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#starring edmund windsor.
kingconquers · 2 years
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@gcldencrcwns​.
Augustine cleared his throat slightly awkwardly, left entirely alone at the table with Edmund, save for the servants. Family dinners were rare enough occasions, nevermind solely the two of them - he spent little one on one time with his third child. Edmund had been Josephine’s favored, Josephine’s son, and Augustine had thought to leave well enough alone once it became clear that Edmund had no interest in warfare or athletics. It had been so long now that he truthfully didn’t know what to say to him. He finally settled on, “What do you think of Switzerland so far?” as neutral of a topic as he could think of.
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greymount · 1 year
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#greymount. a multimuse blog featuring canon and original characters. private and selective. extremely low activity. weaved by leaf (25+, she/they, uk). triggering themes present. rules and muse list below cut.
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rules.
rules are incredibly simple: don't be a dick, don't take control of my characters, don't create drama. we're here to have fun. 21+ only. this is a low activity blog so expect limited formatting and no icons. i'm too lazy to make a gdocs/carrd so all information can be found on this blog. duplicate friendly.
muse list.
a song of ice and fire.
aegon targaryen. young griff. bisexual. avan jogia. book canon.
alicent hightower. queen of the seven kingdoms. lesbian. nur fettahoğlu. book canon.
renly baratheon. lord of storm's end. pretender to the iron throne. gay. david corenswet. book canon.
dragon age.
brilwyn lavellan. herald of andraste. bisexual. emilia clarke. inquisitor. original character. info.
edmund grey. lord of portsmouth and dragonmount. gay. nicholas galitzine. companion. original character. info.
rosemund grey. lady of portsmouth and dragonmount. lesbian. ella hunt. companion. original character. info.
fandomless.
stígandr ragnvaldrson. úlfhéðnar. bisexual. leo suter. original character. info.
how to train your dragon.
hiccup horrendous haddock iii. chief of berk. bisexual. jack kane. canon.
lord of the rings.
arwen undómiel. the evenstar. bisexual. beren saat. canon.
marvel.
peter parker. spider-man. bisexual. andrew garfield. earth-616 canon.
red, white, and royal blue.
alexander claremont-diaz. first son. bisexual. taylor zakhar perez. canon.
henry fox-mountchristen-windsor. prince of england. gay. nicholas galitzine. canon.
star wars.
kanan jarrus. spectre one. bisexual. ekin koç. canon (not bad batch compliant).
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tinyloved · 11 months
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full muse list (+ face claims).
to request a muse, please send me a message letting me know who you’re interested in. we can even plot a little, i do this to prevent having the same types of threads, but i love writing these muses equally (if we have previous threads with said muse, there is no need for this btw).
daisy jones and the six (under request):
daisy jones: riley keough, irene dev
billy dunne, found on @regrethim: sam claflin
camila dunne: camila morrone
graham dunne: will harrison
karen sirko: suki waterhouse
eddie loving/roundtree (under request): josh whitehouse
warren rojas (under request): sebastian chacon
bill ‘bones’ shah: avan jogia
red, white & royal blue
alex claremont-diaz: danny ramirez, taylor zakhar-perez
henry fox-mountchristen-windsor: harris dickinson, nicholas galitzine
june claremont-diaz: isabela merced
zahra bankston: sarah shahi
beatrice fox-mountchristen-windsor: milly alcock, ellie bamber
les misérables:
enjolras: sam reid, aaron tveit
the seven husbands of evelyn hugo:
mick riva: oscar isaac
a little life:
jude st. francis: diego calva, jose condessa
willem ragnarsson: callum turner, harris dickinson
normal people:
connell waldron: paul mescal
marianne sheridan: daisy edgar-jones
ted lasso:
rebecca welton: hannah waddingham, sienna miller
roy kent: brent goldstein
jamie tartt: phil dunster
keeley jones: juno temple, lucy boynton
daisy alexander: florence pugh
marvel:
steve rogers: chris evans, glen powell, paul mescal
natalia romanova: ana de armas
bucky barnes: sebastian stan
yelena belova: florence pugh
grease
danny zuko: jacob elordi
star wars (under request):
poe dameron: oscar isaac
bridgerton (under request):
anthony bridgerton: jonathan bailey
benedict bridgerton: luke thompson
sophie beckett: bruna marquezine
edmund bridgerton: hugh dancy
the little mermaid: (under request):
prince eric: jonah hauer-king
moulin rouge (under request):
christian james: aaron tveit, callum turner
satine: nicole kidman, ashley loren, ellie bamber
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if-you-fan-a-fire · 2 years
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"YARDMAN SPOTS NAZI HIDING IN WAR TRAIN," Toronto Star. May 15, 1942. Page 2. ---- Frederick Oeser, Bowmanville Fugitive, Offers No Resistance at Belleville --- CARRIED 4 KNIVES ---- The vigilance of the C.N.R. yardman in the Belleville train yards today brought about the capture of Frederich Oeser, German prisoner who escaped from an internment camp yesterday. Oeser is being held in the Belleville police station where he is described as "an amiable guy" and made no fuss either at the time of his arrest or since.
According to police, the yardman, Lawrence Amo of Belleville, noticed a man hiding in the gondola of a freight train filled with war materials. He asked him for his registration certificate and the man replied he didn't have one. but said he was going on to Brockville.
"You had better come with me." Amos is quoted as saying and the German went with him to the train office. He was turned over to Special Agent Hendrick of the C.N.R., Sergt. Arthur Boothe and Constable F. Campbell of the Belleville police.
When he was searched, Oeser had on him 13 five cent chocolate bars and three large chocolate bars weighing about a pound. He also had on him part of a bologna loaf and four knives, one of which was a dinner knife and had been notched to make a saw. Also on him was. a German-English dictionary.
Prisoner Looked "Very Young" "He was sitting there dozing and he didn't look more than 18 years old., said a woman who sat across from Eberhard Wildermutch, picked up first in the general waiting-room at the Union station. "He looked very young."
She described him as being "fairly short" and of fair complexion. "He was all by himself, and he acted as if he couldn't keep his eyes open. He kept nodding. I think he was wearing a windbreaker, and he had a sort of little knapsack with him. I didn't really pay any attention to him until the soldiers walked up to him and said. 'Come along with us. He didn't put up a struggle, he just went along."
She said she didn't know how long the man had been there, but long the man had been there, but that she had noticed him only a few minutes before.
Gateman George Billings rushed to the telephone to call R.C.M.P. as soon as Wildermutch admitted he was the escaped prisoner. Lance-Corp. Frank Ingram took him to the military police office in the station, where he was held pending the arrival of R.C.M.P. Det.-Sergt. John Nimmo, who captured Lieut. Commander Gunther Kray of the Ger- man navy in November, 1940. at the Union station after he escaped from Gravenhurst camp, rushed to the station with Detective Edmund Tong. They formed part of the guard to take the Nazi to the nearby headquarters of the R.C.M.P.
A train was not scheduled to leave until shortly after 1 p.m.
Wanted to Be Caught "He seemed to me as though he wanted to be caught," remarked Billings.
Certain He Was Prisoner It was in the Oak room at the west of the Union Station that Lance Corpl. Ingram first caught glimpse of Wildermutch.
"He was sitting back in the corner," he said. "I almost passed. Then I caught a glimpse of him. He started to walk away. I took a look around to see where his partner was. I was certain then he was one of the escaped prisoners."
The lance corporal produced the article and two pictures of the escaped men from The Star. He had been an observer overseas in the great war. attached to the observation corps of the Canadian Corps.
Finally. Ingram said, he went over to the German and questioned him.
"He said he came from Boston and that his accent was Norwegian. I asked him for his papers. He produced some papers from his inside coat pocket. but I had enough experience in the R.C.M.P. at Windsor customs to know these were not the right papers. I asked him for his registration card and he did not have one. I took him down to the military police office in the station." Finally Wildermutch said: "I know who you think I am." Ingram said: 'I told him. You're an escaped German prisoner. 'All right. You've got me, said the German." Ingram was stationed at a prison camp in Northern Ontario, from March to September, 1941. The lance-corporal knew his Germans, he said. Send Them Up North Oeser will be brought to R.C.M.P. headquarters in Toronto and both men, it is reported. will be transferred to another camp in Northern Ontario.
The prisoners escaped yesterday in a packing case. Preparations were being made to move prisoners., from the camp because of overcrowding. Both men are just five feet four and a quarter inches in height, and are said to be the by smallest in the camp. The crates were taken out Wednesday night and loaded on a baggage car. The prisoners hammered their way out during the night.
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bitter69uk · 4 years
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Recently watched: The Girl in the Black Stockings (1957). Tagline: “She was every inch a teasing, taunting “come-on” blonde … and she made every inch pay off!” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend is accompanying me only semi-willingly). 
Look, I don’t mean to overpraise what’s essentially a lurid minor exploitation b-movie. But in terms of low-brow fifties pulp thrills, the addictively trashy Girl in the Black Stockings veritably pulsates with prurience, misogyny, twisted psychology and an almost tangible revulsion towards sex. And it condenses its shock-by-shock twists into a taut 73-minutes. 
While vacationing at The Parry Lodge, a luxe mountain resort in Utah, hunky Los Angeles-based attorney Dave Hewson (Lex Barker) tentatively romances shy Beth Dixon (Anne Bancroft), the hotel’s switchboard operator. We first encounter the couple dancing by moonlight at an outdoor pool party. “Are you breathing this hard because of me or the altitude?” Hewson suavely inquires.  Their tryst is abruptly ruined when he lights a cigarette, and the flame illuminates a brutally slain female corpse in the bushes. The dead woman is Marsha Morgan – the local “good time girl” (prepare for lots of slut-shaming and blame-the-victim talk). Her throat has been slit – and her black stockings are in shreds! Suddenly, every guest and employee at Parry Lodge is a suspect – and what a menagerie of freaks they are! They’re all hiding sordid secrets, and they all seem guilty as hell. One thing’s for sure: as Hewson surmises, “We’re not dealing with an ordinary killer committing an ordinary crime!” 
The hotel’s proprietor is Edmund Parry (Ron Randell), an embittered misanthropic quadriplegic who viscerally loathes women in general and Marsha Morgan in particular. “I must say, the man-eating witch deserved it!” he’s apt to declare. “She was poison. Like a disease! A common creature whose every word, every breath, every gesture, was the show of an empty shallow strumpet. Miss Morgan was an example of a completely justifiable homicide!” Edmund is doted on by Julia (Marie Windsor), his devoted-to-the-point-of-incest sister. Does Edmund’s paralysis eliminate him as the killer? (It’s hinted his disability is psychosomatic). And what about the hotel’s knife-wielding, blood-splattered Native American handyman Joe (Larry Chance)? Due to an alcoholic black-out, he can’t account for his actions on the night of Marsha’s murder. Or bad boy ex-con sawmill employee Frankie (Gerald Frankie), who was sexually entangled with Marsha? Meanwhile, faded matinee idol Norman Grant (John Holland) is staying at Parry Lodge while preparing for a screen comeback, accompanied by his platinum blonde paramour Harriet Ames (Mamie Van Doren). As more dead bodies begin cropping up (cut to newspaper headline exclaiming “Maniac Strikes Again!”), it becomes apparent a serial killer is stalking this remote desert town. Who will be next?  
The Girl in the Black Stockings certainly boasts a fun ensemble cast.  By this point, premium fifties beefcake leading man Lex Barker (a former husband of Lana Turner’s) had already portrayed Tarzan and was yet to feature in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960). Barker’s facial expression is permanently set to “pensive squint”, but we get copious glimpses of his wondrous physique, so who’s complaining? Today we remember Anne Bancroft as a heavy-weight credible “prestige” talent, but before she won her 1962 Best Actress Academy Award for The Miracle Worker, she paid her dues in b-movies like Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), Gorilla at Large (1954) and this one. Character actor John Dehner plays local sheriff Jess Holmes as if he’s wandered in from a Western. Tough-as-nails film noir broad Marie Windsor is cast against type in a virtuous “good girl” role. The Girl in the Black Stockings’ poster mischievously hints archetypal fifties bad girl and personification of moist womanly needs Mamie Van Doren is the film’s star (and the titular girl in the black stockings). In fact, her third-billed role as “the stunning blonde who lived for pleasure” is surprisingly small. Ultimately, it’s Ron Randell’s ferocious performance as the twisted-by-hatred Edmund that leaves the most indelible impression. 
Because it was made in ’56 (when the Motion Picture Production Code was still enforced), The Girl in the Black Stockings can only imply the violence and kink. All the murders occur off screen, but the script compensates by having characters describe the mutilations in gruesome detail (“A girl was slaughtered and carved-up like a side of beef tonight!” “Those arms! Cut up like a jigsaw puzzle!”).  Some particularly vivid moments: when one of the potential culprits is cornered by the cops at the lumber mill, he panics and falls into a buzz saw! And when a little girl discovers a dead body floating face down in the hotel’s pool, she giggles, “Look at that funny man!” Foreshadowing Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), William Castle’s Strait-Jacket (1964), eighties slasher films and even David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (think of Marsha Morgan as the equivalent of Laura Palmer), The Girl in the Black Stockings offers a tawdry good time. 
Watch the film here. 
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heavyarethecrowns · 4 years
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I just heard about Prince George, Duke of Kent. I was wondering if you knew anything interesting about him? Sounds like an interesting guy
Some facts about him,
His full name was George Edward Alexander Edmund (Edmund should make a comeback in the RF!)
He was born on the 20th December 1902 and sadly died just 39 on the 25th August 1942
He was the 4th son of King George V and Queen Mary. His elder siblings were the later King Edward VIII/Duke of Windsor, King George VI, Princess Mary later Countess of Harewood and also Prince Henry, The Duke of Gloucester. There was another siblings, younger than him, Prince John, who tragically passed away at just 13.
He became Duke of Kent in 1934
Prince George served in the Royal Navy in the 1920s and then briefly as a civil servant. In the late 1930s, he served as an RAF officer, initially as a staff officer at RAF Training Command and then, from July 1941, as a staff officer in the Welfare Section of the RAF Inspector General’s Staff. He was killed in a military air-crash on 25 August 1942.
As a young man, the Duke came to the opinion that the future lay in aviation. It became his passion, and in 1929, the Duke earned his pilot’s licence. He was the first of the royal family to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air. Before his flying days, he entered the Royal Navy and was trained in intelligence work while stationed at Rosyth
After leaving the navy, he briefly held posts at the Foreign Office and later the Home Office
In 1939 he returned to active service as a rear admiral in the Royal Navy, but in April 1940, transferred to the Royal Air Force. He temporarily relinquished his rank as an air officer to assume the post of staff officer at RAF Training Command in the rank of group captain, so that he would not be senior to more experienced officers. On 28 July 1941, he assumed the rank of air commodore in the Welfare Section of the RAF Inspector General’s Staff. In this role, he went on official visits to RAF bases to help boost wartime morale
He had many dalliances before and after marriage, from high society types to Hollywood celebs. Also with both men and women. In fact, one of his longest relationships was with Noel Coward. 
Some other notable names include musical star Jessie Matthews, writer Cecil Roberts and apparently he shared Kiki Preston in a ménage à trois with Argentine Jorge Ferrara
The Duke of Kent is rumoured to have been addicted to drugs, especially morphine and cocaine, a rumour that reputedly originated with his friendship with Kiki Preston
In his attempt to rescue his cocaine-addicted brother from the influence of Kiki, Edward, Prince of Wales, attempted for a while to persuade both George and Kiki to break off their contact, to no avail. Eventually, Edward forced George to stop seeing Kiki and also forced Kiki to leave England, while she was visiting George there in the summer of 1929. For years afterwards, Edward feared that George might relapse to drugs if he maintained his contact with Kiki. Indeed, in 1932, Prince George ran into Kiki unexpectedly at Cannes and had to be removed almost by force
It has been alleged for years that American publishing executive Michael Temple Canfield (1926–1969) was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Kent and Kiki Preston. According to various sources, both The Duke of Kent’s brother, the Duke of Windsor and Laura, Duchess of Marlborough, Canfield’s second wife, shared this belief. 
Canfield was the adopted son of Cass Canfield, an American publisher of Harper and Row. In 1953, Canfield married Caroline Lee Bouvier the younger sister of Jacqueline Bouvier who married U.S. Senator and future U.S. president John F. Kennedy the same year. Canfield and Bouvier divorced in 1958, and the marriage was annulled by the Roman Catholic Church in November 1962
On 25th August 1942, George and 14 others took off in an RAF Short Sunderland flying boat W4026 from Invergordon, Ross and Cromarty, to fly to Iceland on non-operational duties. The aircraft crashed on Eagle’s Rock, a hillside near Dunbeath, Caithness, Scotland. All but one were killed, including George. It marked the first time in 450 years that a royal died during active duty. 
There is a false rumour thanks to a book (considered unreliable and farfetched) alleging that Kent had a briefcase full of 100-krona notes, worthless in Iceland, handcuffed to his wrist, leading to speculation the flight was a military mission to Sweden, the only place where krona notes were of value
His elder son, six-year-old Prince Edward, succeeded him as Duke of Kent. Princess Marina, his wife, had given birth to their third child, Prince Michael, only seven weeks before Prince George’s death.
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ofitzroy · 4 years
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❝ ⤚⟶ EUROPE, 1458. thanks is given by the EARL OF RICHMOND, RICHARD FITZROY, from ENGLAND. they are at best ELOQUENT, and at their worst LAZY. whilst abroad, their ambition is to SEEK LEGITIMACY FOR THE SAKE OF HIS FAMILY. HE seems to remind everyone of TIMOTHEE CHALAMET & THE MELODIC TUNE OF A LUTE BEING PLAYING AS THE SUN SETS, THE WHISPERS MADE IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT BENEATH FRESHLY BEATEN COVERS & LAUGHTER BELLOWED AFTER WINNING A GAME OF CARDS. ❞
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here is my second child, made of melancholy and the tightened strings of the lute. 
STATS.
full name  — richard (proto-germanic - “strong or brave leader”) fitzroy (anglo-saxon - “son of the king”) titles  — lord of york, earl of richmond birthplace  —   windsor castle, england (1433) age  — five and twenty (25) languages  — english (mother-tongue), latin (basic, mass-centric), french (fluent, refrains from speaking it), german (basic dialect), spanish (basic), italian (learning) dynasty  — house plantagenet (paternal house), fitzroy (given house), neville (maternal house)
mother  — isabel rose neville, queen of england
father  — edward plantagenet, king of england
spouse  — countess elizabeth beauchamp of richmond (1457-)
issue  — edmund howard-fitzroy (b. 1455)
siblings  — older : prince henry of wales (plantagenet) older : princess beatrice of england (plantagenet) older : prince of england (fitzroy, legitimised) younger : lady of york (fitzroy) younger : lady anne of york (fitzroy) younger : princess ceciliy of england (plantagenet)
other  — duke john neville of york (maternal uncle), earl william of lancaster (maternal uncle), 
zodiac/element — acquarius religious affiliation — roman catholic personality type   — i. swaddled in his mother’s arms the moment he entered into the world it is known to both him and the entire court that he is beloved by isabel neville and his older brother. much cannot be mirrored for his half-brother, the prince of wales, but alas that never did matter. so much love and embroiled passion was to fuel richard’s desire to make a better man of himself. as a child he believed such talk, and often found himself riddled with jealous to his half-siblings who he saw only time to time. yet such boldness soon vanished with age, a tiresome effect carrying on his heavy lids as he walked through life and it’s varying issues to become dulled by the effect of ambition and the pride of his house. still a bastard at sixteen richard found happiness within ale and wine, and then in the flesh that lay beneath heavy skirts. he followed women in a bid to find himself, though such things lead to richard’s siring of a bastard of his own. his personality and lack of love has shadowed by this news, such darkness has engulfed his very person, followed by a lack of ambition and a desperate need to find something to hold onto. ii. as time passed, richard took his bastard for his own soft hands - he gave him his name, he kissed his brow and with one sweep offered himself with marriage and long-lasting love to his childhood friend, elizabeth beauchamp. with land, an estate and a title of his own, richard grew into a fully formed adult with a loving nature that is often overlooked for the ambitious and melodramatic. despite it all, he refuses to change - and found patience in growing his own dynasty with his newfound family. but, called to portugal by demand of his father the lord-king, richard regrets answering to his call. he resigns himself to the idea of acting noble, and would rather keep himself to himself - but he knows now, that his actions ripple onto the ones he loves.. and now, he must chase his legitimisation so there is choice of futures for his child, his future child and mostly for his wife, who he still seems to stare at with honeyed eyes.  face claim — timothee chalamet height  — 5′10″ recognisable features — dark hair that is a stark contrast compared to his pale skin, his agile legs and the lute he plays behind closed doors.
HEADCANNONS
EARL OF RICHMOND  —  the earldom of richmond is a vast and prestigious title to behold! that, richard does not overlook. despite his tired eyes and lazy soul, richard knows very well that his estate was offered as a gift for marrying someone who was beloved by the english court. at first he found anxiety in place of pride but as time moved on richard allowed himself to take to the role as a duck would water. he is a good man to take care of his people, and makes sure that his servants are paid well in turn that they offer him both loyalty and security. as earl of richmond, he commissioned a portrait of elizabeth which hangs with pride in the entrance hall; when they return, he hopes to have one done of edmund who is beloved amongst the people of his home. in truth, he would’ve rather have taken to staying amongst english soil than take flight to portugal’s coast - but he made the voyage to both reaffirm his loyalty to his father and for his wife’s wishes. 
FAMILY  —  for most of his life richard has struggled as a bastard of a king who then married his mother. it was an oddity, to watch his older brother become legitimised - then to later welcome a baby sister into his life, who was both fully-blooded his own sibling but also wore the pride of princess. lines are drawn between the bastards and the legitimate children, that is for sure. for his preference in siblings surely lies within the arms of his fitzroy families; this also leaves him open to the taking of the members of the neville family, who he feels more aligned with. and though his trust in his father still wanes, he finds companionship in his half-siblings too. it is strange, that is for sure, but richard has blossomed within the family since marrying the lady beauchamp, and with time, he will become even more at peace with who he is. 
WANTED CONNECTIONS.
friends, “friends”, men he can play cards with, a bad influence who may drag him under hedonistic skills that he once was fluent with, girls he used to chase, a governess for his son, etc etc 
INFLUENCES.
sirius black (harry potter) charlie pace (lost) ambrose spellman (chilling adventures of sabrina) stan rizzo (mad men) theodore laurence (little women, ho ho ho) tyrion lannister (game of thrones) robin hood (english folklore) jason mendoza (the good place) aragorn (lord of the rings) simba (the lion king) dale cooper (twin peaks) troy branes (community) goh peik lin (crazy rich asians) jon snow (game of thrones) samwell tarly (lord of the rings) joey tribbiani/phoebe buffay (friends) romeo montague (shakespeare) anakin skywalker (star wars) sisyphus (greek mythology) heracles (greek mythology) david (bible) ashoka (indian history) john lennon (english history) beast (beauty & the beast) dante alighieri (the divine comedy) brian jones (english history)
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chiseler · 6 years
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SWEET YOUNG INNOCENT
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Coleen Gray and Sterling Hayden in The Killing
Long before Coleen Gray arrived in Hollywood, when she was still a teenager named Doris Bernice Jensen living in Staplehurst, Nebraska, doppelgängers playing the Coleen Gray role were already appearing on the big screen. In the 1940 RKO programmer The Ape, Maris Wrixon took a Coleen Gray turn as a sweet and innocent young woman with a spinal defect who becomes the focus of Boris Karloff’s affections. Unfortunately, being a mad doctor, Karloff’s efforts to find a cure for the poor girl drive him to kill a whole bunch of people. A year later in John Huston’s High Sierra, it was Joan Leslie in the Coleen Gray role, as the good hearted young woman with a club foot who very nearly convinces Bogart’s Roy Earle to change his criminal ways. Then she makes the mistake of telling him she’s engaged to someone else. And in an oddly prescient move, three years after Coleen Gray earned her first major role, Jean Hagen played Sterling Hayden’s lonely, desperate and long-suffering girlfriend in Huston’s Asphalt Jungle, some six years before Gray would at long last play the role herself in The Killing.
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For all the doppelgängers who came along before and after—and there were plenty—none of them could top Gray herself as the embodiment of lovely, wide-eyed, corn-fed All American innocence—though an innocence, while incorruptible, that often wandered unknowingly into some shadowy territory and the company of some pretty rough characters.
After getting her BA in Dramatic Arts from Hamline University, Gray (still Doris Jensen at that point) set out to see more of the country, stopping first in La Jolla. She worked as a waitress for a few weeks before making the headlong plunge into Hollywood. She enrolled in an acting school, began appearing in some small theatrical productions around L.A., and, as the classic story goes, was spotted by a talent agent who offered her a contract with 20th Century Fox. In an early magazine interview, gray told the reporter of her girlhood dreams of being a movie star, particularly how she would decorate her dressing room and buy gifts for her staff—all the standard dreams of a typical Coleen Gray character. But as so often happened with her characters, after getting what she wanted she soon realized it wasn’t nearly as glamorous as the movie magazines would have us believe.
First came the name change, from Doris Jensen to Coleen Gray, the single “l” to make her unique, and the “Gray” to subconsciously remind people of Betty Grable.
After an uncredited role in 1945’s State Fair was followed by two other uncredited roles, in 1947, the year film noir really came into its own, the newcomer Gray established herself as a genre stalwart, nearly as inescapable as Ida Lupino, but with her own unique character and persona. In counterpoint to all those devious, dime-a-dozen femme fatales out there, and counter even to Lupino’s streetwise and world wary dames, Gray was redemption, a sign of hope within a dark and nihilistic world.
Her big break came as the narrator and co-star of Henry Hathaway’s seminal and groundbreaking Kiss of Death. Working opposite Victor Mature and a young Richard Widmark (making his unforgettable screen debut as sociopath Tommy Udo), it was Gray’s opening narration that established her screen persona for time immemorial.
Over shots of the snow falling on Midtown Manhattan, her gentle Midwestern voice explains:
“Nick Bianco hadn't worked for a year. He had a record - a prison record. They say it shouldn't count against you but when Nick tried to get a job the same thing always happened: ‘Very sorry. No prejudice, of course, but no job either.’ So this is how Nick went Christmas shopping for his kids.”
While most Noir Era opening narration tended to be stern and authoritarian, warning audiences about the scourge of crime, the dangers to be found in the shadows of the big city and what have you, Gray’s voice is empathetic and, yes, innocent, the voice of a young woman in love, and so willing to overlook a few of her beau’s minor character glitches. She understands nick’s circumstances and makes no moral judgment about his decision to rob a jewelry store in the Chrysler Building in order to buy Christmas presents for his family. What we don’t learn until later is that our narrator, Nettie, was actually the criminally young Bianco family babysitter when the events of the opening scene take place. 
Gray herself doesn’t appear onscreen until much later, when she shows up at the prison and breaks down, telling nick his wife has killed herself, his daughters have been put in an orphanage and, oh, yes, she’s been in love with him for years.
That seems A-OK with Nick, and through the narrative economy that so marked Hathaway’s film. The moment he’s sprung we jump months, even a couple years ahead to find Nick and Nettie married, settled down and living a deliriously happy suburban existence. Nick’s finally found work as a bricklayer, and Nettie has given her inner Midwestern girl free reign, keeping house and making dinner in a dress and apron. Even as things go to hell soon afterward, with Nick drawn back into the shadows to try and ensnare that cackling Tommy Udo, Netti’s perhaps naive optimism never falters.
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It was a very good year for Gray, who also found herself co-starring opposite Tyrone Power in another, much darker noir touchstone. Her role in Edmund Golding’s Nightmare Alley (based on the William Gresham novel) would at first blush seem a radical departure from the sweet young innocence of Nettie, but you watch closely, and there’s still plenty of Nettie in Molly. Yes, Molly is a carny working a sideshow electric chair gag in a seedy traveling show , but for all the men lusting after her she remains sweet and virginal. Even when she takes up with the mercenary con man Stanton Carlisle (Power) and the two split the carnival to shoot for the big time with a mentalist act, her conscience comes with her. Once the act morphs from a simple nightclub routine into a spiritualist scam preying on the fragile emotions of the mourning and desperate, pretending to offer comforting contact with lost loved ones, that conscience rears up and Molly splits the show. She returns at film’s end, however, back at the sane carnival where Stanton himself lands after falling as hard and low as a man can manage. While all the other women Stanton has dealt with along the way proved themselves just as conniving and wicked as he is, Molly reappears as a singular symbol of possible redemption. Unlike the book, her presence offers that hope, however slim, Stan might pull himself together yet.
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Five years later in Phil Karlson’s Kansas City Confidential (with Lee Van Cleef, Neville Brand, Jack Elam and John Payne), Gray doesn’t appear until late in the film, but works the same redemptive magic. Sweet and innocent as ever, she’s unaware that her retired cop father has turned criminal mastermind. She’s also wholly unaware her father’s about to settle a score with his three cronies while the patsy he framed for a million dollar armored car heist is closing in to settle a few scores of his own. She just decides to pay a visit, like any loving daughter, because she hadn’t seen her dad in awhile. Worse, during her unwittingly ill-timed visit, she falls for the patsy in question (Payne) even though she knows he’s already got a recored, because as ever she can see beyond such trifles.
The crowning jewel, and the perfect bookend to her role as noir’s ever-present symbol of goodness and light and hope within the darkness came in 1956 with Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing.
Losing the chewing gum and the cheap eyelashes, Gray essentially reprises Jean Hagen’s role in Asphalt Jungle, but with a certain melancholy purity that makes the role all her own.  Kubrick made it clear he signed Sterling Hayden specifically on account of his performance in Asphalt Jungle, and yes, Fay’s relationship with Johnny Clay (Hayden) echoes the relationship in the Huston film in many ways—the sad young woman yearning for little more out of life than a scrap of attention from her outlaw boyfriend. More interesting within the context of the film is how the relationship acts as a mirror image of that scheming Sherry (Marie Windsor) and her sap of a husband George (Elisha Cook) across town. Sherry endlessly belittles George, having not the slightest inkling he’s involved in planning a massive heist. Fay, meanwhile, is a simple kid who—like Nettie in Kiss of Death—knows full well what Johnny’s business is, and loves him anyway. Again, all she wants is a little attention in return, but knows she’ll have to wait to get it. Despite the company she keeps, she’s as wide-eyed and innocent as ever, and at film’s end, when everything goes to hell, she doesn’t run, doesn’t scream or panic. She offers a few gentle suggestions about possible escape, but when a clearly defeated Johnny shrugs off her suggestions, she waits again as he turns to face the cops, and you know she’ll keep waiting until he gets out of prison.
For noir nuts, that was the high water mark, though afterward gray was busier than ever, mostly on television and mostly in Westerns, where her midwestern beauty made her a natural. There were a few weirdies dropped in along the way, including her starring role in the 1960 low-budget drive-in hit The leech Woman. Essentially a knockoff of the previous year’s The Wasp Woman, and one of her very few villainous turns, Gray plays a middle aged woman who learns the secret to eternal youth lay in a formula that calls for the pineal gland of a male. Given the serum’s youth-restoring properties are only temporary, well, that means she’s going to have to start collecting a lot of pineal glands. In another less than wholesome turn in 1962’s The Phantom Planet, she plays the blond and manipulative daughter of a…well, to be honest it’s a bit too much and too mind boggling to get into here, but Gray does seem to be having fun playing against type.
In an era when such a thing wasn’t the kiss of death (so to speak), Gray was an outspoken political conservative and Christian, and as early as  1964 was lobbying Congress for a Constitutional amendment allowing prayer in public schools. She continued working steadily into the mid-Eighties, retiring from show business while only in her sixties. Along with her third husband Joseph Fritz Ziesier, she devoted the last three decades of her life to social work, from the Red Cross and Girl Scouts to an evangelical fellowship group aimed at prison inmates. Which is pretty much what you’d expect from a Coleen Gray character.
by Jim Knipfel
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travelworldnetwork · 6 years
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By Mike MacEacheran
17 January 2019
Amid the neon-lit diners and coffee shops of New York’s Upper East Side sits a townhouse that’s a world away from the fast-paced drama of Manhattan. In sight of Central Park, but not as far north as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is just one of many such houses on a street full of elite mansions and enviable residences. No sightseeing map would direct you to East 70th Street, and it’s routinely bypassed by cab drivers, commuters and pedestrians, all of whom have somewhere else more important to be.
But beyond the townhouse’s wrought iron doors, under a keystone archway, a world of tightly guarded secrets awaits. For this intriguing six-storey mansion, 109-years-old and a fusion of Jacobean Renaissance and Tudor architecture, is a social club for a clandestine group of travellers who have seen more of the world – and universe – than anyone would think possible.
View image of A townhouse in New York houses the headquarters of The Explorer’s Club (Credit: Credit: Mike MacEacheran)
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The deepest oceans. The farthest rivers. The highest peaks. Even the moon and outer space itself. All of it has been mapped by the club’s globetrotting members. And on any given day, many can be found in the back room, taking tea while plotting their next extraordinary adventure. Talk is not of the weather, but of moon landings and blow dart encounters.
The people who’ve marched through these doors created pages of history
This is the little-known Explorer’s Club, the headquarters of one of the world’s most awe-inspiring field science institutions. Its illustrious list of current, historical and honourary members includes Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who first summited Mt Everest; aviator Charles Lindbergh, who made the first solo transatlantic airplane flight in 1927; Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl who sailed his hand-built balsawood raft, the Kon-Tiki, from Peru to Polynesia; famed pilot Amelia Earhart who disappeared in the Pacific; Apollo astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, the first men on the Moon; record-breaking deep-sea diver Sylvia Earle; British paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey, who discovered 15 new species of animal; Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos; Titanic film director and deep-sea explorer James Cameron; and primatologist Dame Jane Goodall, considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees. The list is mind-boggling. Small wonder the club’s in-joke involves an astronaut, aquanaut and speleologist walking into a bar.
“There are millions of stories associated with this place, and sometimes I need to catch myself from name-dropping,” said two-time club president Richard Wiese, who himself is an explorer with more than 200 episodes of the Emmy Award-winning TV travel series Born to Explore with Richard Wiese on his resume. “The people who’ve marched through these doors created pages of history. They’re immortalised figures.”
View image of The Explorer’s Club’s list of members includes Neil Armstrong, Edmund Hillary and Theodore Roosevelt (Credit: Credit: Mike MacEacheran)
Now the club’s 44th president, Wiese was drawn into this Indiana Jones world by his father, Richard Wiese Sr, who was the first man to solo the Pacific Ocean in a plane. He remembers standing on his front lawn in Connecticut looking at cumulus and contrail clouds wishing he could be just as adventurous. By age 12, he had travelled to Africa and climbed Mt Kilimanjaro.
“I recall the first time I came to the club in the mid-1980s,” Wiese told me, while we sat at a table once owned by former member and US president Theodore Roosevelt in the club’s boardroom. “It was to see a lecture about black bears in northern New Jersey, and straightaway I knew I had found my people.”
Like the other mountain-climbing, polar-exploring, zeitgeist-defining club presidents before him, Wiese maintains the society’s purpose is for knowledge enhancement alone, not self-fulfilment. Its 3,500 members – spread across 32 global chapters, including the New York headquarters – are bound by a bond to push the boundaries of science and education. And these days, membership is predominantly taken up by oceanographers, lepidopterologists, primatologists and conservationists. Not wannabe Shackletons.
A case in point: this past summer, a group of club palaeontologists were in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert hunting for fossilised dinosaur remains using drone scanners. “They found dozens, if not hundreds,” Wiese told me, almost as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself. “Exploration for us is now less a cult of personality and more a cult of data. And because of that we’re getting better at finding the truth.”
View image of The Explorer’s Club consists of 3,500 members spread across 32 global chapters, including the New York headquarters (Credit: Credit: Mike MacEacheran)
It was 1904 when The Explorer’s Club was founded by historian, journalist and explorer Henry Collins Walsh and like-minded Arctic explorers. At the time, the race to the North Pole had brought the group together with a broader purpose to explore by air, land, sea and space. This saw the first meetings held at its original headquarters in the Studio Building at 23 West 67th Street. But as the club grew in stature, so too did its need to expand to house trophies, books and priceless artefacts.
Enter American writer and broadcaster Lowell Thomas of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ fame years later. An enthusiastic member in the 1960s, he was instrumental in the club acquiring its current headquarters, once a private family home owned by an heir to the Singer Sewing Machine.
“This place used to be about pushing dragons off the map,” said the club’s archivist and curator of research collections Lacey Flint, leading me on a fascinating tour of the townhouse. “We still push those dragons, but the club has become so much more. What really excites members is that we know more about the volcanoes on Jupiter than we do about the very bottom of our oceans.”
View image of Richard Wiese: “There are millions of stories associated with this place” (Credit: Credit: Mike MacEacheran)
History is alive in the building’s upper galleries like few other places in New York. It isn’t just the taxidermy polar bear guarding the staircase. Or the sledge used by Robert Peary and Matthew Henson on an expedition to the North Pole in 1909 (now placed above a door in the Clark Room). It’s in the indigenous totems found by Michael Rockefeller on a trip to collect primitive art from New Guinea (while several artefacts were airmailed to the US, Rockefeller never returned and rumours persist he was eaten by cannibals). It’s in the series of framed club flags, once folded into spacesuit pockets and carried on every Apollo mission into space. And it’s in the artefacts on the desk of the club’s archivist that still need to be catalogued.
It’s a place that boggles the senses
Moreover, it’s a place that boggles the senses. On the day of my visit, Flint’s desk was taken over by a prized 17th-Century Persian helmet and a pair of Spanish colonial spurs. She oversees some 1,000 objects in the club’s collection, as well as a library brimming with 14,000 volumes, photographs, slides and reports. One recent acquisition is a century-old Akeley Pancake Camera, dating to 1919 and first built for rugged expeditions.
The townhouse is an intriguing architectural marvel in itself. There are wooden beams taken from HMS Daedalus (an 1826 frigate warship). A ceiling bought from a 15th-Century Italian monastery, plus original stained-glass windows inlaid with Tudor roses from Windsor Castle in England. It’s so out-of-this-world, in fact, it feels as if it could have been designed by Jonathan Swift’s fantastical traveller, Lemuel Gulliver.
View image of The Explorer’s Club’s New York headquarters houses around 1,000 artefacts collected by its members (Credit: Credit: Mike MacEacheran)
One floor up, past the Hall of Fame and the Sir Edmund Hillary Map Room, is the extraordinarily detailed Gallery. A drop-in visitor can see trophies of cheetah and lion from Smithsonian expeditions; a yeti scalp and prayer wheels from Tibet; a first edition of Napoleon’s description of Egypt; an Alaskan mammoth tusk, moose heads and stuffed penguins; a pelt from a man-eating Nepali tigress; and the remarkable ivory of a four-tusked elephant, a rare genetic anomaly from Congo. The horde of artefacts is so exact – so remarkable – that, at first, it feels like a film set suspended in time.
They were rock stars of their age
“The risks these explorers took were crazy,” said Flint, pointing to an oil painting of Danish explorer Peter Freuchen that hung above the fireplace. Freuchen, she told me, wore a coat from a polar bear he killed, and once escaped an ice cave using frozen excrement as an improvised dagger. “These were people who would amputate their own foot. They were rock stars of their age and their stories are just as radical. Some unearthed burial grounds of ancient kings, while others travelled to the Arctic with a full tea service or crossed a desert with a camel carrying a full-size writing desk. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”
Members’ adventures are just as inspiring today. Archaeologist Joan Breton Connelly – aka ‘Indiana Joan’ – continues to dig for clues at a Cypriot temple built by Cleopatra that she discovered, while deep-sea explorer Jennifer Arnold’s passion is diving for megalodon teeth.
View image of While The Explorer’s Club has an illustrious history, president Richard Wiese says its members are focussed on the future (Credit: Credit: Mike MacEacheran)
To visit the club – possible for around $25 during the society’s weekly public lectures – is to experience an expense of spirit most people can only dream of. While the world of the explorer is changing, the club’s president believes it is a golden era for members – particularly in the fields of palaeontology, anthropology and space exploration.
There is still plenty of magic left in the world – and it’s our job to find it
With evolution comes opportunity and time for reflection, Wiese told me, and over the next few months, the club will undertake one of its most ambitious projects to date: to bring together the largest ever gathering of moon walkers and Apollo astronauts to celebrate 50 years since the Moon landing in July 1969.
“Our challenge is to stay relevant,” Wiese said, looking out the window. “In science, if an organism doesn’t evolve it’ll go extinct. Yes, we have an illustrious history, but our members are focussed on the future – on climate change and on animal and human preservation. So the more we can promote and popularise science to people that have curiosity about the world the better. There is still plenty of magic left in the world – and it’s our job to find it.”
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BBC Travel – Adventure Experience
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londontheatre · 7 years
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Simon-Anthony Rhoden takes on the role of Lola and Emmerdale star Verity Rushworth joins the cast as Lauren in West End hit KINKY BOOTS, which extends until Saturday 24th March 2018
Kinky Boots, the winner of every major Best Musical award, is pleased to announce that Simon-Anthony Rhoden will take on the role of Lola and Verity Rushworth, popular with TV viewers for her role as Donna Windsor in ITV’s Emmerdale, will star as Lauren from Monday 10 July 2017. Kinky Boots, which recently played its 700th performance at London’s Adelphi Theatre, today also announces the opening of a new booking period until Saturday 24 March 2018, with tickets on sale from Friday 5 May 2017.
Also joining Kinky Boots from Monday 10 July 2017 will be Jed Berry, Momar Diagne, Lauren Drew, Dale Evans, Jordan Fox, Rosie Glossop, Keith Higham, Ben Jennings, Georgia Louise, Emma Odell, Antony Reed and Tom Scanlon.
Continuing with the show are current cast members David Hunter (Charlie Price), Alan Mehdizadeh (Don), Cordelia Farnworth (Nicola), Michael Hobbs (George), Suzie McAdam, Jemal Felix, George Grayson, Robert Grose, Melissa Jacques, Robert Jones, Jane Milligan, Robin Mills, Sean Needham, Jon Reynolds and Dominic Tribuzio.
Matt Henry (Lola) and Elena Skye (Lauren) will play their final performances on Saturday 8 July 2017. Kinky Boots at the Adelphi Theatre has become a favourite with UK theatregoers having won three Olivier Awards for Best New Musical, Best Costume Design and Best Actor in a Musical for Matt Henry who plays Lola. Kinky Boots also won the London Evening Standard BBC Radio 2 Audience Award for Best Musical as well as three WhatsOnStage Awards for Best New Musical, Best Actor in a Musical and Best Choreography.
With a book by Broadway legend and four-time Tony® Award-winner Harvey Fierstein (La Cage aux Folles), and songs by Grammy® and Tony® winning pop icon Cyndi Lauper, this joyous musical celebration is about the friendships we discover, and the belief that you can change the world when you change your mind.
Inspired by true events, Kinky Boots takes you from a gentlemen’s shoe factory in Northampton to the glamorous catwalks of Milan. Charlie Price is struggling to live up to his father’s expectations and continue the family business of Price & Son. With the factory’s future hanging in the balance, help arrives in the unlikely but spectacular form of Lola, a fabulous performer in need of some sturdy new stilettos.
Ensemble in Kinky Boots – credit Helen Maybanks
With direction and choreography by two-time Tony® Award-winner Jerry Mitchell (Legally Blonde, Hairspray), Kinky Boots is the winner of every major Best Musical award including three Olivier Awards, three WhatsOnStage Awards as well as six Broadway Tony® Awards.
Simon-Anthony Rhoden (Lola) is currently the understudy for Lola in Kinky Boots (Adelphi Theatre). His theatre credits include Ash in Marianne (New Wimbledon Theatre); Devon in Married to the Game (Theatre 503); Man in If I Should Stay (Soho); Lance in Beauty’s Legacy (The Keeper’s Daughter); Jim Conley in Parade (Edinburgh Fringe). Television credits include Let it Snow, and Simon-Anthony has also appeared on film in 2 Birds and a Wrench and Blue.
David Hunter (Charlie Price) has numerous theatre credits including Guy in Once (Phoenix Theatre); One Man, Two Guvnors (National Theatre, Adelphi and UK tour); Tommy (Prince Edward), Seussical (Arts); The Hired Man (Leicester Curve and Colchester Mercury); Pub (The Royal Exchange); Spinach (The Royal Exchange) and The Mayor of Zalamea (Liverpool Everyman). In 2012 David reached the semi-finals of ITV’s Superstar, competing to play the role of Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar. As the front man of Pop/Rock band Reemer, he has earned huge support slots playing alongside The Feeling, Scouting for Girls and McFly on their UK arena tour.
Verity Rushworth (Lauren) has multiple theatre credits which include Vera Claythorne in And Then There Were None (UK tour); Velma Kelly in Chicago (Leicester Curve); Penny Lane in Carnaby Street the Musical (UK tour); Beth and Meg in Merrily We Roll Along (Theatr Clwyd); The Girl in The Seven Year Itch (Salisbury Playhouse); Grace Farrell in Annie (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Maria Rainer in The Sound of Music (UK tour); Sophie in Departure Lounge (Waterloo East); and her West End debut as Penny Pingleton in Hairspray (Shaftesbury). At the age of 12, Verity landed the role of Donna Windsor in Emmerdale (ITV), a role which she played for over 11 years. Verity recently returned to reprise her role as Donna for a dramatic and final award-winning five month stint.
Alan Mehdizadeh (Don) has appeared on stage in Billy Elliot the Musical (Victoria Palace, including the live cinema broadcast, DVD release, and 10th-anniversary gala performance); Swap! (UK tour); The Incredible Book Eating Boy (The MAC Belfast and Cahoots NI); Robin Hood (Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury); Jack and the Beanstalk (Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds); Watership Down (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre); Much Ado About Nothing (UK tour) and Reg in Table Manners (What Was That Productions). Alan has also appeared on television in Grange Hill (BBC).
Cordelia Farnworth (Nicola) has extensive theatre credits including Sunset Boulevard (London Coliseum); Ultimate Broadway Shanghai (GWB Entertainment); Rock of Ages (UK tour, Shaftesbury Theatre and Garrick Theatre); Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (Cliffs Pavillion); The Wizard of Oz (Larnaka Patticion Ampitheatre) and Mamma Mia! (Prince of Wales and international tour). Credits whilst training: Copacabana and Hot Mikado. Her film credits include Beauty and the Beast (Mandeville Films).
Michael Hobbs (George) has appeared on stage in Darling of the Day (Union Theatre); Radio Times (Watermill Theatre); Aladdin (Salisbury Playhouse); Who Ate all the Pies (Ladida Productions) and Johnny Johnson (Lost Musicals). Michael has also appeared on screen in A Fairytale of London Town (Mutt & Jeff Pictures) and My Week With Marilyn (Trademark Films).
Kinky Boots is produced by Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig, James L. Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer, Playful Productions, CJ E&M, Jayne Baron Sherman, Just for Laughs Theatricals/Judith Ann Abrams, Yasuhiro Kawana, Jane Bergère, Allan S. Gordon & Adam S. Gordon, Ken Davenport, Hunter Arnold, Lucy and Phil Suarez, Bryan Bantry, Ron Fierstein & Dorsey Regal, Independent Presenters Network, Jim Kierstead/Gregory Rae, BB Group/Christina Papagjika, Brian Smith/Tom & Connie Walsh, Warren Trepp, and Jujamcyn Theaters, in association with Cameron Mackintosh.
Book: Harvey Fierstein Composer & Lyricist: Cyndi Lauper Director & Choreographer: Jerry Mitchell Musical Supervision, Arranger & Orchestrator: Stephen Oremus Scenic Design: David Rockwell Costume Design: Gregg Barnes Lighting Design: Kenneth Posner Sound Design: John Shivers Hair Design: Josh Marquette Make-up Design: Randy Houston Mercer
BOOK TICKETS FROM £22.42
http://ift.tt/2q7hD6r LondonTheatre1.com
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if-you-fan-a-fire · 2 years
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"Sentences Totalling Ten Years Climax Sensational Cases," Windsor Star. August 1, 1942. Page 3. ---- 4 Took Part In Break-ins ---- Victor Hackett, 32, Goes to Kingston for Five Years --- Stole Crime Tools --- W. Edmunds to Pen; Two Others Get Terms in Reformatory ---- Sentences totalling 10 years were imposed by Magistrate D. M. Brodie today on four men earlier in the week found guilty of participating in break-ins of the downtown S. S. Kresge store and Thomson's Welding Service, 488 Pitt street east. TO KINGSTON Victor Hackett, 32, of Assumption street, [pictured] was sent to Kingston Penitentiary for five years for breaking and entering the Pitt street east welding shop and theft of $245 in various equipment. Robert Bell, 21. of Detroit, was given two years less one day in Ontario Reformatory and Lorne Pryor, of Toronto, one year in Ontario Reformatory for breaking and entering Kresge's store July 2 and theft of three government service revolvers, part of an Army Week display. William Edmunds, of Tuscarora street, was sentenced to two years in Kingston Penitentiary for receiving part of the loot from the Kresge store. CLOSES CASES Sentences to the latter trio brought to a close one of the most sensational break-ins in Windsor in several months and the hunt extended to Toronto before the three were apprehended. Hackett, with two other men yet to be tried, was caught by police early Sunday morning. July 12, as a result of co-operation of residents near the scene of the break-in. He was found guilty July 27 after evidence given by Ezra Suzor, 23, of Sandwich East Township, who admitted being an accomplice. Suzor was remanded last Monday without plea and Frank Mathew, 47, of Assumption street, elected trial by judge and jury. FOR SAFE-CRACKING "The equipment you have been found guilty of stealing was of no use to you except for safe-cracking and house-breaking. In view of your record I must sentence you to five years in Kingston Penitentiary," His Worship said. Pryor was found guilty last Wednesday after Bell and Edmunds had pleaded guilty to charges against them. Pryor, with Edmunds, was arrested and held for investigation July 17 by Toronto police two weeks after the Kresge break-in. Police arrested Bell in a rooming house on Sandwich street east less than six hours after the break-in was made,
[AL: Interestingly, both Edmunds and Hackett appealed their convictions. Edmunds succeeded in having it reduced to a reformatory term, but Hackett had his appeal dismissed. Hackett was 33, married, a machinist worked in a Windsor car plant, an English immigrant who arrived in Canada in 1912, and had previously been in an U.S. prison and the Ontario reformatory twice before. This time he was convict #7109 at Kingston Penitentiary. He worked in the machine shop at first, but eventually became a medical orderly - he had a high school education (unusual for the time) and was well conducted. He was transferred August 1943 to Collin's Bay Penitentiary, a lower security 'reform' prison, and was released from there in 1945 by parole.]
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if-you-fan-a-fire · 4 years
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“Movie Thrillers Blamed For Juvenile Delinquency,” Border Cities Star. March 11, 1931. Page 05. --- Attacked at Convention ---- Urban Trustees Told That U.S.Productions Are Worst ---- BAN IS DISCUSSED ---- Adoption of Quebec Rule Barring Minors Under 16 Is Endorses --- Motion picture thrillers, especially those produced in the United States, were branded as insidious propaganda for the spread of crime and juvenile delinquency, at the 12th annual convention today of the Urban School Trustees Association of Ontario.
BACKED BY DELEGATES The attack was the movies was led by Dr. Campbell Laidlaw of Ottawa and received whole-hearted support from the delegates. Dr. Laidlaw introduced a resolution which was seconded by F. B. Edmunds K.C. of Toronto, calling upon the executive of the Association to study ways and means whereby the Department of Public Welfare would be petitioned ‘to remove this menace so far as it possible.’
The resolution, which was carried unanimously, suggested that this miht be accomplished by rigid censorship or by adopting regulations now in effect in Quebec, which would bar children under 16 from attending certain pictures. 
The discussion on movies was introduced by Dr. Laidlaw after E. T. Howe, Attendance Officer of the Windsor Board of Education had presented a paper outlining problems of delinquency that crop up in the study of school attendance.
‘American producers are allowed to sent their pictures into Canada. I believe this is largely responsible for the trouble, Mrs. M. Arnold of St. Thomas declared. ‘I understand that on April 1 three producing companies are going to start operations in Windsor. We ought to ban the United States films. We don’t require them and well will be showing a bit of British fair play.’
CALLED MENACE Dr. Laidlaw’s resolution states that ‘the moving picture theatre as we have it in our midst today it a great menace and ‘directs children, often most unwholesomely, from the main aim in their young selves, gaining an education.’ The executive will report at next year’s conventions on steps that should be taken.
‘Causes of truancy are many,’ Mr. Rowe said. Some fancied grievance with the teacher the irresistible call of the great outdoors, the environment of poverty and insanitary housing, the evil influence of bad companionship, visual defects, adenoids, lack of co-operation of negligent parents in school attendance, lack of shoes and clothing, and the sensitive temperament of a child. Frequent visitation of the Attendance Officer means less truancy and less crime in the future. Unfortunately the public and the average citizen are apathetic on the value of attendance work. They regard ‘playing hookey’ as harmless when in reality it is often the first step toward criminal tendencies later in life.’
REFLECTION ON HOME ‘One of the most deplorable things in life is the socially ambitious mother who has not the time for her daughter, and the amusement-craving daughter who has not time for her mother. In the child we readily see a reflection of the home and its environments. Parents these days do not believe in the process of acquisition by hard work. They want to make everything easy for their children they want everything ready-made. What we need today is more parents who will teach their children love, service and responsibility, along with morality, ethics, and religion. Parents who have the fear of God in their hearts give their children the proper upbringing.
‘The modern youth has far greater problems to meet than have ever before been encountered by the youth of any generation. He has social and educational problems to meet and they are complicated by the modern inventions. Just because a boy fails to make the proper adjustment does not necessarily mean that he is worthless. It seems to me we should try to adjust our educational system to fit the boy or girl. The problem is a big one and the school authorities should have the assistance of the social, religious and industrial bodies to assist them in getting the modern youth to make the most of his abilities.
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