The weekly challenge from Illustration Friday is “blanket“.
It Happened One Night is a 1934 romantic comedy, directed by Frank Capra, in which a pampered socialite tries to get out from under her father’s thumb, and falls in love with a roguish reporter. It is one of the most beloved comedies of all time (It was Friz Freling’s favorite film) and is responsible for bringing lowly Columbia Pictures out of what was known as “Poverty Row”.
Clark Gable, who was under contract to MGM, was on loan to Columbia Pictures, as a punishment for his raucous off-camera behavior. Columbia was considered a lesser studio at the time of the film’s release. Both MGM and Warner Brothers would loan out temperamental actors to Columbia as a “humbling experience.” After filming was completed, Claudette Colbert complained to a friend, “I just finished the worst picture in the world.”
Gable and Colbert weren’t the first choices for the picture. Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy were originally offered the roles, but each turned the script down. The role of Ellie Andrews was also turned down by Miriam Hopkins, Margaret Sullavan, Constance Bennett and Loretta Young. Bette Davis wanted the role, but was under contract with Warner Brothers and refused to loan her. Carole Lombard was unable to accept, because of a schedule conflict. Claudette Colbert agreed to appear only when her salary was doubled to $50,000 and on the condition that her part be completed in four weeks so she could take an already planned vacation. When Clark Gable showed up for work on the first day, he said grimly, “Let’s get this over with.”
Filming began in a tense atmosphere as Gable and Colbert were dissatisfied with the quality of the script. However, they established a friendly working relationship and found that the script was no worse than those of many of their earlier films.
It Happened One Nightbecame the first movie to win all five major Oscars — Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Picture. (That’s a feat only achieved by two more pictures, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in 1976 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1992.) Claudette Colbert disliked the film so much she didn’t even attend the Oscars; when she won for Best Actress she was found about to leave on a trip. She was pulled off of a train and rushed to the ceremony, where she made her acceptance speech in a traveling suit.
In the very famous “Walls of Jericho” scene, one of the highlights of the film, Gable divides the twin-bedded bedroom into two parts by stringing up a clothesline. Then, as he drapes a blanket over the line between their two beds, Colbert dryly observes: “That, I suppose, makes everything quite all right?” He explains, “Well, I like privacy when I retire. Yes, I’m very delicate in that respect. Prying eyes annoy me. Behold the walls of Jericho! Uh, maybe not as thick as the ones that Joshua blew down with his trumpet, but a lot safer. You see, uh, I have no trumpet.”
The sugarfrostedgoodness.com weekly challenge is “round“.
What happened on the sunny afternoon of November 13, 1982, would change the lives of Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and Duk Koo Kim and the future of boxing. By the time it was over, Kim lay in a coma from which he would never awaken, dying five days later at the Desert Springs Hospital in Las Vegas.
Ray Mancini inherited his nickname from his father, veteran boxer Lenny “Boom Boom” Mancini. The name perfectly suited the younger Mancini’s wild, “whirlwind” fighting style. After a failed attempt against Alexis Arguello, Mancini defeated Arturo Frias and became World Lightweight Champion. Mancini’s first defense of his title went easily with a 6th round knockout. But it was his next fight that would change boxing forever.
Duk Koo Kim was brave, but he was wrongly ranked No. 1 by the World Boxing Association. And while his record was 17-1-1, he had but one knockout and had never been tested on a big stage nor faced the kind of force Mancini was at the time. Kim had to labor mightily to get his weight down to the 135-pound limit in the final days leading up to their showdown. Kim made weight, but not without draining himself. Yet round after brutal round, his reaction to being hammered by Mancini was to do what real fighters do. He fought back. He fought back bravely despite obviously hopeless circumstances. He fought back enough that the referee could never justify leaping between them to end Mancini’s bombing raids even in the 13th round, when Mancini rocked Kim repeatedly with 40 unanswered shots. It was a fight filled with action, but Mancini had an easy time hitting Kim during the 14 rounds the fight lasted. Kim left the ring on a stretcher. He sustained brain injuries that led to his death five days later. Later, it was reported that taped to the mirror in Kim’s dressing room was a note that Kim had written to himself. It read: “Kill or be killed.”
Mancini went to the funeral in South Korea and fell into a deep depression afterwards. He said that the hardest moments came when people approached him and asked if he was the boxer who “killed” Duk Koo Kim. Mancini went through a period of reflection, as he blamed himself for Kim’s death. Kim’s mother committed suicide four months after the fight. The bout’s referee, Richard Green, committed suicide in July 1983.
As a result of this bout, the WBC took steps to shorten its title bouts to a distance of 12 rounds. The WBA and WBO followed in 1988 and the IBF did in 1989. Ray had one final fight in April 1992, against former lightweight champion Greg Haugen. Ray was just a mere shadow of his old self, having only 2 fights in seven years, and the fight was stopped in round seven.
Some years later, singer Warren Zevon wrote a song called “Boom Boom Mancini.” Among the lyrics are these lines:
When they asked him who was responsible/For the death of Duk Koo Kim
He said, “Someone should have stopped the fight,” and told me it was him.
They made hypocrite judgments after the fact/But the name of the game is be hit and hit back
In fact, Mancini had never said the fight should have been stopped, agreeing with most ringside observers that Kim’s refusal to retreat made that impossible until he was finally knocked to the floor.
This week’s challenge at Monday Artday is “hidden message“.
Harry Houdini, in addition to being one of the world’s greatest magicians, spent a portion of his life exposing fraudulent psychics and bogus clairvoyants. Houdini showed that psychics were using tricks that he, himself, used in his magic act. This practice eventually broke up his friendship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a great believer in spiritualism.
Prior to his death in 1926, Houdini told his wife Bess (who was also his stage assistant), that if there was a way to send a message from “the other side”, he would find that way. They devised a secret message. The message was based on both sentimentality and an old vaudeville mind-reading routine. The message was “Rosabelle- answer- tell- pray, answer- look- tell- answer, answer- tell”. Bess’ wedding band bore the inscription “Rosabelle”, the name of the song she sang in her act when they first met. The other words correspond to a secret spelling code used to pass information between a magician and his assistant during a “mind-reading” act. Each word or word pair equals a letter. The word “answer” stood for the letter “B”, for example. “Answer, answer” stood for the letter “V”. Thus, the Houdinis’ secret phrase spelled out the word “BELIEVE”.
Bess held a yearly seance, on October 31 — the anniversary of her husband’s death. In early 1929, a very ill Bess was approached by Reverend Arthur Ford, a young and eager medium. Within weeks, Ford triumphantly announced that he had successfully delivered the correct message to Houdini’s widow. It did not take long for the press to discover that Ford’s claim was a hoax; and that Bess had inadvertently revealed the message to several reporters a full year before.
The 1936 séance, atop the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood, was the last one that Bess conducted. Ten years was enough, and she admitted that she had never received the message from Houdini. (Actor William Frawley died in the lobby of the Knickerbocker in 1966. Read all about it HERE, in a previous post.)
Bess died in 1943 and was not permitted to be buried with her husband at Machpelah Cemetery because she was a gentile. Bess Houdini is interred at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.
(CLICK HERE to see a larger version of the illustration and look for the hidden messages.)
