Joanna Dunham Passes On

Joanna Dunham, the actress who  appeared frequently on television and appeared in the film The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), died on 25 November 2014 at the age of 78.

Joanna Dunham was born on 6 May 1936 in  Luton, Bedfordshire. At London University she appeared in a production of The Dark of the Moon opposite Tom Courtenay. Her performance led to a scholarship at  the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1956. Among those attending RADA the same time as Miss Dunham were Susannah York and Brian Epstein. She made her professional debut on stage at the Liverpool Playhouse in a production of The Deserters. She made her television debut the same year on an edition of BBC Sunday-Night Theatre. In the late Fifties she guest starred on such shows as William Tell, The Invisible Man, Private Investigator, Inside Story, Armchair Mystery Theatre, and ITV Television Playhouse. She made her debut on stage in London in a production of Visit to a Small Planet.

In 1961 Joanna Dunham made her film debut in The Breaking Point. She appeared in the film Dangerous Afternoon (1961) before being cast as Mary Magdalene in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Despite her high profile role in The Greatest Story Ever Told, Miss Dunham only made one more movie in the Sixties: A Day at the Beach in 1970. She appeared frequently on television in the Sixties, on such shows as Danger Man, Somerset Maugham Hour, First Night, The Third Man, ITV Play of the Week, The Wednesday Play, Sanctuary, and ITV Saturday Night Theatre.

In the Seventies Joanna Dunham had regular roles in the TV programmes The Passenger, Van der Valk, and Love Among the Artists.  She appeared on such shows as Jason King, The Adventurer, Armchair Theatre, Dial M for Murder, Play for Today, Space: 1999, and ITV Playhouse. She appeared in the horror classic The House That Dripped Blood (1971).

In the Eighties she was a regular on the TV programmes The Outsider and Moondial. She has Who Dares Wins and Are You Being Served?. She appeared in the movie Scandal (1989).  In the Nineties she was a regular on the programme Then Churchill Said to Me. She appeared in the TV movie Diana: A Tribute to the People's Princess. She appeared in the film The Advocate (1993)

Godspeed Ian McLagan

Ian McLagan, who played keyboards for Small Faces and later The Faces, died on 3 December 2014 at age 69. The cause was complications from a stroke.

Ian McLagan was born in Hounslow, Middlesex on 12 May 1945. It was his grandmother in Ireland who, as an accomplished accordion player,  drew him towards music. Young Ian McLagan was only ten years old when he first encountered rock 'n' roll in the form of "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets. He learned guitar and later saxophone, and played in various skiffle groups. Having played guitar in the various skiffle groups, it was his mother who insisted that he study piano. He developed an interest in the organ after hearing  Booker T. and the M.G.'s. He was also heavily influenced by Cyril Davies' All Stars.

Ian McLagan attended Twickenham Art School, where he formed The Muleskinners with friends there. With The Muleskinners he continued to play guitar. The band saw some success, even touring the United States in support of The Rolling Stones. From The Muleskinners he went onto join the somewhat more jazz oriented Boz People with future King Crimson bassist Boz Burrell. It was while he was with The Boz People that Mr. McLagan switched to keyboards. While The Boz People released four singles and even toured in support of Kenny Lynch, the band saw little commercial success.

It was in 1965 that Ian McLagan replaced Jimmy Winston as the keyboardist for Small Faces. Mr. Winston had only played on the first few singles released by the band. Small Faces proved to be fairly successful in the United Kingdom and developed a large following in the United States. At their peak they were second in popularity only to The Who among the Mods and they even rivalled The Rolling Stones at times in over all popularity in the UK. He remained with the band in its initial incarnation, appearing on the albums Small Faces (the 1966 Decca release), Small Faces (known as There Are But Four Small Faces in the U.S., the 1967 Immediate Records release), Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake, and the post-break up collection  The Autumn Stone). Mr. McLagan co-wrote several songs while with Small Faces, including "Own Up Time", "Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire",  and "Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake".

Towards the end of 1968 Steve Marriott left Small Faces, increasingly frustrated with the group being labelled a pop band. The remaining members of Small Faces (Ronnie Lane, Kenny Jones, and Ian McLagan) then formed The Faces in 1970 by recruiting Rod Stewart and Ron Wood (both former members of The Jeff Beck Group). The Faces would have some success, producing hit singles "Stay with Me",      "Cindy Incidentally", "Pool Hall Richard", and "You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything".  From 1970 to 1973 The Faces recorded four albums: First Step. Long Player, A Nod Is As Good As a Wink... to a Blind Horse; and Ooh La La. With The Faces Mr. McLagan wrote such songs as "Bad 'n' Ruin", "You're So Rude", and "Cindy Incidentally".

The Faces broke up in 1975, after which the original Small Faces reunited. Ronnie Lane, who was just beginning to suffer from multiple sclerosis, did not remain with the reunited Small Faces for long. To take his place Ian McLagan, Kenney Jones and Steve Marriott recruited Rick Willis (formerly of Joker's Wild and Roxy Music) to take his place. Small Faces released two more albums, Playmates in 1977 and  78 in the Shade in 1978. Ian McLagan co-wrote several songs, including "Over Too Soon" and "Real Soul". Neither album performed well and Small Faces broke up once again in 1978.

In 1977 Ian McLagan launched his solo career. In 1979 he released his first solo album Troublemaker. It was followed in 1980 by Bump in the Night. Over the years he released several more solo studio albums, including Last Chance to Dance (1985), Best of British (2000), Rise & Shine (2004), Here Comes Trouble (2005), Spiritual Boy (2006), Never Say Never (2008), and United States (2014).

Over the years Ian McLagan also played with several different artists. He has played with The Rolling Stones, Ron Wood, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and many others.

Ian McLagan was an extraordinary musician. His evocative keyboard work is much of what made Small Faces one of the greatest British bands of the Sixties. He was also very versatile. It was not simply a case that he could play both organ and piano equally well, but that he was comfortable with a number of different styles. He could play soul, old time rock 'n' roll, jazz, and a number of different genres with ease. Ian McLagan was one of the greatest keyboardists in rock history. There were very few could ever match his talent.

Television and Aspect Ratio

Chances are very good that if you are a classic film fan (or even a classic television fan) that you know what "aspect ratio" is. For those of you who don't, the aspect ratio of an image is the relation between its width and height. To put it in simpler terms, it is a way of describing the size of an image on a movie or television screen. While aspect ratio might not seem very important to some, for connoisseurs of classic film and television it can be very important. Quite simply, most classic film and television fans want to see motion pictures and TV series shown in their original aspect ratio. Unfortunately, changes in film and television technology have often resulted in many films being shown on television in such a way that much of what was originally on the big screen was lost on the small screen.

The reason for this is that the original standard for television in the United States was an aspect ratio of 4:3. This was very close to the standard of 1.375:1 that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences adopted not long after the advent of the Sound Era and used on most motion pictures made in the Thirties and Forties. When a film shot with an aspect ratio of 1.375:1 is adjusted to a television screen made for an aspect ratio of 4:3 very little of what was originally on the big screen is lost. For much of the Fifties, then, watching films on television was not that big of a problem for anyone who wanted to see them as they were originally shown (well, outside of commercial interruptions anyway...).

That having been said, it was in the Fifties that there would be developments that would make watching many films on television a very painful experience for anyone who wanted to see them as they were originally shown. Quite simply, the Fifties would see the introduction of several widescreen processes, beginning with Cinerama in 1952. The original Cinerama was much larger than the old standard aspect ratio of  1.375:1--it had an aspect ratio of 2.59:1. Other widescreen processes were also much larger than the old standard. 20th Century Fox's CinemaScope was capable of producing an image with an aspect ratio of 2.66:1, nearly twice the size of the old standard. It was because of these widescreen processes that the dominant aspect ratios of film would change. Whereas during the Golden Age of Film 1.375:1 was the standard aspect ratio for films, today 1.85:1 and 2.39:1 are the two most frequently used aspect ratios. Of course, the widescreen films of the Fifties and Sixties, not to mention nearly all movies made since then, were shot with aspect ratios that are very different from the old television standard of 4:3.

Naturally the difference between the aspect ratio of television for much of its history and the widescreen films of the Fifties, Sixties, and beyond created a problem when it came to showing them on film. There was simply little way that, say, a Cinerama film such as How the West was Won, could be made to fit into a television screen in the Sixties and Seventies. The solution to this problem taken by the networks and local television stations was hardly ideal. Quite simply, the image on the screen was severely cropped to fit the television screen. This meant that a good deal of information was lost on the television screen any time such films were shown.

Fortunately a solution to this problem was developed in the form of letterboxing. Letterboxing is a means of preserving a film's original aspect ratio by placing black bars above and below the image. The practice received the name "letterboxing" because the result somewhat resembles the slot of a letter box. The first fully letterboxed release was the RCA videodisc of  Amarcord in 1984. In the Eighties and much of the Nineties letterboxing was confined to videodisc releases, although a few VHS tapes would be released in letterboxed format as well. Possibly the first VHS release in letterboxed format was Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979). When the film was released on video in 1985, Mr. Allen insisted that it be letterboxed in order to preserve the film's widescreen cinematography. Turner Classic Movies, launched in 1994, was among the first television outlets to embrace letterboxing. The advent of DVDs in the mid to late Nineties would see letterboxing commonly used in video releases. Unfortunately, some television outlets are still resistant to letterboxing. Despite the fact that many of its TV shows are shot in widescreen format and shown letterboxed, HBO still refuses to show feature films letterboxed.

Of course, the Nineties would see the advent of widescreen television sets. As widescreen television sets grew in popularity during the Naughts, many television shows started shooting in widescreen formats. Eventually this practice became common enough that the standard aspect ratio for television shifted from 4:3 to 16:9, an aspect ratio much closer to that of current feature films. Unfortunately, while widescreen television sets may be ideal for watching feature films made from the Fifties to today, they are not so ideal for watching television shows made before the Naughts, all of which were shot with an aspect ratio of 4:3. To wit, in some cases some more recent shows shot with a 4:3 aspect ratio have been remastered with a 16:0 aspect ratio. The most recent victim of this practice was The Wire, which HBO remastered for High Definition with using a 16:9 aspect ratio instead of its original 4:3.

Fortunately most older shows won't befall the same fate as The Wire. It seems unlikely that Perry Mason or The Monkees will ever be remastered to fit a 16:9 aspect ratio. That doesn't mean watching older shows on a widescreen presents no problem. Left unadjusted a widescreen television set will stretch the images of old TV shows, shot for a 4:3 aspect ratio, to fit a screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Fortunately, widescreen television sets do allow one to adjust the aspect ratio of the image on the screen (on Samsung sets it is the P.SIZE button on the remote control).  The result is what is known as pillarboxing, in which black bars are placed on either side of the image so it can be viewed in an aspect ratio of 4:3.

While I suspect that the average person doesn't particularly care about the aspect ratio in which movies and TV shows are shown, there are those of us who really prefer that the movies and TV shows we watch appear in as close to their original format as possible. For people like us, then, the many changes in the aspect ratio of films and TV shows, not to mention how various TV outlets handle them, can be a source of constant frustration.

Godspeed P. D. James

Mystery novelist Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park,  better known as P. D. James, died on 27 November 2014 at the age of 94.

P. D. James was born in Oxford on 3 August 1920. She attended the British School in Ludlow and Cambridge High School for Girls. She was unable to go to university because she could not afford to do so. She went to work in a tax office after leaving school. When she was 21  she married Earnest Connor Bantry White. Her husband served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II. Unfortunately after the war he suffered from schizophrenia so severely that he spent much of his time in hospital. To support the family P. D. James studied hospital administration and began working for the National Health Service in 1948. She continued to work for the NHS until 1968. Afterwards she worked for the Home Office until 1979, most of that time spent in the Criminal Policy Department.

P. D. James's first novel, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962. It was the first in what would be a series of 14 novels featuring Detective Chief Inspector (and eventually Commander) Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard. The  Adam Dalgliesh novels would prove to be extremely popular. Starting in 1983 the first novels in the series would be adapted by by Anglia Television for ITV. These adaptations starred Roy Marsden as Dalgliesh. The BBC adapted the novels Death in Holy Orders and The Murder Room in 2003 and 2005 respectively. In the films Martin Shaw played Dalgliesh. The final Adam Dalgliesh novel, The Private Patient, was published in 2008.

She also wrote other books than those in the Adam Dalgliesh series. She wrote two novels featuring London private detective Cordelia Gray. The first, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, was published in 1972. The second, The Skull Beneath the Skin, was published in 1982.  Helen Baxendale played Cordelia Gray in the ITV series An Unsuitable Job for a Woman that aired on and off from 1997 to 2001.

P. D. James also wrote novels outside the mystery genre. Her 1992 novel Children of Men was dystopian science fiction set in a futuristic England where infertility has occurred on a massive scale. It was adapted as the film Children of Men (2006) by director Alfonso Cuarón. She also wrote a continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice that places Austen's characters in a murder mystery, Death Comes to Pemberley. Death Comes to Pemberley was adapted as a three part serial by BBC One in 2013.

P.D. James was one of the most influential mystery writers of her time, and also one of the greatest as well. P. D. James continued the tradition of the gentleman detective with Adam Dalgliesh and her mysteries were very much in the tradition of Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. At the same time, however, she brought the gentleman detective into the late 20th Century. Her novels not only featured complex characters, but often dealt with such modern problems as child abuse, drugs, and even radiation poisoning. Ultimately P.D. James was much more than a writer carrying on the tradition of such writers Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Quite simply, she took the gentleman detective mystery where it had never gone before.

The 110th Anniversary of Nancy Mitford's Birth

There was perhaps no more famous (or notorious) set of sisters in the 20th Century than the Mitford sisters. The daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and Sydney Bowles, the Mitford sisters ranged from a celebrated beauty who married a British Fascist leader to a Communist who became a celebrated journalist and activist in the United States to a beloved duchess who was largely responsible for saving her husband's estate. While all of the Mitford sisters would attain some degree of fame (and, in some instances, infamy), perhaps the most famous of the sisters was also the eldest. Nancy Mitford would attain lasting fame as a novelist, biographer, and journalist. It was 110 years ago today that Nancy Mitford was born in London.

In many respects there was little wonder that Nancy Mitford should have a literary career. On her father's side she was descended from historian and author William Mitford as well as diplomat and author Algernon Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale (her grandfather). On her mother's side her grandfather was Thomas Gibson Bowles, journalist and founder of both the British Vanity Fair and The Lady. To say "writing is in one's blood" may be a bit of a cliché, but in the case of Nancy Mitford it might well have been true.

Nancy Mitford began her writing career in the late Twenties, writing short, anonymous pieces of gossip for the various society magazines. She soon moved onto writing articles for which she received a byline in magazines such as Vogue. It was in 1930 that she started writing weekly columns for the magazine that her maternal grandfather had founded, The Lady. While Miss Mitford made a nice amount of money writing articles, she had greater aspirations when it came to writing. Her first novel, Highland Fling, was published in 1931.

Nancy Mitford followed Highland Fling with Christmas Pudding in 1932, Wigs on the Green in 1935, and Pigeon Pie in 1940 before finding enormous success with The Pursuit of Love in 1945. The Pursuit of Love proved to be an international best seller. Nancy Mitford followed it with a companion novel, Love in a Cold Climate, in 1949. It proved equally successful. She followed the success of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate with The Blessing in 1951 and her final novel, Don't Tell Alfred, in 1960.

It was after Nancy Mitford had established herself as a best selling novelist that she also established herself as a biographer. Her first biography, Madame de Pompadour (about Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour), was published in 1954. It was followed by Voltaire in Love (dealing with the love affair between  Voltaire and the Marquise du Châtele) in 1957, The Sun King (dealing with Louis XIV) in 1966, and Frederick the Great in 1970. Miss Mitford wrote her biographies with much the same tone as her fiction, writing them as much to entertain as to educate. Like her later novels, her biographies also proved successful.

While Nancy Mitford's novels may have been her greatest claim to fame and her biographies remain popular, for many she may be best known for an essay "The English Aristocracy", first published in the magazine  Encounter in 1954 and later published in the collection Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry Into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy. "The English Aristocracy" was largely a Mitford tease, complete with a discussion of "U" (upper class) and "Non-U" (non-upper class or the lower classes) speech. Nancy Mitford did not invent the terms "U" and "Non-U" to denote the social dialects of Great Britain. It was British linguist Alan S. C. Ross, Professor of Linguistics in the University of Birmingham, who coined the terms in 1954 in his article "Linguistic Class-Indicators in Present Day English". Despite this Nancy Mitford would become the person most associated with the terms "U and Non-U". In fact, there were many who did not apparently get Miss Mitford's joke and the article stirred a bit of controversy with regards to the classes in Great Britain. There were even those who regarded Miss Mitford as an authority on the aristocracy, an insufferable snob, or both. While many today know that Nancy Mitford meant "The English Aristocracy" as a tease, she remains the person most closely associated with "U" and "Non-U" speech in most people's minds.

One hundred ten years after her birth Nancy Mitford remains one of the most popular authors to emerge from mid-20th Century Britain. Her works have even been adapted to film and television. Her novel The Blessing provided the basis for the 1959 comedy film Count Your Blessings. Her novels Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate were adapted as the 1980 Thames Television mini-series Love in a Cold Climate. In 2003 The Pursuit of Love was included in a list of "The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time" published in The Guardian.  Uncle Matthew from The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate was included in a list of the "Best Fictional Characters" published in The Independent in 2014.

If Nancy Mitford is still popular, it is perhaps because she was an immensely talented writer. She possessed a razor sharp wit which she put to good use in both her non-fiction articles and her novels. Although she has been accused of being an aristocratic snob, her novels are satires of the upper class. Particularly in The Pursuit of Love  and Love in a Cold Climate, Miss Mitford was always one to point out the absurdities of the aristocracy. The aristocracy were not the only targets of Nancy Mitford's satire. In Highland Fling and Christmas Pudding she sent up the Bright Young Things of her own generation. In Wigs on the Green she satirised the British Fascists so savagely that it created a rift between Nancy and her sister Diana (who was involved with and would later marry Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Fascist Union). Short of her friend Evelyn Waugh, no British writer was as good at satire as Nancy Mitford was.

Of course, much of  Nancy Mitford's success as a writer is also due to both her fiction and non-fiction being very readable. Even in her biographies Miss Mitford used a conversational style with a good deal of wit. None of her writing, from her articles to her novels to her biographies could ever be described as "dry" or "boring". She was also capable of creating very memorable characters. I suspect very few people who have read The Pursuit of Love  and Love in a Cold Climate will ever forget Uncle Matthew. As a writer Nancy Mitford was a unique combination of biting satire and readable prose that was easily adaptable to either fiction or non-fiction. It is little wonder that 110 years after her birth she continues to be popular.

Happy Thanksgiving 2014

I just wanted to wish my fellow Americans a happy Thanksgiving! It is my custom here at A Shroud of Thoughts to post vintage pinups every Thanksgiving. Here then are this year's pin ups!

Ann Sheridan carving her turkey.

Audrey Hepburn prefers feeding the turkeys to eating them.

Gloria De Haven offers the turkey some corn.

I don't think Dusty Anderson is with a real turkey....

Dona Drake prefers to hugging the turkey to eating him.

Virginia Dale also prefers hugging turkeys to eating them!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Birthday to Quelle of Out of the Past

If you're a regular reader of this blog you might also be familiar with the classic film blog Out of the Past. Well, today is the birthday of Quelle, who has run that blog for the past seven years. Out of the Past was one of the first classic film blogs I started reading and Quelle was one of the first classic film bloggers I befriended. She was the first person I ever followed on Twitter. In her blog she writes about a variety of film related topics, from films noirs to classic film stars. She regularly includes reviews of classic film related books. Quelle is the one of the most wonderful people I know and you would do well to read her blog!

Quelle shares her birthday with some other cool people, among them Ricardo Montalbán, who is one of my favourite actors of all time.

She also shares her birthday with Noel Neill, the first actress to play Lois Lane in a live action film (the serial Superman)!

Quelle even shares her birthday with the original captain of the starship Enterprise! Jeffrey Hunter played Captain Christopher Pike in the pilot for the TV show Star Trek, "The Cage", shot about a year before William Shatner assumed the role of Captain Kirk!

It seems that a lot of cool people were born on November 25, and Quelle is among the coolest of them. Here's wishing Quelle a very happy birthday!