The Addams Family (TV series) 1964-1966 - Starring John Astin

The Addams Family is an American television series based on the characters in Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons. The 30-minute series was shot in black-and-white and aired for two seasons in 64 installments on ABC from September 18, 1964 to April 8, 1966. It is often compared to its working-class rival, The Munsters, which ran for the same two seasons and achieved somewhat higher Nielsen ratings. The Addams Family ranked 23rd in its first season, with a 23.9 rating.[2] The show is the first adaptation of the characters to feature The Addams Family Theme.

It was originally produced by Filmways, Inc. at General Service Studios in Hollywood, California. Successor company MGM Television (via The Program Exchange for broadcast syndication, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment for home video/DVD) owns the rights to the show. At one point, distribution rights were licensed to Worldvision Enterprises.

Premise

The Addamses are a close-knit extended family with decidedly macabre interests. They are humans with supernatural abilities. No explanation for their powers is explicitly given in the series.

The very wealthy, endlessly enthusiastic Gomez Addams is madly in love with his refined wife Morticia. Along with their two children, Wednesday and Pugsley, Uncle Fester and Grandmama, they reside in an ornate, gloomy, Second Empire style mansion, attended by their servants, Lurch, the towering butler, and Thing, a hand that usually appears out of a small wooden box. Occasionally, episodes would feature relatives or other members of their weird subculture, such as Cousin Itt or Morticia's older sister, Ophelia.

Much of the humor derives from their culture clash with the rest of the world. They invariably treat normal visitors with great warmth and courtesy, even though their guests often have evil intentions. They are puzzled by the horrified reactions to their (to them) good natured and normal behavior since they are under the impression that their tastes are shared by most of society. Accordingly they view "conventional" tastes with generally tolerant suspicion. For example, Fester once cites a neighboring family's meticulously maintained petunia patches as evidence that they are "nothing but riff-raff." Ironically, many of the things that the Addams family was in favor of that seemed laughable in the mid-1960s have become mainsteam. Homeschooling, protection of swamps (now Federally protected as wetlands), banning of toy guns, and banning of classic fairy tales in schools were all plotlines in the show that were comic fodder at the time. A recurring theme in the epilogue of many episodes was the Addamses getting an update on the most recent visitor to their home, either via something in the newspaper or a phone call. Invariably, as a result of their visit to the Addamses, the visitor would be institutionalized, change professions, move out of the country, or have some other negative life-changing event. The Addamses would always misinterpret the update and see it as good news for that most recent visitor.

The tone was set by series producer Nat Perrin, close friend of Groucho Marx and writer of several Marx Brothers films. Perrin created story ideas, directed one episode, and rewrote every script. Much of the dialog is his (albeit uncredited). As a result, Gomez, with his sardonic remarks, backwards logic, and ever-present cigar (pulled from his breast pocket already lit), has been frequently compared to Groucho Marx. In addition, the series often employed the same type of zany satire and screwball humor seen in the Marx Brothers films. It lampooned politics ("Gomez, The Politician" and "Gomez, The People's Choice"), the legal system ("The Addams Family in Court"), Beatlemania ("Lurch, The Teenage Idol"), and Hollywood ("My Fair Cousin Itt").

Characters

Main characters

Gomez Addams (John Astin) - Gomez is passionately in love with his wife, often referring to her as "Cara Mia." His ardor is greatly intensified when she speaks French (a quirk that first appears in the eleventh episode, "The Addams Family Meet the V.I.P.s"). Before that his ardor was aroused when she called him "Bubele" a German-Bavarian, and Yiddish [3][4] word meaning "darling" or "sweetie." Gomez is very wealthy, due to owning numerous companies and stocks. He doesn't seem to regard money itself as a priority and squanders money cavalierly while remaining wealthy. Gomez spends a great deal of time with his family and does not go out to work. He refers to Spain as his "ancestral home" with his family background referenced as "Castilian," and he occasionally uses Spanish words and phrases. He can perform rapid and complicated calculations in his head. He is remarkably acrobatic and can easily dismount from a hanging position upon a chandelier.

Morticia Addams (Carolyn Jones) - Morticia is a cultivated and beautiful woman who dabbles in art, raises flesh-eating plants, and trims her roses by clipping off the buds and arranging the stems in a vase ("Oh, the thorns are lovely this year"). She can light candles with her fingertips and emit smoke directly from her person. With her aristocratic detachment, she is often the calm center of the chaotic events of the household.

Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan) - Uncle Fester is Morticia's exuberant, kind, and electric uncle. He frequently places a lightbulb in his mouth, where it lights up. When angered by outsiders, he may grab for a blunderbuss and announce that he will shoot the offender in the back.

Lurch (Ted Cassidy) - Lurch is the household butler. Morticia and Gomez summon him by means of a bell pull in the form of a hangman's noose, which rings the massive bell located in the mansion's bell tower; the resulting gong shakes the entire house when the noose is pulled. When Lurch appears (usually immediately thereafter), he responds with a baritone "You rang?" According to IMDb, Lurch was intended to be a non-speaking part, as the Charles Addams cartoon character was silent. However, Cassidy improvised the line during his audition, and it was well received and incorporated into the show. When questions are posed to Lurch his primary response is a deep annoyed grunt, from which the family glean complex meanings. He is superhumanly strong and often plays the harpsichord (the music is actually played by The Addams Family composer Vic Mizzy). Lurch is very high-minded about visitors; when a plainclothes policeman (played by George Neise) visited the family, Lurch patted him down and regarded him suspiciously when he found his gun. Neise showed Lurch his badge, whereupon Lurch returned the gun. Lurch occasionally regards his employers' activities with some dubiousness much like a servant expressing disdain for the idle rich. Ted Cassidy made a cameo appearance as Lurch on an episode of the "Batman" TV series.

Grandmama Addams (Blossom Rock) - Mother of Gomez (who occasionally calls her "Mamacita"). She is a witch who conjures up potions, spells and hexes. She also dabbles in fortune-telling, though it is obvious that, in this respect at least, she is a charlatan. Her given name is never revealed in the series.

Wednesday Friday Addams (Lisa Loring) - Gomez and Morticia's daughter. She is the youngest member (six years old) of the family, she is a strange yet sweet-natured little girl who pursues such hobbies as raising spiders, beheading dolls (called "Marie Antoinette," "Mary Queen of Scots," and "Little Red Riding Hood"), and practicing ballet in a black tutu. Her favorite pet is a black widow spider named Homer, although she also has a lizard named Lucifer. She is strong enough to bring her father to his knees in a judo hold.

Pugsley Addams (Ken Weatherwax) - Gomez and Morticia' son and Wednesday's older brother. Kind-hearted and smart, occasionally conforming to "conventional" standards contrary to his family, he nevertheless shares a close bond with his parents and sister, the latter whom he often plays with. He also enjoys engineering various machines (sometimes with Gomez), playing with blasting caps, and his pet octopus Aristotle. Despite his pudginess, Pugsley is, like his father, exceptionally agile, able to out-climb a gorilla and hang from branches by his teeth.

Thing T. Thing - A disembodied hand that appears out of boxes and other conveniently placed containers. Thing apparently has the ability to teleport from container to container, almost instantly: Thing sometimes appears from different containers at opposite ends of the room within seconds of each other. Though Ted Cassidy would often portray Thing, assistant director Jack Voglin would often portray Thing in scenes where Lurch and Thing appear together.

Recurring characters

Cousin Itt (Felix Silla in most episodes, Roger Arroyo for two episodes) - Gomez's cousin, a short entity completely hidden by his almost head-to-floor-long hair. He speaks in rapid unintelligible gibberish which the family has no difficulty understanding (according to Felix Silla's commentary on the DVD release, the voice for Cousin Itt was recorded by a member of the crew in post-production). Gomez once asks him what is under it all; Itt answers, "Roots." In one episode, Itt is said to have "the eye of an eagle...plus a few of his own." Nevertheless, he wears conventional sunglasses, supposedly so people will not pester him for autographs.

Ophelia - Morticia's sister. Gomez was originally engaged to her in an arranged marriage, but when he saw 22-year old Morticia (dressed in a grown-up version of Wednesday's clothing), he was smitten and fell in love with her; when she spoke French, he claimed that for the first time in his life, his sinuses were cleared and his bronchitis was gone. Ophelia was played by Carolyn Jones in a blonde wig (a staple of 1960's sitcom twins). One quirk of Ophelia's is that the flower growing in her hair had roots that travelled down into her foot; another is her love of judo, with which she can hurl men (usually Gomez) several feet.

Grandma Hester Frump (Margaret Hamilton) - The mother of Morticia and Ophelia.

Mayor Arthur J. Hansen (Peter Baer) - The mayor of the town that the Addams Family live in.

Reunions

A reunion film, Halloween with the New Addams Family [5], aired on NBC in October 1977 and starred most of the original cast, except for Blossom Rock (Grandmama), who was very ill at the time and was replaced by Phyllis actress Jane Rose. The picture also featured extended family members who were created specifically for the production and never appeared in the television series, such as Gomez's brother, Pancho (played by Henry Darrow) and two additional children, Wednesday Junior and Pugsley Junior. It was originally intended for a pilot for a sequel, but no other episodes were ordered.

The interior set of the Addams mansion had previously been used for the 1972 film Ben.

Syndication

As of May 2009, the show can be purchased on iTunes, and can be streamed for free in the US on IMDB, YouTube, Hulu, and Minisodes are available on Crackle You can also watch all the series vol.1-3 on netflix.

DVD releases

MGM Home Entertainment has released The Addams Family on DVD in Region 1, 2 and 4 in three volume sets.

References

1.^ "David Levy; Producer Created 'Addams Family'". LA Times. January 31, 2000.
2.^ "The 'Addams Family' Tree". LA Times. June 9, 1991.
3.^ Yiddish Expressions
4.^ Reminiscing 'Bout Bubba and others
5.^ IMDb.com – Halloween with the New Addams Family
6.^ The Addams Family DVD news: Volume 3 date and details | TVShowsOnDVD.com
7.^ The Addams Family DVD news: *Snap* *Snap* Complete Series Announced | TVShowsOnDVD.com

Deathday: Elizabeth Bathory 1560-1614 Countess & Serial Killer

Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (Báthory Erzsébet in Hungarian, Alžbeta Bátoriová in Slovak, 17 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a countess from the renowned Báthory family. Although in modern times she has been labeled the most prolific female serial killer in history, evidence of her alleged crimes is scant and her guilt is debated. Nevertheless, she is remembered as the "Blood Countess" and as the "Bloody Lady of Čachtice," after the castle near Trencsén (today Trenčín) in the Kingdom of Hungary (today's Slovakia), where she spent most of her adult life.

After her husband's death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims, though the number for which they were convicted was 80. Elizabeth herself was neither tried nor convicted. In 1610, however, she was imprisoned in the Csejte Castle, where she remained bricked in a set of rooms until her death four years later.

Later writings about the case have led to legendary accounts of the Countess bathing in the blood of virgins in order to retain her youth and subsequently also to comparisons with Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia, on whom the fictional Count Dracula is partly based, and to modern nicknames of the Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.

The case of Elizabeth Báthory inspired numerous stories during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The most common motif of these works was that of the countess bathing in her victims' blood in order to retain beauty or youth.

This legend appeared in print for the first time in 1729, in the Jesuit scholar László Turóczi’s Tragica Historia, the first written account of the Báthory case. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this certainty was questioned, and sadistic pleasure was considered a far more plausible motive for Elizabeth Báthory's crimes. In 1817, the witness accounts (which had surfaced in 1765) were published for the first time, suggesting that the bloodbaths, for the purpose of preserving her youth, were legend. However, there were accounts of Bathory showering herself in the blood of her victims, and drawing her victims' blood by biting them.

The legend nonetheless persisted in the popular imagination. Some versions of the story were told with the purpose of denouncing female vanity, while other versions aimed to entertain or thrill their audience. The ethnic divisions in Eastern Europe and financial incentives for tourism contribute to the problems with historical accuracy in understanding Elizabeth Bathory. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Elizabeth Báthory has continued to appear as a character in music, film, plays, books, games and toys and to serve as an inspiration for similar characters.

Deathday: Shirley Jackson 1916-1965 Author "The Haunting of Hill House"

Shirley Jackson (December 14, 1916, San Francisco, California - August 8, 1965, Bennington, Vermont) was an influential American author. A popular writer in her time, her work has received increasing attention from literary critics in recent years. She has influenced such writers as Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Nigel Kneale and Richard Matheson.

She is best known for the short story "The Lottery" (1948), which suggests a secret, sinister underside to bucolic small-town America. In her critical biography of Jackson, Lenemaja Friedman notes that when "The Lottery" was published in the June 26, 1948, issue of The New Yorker, it received a response that "no New Yorker story had ever received." Hundreds of letters poured in that were characterized by, as Jackson put it, "bewilderment, speculation and old-fashioned abuse."

In the July 22, 1948, issue of the San Francisco Chronicle Jackson offered the following in response to persistent queries from her readers about her intentions:

"Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives."

Jackson's husband, the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, wrote in his preface to a posthumous anthology of her work that "she consistently refused to be interviewed, to explain or promote her work in any fashion, or to take public stands and be the pundit of the Sunday supplements. She believed that her books would speak for her clearly enough over the years." Hyman insisted the darker aspects of Jackson's works were not, as some critics claimed, the product of "personal, even neurotic, fantasies," but that Jackson intended, as "a sensitive and faithful anatomy of our times, fitting symbols for our distressing world of the concentration camp and the Bomb," to mirror humanity's Cold War-era fears. Jackson may even have taken pleasure in the subversive impact of her work, as evidenced by Hyman's statement that she "was always proud that the Union of South Africa banned 'The Lottery,' and she felt that they at least understood the story."

Literary life

Born Shirley Hardie Jackson in San Francisco to Leslie and Geraldine Jackson, Shirley and her family lived in the community of Burlingame, California, an affluent middle-class suburb that would feature in Shirley's first novel The Road Through the Wall. The Jackson family then relocated to Rochester, New York, where Shirley attended Brighton High School and graduated in 1934. For college, she first attended the University of Rochester (from which she was "asked to leave") before graduating with a BA from Syracuse University in 1940.

While a student at Syracuse, Shirley became involved with the campus literary magazine, through which she met future husband Stanley Edgar Hyman, who would become a noted literary critic. For Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Harcraft's Twentieth Century Authors (1954), she wrote:

"I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains, naturally, no pertinent facts. I was born in San Francisco in 1919 and spent most of my early life in California. I was married in 1940 to Stanley Edgar Hyman, critic and numismatist, and we live in Vermont, in a quiet rural community with fine scenery and comfortably far away from city life. Our major exports are books and children, both of which we produce in abundance. The children are Laurence, Joanne, Sarah and Barry: my books include three novels, The Road Through The Wall, Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest and a collection of short stories, The Lottery. Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children."

Although Jackson claimed to have been born in 1919 in order to appear younger than her husband, biographer Judy Oppenheimer determined that she was actually born in 1916.

The Hymans eventually settled in North Bennington, Vermont, where Stanley Hyman became a professor at Bennington College while Shirley continued to publish novels and short stories while caring for their children Laurence (Laurie), Joanne (Jannie), Sarah (Sally), and Barry. Eventually the Hyman children would come to their own brand of literary fame as fictionalised versions of themselves in their mother's short stories. The Hymans were well-known for being colorful, generous hosts who surrounded themselves with literary talents, including Ralph Ellison. Both were enthusiastic readers whose personal library was estimated at over 100,000 books.

In addition to her adult literary novels, Jackson also wrote a children's novel, Nine Magic Wishes, available in an edition illustrated by her grandson, Miles Hyman, as well as a children's play based on Hansel and Gretel and entitled The Bad Children. In a series of short stories, later collected in the books Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, she presented a fictionalized version of her marriage and the experience of bringing up four children. These stories pioneered the "true-to-life funny-housewife stories" of the type later popularized by such writers as Jean Kerr and Erma Bombeck during the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1965, Shirley Jackson died of heart failure in her sleep at the age of 48. Shirley suffered throughout her life from various neuroses and psychosomatic illnesses. These ailments, along with the various prescription drugs used to treat them, may have contributed to her declining health and early death. However, at the time of her death, Jackson was overweight and a heavy smoker. After her death, her husband released a posthumous volume of her work, Come Along With Me, containing several chapters of her unfinished last novel as well as several rare short stories (among them "Louisa, Please Come Home") and three speeches given by Jackson in her writing seminars.

With information for Jackson's debut novel, The Road Through the Wall (1948), he described Jackson as someone who practiced witchcraft. Hyman believed this image of Jackson would help promote sales of novels and film rights. She later wrote about witchcraft accusations in her book for young readers, The Witchcraft of Salem Village (1956).

Her other novels include Hangsaman (1951), The Bird's Nest (1954), The Sundial (1958) and The Haunting of Hill House (1959), regarded by many, including Stephen King, as one of the important horror novels of the 20th Century. This contemporary updating of the classic ghost story has a vivid and powerful opening paragraph:

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

Adaptations
In addition to radio, TV and theater adaptations, "The Lottery" has been filmed three times, most notably in 1969 as an acclaimed short film which director Larry Yust made for an Encyclopædia Britannica educational film series. The Academic Film Archive cited Yust's short "as one of the two bestselling educational films ever".[6]

Eleanor Parker starred in Hugo Haas' Lizzie (1957), based on The Bird's Nest, with a cast that included Richard Boone, Joan Blondell, Marion Ross and Johnny Mathis.
The Haunting of Hill House was adapted to film in 1963 with Julie Harris and Claire Bloom. Liam Neeson, Lili Taylor and Catherine Zeta-Jones headed the cast of a 1999 remake.
Jackson's 1962 novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle was adapted for the stage by Hugh Wheeler in the mid-1960s. Directed by Garson Kanin and starring Shirley Knight, it opened on Broadway October 19, 1966. The David Merrick production closed after only nine performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, but Wheeler's play continues to be staged by regional theater companies.
Joanne Woodward directed Come Along with Me (1982), adapted from Jackson's unfinished novel, with a cast headed by Estelle Parsons and Sylvia Sidney.

Deathday: Thomas Gray 1716-1771 Graveyard Poet

Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.

Early life and education

Thomas Gray was born in Cornhill, London, the son of an exchange broker and a milliner. He was the fifth of 12 children and the only child in his family to survive infancy. He lived with his mother after she left his abusive father. He was educated at Eton College where his uncle was one of the masters. He recalled his schooldays as a time of great happiness, as is evident in his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. Gray was a delicate and naturally scholarly boy who spent his time reading great literature and avoiding athletics. It was probably fortunate for the young and sensitive Gray that he was able to live in his uncle’s household rather than at college. He made three close friends at Eton: Horace Walpole, son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, Thomas Ashton, and Richard West. The four of them prided themselves on their sense of style, their sense of humour, and their appreciation of beauty.

In 1734 Gray went up to Peterhouse, Cambridge.[1] He found the curriculum dull. He wrote letters to his friends listing all the things he disliked: the masters ("mad with Pride") and the Fellows ("sleepy, drunken, dull, illiterate Things.") Supposedly he was intended for the law, but in fact he spent his time as an undergraduate reading classical and modern literature and playing Vivaldi and Scarlatti on the harpsichord for relaxation. In 1738 he accompanied his old school-friend Walpole on his Grand Tour, probably at Walpole's expense. They fell out and parted in Tuscany because Walpole wanted to attend fashionable parties and Gray wanted to visit all the antiquities. However, they were reconciled a few years later. Then, he wished his poems would become more popular.

Writing and academia

He began seriously writing poems in 1742, mainly after his close friend Richard West died. He moved to Cambridge and began a self-imposed programme of literary study, becoming one of the most learned men of his time, though he claimed to be lazy by inclination. He became a Fellow first of Peterhouse, and later of Pembroke College, Cambridge. It is said that the change of college was the result of a practical joke. Terrified of fire, he had installed a metal bar by his window on the top floor of the Burrough’s building at Peterhouse, so that in the event of a fire he could tie his sheets to it and climb to safety.

Gray spent most of his life as a scholar in Cambridge, and only later in his life did he begin travelling again. Although he was one of the least productive poets (his collected works published during his lifetime amount to fewer than 1,000 lines), he is regarded as the predominant poetic figure of the mid-18th century. In 1757, he was offered the post of Poet Laureate, which he refused.

In 1762, the Regius chair of Modern History at Cambridge, a sinecure which carried a salary of £400, fell vacant after the death of Shallet Turner, and Gray's friends lobbied the government unsuccessfully to secure the position for him. In the event, Gray lost out to Lawrence Brockett, but he secured the position in 1768 after Brockett's death.[2]

Gray was so self critical and fearful of failure that he only published thirteen poems during his lifetime and once wrote that he feared his collected works would be "mistaken for the works of a flea". Walpole said that "He never wrote anything easily but things of Humour."

Gray was also known as one of the "Graveyard poets" of the late 18th century, along with Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, and Christopher Smart. Gray most likely knew these men, sharing ideas about death, mortality, and the finality and sublimity of death.

"Elegy" masterpiece

It is believed that Gray wrote his masterpiece, the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, in the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire in 1750. The poem was a literary sensation when published by Robert Dodsley in February 1751 and has made a lasting contribution to English literature. Its reflective, calm and stoic tone was greatly admired, and it was pirated, imitated, quoted and translated into Latin and Greek. It is still one of the most popular and most frequently quoted poems in the English language. In 1759 during the Seven Years War, before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, British General James Wolfe is said to have recited it to his officers, adding: "Gentlemen, I would rather have written that poem than take Quebec tomorrow". The poem's famous depiction of an "ivy-mantled tow'r" could be a reference to the early-mideval St. Laurence's Church in Upton, Slough.

The Elegy was recognised immediately for its beauty and skill. It contains many outstanding phrases which have entered the common English lexicon, either on their own or as referenced in other works. A few of these include:

"The paths of glory"
"Celestial fire"
"Some mute inglorious Milton"
"Far from the madding crowd"
"The unlettered muse"
"Kindred spirit"

Gray also wrote light verse, such as Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, a mock elegy concerning Horace Walpole's cat. After setting the scene with the couplet "What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish?", the poem moves to its multiple proverbial conclusion: "a fav'rite has no friend," "[k]now one false step is ne'er retrieved" and "nor all that glisters, gold." (Walpole later displayed the fatal china vase on a pedestal at his house in Strawberry Hill.) Gray’s surviving letters also show his sharp observation and playful sense of humour. He is also well known for his phrase,

"where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise,"

-- Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742)

Forms

Gray himself considered his two Pindaric odes, The Progress of Poesy and The Bard, his best works. Pindaric odes are written with great fire and passion, unlike the calmer and more reflective Horatian odes such as Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College. The Bard tells of a wild Welsh poet cursing Edward I after the conquest of Wales and prophesying in detail the downfall of the House of Plantagenet. It is very melodramatic, and ends with the bard hurling himself to his death from the top of a mountain.

When his duties allowed, Gray travelled widely throughout Britain to places like Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Scotland in search of picturesque scenery and ancient monuments. These things were not generally valued in the early 18th century, when the popular taste ran to classical styles in architecture and literature and people liked their scenery tame and well-tended. Some people have seen Gray’s writings on this topic, and the Gothic details that appear in his Elegy and The Bard as the first foreshadowing of the Romantic movement that dominated the early 19th century, when William Wordsworth and the other Lake poets had taught people to value the picturesque, the sublime, and the Gothic. Gray combined traditional forms and poetic diction with new topics and modes of expression and may be considered as a classically focussed precursor of the romantic revival.

Gray's connection to the Romantic poets is vexed. In the prefaces to the 1800 and 1802 editions of Wordsworths' and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth singled out Gray's "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West" to exemplify what he found most objectionable in poetry, declaring it was "Gray, who was at the head of those who, by their reasonings, have attempted to widen the space of separation betwixt prose and metrical composition, and was more than any other man curiously elaborate in the structure of his own poetic diction."[3] Indeed, it was Gray who had written, in a letter to West, that "the language of the age is never the language of poetry."[4]

Death

Gray died on 30 July 1771 in Cambridge and was buried beside his mother in the churchyard of Stoke Poges, the setting for his famous Elegy. His grave can still be seen there. There is a plaque in Cornhill, marking his birthplace.

References

1.^ Thomas Gray in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
2.^ Edmund William Gosse, Gray (London: Macmillan, 1902), p. 133 at books.google.com
3.^ Abrams, M.H. et al., The Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 2, Fourth Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1979, p.167
4.^ ibid.

Deathday: Lon Chaney Jr. 1906-1973 "The Wolf Man"

Lon Chaney, Jr. (February 10, 1906 – July 12, 1973), born Creighton Tull Chaney, was an American character actor, known mainly for his roles in monster movies and as the son of famous silent film actor, Lon Chaney (below).

 He is most notable for playing Larry Talbot and the werewolf in The Wolf Man movies. Originally credited in films as Creighton Chaney, he was first credited as "Lon Chaney, Jr." in 1935. Chaney had English, French and Irish ancestry.

Early life

Creighton was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the son of Lon Chaney and Frances Cleveland Creighton Chaney, a singing stage performer who traveled in road shows across the country with Lon. His parents' troubled marriage ended in divorce in 1913 following a scandalous public suicide attempt by his mother, in Los Angeles. Young Creighton lived in various homes and boarding schools until 1916, when his father (now employed in films) married Hazel Hastings and could provide a stable home. Many articles and biographies over the years report that Creighton was led to believe his mother Cleva had died while he was a boy, and was only made aware she lived after his father's death in 1930.

From an early age he worked hard to avoid his famous father's shadow. In young adulthood, his father discouraged him from show business, and he attended business college and became successful in a Los Angeles appliance corporation.

Career

It was only after his father's death that Chaney started acting in movies, beginning with an uncredited role in the 1932 film Girl Crazy. He appeared in films under his real name Creighton until 1935, when he began to be billed as "Lon Chaney, Jr." (and would appear as "Lon Chaney" later in his career). Chaney was asked to test for the role of Quasimodo for the 1939 remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The role went to Charles Laughton. In his final years, Chaney would get a brief chance to play Quasimodo, and return to the roles of the Mummy, and the Wolfman on the 1960s television series Route 66 with friends Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. Lon first achieved stardom and critical acclaim in the 1939 feature film version of Of Mice and Men, in which he played Lennie Small.

In 1941, Chaney starred in the title role of The Wolf Man for Universal Pictures Co. Inc., a role which would typecast him for the rest of his life. He maintained a career at Universal horror movies over the next few years, replaying the Wolf Man in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Frankenstein's monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein, Kharis the mummy in The Mummy's Tomb, The Mummy's Ghost and The Mummy's Curse. He also played the offspring of Count Dracula in Son of Dracula. Chaney is thus the only actor to portray all four of Universal's major monsters: the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, and the vampire son of Dracula. Universal also starred him in a series of psychological mysteries associated with the Inner Sanctum radio series. He also played western heroes, such as in the serial Overland Mail, but the imposing 6-foot 2-inch, 220-pound actor often appeared as mundane heavies. After leaving Universal Studios, where he made 30 films, he worked primarily in character roles in low-budget films.

He also established himself as a favorite of producer Stanley Kramer, taking key supporting roles in the classic western High Noon (1952) (starring Gary Cooper), Not as a Stranger (1955), a hospital melodrama featuring Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra, and The Defiant Ones (1958, starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier). Kramer told the press at the time that whenever a script came in with a role too difficult for most actors in Hollywood, he called Chaney.

One of his most talked about roles was a 1952 live television version of Frankenstein on the anthology series Tales of Tomorrow for which he showed up drunk. During the live broadcast, Chaney, playing the Monster, was so drunk that he thought it was just a rehearsal and he would pick up furniture that he was supposed to break only to gingerly put it back down while muttering, "Break later."[1] Chaney's bald and scarred makeup in this show closely resembles that worn by Robert De Niro in a 1994 big-screen treatment.

He became quite popular with baby boomers after Universal released its back catalog of horror films to television in 1957 and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine regularly focused on his films. In 1957, Chaney went to Ontario, Canada, to costar in the first ever American-Canadian television production, as Chingachgook in Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, suggested by James Fenimore Cooper's stories. The series ended after 39 episodes.

In the 1960s, Chaney's career ran the gamut from decent horror productions, such as Roger Corman's The Haunted Palace and big-studio Westerns such as 1967's Welcome to Hard Times, to such bottom-of-the-barrel fodder as Hillbillys in a Haunted House and Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors (both 1967). His bread-and-butter work during this decade was television — where he made guest appearances on everything from Wagon Train to The Monkees — and in a string of supporting roles in low-budget but entertaining and very traditional Westerns featuring middle-aged casts and produced by A. C. Lyles for Paramount. Arguably his finest latter work was in Jack Hill's Spider Baby (filmed 1964, released 1968), for which he also sang the film's title song. He appeared in the 1958 episode "The Black Marshal from Deadwood" of the western series Tombstone Territory.

In later years he battled throat cancer and chronic heart disease after decades of heavy drinking and smoking. In his final horror film, Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), directed by Al Adamson, he played Groton, Dr. Frankenstein's mute henchman. He filmed his part in the spring of 1969, and shortly thereafter filmed his final film role, also for Adamson, in The Female Bunch. Due to illness he retired from acting to concentrate on a book about the Chaney family legacy, A Century of Chaneys, which remains to date unpublished in any form. His grandson, Ron Chaney, was working on completing this project[2].

From a personal standpoint, Chaney seemed to have been well-liked by his co-workers — "sweet" is the adjective that most commonly emerges from people who acted with him — yet he was capable of intense dislikes. For instance, he and frequent co-star Evelyn Ankers did not get along at all despite their undeniable on-camera chemistry. Chaney is also said to have had a belligerent relationship with actor Martin Kosleck. Years after the fact, Kosleck explained this as a case of jealousy over Kosleck's (self-described) superior talent. Chaney had run-ins with actor Frank Reicher (whom Chaney nearly strangled on camera in The Mummy's Ghost) and director Robert Siodmak (over whose head Chaney broke a vase).

Chaney always projected a peculiar childlike quality on screen, no matter how old he was, which meant that his best roles tended to be those for which a childish, helpless or subservient quality was requisite, such as "Lennie," "Larry Talbot," and even in later years some of his roles as weak and/or alcoholic parents. Only rarely did this quality drop, as was the case with his performance as the offspring of "Dracula" in Son of Dracula and years later as "Simon Orne" in The Haunted Palace.

Chaney never for a moment escaped the long shadow of his father, one of the screen's greatest actors. Nonetheless, Chaney, Jr., gave a number of strong performances with notable individuality.
 He was honored by appearing as the Wolf Man on one of a 1997 series of United States postage stamps depicting movie monsters.

Personal life

Married twice, Chaney had two sons, Lon Ralph Chaney (born July 3, 1928) and Ronald Creighton Chaney (born March 18, 1930), both now deceased. He is survived by a grandson, Ron Chaney, who attends film conventions and discusses his grandfather's life and film career. Ron Chaney was featured on the CBS News Sunday Morning program on October 29, 2006.

Death

At the age of 67, Chaney died on July 12, 1973 of heart failure in San Clemente, California[3]. His body was donated for medical research.[4]

 Filmography

The Galloping Ghost (1931)
Girl Crazy (1932)
The Roadhouse Murders (1932)
Bird of Paradise (1932)
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
The Last Frontier (1932)
The Black Ghost (1932)
Lucky Devils (1933)
The Three Musketeers (1933)
Son of the Border (1933)
Scarlet River (1933)
Sixteen Fathoms Deep (1934)
The Life of Vergie Winters (1934)
Girl of My Dreams (1934)
The Marriage Bargain (1935)
Hold 'Em Yale (1935)
A Scream in the Night (1935)
Accent on Youth (1935)
The Shadow of Silk Lennox (1935)
The Singing Cowboy (1936)
Undersea Kingdom (1936)
Ace Drummond (1936)
Killer at Large (1936)
Rose Bowl (1936)
The Old Corral (1936)
Cheyenne Rides Again (1937)
Love Is News (1937)
Midnight Taxi (1937)
Secret Agent X-9 (1937)
That I May Live (1937)
This Is My Affair (1937)
Angel's Holiday (1937)
Born Reckless (1937)
Wild and Woolly (1937)
The Lady Escapes (1937)
One Mile From Heaven (1937)
Thin Ice (1937)
Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
Life Begins in College (1937)
Wife, Doctor, and Nurse (1937)
Second Honeymoon (1937)
Checkers (1937)
Love and Hisses (1937)
City Girl (1938)
Happy Landing (1938)
Sally, Irene, and Mary (1938)
Mr. Moto's Gamble (1938)
Walking Down Broadway (1938)
Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)
Josette (1938)
Speed to Burn (1938)
Passport Husband (1938)
Straight Place and Show (1938)
Submarine Patrol (1938)
Road Demon (1938)
Jesse James (1939)
Union Pacific (1939)
Charlie Chan in City in Darkness (1939)
Of Mice and Men (1939)
Frontier Marshal (1939)
North West Mounted Police (1940)
One Million B.C. (1940)
Too Many Blondes (1941)
Billy the Kid (1941)
Man Made Monster (1941)
San Antonio Rose (1941)
Riders of Death Valley (1941)
Badlands of South Dakota (1941)
The Wolf Man (1941)
North to the Klondike (1941)
Overland Mail (1942)
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
Keeping Fit (1942)
Eyes of the Underworld (1942)
The Mummy's Tomb (1942)
Frontier Badmen (1943)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
What We Are Fighting For (1943)
Son of Dracula (1943)
Crazy House (1943)
Calling Dr. Death (1943)
Weird Woman (1944)
The Mummy's Ghost (1944)
Cobra Woman (1944)
The Ghost Catchers (1944)
Dead Man's Eyes (1944)
House of Frankenstein (1944)
The Mummy's Curse (1944)
Here Come The Co-Eds (1945)
The Frozen Ghost (1945)
Strange Confession (1945)
House of Dracula (1945)
The Daltons Ride Again (1945)
Pillow of Death (1945)
Desert Command (1946)
My Favorite Brunette (1947)
Laguna U.S.A. (1947)
Albuquerque (1948)
The Counterfeiters (1948)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
16 Fathoms Deep (1948)
Captain China (1950)
There's a Girl In My Heart (1950)
Once a Thief (1950)
Inside Straight (1951)
Bride of the Gorilla (1951)
Only the Valiant (1951)
Behave Yourself! (1951)
Flame of Araby (1951)
The Bushwhackers (1952)
The Thief of Damascus (1952)
Battles of Chief Pontiac (1952)
High Noon (1952)
Springfield Rifle (1952)
The Black Castle (1952)
Raiders of the Seven Seas (1953)
Bandit Island (1953)
A Lion Is in the Streets (1953)
The Boy from Oklahoma (1954)
Casanova's Big Night (1954)
The Big Chase (1954)
Passion (1954)
The Black Pirates (1954)
Jivaro (1954)
Big House, U.S.A. (1955)
I Died a Thousand Times (1955)
The Indian Fighter (1955)
Not as a Stranger (1955)
The Silver Star (1955)
The Black Sleep (1956)
Indestructible Man (1956)
Manfish (1956)
Pardners (1956)
Daniel Boone: Trail Blazer (1956)
Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans (1957) - Television series
Along the Mohawk Trail (1957)
The Redmen and the Renegades (1957)
The Pathfinder and the Mohican (1957)
The Cyclops (1957)
The Defiant Ones (1958)
The Alligator People (1959)
Money, Women, and Guns (1959)
13 Demon Street (1959) - Television series
House of Terror (1960)
The Phantom (1961)
The Devil's Messenger (1961)
Rebellion in Cuba (1961)
The Haunted Palace (1963)
Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1964)
Law of the Lawless (1964)
Witchcraft (1964)
Stage to Thunder Rock (1964)
Spider Baby (1964)
House of Black Death (1965)
Young Fury (1965)
Black Spurs (1965)
Town Tamer (1965)
Johnny Reno (1966)
Sharad of Atlantis (1966)
Apache Uprising (1966)
Welcome to Hard Times (1967)
Blood of Dracula's Castle (1967)
Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors (1967)
Hillbillys in a Haunted House(1967)
The Far Out West (1967)
Cannibal (1968)
Buckskin (1968)
The Fireball Jungle (1969)
The Female Bunch (1969)
A Stranger in Town (1969)
Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

References

1.^ A kinescope of the January 18, 1952 broadcast is available on YouTube, and open to the public for viewing at The Paley Center for Media in New York City and Los Angeles.
2.^ http://www.midnightpalace.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=141 (interview with Ron Chaney, including references to Lon's book)
3.^ http://www.cumuseumofterror.com/DeathCerts.htm (includes Chaney's Death Certificate)
4.^ "Lon Chaney Jr., Actor, Is Dead at 67; Portrayed Monsters". New York Times. July 14, 1973, Saturday. "Lon Chaney Jr., the film actor, died yesterday at the age of 67. A long series of illnesses had put Mr. Chaney in and out of hospitals for the last year. He was released from a San Clemente ..."