MADE in HOLLYWOOD

iN SEARCH OF THE iDEAL MALE MADE iN HOLLYWOOD NATIONAL INTER Poorhouse Newsletter No31 October - December 2013 WiLLiAM KENTRiDGE THE NORTON LECTURES six drawing lessons available for television 2 wichita films Humphrey Bogart Robert Redford Al Pacino iN SEARCH OF THE iDEAL MALE MADE iN HOLLYWOOD Critic Molly Haskell says “when I think of incarnated by Dustin Hoffman. As we have don’t have to live up to that macho ideal”. male types in the cinema the images of men the virgin and the whore we have the good We also learn about typecasts and real actors through the years and how they change I don’t guy and the bad guy, the lover, the cowboy, the who would inhabit their roles. Name like really see it in terms of evolution, of progress. gangster, all industrialized and clichéd by the Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, James Stewart I really think even more than with women, Hollywood studio machinery. and James Cagney come to mind. And after there are sort of two or three basic types and Molly Haskell, Maria Janis Cooper - the World War II the male became much more they just recur over and over but in different daughter of Gary Cooper - Stephen Heller complex and as Stephen Heller puts it “not forms, you know, taking on the colour and the and David Dopkin comment on a rich just the husband that comes home to the contours of the society, the Zeitgeist so to selection of cleverly chosen clips dealing with ideal American family”. People with problems, speak.” the appearance of men in film. And Stephen neurosis and psychical problems begin to And Hollywood has always reacted to the Heller concludes “there is no real stereotype invade the screen. Hollywood adjusted to the Zeitgeist from the Jazz age in the thirties and of the male anymore”. I mean, we are beyond post war trauma. its spirit of liberation incarnated by Valentino that, in so far as homosexuality has been After the great success of Wichita’s Chick to the creation of the anti hero perfectly accepted more or less in the culture, men Flicks it was only a matter of time that Clara and Julia Kuperberg were to take a hard look at the way Hollywood presents the male and how the image has changed over past decades to catch up with reality albeit always belatedly. Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall directed by Clara & Julia Kuperberg produced by Wichita Films Cary Grant running time: 52' shot in HD PoorhouseinternationalNewsletter No31 wichita films 3 SYDNEY KORSHAK THE FABLED FiXER FBI man Bill Roemer considered Korshak to let their actor go to rival Paramount. to have been nothing less than “the most Mysteriously a sudden strike threatened important contact that the Mob had to any appearance in front of a camera. Russo has the completion of MGM’s new grand hotel legitimate business, labour, Hollywood and written the only book about Sydney Korshak at Las Vegas and the actor was released. Las Vegas”. And Nick Toshes described him entitled Supermob. He is currently preparing a Robert Evans himself describes Korshak as his as “one of the great hidden figures of 20th documentary on the assassination of JFK and “Godfather”! Clara and Julia Kupebrerg will Century organized crime”. Attorney Sydney his book The Secret War against Castro and surprise you with many more stories which Korshak was thought by many to be the the death of JFK was nominated for a Pulitzer have Korshak at their centre from the early most powerful man in Hollywood for the last Price in 1999. An earlier film of his for PBS days of his being a lawyer in Chicago until his half Century. Until his death he remained an entitled Lee Harvey Oswald makes you think. death in 1996, when he was truly in control of impeccably dressed enigma whose power The other main witness the Kuperbergs were Hollywood. Filming takes place in Chicago, Los reached deep into the lives of Jimmy Hoffa, able to persuade to talk is Dennis McDougal, Angeles, Las Vegas and Palm Springs, where the Frank Sinatra, Lew Wasserman and Ronald one time journalist at the LA Times and enigmatic Sydney Korshak left his footprint. We Reagan. Clara and Julia Kuperberg set out to author of The Last Mogul a well researched will hear interesting parts of a story that only bring to life this mysterious figure who was book on Lew Wasserman. Having made a Korshak himself would have told. running an empire from a reserved table at documentary on Dominick Dunne, who Le Bistro in Beverly Hills with nothing but inadvertently took some of the rare pictures “Korshak negotiated more as two telephones, who could call a strike at a of Sydney Korshak, the Kuperbergs also have minute’s notice, propelled Ronald Reagan, the access to some material from this investigative the lawyer and Wasserman one time B-picture actor and president of the journalist. The stories about Korshak are many negotiated as the party to actor’s union SAG to the post of governor of and NBC has rare footage from the eighties the negotiations. If Lew California and ultimately into the White House which Clara and Julia will also try to obtain. and who paved the way for Lew Wasserman Korshak undoubtedly could pull strings as the didn’t get it done, Sidney to become “the Last Mogul”of Hollywood as production of the Godfather clearly shows. would get called in.” Dennis McDougal titled his biography of the Robert Evans the producer tells how the Mafia one time strong man of Universal. Clara and was going to prevent filming in New York by Julia Kuperberg have very good relations with threatening to murder his wife. One phone call directed by Hollywood and are very much liked there from Korshak settled the matter. When Francis Clara & Julia Kuperberg because of their enthusiasm for movies, in Ford Coppola and Marlon Brando wanted produced by Wichita Films particular American movies. They were able to cast Al Pacino for the part of Michael to interview Gus Russo who normally refuses Corleone they hit a brick wall as MGM refused running time: 52' shot in HD PoorhouseOctober - December 2013 international 4 adrian maben The fake photo directed by Adrian Maben Lewis Carroll, self portrait Xie Kitchin, Lewis Carroll’s favourite sitter written by Edward Wakefield running time: 60' or 90’shot in WONDERLAND REViSiTED HD Spirit of Place The Great Hall, the one that was used in Recently, a fake photograph that appeared on An essential part of this film retraces the the early Harry Potter movies, and certain the internet a few years ago shows the young life of Charles Dodgson, alias Lewis Carroll, stretches of the river Isis from Folly Bridge Alice embracing the photographer. But the by visiting the very places where he lived and upstream to Godstow where the story telling image is in fact a composite of two separate worked. What remains of the spirit of this man lecturer in mathematics took the Dean’s well known photos, one of Carroll, the other in those locations and how do they relate to daughters on a boating trip are also the same of Alice. They have been joined together and his work as the author of Alice’s Adventures today as they were in the second half of the flipped so that they appear to be kissing. And in Wonderland and to the three thousand nineteenth century. because the photos have been reversed, Lewis photographs that he took over a period of 25 Carroll’s hair is parted on the wrong side –on years? The Fake Photo the left hand side instead of the right. To put it more simply, what are the signs From a more contemporary point of view, of Lewis Carroll that are still visible today at some writers on Lewis Carroll have suggested The Films Christ Church, Oxford University, the college that his interest in young girls - fourteen Over the years The Lewis Carroll Alice where he held a lectureship in mathematics years was the limit - together with the recent became a publishing sensation beloved by from 1856 to 1881 and where he remained discovery of nude photos of small children children and adults alike. The book has run until his death in 1898? (six nude studies have survived, and two are into hundreds of editions, has been translated The director of this film has requested of small boys) were proof of his penchant for into at least 97 languages with countless permission to film in Christ Church and to paedophilia. adaptations in other media. revisit the rooms, cathedral gardens and While photographing and exhibiting naked The first British Alice in Wonderland film, quadrangles which were known to the children might be shocking to twenty-first dated 1903, was rediscovered at the British mathematician and writer. They are invisible to century sensibilities, it was perfectly normal Film Institute and has been recently restored the general public and have become, over the during the Victorian era. Nude photographs of by David Schaefer, an expert in Alice-related years, a carefully kept secret. children were a representation of innocence films. Parts have been tinted, parts are His private suite of rooms with its and purity and were sought after by parents in scratched and badly damaged, but taken as a adjoining photographic laboratory have been an age of high infant mortality. And it is worth whole it appears to have a very contemporary transformed into the graduate common room while bearing in mind that Carroll always took style.

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