Category Archives: World War One

August 13, 2012

thought of the Day 8.13.12 Alfred Hitchcock

“If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.”

—Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Photo credit: twm1340)

Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born on this day in Leytonstone, England in 1899. Today is the 113th anniversary of his birth.

He grew up as the middle child of three siblings in a very strict family. When he was a little boy his father once sent him with a note to the town police station. The note asked the constable to lock Alfred up for a jail term of 10 minutes as punishment for bad behavior. The possibly apocryphal story ended with the policeman putting 5-year-old Alfred in a cell for a few minutes before letting him out with a stern warning that “this is what we do to naughty boys.” It was a bit more fire and brimstone guilt heaped on top the boys already strict Catholic upbringing.

He attended St. Ignatius College and London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation. He was rejected for service in WWI because of his health, but served as a cadet with the Royal Engineers. He worked for a company called Henley’s as a draftsman and advertising designer. The company had an in-house publication, The Henley Telegraph, and Hitchcock became one of its most prolific contributors. His stories were generally suspenseful, funny and usually ended with a twist.

His first foray into films was as a title card designer for the nascent Paramount Pictures (London) where he designed title cards for silent movies. He worked for a number of studios at the start of his career and began to write for the movies in the early 1920’s. He did work in Germany where he observed the expressionistic style at Babelsberg Studios. His directorial debut was a bit of a fizzle as Number 13 (1924) was cancelled before it the film got in the can for financial reasons, The Pleasure Garden was flop, and all prints for The Mountain Eagle have been lost.

Cover of The Lodger

In 1926 Hitchock had his first directorial success with The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. His first talkie was Blackmail, which he made while working with British International Pictures. It was also the first of Hitchcock’s films to use a famous landmark (this time the dome of the British Museum) as a back drop. Other Hitchcock films from the period are The Man Who Knew Too much (1934) and the excellent 39 Steps. He was the highest-paid director in England and earned the nick name “Alfred the Great.”

In 1939, as the specter of war loomed again in Europe, Hitchcock was lured to Hollywood to work for David O. Selznick. He directed a film based on the Daphne du Maurier book Rebecca (the film won an Oscar). He worked steadily and successfully through out the 1940s for a number of Hollywood studios, producing movies like Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), and Notorious (1946) .

Rope (1948) was the first movie he made in color. It starred Jimmy Stewart (Stewart would star in four Hitchcock films) and featured long tracking shots that ranged from 4.5 to 10 minutes. (10 Minutes was the maximum a camera could hold at one time.) The necessary cuts were “hidden” as a dark object came in front of the lens. The result was a seamless story.

Cropped screenshot from the trailer for the film Rear Window (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief marked a trifecta of 50’s films where the director collaborated with the beautiful Grace Kelly. Hitchcock paired her against Ray Miland (Murder), Stewart (Window) and Grant (Thief). They were extremely popular. Kelly stopped making films the next year when she married Prince Rainier of Monaco.

English: Doris Day and James Stewart on the of The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956. Alfred Hitchcock is in the back (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He rounded out the 1950s with The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). He also became a US Citizen in 1955 and debuted the television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

In 1963 he adapted another Daphne du Maurier story, The Birds.

He continued to direct, write and produce, but his health problems meant the pacing slowed down. The critics said the quality diminished as well, with the exception of Marne.

He had a cameo in almost all of his movies. Often he is just standing or sitting or walking by a main character, very briefly in a scene. In Lifeboat he appeared in a newspaper advertisement as the before and after client for Reduco weight loss product. The site Alfred Hitchcock The Master of Suspense has a full list of his Cameos.

English: Studio publicity photo of Alfred Hitchcock. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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August 7, 2012

Thought of the Day 8.7.12 Mata Hari

By ritalovestowrite

“I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I lose, sometimes I win.”

–Mata Hari

Postcard of Mata Hari in Paris (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gertrud Margarete “M’greet” Zelle was born on this day in Leeunwarden, Netherlands in 1876. Today is the 136 anniversary of her birth.

The second of five children, M’greet was the only girl. Her father doted on her calling her “an orchid among buttercups.” She did well in school, especially in langauge classes. She had an active imagination and a flair for the dramatic (her dark hair and eyes and olive skin already marked her as exotic amongst the pale skinned, blond haired Dutch villagers) and was popular with her classmates. She lived happily until her father lost his money, and the family status, in stock market speculations. When her mother died M’greet and the boys were separated and shipped off to relatives willing to look after them. After a short stint training to become a kindergarten teacher she moved to The Hague and stayed with her uncle.

At 5’10” M’greet was taller than the average dutch man. And she was small chested. She also didn’t have any money. Not the most attractive qualities for a young woman in wont of a husband. But she was pretty in an exotic sort of way, she was vivacious, she had style and grace and she planned to make the most of it. She answered an ad that read “Officer on home leave from Dutch East Indies would like to meet girl of pleasant character — object matrimony.” The officer the ad referred to was 38 year old Captain Rudolph Macleod, (a friend of his placed the ad with out his knowledge, but he he agreed to meet M’greet and the two fell for each other.) Despite the 20 year difference in their ages the two got married. The marriage proved an unhappy one with Rudolph, an alcoholic, openly taking mistresses and abusing his wife. They moved to Java and Sumatra for his job in the Dutch Colonial Army.

Rudolph and Norman John Mac Leod (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Despite Rudolph’s orders otherwise, M’greet learned to speak Malay. She immersed herself in the culture and joined a local dance company. It was here that she took the artistic pseudonym “Mata Hari” Although the phrase “Mata Hari” has come to mean a kind of femme fatal spy, the term literally means “eye of the day” or “sun”. They had two children, Norman John and Louise Jeanne. While the MacLeods were stationed in Sumatra the children took seriously ill (they were either poisoned or suffered from complications from the treatment of syphilis.) The little boy died.

Louise Jeanne Mac Leod (1898-1919) daughter of Mata Hari (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

M’greet and Rudolf’s marriage, already on rocky ground, spiraled downward. When they returned to Amsterdam in 1902 she filed for separation. The Dutch courts, surprisingly, granted her request, gave her custody of little Louise Jeanne and ordered Rudolph to pay 100 guilders a month is support. The support never came. and a bitter Rudolph publicly denounced his “evil” wife for deserting him. With out a means of feeding or clothing her daughter she reluctantly turned the child over to her father. M’greet eked by relying on the kindness of her relatives.

Mata Hari (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 1903 she decided to change her life. She moved to Paris and under the name “Lady MacLeod” she performed as a circus horse rider, a dancer and an artist’s model. The Orientalism movement in dance was sweeping Europe and her exotic/erotic style and Java inspired dancing became a hit. The website Mata Hari.com quotes Russell Warren Howe’s book to describe the dance…

…(the) diaphanous shawls she wore as the dance began were cast away to tempt the god until finally…the sarong was abandoned and her silhouette, with her back to the audience, writhed with desire toward her supernatural lover. … All passion spent, she touched her brow to Siva’s feet; one of the attendant dancers tiptoed delicately forward and threw a gold lamé cloth across the kneeling figure, enabling her to rise and take the applause.”

He goes on to say that her overnight success “was pivotal in elevating the striptease to an art form.” She took her act on the road and danced at all the European hot spots and capitals. She was a master of illusion in that she did a striptease without stripping all the way down. She wore a body stocking that matched her own skin color and she never took off her bejeweled bra (which she padded.) She dropped the moniker of “Lady MacLeod” and went as “Mata Hari” reinventing herself as a daughter of Indian temple dancer, raised in the temple of Siva. She became a courtesan and developed relationships with wealthy, powerful men. She had always loved “a man in uniform” and now she had lovers of the highest rank.

The Netherlands remained neutral during WWI so she had access to both Germany and France. According to FirstWorldWar.com :

It was said that while in The Hague in 1916 she was offered cash by a German consul for information obtained on her next visit to France. Indeed, Mata Hari admitted she had passed old, outdated information to a German intelligence officer when later interrogated by the French intelligence service.

Mata Hari herself claimed she had been paid to act as a French spy in Belgium (then occupied by German forces), although she had neglected to inform her French spymasters of her prior arrangement with the German consul. She was, it seemed, a double agent, if a not very successful one.

While traveling in France she was arrested in Paris on February 13, 1917. She was held Saint-Lazare prison and interrogated on charges of espionage. She maintained her innocence. The trail was held on July 24 & 25. She was found guilty and sentenced to death. On October 15, 1917 she refused a blind fold and faced her execution squad. She blew them a kiss just before the fired.