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Poe Forward's New Edgar Allan Poe Blog Facebook Page has been PUBLISHED.

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Best, Editors

The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe (1942)

The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe (1942)

Poe is played by John Shepherd (later known as Shepperd Strudwick). Stunning Linda Darnell plays Virginia Clemm. A quite young Henry Morgan (billed as Henry Morgan) aka MASH's "Colonel Potter" shows up as Ebenezer Burling

IMDB Plot Summary:

"Edgar Allan Poe led an unhappy childhood, broken only by the unceasing devotion of his foster mother, Mrs. Frances Allan, whose loving ministrations gave him courage to carry out his desire to write. His first love was Elmira Royster, and though she married another while he was at the University of Virginia, he could never purge his thoughts of her and, under the influence of her spell, he poured out the deepest passions of his heart. After a discouraging period during which he was disowned by his foster father and lost his appointment to West Point, he found the love that tamed his restless heart with Virginia Clemm. After he and Virginia married, Poe did his greatest creative work, writing for the Southern Literary Messenger and Graham's Magazine."

Plot summary written by Les Adams on IMDB.




The Strange Life And Strange Loves Of Edgar Allan Poe

Deathday: Journalist Nellie Bly 1922

Nellie Bly (May 5, 1864[1] – January 27, 1922) was the pen name of American pioneer female journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochran. She remains notable for two feats: a record-breaking trip around the world in emulation of Jules Verne's character Phileas Fogg, and an exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. In addition to her writing, she was also an industrialist and charity worker.

 Early years

Born on May 5, 1864 as Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Cochran's Mills, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, she was nicknamed "Pink" for wearing that color as a child. Her father, a wealthy former associate justice, died when she was six. Her mother remarried three years later, but sued for divorce when Cochran was 14. Cochran testified in court against her allegedly drunken, violent stepfather. As a teenager she changed her surname to Cochrane, apparently adding the "e" for sophistication.[2] She attended boarding school for one term, but dropped out because of a lack of funds. In 1880, Cochran and her family moved to Pittsburgh. A sexist column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch prompted her to write a fiery rebuttal to the editor with the pen name "Lonely Orphan Girl". He was so impressed with her earnestness and spirit he asked her to join the paper. Female newspaper writers at that time customarily used pen names, and for Cochran the editor chose "Nellie Bly", adopted from the title character in the popular song "Nelly Bly" by Stephen Foster.

Nellie Bly focused her early work for the Dispatch on the plight of working women, writing a series of investigative articles on female factory workers. But editorial pressure pushed her to the women's pages to cover fashion, society, and gardening, the usual role for female journalists of the day. Dissatisfied with these duties, she took the initiative and traveled to Mexico to serve as a foreign correspondent. Still only 21, she spent nearly half a year reporting the lives and customs of the Mexican people; her dispatches were later published in book form as Six Months in Mexico. In one report, she protested the imprisonment of a local journalist for criticizing the Mexican government, then a dictatorship under Porfirio Díaz. When Mexican authorities learned of Bly's report, they threatened her with arrest, prompting her to leave the country. Safely home, she denounced Díaz as a tyrannical czar suppressing the Mexican people and controlling the press.

Asylum exposé

Burdened again with theater and arts reporting, Bly left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887 for New York City. Penniless after four months, she talked her way into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World, and took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to feign insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island.

After a night of practicing deranged expressions in front of a mirror, she checked into a working-class boardinghouse. She refused to go to bed, telling the boarders that she was afraid of them and that they looked crazy. They soon decided that she was crazy, and the next morning summoned the police. Taken to a courtroom, she pretended to have amnesia. The judge concluded she had been drugged.

She was then examined by several doctors, who all declared her to be insane. "Positively demented," said one, "I consider it a hopeless case. She needs to be put where someone will take care of her."[3] The head of the insane pavilion at Bellevue Hospital pronounced her "undoubtedly insane". The case of the "pretty crazy girl" attracted media attention: "Who Is This Insane Girl?" asked the New York Sun. The New York Times wrote of the "mysterious waif" with the "wild, hunted look in her eyes", and her desperate cry: "I can't remember I can't remember."[4]

Committed to the asylum, Bly experienced its conditions firsthand. The food consisted of gruel broth, spoiled beef, bread that was little more than dried dough, and dirty undrinkable water. The dangerous patients were tied together with ropes. The patients were made to sit for much of each day on hard benches with scant protection from the cold. Waste was all around the eating places. Rats crawled all around the hospital. The bathwater was frigid, and buckets of it were poured over their heads. The nurses were obnoxious and abusive, telling the patients to shut up, and beating them if they did not. Speaking with her fellow patients, Bly was convinced that some were as sane as she was. On the effect of her experiences, she wrote:

"What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Here is a class of women sent to be cured. I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck."[3]

"...My teeth chattered and my limbs were ...numb with cold. Suddenly, I got three buckets of ice-cold water...one in my eyes, nose and mouth."

After ten days, Bly was released from the asylum at The World's behest. Her report, later published in book form as Ten Days in a Mad-House, caused a sensation and brought her lasting fame. While embarrassed physicians and staff fumbled to explain how so many professionals had been fooled, a grand jury launched its own investigation into conditions at the asylum, inviting Bly to assist. The jury's report recommended the changes she had proposed, and its call for increased funds for care of the insane prompted an $850,000 increase in the budget of the Department of Public Charities and Corrections. They also made sure that all of the examinations were more thorough so that only people who were actually insane went to the asylum.

Around the world

Nellie Bly in her traveling clothes, 1890In 1888, Nellie suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take a trip around the world, attempting to turn the fictional Around the World in Eighty Days into fact for the first time. A year later, at 9:40 a.m. on November 14, 1889, and with two days' notice,[5] she boarded the Augusta Victoria, a steamer of the Hamburg America Line,[6] and began her 24,899-mile journey.

She brought with her the dress she was wearing, a sturdy overcoat, several changes of underwear and a small travel bag carrying her toiletry essentials. She carried most of her money (200 £ in English bank notes and gold in total as well as some American currency)[7] in a bag tied around her neck.[8]

The New York newspaper Cosmopolitan sponsored its own reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, to beat the time of both Phileas Fogg and Bly. Bisland would travel the opposite way around the world.

To sustain interest in the story, the World organized a “Nellie Bly Guessing Match” in which readers were asked to estimate Bly’s arrival time to the second, with the Grand Prize consisting at first of (only) a free trip to Europe and, later on, spending money for the trip.[8][9]

On her travels around the world, she went through England, France (where she met Jules Verne in Amiens), Brindisi, the Suez Canal, Colombo (Ceylon), Hong Kong, the Straits Settlement of Penang and Singapore, and Japan. The development of efficient submarine cable networks and the electric telegraph allowed Bly to send short progress reports[10], though longer dispatches had to travel by regular post and were thus often delayed by several weeks.[9]

She travelled using steamships and the existing railroad systems[11], which caused occasional setbacks, particularly on the Asian leg of her race.[12] During these stops, she visited an Asian torture garden,[13] a leper colony in China[13][14] and she bought a monkey in Singapore[13][15].

Due to rough weather on her Pacific crossing, she arrived in San Francisco on the White Star liner Oceanic on January 21, two days behind schedule[12][16] However, World owner Pulitzer chartered a private train to bring her home, and she arrived back in New Jersey on January 25, 1890, at 3:51 p.m.[10].

"Seventy-two days, six hours, eleven minutes and fourteen seconds after her Hoboken departure" Bly was back in New York. She had circumnavigated the globe almost[6] unchaperoned. At the time, Bisland was still going around the world. Like Bly, she had missed a connection and had to board a slow, old ship called the "Bothina" in the place of a fast ship called the "Etruria".[5] Bly's journey, at the time, was a world record, though it was bettered a few months later by George Francis Train, who completed the journey in 67 days[17]. By 1913, Andre Jaeger-Schmidt, Henry Frederick and John Henry Mears had improved on the record, the latter completing the journey in less than 36 days.[18]

Later years

In 1895 Nellie Bly married millionaire manufacturer Robert Seaman, who was 40 years her senior. She retired from journalism, and became the president of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co., which made steel containers such as milk cans and boilers. In 1904 she invented and patented [19] the steel barrel that was the model for the 55-gallon oil drum still in widespread use in the United States. Her husband died that year. For a time she was one of the leading female industrialists in the United States, but embezzlement by employees forced her into bankruptcy. Forced back into reporting, she covered such events as the women's suffrage convention in 1913, and stories on Europe's Eastern Front during World War I.[20]

In 1916 Nellie was given a baby boy whose mother requested Nellie look after him and see that he become adopted. The child was illegitimate and difficult to place since he was half-Japanese. He spent the next six years in an orphanage run by the Church For All Nations[clarification needed] in Manhattan.

As Nellie became ill towards the end of her life she requested that her niece, Beatrice Brown, look after the boy and several other babies in whom she had become interested. Her interest in orphanages may have been part of her ongoing efforts to improve the social organizations of the day.

She died of bronchopneumonia at St. Mark's Hospital in New York City in 1922, at age 57, and was interred in a modest grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Legacy

Dramatic representations

Bly was the subject of a 1946 Broadway musical by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen.[21]

In 1981 Linda Purl appeared as Bly in a made for TV movie called The Adventures of Nellie Bly.[22]

A fictionalized account of her around the world trip was used in the comic book "Julie Walker is The Phantom" published by Moonstone Books (Story: Elizabeth Massie, art: Paul Daly, colors: Stephen Downer).[23]

Mentions of her

She provides the hinge of a scene in which Abbey Bartlet declaims Bly's achievements to President Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing episode "And Surely It's To Their Credit".[24]

In several recorded versions of the traditional song "Frankie and Johnny", such as the version recorded by Jimmie Rodgers, the lover of the male character "Johnny" is identified as "Nellie Bly."

Named after her

The Nellie Bly Amusement Park in Brooklyn, New York City, is named after her, taking as its theme Around the World in Eighty Days. The park recently reopened under new management, renamed "Adventurers Amusement Park."

From early in the twentieth century until 1961, the Pennsylvania Railroad operated a parlor-car only express train between New York and Atlantic City that bore the name, "Nellie Bly."

Other recognition

In 1998, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[25]

Nellie Bly was one of four journalists honored with a U.S postage stamp in a "Women in Journalism" set in 2002.[26]

Her investigation of the Blackwell's Island insane asylum is dramatized in a 4-D film in the Annenberg Theater at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

References

Bly, Nellie (1887). Ten Days in a Mad-House.
Kroeger, Brooke (1994). Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist.
Affidavit of Beatrice K. Brown; Surrogates Court, Kings County (1922)

Notes

1.^ Kroeger 1994 reports (p. 529) that although a birth year of 1867 was deduced from the age Bly claimed to be at the height of her popularity, her baptismal record confirms 1864.
2.^ Kroeger 1994, p. 25.
3.^ Bly 1887.
4.^ Kroeger 1994, pp. 91–92.
5.^ Ruddick, Nicholas. “Nellie Bly, Jules Verne, and the World on the Threshold of the American Age.” Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 29, Number 1, 1999, p. 4
6.^ Kroeger, Brooke. Nellie Bly – Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist. Times Books Random House, 1994, p. 146
7.^ Kroeger, Brooke. Nellie Bly – Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist. Times Books Random House, 1994, p. 141
8.^ Ruddick, Nicholas. “Nellie Bly, Jules Verne, and the World on the Threshold of the American Age.” Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 29, Number 1, 1999, p. 5
9.^ Kroeger, Brooke. Nellie Bly – Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist. Times Books Random House, 1994, p. 150
10.^ Ruddick, Nicholas. “Nellie Bly, Jules Verne, and the World on the Threshold of the American Age.” Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 29, Number 1, 1999, p. 8
11.^ Ruddick, Nicholas. “Nellie Bly, Jules Verne, and the World on the Threshold of the American Age.” Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 29, Number 1, 1999, p. 6
12.^ Bear, David. “Around the World With Nellie Bly.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 26, 2006
13.^ Ruddick, Nicholas. “Nellie Bly, Jules Verne, and the World on the Threshold of the American Age.” Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 29, Number 1, 1999, p. 7
14.^ Kroeger, Brooke. Nellie Bly – Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist. Times Books Random House, 1994, p. 160
15.^ Kroeger, Brooke. Nellie Bly – Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist. Times Books Random House, 1994, p. 158
16.^ *Daily Alta California, "Phineas Fogg Outdone", January 22, 1890
17.^ http://www.skagitriverjournal.com/WA/Library/Newspaper/Visscher/Visscher3-Bio2.html para 16
18.^ New York Times, “A Run Around the World”, August 8, 1913
19.^ http://www.aoghs.org/pdf/NellieBlyDec06.pdf
20.^ The remarkable Nellie Bly, inventor of the metal oil drum, Petroleum Age, 12/2006, p.5.
21.^ "After the poorly received Nellie Bly (1946) ... [stage director Edgar J.] MacGregor retired.", musicals101.com
22.^ per IMDb.com The Adventures of Nellie Bly
23.^ Julie Walker is The Phantom
24.^ http://www.twiztv.com/cgi-bin/transcript.cgi?episode=http://dmca.free.fr/scripts/thewestwing/season2/thewestwing-205.txt
25.^ National Women's Hall of Fame
26.^ USPS Press Release (September 14, 2002), Four Accomplished Journalists Honored on U.S. Postage Stamps, usps.com

Gustave Dore's "The Raven" Illustrations

Gustave Doré illustrated an oversized edition of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," an endeavor that earned him 30,000 francs from publisher Harper and Brothers in 1883.

"Epigram for Wall Street" Published 1845

I'll tell you a plan for gaining wealth,
Better than banking, trade or leases —
Take a bank note and fold it up,
And then you will find your money in creases!
This wonderful plan, without danger or loss,
Keeps your cash in your hands, where nothing can trouble it;
And every time that you fold it across,
'Tis as plain as the light of the day that you double it!

-The End-

Epigram for Wall Street (1845) was printed in the New York Evening Mirror on January 23, 1845, the poem is generally accepted as being written by Poe, though it was published anonymously. Interestingly, the title neglected to capitalize "street." The humorous poem of four rhyming couplets tells savvy people interested in gaining wealth to avoid investments and banks. Instead, it suggests, fold your money in half, thereby doubling it.

It appears Oliver Stone has doubled down on Wall Street.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" - The Alan Parsons Project

Vincent Price Reads "The Tell-Tale Heart"

Deathday: Poe Friend, Editor & Author Nathaniel Parker Willis 1867

Nathaniel Parker Willis (January 20, 1806 – January 20, 1867), also known as N. P. Willis, was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. For a time, he was the employer of former slave and future writer Harriet Jacobs. His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister wrote under the name Fanny Fern.

Born in Portland, Maine, Willis came from a family of publishers. His grandfather Nathaniel Willis owned newspapers in Massachusetts and Virginia, and his father Nathaniel Willis was the founder of Youth's Companion, the first newspaper specifically for children. Willis developed an interest in literature while attending Yale College and began publishing poetry. After graduation, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the New York Mirror. He eventually moved to New York and began to build his literary reputation. Working with multiple publications, he was earning about US$100 per article and between $5,000 and $10,000 per year. In 1846, he started his own publication, the Home Journal, which was eventually renamed Town and Country. Shortly after, Willis moved to a home on the Hudson River where he lived a semi-retired life until his death in 1867.

Willis embedded his own personality into his writing and addressed his readers personally, specifically in his travel writings, so that his reputation was built in part because of his character. Critics, including his sister in her novel Ruth Hall, occasionally described him as being effeminate and Europeanized. Willis also published several poems, tales, and a play. Despite his intense popularity for a time, at his death Willis was nearly forgotten.

On June 20, 1839, Willis's play Tortesa, the Usurer premiered in Philadelphia at the Walnut Street Theatre. Edgar Allan Poe called it "by far the best play from the pen of an American author."

While Willis was editor of the Evening Mirror, its issue for January 29, 1845, included the first printing of Poe's poem "The Raven" with his name attached. In his introduction, Willis called it "unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent, sustaining of imaginative lift ... It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it." Willis and Poe were close friends, and Willis helped Poe financially during his wife Virginia's illness and while Poe was suing Thomas Dunn English for libel. Willis often tried to persuade Poe to be less destructive in his criticism and concentrate on his poetry. Even so, Willis published many pieces of what would later be referred to as "The Longfellow War", a literary battle between Poe and the supporters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whom Poe called overrated and guilty of plagiarism. Willis also introduced Poe to Fanny Osgood; the two would later carry out a very public literary flirtation.

In 1850 he assisted Rufus Wilmot Griswold in preparing an anthology of the works of Poe, who had died mysteriously the year before. Griswold also wrote the first biography of Poe in which he purposely set out to ruin the dead author's reputation. Willis was one of the most vocal of Poe's defenders, writing at one point: "The indictment (for it deserves no other name) is not true. It is full of cruel misrepresentations. It deepens the shadows unto unnatural darkness, and shuts out the rays of sunshines that ought to relieve them."

In July 1860, Willis took his last major trip. Along with his wife, he stopped in Chicago and Yellow Springs, Ohio, as far west as Madison, Wisconsin, and also took a steamboat down the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri, and returned through Cincinnati, Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1851, Willis allowed the Home Journal to break its pledge to avoid taking sides in political discussions when the Confederate States of America was established, calling the move a purposeful act to bring on war. On May 28, 1861, Willis was part of a committee of literary figures—including William Cullen Bryant, Charles Anderson Dana, and Horace Greeley—to invite Edward Everett to speak in New York on behalf of maintaining the Union. The Home Journal lost many subscribers during the American Civil War, Morris died in 1864, and the Willis family had to take in boarders and for a time turned Idlewild into a girls' school for income.

Willis was very sick in these final years: he suffered from violent epileptic seizures and, early in November 1866, fainted in the streets, prompting Harriet Jacobs to return to help his wife. Willis died on his sixty-first birthday, January 20, 1867, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Four days later, the day of his funeral, all bookstores in the city were closed as a token of respect. His pallbearers included Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Samuel Gridley Howe, and James Thomas Fields.

Deathday: Le Corbeau Director Henri-Georges Clouzot 1977

Henri-Georges Clouzot (August 18, 1907 – January 12, 1977) was a French film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best remembered for his work in the thriller film genre, having directed The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, which are critically recognized to be among the greatest films from the 1950s. Clouzot also directed documentary films, including The Mystery of Picasso, which was declared a national treasure by the government of France.

Clouzot was an early fan of the cinema and, desiring a career as a writer, moved to Paris. He was later hired by producer Adolphe Osso to work in Berlin, writing French-language versions of German films. After being fired from German studios due to his friendship with Jewish producers, Clouzot returned to France, where he spent years bedridden after contracting tuberculosis. Upon recovering, Clouzot found work in Nazi occupied France as a screenwriter for the German-owned company Continental Films. At Continental, Clouzot wrote and directed films that were very popular in France. His second film Le Corbeau drew controversy over its harsh look at provincial France and Clouzot was fired from Continental before its release. As a result of his association with Continental, Clouzot was barred by the French government from filmmaking until 1947.

After the ban was lifted, Clouzot reestablished his reputation and popularity in France during the late 1940s with successful films including Quai des Orfèvres. After the release of his comedy film Miquette et sa mère, Clouzot married Véra Gibson-Amado, who would star in his next three feature films. In the early and mid-1950s, Clouzot drew acclaim from international critics and audiences for The Wages of Fear and Diabolique. Both films would serve as source material for remakes decades later. After the release of La Vérité, Clouzot's wife Véra died of a heart attack and Clouzot's career suffered due to depression, illness and new critical views of films from the French New Wave. Clouzot's career became less active in later years, limited to a few television documentaries and two feature films in the 1960s. Clouzot wrote several unused scripts in the 1970s and died in Paris in 1977.

"The Raven" in Popular Culture: Music/Spoken Word

Lou Reed's 2003 album The Raven is based on Poe's work, including his own version of The Raven in a song by the same name.

The psychedelic band The Glass Prism released an album in 1969 entitled "Poe Through the Glass Prism," with the lyrics coming entirely from various poems by Poe. "The Raven" was the single from the album.

The Alan Parsons Project album Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976) includes a song based on "The Raven" and entitled the same, but with only two verses.

A musical variation of "The Raven" was performed by the Grateful Dead during Space on April 19, 1982.

The black metal band Carpathian Forest used the first two verses of the poem for "The Eclipse / The Raven" on their EP Through Chasm, Caves and Titan Woods (1995).

The gothic metal band Tristania released a track titled "My Lost Lenore" on Widow's Weeds (1998). It is clearly inspired by this poem, but does not incorporate the poem as part of the lyrics. The entire album is in fact reminiscent of The Raven."The Ravens" is another song inspired by the poem, although its main theme is terrorism.

The German black metal band Agathodaimon quotes "The Raven" in the song "Les Posédes" on their 1999 album Higher Art of Rebellion.

A song based on "The Raven" appears on the Grave Digger album The Grave Digger (2003), alongside other songs based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.

The song Kremlin Dusk, from Japanese pop star Utada Hikaru's English-language album Exodus (2004), begins "All along, I was searching for my Lenore/In the words of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe/Now I'm sober and "Nevermore"/Will the Raven come to bother me at home." It also refers to the "dying ember" line in the poem.

Seattle, Washington metal band Nevermore got its name from the repeated refrain in "The Raven". The band also referenced it in the title track from their 2005 album This Godless Endeavor.

The Dutch neoceltic pagan folk band Omnia put a slightly edited version of the poem to music as the second track on their 2007 album Alive!.

The American gothic horror band Nox Arcana released a CD entitled Shadow of the Raven in 2007. Three songs—"Midnight Dreary", "The Raven" and "Nevermore"—as well as the album's title, are direct references to the poem.

The German symphonic metal band Xandria included the quote "Thus spoke the raven, 'Nevermore'" in their song Ravenheart, which is inspired by the poem as well..

The Christian third-wave ska band Five Iron Frenzy quotes many of Poe's lines in "That's How The Story Ends", from The End Is Near, and alludes ironically to the mysterious and somber mood of "The Raven".

The song "Campanas en la Noche" ("Bells in the Night") by the Argentine rock band Los Tipitos, the tale of a man wishing for the return of his lover, is loosely based on the poem. This relationship is even more evident in the song's video, which features the bust of Pallas and the titular raven itself.

Rapper MC Lars released the track "Mr. Raven" on The Laptop EP, quoting some lines directly from the poem and modifying others (e.g. "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I kicked it weak and weary").
The song "Run-Around" by Blues Traveler begins, "Once upon a midnight deary...", a reference to the opening of The Raven.

The extreme metal band, Cradle of Filth, has quoted the poem in their song entitled "An Enemy Led the Tempest".

The Canadian artist Nash the Slash included an instrumental track called "Lost Lenore" on his vinyl album The Million Year Picnic.

Jean Sibelius allegedly based an early conception of his fourth symphony on "The Raven".

The Devil Wears Prada used a track of a man reading a part of "The Raven" as a part of an introduction to concerts during a 2008 tour with Underoath. The piece led into the ending breakdown in the song "Goats on a Boat."

The Dutch based hardstyle artist DJ Pavo released a track entitled "Raven", which quotes various lines from the poem.

Buddy Morrow and His Orchestra recorded an album of songs based on Poe's works. The album, "Poe for Moderns," includes a condensed, jazzy version of "The Raven."

The hip hop group CYNE included a track called "The Raven" on their 2009 album Water for Mars. The group paraphrases Poe's famous line in a few cynical lines (e.g. "Nevermore said the raven, goodbye to innocence").

"The Raven" in Popular Culture: TV

The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror" parodies the poem in its third segment as Lisa reads the story to Bart and Maggie. In the animated segment, Homer serves as the protagonist, Bart takes the raven's form, Marge appears in a painting as Lenore and Lisa and Maggie are angels. Bart sometimes complains as to how the poem isn't scary, and at one point, being that he plays the raven says his catchphrase "Eat my shorts" instead of "Nevermore". Homer provides the spoken dialogue for the narrator; his thoughts are voiced by James Earl Jones. Some of the poem is cut for time (the 5th line in stanza 3, stanza 5, the last 2 lines of stanza 6, the first two lines of stanza 8, stanzas 9 through 13, 15 and 16). The story culminates (after the last two lines of stanza 17 are repeated again) with Homer chasing the Bart-raven around the study before the last stanza. After the poem, Bart says he didn't think the poem was scary and Lisa suggests that people may have been more easily scared in 1845. The scene cuts to Homer, who has overheard the recitation, who is seen shaking, shivering and frightened.
 Night Gallery, hosted by Rod Serling, featured a brief, humorous story entitled "Quoth the Raven." It featured Poe, portrayed by Marty Allen, being constantly maligned by a talking raven (voiced by uncredited Mel Blanc) on a bust of Pallas as Poe is trying to write the original "Raven" poem.

Garfield and Friends parodied the poem in the form of a U.S. Acres short titled "Stark Raven Mad", in which Orson narrates, to the tune of the poem, guarding the harvest against Roy's attempts to steal it. Lenore is featured as Orson's old girlfriend, who moved away after a scuffle with Orson's brothers. This flashback prompts Orson to save Roy from his brothers when they show up to steal the vegetables themselves.

The Histeria! episode "Super Writers" featured a sketch in which a Peter Lorre-esque Poe attempts to pitch his poem to Sammy Melman, who wants a brighter poem with a happy narrator and a bunny instead of a raven. This frustrates Poe to no end and eventually drives him to publish the poem independently. Later in the episode, in a sketch featuring Poe as a villain, the raven serves as his sidekick.

Tiny Toon Adventures parodies the poem, with the character Sweetie Pie playing the role of the raven while Vincent Price does the voice-over for the narrator.

The Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain episode "The Ravin!" parodies the poem, with the Brain narrating and Elmyra using a phrase repetitively.

In the TV show The Addams Family, Morticia uses "The Raven" as a bed-time story to her son Pugsley, reciting it as a nursery rhyme. (Episode 1.2 "Morticia and the Psychiatrist", original air date: 25 September 1964)

The 1960s sitcom The Munsters featured a cuckoo clock with a wise-cracking raven (who had named himself "Charlie") instead of a cuckoo, which would emerge and say, "Nevermore, Nevermore" - usually as a comic foil for Herman Munster.

The animated series Beetlejuice featured Poe as one of the eccentric residents of the Nietherworld. Poe mourns his "lost Lenore" (presumably the same from "The Raven") until it is revealed that she has just been staying with her mother.

In 1979, Roto-Rooter Plumbing and Drain Cleaning Service created an animated television commercial entitled "The Raving," in which the protagonist faced a blocked drain rather than a lost love. The commercial's raven recommended the drain service.

An episode of Teen Titans entitled "Nevermore" follows two of the main characters, Beast Boy and Cyborg, as they use a magical mirror to enter the mind of their friend Raven.

In the Cartoon Network show My Gym Partner's a Monkey, in the episode "Gorilla of my Dreams," Principal Pixiefrog has a girlfriend named Lenore, and a raven flies into the window.

During five's late night NFL coverage, colour analyst Mike Carlson wrote and performed a complex parody of the poem to a game report involving the Baltimore Ravens.

In the kids' show, Cyberchase, the episode, 'Frogsnorts', Sharry's dodo speaks in rhyme, and when trying to tell Hacker that he did not get invited to Frogsnorts, Dodo says, "Don't be sad, don't be sore, quoth the Dodo, nevermore!"

In the Gilmore Girls episode, "A Tale of Poes and Fire," "The Raven" is recited by two men dressed like Edgar Allan Poe for a Poe convention.

In episode 3 of season 4 of Alton Brown's Good Eats ("Fry Hard II: The Chicken") on Food Network, Brown's prologue to the episode shows him rummaging through his cookbooks ("forgotten lore") looking for chicken recipes accompanied by a voice-over of him reciting a parody of the first few stanzas of the poem, during which a plastic chicken, taking the raven's place, perched on the bust of Julia Child and repeatedly says "Fry some more".

The DuckTales character Poe De Spell is a raven who often says "nevermore".

The Gothic cartoon series Ruby Gloom based on the apparel franchise of the same name features three ravens named Edgar, Allan and Poe, being Poe the most prominent one.

In the show King Of The Hill Bill's ex-wife, who is only shown on screen once, is named Lenore, and Bill is often seen pining for her, going so far as to cry out her name in desperation and anguish over her leaving him on Christmas Eve years before.

In one episode of "Bullwinkle's Corner" from The Bullwinkle Show, the poem parodied is "The Raven". The bird which comes into Bullwinkle's "chamber spooky" is a woodpecker instead of the expected raven. Bullwinkle pursues the imposter bird with a fireplace poker and ends up hitting himself on the head. The narration concludes "Now the room is round me wavin'/ feels like I've been in a cave-in/ When will next I read "The Raven"?/I can tell you...nevermore!"

In the 11th episode (called 'Nevermore) of television series Warehouse 13, many Poe poems feature, including The Tell-Tale Heart and, of course, 'The Raven'.

In the Disney series "Phineas and Ferb", a raven flies into one of the characters, Doofenshmirtz's, window and starts tapping and yelling "nevermore!" to which Doofenshmirtz replies "Oh it's just that raven again."

"The Raven" in Popular Culture: Film

"The Raven" was recreated as a hallucination of Poe's in the 1915 silent film The Raven. A fictionalized biography, it starred Henry B. Walthall as Poe.

The 1935 film The Raven has Bela Lugosi as a Poe-obsessed doctor and costars Boris Karloff. The film has a interpretive dance of "The Raven."

In 1942, Fleischer Studios created a two-reel Technicolor cartoon based upon "The Raven" which turned the story of the poem into a lighthearted comedy.

A Bugs Bunny cartoon has Bugs reading a few lines from the poem, starting with the words, "While I nodded nearly napping."

In 1963, Roger Corman directed The Raven, a comedy very loosely based on the poem.

In the 1967 stop-motion film Mad Monster Party, Baron von Frankenstein tests his new potion on a raven, and lets it fly until it lands on a tree branch. Watching the resulting explosion, he says with a chuckle, "Quoth the raven... nevermore. Ah, I've done it -- created the means to destroy matter!"

The stop-motion short film Vincent (1982), by Tim Burton, features a protagonist named Vincent Malloy, whose "favorite author is Edgar Allan Poe." As Vincent lies, seemingly dying, at the end of the film, he quotes the final couplet of "The Raven."

In the 1983 film The Dead Zone, Christopher Walken (as a school teacher Johnny Smith) quotes "The Raven" to his class during a lesson.

In the 1989 film Batman, Jack Nicholson (as The Joker) quotes "The Raven" to Kim Basinger's Vicky Vale when he says, "Take thy beak from out my heart."

Hannes Rall directed an animated, German-language version of The Raven (Der Rabe) in 1998.

A Spanish short film, with English dialogues, directed by Tinieblas González appeared in 1999.

The poem was translated to film by Trilobite Pictures and director Peter Bradley in 2003. The short film was released on DVD in 2005 by Lurker Films.

In the 1994 film The Crow, Eric, the tragic main character, references "The Raven" before blowing up Gideon's pawn shop: "Suddenly, I heard a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. You heard me rapping, right?"

In the 1994 film The Pagemaster, when Richard Tyler is visiting the land of horror and enters Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde's mansion, a raven swoops down next to them and screeches the word, 'nevermore'.

The film Nightmares from the Mind of Poe (2006) adapts "The Raven" along with three Poe short stories: "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Premature Burial".

The poem was referenced in the 2002 film "Finding Forrester", which starred Sean Connery. The film was discussed in the protagonist Jumal's English class.

In the 2005 film The Crow: Wicked Prayer the third sequel to The Crow, during the final battle between Jimmy and Luc, Jimmy tauntingly shouts "Quoth the raven nevermore, motherfucker!"

In the 2010 film The Expendables, numerous references are made to ravens and, obliquely, to "The Raven." The character played by Sylvester Stallone is in the process of getting a tattoo completed which features a raven, and the sea-plane which his team travels in also features an oversize picture of a raven.

John Cusack as Edgar Poe

"The Raven" in Popular Culture: Print

Writer James Russell Lowell, a contemporary of Poe's, references "The Raven" and its author in his poem, A Fable for Critics: "Here comes Poe with his Raven, like Barnaby Rudge, / Three fifths of him genius, two fifths sheer fudge." This mention alludes to the belief that Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty inspired Poe to write "The Raven."

In Edmund Clerihew Bentley's Trent's Own Case (1913), Trent, standing at an open French door and reciting the fifth stanza to himself, receives an unexpected reply:

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, ..."
"Guv'nor!"

In the magazine Mad issue 9 (March, 1954), "The Raven" is reprinted in full with absurd illustrations by Will Elder. Another parody appeared in a Mad collection, We're Still Using That Greasy MAD Stuff (1959). It was titled as "The Spaniel." Rather than "Nevermore," the author was bombarded with famous commercial taglines. A more recent parody in Mad by Frank Jacobs, titled "The Reagan", appeared in issue 265 (September 1986). Even more recently, the poem was used to parody horror movies, and how successful ones often have sequels made that are of low quality. The recurring line is, "Quoth Wes Craven, let's make more!"

In the Donald Duck 10-pager "Raven Mad" by Carl Barks, published in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #265 in 1962, Huey, Dewey and Louie play with a raven who can only say "Nevermore." As in the poem, the raven often repeats the word throughout the story.

"The Raven" has been the subject of constrained writing. Georges Perec's novel A Void (1969), written entirely without the letter 'E' in French and subsequently translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the same constraint, contains a full-length "translation" of "The Raven" entitled "Black Bird." It is attributed to "Arthur Gordon Pym."

Mathematician Mike Keith has also referenced the poem in three examples of constrained writing:
"Near a Raven" is a reworking of Poe's poem in which the length of words correspond to the first 740 digits of pi (1995)
Cadaeic Cadenza, a longer work under the same constraint, begins with the full text of "Near a Raven" (1996)
"Raven-Two", a poetic anagram of the original (1999)

Poet C. L. Edson wrote a parody (ca. 1955) entitled Ravens of Piute Poet Poe, mocking Poe's alliteration and repetition:

"Prophet," said I, "thing of evil, navel, novel, or boll weevil, You shall travel, on the level! Scratch the gravel now and travel! Leave my hovel, I implore."

A raven named Quoth, who first appears in Soul Music and recurs in Hogfather as the steed of the Death of Rats, is a minor character associated with Death in Terry Pratchett's fictional Discworld universe, although on a matter of principle he doesn't "do the N word." He is currently in the employ of a Wizard; his job mainly entails sitting on a talking skull and croaking a lot.

In Joan Aiken's novel Arabel's Raven (1972), as well as further books from the Arabel and Mortimer series, a young girl named Arabel has a pet raven named Mortimer who often says the word "Nevermore!" Aiken won an Edgar Award in 1972.

The Calvin and Hobbes collection "The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury" (released September 1988) contains an original illustrated poem, "A Nauseous Nocturne," which is clearly patterned after "The Raven."

In Stephen King's novel Insomnia (1994), Ralph compares an omen to the raven of the poem. The novel Black House (2001), written by King and Peter Straub, also features a talking crow reminiscent of the raven in Poe's poem. Part III of the novel is entitled "Night's Plutonian Shore."

In Robin Jarvis's Tales from the Wyrd Museum trilogy (1995–1998), Woden has two raven servants named Thought and Memory. Memory is known as Quoth throughout the stories, and occasionally says "Nevermore".

In the seventh book of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Vile Village (2001), a tree in the center of the village covered with crows is called the "Nevermore Tree."

Neil Gaiman references "The Raven" in two of his works:
In the novel American Gods (2001), the protagonist, Shadow, asks one of Odin's ravens, "Hey, Hugin or Munin, or whoever you are. Say 'Nevermore.'" The raven responds, "Fuck you."
The comic book series The Sandman features a raven named Matthew, who has been transformed into a raven as an alternative to death. At one point in the series, he flaps his wings and screams, "Nevermore!", only to explain that he was "being Peter Lorre in that one Roger Corman movie".

Level Ground Press and artist Bill Fountain published an illustrated re-imagining of "The Raven" in 2005. The book incorporates raven myths and legends from around the world into the visual interpretation of the story.

Bigfoot is used instead of a Raven as a parody in the 2005 novel, From Fear to Flattery by Tony Hughes.

Holly Black quotes the poem in her 2005 novel Valiant : A Modern Tale of Faerie, alluding to it as the source for the name of the drug called 'Nevermore'. However, this is later contradicted, when one of the characters asserts that the name comes from the limitations of its use: "Never more than once a day, never more than a pinch at a time, and never more than two days in a row."

One issue of the American Sonic the Hedgehog comic by Archie Comics featured a sorcerer by the name of Mathias Poe, an anthropomorphic Raven undoubtedly based on the poem.

The fantasy novel The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde features a villainous character named Jack Schitt who is ultimately trapped inside a copy of "The Raven."

In the book Eldest, the white raven Blagden says "And on the door was graven evermore, what now became the family lore, Let us never do but to adore," making references to The Raven with the first part of the rhyme.

In the graphic novel Batman: Year One by Frank Miller, the moment when Bruce decides which method he will use to fight crime is widely regarded as a reference to the poem because of the kind of chamber he is in and the bust on which the bat lands.

G. K. Chesterton's poem "The Song Against Songs" refers to "The Raven": "The song of the Raven Never More has never been called a cheery song."

In the novel Waves, by Ogan Gurel, Chapter 23 (Descartes) has a line reminiscent of "The Raven". Themes in that chapter parallel some of the ideas (death and mourning, loss of love, madness) in Poe's poem.

The first of the books based on the hit TV series Supernatural is called Nevermore. Poe is also very important for the rest of the book, as the murders that the main characters, Sam and Dean Winchester are investigating are reinactments of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Cask of Amontillado and The Tell-Tale Heart, respectively, and it all turns out to be part of a ritual to bring Poe back to life.

Parodied as "The Spaniel" by "Edgar, Al and Moe" in "The 'Mad' Collection of Unknown Poetry."

"The Raven" in Popular Culture

The Baltimore Ravens

Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" has been frequently referenced and parodied in contemporary culture. Immediately popular after the poem's publication in 1845, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Some consider it the best poem ever written. As such, modern references to the poem continue to appear in popular culture.

Bela Lugosi in The Raven (1935)

In part due to its dual printing, "The Raven" made Edgar Allan Poe a household name almost immediately and turned Poe into a national celebrity. Readers began to identify poem with poet, earning Poe the nickname "The Raven." The poem was soon widely reprinted, imitated, and parodied. Though it made Poe popular in his day, it did not bring him significant financial success. As he later lamented, "I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life—except in hope, which is by no means bankable."

Elizabeth Barrett (Browning)

The New World said, "Everyone reads the Poem and praises it... justly, we think, for it seems to us full of originality and power." The Pennsylvania Inquirer reprinted it with the heading "A Beautiful Poem." Elizabeth Barrett wrote to Poe, "Your 'Raven' has produced a sensation, a fit o' horror, here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by 'Nevermore'." Poe's popularity resulted in invitations to recite "The Raven" and to lecture – in public and at private social gatherings. At one literary salon, a guest noted, "to hear [Poe] repeat the Raven... is an event in one's life." It was recalled by someone who experienced it, "He would turn down the lamps till the room was almost dark, then standing in the center of the apartment he would recite... in the most melodious of voices... So marvelous was his power as a reader that the auditors would be afraid to draw breath lest the enchanted spell be broken." Parodies sprung up especially in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia and included "The Craven" by "Poh!," "The Gazelle," "The Whippoorwill," and "The Turkey." One parody, "The Pole-Cat," caught the attention of Andrew Johnston, a lawyer who sent it on to Abraham Lincoln. Though Lincoln admitted he had "several hearty laughs," he had not, at that point read "The Raven." However, Lincoln eventually read and memorized the poem.

Abraham Lincoln

Charles Darwin Publishes "On the Origin of Species: 1859

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. For the sixth edition of 1872, the short title was changed to The Origin of Species. Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation.

Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to animals. The political and theological implications were intensely debated, but transmutation was not accepted by the scientific mainstream.

The book was written for non-specialist readers and attracted widespread interest upon its publication. As Darwin was an eminent scientist, his findings were taken seriously and the evidence he presented generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. The debate over the book contributed to the campaign by T.H. Huxley and his fellow members of the X Club to secularise science by promoting scientific naturalism. Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution, with a branching pattern of common descent, had occurred, but scientists were slow to give natural selection the significance that Darwin thought appropriate. During the "eclipse of Darwinism" from the 1880s to the 1930s, various other mechanisms of evolution were given more credit. With the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s, Darwin's concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection became central to modern evolutionary theory, now the unifying concept of the life sciences.

Deathday: Gambler & Crime Kingpin Arnold Rothstein 1928

Arnold "The Brain" Rothstein (January 17, 1882–November 4, 1928) was a New York businessman and gambler who became a famous kingpin of organized crime, the Jewish mafia. Rothstein was also widely reputed to have been behind baseball's Black Sox Scandal, in which the 1919 World Series was fixed. His notoriety inspired several fictional characters based on his life, including "Meyer Wolfsheim" in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby[1] ; the character who shared his name in the Broadway Musical "Legs Diamond"; and "Nathan Detroit" in the Damon Runyon story The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, which was made into the renowned musical Guys and Dolls.

According to crime writer Leo Katcher, Rothstein "transformed organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, run like a corporation, with himself at the top."[2] According to Rich Cohen, Rothstein was the person who first saw in Prohibition a business opportunity, a means to enormous wealth, who "understood the truths of early century capitalism and came to dominate them". Rothstein was the Moses of the Jewish gangsters, according to Cohen, the progenitor, a rich man's son who showed the young hoodlums of the Bowery how to have style; indeed, the man who, the Sicilian-American gangster Lucky Luciano would later say, "taught me how to dress."[3]

Early life and successes

Arnold Rothstein was born in New York City, the son of a businessman, Abraham Rothstein. Arnold was skilled at mathematics and developed an early interest in illegitimate business, whereas his older brother studied to become a rabbi. By 1910, Arnold had moved to the Tenderloin section of Manhattan, where he established an important gambling casino. During Prohibition, Rothstein purchased holdings in a number of speakeasies. He also invested in a horse racing track at Havre de Grace, Maryland, and it was widely reputed that he "fixed" many of the races that he won. Rothstein had a wide network of informants and very deep pockets when it came to paying for good information, regardless of how unscrupulous the sources were. His successes made him a millionaire by age 30.

1919 World Series

In 1919, Rothstein's agents allegedly paid members of the Chicago White Sox to "throw", or deliberately lose, the World Series, enabling him to make a significant sum betting against Chicago: an incident known as the "Black Sox Scandal".[4]

Summoned to Chicago to testify before a Grand Jury investigation of the incident, Rothstein stated that he was an innocent businessman intent on clearing his name and his reputation. Prosecutors could find no evidence linking Rothstein to the affair and he was never indicted. Rothstein's testimony is worth quoting. "The whole thing started when (Abe) Attell and some other cheap gamblers decided to frame the Series and make a killing. The world knows I was asked in on the deal and my friends know how I turned it down flat. I don't doubt that Attell used my name to put it over. That's been done by smarter men than Abe. But I was not in on it, would not have gone into it under any circumstances and did not bet a cent on the Series after I found out what was underway."[5]

The Grand Jury believed Rothstein, but the truth was a lot more complicated and Rothstein was a lot less innocent. One version of this story has Rothstein turning down the proposal relayed by Attel; however, this in fact had been the second "fix" he'd refused to bankroll. A gambler called Joseph "Sport" Sullivan had previously approached Rothstein with the same idea. After receiving Attel's offer, Rothstein reasoned he could now afford to reconsider the first offer from Sullivan's. Rothstein shrewdly figured that the field was becoming so crowded with would-be fixers that he could risk getting involved and still cover his tracks. As Rothstein explained it to Sullivan "If a girl goes to bed with nine guys, who's going to believe her when she says the tenth one's the father?"

Another version of this story has Rothstein working both ends of the fix with Sullivan and Attell.

1921 Travers Stakes

Rothstein also owned a racehorse named Sporting Blood, winner of the 1921 Travers Stakes under suspicious circumstances. Allegedly, Rothstein conspired with a leading trainer, Sam Hildreth, to drive up the odds on Sporting Blood. Hildreth entered an outstanding three year old, Grey Lag, on the morning of the race, immediately causing the odds on Sporting Blood, to rise to 3-1. Rothstein then bet $150,000 through bookmakers, allegedly having been informed that the second favorite, Prudery, was off her feed. Just before post time and without explanation, Hildreth scratched Grey Lag from the starting list. Rothstein collected over $500,000 in bets plus the purse, but a conspiracy was never proven.

Prohibition and organized crime

With the advent of Prohibition, Rothstein diversified into bootlegging and narcotics. His criminal organization included such underworld luminaries as Meyer Lansky, Jack "Legs" Diamond, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, and Dutch Schultz. Rothstein's various nicknames were Mr. Big, The Fixer, The Man Uptown, The Big Bankroll and The Brain. Rothstein frequently mediated differences between the New York gangs and reportedly charged a hefty fee for his services. His favorite "office" was Lindy's Restaurant, at Broadway and 49th Street in Manhattan, where he would stand on the corner surrounded by his bodyguards and do business on the street. Rothstein made bets and collected debts from those who had lost the previous day.

Murder

On November 5, 1928, Arnold Rothstein was shot and mortally wounded while conducting some business affairs at Manhattan's Park Central Hotel. He died the next day at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital in Manhattan.[6] The shooting was allegedly linked to a gambling event that Rothstein had participated in the previous month with several associates and acquaintances. According to underworld folklore, it was a spectacular three-day, high-stakes poker game held somewhere in Manhattan. Rothstein apparently experienced a cold streak with the cards and ended up owing $320,000 at the end of the game. However, Rothstein refused to pay the debt, claiming the game was fixed. The hit was arranged to punish Rothstein for reneging on this debt. Gambler George "Hump" McManus was arrested for the murder, but later acquitted for lack of evidence.[7] Rothstein, on his deathbed, refused to identify his killer, answering police inquiries with "You stick to your trade. I'll stick to mine"[1] and "Me mudder did it." Rothstein was buried at Ridgewood's Union Field Cemetery in a Jewish Orthodox ceremony.

Another theory about Rothstein's death is offered by crime reporter Paul Sann in his book Kill the Dutchman. Sann alleges that Dutch Schultz murdered Rothstein in retaliation for the murder of Schultz's friend and associate, Joey Noe, by Rothstein's protégé, Jack "Legs" Diamond.

Frank Erickson, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and other former associates inherited Rothstein's various "enterprises" after his death. Politically, Rothstein's death contributed to the fall of the corrupt Tammany Hall and the rise of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
Ten years after his death, Arnold Rothstein's only surviving brother declared Rothstein's estate bankrupt.

In popular culture

The author F. Scott Fitzgerald used Arnold Rothstein as the inspiration for Jay Gatsby's crooked associate Meyer Wolfsheim in the novel The Great Gatsby. At one point, Gatsby says to narrator Nick Carraway, "He's the man who fixed the 1919 World Series."

Rothstein's legendary pool-playing marathon, against a Philadelphia pool shark called Jack Conway shipped in by Rothstein's enemies to humiliate him, took place over two days and nights in 1911 at McGraw's Billiard Parlor, off Herald Square in Manhattan. Rothstein just kept playing and betting until Conway's backers had lost $10,000. Eventually, the owner (John McGraw) stepped in and shut down the hall, saying "That's it. If I let you go on I'll have one o' youse dead on my hands." This was the real-life inspiration for the opening pool contest between Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) and Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) in the 1961 film The Hustler. Rothstein's patronage of floating crap games also provided the model for Nathan Detroit in the musical Guys and Dolls. Rothstein also appears as "The Brain" in several of Damon Runyon's short stories, including a fictional version of his death in The Brain Goes Home.

In the film The Godfather, Part II, Hyman Roth mentions that Rothstein is his inspiration. In a sequence cut from the original film, Roth adopts his surname after Rothstein's in honor of his part in the Black Sox Scandal.

Rothstein was portrayed in several films: by F. Murray Abraham in the 1991 Mobsters, by David Janssen in the 1961 King of the Roaring 20s, and by Michael Lerner in the 1988 Eight Men Out, based on the Black Sox Scandal.

In the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, Rothstein is portrayed by Michael Stuhlbarg.

On the ABC series, The Whole Truth, Rothstein's murder is used as a code for ordering a murder by a judge who had taken bribes and was attempting to cover his trail. In reference to his intended target, He says "I'll meet him at the Park Central". The victim also has the surname of Rothstein.

References

1.^ Raab, Five Families, p. ???
2.^ Katcher, Leo (1959/1994). The Big Bankroll. The Life and Times of Arnold Rothstein, New York: Da Capo Press
3.^ Defenders of the faith, The Guardian, Saturday July 6, 2002; Cohen, Rich (1999). Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams, London: Vintage
4.^ Arnold Rothstein and Baseball's 1919 Black Sox Scandal
5.^ The Big Fix: Arnold Rothstein rigged the 1919 World Series. Or did he?, Legal Affairs, March-April, 2004
6.^ In Room 349, Time, December 24, 1928
7.^ Tammany's Rothstein, Time, December 16, 1929

Cohen, Rich (1999). Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams, London: Vintage ISBN 0-099-75791-5
Eisenberg, D., Dan, U., and Landau, E. (1979). "Meyer Lansky: Mogul of the Mob." New York: Paddington Press. ISBN 0-448-22206-x, ISBN 0-7092-0151-6
Henderson Clarke, Donald (1929). In the Reign of Rothstein, New York: The Vanguard Press.
Katcher, Leo (1959/1994). The Big Bankroll. The Life and Times of Arnold Rothstein, New York: Da Capo Press ISBN 0-306-80565-0
Pietrusza, David (2003). Rothstein: The Life, Times and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series, New York: Carroll & Graf.
Raab, Selwyn (2005). Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires, New York: St. Martin's Press ISBN 0-312-30094-8
Rothstein, Carolyn (with Donald Henderson Clarke) (1934), Now I'll Tell, New York: Vantage Press.
Tosches, Nick (2005). King of the Jews. The Arnold Rothstein Story, London: Hamish Hamilton ISBN 0-241-14144-3

Penguin Books Found Not Guilty of Obscenity in Lady Chatterley's Lover case 1960

In 1960, Penguin Books was found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case

Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed in Florence, Italy; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960. (A private edition was issued by Inky Stephensen's Mandrake Press in 1929). The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an aristocratic woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of (at the time) unprintable words.

The story is said to have originated from events in Lawrence's own unhappy domestic life, and he took inspiration for the settings of the book from Eastwood in Nottinghamshire where he grew up. According to some critics, the fling of Lady Ottoline Morrell with "Tiger," a young stonemason who came to carve plinths for her garden statues, also influenced the story. Lawrence at one time considered calling the novel Tenderness and made significant alterations to the text and story in the process of its composition. It has been published in three different versions.

Plot introduction

The story concerns a young married woman, Constance (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class husband, Clifford Chatterley, has been paralyzed and rendered impotent. Her sexual frustration leads her into an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. This novel is about Constance's realization that she cannot live with the mind alone; she must also be alive physically.

Controversy

An authorized abridgment of Lady Chatterley's Lover that was heavily censored was published in America by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1928. This edition was subsequently reissued in paperback in America both by Signet Books and by Penguin Books in 1946.

In 1930, Senator Bronson Cutting proposed an amendment to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which was then being debated, ending the practice of having U.S. Customs censor allegedly obscene books imported to U.S. shores. Senator Reed Smoot vigorously opposed such an amendment, threatening to publicly read indecent passages of imported books in front of the Senate. Although he never followed through, he included Lady Chatterley's Lover as an example of an obscene book that must not reach domestic audiences, declaring "I've not taken ten minutes on Lady Chatterley's Lover, outside of looking at its opening pages. It is most damnable! It is written by a man with a diseased mind and a soul so black that he would obscure even the darkness of hell!"

Lady Chatterley's Lover was one of a trio of books (the others being Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill), the ban on which was fought and overturned in court with assistance by lawyer Charles Rembar in 1959. It was then published by Grove Press.

A French film (1955) based on the novel and released by Kingsley Pictures was in the United States the subject of attempted censorship in New York on the grounds that it promoted adultery. The Supreme Court held that the law prohibiting its showing was a violation of the First Amendment's protection of Free Speech.

The book was famously distributed in the U.S. by Frances Steloff at the Gotham Book Mart, in defiance of the book ban.

Cultural influence

In the United States, the free publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover was a significant event in the "sexual revolution." At the time, the book was a topic of widespread discussion and a byword of sorts. In 1965, Tom Lehrer recorded a satirical song entitled "Smut," in which the speaker in the song lyrics cheerfully acknowledges his enjoyment of such material; "Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?/I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley."

British poet Philip Larkin's poem "Annus Mirabilis" begins with a reference to the trial:

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And The Beatles' first LP.

By 1976, the story had become sufficiently safe in Britain to be parodied by Morecambe and Wise; a "play what Ernie wrote," The Handyman and M'Lady, was obviously based on it, with Michele Dotrice as the Lady Chatterley figure, Ernie as her husband, and Eric as the handyman she has a fling with. Introducing it, Ernie explained that his play was "about a man who has an accident with a combine harvester, which unfortunately makes him impudent."