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Category Archives: Film, Sound, & Photography

Saturday morning coffee

05 Saturday May 2018

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Eleanor Roosevelt, Film, Sound, & Photography, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Great War centennial

≈ 3 Comments

Lewis Hine image of Cantigny battlefield, April 1919

I’m wrapping up my coffee before heading to work to teach my last bibliographic instruction class of the semester. A friend and I were looking at these Lewis Hine images that The Atlantic posted this week and I thought I would share on this weekend morning. Apparently the American Red Cross commissioned Hine to take these images as a means of drumming up support back home for the Red Cross’s important work attending the sick, the wounded, and the hungry. We actually used the one above in the film we made last fall. It is hard to believe that we are now almost four years into the Great War centennial. I suppose it is difficult to comprehend from an American perspective because we did not join the war until April 1917 and really did not become fully involved until Spring 1918. The Battle of Cantigny, where the First Infantry Division fought so tenaciously, was in May 1918. Hine took the photo above almost a full year later.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt sailed for Europe on January 1, 1919, around the time Hine was taking the images that The Atlantic published this week as part of a series over the course of the centennial. It was not the first time Eleanor or Franklin had been on the Continent. Now in their 30s, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy and his wife were already well-traveled and had seen much of the world. Still, they were shocked at what they saw in those months after the Armistice. Eleanor wrote at the time that “I never saw anything like Paris. The scandals going on would make many a woman at home unhappy. It is not place for the boys [the impressionable doughboys], especially the younger ones . . . All the women in the restaurant look to me exaggerated, some pretty, all chic, but you wonder if any are ladies.”

Though given the subject matter I don’t know if one can “enjoy” the photographs, they are indeed poignant and striking. Here they are one more time.

(Image/Lewis Wickes Hine, Library of Congress)

Sunday morning coffee

29 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, Great War centennial, New Yorkers in Uniform: From World War One to Today (film)

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Hudson River from Metro North train, 28 April 2018

We had a great time in Yonkers yesterday for the film showing and discussion about our documentary New Yorkers in Uniform: From World War One to Today. I do not have any pictures of the event itself right now, but I believe a few of the others took some still photographs and possibly even some film footage. If so, I will share when I have. The subject of our film, Thomas Michael Tobin, was born in Yonkers in 1886 and died there in 1966. I have only been to Yonkers three times now: for the on location film shooting in March 2017, the showing this past December, and now again yesterday for the one at the historical society. The city has come to mean a lot to me. I took the photo you see above aboard the train on the way up yesterday morning. As you can see, even though it is late April the foliage has not yet begun here in the Greater New York area.

After the program a small group of us ended up at the Yonkers Brewing Company across the street from the train station for dinner. I don’t want to discuss the details too much right now, but we have some interesting plans that we believe will bring our film project to full fruition between now and the 100th anniversary of the Armistice in November. Ideally we will go back to Yonkers in the fall but we are not 100% certain. We’ll see how it goes.

Doing the event yesterday at the Yonkers Historical Society was a great treat. There were many interesting people involved in some fascinating projects that they told me about during the after party. The doing of local history helps keep the stories alive in immediate and direct ways. I was glad to see there were some young people in attendance as well. I will keep everyone up to date on how things develop over the spring and summer.

A Modern Rubens by Flashlight

17 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, WW1

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“A Modern Rubens by Flashilght,” The National Magazine, July 1918

I came across this image while researching something else and thought I would share. It comes from the July 1918 edition of The National Magazine. The children are refugees in a Venetian bomb shelter and their caretaker is a nun with the American Red Cross. They are looking up at an airplane during a bombardment. From the day Italy entered the war in May 1915 until the end, the Central Powers bombed Venice more than forty times. The damage to the city was as great as anything Italians would see during the Second World War, which is saying a lot. The editors described this as a “flashlight photograph,” by which they presumably meant it was taken in darkness with a flash bulb. Hence the title: “A Modern Rubens by Flashlight.” The Rubens reference may be to the Flemish master’s early seventeenth century “The Massacre of the Innocents.”

Merry Christmas

25 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Eleanor Roosevelt, Film, Sound, & Photography, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Washington, D.C.

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Merry Christmas, everyone. I saw this 1942 Christmas card from Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and fell in love with it for so many reasons. Judging by his white suit and her white dress the image would have been taken in that summer of 1942, seventy-five years ago. Franklin and Eleanor spent the Great War years in Washington and now here they are back in the District of Columbia as President and First Lady with the world at war a second time. One can only imagine the burden. In this image they seem to be trying to project an air of calm and tranquility in a troubled world. The white card stock is perfect for the photograph of two solitary figures sitting in white clothes on a veranda of the White House. There is no clutter on the table. Visually the picture is in balance with the concise message in simple black lettering on the right. Note that the card wishes the beholder a “happier” New Year, a subtle but telling word choice. The Roosevelts’ Christmas card went out to about 400 individuals.

Enjoy your day, all.

(image/White House)

A small Christmas Eve detective story

24 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Eleanor Roosevelt, Film, Sound, & Photography, Franklin Delano Roosevelt

≈ 2 Comments

Roosevelt family, Christmas 1939

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays. I came across the image you see above, which appears to an official Roosevelt Family Christmas portrait. Here is the image as I found it on Wikimedia Commons. It is titled Christmas 1941. For a few minutes I could not put my finger on it, but I knew something was off. The caption at the bottom reads 25 December 2041, with someone adding an addendum noting that “This date is not correct.” That is obvious true but something was still off. At first I noticed the relaxed poses of everyone in the picture; remember, this would have been just a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Even at Christmas, they would not have been so casual. The poses are a tip, but still just circumstantial.

After another minute or so I got it: that is Sara Roosevelt, Franklin’s mother, sitting next to Eleanor on the left. Sara died in September 1941, so for this Christmas photograph to have been from 1941 is obviously incorrect. So when was it? I then looked at the baby, not quite yet a toddler, seated to FDR’s left. That’s John Roosevelt Boettiger, standing on the lap of his mother Anna. An internet search informs us that John is Franklin and Eleanor’s grandson and that he was born in March 1939. A retired professor, he is still alive today. Here he is the center of attention. Everyone is looking at the little tyke. With Sara in the picture we know definitively that this is not 1941. For this photo to be taken in 1940 little John would have been well over 21 months old. That seems unlikely. 1939, when he would have been nine months, is a far better bet.  Sure enough, outtakes conclusively show that this Christmas family photograph was taken in 1939.

I found this image in several places where they get the date incorrect, which is inevitable but always a little dismaying. Were it not Christmas Eve, I would go into that more depth. The point in analyzing the image today is to have a little fun. Merry Christmas, all.

(image/National Archives)

World War I and the Visual Arts

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, Great War centennial, Museums, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father)

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Last night was a special evening: a friend invited me to a group event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a private reviewing of the World War I and the Visual Arts exhibit currently on display through 7 January 2018. There were about a dozen of us on the tour, which took place after the Met Museum closed. To be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is always special, and even more so when it is the holidays and the place is empty. We arrived a little before the tour when the museum was emptying out and got to take in the Neapolitan Christmas tree that is on display every year. Here are a few photos from the evening.

Walter Trier color lithograph, “Maps of Europe.” Look closely.

As with the lithograph above, these color postcards are that much more striking in juxtaposition to the black and white images one usually sees from the Great War.

The four helmets are prototypes designed by Met curator Dr. Bashford Dean during the war for the United States military. As you can tell from the bottom two in particular, they are influenced by medieval armor. Here is more, including a letter to Dean from Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt’s father helped found the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Our guide was the exhibition curator, seen here second from the right explaining this series.

Note the plea in the left hand portion asking the AEF to please rush. There were posters in the exhibit from all of the major nations.

It is not every day one sees the galleries empty at the Met. I snapped this one real fast as the group was heading out.

All in all this was a special night. Here is to good friends who think of you when opportunities such as this arise.

 

 

Found in Yonkers

01 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, New York City

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Good morning, all. I know the blog has been quiet for much of this past week but there has been so much going on. This morning I emailed the draft of a small thing I wrote over these past few days. I won’t go into the details here, but will wait until it is published. I am having my morning coffee before heading to Baruch College for a library conference. I always enjoy the 69th Regiment Armory there on 25th Street as I’m on my way to Baruch. I spent the morning sending a few emails about a film showing we are having a week from tomorrow in Yonkers. I am glad we are going to the community where our doughboy, Thomas Michael Tobin, lived and built a legacy for himself and his family. Here is the flier in case one is in the New York City area next weekend.

 

New Yorkers in Uniform: From World War One to Today

15 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography, New York City

≈ 1 Comment

We showed our film today. I will have more to say in the coming days but for now wanted to share it. Enjoy.

New Yorkers in Uniform, this Wednesday the 15th

13 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Film, Sound, & Photography

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Should one happen to be in New York City this week you are invited to attend the showing of our World War One documentary. The event is being held at New York City College of Technology (CUNY), which is convenient to most public transportation. The program is being held in the Ursula C. Schwerin Library on the 4th floor of the Atrium. The event is free and runs from 1:00-2:30 pm. Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP to the email below or to me here at the Strawfoot.

The Dirty Secret of War

28 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Ernest Hemingway, Film, Sound, & Photography, Great War centennial, Vietnam War, Woodrow Wilson

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This past week we showed to a class the first cut of our World War One film. For homework the students are now reading a series of excerpts from the Library of America’s World War I and America: Told by the Americans who Lived It. Historian A. Scott Berg, the author of a 2013 biography of Woodrow Wilson, edited the work. For Thursday the students read Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home,” which appeared originally in Hemingway’s 1925 collection In Our Time. While preparing for the class I came across an essay by Philip Caputo that appeared this month in the online journal Literary Hub. Caputo was a marine who in 1965 landed at Da Nang during Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of American involvement in Vietnam. In 1977 he published his seminal memoir A Rumor of War. That book secured Caputo’s reputation as a writer. Now in his seventies he has written many more works since the publication of Rumor forty years ago. He published a new novel just this year.

Ernest Hemingway in an American Red Cross ambulance, Italy 1918. Though he spent just two weeks at the front, the intensity of the experience influenced Hemingway deeply.

The reason I say all this is because Caputo makes an interesting point in his essay: many of the best war writers actually spent only a small amount of time in combat. The reason these are the writers who write most eloquently about the combat experience, Caputo speculates, is because warfare is just that intense. Endure it too long and it becomes too much a part of you. Caputo uses Ernest Hemingway as the most striking example. For all we associate him with war, Hemingway spent just two weeks on the front lines during the Great War. He graduated high school in June 1917, wrote for the Kansas City Star from that October to April 1918, quit the paper and volunteered for ambulance duty that spring, sailed in May, worked in war torn Paris for much of June, was wounded in Italy on July 8, coalesced in a Milanese hospital for six months, and was home in Oak Park, Illinois by January 1919.

Chronologically the time may have been short, but the intensity of it led to his incredible output over the next decade. A husband and father by the early 1920s, he paid the bills as a foreign correspondent in Europe for the Toronto Star, where among other things he covered the Genoa Conference in 1922; met leaders such as David Lloyd George, Benito Mussolini, and Georges Clemenceau among others; covered the rise of Fascism and Bolshevism; and witnessed the general anomie of European society in the wake of the Great War. In this same decade he published In Our Time (1925), The Sun Also Rises (1926), and A Farewell to Arms (1929), all of which draw to greater or lesser extent on what he witnessed and experienced during his short time in the war zone.

(image/Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, JFK Library)

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