Gaslight Digest Sunday, August 29 1999 Volume 01 : Number 092


In this issue:


   Mental Labor Exchange
   Hilbert's 20 mathematical questions for the 20th Century
   O/T: For Hallowe'en
   Today in History -- Aug 28
   Hilbert's Math
   F.O.C. Darley Exhibit to Open September 11
   Re: F.O.C. Darley Exhibit to Open September 11
   Today in History -- Aug 29
   Re:  Today in History -- Aug 29
   Re:  Caroline Kirkland Book
   Kipling as Jack the Lad
   Captain Scott's Effects at Auction
   Television and the classics
   Re: Television and the classics

-----------------------------THE POSTS-----------------------------

Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 14:51:11 -0600
From: sdavies(at)MtRoyal.AB.CA
Subject: Mental Labor Exchange

Diana P. pointed out this post from Sharp-L:


- ----- Forwarded by Diana Patterson/Academic/MRC on 08/25/99 07:57 AM ------


Martha Burns <Martha_Burns(at)BROWN.EDU> on 08/07/99 10:22:53 PM

Please respond to "SHARP-L Society for the History of Authorship,
      Reading & Publishing" <SHARP-L(at)LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU>

 Subject: Mental Labor Exchange



        Apropos of Bill Bell's offering from Bourdieu, while searching another
topic, I came across this unusual piece in the New Orleans DAILY DELTA of
February 13, 1851:

        "MENTAL LABOR EXCHANGE. The newest crotchet that has entered the noddles
of the 'Wise men of Gotham,' New York, is the establishment of a 'Mental
Labor Exchange,' -- that is, an 'institution' whose business it will be to
fix a value upon all sorts of literary productions, and to aid the authors
thereof in getting a decent livelihood."  [END]

        The word "Exchange" had certain connotations for those who kept abreast
of the news. A prominent story throughout that fall and winter was of the
capture and trial in New York of "One-Eyed Tompkins," a notorious
confidence man who sold $77,000 worth of bogus stock on the New York Stock
Exchange. In fact, there were at least two stories on Tompkins in the DAILY
DELTA during the week that this other little notice appeared.
        That's the small bit of light I can shed on the "Mental Labor Exchange."
I wonder, can anyone else offer insight?

        By the way, one great benefit in reading papers 150 years old is that
you don't have to wait months to find out what happens. Poor old Tompkins
committed suicide in prison. He left a note declaring his innocence, but,
by that point, no one believed him.

Martha Burns
Brown University


- -----------------------------------------------------
- -----------------------------------------------------
- -----------------------------------------------------

Martha, when I asked permission to repost, also pointed out:

     One thing -- the scoundrel who committed suicide in jail was named
"One-Eyed Thompson," not "One-Eyed Tompkins," as I spelled it in my post.
The DAILY DELTA had it wrong.

                                   Stephen D
                          mailto:sdavies(at)mtroyal.ab.ca

===0===



Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 15:42:35 -0600
From: sdavies(at)MtRoyal.AB.CA
Subject: Hilbert's 20 mathematical questions for the 20th Century

David Hilbert gave a lecture in 1900, in which he proposed "fundamental
questions to challenge mathematical efforts in the 20th century."  I'm no
mathematician, but I would like to know how well science has done in answering
his questions 99 years later.

I found this URL of his lecture:
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/hilbert/toc.html

Can anyone summarize our progress (simply)?

Stephen D
mailto:SDavies(at)mtroyal.ab.ca

===0===



Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 17:05:02 -0700
From: Deborah McMillion Nering <deborah(at)alice.gloaming.com>
Subject: O/T: For Hallowe'en

  Corman Creates Monster Serial For AMC

Roger Corman, the famous low-budget film director behind such classic
flicks as It Conquered the World, has signed on to produce and star
in a 35-chapter "serial monster movie" for AMC. According to The
Hollywood Reporter, the serial installments will air during the
breaks between a selection of classic monster movies and specials
that AMC will feature during its three-day Halloween weekend marathon.

Corman will play the role of Gorman, the head of the  AMC horror
department, and he will be backed up by cameo appearances from his
former associates at  American International Pictures. Corman will
also host AMC's upcoming MonsterFest '99, as well as AMC's eight-week
Corman Film Festival.

(for all you lovers of Corman's old Poe/Lovecraft movies, there have
been quite a few this month)

Deborah

Deborah McMillion
deborah(at)gloaming.com
http://www.gloaming.com/deborah.html

===0===



Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 00:34:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Champ <rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu>
Subject: Today in History -- Aug 28

Interesting things that happened August 28th:

Birthdays on this date:
  In 1828 Leo Tolstoy, writer, social philosopher (War and Peace)
  In 1831 Lucy Ware Webb Hayes, first lady
  In 1833 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, English Pre-Raphaelite painter, designer
  In 1889 Charles Boyer, American film star
  In 1906 Sir John Betjeman, poet laureate of England (Mt. Zion)
  In 1917 Jack Kirby, comic book artist

Events worth noting:
  In 1837 Pharmacists John Lea and William Perrins of Worcester, England begin
          the manufacture of Worcester Sauce.
  In 1862 Belle Boyd released from Old Capital Prison in Washington, DC.
  In 1867 U.S. occupies Midway Islands in the Pacific.
  In 1884 Mickey Welsh strikes out the first 9 men he faces.
  In 1907 United Parcel Service begins service, in Seattle.
  In 1916 Italy's declares war against Germany during WW I.
  In 1917 10 suffragists were arrested as they picketed the White House.
  In 1922 WEAF in NYC aired the first radio commercial. Queensboro Realty
          Company of Jackson Heights paid $100 for 10 minutes of air time.


===0===



Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 05:56:59 -0700
From: Deborah McMillion Nering <deborah(at)alice.gloaming.com>
Subject: Hilbert's Math

My fatherinlaw is a retired mathematician and I passed your website
on to him, Bob and this is his response:


>This is off the cuff. I could look up some stuff on this. As you
>said, in 1900 at an international conference, David Hilbert
>described 20 problems. These where not just puzzles. They were
>serious mathematical concepts that were unresolved at the time.
>Hilbert felt that working on these problems would advance
>mathematics in a significant way.
>
>The profesors that I studied under at Indiana University and at
>Princeton was Emil Artin. I walked into an advanced calculus course
>he was giving in my junior year.  He was so wonderful that I took
>every class he offered while I was at Indiana. He was born in 1898
>and served in the Austrian army during WWI. Then in the early 20s he
>solved two of Hilbert's problems. That MADE him as a world class
>mathematician.
>
>I heard (but do not know) that the last one was resolved about 20 years ago.

Deborah

Deborah McMillion
deborah(at)gloaming.com
http://www.gloaming.com/deborah.html

===0===



Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 21:40:11 -0400 (EDT)
From: LoracLegid(at)aol.com
Subject: F.O.C. Darley Exhibit to Open September 11

Inventing the American Past: The Art of F.O.C. Darley will be open September
11 through November 21 at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford,
Pennsylvania. (www.brandywinemuseum.org).

Organized by the prints division of the New York Public Library, this
exhibition of F.O.C. Darley's works includes prints, drawings, books and
photographs. The exhibition traces Darley's career from Philadelphia to
New York and finally to his home in Claymont, Delaware. This underscores
Darley's leading role as a major illustrator whose imagery parallels
contemporary developments in American history and genre painting.

A catalog of the exhibit by Nancy Finlay is available from a large online
bookseller.

Thackeray sketch added to F.O.C. Darley web page.
Darley's sketch of William Thackeray from the Library of Congress collection
has been added to our Darley Society web page. (www.focdarley.org)

Carol Digel
LoracLegid(at)aol.com

===0===



Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 23:25:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Champ <rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu>
Subject: Re: F.O.C. Darley Exhibit to Open September 11

On Sat, 28 Aug 1999 LoracLegid(at)aol.com wrote:

>
> Inventing the American Past: The Art of F.O.C. Darley will be open September
> 11 through November 21 at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford,
> Pennsylvania. (www.brandywinemuseum.org).
>

Chadds Ford is a name closely associated with another great American
illustrator, N. C. Wyeth.  Do you know, Carol, if Wyeth ever expressed any
views on Darley?

Bob C.

_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Robert L. Champ
rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu
Editor, teacher, anglophile, human curiosity

Whatever things are pure, whatever things are
lovely, whatever things are of good report, if
there is any virtue and if there is anything
praiseworthy, meditate on these things
                                 Philippians 4:8

rchamp7927(at)aol.com       robertchamp(at)netscape.net
_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

===0===



Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 00:29:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Champ <rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu>
Subject: Today in History -- Aug 29

Interesting things that happened August 29th:

Birthdays on this date:
  In 1809 Oliver Wendell Holmes (in Cambridge, MA), jurist, author
  In 1815 Anna Ella Carroll, American writer
  In 1862 Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian Symbolist poet (Nobel 1911)
  In 1881 Valery Nicolas Larbaud, French novelist, essayist, translator
  In 1899 Lyman L. Lemnitzer, Marine Corps general
  In 1912 Barry Sullivan, actor
  In 1915 Ingrid Bergman (in Sweden), actor (Casablanca)
  In 1916 George Montgomery, actor
  In 1917 Isabel Sanford, actor (All in the Family, Jeffersons)
  In 1920 Charles Christopher "Bird" Parker, saxophonist

Events worth noting:
  In 1862 Battle of Second Manassas.
  In 1864 William Huggins discovers chemical composition of nebulae.
  In 1877 Second president of the Mormon Church, Brigham Young, died.
  In 1885 Gottlieb Daimler receives German patent for a motorcycle.
  In 1896 Chop suey invented in NYC by chef of visiting Chinese Ambassador.
  In 1914 'Arizonan' is the first vessel to arrive in SF via the Panama Canal.


===0===



Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 03:28:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Zozie(at)aol.com
Subject: Re:  Today in History -- Aug 29

In a message dated 8/29/99 4:30:35 AM, Bob wrote:

<<  In 1815 Anna Ella Carroll, American writer>>

My little feminist diary notes Carroll's birthday and adds:  [she] helped win
the Civil War with her strategy in the Tennessee campaign but was never
rewarded or duly acclaimed.

Anyone know anything about this?

phoebe

===0===



Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 11:44:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: LoracLegid(at)aol.com
Subject: Re:  Caroline Kirkland Book

jb05215(at)navix.net
Ms. Digel:

Good luck with your continuing research into Darley.  You may already be
aware that Darley illustrated the fourth edition of Caroline M.
Kirkland's A New Home, Who'll Follow? (New York, C. S. Francis, 1850).
You may not be aware that the Library of Congress has digitized the
fifth edition, also containing the Darley illustrations, although I'm
vexed that there is no way to find the illustrations except by browsing
through the text, one slowly-downloading page after another.  (Do a
search for Caroline Kirkland at
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html.)

Best--

Jana Bouma
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
jb05215(at)navix.net

Ray, she is right the pictures are impossible to find - the book has 306
pages.  I am going to try to get the book on interlibrary loan and have Bill
photograph them. Jana replied to the lady at the Mystic Seaport Museum and
gave her some helpful information.
Great web site.  Will explore it further.  Think I'll start pulling together
Civil war stuff  and go after all those civil war recreators.  What do you
have in that line?
Carol

===0===



Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 15:10:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Champ <rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu>
Subject: Kipling as Jack the Lad

Biography nowadays often reads more like an extended tabloid story than
anything that resembles a just consideration of a man or woman's life.
Take the case of the new bio of Rudyard Kipling, which presents the great
writer's story to us with, seemingly, the intention of spicing him up.  I
don't know if Kipling actually did the things recounted here--it is always
a mistake to suppose that any writer's knowledge comes from personal
experience (note, for instance, _The Red Badge of Courage)--but I would at
least like to believe that Kipling did have the unusual effect on the
movies attributed to him here.  The review is from the Times of London.

Bob C.

August 29 1999 BRITAIN

His dark side: Kipling wrote a tale of seduction that inspired the first film
'vamp'


Kipling, brothel creeper and opium smoker, was inventor of the It girl
Richard Brooks
Arts Editor




THE vamp and the "It girl" had the most unlikely creator. Rudyard Kipling,
author of The Jungle Book, Kim and the poem If, is often regarded as a
strait-laced Edwardian imperialist - but a new biography claims that he had
another, far more exotic side.

"He is a much racier writer than he is given credit for," said Andrew Lycett,
whose Rudyard Kipling is published next month. Prostitutes, opium dens and
sexual deviancy are not what readers associate with Kipling, but a film based
on one of his poems was considered so offensive that it was banned and never
shown in Britain.

A Fool There Was, a 1915 silent film based on Kipling's The Vampire, produced
the original "vamp". Theda Bara became the screen's first sex symbol,
starring in the seedy tale of a businessman who abandons his family for drink
and narcotics after seduction by a demi-mondaine.

Kipling wrote the poem about his cousin, Philip Burne-Jones, an artist who
had loved and been spurned by Mrs Patrick Campbell, a famous actress of the
time. Kipling felt sorry for Burne-Jones - who depicted himself in one of his
paintings as a miserable youth, lying on a bed straddled suggestively by a
wild-eyed woman. Kipling was inspired to pen The Vampire in revenge.

The respectable parents of devotees of Mowgli and Baloo the bear would have
been shocked to know that Kipling's ability to write about drugs and loose
women came from personal experience. Kipling, born in India, came as a child
to England, where he lived unhappily for some time with a foster family. He
returned to India in his teens as a journalist.

"He smoked opium and frequented local brothels," said Lycett. Several short
stories, such as On the City Wall, Beyond the Pale and Without the Benefit of
Clergy, have detailed descriptions of houses of ill repute. "I'm sure he must
either have been to them or have had an Indian mistress," says Lisa Lewis,
former chairman of the Kipling Society. On the City Wall refers to the
"squabby Pluffy cushions" in the Lahore brothel and describes a prostitute in
intimate detail.

The origin of the "It girl", later made more famous by Clara Bow, the film
star, came from another of Kipling's works, Mrs Bathhurst, set in South
Africa. Kipling visited the country often. In the short story, linked with
poems and published in 1904, Kipling writes of the "special quality" of a
barmaid: "Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just
It. Some women'll stay in a man's memory once they walk down the street."

Lycett believes this is the first reference to an It girl, which a century
later still describes a woman with allure.

"Kipling had this very romantic side, too," says Lewis. "People who don't
really know his work think of him as a rather formal writer. In fact, he had
an incredibly powerful subconscious, which he called the demon. It was a
poetic muse."

Kipling's love life clearly influenced his work. Lycett found letters between
the author and Isabella Burton, wife of an Indian officer. The witty,
philosophical Burton was fictionalised as Mrs Hauksbee in The Education of
Otis Yeere, but the great unrequited love of Kipling's life was Florence
Garrard, the artist, whom he nearly wed just before marrying the American
Caroline Balestier.

Although their marriage lasted until his death in 1936, Lycett believes it
was not happy. A daughter died as a child in 1899 and Kipling partly blamed
his wife for not looking after her properly when she caught a cold that
worsened. They lost a son in the first world war, which depressed them both
deeply, although Kipling remained a great advocate for England in war.

Despite his popular acclaim, Kipling, a close friend of George V and a
relative of Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister, remained modest about formal
recognition. Although a solidly Establishment figure, he declined the post of
poet laureate and refused a knighthood and the Order of Merit, although he
accepted the Nobel prize for literature in 1907.

"He was very reticent about himself, as his own memoirs, which were published
immediately after his death, show," says Michael Smith, secretary of the
Kipling Society. Smith is not as convinced as Lycett that Kipling led quite
such a licentious life in India: "Kipling might have exaggerated a bit to
friends, though I know he did want to understand what went on in the bazaars
of India, rather than the British clubs."

Lycett emphasises in his book, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, that
Kipling had a greater range as a writer than is generally accepted. He said:
"He could and did write just as well about the brothels of Lahore as the
gardens of Sussex" - where he bought a house, Batemans, which was his home
until his death.

Much of Kipling's writing may be considered out of fashion today, and many of
his views thought politically incorrect, but the popularity of his works has
endured. If, Margaret Thatcher's favourite poem, was written in 1910, but was
recently voted the nation's favourite poem by BBC viewers.

_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Robert L. Champ
rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu
Editor, teacher, anglophile, human curiosity

Whatever things are pure, whatever things are
lovely, whatever things are of good report, if
there is any virtue and if there is anything
praiseworthy, meditate on these things
                                 Philippians 4:8

rchamp7927(at)aol.com       robertchamp(at)netscape.net
_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

































===0===



Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 15:14:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Champ <rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu>
Subject: Captain Scott's Effects at Auction

The great explorer's effects are going on sale at Christie's. Here is the
story, once again taken from the Times of London.

Bob C.

Captain Scott's lost relics go to auction
Jon Ungoed-Thomas


LOCKED away in a suitcase in a bank vault for more than 50 years, they are
the poignant relics of Captain Robert Scott's doomed expedition to the South
Pole. Now displayed for the first time, the artefacts comprise one of the
most significant collections of exploration memorabilia ever assembled in
Britain and are expected to fetch at least ?200,000 at auction next month.
The death of Scott and his fellow explorers in the frozen wastes of the
Antarctic in 1912 has become fixed in the British psyche as an epic tale of
bravery in the face of adversity. They trudged all the way to the South Pole
to claim it for their country - only to find that Roald Amundsen, the
Norwegian explorer, had beaten them by a matter of days. As Scott and his
dejected men tried to make their way back, the rations ran low. "I am just
going outside, and may be some time," said Captain Laurence Oates, with
memorable understatement, as he stepped out of Scott's tent, frostbitten and
dying of gangrene.

The items to be sold at auction at Christie's include Scott's green-glass
goggles, his leather-bound diary, a Union Jack, brass compass, Bible, linen
food bags - and even a crumbling ration biscuit.

"This is the most wonderful material because it is so evocative of the
expedition and so closely associated with Scott," said William Mills, of the
Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge.

Most of the items have not been seen since they were returned to Kathleen,
Scott's widow. The explorer's son, Sir Peter, the renowned conservationist,
later placed the belongings in a bank vault in a battered brown case. They
will now be auctioned on September 17 in a sale that will include 130 lots
relating to polar exploration. Demand is such that even the broken Huntley &
Palmers biscuit is expected to fetch more than ?1,000. It is wrapped in
greaseproof paper bearing the words "Antarctic Biscuit Captain Scott's
Expedition 1910".

"Every item is important because they each in their own way tell this most
extraordinary story," said Nicholas Lambourn, associate director at
Christie's. "Antarctica has opened up as a tourist destination and people
have become increasingly interested in past expeditions."

In the last entry in his journal, Scott, the son of a brewery owner, wrote:
"We shall stick it out to the end but we are getting weaker, of course, and
the end cannot be far."

Eight months later, a search party discovered Scott, who died in his tent
with two of his comrades. His belongings were scattered around him and his
left hand was stretched over the body of one of his friends. Several of the
items now due to be auctioned were recovered from the tent, while others were
found at the expedition's Cape Evans base camp. A silk Union flag, believed
to have been taken to the South Pole and to have adorned Scott's table for
his last birthday meal, is expected to fetch more than ?10,000. Also on sale
is Scott's sledging flag, which was flown at the South Pole and later
recovered from the spot where Scott died. It is embroidered with his family
motto: "Ready Aye Ready".

Among his personal possessions are a silver hip flask and watch, his green
canvas sledging satchel, a metal matchbox and two briar pipes. Equipment for
the expedition is also to be auctioned, including a packet of needles, eight
linen ration bags, a thermometer and a tin containing part of the Primus
stove that heated their last meal, before the fuel ran out.

The Scott family has kept some of the explorer's most treasured possessions,
but believe it is the right time to sell some mementos of the expedition.
"There comes a time when the belongings of one's forebears, famous or not,
should be dispersed," said Lady Scott, Sir Peter's widow.




_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Robert L. Champ
rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu
Editor, teacher, anglophile, human curiosity

Whatever things are pure, whatever things are
lovely, whatever things are of good report, if
there is any virtue and if there is anything
praiseworthy, meditate on these things
                                 Philippians 4:8

rchamp7927(at)aol.com       robertchamp(at)netscape.net
_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@



===0===



Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 15:21:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Champ <rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu>
Subject: Television and the classics

Here in the States we count on English television to bring us exempla of
good taste and civility, which are in short supply on American tv and in
the movies as well. (Unfortunately, we send the English our worst dreck.)
Not everything always goes smoothly with English television, however, as
the following article from the Times of London (my third replication from
that publication in one day!) tells us.  The article also gives us some
intimation of what is coming up in the future.

Bob C.

August 29 1999 TELEVISION

Are adaptations of the classics trying to be too modern? The BBC gave up on a
'comic' David Copperfield, and now ITV is in trouble for daring to reinvent
Fagin, reports SALLY KINNES
 ?
Hardly kosher: Robert Lindsay
and Sam Smith in Oliver Twist

Old favourites in a new twist


More frocks on the box

It takes a lot to ruffle the well-starched petticoats of television costume
drama. Usually, it's only the enormous cost that raises a painted eyebrow or
two. But there's a new whiff of gossip in the air. Over the past few months,
the rows behind the scenes have threatened to be the main event.

Last year, the BBC announced with pride a new production of David
Copperfield, to be shown this Christmas. Within 12 months, it was all going
wrong: script, writer, cast and schedule. The project was delayed so badly,
there was a moment when it looked as if the BBC might celebrate Christmas in
January.

John Sullivan had been chosen to adapt the new version. The creator of Only
Fools and Horses, he is the most successful comedy writer of his generation.
The wheeler-dealer Del Boy (David Jason), and his put-upon Rodney (Nicholas
Lyndhurst) were the comic creations of the 1980s. Throughout the decade,
their Christmas specials were the focal point of the tele-feast. So when
Sullivan told BBC1's controller, Peter Salmon, that he wanted to do
Copperfield, and that Jason (as Micawber) and Lyndhurst (as the
ever-so-'umble Uriah Heep) were part of his casting plans, it must have
seemed the perfect Christmas cracker. As a way of bringing a mass audience to
a literary adaptation, it would be hard to think of a more saleable comic
trio.

But Copperfield, for all its popularity, is not exactly a laugh-a-minute
romp, and faces fell when the script came in. Though the BBC will no longer
discuss it, and Sullivan isn't returning calls, both cite "creative
differences". But according to a BBC insider, Sullivan delivered a late
script that the BBC couldn't make. It was also said to be too funny, and not
traditional enough.

Sullivan left the project, and Jason's other commitments meant he was no
longer available. A new writer, Adrian Hodges, was brought in, who wrote the
new script in six weeks. Meanwhile, in what was widely seen as a snub to the
BBC, Sullivan took an idea for a series based on Micawber to Yorkshire
Television, with whom he now has a "first-look" deal. Yorkshire is the
company for whom Jason makes the hugely successful A Touch of Frost, so the
assumption is that he will play Micawber after all.

It was just the sort of embarrassing interlude the BBC could have done
without. With rows over the new director-general, the licence fee and the
perceived weakness of BBC1, it has been open season on the corporation all
year. The last thing it needed was any suggestion that it was losing its grip
on a BBC staple such as period drama. But the genre has also been giving them
grief over on ITV. Alan Bleasdale was commissioned to adapt Oliver Twist, but
has been causing a furore for having his artistic way with a much loved text.
Chief among his perceived crimes is to take the Jewishness out of Fagin.
Contrary to some reports, Bleasdale doesn't go quite so far as to make Fagin
a Gentile, but neither is he the shrivelled old Jew Oliver encounters in the
book. Instead, he is a magician who took to crime when his magic failed.

All this has caused no end of trouble. The playwright Steven Berkoff wants to
"Save Our Fagin", and Bleasdale's attempts to clean up Fagin's image have
been called "illiterate", "phoney", and "part of the milksop blandness of
Blair's Britain" in the press. Fagin, sly old weasel that he was, would have
been amazed at the number of his newfound friends. Bleasdale, however, has
been completely taken aback. "Sometimes I don't see the bowler coming towards
me. I knew they were going to murder me over GBH. I knew the politics of that
would cause a stink. But I never expected it over this. I was shocked."

In Hollywood, where they can ask for an interview with Edith Wharton (died
1937) without so much as a blush, they would be baffled. Currently in the
middle of a love affair with the classics, Hollywood will twist any tale
until it can raise a buck. Sometimes the attempt crashes around its ears. It
will take more than Robert De Niro to convince anyone that Great Expectations
belongs in contemporary LA. Similarly, in 10 Things I Hate About You, The
Taming of the Shrew perhaps gains little by being relocated to Padua High.
But Leonardo DiCaprio's stylish and original Romeo + Juliet worked a treat,
as did the contemporary take on Jane Austen's Emma, Clueless.

"It doesn't matter in a film," says David Pirie, who adapted Wilkie Collins's
The Woman in White for the BBC. "You can set Jane Austen in an American mall,
and nobody notices. But working for television, especially for the BBC,
you're expected to be traditional."

British television audiences have become used to a rich diet of big books,
lavish budgets and faithfully rendered scripts. Schooled on the BBC's
children's and adult's classic serial in the 1960s and 1970s, dazzled by
Granada's Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown in the 1980s, they
have been ruined with riches in the 1990s, with Pride and Prejudice and Our
Mutual Friend, to name but two. If the latter was particularly faithful to
the book, it was because the adapter, Sandy Welch, had been brought up on the
BBC's Sunday-afternoon serials.

There is always a tension between what writers want to do, however, and what
audiences are prepared to allow. Nominated for a Bafta, The Woman in White
earned Pirie reviews as good as any he's ever had. But he changed plenty, and
it was noticed. "Radio Times got a number of letters saying, 'How dare he? He
should just have given us the text.' For a small and vocal minority, I feel
that is all they want."

Not that it is always up to the writer. Carlton's forthcoming adaptation of
Lady Audley's Secret has been moved forward 10 years from the original
because of the clothes. "The costumes of the time [1860] look like
furniture," says Donald Hounam, the scriptwriter. "It would have been
difficult to give it the lurid tone we were after if we had had everyone
moving around on castors." Then there is the input of the co-production
company, which has its own audiences to consider (adapting the classics is so
expensive, they are now impossible to make alone). The BBC's partner for its
forthcoming Madame Bovary is the Boston-based company WGBH. "They sent a note
saying, 'No nipples, please,' " says Heidi Thomas, who has adapted the
Flaubert classic about a provincial adulteress.

Thomas speaks for many when she says she feels a duty to the author. "I worry
that Flaubert will come back and haunt me and say, 'So what was going on when
you put in that scene in the woods?' " But changes have to be made, none the
less.

For all their traditional roots, classic adaptations are getting much sharper
and more up to date. "In Pride and Prejudice, we put in things that weren't
in the book, like the scene with Darcy swimming at the lake," says Sue
Birtwistle, the producer. "We talked long and hard about it, but we felt it
was reasonable to show he was a young man who had these responsibilities of
running an estate and occasionally must have wanted a moment to himself.
Nobody seemed to mind." When it's really convincing, nobody does.

At the BBC, they are keeping their nerve. They've yanked Copperfield back
from the brink, and like parents who were once panicking at not finding the
right Christmas present, are now confident they've pulled it off. Just
reading the cast list is like unpacking a Christmas stocking: Maggie Smith,
Bob Hoskins, Ian McKellen, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Paul Whitehouse and Dawn
French.

The masterplan at BBC1 is now to alternate 19th-and 20th-century classics,
but nobody could accuse it of not being prepared to take risks. In the
pipeline is a contemporary version of Crime and Punishment by Tony Marchant
(who did Great Expectations), moved from St Petersburg to the UK. It's a
brave thing for a mainstream channel to do. "This year we've given three
19th-century novels the big BBC treatment - Copperfield, Bovary and Wives and
Daughters," says Jane Tranter, head of BBC1 serials. "Then we're moving into
the mainstream with two 20th-century adaptations - a Kingsley Amis, and two
Nancy Mitfords melded as one. We would like to do more, but with 20th-century
books, the rights are very difficult to get. If Graham Greene were available,
for instance, we would hoover him up."

Purists may be relieved to hear that Greene is safely out of reach, but those
with green ink should prepare to fill their pens now. Bleasdale is doing
plenty to worry them. On Oliver Twist, he has come up with what Hollywood
would call a "back story", breathing life into characters barely sketched in.
In the book, the explanation of Oliver's origins are squashed into a single
chapter, almost at the end. New relations and family feuds arrive with every
paragraph. Bleasdale has taken the chapter, smoothed it out into a coherent
narrative, and put it where it belongs chronologically, at the beginning of
the story.

"By putting it at the beginning, I'm giving it an absolutely straight
narrative drive and not having to use the panic of coincidences you find in
the book. Dickens had got himself into a corner. This was his first important
novel, he was only 24, and writing in monthly instalments gave him no chance
to rewrite. He was also just about to start something else.

"I've always found Monks [Oliver's half brother] fascinating. We have a son
who became epileptic in adolescence. I had always wanted to explore what I
felt about that without making it a personal story. So the fact that Dickens
had written about an epileptic character in Monks gave me the release I had
wanted. There's no disrespect here. There's not even arrogance. The changes
I've made have been made out of the necessity to craft seven hours of drama
out of a book that was written in monthly instalments."

Bleasdale is unrepentant, and he's probably right. For all the furore, his
adaptation may well turn out to be the most faithful of all. And what's more,
he's planning another one, so if you don't like the sound of this one, steel
yourself. Though he won't reveal what it is, another 19th-century masterpiece
is already in his sights.*


More frocks on the box

Wives and Daughters,
BBC1, November 1999
Elizabeth Gaskell's final unfinished novel, adapted and completed by Andrew
Davies, arguably the best in the business. Reunites Davies, a former Eng Lit
lecturer, with his former pupil and producer on Pride and Prejudice, Sue
Birtwistle. Expect a happy ending, with a twist about how it's achieved.
Stars Bill Paterson, Michael Gambon, Francesca Annis and Justine Waddell.

Madame Bovary,
BBC1, 2000
Gustave Flaubert's novel about a woman's quest for self-fulfilment, adapted
by Heidi Thomas. For her, Emma Bovary is "a Thomas Hardy character, caught in
an Alan Bennett world" and the book's subject is "the corrosive nature of
human unhappiness". At the BBC, the script got a reputation for being a racy
read as copies went missing. Stars the Australian actress Frances O'Connor;
directed by Tim Fywell.

Gormenghast,
BBC2, early 2000
This adaptation of Mervyn Peake's fantastical novel has been years in the
planning. Twenty-two-year-old Jonathan Rhys Meyers heads an all-star cast
that includes Ian Richardson, Christopher Lee, Stephen Fry and Spike
Milligan. Adapted by Malcolm McKay.

The Railway Children,
ITV, 2000
Adapted from E Nesbit's children's classic by Men Behaving Badly writer Simon
Nye, "a very tender writer" according to Carlton's director of drama,
Jonathan Powell.

The Turn of the Screw,
ITV, probably Christmas
Henry James's brilliant ghost story, adapted by Nick Dear. Stars Pam Ferris,
Jodhi May and Colin Firth.



_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Robert L. Champ
rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu
Editor, teacher, anglophile, human curiosity

Whatever things are pure, whatever things are
lovely, whatever things are of good report, if
there is any virtue and if there is anything
praiseworthy, meditate on these things
                                 Philippians 4:8

rchamp7927(at)aol.com       robertchamp(at)netscape.net
_________________________________________________
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@





























===0===



Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 12:54:43 -0700
From: Marta Dawes <smdawes(at)home.com>
Subject: Re: Television and the classics

Can't wait to see a new adaptation of "The Railway Children" and
"Turning of the Screw".  I wonder how long it will take to get to the
US?

Marta

Robert Champ wrote:
>
> Here in the States we count on English television to bring us exempla of
> good taste and civility, which are in short supply on American tv and in
> the movies as well. (Unfortunately, we send the English our worst dreck.)
> Not everything always goes smoothly with English television, however, as
> the following article from the Times of London (my third replication from
> that publication in one day!) tells us.  The article also gives us some
> intimation of what is coming up in the future.
>
> Bob C.
>
> August 29 1999 TELEVISION
>
> Are adaptations of the classics trying to be too modern? The BBC gave up on a
> 'comic' David Copperfield, and now ITV is in trouble for daring to reinvent
> Fagin, reports SALLY KINNES
>  ?
> Hardly kosher: Robert Lindsay
> and Sam Smith in Oliver Twist
>
> Old favourites in a new twist
>
>
> More frocks on the box
>
> It takes a lot to ruffle the well-starched petticoats of television costume
> drama. Usually, it's only the enormous cost that raises a painted eyebrow or
> two. But there's a new whiff of gossip in the air. Over the past few months,
> the rows behind the scenes have threatened to be the main event.
>
> Last year, the BBC announced with pride a new production of David
> Copperfield, to be shown this Christmas. Within 12 months, it was all going
> wrong: script, writer, cast and schedule. The project was delayed so badly,
> there was a moment when it looked as if the BBC might celebrate Christmas in
> January.
>
> John Sullivan had been chosen to adapt the new version. The creator of Only
> Fools and Horses, he is the most successful comedy writer of his generation.
> The wheeler-dealer Del Boy (David Jason), and his put-upon Rodney (Nicholas
> Lyndhurst) were the comic creations of the 1980s. Throughout the decade,
> their Christmas specials were the focal point of the tele-feast. So when
> Sullivan told BBC1's controller, Peter Salmon, that he wanted to do
> Copperfield, and that Jason (as Micawber) and Lyndhurst (as the
> ever-so-'umble Uriah Heep) were part of his casting plans, it must have
> seemed the perfect Christmas cracker. As a way of bringing a mass audience to
> a literary adaptation, it would be hard to think of a more saleable comic
> trio.
>
> But Copperfield, for all its popularity, is not exactly a laugh-a-minute
> romp, and faces fell when the script came in. Though the BBC will no longer
> discuss it, and Sullivan isn't returning calls, both cite "creative
> differences". But according to a BBC insider, Sullivan delivered a late
> script that the BBC couldn't make. It was also said to be too funny, and not
> traditional enough.
>
> Sullivan left the project, and Jason's other commitments meant he was no
> longer available. A new writer, Adrian Hodges, was brought in, who wrote the
> new script in six weeks. Meanwhile, in what was widely seen as a snub to the
> BBC, Sullivan took an idea for a series based on Micawber to Yorkshire
> Television, with whom he now has a "first-look" deal. Yorkshire is the
> company for whom Jason makes the hugely successful A Touch of Frost, so the
> assumption is that he will play Micawber after all.
>
> It was just the sort of embarrassing interlude the BBC could have done
> without. With rows over the new director-general, the licence fee and the
> perceived weakness of BBC1, it has been open season on the corporation all
> year. The last thing it needed was any suggestion that it was losing its grip
> on a BBC staple such as period drama. But the genre has also been giving them
> grief over on ITV. Alan Bleasdale was commissioned to adapt Oliver Twist, but
> has been causing a furore for having his artistic way with a much loved text.
> Chief among his perceived crimes is to take the Jewishness out of Fagin.
> Contrary to some reports, Bleasdale doesn't go quite so far as to make Fagin
> a Gentile, but neither is he the shrivelled old Jew Oliver encounters in the
> book. Instead, he is a magician who took to crime when his magic failed.
>
> All this has caused no end of trouble. The playwright Steven Berkoff wants to
> "Save Our Fagin", and Bleasdale's attempts to clean up Fagin's image have
> been called "illiterate", "phoney", and "part of the milksop blandness of
> Blair's Britain" in the press. Fagin, sly old weasel that he was, would have
> been amazed at the number of his newfound friends. Bleasdale, however, has
> been completely taken aback. "Sometimes I don't see the bowler coming towards
> me. I knew they were going to murder me over GBH. I knew the politics of that
> would cause a stink. But I never expected it over this. I was shocked."
>
> In Hollywood, where they can ask for an interview with Edith Wharton (died
> 1937) without so much as a blush, they would be baffled. Currently in the
> middle of a love affair with the classics, Hollywood will twist any tale
> until it can raise a buck. Sometimes the attempt crashes around its ears. It
> will take more than Robert De Niro to convince anyone that Great Expectations
> belongs in contemporary LA. Similarly, in 10 Things I Hate About You, The
> Taming of the Shrew perhaps gains little by being relocated to Padua High.
> But Leonardo DiCaprio's stylish and original Romeo + Juliet worked a treat,
> as did the contemporary take on Jane Austen's Emma, Clueless.
>
> "It doesn't matter in a film," says David Pirie, who adapted Wilkie Collins's
> The Woman in White for the BBC. "You can set Jane Austen in an American mall,
> and nobody notices. But working for television, especially for the BBC,
> you're expected to be traditional."
>
> British television audiences have become used to a rich diet of big books,
> lavish budgets and faithfully rendered scripts. Schooled on the BBC's
> children's and adult's classic serial in the 1960s and 1970s, dazzled by
> Granada's Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown in the 1980s, they
> have been ruined with riches in the 1990s, with Pride and Prejudice and Our
> Mutual Friend, to name but two. If the latter was particularly faithful to
> the book, it was because the adapter, Sandy Welch, had been brought up on the
> BBC's Sunday-afternoon serials.
>
> There is always a tension between what writers want to do, however, and what
> audiences are prepared to allow. Nominated for a Bafta, The Woman in White
> earned Pirie reviews as good as any he's ever had. But he changed plenty, and
> it was noticed. "Radio Times got a number of letters saying, 'How dare he? He
> should just have given us the text.' For a small and vocal minority, I feel
> that is all they want."
>
> Not that it is always up to the writer. Carlton's forthcoming adaptation of
> Lady Audley's Secret has been moved forward 10 years from the original
> because of the clothes. "The costumes of the time [1860] look like
> furniture," says Donald Hounam, the scriptwriter. "It would have been
> difficult to give it the lurid tone we were after if we had had everyone
> moving around on castors." Then there is the input of the co-production
> company, which has its own audiences to consider (adapting the classics is so
> expensive, they are now impossible to make alone). The BBC's partner for its
> forthcoming Madame Bovary is the Boston-based company WGBH. "They sent a note
> saying, 'No nipples, please,' " says Heidi Thomas, who has adapted the
> Flaubert classic about a provincial adulteress.
>
> Thomas speaks for many when she says she feels a duty to the author. "I worry
> that Flaubert will come back and haunt me and say, 'So what was going on when
> you put in that scene in the woods?' " But changes have to be made, none the
> less.
>
> For all their traditional roots, classic adaptations are getting much sharper
> and more up to date. "In Pride and Prejudice, we put in things that weren't
> in the book, like the scene with Darcy swimming at the lake," says Sue
> Birtwistle, the producer. "We talked long and hard about it, but we felt it
> was reasonable to show he was a young man who had these responsibilities of
> running an estate and occasionally must have wanted a moment to himself.
> Nobody seemed to mind." When it's really convincing, nobody does.
>
> At the BBC, they are keeping their nerve. They've yanked Copperfield back
> from the brink, and like parents who were once panicking at not finding the
> right Christmas present, are now confident they've pulled it off. Just
> reading the cast list is like unpacking a Christmas stocking: Maggie Smith,
> Bob Hoskins, Ian McKellen, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Paul Whitehouse and Dawn
> French.
>
> The masterplan at BBC1 is now to alternate 19th-and 20th-century classics,
> but nobody could accuse it of not being prepared to take risks. In the
> pipeline is a contemporary version of Crime and Punishment by Tony Marchant
> (who did Great Expectations), moved from St Petersburg to the UK. It's a
> brave thing for a mainstream channel to do. "This year we've given three
> 19th-century novels the big BBC treatment - Copperfield, Bovary and Wives and
> Daughters," says Jane Tranter, head of BBC1 serials. "Then we're moving into
> the mainstream with two 20th-century adaptations - a Kingsley Amis, and two
> Nancy Mitfords melded as one. We would like to do more, but with 20th-century
> books, the rights are very difficult to get. If Graham Greene were available,
> for instance, we would hoover him up."
>
> Purists may be relieved to hear that Greene is safely out of reach, but those
> with green ink should prepare to fill their pens now. Bleasdale is doing
> plenty to worry them. On Oliver Twist, he has come up with what Hollywood
> would call a "back story", breathing life into characters barely sketched in.
> In the book, the explanation of Oliver's origins are squashed into a single
> chapter, almost at the end. New relations and family feuds arrive with every
> paragraph. Bleasdale has taken the chapter, smoothed it out into a coherent
> narrative, and put it where it belongs chronologically, at the beginning of
> the story.
>
> "By putting it at the beginning, I'm giving it an absolutely straight
> narrative drive and not having to use the panic of coincidences you find in
> the book. Dickens had got himself into a corner. This was his first important
> novel, he was only 24, and writing in monthly instalments gave him no chance
> to rewrite. He was also just about to start something else.
>
> "I've always found Monks [Oliver's half brother] fascinating. We have a son
> who became epileptic in adolescence. I had always wanted to explore what I
> felt about that without making it a personal story. So the fact that Dickens
> had written about an epileptic character in Monks gave me the release I had
> wanted. There's no disrespect here. There's not even arrogance. The changes
> I've made have been made out of the necessity to craft seven hours of drama
> out of a book that was written in monthly instalments."
>
> Bleasdale is unrepentant, and he's probably right. For all the furore, his
> adaptation may well turn out to be the most faithful of all. And what's more,
> he's planning another one, so if you don't like the sound of this one, steel
> yourself. Though he won't reveal what it is, another 19th-century masterpiece
> is already in his sights.*
>
> More frocks on the box
>
> Wives and Daughters,
> BBC1, November 1999
> Elizabeth Gaskell's final unfinished novel, adapted and completed by Andrew
> Davies, arguably the best in the business. Reunites Davies, a former Eng Lit
> lecturer, with his former pupil and producer on Pride and Prejudice, Sue
> Birtwistle. Expect a happy ending, with a twist about how it's achieved.
> Stars Bill Paterson, Michael Gambon, Francesca Annis and Justine Waddell.
>
> Madame Bovary,
> BBC1, 2000
> Gustave Flaubert's novel about a woman's quest for self-fulfilment, adapted
> by Heidi Thomas. For her, Emma Bovary is "a Thomas Hardy character, caught in
> an Alan Bennett world" and the book's subject is "the corrosive nature of
> human unhappiness". At the BBC, the script got a reputation for being a racy
> read as copies went missing. Stars the Australian actress Frances O'Connor;
> directed by Tim Fywell.
>
> Gormenghast,
> BBC2, early 2000
> This adaptation of Mervyn Peake's fantastical novel has been years in the
> planning. Twenty-two-year-old Jonathan Rhys Meyers heads an all-star cast
> that includes Ian Richardson, Christopher Lee, Stephen Fry and Spike
> Milligan. Adapted by Malcolm McKay.
>
> The Railway Children,
> ITV, 2000
> Adapted from E Nesbit's children's classic by Men Behaving Badly writer Simon
> Nye, "a very tender writer" according to Carlton's director of drama,
> Jonathan Powell.
>
> The Turn of the Screw,
> ITV, probably Christmas
> Henry James's brilliant ghost story, adapted by Nick Dear. Stars Pam Ferris,
> Jodhi May and Colin Firth.
>
> _________________________________________________
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
>
> Robert L. Champ
> rchamp(at)polaris.umuc.edu
> Editor, teacher, anglophile, human curiosity
>
> Whatever things are pure, whatever things are
> lovely, whatever things are of good report, if
> there is any virtue and if there is anything
> praiseworthy, meditate on these things
>                                  Philippians 4:8
>
> rchamp7927(at)aol.com       robertchamp(at)netscape.net
> _________________________________________________
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

------------------------------

End of Gaslight Digest V1 #92
*****************************