I stood outside The People’s Palace on The Mile End road, one hot July afternoon in 1980. Somehow standing there I could feel her presence on that wintry evening all those years ago. She would have been hesitant, afraid, and yet thrilled. She would have walked up those few enlightening steps, gripped tightly and disapprovingly by her mother. Herbert Marks would have stood beside the pillared archway, smiling, his face lit to the cold night air… Dear Herbert who’s stomach ulcers in time would become the better of him… was the most sweetest of men. They would have entered this great hall arm in arm and performed with an exacting elegance under chandeliers that sparkled like a thousand tiny gems. Here gowns would have been filled with paraded ladies of charm, whilst men squinted through solitary eyeglasses and ordered waiters and drinks around.
In my hand was her silver pendant, it gleamed at me from its loneliness. It had hung around her neck that evening… a heart shaped pendant that opened to a tiny portrait of her… later she had added a picture of her beloved Charles.
The stone steps leading to the terraced balustrade were worn now with the progress of time and footsteps, and the archway of pillared marble, chaffed and pitted by the chilling winter winds that rose from the east of the City… and as I stood there with my thoughts… a shiver ran through my veins.
Charles Spencer Chaplin – Dear Charlie Chaplin!
Dear Charlie became Sir Charles Chaplin, receiving his knighthood from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 1979. His film career had spanned 54 years, and in that time Charlie made a total of 81 films, only 5 were talkies and 67 were completed before his 30th birthday. Sadly Charlie died at the good age of 88 and on Christmas Day in 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland; at his bedside were Oona his fourth wife, their children, and grandchildren. Hannah Chaplin was Charles Mother and she had spent most of the later years of her life at an institute in England and for her remaining seven years she lived in the little house Charlie had bought for her close to the Pacific Ocean. Sidney Chaplin (Sid) was Charlie’s older brother and manager, he had retired to the South of France after the second world war and visited every summer with Charlie in Switzerland. The first love in Charlie’s life was Hetty Kelly; he had fallen in love with her whilst working for Fred Karno. But alas! when he left for a US tour she married a politician and later died from influenza at the very young age of 25. Charlie never forgot her and she was the inspiration for many of his screen heroines. Charlie had a leading lady in Edna Purviance for over 30 comedies, and when she retired after failing to make a new career as a dramatic actress Charlie had her kept on the studio payroll for the rest of her life. Charlie’s first wife was a very young Mildred Harris. After their sudden divorce she was reduced to working in sleazy nightclubs and died an alcoholic at the age of 43. Charlie’s second wife was Lita Grey and they had two sons; Charlie Chaplin Jnr, and Sidney Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin Jnr died in 1968. Paulette Goddard – formally Levy, was a famous star, and became Charlie’s third wife. When she retired from acting in 1966 and divorced from Charlie, she and her new husband set up home in Switzerland not far from Charlie’s house. Joan Barry was besotted by Charlie. She was a flirt and a drunk and followed Charlie around everywhere. After their affair ended she claimed he was the father of her child. But a blood test (not admissible in a California Court at the time) proved otherwise. However Charlie supported Joan’s daughter Carol Anne until she reached the age of 21. Poor Joan, unfortunatly spent much of her remaining life sectioned before dying at an early age. Oona O’Neil Chaplin was 18 when she consented to marry Charlie. She had been a former Irish debutant and together they had eight children. She did survive Charlie by some 14 years and she had always loved him with a passion until her own death in the September of 1991.
Made in 1962 ‘Carnival of Souls’ was shot as a ‘B’ picture in three weeks, and since has become a huge cult film!
After a fatal car accident a young woman played by Candace Hilligoss finds herself trapped between this world and the next. The Dead make several attempts to bring her to the world of perpetual darkness…
It’s a film of the supernatural played with thought and great feeling, and was made in the US by director Herk Harvey.
When I first aired this blog back in 2009 it raised a great deal of interest from many of you, so much so, that I followed it up with my blog on The Saltair Pavilion in Utah, and in turn that created much interest. So here again is the original blog on Carnival of Souls… And I hope you will link it to The Saltair Pavilion in my blog search window… Patrick.
Thomas Henry Cotton was a Golf champion. He became a professional at Langley Park in 1927. He won the Kent Professional Championship 1926-30; British Open, 1934, 1937; also Italian, German and Czechoslovak Open. He also represented Great Britain v. America in 1929 and 1937. He was born in 1907.
David Herbert Lawrence was an English author and poet, best known for his works: The White Peacock (1911) Sons and Lovers (1913) The Rainbow (1915 suppressed by the police) The Plumed Serpent (1926) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928 banned in England) He was born in 1885.
Virginia Woolf was a writer and critic. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf an author and publisher, and with him controlled the Hogarth Press, which he founded in 1917. Her works include The Voyage Out (1915) A Room of One’s Own (1929) and The Waves (1931) She was a member of The Bloomsbury Group, and was born in 1882.
Found in the basement cellar of a shop in Blackburn Lancashire England were over 800 short films of Edwardian life in the North of England. They were made by the partnership of Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon and the films they shot were of local people and events. It is a remarkable glimpse into history. They made the films to be shown at the Music Hall, Town Hall, or Fairgrounds. They were made for commercial reasons with the sole intention of putting ‘bums on seats’ after all, for people to see themselves on a projected screen was something new and quite wonderful!
Between 1897 and 1913 Mitchell and Kenyon made hundreds of short films depicting the everyday lives of ordinary people, and when the business closed its doors in the nineteen twenties their original negative film stock was left hidden away in the basement of the shop. Here it lay for years simply collecting dust until 1994 when a building contractor found three large metal drums containing hundreds of Mitchell and Kenyon films. The films were passed to a local film historian who in turn gave them to the British Film Institute Archives in Hertfordshire.
The film stock was nitrate, very delicate, and highly flammable, although the coolness of the basement must have helped to preserve the material from utter decay. The films were brittle, but the originals were painstakingly re-photographed onto modern film stock, a process that took around three years. They now form one of the largest collections of early non-fiction films in the world.
Kenyon had originally made penny slot-machines, and Mitchell had been a stills photographer. At the time they set-up in business together the moving image was the hi-tec of its time. Many of their films show people leaving work and putting as many faces on the screen as possible was their aim, after all, this was a paying public! They could watch themselves in showings at the Music Hall, Town Hall, or local Fairground. Mitchell and Kenyon would hand out lealets telling of the showing times and where, and saying “See Yourselves As Others See You”
Mitchell and Kenyon did also show the prosperous side of Edwardian life in visiting other larger towns and cities with their camera and they also made a number of rather stilted dramas that were less accepted by the public who really loved their ‘local’ films.
Polyfoto and Enid Stamp Taylor…
This remarkable and until recently unpublished set of pictures taken by Polyfoto in the 1930′s show a more unguarded and natural Enid Stamp Taylor and are thought to be taken in one of London’s large department stores. They were given to me by Enid’s daughter Robin Anne, and interestly enough there is a corresponding set taken at the same time of Robin Anne herself. Therefore, one must conclude this was a spontaneous gesture during one of Enid’s frequent shopping trips in central London.
Polyfoto were a photographic company that had instore portait studios in many large towns across the country from the 1930′s right up until the mid 70s and enjoyed their own distinctive and notable photographic system which incorporated unperforated 35mm film that in turn produced small square pictures as a contact sheet from which the sitter could choose enlargements a day or two later. However, the system became expensive and dated with the rise of the photo booth
Sadly, these are all that have survived from a sheet of some 40 pictures! – Patrick.
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is like a lie that makes us realize truth. Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 Spanish painter.
I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-78 French philosopher.
One would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well. Margaret Thatcher 1925- British stateswoman.
Charm… it’s a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don’t need to have anything else; and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter what else you have. J.M. Barrie 1860-1937 Scottish writer.
The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. Fran Lebowitz 1946- American writer.
This is the Night Mail crossing the border, bringing the cheque and the postal order, letters for the rich, letters for the poor. The shop at the corner, the girl next door. W.H. Auden 1907-73 English poet.
Three Generations…
This shot taken in 1934 depicts three generations of the Stamp Taylor family…
Agnes Stamp Taylor, mother to Enid Stamp Taylor, and Enid’s daughter Robin Anne.
The picture was loaned to me from Robin Anne’s own photo collection of her mother and grandmother.
The Dark Daughters by Rhys Davis, was first published in 1947 by William Heinemann.
In 1895, wearing a smart frock-coat and an even smarter puce cravat, Mansell Roberts opened his chemist shop at the base of an arboreal North London hill intersected with rows of solid new villas. The wholesome breezes of Hampstead Heath blew down over the hill before losing themselves with a different odour in the clotted lower-class districts far below. Among tasteful scrolls heading the new chemist’s bills – and much more imposing than the actual premises – was an engraving depicting the shop’s exterior with two smart carriages drawn up at the kerb. Mansell had ordered many packages of these bills.
He was by nature adverse to giving credit but he trusted those villas with their horse-shoe drivers, stucco porticoes, flowering urns, and their roomy basements for several domestics. And to make more certain of laying a solid local foundation, he had become a worshipper at decorous St. Mark’s, though again his nature was adverse to the Established Church; he preferred those small dissenting sects catering for the less orderly souls of England.
The opening lines from this compelling story by Rhys Davies… Friends have been able to buy copies of this out of print book at different times from Amazon and on ebay.
