The Monday Artday illustration websites challenge this week is Pixar
as in the Disney subsidiary.
This is illustration number two for this challenge.
It’s Sheriff Woody and his new best friend, Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.
Monday Artday: pixar (part 1)
The Monday Artday illustration website’s challenge this week is “Pixar”… as in the Disney subsidiary.
James P. Sullivan and his best pal, Mike Wazowski.
Comments
IF: bottled
This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “bottled”.
“Now, Jeannie, we gotta get you bottled up. Dr. Bellows will be here any minute!”
(I would have completed this illustration over the weekend, but I was otherwise occupied HERE.)
Comments
from my sketchbook: klaus nomi
He would have you believe that he landed on this planet from some far off galaxy, but in reality, Klaus Nomi was born in Germany (on planet Earth) in 1944.
In his youth, he worked as an usher at the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin where he’d entertain the other ushers and the maintenance staff by singing opera after the shows. He also sang in small clubs in Germany until he moved to New York City in 1972. He began performing in the arty East Village clubs showcasing an eclectic blend of operatic arias and pop classics from the 1960s. His shows featured strobe lights and smoke bombs and unusual costumes and was a word-of-mouth sensation. Klaus soon teamed with Joey Arias, a Fiorucci live model and drag queen turned singer/performance artist. Klaus appeared with Arias and his band Strange Party at various night clubs in New York City. Their otherworldly shows caught the attention of David Bowie and he asked the pair to accompany him on his upcoming guest appearance on Saturday Night Live. Klaus sang back-up with Bowie on “TVC15”, “Boys Keep Swinging” and “The Man Who Sold the World” on the show in 1979. Bowie wore an over-sized plastic tuxedo for his set and Klaus was taken by it. He commissioned one to be made for himself and it soon became his iconic trademark. Klaus released four albums and a slew of singles ranging from opera to show tunes to covers of early rock and roll classics. As his career progressed, he concentrated primarily on opera and displayed an incredibly wide vocal range.
In the late 1970s, Klaus’ health began to deteriorate and he eventually succumbed to the then-relatively unknown disease AIDS in 1983. He was 39.
In the nearly 30 years since his death, Klaus’ cult following has increased. A documentary of his life, The Nomi Song, was released in 2004. Several designers have used his unusual fashion as an inspiration for their lines. Many artists have recorded cover versions of his songs. A cartoon version of Klaus even popped up on The Venture Brothers in 2006.
Yet, Klaus Nomi remains largely unknown.
Comments
IF: duet
Jeanne Deckers was a nun in the Dominican Fichermont Convent in Waterloo, Belgium. She wrote, sang and performed her own songs, which were so well received that the monastery decided to let her record an album, which visitors to the monastery would be able to purchase. In 1963, Jeanne (who chose the name Sister Luc Gabriel) released the song “Dominique,” which became an international hit. Radio stations embraced the song and in the United States it became wildly popular and brought a sort of distracting comfort in the days following the assassination of President Kennedy. Almost overnight, Sister Luc Gabriel, the Dominican nun, was an international celebrity with the stage name of “Sœur Sourire” (Sister Smile). She gave concerts and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in early 1964.
Sister Luc Gabriel’s unlikely rise to fame was chronicled in the 1966 film The Singing Nun starring Debbie Reynolds. Sister Luc Gabriel dismissed the film as pure fiction. In 1967, she released a second album that was poorly received. Meanwhile, her label, Phillips Records, kept a majority of the revenue from her debut release and maintained right to the name “Sœur Sourire, forcing Sister Luc Gabriel to take the altered stage name “Luc Dominique”. Still determined to maintain a singing career, she released a third album, this time geared toward religious songs for children. Again, it went nearly unrecognized. Between her failing music career and her increasing criticism of Catholic doctrines, she left the Church. Still using the name “Luc Dominique,” she recorded an ode to her strong advocacy of birth control called “Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill.” It, too, was a commercial failure. Sister Luc reverted back to being plain old Jeanne Deckers and faded into show business obscurity.
With her music career in her past, Jeanne opened a school for autistic children with her friend Anna Pécher, also a former nun. In the late 1970s, the Belgian government claimed that she owed approximately $63,000 in back taxes. Jeanne countered that the royalties from her recording were given to the convent and therefore she was not liable for payment of any personal income taxes. Lacking any receipts to prove her donations to the convent, Jeanne ran into heavy financial problems. Despite being a solo act in her early days, Jeanne performed a suicide duet with Anna. The pair – friends for ten years – composed a note reading “We hope God will welcome us. He saw us suffer. He should show clemency.” Then, they each downed a fatal dose of barbiturates and alcohol.
Jeanne was 51.
Comments
Monday Artday: peter pan
The current challenge on the Monday Artday illustration website is “Peter Pan”.
Now you understand why Peter Pan bitched so much about not wanting to grow up.
Comments
from my sketchbook: joseph kearns
Character actor Joseph Kearns began his career in the heyday of radio in the unlikely role of a pipe organ player. He soon was performing regularly on radio programs like I Married Joan, December Bride, Burns and Allen, Sam Spade and many others. He was the mysterious announcer “The Man in Black” on the radio drama Suspense. His best known radio role was that of Ed, the security guard for Jack Benny’s underground money vault, on The Jack Benny Program. The “running gag” was that Benny had kept Ed on duty at the vault’s door so long that the guard was not aware of current events. When Benny informed him that “The War had ended,” Ed asked whether the “North” or the “South” had won.
In 1951, Joseph made his motion picture debut in the Ida Lupino-directed Hard, Fast and Beautiful with Claire Trevor. The same year, he lent his voice to The Doorknob in Walt Disney’s animated Alice in Wonderland. He appeared on both comedy and dramatic series in the early days of television. He was a regular cast member on Our Miss Brooks, Professional Father and How to Marry a Millionaire. He even reprised his role (appearing exclusively in shadow) as Ed the guard on the TV version of Jack Benny’s show. In 1959, Joseph landed the role for which he is most remembered. He was cast as the irascible Mr. Wilson, the long-suffering neighbor of Dennis Mitchell on the CBS sitcom Dennis the Menace. For three seasons, Joseph’s Mr. Wilson was tortured by Dennis, the eternal pain-in-the ass. On February 11, 1962, CBS aired the Dennis the Menace episode entitled “Where There’s a Will”, in which Mr. Wilson made out his will and explained to Dennis that he would inherit his gold watch when he dies. Joseph Kearns died from a cerebral hemorrhage on February 17, 1962.
A week or so ago, I called my brother to wish him a “Happy Birthday”. He was lamenting over turning 54. Later, I called him to tell him a bit of information that I hoped would make him feel better about passing another year over the half century mark. I told him that I was watching Dennis the Menace, a show we both agreed we hated watching in our youth. Feeding my obsession for the trivial, I went on to say that I was researching the fate of the show’s various cast members. I knew that Joseph Kearns had passed away during the program’s third season. (He was replaced by the equally annoying Gale Gordon.) What surprised me was Joseph Kearn’s age at the time of his death. He was 55. My brother’s reaction was the same as mine. Fifty-five!? Jeez! I thought he was at least seventy! I informed my brother that he looks a hell of a lot better than Mr. Wilson did at practically the same age.
I think I cheered him up. At least a little.
Comments
from my sketchbook: dorothy dell
Dorothy Dell aspired to fame from the time she was a child. She won a “Beautiful Baby” contest in her native Hattiesburg, Mississippi at one year old and continued to enter and win others throughout her childhood. In high school in Louisiana, she made friends with Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton, another aspiring actress. The pair became known as “The Two Dorothys” and decided the first one to make the big break into show business would help the other. The two Dorothys entered the Miss New Orleans Pageant in 1930. Dorothy Dell won the contest. Later the same year, Dorothy was named winner of the International Pageant of Pulchritude, the forerunner to the Miss Universe Pageant.
Dorothy turned down initial offers from master showman Florenz Ziegfeld. She insisted on a part for her friend, the other Dorothy, but Ziegfeld said she was too short for the chorus line. Dorothy instead opted for the vaudeville circuit and was accompanied on tour by her family and friend. She finally accepted a stint in what would be the final Ziegfeld Follies in 1931. She stood in for an ailing Ruth Etting and was soon drawing comparisons to Mae West. Hollywood took notice and came calling.
In 1933, Dorothy moved to Hollywood and signed a contract with Paramount Pictures. She was cast as a saloon girl in 1934’s Wharf Angel, beating out established stars like Mae Clarke and Isabel Jewell. She is proclaimed as “the find of the season” in the press. Her next part was in the Shirley Temple vehicle Little Miss Marker later the same year. She made the musical Shoot the Works which garnered Dorothy more comparisons to Mae West. Just after the premiere of Shoot the Works, co-star Lew Cody and actress Lilyan Tashman passed away. At Cody’s wake, Dorothy wondered to a friend, The old theater superstition says death strikes in threes. I wonder wholl be next?
Paramount scheduled her to re-team with Shirley Temple in Now and Forever, co-starring Gary Cooper. Before filming began, Dorothy attended a party in Altadena, California with Dr. Carl Wagner, an oral surgeon who operated on her mother a few months earlier. Wagner, a prominent society figure in Pasadena, figured in the police probe into the mysterious murder of Dr. Leonard Siever, a leading Pasadena dentist, who was killed in December 1933. Wagner drove Dorothy back to Pasadena, but the trip was cut short when the car struck a telephone pole, caromed off a palm tree and finally smashed into a boulder. Wagner died in the hospital six hours later. Dorothy was killed instantly. She was 19. Newcomer Carole Lombard took over Dorothy’s part in Now and Forever.
Dorothy’s childhood friend, Dorothy Slaton moved to Chicago and took a job as an elevator operator at the Marshall Fields department store. A chance meeting with popular singer Rudy Vallee led to a singing gig in Manhattan, where she met Louis B. Mayer, head of the MGM Studios. Mayer arranged for a screen test and Dorothy’s career took off. On Vallee’s suggestion, she changed her last name to the French word for “love” Lamour. Dorothy Lamour always credited her childhood friend Dorothy Dell as the person responsible for the beginning of her own film career.
This post marks the fourth anniversary of the josh pincus is crying blog.
Comments
from my sketchbook: lorene yarnell
After meeting while filming the Sid and Marty Krofft special Fol-de-Rol in 1972, tap dancer Lorene Yarnell married mime Robert Shields in a flamboyant, but silent ceremony in San Francisco’s Union Square. Soon, the duo were cast as regular performers on The Mac Davis Show and later, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. They performed their blend of dance, mime and slapstick humor on hundreds of television and live shows, prompting CBS to give them their own variety show in 1977. The show was a popular summer series, although it was dropped in early 1978 when rival ABC ran Laverne & Shirley as competition in the same time slot. Lorene Yarnell and her husband appeared before two presidents and Queen Elizabeth, on Broadway (albeit unsuccessfully) and a tour of China with Bob Hope. They headlined in Las Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City. The couple eventually divorced in 1986, but continued to work together until 2009. Playing off of Mrs. Clinker, the robotic character she developed on the variety show, Lorene appeared in the identity-hiding costume of Dot Matrix in Mel Brooks’ 1987 sci-fi send-up Spaceballs, with comedian Joan Rivers providing the voice.
Married to her fourth husband, Bjorn Jansson, Lorene moved to his native Norway where she owned and operated a dance studio. She returned to her first love and taught tap and jazz. The dancer, whose skills Gene Kelly once called “flawless”, lived in virtual anonymity among her students.
On July 29, 2010, while watching television at home with her husband, Lorene died when a previously undetected cerebral aneurysm ruptured. She was 66.
Comments
Monday Artday: villain, part 2
This week’s Monday Artday challenge word is “villain.” Here is the second of two illustrations for this suggestion. (Here is the first.)
One of the slimiest, shiftiest villains to ever grace the silver screen was the despicable Hans Guber, as portrayed by Alan Rickman, in the original “Die Hard”.
Under the guise of a group of international terrorists, the cold and ruthless Hans and his cohorts merely wish to steal 640 million dollars in bearer bonds from the vault of the Nakatomi Building in Los Angeles. Their plans are eventually thwarted by visiting New York City cop, resourceful John McClane, the self-proclaimed “fly in the ointment; monkey in the wrench”.
“Die Hard” is actually based on the 1979 novel “Nothing Lasts Forever” by Roderick Thorp. The book, itself a sequel to Thorp’s novel “The Detective” (filmed in 1968 with star Frank Sinatra), was adapted for the action film with several alterations, most notably the inclusion of the Hans Gruber character, who did not originally appear.