The General Slocum
is a paddle-wheel passenger steamship in the East River which catches fire and burns to the water-line, June 15, 1904. More than a thousand people perish, the worst disaster in New York City's history until September 11, 2001.
Appropriated image of the East River, from the Upper East Side, Manhattan.
I was feeling frustrated lately that the great tragedy of the General Slocum should be the only lead-in I could think of for a post on a particularly enchanted part of the Upper East Side on the East River, called Gracie Square. I wanted something light and airy and fun -- "gay" even, but in that old-fashioned, unpolitical and un-sexual sense. Sadly however, the General Slocum disaster and the opening of the IRT line on the East Side combine to dominate the news associated with this area in 1904, and understandably too, since tragedy and transportation literally and figuratively move history forward, don't they.
But I couldn't delay any longer and decided not to let unpleasant things distract me [including an unrelated but paying assignment I'm on deadline for, which is "killing me" as Marcia Gay Harden's character says to Ed Harris's Jackson Pollack, "You are killing me," she screams at him, but that's another story]. My dear friend over at The Daily Blague, whose life and mine first intersected through the magic of the blogosphere, is not only the source of today's [purloined] image -- and there were many more excellent choices of "Yorkville" and Gracie Square to choose from! -- but he was also the wise critic and intrepid movie-goer who recommended "The World of Henry Orient" to me because of my love for this perfectly charming part of Manhattan, and I encourage any of you who have not had the pleasure to rush out and rent it or add it to your Netflix queue without delay. Do not be deterred (as I was) for fear of it being a Peter Sellers film, since it isn't: Sellers' character, Henry Orient -- based loosely on the real pianist Oscar Levant [Levant, as in a part of Asia, therefore the politically incorrect "Oriental" -- a pun by the screenwriter Nunnally Johnson] -- Henry is a rather unconvincing skirt-chasing pianist who pursues a married Paula Prentiss, but Henry/Peter is not the raison d'etre of the film, or rather he is simply that necessary but unengaging plot device which drives the story forward.
No, the real story is the love story between two school girls who meet in the opening scene outside their exclusive girls' school on East 83rd Street and lose a portfolio of sheet music into the East River and proceed on adventures in a 60s New York City that has never looked so beautiful. Heaven! Of course, like so many films from the era, still reeling from the Kennedy Assassination, it has a febrile tone, still in denial, a breezy witty attitude toward the world and matters like divorce and therapy and adolescence which will soon be dealt with in an entirely different (one might say "dour") fashion as the decade progressed, ending of course -- as so many hopes and dreams did -- with the deaths of another Kennedy and King and the Four Dead in Ohio at Kent State.
If you are looking for "Harriet the Spy" circa 1964, then "The World of Henry Orient" is the film for you! Oddly enough, one of its Young Stars would grow up to become "best known for her role in attempts to discredit George W. Bush's political opponents," serving as the chief public relations consultant for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and also helping to discredit John McCain in the Republican presidential primary of 2000.
History intertwines with film in such unusual ways, wouldn't you say? RJK over at the Daily Blague reviews "There Will Be Blood." Having seen the film here in L.A. I can tell you a faint rustling of subtext whispered through the audience, at least for those of us who recognized the interiors of the Doheny Mansion, where final scenes in the film are set. [NO SPOILERS!] Ned Doheny, son of an oil man, would die in a murder-suicide pact with his male secretary in 1929, just months after Ned and his wife and children moved into the house his father had built for him. "There Will Be Blood" is a story about oil and men and blood, whatever else you may think of it. And there was, in real life too. And there probably always will be, I suppose.
Now, you will say, "The World of Henry Orient" is not about any of those unpleasant things, and you are right. But perhaps the seeds were planted, during its filming or during the time in which it was filmed or in the young psyches of those living at the time, seeds that would come to term and flower in another era, when other battles would be fought, and men would die and blood would be, at least politically speaking, shed.
File Under: Steamships to Swift Boats. Oil to Blood. Ashes to ashes, we all fall down.
Appropriated image of the East River, from the Upper East Side, Manhattan.
I was feeling frustrated lately that the great tragedy of the General Slocum should be the only lead-in I could think of for a post on a particularly enchanted part of the Upper East Side on the East River, called Gracie Square. I wanted something light and airy and fun -- "gay" even, but in that old-fashioned, unpolitical and un-sexual sense. Sadly however, the General Slocum disaster and the opening of the IRT line on the East Side combine to dominate the news associated with this area in 1904, and understandably too, since tragedy and transportation literally and figuratively move history forward, don't they.
But I couldn't delay any longer and decided not to let unpleasant things distract me [including an unrelated but paying assignment I'm on deadline for, which is "killing me" as Marcia Gay Harden's character says to Ed Harris's Jackson Pollack, "You are killing me," she screams at him, but that's another story]. My dear friend over at The Daily Blague, whose life and mine first intersected through the magic of the blogosphere, is not only the source of today's [purloined] image -- and there were many more excellent choices of "Yorkville" and Gracie Square to choose from! -- but he was also the wise critic and intrepid movie-goer who recommended "The World of Henry Orient" to me because of my love for this perfectly charming part of Manhattan, and I encourage any of you who have not had the pleasure to rush out and rent it or add it to your Netflix queue without delay. Do not be deterred (as I was) for fear of it being a Peter Sellers film, since it isn't: Sellers' character, Henry Orient -- based loosely on the real pianist Oscar Levant [Levant, as in a part of Asia, therefore the politically incorrect "Oriental" -- a pun by the screenwriter Nunnally Johnson] -- Henry is a rather unconvincing skirt-chasing pianist who pursues a married Paula Prentiss, but Henry/Peter is not the raison d'etre of the film, or rather he is simply that necessary but unengaging plot device which drives the story forward.
No, the real story is the love story between two school girls who meet in the opening scene outside their exclusive girls' school on East 83rd Street and lose a portfolio of sheet music into the East River and proceed on adventures in a 60s New York City that has never looked so beautiful. Heaven! Of course, like so many films from the era, still reeling from the Kennedy Assassination, it has a febrile tone, still in denial, a breezy witty attitude toward the world and matters like divorce and therapy and adolescence which will soon be dealt with in an entirely different (one might say "dour") fashion as the decade progressed, ending of course -- as so many hopes and dreams did -- with the deaths of another Kennedy and King and the Four Dead in Ohio at Kent State.
If you are looking for "Harriet the Spy" circa 1964, then "The World of Henry Orient" is the film for you! Oddly enough, one of its Young Stars would grow up to become "best known for her role in attempts to discredit George W. Bush's political opponents," serving as the chief public relations consultant for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and also helping to discredit John McCain in the Republican presidential primary of 2000.
History intertwines with film in such unusual ways, wouldn't you say? RJK over at the Daily Blague reviews "There Will Be Blood." Having seen the film here in L.A. I can tell you a faint rustling of subtext whispered through the audience, at least for those of us who recognized the interiors of the Doheny Mansion, where final scenes in the film are set. [NO SPOILERS!] Ned Doheny, son of an oil man, would die in a murder-suicide pact with his male secretary in 1929, just months after Ned and his wife and children moved into the house his father had built for him. "There Will Be Blood" is a story about oil and men and blood, whatever else you may think of it. And there was, in real life too. And there probably always will be, I suppose.
Now, you will say, "The World of Henry Orient" is not about any of those unpleasant things, and you are right. But perhaps the seeds were planted, during its filming or during the time in which it was filmed or in the young psyches of those living at the time, seeds that would come to term and flower in another era, when other battles would be fought, and men would die and blood would be, at least politically speaking, shed.
File Under: Steamships to Swift Boats. Oil to Blood. Ashes to ashes, we all fall down.
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