(Read “Imelda Marcos Almost Gets the Beatles Killed Part 1” first.)
Hear what the Fab Four had to say about their brush with death in Manila:
*For other related posts on this site, see:
“Imelda Marcos: 2000 Shoes”
“Ferdinand Marcos’ Restless Corpse”
“Imelda Being Imeldific*”
Posted in Beatles, the, Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, PEOPLE | Tagged Beatlemania, biographies of first ladies, biographies of political wives, biographies of women, Imelda Marcos, the Beatles, the Beatles 1966 World Tour, the Beatles return from Manila, The Beatles' Manila concerts | 13 Comments »
Imelda Marcos being Imeldific, June 20, 2009, Manila.
“Filipinos are brainwashed to be beautiful. We’re allergic to ugliness,”
said Imelda Marcos as as she greeted reporters this weekend in her swank two-story Manila penthouse. Approaching her 80th birthday on July 2, she complained about her lot in life, saying she is penniless and struggling to still look presentable. Her claim is hardly believable, since she and her husband, the late President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, stashed away billions during his dictatorship. Meanwhile, a 22-carat diamond engagement ring still adorns the former beauty queen’s finger.
“Despite some 900 civil and criminal cases she had faced in Philippine courts since 1991 _ cases ranging from embezzlement and corruption to tax evasion _ she has emerged relatively unscathed and never served prison time. All but a handful of the cases have been dismissed for lack of evidence and a few convictions were overturned on appeal….
Imelda Marcos penniless yet jeweled
Imelda, her hair coifed and cheeks rouged, teared up as she complained she had to withdraw money from her husband’s meager war pension to post bail so she could travel to Singapore earlier this month for an eye checkup paid for by her children.“I was first lady for only 20 years. All the beautiful things I gave to the Philippines, am I being persecuted for that? I didn’t know you can inherit a crime from your husband.”
Her husband and his cronies allegedly amassed ill-gotten wealth estimated at $5 billion to $10 billion during Marcos’ 20 years in power, but the Presidential Commission on Good Government, created to recover the Marcos billions, says the government has only found cash and assets totaling $1.63 billion.
The assets include three separate sets of diamond tiaras, ruby brooches, emerald necklaces and other jewels.
She remains unashamed of her past, when she shopped in the world’s richest boutiques and launched lavish beautification projects at home in the midst of the Philippines’ extreme poverty.”
*Imeldific is a word coined after former First Lady Imelda Marcos. It means “ostentatious extravagance” as in this example:
She had a shoe collection that met Imeldific standards.
I’ve written more posts on the Marcoses:
“Ferdinand Marcos’ Restless Corpse”
Posted in Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, PEOPLE | Tagged 2000 shoes, beauty queen Imelda Marcos, biographies of first ladies, biographies of political wives, biographies of women, Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda Marcos, Imelda Marcos penniless with diamond ring, Imelda Marcos' jewelry, Imelda turns 80, Imelda's shoes, Imeldific, Manila, the Phillipines | 4 Comments »
Barry Obama in 1980 when a freshman at Occidental College, photo by Lisa Jack
“Barack Obama: The Freshman,” an exhibition of black-and-white photographs by Lisa Jack, is on view at M + B Gallery in Los Angeles. Lisa Jack took the photographs of the man who would be president when both were students at Occidental College (“Oxy”) in L.A in 1980.
Ms. Jack was scouting that year for people to pose for her photographic portrait project. One of her classmates suggested she call a guy named Barry.
“A friend of a friend was telling me about this really handsome guy, and he walked into the campus coffee shop,” she recalled. She asked him to pose and he agreed. They made arrangements to meet. “I photographed a lot of people and it was always interesting what they decided to wear to the shoot.” (1)
A teenage Barack Obama in a 1980 photo by Lisa Jack
Friends remember that Barry Obama had clear-cut ideas about his own style. He grew his hair log, wore subdued square-cut Hawaiian shirts and wore sandals.
Ms. Jack hoped Barry would ask her out, but he did not. Although he was pleased with the photographs, they did not maintain contact. Ms. Jack forgot about the photos until the 2008 presidential campaign.
(1) “When He was Barry,” The New York Times, June 18, 2009.
Posted in Barack and Michelle Obama | Tagged Barack Obama, Barry at Oxy, Barry Obama, Barry Obama at Occidental College, Obama photos by Lisa Jack, Obama when young, Obama's fashion sense, Obama's style, photos of Obama in college, photos of Obama when a teenager, teenage Obama photos, young Obama | Leave a Comment »
In an interview with John Harwood of CNBC, President Obama swatted a fly, killing it. PETA condemned the president's fly murder.
The White House is currently experiencing a fly infestation. Flies are swarming the place, irritating everyone, even the president. During an East Room interview on last Tuesday, June 16, a very large fly was circling President Obama’s head, distracting him. The president stopped talking and watched the fly. When it landed on his hand, he studied it then swatted it, killing it dead. Then he brushed it off his hand onto the floor.
“That was pretty impressive, wasn’t it?” he asked the film crew, while glancing down at the dead fly on the floor. “I got the sucker.”
The New York Times dubbed the president, “The First Exterminator.” The scene was an instant youtube hit and made TV news around the world. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, though, were not amused, and condemned the Obama Fly Murder.
See the video below:
Posted in Barack and Michelle Obama, PEOPLE | Tagged Obama kills fly, Obama swats fly, PETA angry at Obama fly murder, President Obama | Leave a Comment »
Dorothy Hale and Isamu Noguchi at the premiere of “Four Saints in Three Acts,” February 7, 1934, Hartford, Connecticut
In 1934, the socialite and actress Dorothy Hale took a road trip through Connecticut with two old friends, writer Clare Boothe Luce and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. They drove in a special car Noguchi had designed with his drinking buddy, futuristic inventor Buckminster Fuller. The car was called the Dymaxion.
The Dymaxion Car
Buckminster Fuller with his portrait by Isamu Noguchi, 1929, photo by Noguchi
The 20-foot long aluminum-bodied Dymaxion car caused a traffic jam wherever it went. This was between the two world wars when cars were sedans and pick-up trucks. “Bucky” Fuller’s car was shaped like a teardrop and ran on three wheels. It went 90 m.p.h. and was fuel-efficient at 30 m.p.g. The 3-wheeler made a 360-degree turn on a dime. A periscope that came out of the roof gave extra visibility. It seated eleven passengers.
It was the car of the future – for a while. Unfortunately, only three Dymaxion cars were ever produced. Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski bought one. Amelia Earhart was interested in investing. Financing was a problem and Fuller was running out of cash.
Aviator Amelia Earhart
Any hope of putting the Dymaxion in full-scale production dried up quickly when the car was involved in a fatal accident at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. Another car was blamed for the crash but that didn’t stop the negative publicity for the Dymaxion.
Sadly, only one of the Dymaxions exists today. You can view the restored exterior of the car at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada. Disappointingly, though, the car windows are painted opaque from the inside to prevent you looking inside. Evidently, the inside was in very bad shape when the car was acquired and little information exists as to its original look in order to guide the museum restoration artists. The rumor is that the car had been used as a chicken coop somewhere in the Midwest before it was discovered, which explains the wrecked state of the interior!
View this youtube video to see the amazing turning radius of the Dymaxion. While you’re viewing, keep a lookout for Amelia Earhart in the back seat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlLZE23EJKs&feature=related
For more on Dorothy Hale, see my most popular post, “Frida Kahlo: The Suicide of Dorothy Hale.”
Posted in Amelia Earhart, Buckminster Fuller, Claire Boothe Luce, Dorothy Hale, Isamu Noguchi, PEOPLE | Tagged Amelia Earhart, biographies of actresses, biographies of women, Buckminster Fuller, Chicago World's Fair 1933, Clare Boothe Luce, Dorothy Hale, Isamu Noguchi, Leopold Stokowski, National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada, the Dymaxion car | 8 Comments »
From The New York Times, June 15, 2009:
$431,000 Paid for Envelope and Its Stamp
An envelope from an 1873 letter bearing a scarce 90-cent stamp with Abraham Lincoln fetched more than $431,000 at an auction in New York City on Saturday.
The envelope, or cover, as collectors call used envelopes, was sold by Siegel Auction Galleries.
The 1873 letter bearing the scarce 90-cent Lincoln stamp
Known to collectors as the Ice House Cover, the envelope, which traveled by ship from New York to India, is the only one collectors have found still bearing the red and black stamp with Lincoln on it. Last traded publicly in 1943, then stolen and long thought to have been lost to philately, the cover was seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2006 and returned, after a court battle, to the heirs of J. David Baker, its last owner.
The letter was sent from a New England ice merchant to one of his ice warehouses in Calcutta, then part of Britain’s East Indies colony. It was franked with a total of $1.12, a large sum of money in those days, which paid the two-ounce foreign letter rate.
Markings on the envelope reveal that it traveled across the Atlantic, by train through Germany and Italy, by ship to Egypt and again from Suez to Bombay, and then by train across India. Before the advent of the Universal Postal Union the next year, the sum reflected rates negotiated between the United States and Britain to encourage growing international trade. Indeed, the commercial success of sending ice from winter ponds in Massachusetts to the sweltering cities of India was part of this progress.
This 90-cent Lincoln stamp was issued in 1869. The image was provided by famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady.
Early collectors mainly sought to fill their albums with stamps that had been soaked off their envelopes, and an item like the Lincoln, issued in 1869 in a run of fewer than 50,000, would have been no exception. When, at the end of the 19th century, collectors began saving entire envelopes — on account of the fascinating tales they revealed about their trips through the world’s postal systems — it became apparent that covers with the Lincoln were no longer to be found.
In 1914, a New York collector traveling in India did come across one. He sold it to a dealer in New York for $50 or $100 — accounts vary — and by the 1960s it had been sold to Mr. Baker, a steel executive and prominent collector in Indianapolis, for $6,500.
One night in 1967, a prized group of about 250 rare covers, including the Ice House Cover, was stolen from his home. The F.B.I. found most of those covers a decade later, and Mr. Baker was able to buy them back from his insurance company. But the Ice House Cover was missing.
In early 2006, however, an elderly couple walked into a stamp shop in Chicago to ask about the value of some old envelopes they had found while cleaning the home of a deceased friend. The store owner recognized the Ice House Cover and alerted the police. After an investigation by the F.B.I. cleared the couple, the cover was returned by court order to Mr. Baker’s widow and daughter. In May, the Philatelic Foundation, a nonprofit organization in New York, examined the cover and declared it genuine.
The buyer on Saturday was Dr. Arthur K. M. Woo, who is renowned in philatelic circles for his worldwide exhibits of rare covers. He paid a total of $431,250, including buyer’s commission.
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, PEOPLE | Tagged 90-cent Lincoln, 90-cent Lincoln stamp sold, Abraham Lincoln, Ice House Cover, Lincoln memorabilia, Lincolniana, Mathew Brady photographs, rare Lincoln stamp sold, rare stamps, stamp collecting, stamp collectors | 3 Comments »
Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi greets Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, June 10, 2009, in Rome.
On Wednesday, June 10, 2009, Libyan leader Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi landed at Rome’s airport to conduct business with the Italian government headed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It was his first trip to Italy. The Libyan dictator received a “rock star welcome,” protested the Left-Wing Italian opposition party. (1)
Qaddafi arrived in Rome with a 300-strong retinue on 3 airbuses. He pitched his giant Bedouin tent in a park in the centre of Rome. Gone was the camel he’d taken with him to Paris.
With his peaked cap, red flashes, gold braid epaulettes, and an array of military decorations, a rather large black-and-white photograph was pinned to his chest. It featured the image of a Libyan resistance leader who was hanged by the Italians in 1931.
“This hanging is like the crucifixion of Christ for Christians,” said Qaddafi at the news conference.
Although Qaddafi was as showy as a peacock, it was his trademark posse of female bodyguards who stole the show. Referred to as “Amazons” by the Italian news media, the 40 or so women are said to swear an oath to remain virgins and to never leave Qaddafi’s side. They wear matching camouflage fatigues and Kalashnikovs slung over their arms as well as make-up and fingernail polish.
Qaddafi's female bodyguards
Qaddafi speaks in Rome, June 12, 2009, receiving jeers and applause for often contradictory comments on women's rights
Qaddafi fancies himself a feminist. During his visit to Italy, he met with 700 Italian women from the business and cultural sectors. Flanked by his female bodyguards and wearing traditional robes, he criticized the Islamic world’s ill treatment of women where, he said, women are like pieces of furniture. In some Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, he pointed out, women are not even allowed to drive. Qaddafi had an opinion on that:
“If anything, it’s up to her husband, her brothers, or the father to give her permission,” Qaddafi said.
The remark drew loud boos from the audience. At the conclusion of his speech, Qaddafi reached out and grabbed a veil on one of the women in his entourage and wiped the sweat off his brow.
(1) “Qaddafi Pays a Business Call on Berlusconi,” New York Times, June 11, 2009.
Posted in Muammar el-Qaddafi, PEOPLE | Tagged Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, Gaddafi, Gadhafi, Moammar Gaddafi | 8 Comments »
"The Weaker Sex, by Charles Dana Gibson, 1903
“Illustrator Charles Dana Gibson’s (1867-1944) glamorous, winsome “Gibson girls” set the standard for female beauty in turn-of-the-century America. Here [in the above illustration], however, Gibson parodies his own creations, portraying his traditionally passive paradigms of womanhood as playfully assertive giants toying with a minuscule man.” (1)
(1) Library of Congress “Monstrous Craws & Character Flaws” Exhibit
Posted in Charles Dana Gibson, The Gibson Girl | Tagged "The Weaker Sex", Charles Dana Gibson, The Gibson Girl | 4 Comments »
In this 1934 Diego Rivera mural, "Man, Controller of the Universe," Leon Trotsky makes an appearance.
In 1937, Frida Kahlo took a new lover. He was Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary. When Frida met Trotsky, he was a man without a country. He had come to Mexico as a political refugee. He had been expelled from the Soviet Union by his archrival Josef Stalin. For nine years, Trotsky and his wife Natalia had lived in exile, searching in vain for political asylum in Turkey, France, and Norway, with no country wanting to admit them permanently, fearing reprisals from the Soviets (they threatened, for instance, to cancel their large exports of Norwegian herring).
Trotskyites all over the world were frantic with worry. Frida’s husband Diego Rivera, a well-known Communist and recent convert to Trotsky’s brand of Communism, came to the Trotskys’ rescue, intervening on their behalf with the Mexican government to grant them asylum in Mexico City.
Diego was hospitalized with eye and kidney problems when, on the morning of January 9, 1937, the steamship carrying Trotsky and his wife arrived in Tampico harbor. Natalia Trotsky refused to disembark until she was sure she was safe and saw some familiar faces. She had lived for years surrounded by guards and under threat by assassination by Stalin’s agents. She was afraid to leave the boat. Finally a government cutter approached carrying a welcoming party of Mexican authorities, Communist party members, journalists, and Frida Kahlo, who was standing in for the ill Diego. (1)
Satisfied they were in safe hands, Trotsky and Natalia walked down the wooden pier to freedom. He, wearing tweed knickerbockers and a cap, and carrying a briefcase and a cane, walked with his chin held high, his stride that of a proud soldier. She, a little dowdy in a suit and looking worn and worried, watched her feet so as not to trip on the rought planks of the narrow dock. Just behind them walked Frida, lithe and exotic in her rebozo (shawl) and long skirt.” (1)
Natalia and Leon Trotsky arriving in Tampico, Mexico, January 9, 1937, greeted by artist Frida Kahlo, center.
A train carried them to the capital where Rivera awaited them. The two great men, lovers of Communism, embraced, then all four drove quickly to Frida’s childhood home in Coyoacan called the Blue House. There the Trotskys would live rent-free, off and on for two years, with their every need and want attended to by Frida, Diego, Cristina Kahlo, friends, and Trotskyite party members who acted as guards, chauffeurs, escorts, and advisers.
Diego had the blue house turned into a fortress. The windows that faced the street were filled in with adobe bricks. Police stood guard during the day, Trotskyites by night. Diego even bought the property next door and connected the two buildings to provide a larger garden and a wing with a studio for Frida, as she would be the Trotskys’ chief hostess.
"Fulang-Chang and I," by Frida Kahlo, 1937. At age 29, Frida was at her loveliest.
It didn’t take long for both Frida and Trotsky to start making eyes at each other. Both were notorious for conducting extramarital love affairs. Trotsky and Frida spoke English to one another, which left Natalia guessing what they were saying, as she didn’t speak English (and Diego’s English was deplorable).
The two couples saw a lot of each other. Frida was openly flirtatious with Trotsky, calling him “love” and hoping to make Diego insanely jealous in retaliation for his affair with her sister Cristina (See previous post, “Frida Kahlo: I Can’t Live, if Living is Without You!”).
Trotsky slipped love letters into books he loaned Frida. By late spring of 1937, the two were immersed in a full-fledged love affair. They met secretly at Cristina Kahlo’s house, which Diego probably had bought her. Frida nicknamed Trotsky “Piochitas” (little goatee) for his white beard and called him also “el viejo,” as he was 58 years old while she was only 29.
By late July, though, the affair had fizzled out. Frida had proved to herself that she could still attract men and returned, as usual, to doting on Diego. The end may have come about, though, because Natalia and Diego discovered the affair (which could have been Frida’s intention all along). Over time, Diego and Trotsky had several philosophical disagreements about Communism. Diego ceased to be a Trotskyite. Soon, the couples grew apart, although the Trotskys remained in Mexico, they moved out of the Blue House.
Frida, though, remained friends with Trotsky. She painted a self-portrait for him. The painting shows her standing between two curtains, holding a piece of paper that says in Spanish,
‘To Trotsky with great affection, I dedicate this painting November 7, 1937. Frida Kahlo, in San Angel, Mexico.’ The date was significant because it was both Trotsky’s birthday and the anniversary of the October Revolution, according to the Gregorian calendar.” (2)
"Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky Between the Curtains," by Frida Kahlo, 1937
Less than three years later, Trotsky was dead. On August 20, 1940, he was attacked in his home by an assassin sent by Stalin named Ramón Mercader, who buried the pick of an ice axe into Trotsky’s skull. Trotsky died the next day.
Leon Trotsky on his Deathbed, August 21, 1940
Frida was distraught. She called Diego in San Francisco to tell him the news.
“They killed old Trotsky this morning,” she cried. “Estupido! It’s your fault that they killed him. Why did you bring him?” (1)
Frida had met the assassin once in Paris and had invited him to her house in Coyoacan to dine, which placed her under suspicion. She was picked up by the Mexican police and interrogated for 12 hours, before being released, two days later, without charge.
(1) Herrera, Hayden. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1983.
(2)Zamora, Martha. Frida Kahlo: The Brush of Anguish. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1990.
Posted in Leon Trotsky | Tagged biographies of artists, biographies of Hispanic artists, biographies of HIspanic women, biographies of women, casa azul, Controller of the Universe by Diego Rivera, Cristina Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Frida's self-portrait for Trotsky, Josef Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Leon Trotsky in Mexico, Man, Mexican Trotskyites, Natalia Trotsky, the Blue House in Coyoacan, Trotsky's assassination, Trotsky's murder, Trotskyites | 22 Comments »
Abraham Lincoln, February 5, 1865. He would live less than 3 more months.
It was the morning of Friday, April 14, 1865, the last full day of Abraham Lincoln’s life. It was a beautiful spring day. The president was looking forward to an evening at the theater. Plays relaxed him, expecially comedy. There were some who looked down on him for being a theater-goer. They considered it lowbrow entertainment, especially for the commander-in-chief. Who were they to deny Lincoln a few minutes away from his troubling thoughts?
But that was all behind him now. The War Between the States was over. The terrible suffering had come to an end. Abe and his wife, Mary, had lost two sons to illness. That afternoon, he and Mary took a leisurely carriage ride. They spoke of the future together. Abraham was very happy. He said to Mary:
“We must both be more cheerful in the future.”
Abraham Lincoln’s favorite carriage. It was the carriage that took him, Mary, Major Henry Rathbone, and Clara Harris to Ford’s Theatre on the night of Lincoln’s assassination. The carriage is a 4-passenger barouche. When the doors are opened, steps unfold.
Major Henry Rathbone
Shortly after their return to the White House, they dressed for the theater – Ford’s Theater – to see “Our American Cousin” starring Laura Keene. Mary and Abe had had a dickens of a time finding someone to attend the performance with them. They had invited 12 people and all had declined. It was Good Friday, the most solemn day on the Christian calendar, and not a day many folks sought entertainment. Most were busy, some disapproved of theater in general. The Grants – especially Julia, the General’s wife – could not stand the idea of being confined in a theater box with Mary and her explosive temper.
Clara Harris photographed by Mathew Brady, ca. 1860-68.
Finally, a young couple the Lincolns were fond of – Major Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris – accepted their invitation. Henry and Clara had just become engaged. Oddly enough, Clara was Henry’s stepsister. When Henry’s father died, his mother married Ira Harris, Clara’s father.
The two couples arrived at Ford’s Theater in the president’s carriage after the performance had already begun. As the four entered the presidential box, decorated with American flags and a painting of George Washington, the actors froze on stage. The orchestra struck up “Hail to the Chief.” The audience clapped, cheered, and waved.
“The president,” remembered one theater-goer, “stepped to the box-rail and acknowledged the applause with dignified bows and never-to-be-forgotten smiles.” (1)
The applause died down as the Lincolns, Clara and Henry took their seats. Abraham settled into a rocking chair Ford had brought up from his office especially for him. He sat on the far right of the box. To the left, Mary pulled her chair close to her husband’s, nestling up to him at one point, and slipping her arm through his. On the left side of the box, Clara sat in a stuffed chair. Henry sat on a small sofa behind her and in the back of the box. Mary fretted that Henry couldn’t see the stage well from the sofa and said so.
One of the biggest laughs in the play came in the third act when the male lead delivered this line:
“Don’t know the manners of good society, eh?” he paused. “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal – you sockdologizing old mantrap.”
This line always got a big laugh. Tonight was no exception. The audience – including the president – laughed and clapped. They made so much noise that only the people in the box heard the crack of a gunshot, as actor John Wilkes Booth had planned. Booth had crept into the presidential box and, with a derringer, shot the president in the back of the head.
The “Assassination of President A Lincoln” showing, from left to right, Clara Harris, Mary Todd Lincoln, Major Henry Rathbone, President Abraham Lincoln, and John Wilkes Booth
The rest was blue gunsmoke and confusion. The president was slumped forward in his chair with no visible wound. He looked as if he was sleeping. Henry grabbed the gunman who held his gun in one hand and a dagger in the other. Booth dropped the gun and slashed Henry in the arm and the head. Because of Henry’s interference, Booth was unable to make a clean jump out of the presidential box onto the stage below. Booth caught his foot as he jumped, landing on the stage at a weird angle, and breaking his leg. Henry shouted into the audience, “Stop that man!” Clara yelled, “The president has been shot!”
John Wilkes Booth flees across the stage of Ford’s Theater after having assassinated President Lincoln. He shouts, “Sic semper tyrannis!” (Latin for “Thus it shall ever be for tyrants,” the Virginia state motto) and, perhaps also, “The South is avenged.”
Though Henry was weak from loss of blood and his wounds were serious, the president’s wound was mortal. By the next morning, the president was dead.
Henry survived the attack and, in 1867, he and Clara were married. They had three children. But all was not well with Henry. Perhaps because of his head wound, his mental health rapidly deteriorated. He heard voices and believed he was being persecuted and tortured. He became jealous of his wife’s attention to their children. Clara lived in utter terror of what Henry might do.
Eighteen years after Lincoln’s assassination, Henry Rathbone reenacted Booth’s brutal attack on President Lincoln – within his own home. Armed with knife and pistol, Henry attacked his family, murdering Clara with a pistol, trying to kill his children, then stabbing himself. He lived and was declared insane. He was institutionalized in Germany for the rest of his life.
(1) Fleming, Candace. The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary. New York: Random House, Inc., 2008.
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Clara Harris, John Wilkes Booth, Major Henry Rathbone, Mental Institutions, PEOPLE | Tagged Clara Harris, Ford's Theater, John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln Assassination, Major Henry Rathbone, Mary Todd Lincoln, Our American Cousin, President Abraham Lincoln, the murder of Clara Harris | 14 Comments »
Boston Corbett (1832-?) photographed in 1865
The man who killed John Wilkes Booth was as mad as a hatter. His name was Boston Corbett. Actually, his name was not originally Boston Corbett, but Thomas T. Corbett. He became a reborn evangelical Christian while in Boston which he took as his new name. He began to wear his hair long like Jesus. He became a religious fanatic. Those who knew him said he was “different.” Boston Corbett was as mad as a hatter.
Boston Corbett was as mad as a hatter because he was a hatter – at a time when mercury was used in the felt hatmaking process. Hatmakers breathed the mercury vapors which caused mercury poisoning. Mercury damages the nervous system, producing symptoms such as drooling, twitching, paranoia, hallucinations, and agitation. It was probably mercury poisoning that caused the mental problems that dogged Corbett all his days.
"The Mad Hatter's Tea Party." Though he did not create the expression "mad as a hatter," author Lewis Carroll did create the eccentric character of the hatter in his book, Alice in Wonderland (illustrations by Sir John Tenniel), first released in London in 1865, coincidentally, the year Lincoln was assassinated. The hatter in the book is an eccentric fellow with wacky ideas and incoherent speech, characteristics attributed to many hatters of the day, suffering from mercury poisoning. Mercury was used in hatmaking and its poisonous vapors caused debilitating neurological damage to the hatters, resulting in a complete mental breakdown.
As I was saying, Corbett’s job – daily breathing in the noxious mercury fumes while he made felt hats – was making him go insane. By July 16, 1858, Corbett had become so insane that he picked up a pair of scissors, took off his pants, and castrated himself. After doing the strange deed, he nonchalantly dressed again and went out to a prayer meeting, where he ate heartily and then took a walk. Corbett did, however, end up seeing a doctor to receive treatment for his self-mutilation. (1)
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Corbett enlisted in the Union army. He reenlisted three times and was made sergeant. In the days following President Lincoln’s assassination, he was selected as one of the 26 soldiers in the 16th New York Cavalry commissioned to pursue and capture the fugitive assassin John Wilkes Booth. On April 26, 1865, Corbett and the others cornered Booth and his coconspirator David Herold in a tobacco barn on Richard Garrett’s Virginia farm. Herold gave himself up.
Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth
Booth refused to surrender, so the soldiers set the barn on fire, hoping to smoke him out. Corbett watched Booth through a large crack in the barn wall. As Booth moved about inside the burning barn, Corbett stuck his Colt revolver through the crack and aimed at the unsuspecting Booth, a full 12 feet away. Corbett’s bullet struck Lincoln’s killer in the neck, puncturing his spinal cord. Booth did not die at once.
When Corbett was questioned about his unilateral decision to kill rather than to capture Booth alive, he replied:
“God Almighty directed me.”
Back in Washington, Corbett was placed under technical arrest, but Secretary of War Edwin Stanton refused to prosecute the man many considered a hero. Stanton said, “The rebel is dead. The patriot lives.” Corbett collected $1653.85 in reward money.
Famous now, Corbett returned to the hat trade, first in Boston then in Connecticut and New Jersey. Further exposure to mercury caused his already volatile and erratic behavior to escalate. He got into frequent arguments which involved flashing his revolver in men’s faces.
He grew paranoid.
Then, in 1878, he made a radical life change. He moved to Kansas to live in a dugout; his home was nothing more than a hole in a hill with a stone front and a patchwork roof. He lived simply, sleeping on a homemade bed. He bought a flock of sheep. He began to give religious lectures that invariably turned into incoherent rants. He kept a number of firearms.
Improbably, in 1887, Corbett was appointed assistant doorkeeper to the Kansas House of Representatives in Topeka. Shortly after his appointment, he got crosswise with some men, pulled out a gun, threatened them, and got arrested. He was declared insane and sent to the Topeka Asylum for the Insane.
But he didn’t stay there. A little over a year later, he stole a horse that had been left at the asylum entrance and escaped. Little is known about where he went after that. Some say Mexico. He may have become a traveling salesman for a medicine company in Oklahoma Territory and Texas. No one knows what became of the man who killed John Wilkes Booth. That may forever remain a mystery.
(1) The actual hospital record can be read on page 59 of Lincoln and Kennedy: Medical & Ballistic Comparisons of their Assassinations by Dr. John K. Lattimer.
Posted in Boston Corbett, John Wilkes Booth, Mental Institutions | Tagged 19th century hatmaking, Abraham Lincoln, Boston Corbett, Edwin Stanton, insane asylum, John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln Assassination, mad as a hatter, mental illness, mercury poisoning | 17 Comments »
John Wilkes Booth assassinates President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. The Confederacy had fallen five days earlier.
John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, 1838-1865. Born into a famous acting family, his father named him after an English rebel and encouraged in him an anti-establishment nature.
For 12 days, Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth was a fugitive, successfully eluding Union manhunters who were combing the countryside south of Washington, D.C., in search of him. With a painful broken left leg, Booth rode and walked through Maryland, rowed across the Potomac River, and landed in Virginia. He hid in underbrush, Confederate safe houses, and pine thickets. But time was running out on him when he reached Virginia’s shores. Booth had committed the most foul crime, the murder of our president. Abraham Lincoln had been dead for 11 days then. The country was plunged into deep mourning. The people -from both the North and South – agitated for justice. The Union manhunters hot on Booth’s trail were not turning back, not until they’d brought in their prey – dead or alive.
They finally caught up with Booth and his assassination coconspirator Davey Herold at 2 a.m. on April 26, 1865. Union cavalry surrounded a tobacco barn at Richard Garrett’s farm outside Port Royal, Virginia, where Booth and Herold were inside sleeping. They were 60 miles south of Ford’s Theater in Washington.
Booth's escape route
Herold quickly surrendered, marching out of the barn and submitting to being tied to a tree. But Booth refused to come out of the barn. Gathering straw and brush, the soldiers set the barn on fire. Still Booth would not surrender. Through knotholes and cracks in the barn’s walls, the soldiers watched him moving around inside the barn, hobbling around on a crutch, holding a carbine. By sunrise, though, Booth was dead, killed by a shot fired through his neck by soldier Boston Corbett aiming through the barn walls and acting on his own accord. Booth did not die instantly but lingered near death lying on the grass near a locust tree. He was later moved to the porch of the Garrett farmhouse, where he died.
Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth was pronounced dead at 7:15 A.M. April 26, 1865. After his death, a search of his body turned up a pair of revolvers, a belt and holster, a knife, some cartridges, a file, a war map of the Southern states, a spur, a pipe, a Canadian bill of exchange, a compass with a leather case, a signal whistle, an almost burned-up candle, photos of five women - four actresses (Alice Grey, Helen Western, Effie Germon, and Fanny Brown) and his fiancée, Lucy Hale (the daughter of ex-Senator John P. Hale from New Hampshire), and an 1864 date book kept as a diary.
By 8:30 a.m., Booth’s limp body was sewn into a horse blanket, placed on a plank serving as a stretcher, and loaded onto a wagon that was then driven to Belle Plain. From there, it was loaded onto a steamship then a tugboat and transported up the Potomac to the Washington Navy Yard. There it was transferred to the anchored ship, the Montauk. Booth’s remains were laid on a bench. The horse blanket was removed, and a tarp was placed over the corpse. Many witnesses were gathered to identify the body:
One of these people was Dr. John Frederick May. Some time prior to the assassination, Dr. May had removed a large fibroid tumor from Booth’s neck. Dr. May found a scar from his operation on the corpse’s neck exactly where it should have been. Booth’s dentist, Dr. William Merrill, who had filled two teeth for Booth shortly before the assassination, pried open the corpse’s mouth and positively identified his fillings.
Charles Dawson, the clerk at the National Hotel where Booth was staying, examined the remains, saying “I distinctly recognize it as the body of J. Wilkes Booth – first, from the general appearance, next, from the India-ink letters, ‘J.W.B.,’ on his wrist, which I had very frequently noticed, and then by a scar on the neck. I also recognize the vest as that of J. Wilkes Booth.” …Seaton Munroe, a prominent Washington attorney who knew Booth, viewed the body and said that he “was very familiar with his (Booth’s) face and distinctly recognize it.” Alexander Gardner, a well-known Washington photographer, and his assistant, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, were also among those called to the Montauk to identify Booth’s corpse. (1)
As for the tattoo, it was on John Wilkes Booth’s left hand. His sister, Asia Booth Clarke, wrote about it in her published memoirs, The Unlocked Book, John Wilkes Booth, a Sister’s Memoir. Asia felt her brother possessed both great charm and physical beauty, including his hands:
“He had perfectly shaped hands, and across the back of one he had clumsily marked, when a little boy, his initials in India ink.” (2)
Though innocent of any crime, Asia’s husband was one of a hundred people rounded up and imprisoned after the Lincoln assassination, implicated by association with John Wilkes Booth. After her husband’s release from jail and exoneration from criminal activity, Asia, her husband, and their children (8 total, 2 of whom became actors) emigrated to England, away from the unwanted notoriety brought about by her brother’s heinous crime.
(1) Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination
(2) Steers, Edward, Jr. Blood on the Moon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001.
Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, PEOPLE | Tagged Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Gardner photograph, Asia Booth Clark, Booth manhunt, Boston Corbett, David Herold, Ford's Theater, Garrett farmhouse, John Wilkes Booth, John Wilkes Booth's death, John Wilkes Booth's escape route, John Wilkes Booth's tattoo, Lincoln Assassination, map of John Wilkes Booth's escape route, the killing of John Wilkes Booth, the Montauk | 6 Comments »
"Fulang-Chang and I" by Frida Kahlo, 1937. Fulang-Chang was Frida's favorite spider monkey.
As discussed in a previous post, “Frida Kahlo: A Few Small Nips,” Frida was devastated to learn of her husband Diego Rivera‘s affair with her younger sister Cristina. No one really knows exactly when Diego and Cristina began their affair, but, by early 1935, Frida had moved out of her San Angel house she shared with Diego and, taking her favorite spider monkey, rented an apartment in the center of Mexico City. Frida was determined to try and create and independent life for herself. She had not yet become a celebrated artist and was financially dependent upon Diego.
But Frida couldn’t make the break. Although Frida had a strong life force, she became desperately insecure without Diego around to praise her talents and beauty. Although she had moved out to get away from Diego, she continued to see him constantly, he keeping some of his clothes in her apartment and buying her a set of blue leather furniture just like the red set he’d given Cristina for her place.
Frida was so mixed up and unhappy. Both living with Diego made her miserable and living without him made her miserable.
Cracks began to appear in the brave face Frida showed her friends. Old boyfriend Alex Gómez Arias visited her at her flat one day. Frida, glancing out the window, spotted her sister Cristina at a gas station across the road. Frida flew into a rage.
Look!” she cried. “Come here! Why does she come and fill up her car in front of my house?”
Diego Rivera
Finally, in early July, Frida packed and took off to New York with friends. After confiding her troubles, she came to a decision. She could not live without Diego. She reconciled herself to the fact that, should she stay married to Diego, he would continue his skirt-chasing. On July 23, 1935, she wrote him a letter:
[I know now that] all these letters, liaisons with petticoats, lady teachers of ‘English,’ gypsy models, assistants with ‘good intentions,’ ‘plenipotentiary emissaries from distant places,’ only represent flirtations, and that at bottom you and i love each other dearly….
All these things have been repeated throughout the seven years that we have lived together, and all the rages I have gone through have served only to make me understand in the end that I love you more than my own skin….”
Frida returned to San Angel to live, once again, with Diego. Diego continued his philandering ways. Frida herself began a flurry of affairs with a number of people, both men and women. The relationships were often fiery and fleeting. She was fascinated by great men and women.
Diego was not jealous of Frida’s women lovers but was extremely jealous of the men. One of Frida’s lovers included the American sculptor Isamu Noguchi who had come to Mexico to do a mural.
When Rivera discovered it, he was so enraged that he sped to the Coyoacán house, where the lovers were in bed. Frida’s mozo (houseboy), Chucho, warned his mistress of Diego’s arrival. Noguchi threw on his clothes, but one of the hairless dogs pounced upon a sock and ran off with it. Noguchi…abandoned the sock, scrambled up the orange tree in the patio, and fled over the roof. Of course, Diego found the sock and did what Mexican machos are supposed to do under such circumstances.
As Noguchi tells it: ‘Diego came by with a gun. He always carried a gun.'”(1)
Diego demanded that Frida and Noguchi end the affair.
(1) Herrera, Hayden. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo. New York: HarperCollins, 1983.
Posted in Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, PEOPLE | Tagged biographies of artists, biographies of Hispanic artists, biographies of HIspanic women, biographies of women, biographies of women artists, Cristina Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Frida's pet monkey, Fulang-Chang, Isamu Noguchi | 12 Comments »
In this March 2007 photo, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II greets American photographer Annie Leibovitz at a reception prior to their photo shoot. Notice that the Queen has her black Launer purse on her arm.
Prior to her May 2007 visit to the United States, Queen Elizabeth II sat for a series of official photographs by famous celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. Ms. Leibovitz is well known for her sometimes controversial celebrity photographs including one of a naked John Lennon hugging a fully clothed Yoko Ono.
December 8, 1980 photograph of John Lennon with wife Yoko Ono taken by Annie Leibowitz.
Leibovitz has said the original concept for the now legendary John Lennon and Yoko Ono Rolling Stone cover was for both to appear nude, designed to mark the release of their album “Double Fantasy.” As legend has it, Lennon was game, shedding his clothes quickly, but Ono felt uncomfortable even taking off her top. Leibovitz recalled for Rolling Stone:
“I was kinda disappointed, and I said, ‘Just leave everything on.’ We took one Polaroid, and the three of us knew it was profound right away.”
It was December 8, 1980. Five hours later, Lennon was dead – shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in front of his Manhattan apartment.
Now back to what I was saying about the Queen:
Leibowitz took the official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II in March 2007. One of the photos, shown below, shows a very serene Queen sitting in the White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace dressed in a pale gold evening dress, fur stole, and diamond tiara. The wide shot captures the Queen gazing towards a large open window and reveals some of the room’s furnishings and a reflection of a chandelier in a mirror. The room is dark except for the soft light flooding through the open window. All is calm.
Queen Elizabeth II, photographed by Annie Leibowitz, March 2007
The session was going smoothly until Leibovitz asked the Queen to take off her tiara (crown) to look “less dressy” for the next photo. The Queen flew into a huff and replied:
“Less dressy? What do you think this is?”
The Queen was definitely not amused and the tiara stayed on the royal head.
The incident was caught on tape and included in a BBC documentary “A Year with the Queen.” The BBC kept the footage and included it in a promotional trailer for the film. The trailer shows the Queen telling an aide, “I’m not changing anything. I’ve had enough dressing like this, thank you very much” and storming out of the room. The BBC later apologized and admitted that the sequence of events shown on the trailer had been misrepresented, as the Queen was in fact walking to the sitting in the second scene, not exiting. This led to a BBC scandal and a shake-up of ethics training. The event is known as “Tiaragate” and “Crowngate.” According to sources, the Queen was still furious about the incident months later.
Here’s the NBC-TV report:
Posted in Annie Leibovitz, Beatles, the, PEOPLE, Queen Elizabeth II, ROYALTY/NOBILITY, Yoko Ono | Tagged Annie Leibovitz, biographies of queens, biographies of royalty, Crowngate, Double Fantasy, John Lennon, John Lennon's murder, Launer's handbags, Mark David Chapman, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Elizabeth's handbag, Queen Elizabeth's purse, Rolling Stone, the British Royal Family, the queen is not amused, Tiaragate, Yoko Ono | 6 Comments »
Diego Rivera, seated in front of a mural depicting the American class struggle, 1933.
Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) went into her marriage (1929) with her eyes wide open. She knew that her husband, famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, spread his affections around. Diego engaged in numerous short-lived and casual relationships with the fawning women – actresses, models, artists, photographers – who flocked around him. He was Mexico‘s most celebrated artist of his time.
"Portrait of Lupe Marin," by Diego Rivera, 1938
Diego’s many extramarital affairs had destroyed his previous marriage to Lupe Marín, Once, in front of a group of guests, a jealous Lupe made quite a scene, tearing a rival’s hair, ripping up some of Diego’s drawings, and beating Diego with her fists. Another time she smashed some of his archaeological artifacts and served the broken shards to Diego in a soup bowl.
At the beginning of their marriage, whenever Frida learned of yet another of Diego’s affairs, she managed to put on a good face. She pretended it did not hurt her, excusing Diego by saying flippantly, “How would I be able to love someone who wasn’t attractive to other women?” She retaliated by having love affairs of her own, with men and with women, once telling acquaintance Jean van Heijenoort that her view of life was
Make love, take a bath, make love again.”
She held up until the year 1934. That was the year Frida and Diego returned from living three years in the United States. Their funds were low. Diego’s Rockefeller Center mural had caused a terrible controversy. Diego had painted a heroic portrait of the Russian Communist leader Vladimir Lenin in the mural and had refused to paint him out. Diego was fired and the mural was then destroyed. Homesick for Mexico, Frida made Diego return home, against his wishes. Diego sulked.
"Portrait of My Sister Cristina Kahlo," by Frida Kahlo, 1928 (portion)
Demoralized and broke, both of them were also in poor health. Diego had maintained a grueling painting schedule on the scaffold, turning out murals in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York, and was “weak, thin, yellow, and morally exhausted,” Frida wrote to her friend Ella Wolfe that July. Frida had been in the hospital three times that year – for an appendectomy, a therapeutic abortion, and foot surgery.
No one knows exactly when Diego began his affair with Frida’s sister Cristina; it was probably in the summer of 1934. Frida was devastated. Cristina was not just her sister but her confidante. Cristina’s husband had left her in 1930 and, since then, she and her children had spent a great deal of time at Frida and Diego’s house. Cristina had served as a model many times for Diego’s murals and they had grown very close, too close, to Frida’s chagrin. Diego had, no doubt, seduced Cristina with his clever words, and convinced her that he needed her, reminding Cristina that Frida was too sick for lovemaking and that he, Diego, was sad and needy.
"Self-Portrait with Curly Hair," by Frida Kahlo, 1935
In her great anguish, Frida cut off her long hair and stopped wearing the native Mexican costumes that were her signature look and that made Diego so happy. She painted a self-portrait of her new look. This little painting, 7-1/4 x 5-3/4 inches, was called “Self-Portrait with Curly Hair.” Her smallest canvas ever, Frida gave the little painting to Ella Wolfe, Frida’s longtime friend and the wife of Diego Rivera’s biographer, Bertram Wolfe. Ella kept the painting until 2000. In 2003, “Self-Portrait with Curly Hair” was auctioned off by Artemundi & Co. and sold for $1,351,500.00. Today, Frida Kahlo remains the most expensive-selling female artist in the history of art.
During that period of terrible pain from the betrayal by both husband and sister, Frida painted another painting quite different from “Self-Portrait with Curly Hair.” This one was morbid, bloody, disquieting. Shown below, “A Few Small Nips” features a woman being literally “murdered by life,” as Frida herself felt, murdered both physically by her chronic pain and suffering and emotionally by Diego and Cristina. The painting’s theme is based on a newspaper account of a real murder. A drunken guy threw his girlfriend on a cot and stabbed her 20 times. When interviewed, the brutal murderer protested his innocence, saying, “But I only gave her a few small nips.”
"A Few Small Nips" by Frida Kahlo, 1935.
NEXT: Frida to Diego: I Can’t Live, if Living is Without You!
Readers: For more on Frida Kahlo on this blog, click here.
Posted in Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, PEOPLE | Tagged A Few Small Nips, A Portrait of My Sister Cristina Kahlo by Frida Kahlo, Artemundi auction, Bertram Wolfe, biographies of artists, biographies of Hispanic artists, biographies of HIspanic women, biographies of women, Cristina Kahlo, Diego Kahlo, Diego Rivera painting a mural, Diego Rivera's Rockefeller Center mural, Ella Wolfe, Frida Kahlo, Jean van Heijenoort, Lupe Marin, murdered by life, Portrait of Lupe Marin by Diego Rivera, Self-Portrait with Curly Hair by Frida Kahlo, Vladimir Lenin | 3 Comments »
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