, Bey­on­cé and Bob Dylan. What­ev­er you think of the work of any of these fig­ures in par­tic­u­lar, you can hard­ly deny the impact they’ve had on our cul­ture. Were we liv­ing a cen­tu­ry ago, we might have said the same of Hen­ry Ford and John D. Rock­e­feller, James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzger­ald (though he had­n’t quite pub­lished The Great Gats­by yet), Pablo Picas­so and Char­lie Chap­lin, Marie Curie and Sig­mund Freud.

Were we liv­ing in the year 1225, our lives would’ve over­lapped with those of Leonar­do Fibonac­ci, Fran­cis of Assisi, Rumi, and Thomas Aquinas, as well as both Genghis Khan and his grand­son Kublai Khan.

All this is laid out visu­al­ly in The Big Map of Who Lived When, cre­at­ed ear­li­er this year by a Red­dit user called Profound_Whatever. As Big Think’s Frank Jacobs writes, the map reveals sur­pris­ing instances of con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous­ness, such as that cur­rent U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden “for about a year was alive at the same time as Niko­la Tes­la (1854–1943), the Ser­bian-Amer­i­can inven­tor who devel­oped the alter­nat­ing cur­rent (AC) sys­tem that is used for dis­trib­ut­ing elec­tric­i­ty.”

For “anoth­er, more recent (and more baf­fling) over­lap: The life of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973), who wrote The Lord of the Rings, coin­cid­ed ever so slight­ly with that of Eminem.” Going far­ther into the past, how many of us were ful­ly aware that “Christo­pher Colum­bus (1451–1506), Leonar­do da Vin­ci (1452–1519), and Mar­tin Luther (1483–1546) were con­tem­po­raries of each oth­er”? Or that “the lives of Oliv­er Cromwell (1599–1658) and René Descartes (1596–1650) synced almost per­fect­ly with each oth­er, despite the one being the dog­mat­i­cal­ly Puri­tan fig­ure­head of the Eng­lish Civ­il War, and the oth­er the father of mod­ern, ratio­nal­ist phi­los­o­phy by giv­ing doubt to a cen­tral role in the pur­suit of truth”?

The Big Map of Who Lived When uses a col­or-cod­ing sys­tem to divide the fig­ures whose lifes­pans it charts into eight cat­e­gories, includ­ing artists (Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Rube Gold­berg), thinkers (John Locke, Charles Dar­win), “busi­ness & indus­try” (includ­ing famed pirates from Hen­ry Mor­gan to Black­beard), and “lead­ers & bad­dies” (Napoleon, Adolf Hitler). It all reminds us that we’d give any­thing for a chance to meet some of them, or to stay out of the path of oth­ers. Of course, the indi­vid­u­als we think of as hav­ing defined a par­tic­u­lar his­tor­i­cal era weren’t always regard­ed that way by every­one else who lived at the same time: some­thing it would­n’t hurt to bear in mind when con­sid­er­ing our own place in his­to­ry.

via Big Think

Relat­ed con­tent:

Joseph Priest­ley Visu­al­izes His­to­ry & Great His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures with Two of the Most Influ­en­tial Info­graph­ics Ever (1769)

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

4000 Years of His­to­ry Dis­played in a 5‑Foot-Long “His­tom­ap” (Ear­ly Info­graph­ic) From 1931

180,000 Years of Reli­gion Chart­ed on a “His­tom­ap” in 1943

10 Mil­lion Years of Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in an Ele­gant, 5‑Foot Long Info­graph­ic from 1931

The His­to­ry of the World in One Video: Every Year from 200,000 BCE to Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

A Digital Archive Features Hundreds of Audio Cassette Tape Designs, from the 1960s to the 1990s

in Archives, History, Music, Technology | September 4th, 2024

Audio cas­sette tapes first appeared on the mar­ket in the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties, but it would take about a decade before they came to dom­i­nate it. And when they did, they’d changed the lives of many a music-lover by hav­ing made it pos­si­ble not just to lis­ten to their albums of choice on the go, but also to col­lect and trade their own cus­tom-assem­bled lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences. By the eight­ies, blank tapes had become a house­hold neces­si­ty on the order of bat­ter­ies or toi­let paper for such con­sumers — and just as with those fre­quent­ly replen­ished prod­ucts, every­one seemed to have their favorite brand.

Some pre­ferred tapes from Philips, which devel­oped the for­mat of the Com­pact Cas­sette in the first place. Oth­ers had their pick from Fuji, BASF, Sony, Radio Shack, Scotch (which also made tape of the sticky vari­ety), and a host of oth­er brands besides.

Even some mem­bers of post-cas­sette gen­er­a­tions rec­og­nize the old tagline “Is it live or is it Mem­o­rex?” or Max­el­l’s “Blown Away Guy” in his scarf and LC2. If you’re old enough to have done tap­ing of your own, you don’t need a logo to rec­og­nize your brand; you’ll know it as soon as you spot the design of the cas­sette itself in the online archive at tapedeck.org.

“I built tapedeck.org to show­case the amaz­ing beau­ty and (some­times) weird­ness found in the designs of the com­mon audio tape cas­sette,” writes the site’s cre­ator Oliv­er Gel­brich. “There’s an amaz­ing range of designs, start­ing from the ear­ly 60’s func­tion­al cas­sette designs, mov­ing through the col­or­ful play­ful­ness of the 70’s audio tapes to amaz­ing shape vari­a­tions dur­ing the 80s and 90s.” You can browse the ever-expand­ing col­lec­tion by brand, run­ning time, col­or, and even tape coat­ing: chrome, fer­ro, fer­rochrome, and met­al, by whose dif­fer­ences audio­philes set great store.

Some­what improb­a­bly, in this age where even home CD-burn­ing has been dis­placed by near-instan­ta­neous stream­ing and down­load­ing of dig­i­tal music, the cas­sette tape has made some­thing of a come­back. The near-mytho­log­i­cal allure of the mix­tape has only grown in recent years, dur­ing which artists both minor and major have put out cas­sette releas­es — and in some cas­es, cas­sette-only releas­es. This seems to be hap­pen­ing around the world: a few weeks ago, while strolling an art-school neigh­bor­hood in Seoul, where I live, I passed a cof­fee shop that offered its young cus­tomers rentals of both tapes and Walk­man-style play­ers on which to lis­ten to them. As anoth­er gen­er­a­tion-tran­scend­ing slo­gan has it, every­thing old is new again.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Home Tap­ing Is Killing Music: When the Music Indus­try Waged War on the Cas­sette Tape Dur­ing the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back

Lis­ten to Audio Arts: The 1970s Tape Cas­sette Arts Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Andy Warhol, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­ers

The Beau­ty of Degrad­ed Art: Why We Like Scratchy Vinyl, Grainy Film, Wob­bly VHS & Oth­er Ana­log-Media Imper­fec­tion

Atten­tion K‑Mart Shop­pers: Hear 90 Hours of Back­ground Music & Ads from the Retail Giant’s 1980s and 90s Hey­day

A Free Dig­i­tal Archive of Graph­ic Design: A Curat­ed Col­lec­tion of Design Trea­sures from the Inter­net Archive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Night Frank Zappa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Captain Beefheart Too (Belgium, 1969)

in Music | September 3rd, 2024

Recent­ly an old­er musi­cian acquain­tance told me he nev­er “got into ‘Inter­stel­lar Over­drive’ and all that,” refer­ring to the “first major space jam” of Pink Floy­d’s career and the sub­se­quent explo­sion of space rock bands. I found myself a lit­tle tak­en aback. Though I was born too late to be there, I’ve come to see “’Inter­stel­lar Over­drive’ and all that” as one of the most inter­est­ing things about the end of the sixties—the com­ing of Cap­tain Beef­heart and the Mag­ic Band, of The Soft Machine, of Hawk­wind and oth­er psy­che­del­ic war­riors.

Too oft over­looked in the pop­u­lar Wood­stock/Alta­mont bina­ry short­hand for fin-de-six­ties rock and roll, these bands’ brand of prog/­jaz­z/blues/psych-rock exper­i­men­tal­ism got its due in Amou­gies, Bel­gium, in a 1969 fes­ti­val meant as Europe’s answer to the three-day “Aquar­i­an expo­si­tion” staged in upstate New York that same year.

Spon­sored by Paris mag­a­zine Actuel, “The Actuel Rock Fes­ti­val” fea­tured all of the bands men­tioned above (except Hawk­wind), along with Yes, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cher­ry, and many more. MC’ing the event, and serv­ing as Beefheart’s man­ag­er, was none oth­er than impre­sario of weird him­self, Frank Zap­pa, who sat in with Floyd on “Inter­stel­lar Over­drive,” bring­ing his con­sid­er­able lead gui­tar prowess to their dark, descend­ing instru­men­tal.

Just above, hear that Zappa/Floyd per­for­mance of the song. The live audio record­ing is fuzzy and a bit hol­low, but the play­ing comes through per­fect­ly clear. Zap­pa, in fact, jammed with near­ly all the artists on the ros­ter, though only a few record­ings have sur­faced, like this one from an audi­ence mem­ber. Of their col­lab­o­ra­tion, Pink Floyd drum­mer Nick Mason said in 1973, “Frank Zap­pa is real­ly one of those rare musi­cians that can play with us. The lit­tle he did in Amou­gies was ter­ri­bly cor­rect.” I think you’ll agree.

Dan­ger­ous Minds records many of Zappa’s rec­ol­lec­tions of the event, includ­ing a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sar­don­ic account he gave in an inter­view with The Simp­sons’ Matt Groen­ing in which he com­plains of feel­ing “like Lin­da McCart­ney” and about the scourge of “slum­ber­ing euro-hip­pies.” Zap­pa appar­ent­ly did not remem­ber jam­ming with Floyd but “the pho­tos don’t lie and nei­ther does the record­ing.” He does recall play­ing with Cap­tain Beef­heart, who says he him­self “enjoyed it.” You can hear Beef­heart’s set with Zap­pa above.

Accord­ing to a biog­ra­phy of found­ing Pink Floyd singer and gui­tarist Syd Bar­rett—gone by the time of the festival—footage of the Zappa/Floyd jam exists, part of an unre­leased doc­u­men­tary of the event by Gerome Laper­rousaz. That film has yet to sur­face, it seems, but we do have the film above—slipping between black-and-white and color—of Pink Floyd play­ing “Green is the Colour,” “Care­ful With That Axe, Eugene,” and “Set the Con­trols For the Heart of the Sun.” It’s a must-watch if only for Roger Waters’ bone-chill­ing screams in the sec­ond song.

The fes­ti­val is notable not only for these ear­ly per­for­mances of the new­ly Gilmour-front­ed Pink Floyd, but also for the appear­ance of Ayns­ley Dun­bar, future Zap­pa drum­mer and jour­ney­man musi­cian extra­or­di­naire. Alleged­ly Zap­pa met Dun­bar at the fes­ti­val and was quite impressed with the latter’s jazz chops (though Dun­bar first joined Zappa’s band on gui­tar before mov­ing to drums). You can hear Zap­pa jam with his even­tu­al star drummer’s band, Ayns­ley Dunbar’s Retal­i­a­tion, above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix, Pink Floyd, Traf­fic & Oth­er Bands Play Huge Lon­don Fes­ti­val “Christ­mas on Earth Con­tin­ued” (1967)

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

Ani­mat­ed: Frank Zap­pa on Why the Cul­tur­al­ly-Bereft Unit­ed States Is So Sus­cep­ti­ble to Fads (1971)

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Ver­sa (1967)

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

The 11 Censored Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Cartoons That Haven’t Been Aired Since 1968

in Animation, Film, History | August 27th, 2024

For decades and decades, Warn­er Bros.’ Looney Tunes and Mer­rie Melodies car­toons have served as a kind of default chil­dren’s enter­tain­ment. Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived for the­atri­cal exhi­bi­tion in the nine­teen-thir­ties, they were ani­mat­ed to a stan­dard that held its own against the sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions along­side which they would lat­er be broad­cast. Even their clas­si­cal music-laden sound­tracks seemed to sig­nal high­er aspi­ra­tions. But when scru­ti­nized close­ly enough, they turned out not to be as time­less and inof­fen­sive as every­one had assumed. In fact, eleven Looney Tunes and Mer­rie Melodies car­toons have been with­held from syn­di­ca­tion since the nine­teen-six­ties due to their con­tent.

The LSu­per­Son­icQ video above takes a look at the “Cen­sored Eleven,” all of which have been sup­pressed for qual­i­ties like “exag­ger­at­ed fea­tures, racist tones, and out­dat­ed ref­er­ences.” Pro­duced between 1931 and 1944, these car­toons have been described as reflect­ing per­cep­tions wide­ly held by view­ers at the time that have since become unac­cept­able. Take, for exam­ple, the black pro­to-Elmer Fudd in “All This and Rab­bit Stew,” from 1941, a col­lec­tion of “eth­nic stereo­types includ­ing over­sized cloth­ing, a shuf­fle to his move­ment, and mum­bling sen­tences.” In oth­er pro­duc­tions, like “Jun­gle Jit­ters” and “The Isle of Pin­go Pon­go,” the offense is against native islanders, depict­ed there­in as hard-par­ty­ing can­ni­bals.

At first glance, “Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs,” from 1943, may resem­ble a grotesque car­ni­val of stereo­types. But as direc­tor Bob Clam­pett lat­er explained, it orig­i­nat­ed when he “was approached in Hol­ly­wood by the cast of an all-black musi­cal off-broad­way pro­duc­tion called Jump For Joy while they were doing some spe­cial per­for­mances in Los Ange­les. They asked me why there weren’t any Warn­er’s car­toons with black char­ac­ters and I did­n’t have any good answer for that ques­tion. So we sat down togeth­er and came up with a par­o­dy of Dis­ney’s Snow White, and ‘Coal Black’ was the result.” These per­form­ers pro­vid­ed the voic­es (cred­it­ed, out of con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion, to Mel Blanc), and Clam­pett paid trib­ute in the char­ac­ter designs to real jazz musi­cians he knew from Cen­tral Avenue.

How­ev­er admirable the inten­tions of “Coal Black” — and how­ev­er mas­ter­ful its ani­ma­tion, which has come in for great praise from his­to­ri­ans of the medi­um — it remains rel­e­gat­ed to the banned-car­toons nether­world. Of course, this does­n’t mean you can’t see it today: like most of the “Cen­sored Eleven,” it’s long been boot­legged, and it even under­went restora­tion for the first annu­al Turn­er Clas­sic Movies Film Fes­ti­val in 2010. Some of these con­tro­ver­sial shorts appear on the Looney Tunes Gold Col­lec­tion Vol­ume: 3 DVDs, intro­duced by Whoopi Gold­berg, who makes the sen­si­ble point that “remov­ing these inex­cus­able images and jokes from this col­lec­tion would be the same as say­ing they nev­er exist­ed.” Grown-ups may be okay with that, but kids — always the most dis­cern­ing audi­ence for Warn­er Bros. car­toons — know when they’re being lied to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock: The School­house Rock Par­o­dy Sat­ur­day Night Live May Have Cen­sored

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

Dr. Seuss Draws Anti-Japan­ese Car­toons Dur­ing WWII, Then Atones with Hor­ton Hears a Who!

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Jimi Hendrix Arrives in London in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clapton Away: “You Never Told Me He Was That F‑ing Good”

in Music | August 20th, 2024

Jimi Hen­drix arrived on the Lon­don scene like a ton of bricks in 1966, smash­ing every British blues gui­tarist to pieces the instant they saw him play. As vocal­ist Ter­ry Reid tells it, when Hen­drix played his first show­case at the Bag O’Nails, arranged by Ani­mals’ bassist Chas Chan­dler, “there were gui­tar play­ers weep­ing. They had to mop the floor up. He was pil­ing it on, solo after solo. I could see everyone’s fill­ings falling out. When he fin­ished, it was silence. Nobody knew what to do. Every­body was dumb­struck, com­plete­ly in shock.”

He only exag­ger­ates a lit­tle, by all accounts, and when Reid says “every­body,” he means every­body: Kei­th Richards, Mick Jag­ger, Bri­an Jones, Jeff Beck, Paul McCart­ney, The Who, Eric Bur­don, John May­all, and maybe Jim­my Page, though he denies it. May­all recalls, “the buzz was out before Jimi had even been seen here, so peo­ple were antic­i­pat­ing his per­for­mance, and he more than lived up to what we were expect­ing.” In fact, even before this leg­endary event sent near­ly every star clas­sic rock gui­tarist back to the wood­shed, Jimi had arrived unan­nounced at the Regent Street Poly­tech­nic, and asked to sit in and jam with Cream, where he pro­ceed­ed to dethrone the reign­ing British gui­tar god, Eric Clap­ton.

Nobody knew who he was, but “in those days any­body could get up with any­body,” Clap­ton says in a recent inter­view, “if you were con­vinc­ing enough that you could play. He got up and blew everyone’s mind.” As Hen­drix biog­ra­ph­er Charles Cross tells it, “no one had ever asked to jam” with Cream before. “Most would have been too intim­i­dat­ed by their rep­u­ta­tion as the best band in Britain.” To hear the sto­ry as it’s told in the clip above from the BBC doc­u­men­tary Sev­en Ages of Rock, no one else would have ever dared to get onstage with Eric Clap­ton. Clap­ton, as the famed graf­fi­ti in Lon­don announced, was God. “It was a very brave per­son who would do that,” says Jack Bruce.

Actu­al­ly, it was Chan­dler who asked the band, and who also tried to pre­pare Clap­ton. Jimi got onstage, plugged into Bruce’s bass amp, and played a ver­sion of Howl­in’ Wolf’s “Killin’ Floor.” Every­one was “com­plete­ly gob­s­macked,” Clap­ton writes in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy. “I remem­ber think­ing that here was a force to be reck­oned with. It scared me, because he was clear­ly going to be a huge star, and just as we are find­ing our own speed, here was the real thing.” Fear, envy, awe… all rea­son­able emo­tions when stand­ing next to Jimi Hen­drix as he tears through “Killin’ Floor” three times faster than any­one else played it (as you can see him play it in Stock­holm above)—while doing the splits, lying on the floor, play­ing with his teeth and behind his head…

“It was amaz­ing,” writes Clap­ton, “and it was musi­cal­ly great, too, not just pyrotech­nics.” There’s no telling how Jimi might have remem­bered the event had he lived to write his mem­oirs, but he would have been pret­ty mod­est, as was his way. No one else who saw him felt any need to hold back. “It must have been dif­fi­cult for Eric to han­dle,” says Bruce, “because [Eric] was ‘God,’” and this unknown per­son comes along, and burns.” He puts it slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly at the top: “Eric was a gui­tar play­er. Jimi was some sort of force of nature.”

Rock jour­nal­ist Kei­th Altham has yet a third account, as Ed Vul­liamy writes at The Guardian. He remem­bers “Chan­dler going back­stage after Clap­ton left in the mid­dle of the song ‘which he had yet to mas­ter him­self’; Clap­ton was furi­ous­ly puff­ing on a cig­a­rette and telling Chas: ‘You nev­er told me he was that fuck­ing good.’” Who knows if Hen­drix knew Clap­ton had strug­gled with “Killin’ Floor” and decid­ed not to try it live. But as blues gui­tarist Stephen Dale Petit notes, “when Chas invit­ed Jimi to Lon­don, Jimi did not ask about mon­ey or con­tracts. He asked if Chas would intro­duce him to Beck and Clap­ton.”

He had come to meet, and blow away, his rock heroes. “Two weeks after The Bag O’Nails,” writes Clas­sic Rock’s John­ny Black, “when Cream appeared at The Mar­quee Club, Clap­ton was sport­ing a frizzy perm and he left his gui­tar feed­ing back against the amp, just as he’d seen Jimi do.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Unplugged: Two Great Record­ings of Hen­drix Play­ing Acoustic Gui­tar

23-Year-Old Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Gui­tar Sound (1968)

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view Ani­mat­ed (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Soviet Inventor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Early Electronic Instrument That Could Be Played Without Being Touched (1954)

in Music | August 20th, 2024

You know the sound of the theremin, that weird, war­bly whine that sig­nals mys­tery, dan­ger, and oth­er­world­ly por­tent in many clas­sic sci-fi films. It has the dis­tinc­tion of being not only the very first elec­tron­ic instru­ment but also the only instru­ment in his­to­ry one plays with­out ever touch­ing any part of it. Instead, the theremin play­er makes hand motions, like the con­duc­tor of an invis­i­ble choir, and the device sings. You can see this your­self above, as the instrument’s inven­tor, Leon Theremin, demon­strates his therem­invox, as he called it at the time, in 1954. Speak­ing in Russ­ian, with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, Theremin describes how the “instru­ment of a singing-voice kind” works “by means of influ­enc­ing an elec­tro­mag­net­ic field.”

Theremin orig­i­nal­ly invent­ed the instru­ment in 1919 and called it the Aether­phone. He demon­strat­ed it for Vladimir Lenin in 1922, and its futur­is­tic sound and design made quite an impres­sion on the ail­ing com­mu­nist leader. Theremin then brought the device to Europe (see a silent news­reel demon­stra­tion here) and to the U.S. in 1927, where he debuted it at the Plaza Hotel and where clas­si­cal vio­lin­ist Clara Rock­more, soon to become the most devot­ed pro­po­nent and play­er of the theremin, first heard it.

Although many peo­ple thought of Theremin’s inven­tion as a nov­el­ty, Rock­more insist­ed that it would be tak­en seri­ous­ly. She appren­ticed her­self to Theremin, mas­tered the instru­ment, and adapt­ed and record­ed many a clas­si­cal com­po­si­tion, like Tchaikovsky’s “Berceuse,” above. More than any­one else, Rock­more made the theremin sing as its inven­tor intend­ed.

The ori­gin sto­ry of the theremin, like so many inven­tion sto­ries, involves a hap­py acci­dent in the lab­o­ra­to­ry. Just above, Albert Glin­sky, author of the his­to­ry Theremin: Ether Music and Espi­onage, describes how Theremin inad­ver­tent­ly cre­at­ed his new instru­ment while devis­ing an audi­ble tech­nique for mea­sur­ing the den­si­ty of gas­es in a chem­istry lab. The first iter­a­tion of the instru­ment had a foot ped­al, but Theremin wise­ly decid­ed, Glin­sky says, that “it would be so much more intrigu­ing to have the hands pure­ly in the air,” manip­u­lat­ing the sound from seem­ing­ly nowhere. Although there are no frets or strings or keys, no bow, slide, or oth­er phys­i­cal means of chang­ing the theremin’s pitch, its oper­a­tion nonethe­less requires train­ing and pre­ci­sion just like any oth­er musi­cal instru­ment. If you’re inter­est­ed in learn­ing the basics, check out the tuto­r­i­al below with therem­i­nist Lydia Kav­ina, play­ing a ‘there­ami­ni’ designed by syn­the­siz­er pio­neer Moog.

In his day, Theremin lived on the cut­ting edge of sci­en­tif­ic and musi­cal inno­va­tion, and he hoped to see his instru­ment inte­grat­ed into the world of dance. While work­ing with the Amer­i­can Negro Bal­let Com­pa­ny in the 1930s, the inven­tor fell in love with and mar­ried a young African-Amer­i­can dancer named Lavinia Williams. He was sub­se­quent­ly ostra­cized from his social cir­cle, then he either abrupt­ly picked up and left the U.S. for the Sovi­et Union in 1938 or, more like­ly, as Lavinia alleged, he was kid­napped from his stu­dio and whisked away. What­ev­er the case, Theremin end­ed up in a Gulag lab­o­ra­to­ry called a sha­ras­ka, design­ing lis­ten­ing devices for the Sovi­et Union. There­after, he worked for the KGB, then became a pro­fes­sor of physics at Moscow State Uni­ver­si­ty.

Theremin nev­er gave up on his elec­tron­ic instru­ments, invent­ing an elec­tron­ic cel­lo and vari­a­tions on his theremin dur­ing a 10-year stint at the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music. He gave his final theremin demon­stra­tion in the year of his death, 1993, at age 97. (See him play­ing above in 1987 with his third wife Natalia.) To learn much more about the inventor’s fas­ci­nat­ing life sto­ry, be sure to see Steven M. Martin’s 1993 doc­u­men­tary Theremin: An Elec­tron­ic Odyssey.

And if you’re intrigued enough, you can buy your very own Theremin made by Moog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn How to Play the Theremin: A Free Short Video Course

Watch Jim­my Page Rock the Theremin, the Ear­ly Sovi­et Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment, in Some Hyp­not­ic Live Per­for­mances

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

Leon Theremin Adver­tis­es the First Com­mer­cial Pro­duc­tion Run of His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment (1930)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness