Hammer Film Productions Ltd. is a British film production company based in London. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic horror and fantasy films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Many of these involve classic horror characters such as Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy, which Hammer reintroduced to audiences by filming them in vivid colour for the first time. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies, as well as, in later years, television series.

During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success. This success was, in part, due to its distribution partnerships with American companies United Artists, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, American International Pictures and Seven Arts Productions.

During the late 1960s and 1970s, the saturation of the horror film market by competitors and the loss of American funding forced changes to the previously lucrative Hammer formula with varying degrees of success. The company eventually ceased production in the mid-1980s. In 2000, the studio was bought by a consortium including advertising executive and art collector Charles Saatchi and publishing millionaires Neil Mendoza and William Sieghart. The company announced plans to begin making films again, but none was produced.

In May 2007, the company name was sold to a consortium headed by Dutch media tycoon John de Mol, who announced plans to spend some $50 million (£25m) on new horror films. The new organization acquired the Hammer group's film library of 295 pictures. Simon Oakes, who took over as CEO of the new Hammer, said, "Hammer is a great British brand—we intend to take it back into production and develop its global potential. The brand is still alive but no one has invested in it for a long time."

Since then, Hammer has produced several films, including Beyond the Rave (2008), Let Me In (2010), The Resident (2011), The Woman in Black (2012), The Quiet Ones (2014), and The Lodge (2019).

Hammer before horror

Early history (1935–1937)
In November 1934, William Hinds, a comedian and businessman, registered his film company, Hammer Productions Ltd. It was housed in a three-room office suite at Imperial House, Regent Street, London. The company name came from Hinds' stage name, Will Hammer, which he had taken from the area of London in which he lived, Hammersmith.

Work began almost immediately on the first film, now lost, The Public Life of Henry the Ninth at the MGM/ATP studios. Filming concluded on 2 January 1935. The film tells the story of Henry Henry, an unemployed London street musician, and the title was a "playful tribute" to Alexander Korda's The Private Life of Henry VIII which was Britain's first Academy Award for Best Picture nominee in 1934. During this time Hinds met Spanish émigré Enrique Carreras, a former cinema owner, and on 10 May 1935 they formed the film distribution company Exclusive Films, operating from an office at 60-66 National House, Wardour Street. Hammer produced four films distributed by Exclusive:

 The Mystery of the Mary Celeste (1935; Phantom Ship in the U.S.), featuring Bela Lugosi
 Sporting Love (1936)
 Song of Freedom (1936), featuring Paul Robeson
 The Bank Messenger Mystery (1936)

A slump in the British film industry forced Hammer into bankruptcy, and the company went into liquidation in 1937. Exclusive survived and on 20 July 1937 purchased the leasehold on 113-117 Wardour Street and continued to distribute films made by other companies.

Revival (1938–1955)

James Carreras, Enrique's son, joined Exclusive in 1938, closely followed by William Hinds' son, Anthony. At the outbreak of World War II, James Carreras and Anthony Hinds left to join the armed forces and Exclusive continued to operate in a limited capacity. In 1946, James Carreras rejoined the company after demobilisation. He resurrected Hammer as the film production arm of Exclusive with a view to supplying 'quota-quickies', cheaply made domestic films designed to fill gaps in cinema schedules and support more expensive features. He convinced Anthony Hinds to rejoin the company, and a revived Hammer Film Productions set to work on Death in High Heels, The Dark Road, and Crime Reporter. Not able to afford top stars, Hammer acquired the film rights to BBC radio series such as The Adventures of PC 49 and Dick Barton: Special Agent (an adaptation of the successful Dick Barton radio show). All were filmed at Marylebone Studios during 1947. During the production of Dick Barton Strikes Back (1948), it became apparent that the company could save money by shooting in country houses instead of studios. For the next production, Dr Morelle – The Case of the Missing Heiress (another radio adaptation), Hammer rented Dial Close, a 23 bedroom mansion beside the River Thames, at Cookham Dean, Maidenhead.

On 12 February 1949, Exclusive registered "Hammer Film Productions" as a company with Enrique and James Carreras, and William and Tony Hinds as directors. Hammer moved into the Exclusive offices in 113-117 Wardour Street, and the building was rechristened "Hammer House".

In August 1949, complaints from locals about noise during night filming forced Hammer to leave Dial Close and move into another mansion, Oakley Court, also on the banks of the Thames between Windsor and Maidenhead. Five films were produced there: Man in Black (1949), Room to Let (1949), Someone at the Door (1949), What the Butler Saw (1950), The Lady Craved Excitement (1950).

In 1950, Hammer moved again to Gilston Park, a country club in Harlow Essex, which hosted The Black Widow, The Rossiter Case, To Have and to Hold and The Dark Light (all 1950).

In 1951, Hammer began shooting at their most fondly-remembered base, Down Place, on the banks of the Thames. The company signed a one-year lease and began its 1951 production schedule with Cloudburst. The house, virtually derelict, required substantial work, but it did not have the construction restrictions that had prevented Hammer from customising previous homes. A decision was made to remodel Down Place into a substantial, custom-fitted studio complex that became known as Bray Studios. The expansive grounds were used for much of the later location shooting in Hammer's films and are a key to the 'Hammer look'.

Also in 1951, Hammer and Exclusive signed a four-year production and distribution contract with Robert Lippert, an American film producer. The contract meant that Lippert Pictures and Exclusive effectively exchanged products for distribution on their respective sides of the Atlanticbeginning in 1951 with The Last Page and ending with 1955's Women Without Men (a.k.a. Prison Story). It was Lippert's insistence on an American star in the Hammer films he was to distribute that led to the prevalence of American leads in many of the company's productions during the 1950s. It was for The Last Page that Hammer made a significant appointment when they hired film director Terence Fisher, who played a critical role in the forthcoming horror cycle.

Towards the end of 1951, the one-year lease on Down Place expired, and with its growing success Hammer looked towards more conventional studio-based productions. A dispute with the Association of Cinematograph Technicians blocked this proposal, and the company purchased the freehold of Down Place instead. The house was renamed Bray Studios after the nearby village of Bray, and it remained Hammer's principal base until 1966. In 1953, the first of Hammer's science fiction films, Four Sided Triangle and Spaceways, were released.

The birth of Hammer Horror (1955–1959)
Hammer's first significant experiment with horror came in a 1955 adaptation of Nigel Kneale's BBC Television science fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment, directed by Val Guest. As a consequence of the contract with Robert Lippert, American actor Brian Donlevy was imported for the lead role and the title was changed to The Quatermass Xperiment to cash in on the new X certificate for horror films. The film was unexpectedly popular, and led to the popular 1957 sequel Quatermass 2again adapted from one of Kneale's television scripts, this time by Kneale and with a budget double that of the original: £92,000. In the meantime, Hammer produced another Quatermass -style horror film, X the Unknown, originally intended as part of the series until Kneale denied them permission to use his characters (the writer is known to have disliked Donlevy's performance as Quatermass). At the time, Hammer voluntarily submitted scripts to the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) for comment before production. Regarding the script of X the Unknown, one reader/examiner (Audrey Field) commented on 24 November:

Well, no one can say the customers won't have had their money's worth by now. In fact, someone will almost certainly have been sick. We must have a great deal more restraint, and much more done by onlookers' reactions instead of by shots of 'pulsating obscenity', hideous scars, hideous sightless faces, etc, etc. It is keeping on and on in the same vein that makes this script so outrageous. They must take it away and prune. Before they take it away, however, I think the President [of the BBFC] should read it. I have a stronger stomach than the average (for viewing purposes) and perhaps I ought to be reacting more strongly.

Hammer Horror contributors

Directors and writers
 Michael Carreras, a.k.a. Henry Younger, writer/director of The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, and director/producer of The Lost Continent
 Terence Fisher, director of The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy and others
 Freddie Francis, director of The Evil of Frankenstein and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave
 Roy Ward Baker, director of Quatermass and the Pit, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and others
 Tudor Gates, writer of The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, and Twins of Evil
 John Gilling, writer and director of The Shadow of the Cat, The Plague of the Zombies, The Reptile, and The Mummy's Shroud
 Anthony Hinds, a.k.a. John Elder, writer of The Curse of the Werewolf, Frankenstein Created Woman and others
 Jimmy Sangster, writer of The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and others; director of The Horror of Frankenstein and Lust for a Vampire
 Peter Sasdy, director of Taste the Blood of Dracula and Hands of the Ripper
 Seth Holt, director of Taste of Fear, The Nanny and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb
 Don Sharp, director of Kiss of the Vampire and Rasputin the Mad Monk
 Alan Gibson, director of Crescendo, Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula
 Don Houghton, writer of Dracula A.D. 1972, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and Shatter
 Peter Sykes, director of Demons of the Mind and To the Devil a Daughter

Other personnel

The scores for many Hammer horror films, including The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula, were composed by James Bernard. Other Hammer musical personnel included Malcolm Williamson, John Hollingsworth, and Harry Robertson.

Production designer Bernard Robinson and cinematographer Jack Asher were instrumental in creating the lavish look of the early Hammer films, usually on a very restricted budget.

Actors

Hammer's horror films featured many actors who appeared repeatedly in a number of movies, forming an informal "Hammer repertory company".
 Ralph Bates appeared in a number of Hammer films in the early 1970s when the company considered him as a possible replacement both for Peter Cushing in the role of Frankenstein and for Christopher Lee in the role of Dracula. Despite appearing in one film in each of these horror series, ultimately he permanently replaced neither actor.
 Shane Briant had leading roles in several well-regarded Hammer films of the early 1970s, such as Straight On till Morning and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell.
 Veronica Carlson was a leading lady in Hammer films of the late 1960s.
 Peter Cushing was Hammer's pre-eminent star from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s and remains, along with Christopher Lee, the actor most commonly associated with the company; in Hammer films he played Baron Victor Frankenstein six times and Doctor Van Helsing five times, along with many other characters, both heroic and villainous.
 Michael Gough had supporting roles in Hammer's Dracula and The Phantom of the Opera. Like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Gough also appeared in horror films made by Hammer's main U.K. rival, Amicus Productions, amongst others.
 Andrew Keir was a Scottish actor who appeared in leading roles for Hammer in films such as Quatermass and the Pit and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb.
 Christopher Lee was propelled to international stardom when he played Count Dracula in Hammer's 1958 version of the classic horror tale, a role he would play a further six times for Hammer in various sequels. He is today regarded as one of the biggest horror stars in film history.
 Miles Malleson was employed by Hammer to provide comic relief in their earlier Gothic horror films, such as The Brides of Dracula.
 Francis Matthews played second leads in several Hammer films, such as The Revenge of Frankenstein and Dracula: Prince of Darkness.
 André Morell was employed mainly in supporting parts in British films of the 1950s and 1960s, but took lead roles for Hammer in films like The Shadow of the Cat and The Plague of the Zombies.
 Ingrid Pitt had the lead roles in the Hammer vampire films The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula.
 David Prowse, best known for physically portraying Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, appeared in the Hammer films The Horror of Frankenstein, Vampire Circus, and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. In both Frankenstein films, Prowse played the Monster.
 Oliver Reed had his international film career launched by Hammer, for whom he gave powerful performances in films like The Curse of the Werewolf, Paranoiac and The Damned.
 Michael Ripper was Hammer's most prolific actor, appearing in dozens of supporting roles for the company, usually as publicans, coach drivers, and minor officials, throughout the company's most successful years. His final Hammer horror film appearance was in Scars of Dracula in 1970.
 Barbara Shelley was a prolific actress who performed in Hammer films, such as The Gorgon and Quatermass and the Pit.
 Madeline Smith transitioned from a modelling career to acting and appeared in Hammer's Taste the Blood of Dracula before gaining more prominent roles in The Vampire Lovers and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell.
 Thorley Walters was a well known comedy actor in British films who played semi-comic supporting roles in Hammer films, such as The Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein Created Woman and Vampire Circus.
 George Woodbridge played many supporting roles and minor characters in films such as Dracula, The Revenge of Frankenstein, and The Mummy .

Key horror films

The Curse of Frankenstein

As production began on Quatermass 2, Hammer started to look for another U.S. partner willing to invest in and handle the American promotion of new product. They eventually entered talks with Associated Artists Productions (a.a.p.) and head, Eliot Hyman. During this period, two young American filmmakers, Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky, who later established Hammer's rival Amicus, submitted to a.a.p. a script for an adaptation of the novel Frankenstein. Although interested in the script, a.a.p. were not prepared to back a film made by Rosenberg and Subotsky, who had just one film to their credit. Eliot Hyman however, sent the script to his contact at Hammer. Rosenberg would often claim he 'produced' The Curse of Frankenstein, an exaggeration repeated in his obituary.

Although the novel by Mary Shelley was long since in the public domain, Anthony Hinds was unsure about the story, as Subotsky's script adhered closely to the plot of the 1939 Universal film Son of Frankenstein, featuring a second-generation Baron Frankenstein emulating his father, the original monster-maker. This put the project at risk of a copyright infringement lawsuit by Universal. In addition a great deal of polishing and additional material was needed, as the short script had an estimated running time of just 55 minutes, far less than the minimum of 90 minutes needed for distribution in the U.K. Accordingly, comments on the script from Hammer's Michael Carreras (who had joined his father James as producer in the early 1950s) were less than complimentary:

The script is badly presented. The sets are not marked clearly on the shot headings, neither is DAY or NIGHT specified in a number of cases. The number of set-ups scripted is quite out of proportion to the length of the screenplay, and we suggest that your rewrites are done in master scene form.

Further revisions were made to the script, and a working title of Frankenstein and the Monster was chosen. Plans were made to shoot the film in Eastmancolora decision which caused worry at the BBFC. Not only did the script contain horror and graphic violence, but it would be portrayed in vivid colour.

The project was handed to Tony Hinds, who was less impressed with the script than Michael Carreras, and whose vision for the film was a simple black-and-white 'quickie' made in three weeks. Concerned that Subotsky and Rosenberg's script had too many similarities to the Universal films, Hinds commissioned Jimmy Sangster to rewrite it as The Curse of Frankenstein. Sangster's treatment impressed Hammer enough to rescue the film from the 'quickie' treadmill and to produce it as a colour film.

Sangster submitted his script to the BBFC for examination. Audrey Field reported on 10 October 1956:

We are concerned about the flavour of this script, which, in its preoccupation with horror and gruesome detail, goes far beyond what we are accustomed to allow even for the 'X' category. I am afraid we can give no assurance that we should be able to pass a film based on the present script and a revised script should be sent us for our comments, in which the overall unpleasantness should be mitigated.

Regardless of the BBFC's stern warnings, Hinds supervised the shooting of an unchanged script.

The film was directed by Terence Fisher, with a look that belied its modest budget. British TV star Peter Cushing portrayed Baron Victor Frankenstein, and supporting actor Christopher Lee was cast as the imposingly tall, brutish Creature. With a budget of £65,000 and a cast and crew that would become the backbone of later films, Hammer's first Gothic horror went into production. The use of colour encouraged a previously unseen level of gore. Until The Curse of Frankenstein, horror films had not shown blood in a graphic way, or when they did, it was concealed by monochrome photography. In this film, it was bright red, and the camera lingered on it.

The film was an enormous success, not only in Great Britain, but also in the U.S., where it inspired numerous imitations from, amongst others, Roger Corman and American International Pictures (with their series largely based on Edgar Allan Poe – the so-called "Poe Cycle"). It found success on the European continent also, where Italian directors and audiences were particularly receptive.

Dracula

The huge box office success of The Curse of Frankenstein led to the inevitable desire for a sequel in The Revenge of Frankenstein, and an attempt to give the Hammer treatment to another horror icon. Dracula had been a successful film character for Universal in the past, and the copyright situation was more complicated than for Frankenstein. A legal agreement between Hammer and Universal was not completed until 31 March 1958after the film had been shotand was 80 pages long.

Meanwhile, the financial arrangement between a.a.p. and Hammer had broken down when money promised by a.a.p. had not arrived. Hammer began looking for alternatives, and with the success of The Curse of Frankenstein signed with Columbia Pictures to distribute The Revenge of Frankenstein and two films from the defaulted a.a.p. deal, The Camp on Blood Island and The Snorkel. Hammer's financial success also meant the winding-down of the parent film distribution company Exclusive, leaving Hammer to concentrate on filmmaking.

Work continued on the script for Dracula, and the second draft was submitted to the BBFC. Audrey Field commented on 8 October 1957:

"The uncouth, uneducated, disgusting and vulgar style of Mr Jimmy Sangster cannot quite obscure the remnants of a good horror story, though they do give one the gravest misgivings about treatment. [...] The curse of this thing is the Technicolor blood: why need vampires be messier eaters than anyone else? Certainly strong cautions will be necessary on shots of blood. And of course, some of the stake-work is prohibitive."

Despite the success of The Curse of Frankenstein, the financing of Dracula proved awkward. Universal was not interested, and the search for money eventually brought Hammer back to a.a.p.'s Eliot Hyman, through another of his companies, Seven Arts (which later merged with Warner Bros., now the successor-in-interest to a.a.p.). Although an agreement was drawn up, it is alleged that the deal was never realised and funding for Dracula eventually came from the National Film Finance Council (£33,000) and the rest from Universal in return for worldwide distribution rights. However, recent research suggests that the issue of who exactly funded Dracula is still not entirely clear (see Barnett, 'Hammering out a Deal: The Contractual and Commercial Contexts of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958)', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, published online 19 November 2013).

With a final budget of £81,412, Dracula began principal photography on 11 November 1957. Peter Cushing again had top-billing, this time as Doctor Van Helsing, whilst Christopher Lee starred as Count Dracula, with direction by Terence Fisher and a set design by Bernard Robinson that was radically different from the Universal adaptation; it was so radical, in fact, that Hammer executives considered paying him off and finding another designer.

Dracula was an enormous success, breaking box-office records in the U.K., the U.S. (where it was released as Horror of Dracula), Canada, and across the world. On 20 August 1958, the Daily Cinema reported:

"Because of the fantastic business done world-wide by Hammer's Technicolor version of Dracula, Universal-International, its distributors, have made over to Jimmy Carreras' organisation, the remake rights to their entire library of classic films."

Establishing the fanged vampire in popular culture, Lee also introduced a dark, brooding sexuality to the character. The academic Christopher Frayling writes, "Dracula introduced fangs, red contact lenses, décolletage, ready-prepared wooden stakes and – in the celebrated credits sequence – blood being spattered from off-screen over the Count's coffin". The film magazine Empire ranked Lee's portrayal as Dracula the 7th Greatest Horror Movie Character of All Time. 1960 saw the release of the first in a long line of sequels, The Brides of Dracula, with Cushing returning to the role of Van Helsing, though Lee did not play Dracula again until Dracula: Prince of Darkness, released in 1966.

The Mummy

With the agreement in place, Hammer's executives had their pick of Universal International's horror icons and chose to remake The Invisible Man, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Mummy's Hand. All were to be filmed in colour at Bray Studios, by the same team responsible for The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. The Mummy (the title used for the remake of The Mummy's Hand, which also incorporated significant story elements from that film's first two sequels, The Mummy's Tomb and The Mummy's Ghost) was made in 1959, The Phantom of the Opera followed in 1962, and Hammer collaborated with William Castle on a remake of The Old Dark House in 1963. The Invisible Man was never produced.

Principal photography for The Mummy began on 23 February 1959 and lasted until 16 April 1959. Once again it starred both Peter Cushing (as John Banning) and Christopher Lee (as Kharis the Mummy), and was directed by Terence Fisher from a screenplay from Jimmy Sangster. The Mummy went into general release on 23 October 1959 and broke the box-office records set by Dracula the previous year, both in Great Britain and the U.S. when it was released there in December.

Sequels
Hammer consolidated their success by turning their most successful films into series.  This was a practice they had making Dick Barton movies which they continued to their horror movies and other genres.

Quatermass
The success of The Quatermass Xperiment (1955; The Creeping Unknown in the U.S.) led to two sequels:
Quatermass 2 (1957; Enemy from Space in the U.S.)
Quatermass and the Pit (1967; Five Million Years to Earth in the U.S.)

There were also two Quatermass-style films:
X the Unknown (1956)
The Abominable Snowman (1957; The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas in the U.S.) – also based on a script by Nigel Kneale and directed by Val Guest

Frankenstein

Six sequels to The Curse of Frankenstein were released between 1958 and 1974:
 The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
 The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
 Frankenstein Created Woman (1966)
 Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
 The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)
 Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973)

All starred Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein, except The Horror of Frankenstein (which was not a sequel, but a tongue-in-cheek remake of The Curse of Frankenstein), in which Ralph Bates took the title role. The Evil of Frankenstein stars Cushing but due to an agreement made with Universal to more closely pastiche their version of the Frankenstein story, it re-tells the Baron's history in flashbacks that bear no resemblance to the two earlier Hammer Frankenstein films and it portrays the Baron with a very different personality, resulting in a film which permanently breaks the chronological continuity of the series. Each subsequent movie in the series contains elements that do not relate to (or flatly contradict) the events of the movie that went before, whilst the characteristics of Cushing's Baron vary wildly from film to film, resulting in a series that does not progress as a self-contained narrative cycle.

David Prowse was the only actor to star as the creature twice in the Hammer Frankenstein series; he reprised the role from The Horror of Frankenstein in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell.

Hammer also produced a half-hour pilot titled Tales of Frankenstein (1958) that was intended to premiere on American television; it was never picked up, but is now available on DVD. Anton Diffring took over Cushing's role of Baron Frankenstein.

Dracula

Eight sequels to Dracula were released between 1960 and 1974:

 The Brides of Dracula (1960)
 Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1965)
 Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
 Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969)
 Scars of Dracula (1970)
 Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)
 The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973; Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride in the U.S.)
 The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974; The 7 Brothers Meet Dracula in the U.S.), featuring John Forbes-Robertson as Dracula in place of Christopher Lee.

Peter Cushing appeared in the first and final three sequels (with archive footage also used in Dracula: Prince of Darkness). Christopher Lee appeared in all the sequels except the first and last.
The first five sequels were direct sequels to the original. The Brides of Dracula did not include Dracula but is still considered part of the series since Peter Cushing reprises his role as Doctor Van Helsing and battles vampire Baron Meinster (David Peel) and the film makes several direct references to the 1958 original. Christopher Lee returned as Dracula for the following six films, which employed ingenuity in finding new ways to resurrect the Count. Only archive footage of Cushing was used in Dracula: Prince of Darkness and he wouldn't return to the Dracula series until Dracula A.D. 1972. Hammer upped the graphic violence and gore with Scars of Dracula in an attempt to re-imagine the character to appeal to a younger audience, but the movie performed poorly at the box-office which led to a further change of style with the remaining three films. Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula were not period pieces like their predecessors, but had a contemporary 1970s London setting. Now set in a new timeline, Peter Cushing appeared in both films, playing Professor Lorrimer Van Helsing, as well as his own grandfather (Lawrence Van Helsing) in the prologue of the first of the two films. Cushing returned for a final time as Professor Van Helsing in the horror / martial arts crossover The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a movie this time set primarily in 1904.

Christopher Lee grew increasingly disillusioned with the direction the character was being taken and with the poor quality of later scripts, although he did improve these slightly himself by adding lines of dialogue from the original novel. Lee speaks at least one line taken from Bram Stoker in every Dracula film he appeared in, except for Dracula: Prince of Darkness in which the Count does not talk at all (Lee claimed repeatedly he was appalled by his dialogue in that film and refused to speak it, but Jimmy Sangster rebutted that no dialogue was written for the character). He was also concerned about typecasting, and after filming The Satanic Rites of Dracula he finally quit the series.  John Forbes-Robertson took over the role for one final outing as the Count.

The Mummy
Three sequels to The Mummy were released between 1964 and 1971:

 The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)
 The Mummy's Shroud (1966)
 Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971)

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee appeared in none of the Mummy sequels, which had stories and characters unrelated to the 1959 film and all three were relegated to second feature status, as by the mid-1960s, Hammer's films were often intended for double features. Often two films would be shot back-to-back with the same sets and costumes to save money, and then each film would be shown on a separate double feature to prevent audiences noticing any recycling, as for example in The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile (both 1966). The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb supported the slightly more prestigious The Gorgon, whilst The Mummy's Shroud was a second feature for Frankenstein Created Woman.

Blood from the Mummy's Tomb was a modern-day take on Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars and featured Valerie Leon as a reincarnated Egyptian princess, rather than a mummy. The same novel served as the basis for the 1980 Charlton Heston film, The Awakening, and a later direct-to-video feature, Bram Stoker's Legend of the Mummy, starring Lou Gossett Jr.

Other films

Horror films
Other horror films produced by Hammer included:
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1958), starring Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes
The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959)
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960; House of Fright on U.S. TV), a version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), Hammer's only werewolf film, and Oliver Reed's first starring role
The Shadow of the Cat (1961)
The Phantom of the Opera (1962), starring Herbert Lom
The Gorgon (1964), again starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee
The Witches (1966), starring Joan Fontaine
The Plague of the Zombies (1966), directed by John Gilling
The Reptile (1966), directed by John Gilling
Rasputin the Mad Monk (1966)
The Devil Rides Out (1968), adapted from the novel by Dennis Wheatley
Countess Dracula (1971), directed by Peter Sasdy, based on the stories surrounding the "Blood Countess" Elizabeth Báthory
Hands of the Ripper (1971), also directed by Peter Sasdy, about the daughter of Jack the Ripper
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), another version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this time with a gender-swapping twist

Vampire films
In addition to their Dracula series, Hammer produced a number of other horror movies on the vampire theme, including:
 Kiss of the Vampire (1962; Kiss of Evil on U.S. TV), directed by Don Sharp
 Vampire Circus (1972), directed by Robert Young
 Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter (1974), directed by Brian Clemens

Hammer also made a loose trilogy of films, known as ″The Karnstein Trilogy″, based on Sheridan Le Fanu's early vampire novella Carmilla, written by newcomer Tudor Gates. These films include:
 The Vampire Lovers (1970), featuring Polish actress Ingrid Pitt in the central role and directed by Roy Ward Baker
 Lust for a Vampire (1970; To Love a Vampire on U.S. TV), directed by Jimmy Sangster
 Twins of Evil (1971), directed by John Hough

Psychological thrillers
Running alongside production of their 1960s gothic horror films, Hammer made a series of what were known as "mini-Hitchcocks" mostly scripted by Jimmy Sangster, and directed by Freddie Francis and Seth Holt. These low-budget suspense thrillers, often in black-and-white, were made in the mould of Les Diaboliques (1955), although more often compared to the later Psycho.  This series of mystery thrillers, which all had twist endings, comprised:
 Taste of Fear (1961; Scream of Fear in the U.S.)
 Maniac (1963)
 Paranoiac (1963)
 Nightmare (1964)
 Hysteria (1965)
 Fanatic (1965; Die! Die! My Darling! in the U.S.)
 The Nanny (1965)
 Crescendo (1970)
 Fear in the Night (1972)
Demons of the Mind (1972)
Straight On till Morning (1972)
In addition to these were more traditional thrillers such as:
The Snorkel (1958)
Passport to China (1960) a Cold War thriller
The Full Treatment (1960)

Prehistoric films
Hammer had some success with films set in (or with strong connections to) the prehistoric/ancient world, including:
She (1965), based on the novel of the same name by H. Rider Haggard, this starred Ursula Andress and John Richardson alongside Cushing and Lee
One Million Years B.C. (1966), with Raquel Welch and John Richardson
Slave Girls (1967; Prehistoric Women in the U.S.), with Martine Beswick
The Viking Queen (1967)
The Vengeance of She (1967)
The Lost Continent (1968), starring Eric Porter, adapted from another Dennis Wheatley novel
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970), directed by Val Guest
Creatures the World Forgot (1971), directed by Don Chaffey

War films
Hammer made several war films over the years:
The Steel Bayonet (1957)
The Camp on Blood Island (1958)
Ten Seconds to Hell (1959)
Yesterday's Enemy (1959)
The Secret of Blood Island (1965)

Comedies
Hammer were less well known for their comedies, but they made a number in the 1950s and early 1960s, returning to the genre in the 1970s:
Up the Creek (1958) and its sequel Further Up the Creek (1958)
I Only Arsked! (1958)
Don't Panic Chaps! (1959)
The Ugly Duckling (1959)
Watch It, Sailor! (1961)
A Weekend with Lulu (1961)
The Old Dark House (1963)
The Anniversary (1968), with Bette Davis

Science fiction
Hammer occasionally made science fiction movies. Notable examples were:
The Damned (1963)
Moon Zero Two (1969)

Swashbucklers
Hammer made a number of swashbucklers, including:
The Men of Sherwood Forest (1954)
Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)
The Pirates of Blood River (1961), a swashbuckler starring Christopher Lee
Captain Clegg (1962; Night Creatures in the U.S.), an adventure starring Peter Cushing and Oliver Reed
The Scarlet Blade (1963)
The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964), a period adventure starring Christopher Lee and Barry Warren
A Challenge for Robin Hood (1967)

Imperial adventure films
Hammer had some success with films set in the British Empire, such as:
The Stranglers of Bombay (1959)
The Terror of the Tongs (1961)
The Brigand of Kandahar (1965)

Crime films
Hell is a City (1959), a crime thriller starring Stanley Baker
Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960; Never Take Candy from a Stranger in the U.S.), a drama about child abuse starring Patrick Allen and Felix Aylmer
Cash on Demand (1961)
On 29 May 1968, Hammer was awarded the Queen's Award to Industry in recognition of their contribution to the British economy. The presentation ceremony took place on the steps of the Castle Dracula set at Pinewood Studios, during the filming of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.

Last years of film production
Hammer films had always sold, in part, on their violent and sexual content. In the late 1960s, with the release of Hollywood films like Bonnie and Clyde, Rosemary's Baby, and The Wild Bunch, the studio struggled to maintain its place in the market. Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby was a successful example of psychological horror, while Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch exposed mainstream audiences to more explicit gore, and were more expertly staged than Hammer films. Meanwhile, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) had set a new standard for graphic violence in horror films.

In 1969 Tony Hinds resigned from the Hammer board and retired from the industry. Hammer was not the same without him; it responded to the new reality by bringing in new writers and directors, testing new characters, and attempting to rejuvenate their vampire and Frankenstein films with new approaches to familiar material. (1974's Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, for example, features a scene where the Baron treads on a discarded human brain.)

The company soon realised, however, that if they could not be as gory as the new American productions, they could follow a trend in European films of the time and instead play up the sexual content of their films.

While the studio remained true to previous period settings in their 1971 release Vampire Circus, Dracula AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), for example, abandoned period settings in pursuit of a modern-day setting and a "swinging London" feel. The Satanic Rites of Dracula, then called Dracula is Dead... and Well and Living in London, indulged the turn toward self-parody suggested by the title, with some humour appearing in the script, undercutting any sense of horror. These latter films were not successful and drew fire not only from critics but from Christopher Lee himself, who refused to appear in any more Dracula films after these. Speaking at a press conference in 1973 to announce Dracula is Dead... and Well and Living in London, Lee said:

TV adaptations
Hammer Films had commercial success with some atypical output during this period, with film versions of several British TV situation comedies, most notably the ITV series On the Buses (1971). The first spin-off made was Hammer's biggest domestic earner of the 1970s and was popular enough to produce two sequels, Mutiny on the Buses (1972) and Holiday on the Buses (1973), seeing Hammer return to their pre-horror practice of adapting television properties for the cinema as they had once done with PC 49 and Dick Barton.

Other adaptations included:
Nearest and Dearest (1972)
That's Your Funeral (1972)
Love Thy Neighbour (1973)
Man at the Top (1973)
Man About the House (1974)

Final films
In the latter part of the 1970s, Hammer made fewer films, and attempts were made to break away from the then-unfashionable Gothic horror films on which the studio had built its reputation. The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), a co-production with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers which attempted to combine Hammer's brand of horror with the then popular martial arts genre, and To the Devil a Daughter (1976), their third adaptation of a Dennis Wheatley novel, were both quite successful at the U.K. box office, but Hammer was unable to capitalise on them as most of the profits went to other financial backers.

Hammer Films struggled on throughout the 1970s before going into liquidation in 1979. Hammer's last production, in 1979, was a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes, starring Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd. (The Encyclopedia of British Film characterized the remake as "about as witless and charmless as could be conceived".)

Brand-name resurrection (2007–present)
In the 2000s, although the company seemed to be in hibernation, frequent announcements had been made of new projects. In 2003, for example, the studio announced plans to work with Australian company Pictures in Paradise to develop new horror films for the DVD and cinema market. On 10 May 2007, it was announced that Dutch producer John De Mol had purchased the Hammer Films rights via his private equity firm Cyrte Investments. In addition to holding the rights to over 300 Hammer films, De Mol's company plans to restart the studio. According to an article in Variety detailing the transaction, the new Hammer Films was to be run by former Liberty Global execs Simon Oakes and Marc Schipper. In addition, Guy East and Nigel Sinclair of L.A.-based Spitfire Pictures are on board to produce two to three horror films or thrillers a year for the U.K.-based studio. The first output under the new owners is Beyond the Rave, a contemporary vampire story which premièred free online, exclusively, on Myspace in April 2008 as a 20 × 4 min. serial.

The company began shooting a new horror/thriller film in County Donegal in 2008, backed by the Irish Film Board. The film is titled Wake Wood and was scheduled for release in the United Kingdom in the autumn of 2009.
The film was produced in collaboration with the Swedish company Solid Entertainment, makers of the vampire film Frostbiten, which pays homage to the Hammer vampire films among others. It was given a limited UK/Ireland theatrical release in March 2011. In the summer of 2009, Hammer produced in the U.S. The Resident, a thriller directed and co-written by Finnish filmmaker Antti Jokinen and starring Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Christopher Lee. It was released in the US and UK in March 2011. In 2010, Hammer, in partnership with Overture Films and Relativity Media, released Let Me In, a remake of Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In.

In June 2010, it was announced that Hammer acquired Wake, a script by Chris Borrelli for an action feature to be directed by Danish filmmaker Kasper Barfoed. In February 2012, the Hammer and Alliance Films adaptation of The Woman in Black was released. Daniel Radcliffe stars as lawyer Arthur Kipps. Jane Goldman wrote the film's screenplay, with James Watkins in the director's chair. In April 2012, the company announced it was to make a sequel to The Woman in Black titled The Woman in Black: Angel of Death. Also in 2012, Hammer and Alliance Films announced two more films going into production during 2012, entitled The Quiet Ones and Gaslight. The Quiet Ones tells the story of an unorthodox professor (Jared Harris) who uses controversial methods and leads his best students off the grid to take part in a dangerous experiment: to create a poltergeist. It was released on 10 April 2014 in the UK and 25 April in the US.

After a few quiet years, the film The Lodge had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on 25 January 2019. It was scheduled to be released on 15 November 2019, by NEON.

In September 2019, Hammer signed a worldwide distribution deal with StudioCanal for its catalogue.

In November 2021, it was announced Network Distributing had united with Hammer to form Hammer Studios Ltd. In August 2023, it was announced Hammer Studios Ltd. had been acquired by the John Gore Organisation.

In July 2022, Hammer Film Production Ltd was incorporated by Ronan Williams via Companies House in the UK.

Current films
 Beyond the Rave (2008)
 Let Me In (2010)
 The Resident (2011)
 Wake Wood (2011)
 The Woman in Black (2012)
 The Quiet Ones (2014)
 The Woman in Black: Angel of Death (2015)
 The Lodge (2019)
 Doctor Jekyll (2023)

Critical response

Hammer's horror films were often praised by critics for their visual style, although rarely taken seriously. "Altogether this is a horrific film and sometimes a crude film, but by no means an unimpressive piece of melodramatic storytelling" wrote one critic of Dracula in The Times in 1958. Critics who specialise in cult films, like Kim Newman, have praised Hammer Horror more fully, enjoying their atmosphere, craftsmanship and occasional camp appeal. In A History of Horror, Mark Gatiss remarked that Hammer's earlier films were taken seriously at the time, in comparison to the trademark camp appeal of their later works.

In a 2013 retrospective for The Guardian, Michael Newton wrote:Shot in Eastmancolor, the first batch of Hammer Horror movies – Terence Fisher's The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959) – are among the loveliest-looking British films of the decade... The early Hammer films offer a last gasp of British romanticism, the solid sets drenched in a soft brilliance of shadows, of greys, reds and blues; when these films stray into the far woods, it's always autumn there, never spring. The leaves fall, and the light shines golden and clear; compared with the well-lit contemporary look of the "angry young men" films, Hammer's mournful sumptuousness must have been even more striking. They play out a 1950s reverie of contagion, lust and post-Suez anxiety. Questions of guilt circulate in these films, where the virtuous can be transformed into vampires through one moment of sexual weakness...

Television series

Journey to the Unknown

This was a fantasy, science fiction and supernatural anthology series which dealt with normal people in everyday situations that found themselves having to experience something out of the ordinary. 17 episodes of approximately 50 minutes each were produced by Hammer Film Productions and 20th Century Fox Television. In America, eight episodes from the series were broadcast as four made-for-television films consisting of twinned episodes along with new segment introduction footage provided by actors Patrick McGoohan, Sebastian Cabot and Joan Crawford serving as hosts.  The series was first aired on ABC from 26 September, 1968 to 30 January, 1969, prior to broadcast in the UK on ITV in 1969.

Hammer House of Horror

In 1980, Hammer Films created an anthology series for British television, Hammer House of Horror. Shown on ITV, it ran for 13 episodes with a running length of approximately 54 minutes each. In a break from their cinema format, these self-contained episodes featured plot twists which usually saw the protagonists fall into the hands of that episode's horror at the end. The series featured a different kind of horror each week, including witches, werewolves, ghosts, devil worship and voodoo, but also included non-supernatural horror themes such as cannibalism, confinement and serial killers. All the stories were set in contemporary England.

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense

A second television anthology series, Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, was produced in 1984 and ran for 13 episodes. The stories were originally to have been the same 54 min. length as their previous series, but it was decided to expand them to feature-length to market them as 'movies of the week' in the US. The running time varied from 69 to 73 minutes. The series was made in association with 20th Century Fox (who broadcast films as Fox Mystery Theater) and as such, the sex and violence seen in the earlier series was toned down considerably for US television. Each episode featured a star, often American, known to US viewers. This series was Hammer's final production of the 20th century, and the studio went into semi-permanent hiatus.

See also
 Hammer filmography
 House of Hammer
 Cinema of the United Kingdom

References

Bibliography

 Frankenstein, Dracula et les autres sous les feux de la Hammer, Daniel Bastié, Editions Grand Angle, 2015, p.227

External links

 Official Hammer web site
 Hammer Horror Films List
 Hammer Horror BFI Screenonline article

Hammer Film Productions
British companies established in 1934
Film production companies of the United Kingdom
Mass media companies based in London
Mass media companies established in 1934
1934 establishments in England

Hammer Film Productions


Thomas Amory D.D. (28 January 1701 – 24 June 1774) was a British dissenting tutor and minister and poet from Taunton.

Biography
His father was a grocer and his mother a sister of Henry Grove. He was at school under Chadwick, a local dissenting minister, and learned French at Exeter under André de Majendie, a refugee minister. On 25 March 1717 he entered, as a divinity student, the Taunton Academy, then the chief seat of culture for the dissenters of the west, under Stephen James of Fullwood, who taught theology, and Henry Grove, who taught philosophy. He received his testimonials for the ministry in 1722, and then went to London to study experimental physics in the academy of John Eames in Moorfields. In 1725, on Stephen James's death and before his own ordination, he acted as assistant in the ministry to Robert Darch, at Hull Bishops, and in the Taunton Academy to Grove. He was ordained 3 October 1730 as colleague to Edmund Batson at Paul's Meeting, Taunton. Batson was more conservative in theology than Amory, and was unwilling to divide the stipend; hence, in 1732, Amory's friends seceded and built him a new meeting-house in Tancred Street. On Grove's death in 1738 Amory was placed at the head of the academy.

A list of his students is given in the Monthly Repository, 1818; there were more men of mark under Grove; Amory's best pupils were Thomas and John Wright of Bristol. In 1741 he married Mary, daughter of the Rev. S. Baker of Southwark. By her he had five children, four of whom survived him. He moved to London in October 1759 to become afternoon preacher at the Old Jewry meeting-house, and in 1766 succeeded Samuel Chandler as co-pastor of the congregation with Nathaniel White. He was elected one of Daniel Williams's trustees in 1767 (his portrait is in Dr. Williams's Library). He received the degree of D.D. Edin. in 1768, and was Tuesday lecturer at Salters' Hall from 1768, and morning preacher at Newington Green, as colleague with Dr. Richard Price, from 1770, in addition to his other duties. Though thus full of preaching engagements, he was not so popular in London as he had been in Taunton. His theology, of the Clarkean type, was not conservative enough for the bulk of the London presbyterians of that day. His style was dry and disquisitional; his manner wanting in animation. But he was a leader of the dissenting liberals, and in 1772 a strenuous supporter of the agitation for a removal of the subscription to the doctrinal articles of the established church, till 1779 demanded of all dissenting ministers by the Toleration Act. Amory, like many others, had in point of fact never subscribed, and he had to combat the opposition of his friends, who thought, with Joseph Priestley, that a subscription not rigidly enforced was better than a new declaration (that they received the Scriptures as containing a divine revelation), which might be pressed in the interests of intolerance. Amory did not live to see the bill for this new declaration pass, after being twice rejected by the Lords.

He died on 24 June 1774, and was buried in the hallowed ground of dissent at Bunhill Fields. The inscription on his tomb speaks of him as 'having been employed for more than fifty years in humbly endeavouring to discover the religion of Jesus Christ in its origin and purity.'

Works
Andrew Kippis gives a list of his twenty-seven publications, including prefaces and single sermons. His maiden effort was a 'Poem on Taunton,' 1724. He wrote the life and edited the works of Grove, 1745; prefixed a memoir of the author to Dr. George Benson's 'Life of Jesus Christ,' 1764; and edited Chandler's posthumous sermons, with memoir, 1768.

References

English Christian religious leaders
Dissenting academy tutors
People from Taunton
1701 births
1774 deaths
Burials at Bunhill Fields

Thomas Amory (tutor)


Tsaritsyno (, literal meaning "Tsaritsa's property") is a palace museum and park reserve in the south of Moscow.

It was founded in 1775 as the summer residence of Empress Catherine II, but the construction remained incomplete. For most of its history, it was a half-abandoned park with picturesque ruins. In the 2000s, the palace was restored according to the original plans. Today, it is a museum complex and a leisure place for Muscovites and tourists.

History

During the Russian Empire

Before Catherine the Great
The land has been packaged together since the 16th century under Bogorodskoye, when it beloHectares Tsaritsa Irina, sister of Tsar Boris Godunov. Over two centuries, it changed hands Hectare several noble owners (including Streshnevs and Galitzines) until Catherine the Great finally bought it from the former owner, Prince Cantemir, in 1775.

During the time of Catherine the Great
Catherine the Great wished to use the estate as a summer residence. An essential role in the future fate of Tsaritsyno was played by the fact that it is located in an area that, at that time, was a suburb of Moscow. In the same year, the empress gave the task to her court architect, Vasily Bazhenov, to develop a project for a summer residence near Moscow.

Bazhenov's project

Bazhenov designed the palace in the Neo-Gothic, Moscow Baroque, and Classical styles. He planned Tsaritsyno as a complete mini town:.

The peculiarity of the layout of the Tsaritsyno buildings is such that it allows us to speak of the "poetry of geometry": with the use of symmetry and different geometric shapes embedded in the design.  Six octahedrons pavilions are laid in a cruciform; The Small Palace is in the form of a semicircle; the Kitchen Building is in the form of a square with rounded corners. The same applies to the internal layout: round, oval, and semi-oval halls are masterfully combined with rectangular halls. It is important to note that Bazhenov designed almost all the interiors of the Tsaritsyno buildings with vaulted ceilings, which achieved an even more significant effect of the play on geometric shapes.

One of the main features of Bazhenov's project was that there was no main palace as a single building - there are instead three independent buildings. Catherine II liked the project, and construction began in May 1776.

However, by the end of the year, troubles arose with building supplies and funding; this was repeated several times throughout the construction, which lasted for a decade - contrary to the architect's plans to finish it all in three years. Bazhenov wrote numerous letters to officials to determine the reasons for the difficulties. Nevertheless, despite money and material shortages, the previously begun buildings were completed in 1777-1778, and in 1777 the construction of the Figured Gate and the main palace, which consisted of three buildings, began. It ended in 1782; at the same time, work for the Large Cavalry Corps, several outbuildings, and an arch-gallery was started.

In early June 1785, ten years after the beginning of construction, Catherine II arrived in Moscow. The visit was brief. She briefly inspected the palace and left it very disappointed. The verdict of the empress after a quick inspection was harsh: the money spent on construction could have been better spent, the stairs were narrow, the ceilings were heavy, the rooms and boudoirs were cramped, and the halls were dark, like cellars. Catherine ordered "to make a fair amount of deconstruction" and to present a new project for the main palace.

Historians now agree the main reason is that by the year 1785 Bazhenov's palace layout became politically incorrect: relations between Catherine and Crown Prince Paul irreversibly worsened, the empress had thoughts of removing Paul from the order of succession completely, and twin palaces had to make way for a single one – her own.  Another reason for the royal anger could be Bazhenov's affiliation with the Freemasons (the architect underwent an initiation ceremony in 1784 on the guarantee of the educator and publisher N.I. Novikov, and was admitted to the Deucalion lodge), and his secret contacts with Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich.

Bazhenov's freemasonry was highly reflected in the Tsaritsyno buildings. The decor of many buildings, the mysterious lacy stone patterns, clearly resemble Masonic ciphers and emblems. Tsaritsyno is often referred to as the "architectural reference book" of Masonic symbols of the 18th century.

Bazhenov was immediately removed from construction, his student, Matvey Kazakov, was appointed the new architect of the Tsaritsyno residence, which was another humiliation for the retired architect. The Empress ordered Kazakov to build a new palace as a single building. More than six months passed after Catherine II's inspection of the Tsaritsyno before a new project for palace development was approved.

Kazakov's Big Palace

By February 1786, Kazakov prepared a project for the Grand Palace, and it was approved by the Empress. In March, the dismantling of two buildings began - the chambers of Catherine and Tsarevich Pavel. In November 1796, Catherine the Great suddenly died. At this time, the construction of the Grand Tsaritsyno Palace had been roughly completed. The building was covered with a temporary roof. Interior finishing work had begun; when all work in Tsaritsyno was stopped, 17 rooms of the Big Palace had parquet floors and ceilings. In the remaining Bazhenov buildings no interior decoration was carried out for the entire previous decade. The new Emperor Paul I visited Tsaritsyno after his coronation in March 1797 and did not like it. On June 8 (19) of the same year, a decree was issued "not to produce any buildings in the village of Tsaritsyno." In the future, the development of the Tsaritsyno buildings did not resume, and the palace ensemble, so long and difficult to build for Vasily Bazhenov and Matvey Kazakov, never became a residential imperial residence.

Imperial residence after Catherine

The unfinished royal residence quickly fell into disrepair. Already at the very beginning of the 19th century, buildings began to collapse and overgrow with greenery like classical ruins.

The emperors following Catherine were not particularly interested in Tsaritsyno, did not live there, and did not try to complete the construction.

However, starting from the reign of Alexander I, Tsaritsyno Park became available for "promenades".

However, the first decade of the 19th century in Tsaritsyno is associated with the activities of P. S. Valuev, the head of the "Kremlin Expedition of Buildings", and I. V. Egotov, a student of Bazhenov and Kazakov, who was the director of the "Kremlin Drawing Expedition" since 1803. Under the leadership of Ivan Egotov, the design of a landscape park was completed: instead of several wooden Bazhenov pavilions, stone park pavilions and gazebos (Milovida, Nerastankino, Temple of Ceres) were built.

Finally, in 1860, after an audit that admitted that the maintenance of the estate did not bring significant income, Tsaritsyno was transferred from the department that managed the royal property to the Department of Appanages. Thus, Tsaritsyno ceased to be the personal property of the imperial family.

Becoming a state property: Tsaritsyno-Dachnoe

After becoming state property, Tsaritsyno was meant to generate income. At first, it was supposed to sell all the buildings for demolition for 82,000 rubles, but no buyer was found. At the same time, Moscow authorities decided to lease out part of the Tsaritsyno lands for dacha development. The idea was hampered by the lack of transport links with Moscow, but the situation changed in 1865 when the "Tsaritsyno'' station of the newly built Kursk railway was opened (it was even renamed to Tsaritsyno-Dachnoye in 1904). The plans for dacha development mainly affected the territories located to the west of the palaces and the historical park but part of the palace estate was also given over to dachas. This part included the First and Third Cavalier Corps with the adjacent palace territories, as well as the fields with greenhouses and orchards from the east.

Tsaritsyno became a holiday destination; in the 1870s, a whole summer cottage village Novoe Tsaritsyno came into existence. Over the years, celebrities rented dachas here or visited friends and relatives: writers F. M. Dostoevsky, F. I. Tyutchev, A. N. Pleshcheev, A. P. Chekhov, I. A. Bunin (here he met his future second wife, Vera Muromtseva), Leonid Andreev, Andrei Bely, N. D. Teleshov, composers M. A. Balakirev and P. I. Tchaikovsky, historians I. E. Zabelin and V. O. Klyuchevsky, naturalist K. A. Timiryazev, Chairman of the First State Duma S. A. Muromtsev. By the beginning of the 20th century, there were about a thousand dachas in Tsaritsyno and nearby villages, despite the fact that those dachas were considered extremely expensive.

The condition of the ownerless palace buildings steadily worsened. Abandoned greenhouses were demolished; some buildings and pavilions were occasionally used, and so underwent cosmetic repairs. But most of the buildings were still in disrepair. In 1880 there was a partial collapse of the roof of the Grand Tsaritsyno Palace; in order to avoid accidents, it was decided to remove the remnants of the roof and dismantle the frames of the Gothic décor of the towers.

During the years of the Soviet Union
In the first years of Soviet power, the Tsaritsyno, along with New Tsaritsyno and the nearest villages were combined under the name of Lenino village.

Created in March 1918, the revolutionary local government - the Soviet of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies, - was located in the First Cavalry Corps. In 1932, this building was rebuilt and became a 3-story building (the brick for completion was taken from the inner walls of the adjacent Second Cavalry Corps); it housed the executive committee of the Leninsky district of the Moscow region.

First Museum

In 1926, the palace and park ensemble was transferred to the jurisdiction of Glavnauka, and after - to the museum sub-department of Moscow Department of Public Education. On July 21, 1927, the Tsaritsyno Museum was opened in the building of the Third Cavalry Corps; a year later, the museum acquired the status of a local history museum. The first repair and restoration work in Tsaritsyno also dates back to 1927.

However, the museum did not last long in this form. In 1930, in accordance with the collectivization campaign, the exposition was based on models of agricultural products and diagrams of the development of the Leninsky district; the museum itself began to be called the "Leninsky District Local Horticultural and Garden Museum". Finally, in 1937 the museum was closed, and the village club with a cinema was set up in the building.

Maintenance during Soviet Era

The Khlebny Dom received a new life in Soviet times: in the early 1920s, communal apartments spontaneously appeared here. They lasted until the 1970s. In 1939, the temple on the territory of the palace and park ensemble was closed; the building was given over to host a transformer substation.

In 1936, by the order of the Moscow City Council, architects developed a project for adapting the Tsaritsyno ensemble into a rest house. The implementation of these plans was halted by the Great Patriotic War.

At the end of the 1950s, the Milovida and Nerastankino pavilions, the Golden Sheaf pavilion, and a number of park bridges again required restoration. The work was carried out in 1958-1961. The first project of the scientific restoration of the Tsaritsyno architectural and landscape monuments dates back to the end of the 1960s.

In 1960, Lenino became part of Moscow. In the 1970s, because of the development of the nearby Orekhovo-Borisovo residential area, a security zone with an area of more than 1,000 hectares was established around Tsaritsyno and the cascade of the Tsareborisovsky Ponds.

Restoration at the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century
Since the mid-1980s, scientific restoration of the Tsaritsyno objects has been carried out; almost all of them were restored by 2004.

In 2004, the museum-reserve was transferred under the jurisdiction of the Moscow authorities, and in September 2005, full-scale work was launched in Tsaritsyno to restore the Grand Palace and reconstruct the palace ensemble and park. The reconstruction project was developed in the architectural workshop No. 13 "Mosproekt-2" (the authors of the project are O. E. Galanicheva, N. G. Mukhin) under the leadership of Moscow Mayor Yu. M. Luzhkov and the head of "Mosproekt-2" M. M. Posokhin.

However, the Tsaritsyno reconstruction work caused an intense debate, which lasted throughout the implementation of the project. Critics of the project, among whom were prominent art critics, restorers, and architects, noted that the new Tsaritsyno construction was carried out with violations of the legislation of protection of cultural monuments, and with unacceptable distortions of the historical appearance of Tsaritsyn. The idea of building an atrium in the Khlebny Dom came under criticism: the project supposed the construction of a glass-domed ceiling of the courtyard, which changed the silhouette of the building.

The greatest objections were raised by the project of restoration of the Grand Palace. This idea itself, according to critics, was erroneous: from the standpoint of preserving historical authenticity; it is impossible to restore what was destroyed in a natural way; you cannot finish building something that was not completed due to historical circumstances. Architectural historian Grigory Revzin pointed out that back in the 19th century, the ruins of the Grand Tsaritsyno Palace were a self-sufficient monument, belonging to the era of romanticism, in which there was a cult of ruins. The dilapidated palace was an important part of the landscape park, forming a special emotional atmosphere around it. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, rector of the Moscow Institute of Architecture, also noted that the completion of the construction essentially destroyed the monument, since the perception of the building radically changed.

The next objection of the opponents of the project was related to the appearance of the palace: if it was to be restored, then only strictly adhering to the principles of scientific restoration. Yet the project was supposed to build the palace in a form in which it never existed. During the original construction of the palace, in 1793, according to the order of Catherine II, Matvey Kazakov made changes: the palace was lowered by one floor and obtained different roofs of the main buildings and towers. The Mosproekt-2 project combined both options - the actually existing walls of the final Kazakov version of the palace were planned to be completed with roofs from the original, unrealized version. Aleksey Komech, director of the Institute of Art Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a consistent opponent of the plans to restore the palace, called this approach "fantasy restoration". As an alternative to "fake" and "remake", it was proposed to emphasize the authenticity of the ruined palace with the help of modern architectural technologies: for example, by placing some glass rooms inside the conserved ruins that could be used for museum purposes. One such project for the restoration of the palace was developed and approved shortly before the Tsaritsyno ensemble became the property of Moscow.

In response to critics, the Moscow authorities referred to the opinion of Muscovites: according to sociological surveys, residents of the Tsaritsyno district wanted to see the palace restored. M. M. Posokhin noted that the roof of the palace, which existed for about a hundred years, was temporary and was erected at the end of the 18th century by order of the then Moscow authorities in order to preserve the building. Therefore, it cannot be considered the author's intention.

Experts also criticized the newly-built objects, that did not previously exist: a transformer box in the Gothic style, a glass pavilion leading to the underground lobby of the museum, a light-dynamic fountain on the Middle Tsaritsyno pond (it was noted that Catherine II did not love fountains).

Opponents of the reconstruction, seeing that their arguments were being ignored by the project leaders, appealed to Rosokhrankultura and the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation with a demand to stop the construction as violating the current legislation of cultural heritage protection, but to no avail. A. I. Komech, the initiator of the appeals, assumed the following outcome to be very likely:

Despite severe criticism from a number of experts, the restoration project of the Grand Tsaritsyno Palace was fully finished in 2005-2007. In a short time, a huge amount of construction and restoration work was carried out; much of which was unique. The official opening of the reconstructed palace complex, including the restored Grand Tsaritsyno Palace, took place on September 2, 2007. The President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin took part in the celebration.

The main attractions of Tsaritsyno

Palace ensemble

Bazhenov's buildings

It consists of more than 20 buildings, most of which were built by the architect Bazhenov in 1775 - 1785 and give Tsaritsyno its recognizable appearance. All of them were built in Moscow Baroque and Neo-Gothic style. It is also claimed that the decoration of the buildings includes many Masonic symbols (Bazhenov was a Freemason), and the meaning of many of them is still not solved.

Kazakov's Big Palace
However, the largest building of the complex - the Grand Palace - was designed by Bazhenov's student, Matvey Kazakov. Construction began under the command of Kazakov in 1786, but was not fully completed. The unfinished palace stood half-ruined for more than 200 years. It was finished only in 2007 by architectural restorers according to historical drawings.

Later buildings
Many small architectural forms, pavilions, "picturesque ruins" in the park were erected in the 19th century, in the era of romanticism. This happened after Tsaritsyno ceased to be a personal royal residence and became a public park.

Park and ponds
The Tsaritsyno palace and park ensemble, covering an area of more than 100 hectares, is located on a hilly area crossed by ravines.

Park

The park began to be arranged in the 1770s, simultaneously with the beginning of the palace construction.

Vyatichi's burial mounds
The place where Tsaritsyno is located was inhabited long before Catherine's reign. One of the first inhabitants was the East Slavic tribe of Vyatichi between the 9th and 12th centuries.

In the depths of the Tsaritsyno park, their burial mounds are still preserved. They attracted the attention of historians and archaeologists as early as the 19th century. The most complete archaeological excavations date back to 1944. A group led by A.V. Artsikhovsky discovered a number of interesting items, including tools, which until then had not been found in similar burial mounds in the Moscow region. The findings were subsequently transferred to the Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve and laid the foundation for its archaeological collection.

Ponds and islands

The Tsaritsynskiye ponds cascade was formed during the 16th-18th centuries. The oldest is the Borisovsky pond, which was founded during the reign of Boris Godunov. The upper and lower Tsaritsynskiy ponds appeared when the estate of Chernaya Gryaz belonged to the boyars Streshnevs: the lower pond appeared in the XVII century. All the subsequent owners of the Chyornaya Gryaz paid a lot of attention to maintaining the ponds, building and reconstructing dams, water mills, and creating artificial islands. The Middle Tsaritsynsky Pond appeared in the 1980s after the construction of a high dam, along which the route of Novotsaritsynsky Highway divided the Lower Pond into two parts. Directly adjacent to the Grand Palais and park ensemble are the Upper and Middle ponds. They form a natural boundary of the ensemble from the west and an important part of it. Some of the palace buildings and pavilions of the landscape park are oriented towards the ponds.

Fountain
During the 2000s restoration, a light and music fountain was installed on Horseshoe Island in the Middle Tsaritsyno Pond. It is one of the biggest fountains of that type in Moscow.

Architectural features of the Grand Palais
The basis of Bazhenov's architectural plan is formed by two equal wings, square in plan, intended for the apartments of Catherine II (right-wing) and Crown-prince Paul (left-wing).

The palace, despite its vivid neo-Gothic features (towers, lancet arches) in its solution is close to the canons of Classicism: strict symmetry, the tripartite division of the facades, the overall calm and balanced proportions, the monumental details (semi-columns in the corners of towers, fascias, loggias of side-wings). The hipped ends of the towers bear features tracing back to the towers of the Moscow Kremlin. In many respects, the Great Palace shows a different approach to the task of building a country residence "in the Gothic style".

The palace was not completed due to the sudden death of Catherine II. By 1796 it already had a temporary roof painted black. This gave the building a gloomy appearance which affected the perception of contemporaries of the construction. It was only by the middle of the 19th century that critics started to give credit for the palace's architectural features.

The ruined palace, which had not been used in any way during its history, was converted into a museum complex in 2005-2007.

Gallery

References

External links and references

Photo of Palace Complex and Park
Reviews on TripAdvisor
Tsaritsyno Park - One of the Best Museums in Moscow

Parks and gardens in Moscow
Museums in Moscow
Palaces in Moscow
Royal residences in Russia
Vasili Bazhenov buildings
Gothic Revival architecture in Russia
Art museums and galleries in Moscow
Folk art museums and galleries
Decorative arts museums in Russia
Cultural heritage monuments of federal significance in Moscow

Tsaritsyno Palace


Ladislav Mráz (25 September 1923 – 7 May 1962) was a Czech operatic bass-baritone who had an active career in Czechoslovakia from 1943 through 1962. His voice is preserved on a number of recordings made on the Supraphon label, including complete recordings of Bedřich Smetana's The Devil's Wall and Antonín Dvořák's The Specter's Bride.

Biography
Mráz studied singing at the Prague Conservatory with Hilbert Vávra and Mrs. E. Fierlingerová. He made his professional opera debut at the opera house in Tábor in 1943 where he was committed for the 1943-1944 season. From 1944-1946 he sang at the Divadlo Josefa Kajetána Tyla in Plzeň. He was committed to the Prague State Opera from 1946-1948.

In 1948 Mráz became a member of the Prague National Theatre. He returned to the State Opera in 1950 but then returned to the National Theatre in 1953 where he remained until his death nine years later. Among the roles he created on stage were Count Vilém of Harasov in The Jacobin, Creon in Oedipus rex, Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Herrmann in Tannhäuser, Kecal in The Bartered Bride, Leporello in Don Giovanni, Rarach in The Devil's Wall, Vodník in Rusalka, and the title roles in The Flying Dutchman, and Svätopluk.

From 1948 to 1961 Mráz regularly appeared at the Prague Spring Festival. In 1956 he won first prize at the Dutch International Vocal Competition 's-Hertogenbosch. He appeared frequently in concerts and recitals in the Netherlands, performing as a soloist in such works as Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion and Johannes Passion, and Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. He also made a number of appearances on Dutch radio and television, notably recording the main protagonist in Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff.

Mráz also performed frequently with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra as a soloist in oratorios, song cycles, and works of contemporary music. Guest appearances took him to opera houses in Paris, Vienna, and Holland. He sang Hans Sachs at the opening of the new opera house in Leipzig in 1960 where he was a guest artist for many years. He was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1961. He died at the height of his stage career in Prague in 1962 at the age of 38.

References

1923 births
1962 deaths
Czech operatic baritones
Operatic bass-baritones
Recipients of the USSR State Prize
20th-century Czech male opera singers
Czechoslovak male opera singers
Prague Conservatory alumni

Ladislav Mráz


The Golden Wind Zen Order (GWZO) is an American Zen Buddhist Order with centers and groups in Long Beach, CA and Seattle, WA. It was founded in 2004 by Zen Master Ji Bong  (Robert Moore). Moore began training with the Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn in 1974, and was one of the founders of the New Haven Zen Center and core teachers of the early years of the international Kwan Um School of Zen. He was a teacher at several centers around the United States, and after more than twenty years of training, he received Dharma transmission from Seung Sahn in 1997.

Moore established his own practice center in the 1990s, and eventually broke off from the Kwan Um School in 2004 to establish an independent organization, the Golden Wind Zen Order. Though not affiliated with the Kwan Um School, the GWZO follows many of its practice forms, with an emphasis on seated meditation practice, kong-an training, and chanting.

The Order's practice centers are the Golden Wind Zen Center (currently in the Signal Hill area of Long Beach, CA) and the Blue Heron Zen Community in Seattle, WA.

History
The Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn, Robert Moore, and Paul Lynch founded the Huntington Beach Zen Center in 1993. The first center was a four bedroom house, with the Dharma Room located in the back of the house. In early 1994 the Zen Center accepted its first resident, who lived as a novice monk full-time at the Zen Center. A few residents moved in and out of the Huntington Beach Zen Center, including a Korean monk. In 1995 the Zen Center was moved to a larger six bedroom house in Stanton. At that time Zen Master Seung Sahn suggested changing the name of the center to Ocean Eyes Zen Center.

In 1997 the Ocean Eyes Zen Center moved from Stanton to a residence in Long Beach, California where it was established as a residential center with 5 to 6 full-time resident students. However, the residential model came into conflict with local zoning ordinances, and in 1999 the Center became temporarily homeless. However, students continued to practice in transitional locations in Whittier and in San Pedro until 2000, when the Center reopened at a new location in Long Beach. In 2011, the Center re-located to a commercial building in the Signal Hill area of Long Beach.

These centers were all affiliated with the international Kwan Um School of Zen until 2004. That year Moore and the membership decided to change the name of the Center to the Golden Wind Zen Center, and to affiliate with a new, independent teaching organization called the Golden Wind Zen Order.

The Dharma Sound Zen Community in Seattle, WA was originally established under the auspices of the Kwan Um School of Zen, with Moore as their guiding teacher. After Moore established the GWZO, Dharma Sound members elected to retain Moore as their guiding teacher, and to affiliate with the GWZO. In 2006, Dharma Sound changed its name to the Blue Heron Zen Community, and also separated from the Kwan Um School.

Over some two decades, Moore trained several students to become teachers or "Ji Do Poep Sunims" (JDPSN, or "Dharma Masters"). These have included Jeff Tipp, Eric Nord, and Anita Feng in Seattle, along with Tim Colohan and Sensei Frank McGouirk in Long Beach. McGouirk has been the head teacher and director of the Aikido-Ai dojo in Whittier, CA for several years, and some GWZO members also practice and teach there. After nearly twenty years of training, Colohan left the GWZO in 2015 to pursue other teaching and practice opportunities.

In 2015, Zen Master Ji Bong (Robert Moore) gave transmission to his first Dharma heir, Zen Master Jeong Ji (Anita Feng) at the Blue Heron Zen Community in Seattle, WA.

Teaching Hierarchy

Guiding Teachers
Ji Bong Zen Master Robert Moore
Jeong Ji Zen Master Anita Feng
 Jeff Tipp, Ji Do Poep Sa Nim or "Dharma Master" (JDPSN)
 Eric Nord, JDPSN
 Ann Pepper, JDPSN
 Sensei Frank McGouirk (not currently active)
 Tim Colohan (not currently active)

See also

Buddhism in the United States
Timeline of Zen Buddhism in the United States

Notes

References

External links
Golden Wind Zen Center
Aikido Ai Dojo
Blue Heron Zen Community

2004 establishments in California
Buddhism in California
Buddhist orders
Schools of Buddhism founded in the United States
Zen in the United States

Golden Wind Zen Order


Isidor Lateiner (January 8, 1930, Havana, Cuba – May 26, 2005, Amsterdam, Netherlands) was a Cuban-American violinist. He was the brother of pianist Jacob Lateiner.

Lateiner showed exceptional musical talent at a very early age. He began giving concerts at only 5 years old. Lateiner came to the United States when he was ten, and was awarded a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied with Lea Luboshutz and later with Ivan Galamian.

He later moved to Amsterdam, where he continued his career as a soloist and as a chamber music partner.

Performing and recording career
At the age of fifteen he appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy and later with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Netherlands and various radio orchestras making different recordings of the violin repertoire.

As a chamber musician, Lateiner's name is associated with those of Godfried Hoogeveen and Edith Grosz, to whom he was married and with whom he gave recitals throughout the world and made radio recordings in Europe. He taught at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

Lateiner made different recordings as a soloist of violin concertos and recorded the sonatas and partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach.

He commissioned composers such as Milton Babbitt, Matthias Kadar, Hans Kox and Jochem Slothouwer to write chamber music pieces and violin concertos for himself.

1930 births
2005 deaths
Musicians from Amsterdam
Musicians from Havana
American classical violinists
Male classical violinists
American male violinists
American people of Cuban-Jewish descent
Cuban emigrants to the United States
Cuban Jews
Cuban violinists
Jewish American musicians
Jewish classical musicians
Jewish violinists
20th-century classical violinists
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American Jews
21st-century American Jews
20th-century American violinists

Isidor Lateiner


Tarzan the Terrible is a novel by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the eighth in his series of twenty-four books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published as a serial in the pulp magazine  Argosy All-Story Weekly in the issues for February 12, 19, and 26 and March 5, 12, 19, and 26, 1921; the first book edition was published in June 1921 by A. C. McClurg. Its setting, Pal-ul-don, is one of the more thoroughly realized "lost civilizations" in Burroughs' Tarzan stories. The novel contains a map of the place as well as a glossary of its inhabitants' language.

Plot

Two months have passed since the conclusion of the previous novel Tarzan the Untamed in which Tarzan spent many months wandering about Africa wreaking vengeance upon those who he believed brutally murdered Jane. At the end of that novel, Tarzan learns that her death was a ruse and that she had not been killed at all.

In attempting to track Jane, Tarzan has come to a hidden valley called Pal-ul-don filled with dinosaurs, notably the savage Gryfs which are Triceratops that are omnivorous and stand 20 feet tall at the shoulder, have claws on their front legs, and Stegosaurus-like plates on its back. The lost valley is also home to two different adversarial races of tailed human-looking creatures: the hairless and white-skinned, city-dwelling Ho-don and the hairy and black-skinned, hill-dwelling Waz-don. Tarzan befriends a Ho-don warrior and the Waz-don chief actuating some uncustomary relations. In this new world, Tarzan becomes a captive where he impresses his captors with his accomplishments and skills that they name him "Tarzan-Jad-Guru" (Tarzan the Terrible).

Jane is also being held captive in Pal-ul-don, having been brought there by her German captor. She becomes a centerpiece in a religious power struggle, until she escapes. Her German captor becomes dependent on her due to his own lack of jungle survival skills.

With the aid of his native allies, Tarzan continues to pursue his beloved, going through an extended series of fights and escapes to do so. In the end, success seems beyond even his ability to achieve until in the final chapter he and Jane are saved by their son Korak, who has been searching for Tarzan just as Tarzan has been searching for Jane.

Adaptations
The book has been adapted into comic form by Gold Key Comics in Tarzan #166-167 (July–September 1968), with a script by Gaylord DuBois and art by Russ Manning.

Pa-lu-don appears in the Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle episode "Tarzan and the Beast in the Iron Mask".

References

External links

 ERBzine.com Illustrated Bibliography entry for Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan the Terrible
 Edgar Rice Burroughs Summary Project page for Tarzan the Terrible
 Geography of Pal-ul-Don
 Pal-ul-don in ERBzine by Rick Johnson

1921 American novels
1921 fantasy novels
Novels about dinosaurs
Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Novels first published in serial form
Novels set in jungles and rainforests
Works originally published in Argosy (magazine)
A. C. McClurg books

Tarzan the Terrible


Kitezh () is a legendary and mythical city beneath the waters of Lake Svetloyar in the Voskresensky District of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in central Russia. Reference to Kitezh appears for the first time in Kitezh Chronicle, an anonymous book from the late 18th century, believed to have originated among the Old Believers.

The legend

Legend has it that Georgy II, Grand Prince of  Vladimir (), first built the town of Maly Kitezh (Little Kitezh - today's  Krasny Kholm) on the Volga River. It is sometimes erroneously identified with  Gorodets, which was actually founded in 1152, more than 30 years before Georgy's birth in 1189. Later on, the prince crossed the rivers of  Uzola, Sanda, and  Kerzhenets, and found a beautiful spot on the shores of Lake Svetloyar, where he decided to build the town of Bolshoy Kitezh (Great Kitezh). According to folk etymology, the name of the town came from the royal residence of Kideksha (near Suzdal), ransacked by the  Mongols in 1237; Max Vasmer labels the place-name as "obscure".

After having conquered some of  the Russian lands in the late 1230s, the Mongol ruler Batu Khan () heard of Kitezh and ordered his army to advance towards it. The Mongols soon captured Maly Kitezh, forcing Georgy to retreat into the woods towards Bolshoy Kitezh. One of the prisoners told the Mongols about some secret paths to Lake Svetloyar. The army of the Golden Horde followed Georgy and soon reached the walls of the town. To the surprise of the Mongols, the town had no fortifications whatsoever. Its citizens didn't even intend to defend themselves and were engaged in fervent praying, asking God for their salvation. On seeing this, the Mongols rushed to the attack, but then stopped. Suddenly, they saw countless fountains of water bursting from under the ground all around them. The attackers fell back and watched the town submerge into the lake. The last thing they saw was a glaring dome of a cathedral with a cross on top of it. Soon only waves remained.

This legend gave birth to numerous incredible claims about the lost city. It is said that only those who are pure in their heart and soul will find their way to Kitezh (the road to the lake is still called "Батыева тропа", or the Path of Batu). Allegedly, one can sometimes hear the sound of chiming bells and people singing from under the waters of Lake Svetloyar when the weather is calm. Some stories claim that the most pious individuals may actually see the lights of religious processions (called "крестный ход") and even buildings on the bottom of the lake. For this reason, Lake Svetloyar is sometimes called the "Russian Atlantis".

Popular culture

 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya (1907) is based on the legend of Kitezh.
 A theme in Anna Akhmatova's poem "The Way of All the Earth" or "Woman of Kitezh" (Kitezhanka or Китежанка).
 The town is also mentioned, among many other references to Russian folklore, in Monday Begins on Saturday, a 1965 novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and Charodey film and film script.
 The acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog went in search of Kitezh in his short documentary Bells from the Deep (1993).
 Kitezh is mentioned in the 2010 novel Kraken by China Miéville. "Marge read of their utopias, sunk not in ruination but reward: Kitezh, Atlantis, Tyno Helig."
 Kitezh is the childhood nickname of Tilda Swinton's character Emma Recchi in the film I Am Love (2009, Luca Guadagnino).
 Tunturia's album Invisible City (2012) is an instrumental concept album that follows six stages of the rise and fall of Kitezh.
 A fictionalized version of Kitezh is rediscovered by the protagonist Lara Croft in the 2015 video game Rise of the Tomb Raider developed by Crystal Dynamics.
 Kitezh is used as the name of one of the planets in Signalis.

See also
 Lake Svetloyar
 List of lost lands
 Buyan
 Ys
 Cantre'r Gwaelod
 Llys Helig

References

Fictional populated places in Russia
Locations in Slavic mythology
Russian folklore
Culture of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast
Mythological populated places

Kitezh


Smokin' Aces is a 2006 American crime thriller movie. It is about a Las Vegas Strip magician who became a mafia informant and the FBI agent who is assigned to protect him. Taraji P. Henson plays Sharice. Ray Liotta plays Donald. Alicia Keys plays Georgia.

The movie got negative reviews from critics. It made more than $54 million worldwide.

Other websites

2006 crime thriller movies
American crime thriller movies
2000s English-language movies
Movies set in Nevada

Smokin' Aces


Global Trust Bank (India) (GTB) was founded on 21 October 1994 and commenced operations at Secunderabad. Its founders included Ramesh Gelli (its first Chairman), Sridar Subasri, and Jayant Madhob, among others. The bank introduced a number of technology-based innovations and responsive service.

GTB was involved in the stock market scam of 2001, that the stockbroker Ketan Parekh ran. GTB lent heavily to individuals speculating in the stock market; when the market crashed the bank suffered extensive losses. One consequence was that merger talks with UTI Bank fell through. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) forced Gelli to resign. Gelli's successor resigned after six months, and Gelli's son joined the board of directors. In 2004, Gelli briefly returned to the bank in February 2004 before being again forced to resign.

RBI examined GTB's accounts for 2001-2 and found that GTB's net worth had turned negative, but did not close the bank. GTB did not address its problems. Instead, and despite its dire straits, GTB continued to grow. It had 87 branches in 2002–2003, and grew to 103 branches before the RBI forced it to close. It also paid interest on deposits at a rate equal to or better than other banks in its area. GTB sought to recapitalize itself by bringing in new investors. In mid-2004 GTB was in close talks with Newbridge Capital. Newbridge was to invest US$200million, subject to RBI approval. However, RBI was reluctant to permit private investors to restructure GTB.

RBI issued a Moratorium Order on 24 July 2004. Before GTB's winding up, Goldman Sachs owned 4% of the bank and the International Finance Corporation owned 5%.

GTBL has filled financial lawsuits against Goldman Sachs on  24 July 2004. GTBL shareholders received nothing for their shares; depositors, however, suffered no loss from Shareholders of Goldman Sachs.
GTBL was acquired by and amalgamated into Oriental Bank of Commerce on 14 August 2004 excluded  Oriental Bank of Commerce from financial lawsuits against Goldman Sachs on  24 July 2004.
RBI and OBC discovered that situation was even worse than it had appeared at the time of departing of  Goldman Sachs with 4% of the bank capital.
OBC did gain an increased presence in the southern parts of India and presence improved due to community service to improved economic growth.
OBC has improved extensively with more staff and more branches with economic growth to community service and improvement in deposits, investments, and advances.

Citations and references
Citations

References
Gupte, V. Yatin (July 2004) Impact Analysis: GTB-OBC merger. - accessed 2 November 2014.
Marcello, Ray (27 July 2004) "RBI directs Global Trust Bank to Merge". Financial Times. - accessed 2 November 2014.
Sridhar, V. (14–27 August 2004) "The Collapse of a bank". Frontline, Vol. 21, #17. - accessed 2 November 2014.
Suryanarayana, A. (2006) The Rise and Fall of Global Trust Bank. (ICFAI).

Defunct banks of India
Banks established in 1994
Banks disestablished in 2004
Companies based in Telangana
1994 establishments in Andhra Pradesh
Indian companies established in 1994
Indian companies disestablished in 2004

Global Trust Bank (India)


Blondie is a 1938 American comedy film directed by Frank Strayer, based on the comic strip of the same name, created by Chic Young. The screenplay was written by Richard Flournoy.
The plot involves the Bumsteads' fifth anniversary, Dagwood trying to get a raise, and Blondie trying to buy new furniture.

This was the first of 28 films based on the comic strip; Columbia Pictures produced them from 1938 to 1943, and popular demand brought them back in 1945. When the Blondie film series came to an end with Beware of Blondie in 1950, it was announced as being replaced with a series of Gasoline Alley movies. However, only two such films were made, Gasoline Alley (1951) and Corky of Gasoline Alley (1951). Columbia then reissued the Blondie features, beginning with the first film in the series.

Columbia used the series to showcase many of its contract players. Rita Hayworth was featured in Blondie on a Budget; Glenn Ford in Blondie Plays Cupid, Larry Parks and Janet Blair in Blondie Goes to College, Shemp Howard in Blondie Knows Best, and Adele Jergens in Blondie's Anniversary. Other roles were taken by Columbia contractees Doris Houck, Bruce Bennett, Lloyd Bridges, Ann Doran, Stanley Brown, Richard Fiske, Bud Jamison, Eddie Laughton, John Tyrrell, Alyn Lockwood, Jimmy Lloyd, Gay Nelson, and Ross Ford.

Plot summary
Dagwood Bumstead is a good-natured but scatterbrained young salesman at the Dithers Construction company office, with a wife, young son, and dog.  He often arrives at work barely on time, after clumsily colliding on foot with the mail carrier.  In this pilot episode, Blondie secretly orders new furniture on credit for their anniversary, not realizing Dagwood is broke because he had helped out a needy friend.  Mr. Dithers sends Dagwood to a hotel with orders to have a guest there, Mr. Hazlip, sign a valuable construction contract, but the reluctant Hazlip has the hotel clerk tell Dagwood he is not in.  While lounging on a lobby couch, Dagwood and another gentleman notice that the hotel's vacuum cleaner is broken, and they sneak it into the other man's room where the two of them bond while wasting hours, for fun, trying to repair it, although it's none of their business.  Blondie phones and mistakenly thinks the man's daughter, whom she's never met, is Dagwood's paramour, and asks for a divorce.  Meanwhile, Blondie's parents and amorous ex-boyfriend visit her, and the new furniture is repossessed by movers in front of their eyes.  Dagwood, though unlicensed, borrows the parents' car without permission, and collides with a policeman, who notices the stolen vacuum cleaner in it bearing the hotel's name.  In court, Blondie pleads with the judge not to jail her husband.  To everyone's surprise, the vacuum cleaner gentleman is revealed as the valuable client Mr. Hazlip whom Dagwood had been trying to contact.  He willingly signs the Dithers contract, and Blondie negotiates a raise and promotion for Dagwood.

Cast

 Penny Singleton as Blondie Bumstead
 Arthur Lake as Dagwood Bumstead
 Larry Simms as Alexander "Baby Dumpling" Bumstead
 Gene Lockhart as Clarence Percival "C.P." Hazlip
 Jonathan Hale as J.C. Dithers
 Gordon Oliver as Chester Franey
 Danny Mummert as Alvin Fuddle
 Kathleen Lockhart as Mrs. Miller (Blondie's mother)
 Ann Doran as Elsie Hazlip
 Dorothy Moore as Dot Miller (Blondie's sister)
 Fay Helm as Mrs. Fuddle
 Emory Parnell as Police Desk Sergeant
 Willie Best as Hotel Porter (uncredited)
 Ian Wolfe as Judge
 Irving Bacon as Mr. Beazley, Letter Carrier
 Dick Curtis as Daily Gazette Reporter
 Edgar Dearing as Hotel Policeman
 Richard Fiske as Nelson, Dithers' Employee
 James Flavin as Policeman in Accident
 Bud Jamison as Repossessor
 Charles Lane as Furniture Salesperson
 David Newell as First Draftsperson
 Emory Parnell as Police Desk Sergeant
 John Rand as Gardener

Films
Twenty-eight films were produced by Columbia Pictures between 1938 and 1950:

 Blondie (1938)
 Blondie Meets the Boss (1939)
 Blondie Takes a Vacation (1939)
 Blondie Brings Up Baby (1939)
 Blondie on a Budget (1940)
 Blondie Has Servant Trouble (1940)
 Blondie Plays Cupid (1940)
 Blondie Goes Latin (1941)
 Blondie in Society (1941)
 Blondie Goes to College (1942)
 Blondie's Blessed Event (1942)
 Blondie for Victory (1942)
 It's a Great Life (1943)
 Footlight Glamour (1943)
 Leave It to Blondie (1945)
 Life with Blondie (1945)
 Blondie's Lucky Day (1946)
 Blondie Knows Best (1946)
 Blondie's Big Moment (1947)
 Blondie's Holiday (1947)
 Blondie in the Dough (1947)
 Blondie's Anniversary (1947)
 Blondie's Reward (1948)
 Blondie's Secret (1948)
 Blondie's Big Deal (1949)
 Blondie Hits the Jackpot (1949)
 Blondie's Hero (1950)
 Beware of Blondie (1950)

Preservation
Blondie was preserved and restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The restoration's funding was provided by the Packard Humanities Institute. The restoration premiered at the UCLA Festival of Preservation in 2022.

References

Further reading
Blondie Goes to Hollywood, by Carol Lynn Scherling. Albany, 2010. BearManor Media. .

External links

 Blondie: The Movie Series

1938 films
Columbia Pictures films
American black-and-white films
Blondie (film series) films
Films based on comic strips
Films based on American comics
Live-action films based on comics
1938 comedy films
Films directed by Frank R. Strayer
Films scored by Leigh Harline
1930s English-language films
1930s American films

Blondie (1938 film)