Police Academy is a 1984 American comedy film directed by Hugh Wilson in his directorial debut, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. Its storyline follows a new recruitment policy for an unnamed city's police academy to take in any recruit who wishes to apply and study to become a police officer. The film stars Steve Guttenberg, Kim Cattrall, and G.W. Bailey.

The film was produced by The Ladd Company. It premiered on March 23, 1984. It grossed $8.5 million in its opening weekend and more than $149 million worldwide, against a budget of $4.5 million, and remains the most successful film of the series as of 2022. The film spawned six sequels in the Police Academy franchise.

Plot
Due to a shortage of police officers, Mary Sue Beal, the mayor of an unnamed, English-speaking, North American metropolis, requires the police department to accept all recruit applications. Easy-going Carey Mahoney, a repeat offender, is given a choice by Police Captain Reed enroll in the police academy to reform himself, or go directly to prison. Since captain Reed is friends with Mahoney's father who is also a cop. There is a loophole that the academy can throw him out but he cannot quit or he would end up in jail. Mahoney agrees to the demand, but plans to perform badly enough to be expelled for cause. The chief of police, Henry Hurst, outraged by the Mayor's plan, decides to make the experience so bad for all new recruits that they will simply give up and resign.

Lieutenant Thaddeus Harris makes their lives miserable, though Commandant Eric Lassard wants to give the new cadets a chance. Harris appoints Copeland and Blankes as cadet squad leaders to help him secretly execute his plan.

Lassard reveals to Mahoney his deal with Capt. Reed: Mahoney must remain at the police academy for the full term. Mahoney falls in love with cadet Karen Thompson and befriends fellow cadets Larvell Jones, a human beatbox, ladies' man George Martin, gun-obsessed security guard Eugene Tackleberry, cowardly man Leslie Barbara, accident-prone Douglas Fackler and gentle giant Moses Hightower.

Blankes and Copeland investigate a party organized by Mahoney, who tricks them by saying that the party is being held at the Blue Oyster, which they quickly discover is actually a gay biker bar. In revenge, the pair plant a prostitute in Mahoney's dormitory, to be found during final room checks to get him expelled. While smuggling her off campus before this happens, Mahoney is forced to hide with her under a microphoned lectern, just as Commandant Lassard leads a group of fellow officers inside the meeting room. While Mahoney is not looking, the prostitute performs fellatio on Lassard as he speaks at the lectern. Mahoney later steps out from under it only to find Lassard still present, leading him to assume that Mahoney performed the deed.

Hightower reveals to Mahoney that he has not driven a car since he was 12. To help Hightower prepare for his cadet driving test, they steal Copeland's small, two-door Honda after ripping out the front seats so that Hightower can fit inside. After Hightower passes the test, Copeland racially insults cadet Laverne Hooks for causing an accident. Hightower, angered by the racial slur, overturns Copeland's police cruiser with him still inside it. Harris ejects Hightower from the academy, upsetting the other cadets.

Blankes and Copeland fail to trick Mahoney into fighting them after they discover Copeland's destroyed car. Barbara stands up for Mahoney and knocks Copeland out with his metal lunch tray. Blankes retaliates, and Mahoney becomes involved in a brawl. When Harris asks who started the fight, Mahoney takes the blame to protect Barbara's cadet standing, and Mahoney is finally expelled from the academy.

While downtown, Fackler throws an apple from his police car window, which hits a man on the back of the head. This triggers a chain reaction of violence which quickly escalates into a full-blown riot. Mahoney, just about to leave, joins the other cadets to help pacify the growing, angry crowd. The cadets are accidentally transported to the epicenter of the rioting, and one criminal steals Blankes and Copeland's revolvers, whereupon the two hide out in the Blue Oyster Bar as the riot grows in size. A gang and their leader goes on to captures Harris, taking him hostage. Mahoney attempts to rescue Harris but is also taken hostage. Hightower appears, deceives the gang's leader, and easily tosses him down a full flight set of stairs to be arrested by Hooks.

Mahoney and Hightower are both reinstated, and for rescuing Harris and capturing his kidnapper, they receive the academy's highest commendation and medals, after which all the police cadets graduate from the academy.

Cast

 Steve Guttenberg as Cadet Carey Mahoney
 Kim Cattrall as Cadet Karen Thompson
 Bubba Smith as Cadet Moses Hightower
 Donovan Scott as Cadet Leslie Barbara
 Michael Winslow as Cadet Larvell Jones
 Andrew Rubin as Cadet George Martin
 David Graf as Cadet Eugene Tackleberry
 Bruce Mahler as Cadet Douglas Fackler
 Marion Ramsey as Cadet Laverne Hooks
 Brant von Hoffman as Cadet Kyle Blankes
 Scott Thomson as Cadet Chad Copeland
 G. W. Bailey as Lieutenant Thaddeus Harris
 George Gaynes as Commandant Eric Lassard
 Leslie Easterbrook as Sergeant Debbie Callahan
 George R. Robertson as Chief Henry J. Hurst
 Debralee Scott as Violet Fackler
 Ted Ross as Captain Reed
 Doug Lennox as Main Bad Guy
 Georgina Spelvin as Hooker
 Don Lake as Mr. Wig
 Michael J. Reynolds as Office Executive
 Gary Farmer as Sidewalk Store Owner
 John Hawkes as Tesky Truck Driver
 Kay Hawtrey as Surprise Party Lady
 Dar Robinson as Plaid Thug
 T. J. Scott as Tough
 Hugh Wilson as Angry Driver

Casting
The producers considered Michael Keaton, Tom Hanks, and Judge Reinhold for the role of Carey Mahoney. Bruce Willis auditioned for the role of Carey Mahoney.

Production

Development
Paul Maslansky says he got the idea for the film when in San Francisco filming The Right Stuff:
I noticed a bunch of ludicrous-looking police cadets being dressed down by a frustrated sergeant. They were an unbelievable bunch, including a lady who must have weighed over 200 pounds and a flabby man well over 50. I asked the sergeant about them, and he explained that the mayor had ordered the department to accept a broad spectrum for the police academy. "We have to take them in,"...[he said] ..."And the only thing we can do is wash them out."
Maslansky said he wondered "But what if they actually made it?" He took the idea to Alan Ladd Jr., who agreed to finance.
Neal Israel was hired to write the script with Pat Proft. Israel said:
It's a matter of block comedy scenes. Perhaps the most recognizable was the obvious results of guys eating beans in Blazing Saddles. If you have four or five of these block comedy scenes in a teen-age comedy, you have a hit. If your block comedy scenes are very, very strong ones, you have a blockbuster.
Dom DeLuise was considered to direct the film but he was unavailable. Hugh Wilson was hired as director based on his success with WKRP in Cincinnati, even though he was not familiar with many films of this genre. He then saw a lot of those sort. saying "it was fairly discouraging. This immediately convinced me to cut down on the sleaze. I asked for, and got, the power to refine the Israel-Proft script. Maintaining that 'funny is money,' I wanted to go for real laughter rather than going for the elements such as gratuitous sex and anti-Establishment exploits. I wanted jokes which were rooted in reality."

Maslansky says Wilson "took a lot of the vulgarity out; some of the very things I considered necessary. I worried that it was becoming more homogenized, and I told Hugh, "Let's keep some of the flatulence in."

Wilson says "I found out that the shower scene, the party scene, and the fellatio scene were obligatory; I had to put them in. So I was stuck with trying to make those scenes as artistic as possible."

According to the Los Angeles Times, about "20 of the major elements in the movie" remain from the Israel and Proft version. Israel says that when Wilson and Maslansky turned in their rewrite to the Ladd Company, "it was rejected and the project was almost shelved. Only when they put back in dozens of our gags did the project get the go ahead."

Some of the scenes Wilson was unhappy with included the fellatio scene and the scene where a police sergeant was hurled into the backside of a horse. A compromise was reached where these acts were not actually directly shown.

"I realize that you can carry grossness, rudeness, and crudeness just so far before the audience finds it terribly repetitive and not so funny," said Wilson. "After the enormous success of Police Academy, I no longer believe that you have to show the female breast or make cruel ethnic jokes, not to mention the rampant sexism. And you don't have to reproduce the sounds that an overfed body makes."

Filming
Opening scenes were shot in Toronto, Ontario. The camera booth scene was shot on the Cherry Street Bridge in Toronto. The academy itself was previously the site of the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital in Etobicoke, and has since become the Lakeshore campus of Humber College. The studio scenes were shot at Lakeshore Film Studios; the city scenes were filmed in various parts of Toronto. The riot scenes was filmed at Kensington Market in Toronto, The Silver Dollar Room on Spadina Avenue is the real name of the bar that was filmed for the Blue Oyster Bar scenes.

Music
In 2013, La-La Land Records issued a limited edition album of Robert Folk's score.

 Main Title/Night Rounds (1:52)
 Rounds Resume/Tackleberry (1:10)
 Barbara (0:51)
 Join Up (1:10)
 The academy (1:16)
 Recruits (1:54)
 Pussycat/Uniforms (1:56)
 Assignment (1:20)
 Formation/Move Out (3:26)
 Obstacles (2:15)
 Martin and Company (0:46)
 Ball Games (0:27)
 More Martin (0:28)
 Regrets (1:05)
 Guns/In Drag (4:01)
 Warpath (0:28)
 Improvement (1:15)
 Jam Up (0:42)
 Hightower Drive (1:37)
 Santa Claus Is Coming to Town - J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie (0:40)
 Need to Talk/Hightower Leaves (1:16)
 Riot Starts (1:25)
 Riot Gear (2:42)
 SOB (0:32)
 Match (1:44)
 Where's Harris? (2:40)
 Straighten Up (1:26)
 Police Academy March (1:06)
 El Bimbo - Claude Morgan, performed by Jean-Marc Dompierre and His Orchestra (1:49)

Release

Home media
 Police Academy (1984) was released on VHS home video in the film's original widescreen aspect ratio. In Europe, it was released on VHS under the expanded title Police Academy: What An Institution!
 Police Academy: 20th Anniversary Special Edition (1984) was released on DVD around the world in 2004. Special features include a "Making of" documentary, audio commentary by the film's cast, and the film's original theatrical trailer.
 Police Academy: The Complete Collection [1984-1994] was released on DVD as a box set containing all seven Police Academy films made between 1984 and 1994. Police Academy 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7 were in the film's theatrical widescreen 1.85-to-1 aspect ratio, while Police Academy 4 and 5 were in the TV aspect ratio of 1.33-to-1. All seven films have multi-language subtitles and their own featurettes.
 4 Film Favorites: Police Academy 1-4 Collection is a DVD set released on September 15, 2009. It contains the first four films in the series on three discs, the first two separately, while the third and fourth films are a single, double-sided disc. Police Academy 5-7 was later released as a DVD set entitled 4 Film Favorites: Cop Comedy Collection, packaged along with the feature film National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993).
 Police Academy: What an Institution! was released on July 1, 2013, as a Region Free Blu-ray single disc, with special features included.

Reception

Box office
Police Academy opened in the number 1 spot in 1,587 U.S. theaters on March 23, 1984, to a first weekend total gross of $8.6 million. The film went on to gross $81.2 million, becoming the 6th highest-grossing American film of 1984. It grossed $68.6 million overseas for a total worldwide gross of $149.8 million. The film made a profit of $35 million.

Critical response
Police Academy received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 57% based on 30 reviews, with the critical consensus reading: "Police Academy is rude, crude, and proudly sophomoric – which is either a condemnation or a ringing endorsement, depending on your taste in comedy." On Metacritic the film has a score of 41 out of 100 based on reviews from 6 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film zero stars out of four, commenting: "It's really something. It's so bad, maybe you should pool your money and draw straws and send one of the guys off to rent it so that in the future, whenever you think you're sitting through a bad comedy, he could shake his head, and chuckle tolerantly, and explain that you don't know what bad is".

Critic Vincent Canby, of The New York Times, gave a mixed review, saying: "The movie plows through one outrageous sequence to the next with the momentum of a freight train".
Rita Kemply, of The Washington Post, wrote: "Attention, all units: Slapstick in progress in the vicinity of Police Academy. Suspects wanted for mugging the camera [...] with the intent to incite a laugh riot. Please respond to this blues burlesque, a uniformly funny hit sure to have a long run. Its target audience: those who can take their T&A with a grain of assault. Its plot [is] a combo of Animal House and An Officer and a Gentleman. Its stars a rainbow coalition of hot newcomers and dependable, unexpendable pros."

Producer Paul Maslansky says that original feedback on the film was that it was not gross enough, with one executive reportedly saying: "What are you trying to do, make a damned Tootsie?"; and another claiming: "Paul, it doesn't fit the formula; it needs more flatulence, more slobbishness, more T&A."

References

External links

 1
1984 films
1980s police comedy films
1980s English-language films
Warner Bros. films
Films about pranks
Films directed by Hugh Wilson
Films shot in Toronto
American slapstick comedy films
The Ladd Company films
Films with screenplays by Pat Proft
Films with screenplays by Neal Israel
Films scored by Robert Folk
Films with screenplays by Hugh Wilson
1984 directorial debut films
1984 comedy films
Films produced by Paul Maslansky
1980s American films

Police Academy (film)


Patricia Hardy (December 23, 1931 – August 20, 2011) was an American television and film actress whose career was most active during the 1950s. She was the wife of actor Richard Egan.

Biography
The third daughter of parents of Irish descent, James J. and Mary (née Toal) Hardy, Patricia Hardy was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She won several beauty pageants during her early years, including Miss Brooklyn, Miss Coney Island and Miss New York Press Photographer. She was a model for Walter Thornton and appeared on the cover of Look Magazine. She began her entertainment career in New York City, performing at the Copacabana nightclub with such well-known performers as Danny Thomas and Jimmy Durante.

She met her future husband, actor Richard Egan, in 1956. The couple married on June 7, 1958, in San Francisco and remained together until Egan's death in July 1987. The couple had four daughters - Patricia, Kathleen, Colleen, and Maureen Egan, a writer and music video director, as well as a son, Richard Egan Jr., who founded Vagrant Records.

Hardy moved from New York to Los Angeles to pursue a film and television career. She was cast in several 1950s television episodes including two appearances on Perry Mason: as defendant Claire Olger in the 1958 episode, "The Case of the Haunted Husband," and as Jo Ann Blanchard in the 1959 episode, "The Case of the Startled Stallion." She also appeared in the series' State Trooper, The Loretta Young Show, Lassie and Schlitz Playhouse, in which she co-starred in an episode with James Dean.  Her film credits included Girls in the Night in 1953 and Don't Knock the Rock in 1957.

Death
Hardy died of colon cancer at her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California on August 20, 2011, aged 79. She was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California, alongside her husband, at Section AA, Tier 37, Grave 139

References

External links

 Profile, legacy.com
 Family website
 Profile, ovguide.com

1931 births
2011 deaths
American film actresses
American television actresses
Actresses from Brooklyn
American people of Irish descent
Deaths from cancer in California
Deaths from colorectal cancer
People from Brentwood, Los Angeles
21st-century American women

Patricia Hardy


Naturalism is a philosophical viewpoint. According to this viewpoint everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted.

Naturalism  may also refer to:

 Naturalism (arts), a style in painting and the visual arts
 Naturalism (literature),  a literary style
 Naturalism (theatre), a movement in theatre and drama that began in the 19th century
 Naturalism (philosophy)
 Ethical naturalism, the theory that ethical statements can be derived from non-ethical statements
 Spiritual naturalism, spirituality that does not involve the supernatural
 Religious naturalism, religion that does not include supernatural beliefs

Naturalism


Henrik Erik Gustav Hagberg (born 31 March 1955) is a Swedish physician and neuroscientist. His research focuses on experimental brain research, perinatal medicine and obstetrics. He holds the Research Chair in Fetal Medicine at the Centre for the Developing Brain at King's College London, and is one of the world's most highly cited researchers in the field of perinatal brain injury. According to Google Scholar, his work has been cited over 33,000 times in scientific literature, and he has an h-index of 107.

He has formerly been Professor of Obstetrics and Perinatal Medicine at Imperial College London and Professor in the same field at Sahlgrenska Academy in Sweden. He has published over 400 articles.

He is the son of the paediatric surgeon Sture Hagberg, director of paediatric surgery at the Gothenburg Eastern Hospital.

References

Swedish neuroscientists
Academics of King's College London
Academics of Imperial College London
Academic staff of the University of Gothenburg
1955 births
Living people

Henrik Hagberg


I Confess is a 1953 American film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Montgomery Clift as Catholic priest Father Michael William Logan, Anne Baxter as Ruth Grandfort, and Karl Malden as Inspector Larrue.

The film is based on a 1902 French play by Paul Anthelme titled Nos deux consciences (Our Two Consciences), which Hitchcock saw in the 1930s. The screenplay was written by George Tabori.

Filming took place largely on location in Quebec City with numerous shots of the city landscape and interiors of its churches, especially St. Zéphirin's and other emblematic buildings, such as the Château Frontenac.

Plot

Father Logan is a devout Catholic priest in Ste. Marie's Church in Quebec City. He employs German immigrant married couple Otto and Alma Keller as caretaker and housekeeper, respectively. Otto Keller also works part-time as a gardener for a shady lawyer, Villette.

The film begins late one evening as a man wearing a cassock walks away from Villette's home with the lawyer dead on the floor inside. Shortly afterward, in the church confessional, Otto confesses to Logan that he accidentally killed Villette while trying to rob him. Otto tells his wife about his deed and assures her that the priest will not say anything because he is required to keep anything revealed during confession inviolate.

The next morning, Otto goes to Villette's house at his regularly scheduled gardening time and reports the death to the police. Logan also goes to the crime scene after hearing Alma mention that her husband is there and finds the police there. Logan is interviewed by Inspector Larrue, who witnesses Logan talking to a woman after he leaves.

At the police station, two young girls tell Larrue they saw a priest leaving Villette's house. This prompts Larrue to call Logan in for more questioning, but Logan refuses to provide any information about the murder. Prematurely suspecting Logan, Larrue orders a detective to follow Logan and contacts Crown Prosecutor Robertson, who is attending a party hosted by Ruth Grandfort, the woman Logan talked to outside of Villette's house, and her husband Pierre, a member of the Quebec legislature. Ruth overhears Robertson discussing Logan, and Larrue's detective discovers her identity by following her home the next day after she meets with Logan to warn him that he is a suspect.

Considering everyone Logan speaks to a suspect, Larrue calls Ruth and Logan in for questioning, and Ruth blurts out the truth, narrating a series of flashbacks: she and Logan fell in love when they were childhood friends, but he went to fight in World War II with the Regina Rifle Regiment and eventually stopped writing to her.

She eventually married Pierre, for whom she had been working as secretary. The day after Logan returned from the war, he and Ruth spent the day on a nearby island. A storm forced them to shelter for the night in a gazebo, and Villette found them there in the morning, recognizing Ruth. The next time Ruth saw Logan was several years later when he was ordained as a priest.

Villette had recently asked Ruth to persuade her husband to help him escape a tax scandal, with the condition that if she refused, he would publicize the night she spent with Logan. She met with Logan on the night of the murder, and Logan agreed to intercede with Villette.

Ruth's meeting with Logan occurred between 9 and 11 pm on the night of the murder, but Larrue shows Robinson Villette's autopsy report that indicates that Villette couldn't have died before 11:30 pm. The fact that Ruth and Logan concluded their meeting at 11 pm leaves Logan without an alibi.

Knowing he will be arrested, Logan turns himself in the next day at Larrue's office. Keller has planted the bloody cassock among Logan's belongings, and when Logan is tried in court, Keller testifies that he saw Logan enter the church after the murder, acting suspiciously.

The jury finds Logan not guilty, due to insufficient evidence, but the crowd outside the courthouse mobs Logan as he leaves the court. This upsets Alma to such an extent that she starts to shout that Logan was innocent. Otto, realizing that he's about to be revealed as the murderer, shoots Alma, killing her. He then flees but is pursued by police officers.

Larrue finally realizes that Otto is the murderer, corners him in the grand ballroom of the Château Frontenac, and tricks him into confessing the murder. Otto, suspecting that Logan had betrayed him to the police, threatens to shoot him. However, Logan prefers peace over violence, and advances into the ballroom to talk with Otto.

Immediately followed by police officers, Logan talks with Otto, his main intention being to prevent a ballroom gunfight, but Otto shoots at him; a police sharpshooter then shoots Otto, saving Logan's life. Mortally wounded, Otto calls to Logan in extremis and dies immediately after asking him for forgiveness.

Cast

Production
I Confess had one of the longest pre-productions of any Hitchcock film, with almost 12 writers working on the script for Hitchcock over a period of eight years (Hitchcock had taken time off for the wedding of his daughter Patricia Hitchcock in 1951, and Hitchcock was in the midst of dissolving his partnership in Transatlantic Pictures with Sidney Bernstein). In the original screenplay, following the source play, the priest and his lover had an illegitimate baby, and the priest was executed at the end of the film. These elements were removed at the insistence of executives at Warner Brothers who feared a negative reaction.

Hitchcock first hired Anita Björk as the female lead after seeing her in Miss Julie (1951). However, when she arrived in Hollywood with her lover and their baby, Warner Bros. insisted that Hitchcock find another actress for the role.

Shooting took place in Hollywood and Quebec from August 21 to October 22, 1952. Hitchcock had planned on using Quebec churches at no cost. When the local diocese read the original script by George Tabori, it objected to the priest's execution and rescinded its permission. When Tabori refused to change the script, Hitchcock brought in William Archibald to rewrite it.

Hitchcock, as was his custom, created detailed storyboards for each scene. He could not understand Clift's Method acting technique and quickly became frustrated with Clift when he blew take after take for failing to follow Hitchcock's instructions.

Cognizant of the difficulty non-Catholics would have in understanding the priest's reluctance to expose Keller, Hitchcock said:

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo appearance occurs during the second minute—right after the opening credits—as he walks across the top of a stairway.

Reception
The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times faulted an "obviously padded" and "a suspenseless script," explaining that "only the most credulous patron will be worried for very long that the hero will not be delivered from his dilemma by some saving grace. And this realization well unburdens the situation of any real suspense." Crowther's review concluded that "Mr. Hitchcock does manage to inject little glints of imagery and invent little twists of construction that give the film the smooth, neat glitter of his style. Shot on location in Quebec, it has a certain atmospheric flavor, too. But it never gets up and goes places. It just ambles and drones along." Variety wrote that the film was "short of the suspense one would expect and overlong on talk," although it did note "a number of top-flight performances." Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post wrote in a negative review that the film "asks for more than the usual suspension of disbelief" because "the priest is not helpless, a fact which the writers and director attempt to forget at the cost of the film's credibility from the earliest reel. It would certainly seem that so young a priest's superiors would have had more to do with his problem, if not at first, surely before the matter came to public trial ... So promising an idea as is the use of the confessional in framing a murder case and respectful as the picture appears to be of matters ecclesiastic, the basic conception is false. The result is a tricked-up picture unworthy of the suave master of movie thrillers." John McCarten of The New Yorker was also negative, writing: "Presumably, this is meant to be a kind of mystery drama. What it actually amounts to, though, is an exposition of the difficulties a priest can get into by keeping the secrets of the confessional inviolate. The theme is prinked up with murder and romance, but neither, as represented here, makes for suspense or entertainment ... it is possible that Montgomery Clift, who plays the part, was ill-advised to portray the priest as a sort of bemused juvenile, plainly too abstracted to lead one lamb, let alone a flock."

A mixed review in The Monthly Film Bulletin declared the film "rather less successful than Strangers on a Train and a good deal more so than anything else Hitchcock has done since the ill-fated Rope ... The final chase through the huge Chateau Frontenac seems a touch that Hitchcock could not resist: out of keeping with the generally somber tone of the film, it provides a showily melodramatic climax. The unresolved split between the straightforward thriller technique and the more penetrating psychological study of character, indeed, makes itself felt as a weakness at intervals throughout the film." The Chicago Tribune also was mixed, declaring that "While it has scenery and carefully allotted bits of tension, the film is crowded and devious plot-wise and doesn't rank with Director Hitchcock's previous bests. The finale is slightly overdone, even if it does manage to bring in a famed hotel."

Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote one of the positive reviews and declared that Hitchcock "has fashioned an absorbing screen drama, one of the solidest and most expertly made of recent weeks. In his careful treatment Hitchcock has gone deeper into human relationships than is usual with him, relying less on the physical chase or on theatrical props like trains and merry-go-rounds than on the interplay of faith and doubt to create his famous brand of suspense." Harrison's Reports wrote, "Living up to his reputation as a master of the suspense film, Alfred Hitchcock has fashioned a powerful dramatic entertainment in 'I Confess.' ... It is not a cheerful picture, but it holds one tense throughout."

The film was banned in Ireland because it showed a priest having a relationship with a woman (even though, in the film, the relationship takes place before the character becomes a priest).

The film was entered into the 1953 Cannes Film Festival.

I Confess was a favorite among French New Wave filmmakers, according to filmmaker/historian Peter Bogdanovich.

Film critic Sarah Ortiz has described I Confess as "the most Catholic film of Hitchcock's films." In 2012, The Guardian called the film "A forgotten albeit flawed masterpiece". On Rotten Tomatoes, I Confess holds a rating of 81% from 31 reviews.

Adaptations
I Confess was adapted to the radio program Lux Radio Theatre on September 21, 1953, with Cary Grant in Montgomery Clift's role.

See also
The Confessional (Le Confessionnal), directed by Robert Lepage, a 1995 film which dramatizes the filming of I Confess as the backdrop for a thematically related story.

References

Additional references
 I Confess DVD documentary

External links

Streaming audio
 I Confess on Lux Radio Theater: September 21, 1953

1953 films
1953 crime drama films
1950s psychological thriller films
American crime drama films
American black-and-white films
Film noir
Films scored by Dimitri Tiomkin
Films about Catholic priests
Films about Catholicism
American films based on plays
Films directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Films produced by Alfred Hitchcock
Films set in Quebec City
Warner Bros. films
1950s English-language films
1950s American films
English-language crime drama films

I Confess (film)


A Shilling for Candles is a 1936 mystery novel by Josephine Tey (Elizabeth MacKintosh) about the investigation of the drowning of a film actress, known as Christine Clay. It is the second of Tey's five mysteries featuring Inspector Alan Grant, and the first book written under the Josephine Tey pseudonym. The plot draws extensively on Tey's experience in working with actors in her play Richard of Bordeaux, which was produced in London's West End in 1933 starring John Gielgud and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, and on her work as a contract writer in Hollywood.

Plot
The body of a woman, Christine Clay (née Christina Gotobed) is discovered at the edge of the surf on a beach in Kent. She is initially thought to be the victim of a drowning accident, but the presence of a button tangled in her hair leads Inspector Grant to conclude she has been murdered. Suspicion quickly falls on her house guest, Robert Tisdall, who admits to having stolen Clay's car and then regretted it and returned. Tisdall had been Clay's guest for 4 days at the time of the murder, in a cottage that she had rented in secret to have an anonymous holiday.  He inherited a fortune but has squandered it, and was rescued from a life of poverty when Clay randomly encountered him in London and offered him hospitality out of kindness. She did not tell him her name, instructing him to call her "Chris". Clay's identity is revealed when Jason Harmer, her songwriter, arrives at the cottage having tracked down its location from a clue in a letter he received from her. Once her identity becomes public Lydia Keats, an astrologist, receives considerable attention for having correctly predicted that Clay would drown.

The day before the murder, Clay wrote to her lawyer instructing him to add a codicil to her will bequeathing a small portion of her estate — a ranch in California and several thousand pounds — to Tisdall.  The bulk of her estate is left to "maintain the beauty of the English countryside". Tisdall claims not to have known about the bequest to him. Although it goes against his intuition, Grant is convinced of Tisdall's guilt by the motive provided by the bequest. Another suspicious circumstance is that Tisdall's coat, which had buttons similar to the one found in Clay's hair, has been stolen. Furthermore, none of Clay's friends knows of the cottage, except for her husband and the owner of the cottage, another film star.

Grant decides to arrest Tisdall, but he escapes. Later, Tisdall is discovered by Erica Burgoyne, the 16-year-old daughter of the local Chief Constable. Erica believes Tisdall's story about his coat, and sets out to find it. She discovers that a tramp was in the neighborhood on the day the coat was stolen, and tracks him through the fact that he mends china. The coat she recovers has no missing buttons, leading Grant to conclude that Tisdall is innocent. However, Tisdall cannot be found and anxiety mounts regarding his safety.

Grant is left back at square one. He next investigates Clay's brother Herbert Gotobed, who turns out to be a con man with a history of posing as a religious prophet, and Clay's husband, Lord Edward Champneis. Champneis arouses suspicion by failing to account for his whereabouts on the night before the murder, but Grant is reluctant to confront him. Grant tracks Gotobed to a monastery in Canterbury, close to Clay's cottage, where he is on the point of being given control of a large amount of money as Prior to the brotherhood's Mexican mission. Eventually Gotobed is arrested, though not for his sister's murder, and extradited to the US. Champneis's suspicious behavior turns out to be due to an effort to help a political exile to obtain sanctuary in the UK. Tisdall re-surfaces, having hidden in an attic for several days; he is feverish and on the point of pneumonia but recovers.

At a loss for the next step, Grant decides to get a haircut.  While waiting, he happens across an article in an old magazine that points out how celebrated Lydia Keats will be if her prediction of death by drowning for a film star—not identified in the article—comes true, and hints that the star should not go swimming with Keats for fear she might be tempted to make her prediction a reality. He telephones the cottage's owner and discovers that he mentioned Clay's tenancy of the cottage to Keats, forgetting that it was supposed to be a secret.  Keats has a motorboat that could have given her easy access to the beach where Clay was killed. Grant investigates and finds a coat in the motorboat that is missing a button on one sleeve. He confronts Keats.  She raves about her infallibility and the glorious destiny predicted for her by the stars, and is taken away by the police surgeon. The final scene of the book is a dinner party attended by Grant, Tisdall and the Burgoynes, at which Grant is happy to see that Erica has not become inappropriately attracted to Tisdall.

Adaptations

Film
The novel was adapted for Young and Innocent (1937) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney.

Radio
There have been various full cast adaptations for BBC Radio:

1954, adapted by Rex Rienits and produced by Charles Lefeaux. Part of the Saturday Night Theatre series.
1963, adapted by Rex Rienits and produced by Audrey Cameron. Part of the Saturday Night Theatre series.
1969, adapted by Rex Rienits and produced by Betty Davies. Part of the Saturday Night Theatre series.
1998, adapted by John Fletcher and directed by Tabitha Potts. Part of The Saturday Play series. This version dispenses with much of the plot, changes the identity of the murderer, and presents the remaining narrative as a Wodehousian romantic romp.

There have been several solo readings for BBC Radio:
1959, in 12 episodes, abridged by Donald Bancroft and read by Ronald Wilson.
2003, in two episodes, abridged by [undetermined] and read by [undetermined].
1993, BBC audiobook, unabridged and read by Stephen Thorne. Produced by Chivers Audio Books and released on cassette.

Parallels with author's life
Marta Hallard is believed to be based on Marda Vanne, whose partner Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies was the leading lady in Richard of Bordeaux. Like Christine Clay, Elizabeth MacKintosh left the bulk of her money to the National Trust.

Publication history
First published in 1936 by Methuen Publishing in London. First American edition in 1954 from The Macmillan Company, New York.  ; .

Explanation of title
Clay's will includes the bequest "To my brother Herbert, a shilling for candles".  Herbert is a con man who poses as religious. Grant comments that this bequest is the only sign of real enmity he has discovered in Clay's relationships.

References

External links

1936 British novels
English-language novels
British mystery novels
Novels set in Kent
Novels set in London
Methuen Publishing books
Novels by Josephine Tey
British crime novels
British detective novels
British novels adapted into films

A Shilling for Candles


The Zetland is the oldest surviving lifeboat in the world. It is currently in a free museum in Redcar, England. The name Zetland comes from the local Lord of Manor, the Marquess of Zetland. The Zetland is on the National Register of Historic Ships, as part of the National Historic Fleet.

The lifeboat was stationed at Redcar in 1802, built by Henry Greathead of South Shields.

Not all rescue attempts were successful. On Christmas Day 1836, a crewman was washed from the Zetland and drowned during a vain attempt to save the crew of the Danish brig Caroline. The man, William Guy, was a Tees pilot, and it is said that he left a service in chapel to take his place in the lifeboat.

During 1858 the Tees Bay Lifeboat Society decided to hand over the administration of their boats to the RNLI. On 17 February 1864, the Zetland sustained damage whilst rescuing the crew of seven from the brig Brothers. The RNLI considered the old boat no longer fit for service and supplied a new self-righting lifeboat named Crossley. Arrangements were made to have the Zetland broken up and a local carpenter was employed to carry out the task. An angry crowd prevented the work commencing and, after negotiation, the boat was given to the townspeople providing it would not 'compete' with the new RNLI lifeboat.

In 1872, the Zetland was repaired following fundraising which totalled £100. In 1880, it was launched with two other Redcar lifeboats (the Crossley and the Emma) and saved seven sailors' lives from the brig Luna.

The boat was the centrepiece of 1963 International Lifeboat Conference in Edinburgh. Listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, the Zetland lifeboat remains fully preserved and open for public visits in the Zetland Lifeboat Museum, which is a listed building on the Esplanade, Redcar, just a few hundred yards from the present Redcar Lifeboat Station.

References

Further reading

External links
 Zetland Lifeboat Museum

Greathead-class lifeboats
Museum ships in the United Kingdom
Sea rescue in England
Ships and vessels of the National Historic Fleet
Redcar
Ships built on the River Tyne

Zetland (lifeboat)


Orkus is a monthly German music and culture magazine published by the Zoomia Media Group. Despite its subtitle ("Gothic - romantic - industrial - electro") and its web tagline ("Das Magazin fur Dark Rock-Electro-Gothic Rock-Dark Metal & More"), it includes all popular music genres including metal, medieval rock, Neue Deutsche Härte, alternative rock, electro and futurepop. The gothic rock, dark wave and industrial music genres have had only a minor presence since the late 1990s.

History
The magazine was established in 1995 by Claus Müller and was released for free in A5 format. The focus was initially on new wave, gothic rock, electro, and industrial music. With the third edition in May 1996, the magazine was published for a fee and in A4 format. Since 1997, the focus has shifted increasingly to heavy metal. However, other genres such as Goa trance, intelligent dance music, ambient, drum and bass, and techno, are represented in the magazine.

Each month has a goth-related cover, often featuring a semi-nude female model.

It is generally considered one of the top three music magazines in Germany, along with Zillo and Sonic Seducer.

Orkus is the official sponsor of the Amphi Festival and releases DVDs of the event in their issues at the end of the year.

Content
In addition to interviews, concert reports, short portraits, and reviews, particularly from death metal, dark metal, and black metal, there are articles unrelated to music, such as illustrated reports on cemeteries and a series on mysticism in everyday life. There are also columns by musicians (Oswald Henke, Alexander Kaschte) and pages with poems from readers.

Each issue came with a CD with new tracks and remixes from the bands featured in the magazine until March 2020.

Its compilation CD Orkus Collection 2 made it to #1 on the 2002 Deutsche Alternative Charts.

References

External links

 Amphi Festival Website

1995 establishments in Germany
Free magazines
German-language magazines
Heavy metal publications
Magazines established in 1995
Monthly magazines published in Germany
Music magazines published in Germany

Orkus


St James Parish Hall is a heritage-listed church hall at 112 Russell Street, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Henry James (Harry) Marks and built in 1912. It is also known as Taylor Memorial Institute. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 28 March 1995.

History
St James' Parish Hall was built in 1912 opposite St James Anglican Church () in Russell Street. James Taylor donated the land and erected the Hall designed by architect Harry J. Marks, to stand as a memorial to his parents, the Hon. James Taylor and his wife Sarah. The Hon. James Taylor had given the land for St James' Church as a gift to the Parish some forty-five years earlier, and is credited with taking a leading role in the early development of Toowoomba.

The hall features Marks' unusual construction methods and details, including his patented "hollow wall" construction to give the appearance of a solid wall whilst being cheaper to construct than brickwork. Another interesting feature of the building developed and used by Marks is the extendable casement window which provides optimum directional ventilation. Only three of these windows remain in working order.

The hall was opened on 1 May 1912 by Archbishop of Brisbane St Clair Donaldson. The Hall was described as "a model of architecture" with ample facilities for the uses it was to be put to, including reading rooms and library, a lounge, and as a venue for Sunday school and meetings.

The Hall was repainted and minor repairs were undertaken in 1923–24, mostly to remedy damage from water penetration under the roof.

The brick fence at the front of the hall is thought to have been designed () by Charles Beresford Marks (Harry Marks' son), and bears a small plaque in memory of James Taylor as benefactor and foundation member of St James' Parish.

The building was substantially extended to the rear to form a large kitchen area . Work was undertaken in 1991 to repair water damage to the roof and ceiling of the Hall.

Description
St James' Parish Hall, fronting Russell Street to the north, is located opposite St James Church. The site is bounded on either side by single-storeyed buildings; a brick store built to the boundary on the east and a timber building and bitumen driveway to the west, with Baty Lane to the south. A single-storeyed timber and iron cottage is located to the southeast and a toilet block is located to the southwest. (The cottage and toilet block do not form part of the Entry in the Heritage Register.)

The building exhibits a strong arts and crafts influence in its design, with its picturesque terracotta tiled roof and prominent eaves, rough cast exterior, heavy base and stylised signage on the north wall.

The single-storeyed building has a brick base and utilises a "hollow wall" construction system, consisting of a metal frame lined with chicken wire and a stucco render; a smooth finish trim with rough infill externally and smooth finish internally. A marble memorial plaque is located to the base of the north wall.

The building has a fanciful steep pitch terracotta tiled roof with sprocketted eaves and projecting gables to the east and west. Three turrets, to the centre, and the north and south bays, have been formed by the ridge being deleted between them and a curved capping piece inserted. The centre turret has a "pot bellied", sheet metal roof ventilator, the other two have rounded finials.

The building has "extendable casement" windows, only three of which are still intact with the remainder having been modified into standard casements. These consist of a metal track above and below the centre of the window, perpendicular to the wall, on which the window slides away from the opening and can pivot at 360° for optimum ventilation. The windows in the hall have fanlight and sidelights, and in the end bays have hopper windows above, all of which have green and obscure glass panes.

The northeast porch has decorative timber arched brackets and balustrade. These have been removed from the northwest porch, which has a ramp for disabled access. Double timber doors with fanlights open into the hall.

A shallow corrugated iron gable roofed kitchen and store, which has been added to the south of the building, has fibrous cement cladding with timber cover strips, large sash windows with green and obscure glass panes, timber and iron window hoods to the south and brick stumps.

Internally, the building has a raised timber stage to the south bay, and a central hall with side aisles from which the kitchen and store is accessed. The building has rendered walls, timber posts with decorative brackets and arches, exposed trusses and boarded timber ceilings. Diagonal boarding is a decorative feature used throughout the building, including the ceiling, panels in doors and partition walls.

The kitchen and store have metal trusses, a fibrous cement sheet ceiling with timber cover strips and tongue and groove walls. A section of timber floor following the line of the stage bay, and abutting the kitchen and store floor, is visible. A section of folding partition wall with a metal roller divides the store area and in its detailing appears to be originally from the hall.

A brick fence with a central gateway is built along the Russell Street boundary, and features piers with crucifix shaped concrete trim.

Status of 1950 Extension: The rear kitchen extension () does not contribute to the cultural heritage significance of St James Parish Hall (1912). It does not contribute in scale, form or materials to the Russell Street streetscape or the Toowoomba townscape. The extension is unremarkable in terms of quality or craftsmanship and is unlikely to be valued by the community. The rear extension is included on the Register only for the purpose of ensuring that its future demolition or renovation would result in an appropriate treatment of the rear wall of the original hall building, or that any building which replaces it, is sympathetic to the hall proper.

Heritage listing
St James Parish Hall was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 28 March 1995 having satisfied the following criteria.

The place is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland's history.

St James Parish Hall, erected 1912, is significant historically for its association with St James Church and the development of the Anglican Church in Toowoomba.

The place is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places.

It is a picturesque example of an Arts and Crafts inspired church hall in Toowoomba, and exhibits a range of aesthetic characteristics valued by the Toowoomba community and congregation of St James church, in particular the contribution of the building in its design, scale, form and materials to the streetscape of Russell Street and to the Toowoomba townscape; and the quality of, and craftsmanship displayed by, the interior, including the timber joinery.

The place is important because of its aesthetic significance.

It is a picturesque example of an Arts and Crafts inspired church hall in Toowoomba, and exhibits a range of aesthetic characteristics valued by the Toowoomba community and congregation of St James church, in particular the contribution of the building in its design, scale, form and materials to the streetscape of Russell Street and to the Toowoomba townscape; and the quality of, and craftsmanship displayed by, the interior, including the timber joinery.

The place is important in demonstrating a high degree of creative or technical achievement at a particular period.

The use of the "hollow wall" construction technique, the extendable casement window and pot-bellied roof ventilator, as patented designs, are important in demonstrating a high degree of technical achievement by the architect, Harry J Marks, in the early 20th century.

The place has a strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons.

As the parish hall for St James Church, one the oldest churches in Toowoomba, it has a special association with the Toowoomba community for social and cultural reasons.

The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history.

It has special association with the life of the Hon. James Taylor, who played a prominent role in the early development of Toowoomba, and his family; and with the work of Toowoomba architects Harry J Marks and Charles Beresford Marks, who were responsible for the design of many Toowoomba buildings.

References

Attribution

External links

Queensland Heritage Register
Churches in Toowoomba
Churches in Toowoomba Region
Articles incorporating text from the Queensland Heritage Register
Religious buildings and structures completed in 1912
1912 establishments in Australia

St James Parish Hall, Toowoomba


Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff (Владимир Григорьевич Третчиков, , Petropavlovsk, Russian Empire, now Petropavl in Kazakhstan – 26 August 2006, Cape Town, South Africa) was an artist whose painting Chinese Girl, popularly known as The Green Lady, is one of the best-selling art prints of the twentieth century.

Tretchikoff was a self-taught artist who painted realistic figures, portraits, still life, and animals, with subjects often inspired by his early life in China, Singapore and Indonesia, and later life in South Africa. While his work was immensely popular with the general public, it is often seen by art critics as the epitome of kitsch (indeed, he was nicknamed the "King of Kitsch"). He worked in oil, watercolour, ink, charcoal and pencil but is best known for those works turned into reproduction prints. According to his biographer Boris Gorelik, writing in Incredible Tretchikoff, the reproductions were so popular that it was rumoured that Tretchikoff was the world's richest artist after Picasso.

Red Jacket, a 1998 South African documentary, detailed Tretchikoff's life and work.

Life and career
Vladimir Grigoryevich Tretchikoff was the youngest of eight children in a well-to-do family in Petropavlovsk (now Petropavl), a town in Siberia. Upon the Russian Revolution in 1917, the family abandoned their property and fled to Harbin, a city in China with a large Russian presence. Tretchikoff worked as a scene painter at the city's Russian opera house, and went to school until the age of 16. His work as a scene painter may explain why much of his later work is designed to be seen from a distance, and was presented with an inherent theatricality. A year previously, he was commissioned to paint portraits for the boardroom of the Chinese-Eastern Railway, and with the money from this commission he joined the community of Shanghai Russians.

In Shanghai, Tretchikoff worked as an art director and illustrator for Mercury Press, an American-owned advertising and publishing company. At the same time, he contributed cartoons to local Russian and English-language magazines. He met and married Natalie Telpougoff, a fellow Russian émigré.  The couple moved to Singapore, where Tretchikoff worked for an advertising agency, gave art lessons, and contributed artwork to the Straits Times.  International recognition came in 1937 when he was commissioned by the head of IBM, Thomas Watson, to represent Malaya in an exhibition of international art for which he produced the painting The Last Divers.

When the Second World War spread to the Pacific in 1940, Tretchikoff became a propaganda artist working for the British Ministry of Information. In February 1942, Tretchikoff was on board a ship evacuating ministry personnel to South Africa.  The ship was bombed by the Japanese, and the 42 survivors rowed first to Sumatra, which they found was already occupied by the Japanese Army.  They then rowed to Java, which took 19 days, only to find that it too was occupied.  Tretchikoff was imprisoned in Serang (where he spent three months in solitary confinement for protesting that as a Russian citizen he ought to be set free), and then was released and spent the rest of the war on parole in Batavia, (now Jakarta), where he worked under supervision of a Japanese artist. Here he met Leonora Schmidt-Salomonson (Lenka) who became his lover and one of his most famous models.

In 1946 he was reunited with his wife and their daughter Mimi in South Africa, who both had been successfully evacuated on an earlier boat.

Success

Tretchikoff quickly became known in South Africa thanks to a book that collected his portraits of Asian women and paintings of flowers, and held successful exhibitions in Cape Town and Johannesburg.  He became known in the United States, where the Rosicrucians of San Jose invited him to launch an American tour. Around 57,000 people saw his show in Los Angeles, and 52,000 in San Francisco. In Seattle, a rival show which included Picasso and Rothko was far less attended, to Tretchikoff's satisfaction. Then he took his show to Canada, where it was also a success. This was followed by a large exhibition in 1962 at Harrods in London, where he decided that the Harrods art gallery was too small to accommodate the crowds. He requested and was granted the privilege of having his exhibition in the ground-floor exhibition space, which was attended by more than 205,000 visitors. One of his British admirers, Leslie Rigall, bought a dozen of his paintings, and designed his new house in Windsor Great Park around them.

His Chinese Girl, a 1952 painting featuring Eastern model, Monika Pon-su-san, with blue-green skin, is one of the best selling prints of the twentieth century. Prints of the painting became widespread during the 1950s and 1960s, and the painting was featured in various plays and television programmes including Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) and, with a drawn moustache, in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Other popular paintings of oriental figures were Miss Wong, Lady from Orient, and Balinese Girl. He said of British prima ballerina assoluta, Alicia Markova, who sat for Alicia Markova "The Dying Swan", that she was his most stimulating sitter.

Books
In 1973, Tretchikoff published his autobiography, Pigeon's Luck, with Anthony Hocking, an account of his wartime experiences. The book was painstakingly researched by  Hocking, who contacted people in more than 21 countries.

In 2013, the first complete biography of the artist, Incredible Tretchikoff by Boris Gorelik, was published in London by Art / Books and in Cape Town by Tafelberg.

Revival
Interest in his artworks underwent a resurgence in the late 1990s as part of a revival of 1950s and 1960s retro decor. In 1998 Sotheby's of Johannesburg sold an oil-on-canvas still life for $1800, double what they expected. In 1999 Zulu Maiden was expected to fetch $1800 but went for $10,000. In October 2002 another original fetched $18,000<ref>"The Comeback King of Kitsch", Sunday Magazine (Sunday Herald Sun/Sunday Telegraph, July 13, 2003.</ref> and in May 2008, Fruits of Bali earned $480,000 at Stephan Welz & Co in Cape Town.

The most expensive Tretchikoff painting to date is Chinese Girl which went for nearly £1,000,000 at Bonhams, London in March 2013. The previous record was Red Jacket, which fetched £337,250 in October 2012, also at Bonhams.That record was soon broken at the same auction house. In March 2013, Chinese Girl was sold for GBP 982,050.It was bought by Laurence Graff, the British businessman and jeweller, who owns the Delaire Graff Estate near Stellenbosch in South Africa, where the picture is displayed.

Death and legacy
Tretchikoff suffered a stroke in 2002 that left him unable to paint, and died on 26 August 2006 in Cape Town, his home since 1946. He was survived by his wife Natalie, his daughter Mimi (b. 1938), four granddaughters and five great-grandchildren. Natalie Tretchikoff died on 18 July 2007.

The South African National Gallery never acquired an original Tretchikoff because they did not "really regard Tretchikoff as a South African artist". In Esme Berman's book, Art and Artists of Southern Africa, he is discussed in little more than two lines, under the heading "popular artists". Tretchikoff once said that the only difference between himself and Vincent van Gogh was that Van Gogh had starved whereas he had become rich.

Illusionist Uri Geller is an admirer of Tretchikoff, in spite of agreeing with critics that his is anything but great art. He wrote, "You put a brick in the Tate today and it's art. Who decided that the Green Lady is kitsch? Not the hundreds of thousands who bought it."

Another admirer of Tretchikoff is fashion designer Wayne Hemingway, who compared him to Andy Warhol. In his book, Just Above The Mantelpiece, which defends popular art, he wrote, "He achieved everything that Andy Warhol stated he wanted to do but could never achieve because of his coolness."

Soon after his death the Tretchikoff Trust was established. The Trust hosts workshops for teenagers throughout South Africa. The Trust is based on Tretchikoff's life motto "Express your passion, do whatever you love, take action, no matter what". In 2011, the first Tretchikoff retrospective was held at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. Curated by Andrew Lamprecht, it proved to be one of the most successful shows in the gallery's history.

Documentary
A 1998 South African documentary, Red Jacket, was made about Tretchikoff.

See also
Bragolin
Margaret Keane
Joseph Henry LynchAlicia Markova "The Dying Swan" References

Further reading

 The Sun-Herald (Sydney) - "Rich Kitsch" 26 March 2006 (Home on Sunday, pg. 8)
 Art and Artists of South Africa, Esme Berman,
 The Dictionary of South African Painters and Sculptors, Grania Oglivie,  Published Everard,
 Time Out at PTs: The Art of Vladimir Tretchikoff, in Scottish International Volume 6, No. 7, p. 15

External links
Official Tretchikoff website
Incredible Tretchikoff - an unofficial Facebook group
Interview with Tretchikoff's model for Chinese Girl in Mail & Guardian"Lady in Green", by Uri Geller
SABC News report on his passing
Obituary at bigshinything
 Obituary in the [http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/printedition/Default.aspx SA Sunday Times']
 Obituary in The Guardian
Obituary in The New York Times
Obituary in The Washington Post
Appreciation in the Guardian
Obituary in The Times

1913 births
2006 deaths
People from Petropavl
20th-century Russian painters
Russian male painters
21st-century Russian painters
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to China
Russian exiles
South African painters
South African male painters
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to South Africa
20th-century Russian male artists
21st-century Russian male artists
20th-century autobiographers
Russian autobiographers

Vladimir Tretchikoff


The church of St Medardus and St Gildardus in Little Bytham, Lincolnshire, England, is a Grade I listed building. It is dedicated to two 6th-century French saints, St Medard and St Gildard (or Medardus and Gildardus); the dedication is unique in the UK. Virtually unknown in Britain, St Medard is still well known in France, with at least 25 towns or villages named after him (as St Médard or St Méard). Gildard, thought to be his brother, is less well known. The village fête is held annually on or near St Medard's feast day, 8 June.

The earliest parts of the building are some Anglo-Saxon "long-and-short" stonework, visible externally at the southeast and southwest corners (quoins) of the nave. The church also has several Romanesque details dating from the Norman era, including a Priest's Door ("uncommonly ornate", according to Nikolaus Pevsner) with a finely carved tympanum; the empty circular niche in the tympanum is said to have held a relic; the birds in roundels to either side are probably eagles, as one is legendarily supposed to have sheltered Medard from the rain. Also Norman are the plain, undecorated arch into the tower, and the north door (late 12th century).

The south aisle and the upper parts of the tower and spire are 13th century work; the intersecting tracery of the east window of the south aisle shows that it is slightly later, dating from around 1300, as does the nearby piscina. The chancel arch is probably also from the late 13th century, and the double piscina in the chancel may be of a similar age. The Easter Sepulchre in the chancel is in the slightly later (Decorated) style, but is a fairly crude example. A finely sculpted capital depicting a Green Man surrounded by oak leaves, similar to examples at nearby Kirkby Underwood and Greatford, also dates from c.1300. It is no longer in position, having been built into a wall, face inwards, and rediscovered during later restoration work.

The stone base of the pulpit is dated 1590, and has a Latin inscription Orate et parate ("Pray and prepare"). Pevsner mistakenly gives this as Orate et Arate.  The Listed Building entry is taken from Pevsner, with the same error.

The churchyard contains the war grave of a Royal Engineers soldier of the First World War.

References

External links

12th-century church buildings in England
South Kesteven District
Church of England church buildings in Lincolnshire
Grade I listed churches in Lincolnshire

St Medardus and St Gildardus Church, Little Bytham


Rheinorange (Rhine Orange) is a sculpture erected in 1992 in Duisburg-Neuenkamp, Germany. It is located at the point where the  Ruhr flows into the Rhine at 'Rheinkilometer 780', i.e. 780 km from the source of the Rhine. It was constructed from steel by the sculptor Lutz Fritsch from Köln.

It is 25 m tall, 7 m wide and 1 m thick, and weighs 83 tonnes. The cost was over 400.000 DM, which was donated by the  Niederrhein IHK (chamber of commerce) after a fund-raising initiative by the young entrepreneurs members.  The name Rheinorange is actually a play on words. It sounds like Reinorange (pure orange) which is RAL 2004 in the  RAL color standard.

The sculpture is intended to form a landmark. The mouth of the river, the largest inland harbour in Europe, the most important steel district in Europe, a base for technology with a future, the Lehmbruck-Museum as an important gallery for modern sculpture in Europe, are all intended to be connected with each other in representing  aspects of the  economic and cultural life of  Duisburg.

The Rhine Orange is a feature on the Ruhr Industrial Heritage Trail.

Gallery

External links
This is a translation of a German article on Wikipedia

References

Culture in Duisburg
Rhine
Outdoor sculptures in Germany
Buildings and structures in North Rhine-Westphalia

Rhine Orange


In computing, a hextet, or a chomp, is a sixteen-bit aggregation, or four nibbles. As a nibble typically is notated in hexadecimal format, a hextet consists of 4 hexadecimal digits. A hextet is the unofficial name for each of the 8 blocks in an IPv6 address.

History
Bob Bemer suggested the use of hextet for 16-bit groups in 2000. In 2011 an Internet Draft explored various alternatives for hextet such as quibble, short for "quad nibble". In response to this draft, author Trefor Davies suggested the use of the word chomp because it is in line with the current denominations bit, nibble, byte.

Hextet would more properly describe a 6-bit aggregation, whereas the exact term for 16 bits should be hexadectet, directly related to the term octet (for 8 bits). However, because it is harder to pronounce, the short form hextet is used—in analogy to how hex is commonly used as an abbreviation for hexadecimal in computing. This usage of hex to mean 16 is also in line with the similar IEEE 1754 term hexlet indicating 16 octets.

Although the word hextet is not officially recognized in the IETF documents, the word is used in technical literature on IPv6 published after the Internet Draft. Official IETF documents simply refer to them as pieces.

Cisco sources generally use the term quartet as does IPv6.com, a reference either to the four digit grouping or to the fact that it represents four nibbles; however, this term is also used by some to refer to a four-bit aggregation.

See also
Sextet (group of 6 bits)
Doublet (2 octets)

References

Units of information

Hextet


A potion is a liquid "that contains medicine, poison, or something that is supposed to have magic powers."  It derives from the Latin word potio which refers to a drink or the act of drinking. The term philtre is also used, often specifically for a love potion,  a potion that is supposed to create feelings of love or attraction in the one who drinks it.
Throughout history there have been several types of potions for a range of purposes. Reasons for taking potions ranged from curing an illness, to securing immortality to trying to induce love. These potions, while often ineffective or poisonous, occasionally had some degree of medicinal success depending on what they sought to fix and the type and amount of ingredients used. Some popular ingredients used in potions across history include Spanish fly, nightshade plants, cannabis, and opium.

During the 17th to 19th century, it was common in Europe to see peddlers offering potions for ailments ranging from heartbreak to the plague. These were eventually dismissed as quackery. Prostitutes, courtesans, enchanters and midwives were also known to distribute potions.

Etymology
The word potion has its origins in the Latin word potus, an irregular past participle of potare, meaning "to drink." This evolved to the word potionem (nominative potio) meaning either "a potion, a drinking" or a "poisonous draught, magic potion". In Ancient Greek, the word for both drugs and potions was "pharmaka" or "pharmakon".
 In the 12th century, the French had the word pocion, meaning "potion", "draught", or "medicine". By the 13th century, this word became pocioun, referring to either a medicinal drink, or a dose of liquid medicine (or poison).

The word "potion" is also cognate with the Spanish words pocion with the same meaning, and ponzoña, meaning "poison"; The word pozione was originally the same word for both "poison" and "potion" in Italian, but by the early 15th century in Italy, potion began to be known specifically as a magical or enchanted drink.

Administrators of potions
The practice of administering potions has had a long history of being illegalised. Despite these laws, there have been several different administrators of potions across history.

Quacks

Quacks or charlatans are people who sell "medical methods that do not work and are only intended to make money".  In Europe in the 15th century it was also common to see long-distance peddlers, who sold supposedly magical healing potions and elixirs. During the Great Plague of London in the 17th century, quacks sold many fake potions promising either cures or immunity. Because pills looked less trustworthy to the public, potions were often the top sellers of quacks. These potions often included bizarre ingredients such as floral pomanders and the smoke of fragrant woods. The well known Wessex quack Vilbert was known to sell love potions made of pigeon hearts.  By the 18th century in England, it was common for middle class households to stock potions that claimed to solve a variety of ailments. Quackery grew to its height in the 19th century.

Pharmacists
In 18th- and 19th-century Britain, pharmacies or apothecaries were often a cheaper, more accessible option for medical treatment than doctors.  Potions distributed by chemists for illnesses were often derived from herbs and plants, and based on old beliefs and remedies.

Prior to the Pharmacy Act 1868 anybody could become a pharmacist or chemist. Since the practice was unregulated, potions were often made from scratch.

Potions were additionally used to cure illness in livestock. One potion found in a 19th-century pharmacist's recipe book was to be used for "lambs of about 7 years old" and contains chalk, pomegranate and opium.

The role of women in distributing potions

There was a strict hierarchy in the medical community of Europe during the 12th to 15th centuries. Male doctors were the most respected and paid followed by female apothecaries, barber-surgeons and surgeons. Women were often the main way that individuals who could not afford doctors or apothecaries could gain medical treatment Potions, in addition to calming teas or soup, were a common homemade  treatment made by women. When unable to go to a female house member, early modern people would often go to the wise women of their village. Wise women (who were often supposed witches) were knowledgeable in health care and could administer potions, lotions or salves in addition to performing prayers or chants. This was often free of charge or significantly less expensive than the potions of apothecaries.

The limited jobs available to women during the 17th to 18th century in Europe often involved a knowledge of potions as an additional way to gain a financial income.  Jobs that often involved the selling of love potions included prostitutes, courtesans, enchanters and midwives.   These practices varied by region. In Rome, up until the period of the civil wars, the only physicians were drug-sellers, enchanters and midwives. In Greece, retired courtesans often both created potions and worked as midwives. Prostitutes in Europe were often expected to be an expert in magic and administer love potions.

Self-administration
In the Middle Ages and the early modern period using potions to induce sterility and abortion was widely practiced in Europe. The majority of abortive potions were made using emmenagogue herbs (herbs used to stimulate menstruation) which were intended to cause a period and end a pregnancy. Additionally abortive potions could also be prepared by infusion of a herb or tree. The willow tree was a common ingredient in these potions, as it was fabled to cause sterility. Several key theological and legal literature of the time condemned this practice, including Visigothic law and the Church.

Many herbal potions containing emmenagogues did not contain abortifacients (substances that induce abortion) and were instead used to cure amenorrhoea (a lack of period). There are several different types of literature in the humoral tradition that propose the use of herbal potions or suppositories to provoke menstruation.

Famous potion makers

Giulia Tofana and Gironima Spana
Giulia Tofana (1581-1651) was an Italian poisoner, known as the inventor of the famous poison Aqua Tofana. Born in Sicily, she invented and started to sell the poison in Palermo in Sicily.   She later established herself in Rome, where she continued the business, specialising in selling to women in abusive marriages who wanted to become widows.   She died peacefully in 1651 and left the business to her stepdaughter Gironima Spana, who expanded it to a substantial business in the 1650s. The organization was exposed in 1659 and resulted in the famous Spana Prosecution, which became a subject of sensationalistic mythologization for centuries.

Paula de Eguiluz
Paula de Eguiluz was born into slavery in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in the 17th century. Within the area in which she lived, sickness and disease ravaged the towns and major cities. Paula de Eguiluz decided to research and find her own cures to these maladies. Because of this, she is widely known for being involved in health care and healing.

Once her healing and health care practice took off, she started to sell potions and serums to clients. de Eguiluz's business attracted a following and slowly got her into a bit of trouble.

Due to Paula's healing accomplishments, she was arrested approximately 3 times. During these inquisitions, she was forced to tell the jury that she performed witchcraft. In response to these false confessions, she was imprisoned and whipped several times.

Catherine Monvoisin

Catherine Monvoisin, better known to some as La Voisin, was born within the year 1640 in France.

Catherine Monvoisin married Antoine Monvoisin who was a jeweler in Paris. His business plummeted and Catherine had to find work in order for her and her family to survive. She had a knack for reading people very accurately coupled with chiromancy and utilized her skills in order to make money.

La Voisin would read people's horoscopes and perform abortions, but she also sold potions and poisons to her clients. Her work quickly became well known throughout France and people would quickly become her clients. Around the year 1665, her fortune telling was questioned by Saint Vincent de Paul's Order, but she was quick to dismiss the allegations of witchcraft.

Catherine would then begin making potions whether it be for love, murder, or everyday life. Her love potion consisted of bones, the teeth of moles, human blood, Spanish fly beetles, and even small amounts of human remains. Her predecessor and major influence was Giulia Tofana.

On March 12, 1679, Catherine was arrested Notre- Dame Bonne- Nouvelle due to a string of incidents involving her and her potions. She confessed her crimes of murder and told authorities a majority of everything they needed to know about the people she knowingly murdered.

On February 22, 1680, La Voisin was sentenced to a public death wherein she was to be  burned as the stake for witchcraft.

Jacqueline Felicie
Jacqueline Felice de Almania was tried in Italy in 1322 for the unlicensed practice of medicine. She was mainly accused of doing a learned male physicians job and accepting a fee. This job involved "examining urine by its physical appearance; touching the body; and prescribing potions, digestives, and laxatives." Eight witnesses testified to her medical experience and wisdom. However, as she had not attended university, her knowledge was dismissed. Jacqueline Felice was then found guilty and fined and excommunicated from the church.

Popular types of potions
Emotions such as anger, fear and sadness are universal and as such potions have been created across history and cultures in response to these human emotions.

Love potion

Love potions have been used throughout history and cultures.  Scandinavians often used love-philtres, which is documented in the Norse poem The Lay of Gudrun.

In 17th-century Cartagena, Afro-Mexican curer (curanderos/as) and other Indigenous healers could gain an income and status from selling spells and love potions to women trying to secure men and financial stability. These love potions were sold to women of all social classes, who often wished to gain sexual agency.

Restorative potion

Confectio Alchermes
In the early 9th century, Arab physician Yuhanna ̄ Ibn Masawaih used the dye kermes to create a potion called Confectio Alchermes. The potion was "intended for the caliph and his court and not for commoners." The potion was intended to cure heart palpitations, restore strength and cure madness and depression.

During the Renaissance in Europe, Confectio Alchermes was used widely. Recipes for the potion appeared in the work of the popular English apothecary Nicholas Culpeper and the official pharmacopoeia handbooks of London and Amsterdam. Queen Elizabeth's French ambassador was even treated with the remedy; however, the recipe was altered to include a "unicorn's horn" (possibly a ground-up narwhal tusk) in addition to the traditional ingredients. The ingredients for the potion mainly included ambergris, cinnamon, aloes, gold leaf, musk, pulverized lapis lazuli, and white pearls.

St Paul's potion
St Paul's potion was intended to cure epilepsy, catalepsy and stomach problems. Many ingredients used in the potion had medicinal value. According to Toni Mount the list of ingredients included "liquorice, sage, willow, roses, fennel, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cormorant blood, mandrake, dragon's blood and three kinds of pepper".

Many of these ingredients still have medicinal value in the 21st century. Liquorice can be used to treat coughs and bronchitis. Sage can help memory and improve blood flow to the brain. Willow contains salicylic acid, which is a component of aspirin. Fennel, cinnamon and ginger are all carminatives, which help relieve gas in the intestines. The cormorant blood adds iron to treat anemia. If used in small doses, Mandrake is a good sleeping draught (though in large doses Mandrake can be poisonous.) Dragon's blood refers to the bright red resin of the tree Dracaena draco. According to Toni Mount "it has antiseptic, antibiotic, anti-viral and wound-healing properties, and it is still used in some parts of the world to treat dysentery."

Immortality potion
Creating a potion for immortality, was a common pursuit of alchemists throughout history. The Elixir of Life is a famous potion that aimed to create eternal youth. During the Chinese dynasties, this elixir of life was often recreated and drunk by emperors, nobles and officials. In India, there is a myth of the potion amrita, a drink of immortality made out of nectar.

Psychedelic potions

Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca, is a hallucinogenic plant-based potion used in many parts of the world. It was first created by indigenous South Americans from the Amazon basin as a spiritual medicine. The potion was often administered by a shaman during a ceremony. The potion contains the boiled stems of the ayahuasca vine and leaves from the chacruna plant. Chacruna contains dimethyltryptamine (also known as DMT), a psychedelic drug. The potion caused users to vomit or 'purge' and induced hallucinations.

Folklore

Potions or mixtures are common within many of local mythologies. In particular, references to love potions are common in many cultures. Yusufzai witches, for example, would bathe a recently deceased leatherworker and sell the water to those seeking a male partner; this practice is said to exist in a modified form in modern times.

Famous potions in literature
Potions have played a critical role in many pieces of literature.  Shakespeare wrote potions into many of his plays including a love potion in A Midsummer Night's Dream, poison in Hamlet, and Juliet takes a potion to fake her death in Romeo and Juliet.

In the Harry Potter series, potions also play a main role.  The students are required to attend potion classes and knowledge of potions often becomes a factor for many of the characters.

In the fairytale "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen, the Little Mermaid wishes to become human and have an immortal soul.  She visits the Sea Witch who sells her a potion, in exchange for which she cuts out the Little Mermaid's tongue.  The Sea Witch makes the potion using her own blood that she cuts from her breast.  She warns the Little Mermaid that it will feel as if she had been cut with a sword when her fin becomes legs, that she will never be able to become a mermaid again, and risks turning into seafoam and not having an immortal soul if she fails to win the Prince's love.  The Little Mermaid decides to take the potion which successfully turns her into a human so that she can try to win the love of the Prince and an immortal soul.

In the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Henry Jekyll creates a potion that transforms him into an evil version of himself called Edward Hyde.  Dr. Jekyll does not explain how he created this potion because he felt his "discoveries were incomplete," he only indicates that it requires a "particular salt."  He uses the potion successfully to go back and forth between his normal self, Dr. Jekyll, and his evil self, Mr. Hyde.

Popular ingredients used in potions

Solanaceous plants
In the 11th century, plants belonging to the nightshade family Solanaceae were often used as an ingredients in the potions - aphrodisiac or otherwise - and flying ointments of witches. The specific nightshades used in such concoctions were usually tropane alkaloid-containing species belonging to the Old World tribes Hyoscyameae and Mandragoreae. These potions were known as pharmaka diabolika ("devilish drugs").

The root of Mandragora officinarum, the celebrated  mandrake, fabled in legend to shriek when uprooted, was often used to prepare sleeping potions, although it could prove poisonous in excess, due to its tropane alkaloid content.
M. officinarum is native to the Mediterranean region. Administered in small doses mandrake root has been used in folk medicine as an analgesic, an aphrodisiac and a remedy for infertility. Larger doses act as an entheogen of the deliriant class, having the potential to cause profound confusion and dysphoria characterised by realistic hallucinations of an unpleasant character.
Classical and Renaissance authors have left certain accounts of the use of the plant by witches in the preparation of potions intended variously to excite love, cause insanity or even kill. Scopolamine, a toxic, deliriant alkaloid present in (and named after) Scopolia carniolica and also present in Mandragora, Hyoscyamus and other Solanaceae, was used by the infamous Dr. Crippen to kill his wife.

Spanish fly
In ancient Greece, the Spanish fly (also known as cantharides) was crushed with herbs and used in love potions.  It was believed to be effective due to the bodily warmth that resulted from ingesting it. However, this was actually a result of inflammation from toxins in the tissues of the beetle. Ferdinand II of Aragon drank many potions and elixir contains the Spanish fly.

Cochineal
Cochineal, another type of dye, replaced kermes as an ingredient in Confectio Alchermes in the 17th and 18th century. Cochineal was also heavily used as an ingredient in potions for jaundice. Jaundice potions were a mix of Cochineal, cream of tartar and Venetian soap and patients were directed to take it three times a day.

Cannabis and opium
Opium and cannabis has been used in potions throughout human history. Potions containing cannabis and/or opium were particularly popular in Arabia, Persia, and Muslim India after the arrival of the drugs around the 9th century. Cannabis and opium were a common ingredient used in potions and tinctures sold by apothecaries in 19th-century Europe, as the ingredients made patients feel better, and the addictive nature of the drug meant it sold well. Nepenthes pharmakon is a famous type of magical potion recorded in Homer's Odyssey, intended to cure sorrow. Pharmakon was the word for medicine in Ancient Greek. The potion was recreated in the 18th century, and contains both the plant nepenthe and opium.

See also
 Alchemy in art and entertainment
 Asterix
 Concoction
 Extract
 Herbal medicine
 Herbal tea
 History of pharmacy
 Spagyric
 The Love Potion

References

External links
 Poisoning in the Middle Ages

Alchemical substances
Alternative medicine
Fantasy tropes
Herbalism
Magic substances
Poisons

Potion


"Small Time Laboring Man" (sometimes called "Small Town Laboring Man") is a song by George Jones.  It was composed by Jones and Earl "Peanut" Montgomery and released as a single on the Musicor label in 1968.

Background
Although Jones had scored several Top 10 hits in 1967 and 1968 (including the #1 hit "Walk Through This World with Me"), "Small Time Laboring Man" was a disappointment, barely making the Top 30.  The maudlin ballad, which tells the story of a man who "toils and sweats" for "a dollar an hour, eight hours a day," contained gospel elements tinged with patriotism ("I'd fight for my country with my callous hands") and Jones typically committed, heartfelt vocal, but the single may have been too dour for even the conservative country audience, with Nick Tosches commenting in his article "The Devil in George Jones" in 1994, "The late sixties...were a strange time for Jones. America was adrift in a fluorescent cloud of patchouli-scented ahimsa, and Jones, in his crew cut and his Nudie Cohn suits, seemed hopelessly out of sync." In an attempt to align himself with the times, Jones would make a rare digression from straight country and record the Montgomery protest song "Unwanted Babies," a folk song that George detested and released under the pseudonym Glen Patterson.  "Small Time Laboring Man" did not go completely unnoticed, however; in a Rolling Stone interview in 1969, Bob Dylan was asked what he thought was the best song released in the previous year and he replied, "George Jones had one called 'Small Town Laboring Man'."

Discography

George Jones songs
1968 songs
Songs written by Earl Montgomery
Songs written by George Jones
Song recordings produced by Pappy Daily
Musicor Records singles

Small Time Laboring Man