I’d wanted to write last night about Donald Trump’s ever-changing position on mandatory background checks for gun sales, and the pathetic way in which he publicly grovels at the feet of the NRA, but, when I saw that one of my favorite films, Preston Sturges’s delightfully thoughtful 1941 screwball comedy Sullivan’s Travels, was going to […]
Tag Archives: cross-dressing
The etymology of “beazel”
Posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1922, 1939, 1941, 19th Amendment, background checks, barlow, beazel, beezle, biscuit, bitch", censorship, Charlie Chaplin, crumb-gobbler, crumb-gobblers, Donald Trump, equality, etymology, film history, films, flapper, flapperese, floozie, frail, George Cukor, great films, gun control, gun laws, ho, hobos, Joel McCrea, John L. Sullivan, Little Tramp, Logansport Pharos-Tribune, Mae West, mass shootings, NRA, pettable, pettable crumb-gobblers, petting, Preston Sturges, right to vote, roaring twenties, Robert Greig, Rosalind Russell, screwball comedy, slang, suffrage, Sullivan's Travels, The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances: Outrage at Couple Dancing in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, The Women, universal background checks, Veronica Lake, women's rights | 18 Comments
Introducing King Strang: Imperial Primate of the Halcyon Order of the Illuminati
The fellow pictured above is James Jesse Strang, the self-proclaimed prophet who, upon the death of Joseph Smith on June 27, 1844, mounted a nearly successful attempt to wrench control of the Mormon church from Brigham Young. His presence continues to loom large over Michigan’s Beaver Island, where I spent this past weekend, and where […]
Posted in Agriculture, History, Michigan, Uncategorized | Also tagged angels, Beaver Island, Ben Perce, Bill Cashman, Burlington, Caleb Barnes, Carthage, Charlie J. Douglas, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, con men, cults, Elvira Eliza Field, forgeries, Halcyon Order of the Illuminati, Huckleberry Finn, Illinois, Imperial Primate, Isaac Scott, King Strang, Mark Twain, Millard Fillmore, monogamy, Mormon, Nauvoo, polygamy, revelation, Strangite, USS Michigan, utopian communities, Voree, Voree plates, Voree Tablets | 31 Comments
Digging though the Hollywood archives: Ted Healy’s drawing of Wallace Beery, and Wallace Beery’s murder of Ted Healy
Every once in a while, I’ve been known to go off on a tangent. Something obscure will pique my interest, and, for whatever reason, I find that I’m not able to let it go. (Does anyone remember my interest in the large school bell that was rung by the 19 year old Orson Welles in […]
Posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1932, 1937, Albert Broccoli, anxiety, Dinner at Eight, drag, Good Old Soak, Grand Hotel, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Greta Garbo, Hollywood, Jackie Cooper, James Bond, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Louie B. Mayer, MGM, murder mystery, Orson Welles, Oscars, Pat DiCicco, Phyllis Ann Beery, silent films, social anxiety disorder, Sweedie The Swedish Maid, Ted Healy, The Champ, The Hearts of Age, Thelma Todd, Three Stooges, Trocadero, unresolved mystery, vaudeville, Wallace Beery, Will Rogers | 33 Comments