Neil Armstrong’s Parents Appear on the Classic American TV Show “I’ve Got a Secret,” 1962

in Astronomy | October 4th, 2012

“I’ve Got a Secret” was an Amer­i­can game show aired by CBS. By ask­ing a series of ques­tions, a pan­el had to deter­mine the secret of con­tes­tants. On Sep­tem­ber 17, 1962, Stephen Koenig Arm­strong and Vio­la Louise Engel Arm­strong came on the show and har­bored this secret — their son was one of nine men made an astro­naut that very day. Almost sev­en years lat­er, on July 20, 1969, Arm­strong became the first per­son to set foot on the moon. This is why host Gar­ry Moore’s ques­tion is all the more amaz­ing: “Now, how would you feel, Mrs. Arm­strong, if it turned out — of course nobody knows — but if it turns out that your son is the first man to land on the moon? How would you feel?”

Neil Arm­strong died on August 25, 2012 in Cincin­nati, at the age of 82. Here is NASA’s trib­ute to his life and achieve­ments.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

John Waters Reads Steamy Scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Banned Books Week (NSFW)

in Books, Literature | October 3rd, 2012

In case you did­n’t real­ize it, we’re smack dab in the mid­dle of Banned Books Week, which reminds us not to take intel­lec­tu­al free­dom for grant­ed. Hun­dreds of books are cen­sored each year in Amer­i­ca’s schools, book­stores and libraries, many of them works of unques­tion­able lit­er­ary mer­it, books like The Catch­er in the Rye, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird and Huck­le­ber­ry Finn.

The New York Times has cre­at­ed a handy guide out­lin­ing Ways to Cel­e­brate Banned Books Week, while City Lights, the beloved San Fran­cis­co book­store found­ed by Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, came up with its own way to raise aware­ness. They got film­mak­er John Waters to read a steamy pas­sage from D.H. Lawrence’s con­tro­ver­sial nov­el, Lady Chat­ter­ley’s Lover. Although orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1928, an uncen­sored ver­sion of the book did­n’t appear in Britain until 1960. And almost imme­di­ate­ly Pen­guin, the pub­lish­er, was tried under the Obscene Pub­li­ca­tions Act. A jury returned with a ver­dict of ‘Not Guilty.’ As you can imag­ine, the lines read by Mr. Waters are not safe for work. You can find Lady Chat­ter­ley’s Lover housed in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

–  Cen­sor­ship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it. Mark Twain

via @GalleyCat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Clas­sic Beat Poem, Howl

Mike Wal­lace and Ben­nett Cerf (Founder of Ran­dom House) Talk Cen­sor­ship

The ‘Tractate on the Steppenwolf’: Max Von Sydow Narrates Animated Scene from Hermann Hesse’s Novel

in Animation, Books, Literature | October 3rd, 2012

Her­mann Hes­se’s 1927 nov­el Step­pen­wolf is a curi­ous mix­ture of mys­ti­cism and exis­ten­tial angst. It’s the sto­ry of a strange man who appears one day in an unnamed town and rents an attic apart­ment. By day he stays alone in his rooms, read­ing Goethe and Novalis. By night he wan­ders the dark alley­ways of the Old Town, like “a wolf of the steppes that had lost its way and strayed into the towns and the life of the herd.”

Despite a strong ele­ment of mag­ic in the sto­ry, Step­pen­wolf is essen­tial­ly an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal book. Hesse wrote it dur­ing a time of acute per­son­al cri­sis, when he had entered mid­dle age and was deal­ing with the fail­ure of his mar­riage to a younger woman. Strug­gling against thoughts of sui­cide, the book­ish Hesse sought to over­come his sense of iso­la­tion and estrange­ment from soci­ety by going out at night to the tav­erns and dance halls. For a sense of his men­tal state, here is a pas­sage from Step­pen­wolf in which the pro­tag­o­nist Har­ry Haller talks in a dream to his “immor­tal” hero, Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe:

Like all great spir­its, Herr von Goethe, you have clear­ly rec­og­nized and felt the rid­dle and the hope­less­ness of human life, with its moments of tran­scen­dence that sink again to wretched­ness, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of ris­ing to one fair peak of feel­ing except at the cost of many days’ enslave­ment to the dai­ly round; and, then, the ardent long­ing for the realm of the spir­it in eter­nal and dead­ly war with the equal­ly ardent and holy love of the lost inno­cence of nature, the whole fright­ful sus­pense in vacan­cy and uncer­tain­ty, this con­dem­na­tion to the tran­sient that can nev­er be valid, that is ever exper­i­men­tal and dilet­tan­tish; in short, the utter lack of pur­pose to which the human state is condemned–to its con­sum­ing despair.

But Hesse saw Step­pen­wolf as an opti­mistic book. It’s about a man’s jour­ney to self-aware­ness and spir­i­tu­al lib­er­a­tion. As he wrote in the intro­duc­tion, “The ‘Trea­tise’ [see above] and all those spots in the book deal­ing with mat­ters of the spir­it, of the arts and the ‘immor­tal’ men oppose the Step­pen­wolf’s world of suf­fer­ing with a pos­i­tive, serene, super-per­son­al and time­less world of faith. This book, no doubt, tells of griefs and needs; still it is not a book of a man despair­ing, but of a man believ­ing.”

The ani­mat­ed sequence above is from the rarely seen 1974 film of Step­pen­wolf by Fred Haines, in which the Har­ry Haller char­ac­ter played by Max von Sydow reads from the “Trac­tate on the Step­pen­wolf,” a mys­te­ri­ous text that was giv­en to Haller and then left behind by him, describ­ing the Step­pen­wolf’s divid­ed nature. The scene fea­tures imagery by the Czech artist Jaroslav Bradác.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Franz Kaf­ka: The Ani­mat­ed Short Film

Steven Spielberg Reveals He Is Dyslexic. Making Movies Offered Him a “Great Escape” as a Child

in Education, Film | October 3rd, 2012

We recent­ly brought you an inter­view with Steven Spiel­berg and his father, dis­cussing the films the direc­tor made as a teenag­er. Of all Amer­i­can auteurs, Spiel­berg may be the most in touch with his inner child, so it comes as no sur­prise that the young Spiel­berg record­ed train crash­es and bat­tles using his own room or yard as the back­drop.

What no one, includ­ing the Dream­Works co-founder him­self, knew until recent­ly is that all those 8 mm shorts were more than just a pas­time. In a recent inter­view Spiel­berg revealed that he is dyslex­ic and that he was only diag­nosed five years ago. “It explained a lot of things,” Spiel­berg told Quinn Bradlee. “It was like the last puz­zle part in a tremen­dous mys­tery that I’ve kept to myself all these years.”

Always two years behind the class in read­ing, Spiel­berg was teased by oth­er kids in school. He dread­ed hav­ing to read in front of the class. He nev­er lacked for friends, though look­ing back on it sev­er­al of his friends were prob­a­bly also dyslex­ic.

“Even my own friends who were just like me, we didn’t have the skills to talk about it,” he recalled in the inter­view for Friends of Quinn, a site for peo­ple with learn­ing dif­fer­ences. “I got bul­lied. I dealt with it by mak­ing movies. That was my cov­er up.”

Spiel­berg, whose films have spanned all gen­res over more than four decades, says that moviemak­ing was his “great escape” from feel­ing painful­ly dif­fer­ent.

“I nev­er felt like a vic­tim. Movies helped save me from shame, from guilt from putting it on myself when it wasn’t my bur­den,” he says. “In light of feel­ing like an out­sider, movies made me feel inside my own skill set.”

He says that it takes him about three hours to read what most peo­ple could read in a lit­tle more than an hour.

“I’m slow, but I’ve learned to adjust,” he says. “I am in a busi­ness where read­ing is very impor­tant. I read often and I have great com­pre­hen­sion. I retain almost every­thing I read. I real­ly take my time going through a book or a script.”

With all of that said, don’t miss our pre­vi­ous post: Steven Spielberg’s Debut: Two Films He Direct­ed as a Teenag­er

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lance writer. Find more of her work at .

Bob Dylan’s Historic Newport Folk Festival Performances, 1963–1965

in Film, Music | October 2nd, 2012

“You know him, he’s yours: Bob Dylan.” It’s hard to imag­ine a more iron­ic intro­duc­tion, but those were the words used by Ron­nie Gilbert of The Weavers to intro­duce Dylan at the 1964 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. “What a crazy thing to say!” Dylan wrote in his mem­oir, Chron­i­cles. “Screw that. As far as I knew, I did­n’t belong to any­body then or now.” A year lat­er at New­port he made his point loud and clear. They did­n’t know him, and he was­n’t theirs.

On July 25, 1965 Dylan shocked the folk purists at New­port by plug­ging his Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er into an ampli­fi­er and join­ing gui­tarist Mike Bloom­field and oth­ers from the But­ter­field Blues Band in a blis­ter­ing ren­di­tion of “Mag­gie’s Farm,” a song often inter­pret­ed as Dylan’s protest song against the expec­ta­tion of singing protest songs. (The farm in the title is viewed as a pun on Silas McGee’s farm in Mis­sis­sip­pi, where Dylan made his famous appear­ance dur­ing a civ­il rights ral­ly.) Many in the audi­ence took it as a slap in the face. Boos rose up amid the cheer­ing, and the boo­ing con­tin­ued into Dylan’s next song, the now-clas­sic “Like a Rolling Stone.” Music writer Greil Mar­cus described the scene:

There was anger, there was fury, there was applause, there was stunned silence, but there was a great sense of betray­al. As if some­thing pre­cious and del­i­cate was being dashed to the ground and stomped. As if the del­i­cate flower of folk music, the price­less her­itage of impov­er­ished black farm­ers and des­ti­tute white min­ers, was being mocked by a dandy, with a gar­ish noisy elec­tric gui­tar, who was going to make huge amounts of mon­ey as a pop star by exploit­ing what he found from these poor peo­ple.

The con­tro­ver­sial “elec­tric” per­for­mance was the last of three Dylan appear­ances at the New­port fes­ti­val. His first time there was in 1963, when he was an obscure young singer, lit­tle known out­side of Green­wich Vil­lage. He appeared at the fes­ti­val as a guest of Joan Baez, who was far bet­ter known and had recent­ly appeared on the cov­er of Time mag­a­zine. Baez intro­duced Dylan to audi­ences around the coun­try and encour­aged him to write polit­i­cal­ly com­mit­ted folk songs. But by the 1964 fes­ti­val Dylan had already caught up to Baez, in terms of fame, and by 1965 he was break­ing free of Baez and her expec­ta­tions, and of folk music in gen­er­al.

Mur­ray Lern­er’s The Oth­er Side of the Mir­ror: Bob Dylan Live at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val 1963–1965 (above) cap­tures Dylan’s evo­lu­tion over those three years. The footage was orig­i­nal­ly shot for Lern­er’s clas­sic 1967 doc­u­men­tary, Fes­ti­val!, and was even­tu­al­ly acquired by Dylan, whose man­ag­er agreed to let Lern­er assem­ble it into a film–but only after the release of Mar­tin Scors­ese’s No Direc­tion Home, which uses some of the mate­r­i­al. The Oth­er Side of the Mir­ror was released in 2007. The doc­u­men­tary was shot on Kodak Plus‑X and Tri‑X film with a three-per­son crew. As Lern­er lat­er explained in an inter­view, his inten­tion was to let Dylan’s evolv­ing music speak for itself:

We decid­ed on no nar­ra­tion, no pun­dit inter­views, no inter­views with Dylan. noth­ing except the expe­ri­ence of see­ing him. That to me is excit­ing. Just the clear expe­ri­ence gives you every­thing you need. I felt that when screened the music of The Oth­er Side of the Mir­ror, because he’s tout­ed metaphor­i­cal­ly as the mir­ror of his gen­er­a­tion, and I thought no, he’s beyond that. He always takes the gen­er­a­tion beyond that, and he’s like on the oth­er side of the mir­ror. But I also felt the won­drous qual­i­ty of his imag­i­na­tion took us like Alice to a new world on the oth­er side of the mir­ror.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bob Dylan’s (In)Famous Elec­tric Gui­tar From the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val Dis­cov­ered?

The Times They Are a‑Changin’: 1964 Broad­cast Gives a Rare Glimpse of the Ear­ly Bob Dylan

Art Lovers Rejoice! New Goya and Rembrandt Databases Now Online

in Art | October 1st, 2012

Two of the the tow­er­ing fig­ures of West­ern art–Fran­cis­co de Goya and Rem­brandt van Rijn–have just become more acces­si­ble to peo­ple around the world with the intro­duc­tion of a pair of new online data­bas­es.

The Museo del Pra­do in Madrid has just launched a Web site, Goya en el Pra­do, which makes over 1,000 works by the late 18th- and ear­ly 19th-cen­tu­ry Span­ish mas­ter avail­able for online view­ing, along with his cor­re­spon­dence and oth­er doc­u­ments. Although the site is cur­rent­ly avail­able only in Span­ish (tip: view the site with Google Chrome and it will trans­late things for you!) the pic­to­r­i­al con­tents are easy to explore for peo­ple who are not flu­ent in the lan­guage. They fall under three cat­e­gories: paint­ings (pin­turas), draw­ings (dibu­jos) and prints (estam­pas). More than half of Goy­a’s sur­viv­ing works–from his mas­ter­pieces to obscure sketches–are housed at the Pra­da and are now avail­able for brows­ing by schol­ars and the gen­er­al pub­lic alike. Many of the works are rarely seen. “Notable fea­tures with­in this excep­tion­al­ly impor­tant and inter­est­ing project,” writes artdaily.org, “include the option to access online the unique col­lec­tion of works on paper by Goya in the Muse­um, which is not nor­mal­ly on dis­play for con­ser­va­tion rea­sons.” Here’s the link: Goya en el Pra­do.

Two ven­er­a­ble Dutch art institutions–the Nether­lands Insti­tute for Art His­to­ry (RKD) and the Roy­al Pic­ture Gallery Mau­rit­shuis have joined forces to cre­ate The Rem­brandt Data­base, a resource that brings togeth­er mate­ri­als from research insti­tu­tions around the world, includ­ing the Nation­al Gallery of Lon­don and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. Unlike the Prado’s Goya project, which is intend­ed for a wide audi­ence, the Rem­brandt site is designed specif­i­cal­ly for art schol­ars. “The Rem­brandt Data­base aims to become the first port of call for research on Rem­brandt’s paint­ings,” accord­ing to a state­ment on the site. “Our objec­tive is not to present a final set of data, but to devel­op and grow con­tin­u­al­ly, espe­cial­ly as more doc­u­men­ta­tion becomes avail­able through new research and col­lab­o­ra­tion with new part­ners.” By 2014 the orga­niz­ers hope to have mate­r­i­al from 20 muse­ums. At present there are only a dozen Rem­brandt paint­ings in the data­base, but some of the entries are sup­port­ed by exten­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion, includ­ing infrared and X‑ray imagery. Here’s the link: The Rem­brandt Data­base.

via Metafil­ter/The Art Tri­bune

Eisenhower Answers America: The First Political Advertisements on American TV (1952)

in Politics, Television | September 28th, 2012

Going into the 1952 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the Democ­rats had held the White House for near­ly twen­ty years. FDR took office in 1933, begin­ning the first of twelve years in office. Then Har­ry S. Tru­man led the nation for near­ly anoth­er eight years. Dur­ing that time, Amer­i­ca endured a lot. War, eco­nom­ic depres­sion, and more war — some hot, some cold. By the time the 1950s rolled around, Amer­i­cans were tired and ready for a change.

In the 1952 elec­tion, we find Adlai Steven­son, the reluc­tant Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date, squar­ing off against Dwight D. Eisen­how­er, the war hero who had led Amer­i­can troops to vic­to­ry in Europe, instant­ly becom­ing the “most admired liv­ing Amer­i­can” (accord­ing to opin­ion polls). Eisen­how­er, it turns out, knew how to win elec­tions as well as wars. In ’52, Ike aired the first ad cam­paigns on tele­vi­sion. Called Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca, the ads fea­tured “every­day” Amer­i­cans ask­ing ques­tions about the issues of the day — the war in Korea, infla­tion, high tax­es, etc. PBS has a well-researched intro­duc­tion to this inno­va­tion in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, while the nice­ly-curat­ed web site, The Liv­ing Room Can­di­date, offers a rich col­lec­tion of cam­paign com­mer­cials aired between 1952 and 2008.

You can watch a playlist of ads from the Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca cam­paign below.

F. Scott Fitzgerald Reads From Shakespeare’s Othello (c.1940)

in Audio Books, Literature | September 26th, 2012

When F. Scott Fitzger­ald died in 1940, his New York Times obit­u­ary claimed, “the promise of his bril­liant career was nev­er ful­filled.” This is a sen­tence that may puz­zle mod­ern-day lovers of Fitzgerald’s endur­ing­ly-rel­e­vant fic­tion, but it was the judg­ment of the time on the exhaust­ed, alco­holic writer’s career. And it was a judg­ment he often applied to him­self, as he demon­strat­ed pub­licly in his 1936 essay “The Crack-Up,” about his depres­sion. Reduced at the end of his life to writ­ing film scripts for mon­ey, a task he found degrad­ing for a “suc­cess­ful lit­er­ary man” such as him­self, Fitzger­ald also, at some time near his final year, made record­ings of him­self read­ing the work of Shake­speare, Keats, and oth­ers, pre­sum­ably also for mon­ey, though it’s not exact­ly clear who pro­duced the record­ings or why.

In the first video (above), lis­ten to Fitzger­ald deliv­er a dig­ni­fied read­ing of Othello’s speech to the Venet­ian Sen­a­tors from Act 1, Scene 3 of Oth­el­lo. Fitzger­ald stum­bles and slurs occa­sion­al­ly, and the speech may in fact be com­posed of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent takes edit­ed togeth­er, sug­gest­ing that he may have had dif­fi­cul­ty mak­ing it through. Nonethe­less, his voice is seduc­tive and sonorous; he reads the speech as a lit­er­ary mono­logue, rather than a dec­la­ra­tion. Hear more of him below, read­ing an edit­ed ver­sion of John Masefield’s “On Grow­ing Old,” a poem which may have had par­tic­u­lar poignan­cy to the man who wrote in 1936, “of course all life is in a process of break­ing down.” But even in decline, Fitzger­ald was worth lis­ten­ing to. You can find major works by F. Scott Fitzger­ald in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s

Vladimir Nabokov Makes Editorial Tweaks to Franz Kafka’s Novella The Metamorphosis

in Literature, Writing | September 25th, 2012

Vladimir Nabokov admired Franz Kafka’s novel­la, The Meta­mor­pho­sis. Hence the lec­ture that Nabokov ded­i­cat­ed to the work here. But he also saw some small ways to word­smith the sto­ry, or at least the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of it. Above, we have some edits — the nips and tucks — that Nabokov scrib­bled on his per­son­al copy of Kafka’s most famous work.

In 1989, Nabokov’s lec­ture on The Meta­mor­pho­sis was actu­al­ly turned into a tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion star­ring Christo­pher Plum­mer. You can watch The Meta­mor­pho­sis — A Study: Nabokov on Kaf­ka online. It runs 30 min­utes. Of course, you can also down­load your own copy of Kafka’s near per­fect work of poet­ic imag­i­na­tion, to bor­row a phrase from Elias Canet­ti. Vis­it our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books.

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:

Take Vladimir Nabokov’s Quiz to See If You’re a Good Reader–The Same One He Gave to His Stu­dents

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Vladimir Nabokov Talks About Life, Lit­er­a­ture & Love in a Metic­u­lous­ly Pre­pared Inter­view, 1969

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

Discovered: Lord Byron’s Copy of Frankenstein Signed by Mary Shelley

in Books, Literature | September 22nd, 2012

The sto­ry behind the writ­ing of Franken­stein is famous. In 1816, Mary Shel­ley and Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley, sum­mer­ing near Lake Gene­va in Switzer­land, were chal­lenged by Lord Byron to take part in a com­pe­ti­tion to write a fright­en­ing tale. Mary, only 18 years old, lat­er had a wak­ing dream of sorts where she imag­ined the premise of her book:

When I placed my head on my pil­low, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imag­i­na­tion, unbid­den, pos­sessed and guid­ed me, gift­ing the suc­ces­sive images that arose in my mind with a vivid­ness far beyond the usu­al bounds of rever­ie. I saw — with shut eyes, but acute men­tal vision, — I saw the pale stu­dent of unhal­lowed arts kneel­ing beside the thing he had put togeth­er. I saw the hideous phan­tasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the work­ing of some pow­er­ful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion.

This became the ker­nel of Franken­stein; or, The Mod­ern Prometheus, the nov­el first pub­lished in Lon­don in 1818, with only 500 copies put in cir­cu­la­tion.

Near­ly two cen­turies lat­er, a first edi­tion signed by Shel­ley has turned up in the ves­tiges of Lord Byron’s library. The grand­son of Lord Jay notes, “I saw the book lying at an angle in the cor­ner of the top shelf. On open­ing it, I saw the title page, recog­nised what it was at once and leafed hun­gri­ly through the text — it was only when I flicked idly back to the first blank that I saw the inscrip­tion in cur­sive black ink, “To Lord Byron, from the author.”

Today this inscribed copy is on dis­play at Peter Har­ring­ton’s, a Lon­don spe­cial­ist in rare books. And there it will be put on auc­tion, like­ly fetch­ing north of £350,000, or $575,000. The video above gives you more of the back­sto­ry on the writ­ing and gift­ing of the book.

You can find Franken­stein in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books. Also don’t miss the first film adap­ta­tion of Franken­stein from 1910 here, or the 1931 ver­sion list­ed in our meta list of Free Movies Online.

via Huff­Po