The Andy Warhol Diaries. Netflix.

 just finished the andy warhol diaries on netflix and I was left with a profound sadness. I can't begin to try to understand him or what made him tick, but I always loved his work. He was hated in the new york art world especially by the 2nd generation abstract painters and I remember John getting into many heated arguments over his work and his importance. John was totally supportive of Andy and wrote about him many times. I was forbidden to go anywhere near the factory, and John always went alone, guess he was afraid I would be kidnapped or worse by all those superstars. Andy was much more accessible before the shooting, and he was everywhere it seemed, and I chatted him up a few times and wish I had gotten him to sign stuff for me. He did give John two beautiful large flower prints signed, I wanted the Marilyn's. and Andy bought John's De Kooning drawing that was rolled up behind our refrigerator on 10th st. so we could have key money to get our loft. I spoke to him a few times on the phone, and he said something like "I hear you're burning little plastic buildings" he was up on all the gossip thanks to his main gossip queen squeezes Gregory Battcock and David Bourdon. David was his main squeeze on the gossip front. I was never really interested in all the glitter and glam of the late 70's and early 80's superficial art world crap way too shy and insecure so I kept to myself and saw only a few close artist friends. The interviews with all those past and very past art world things were very revealing and in the end very sad. I kept myself as clean and drug free as possible and how I didn't get AIDS is a miracle I still don't understand. I lost so many friends. Oh don't get me wrong I danced and sexed it up with the best of them, but the important thing was making art, and I really disliked so many of these art world creatures and "things" anyway. Tony Shafrazi and Mary Boone yuk. And what would I ever talk about with Keith Haring? The best thing was knowing Philip and Dorothy Pearlstein and talking to them about when Andy and Philip were roommates. Imagine that if you can. There were a few quick photos of them in their youth in the doc. and wished they had interviewed Philip. The thing that I realized early on that if you really wanted to hang out with these people you could, only I didn't want to. The people in the art world I liked, liked me and the ones that I hated I really hated. That was enough for me. You leave this documentary with such a strong sense of loss, it was almost overwhelming, but his funeral looked fabu. Highly recommended.

March 2022. New work on paper

 

William Hurt 1950-2022

 

The High and The Mighty 1954

 

Oh the high. Oh the mighty. 

The Granddaddy of the airplane disaster or near disaster movies was this 1954 release that was the 8^th highest and mightiest grossing film of the year. Set in a fake looking cute propeller plane going from Hawaii to San Francisco in 12 hours with a nearly empty passenger load of lower tier actors and actresses.


Let see we first of all have the co-pilot John Wayne who has been flying planes since 1914 and was brought down some years back by his plane crashing in South America killing his wife and young son who just happened to be aboard the plane.  He only suffered a broken leg and a discreet limp but has been paying for his disaster for a long time.

His co-pilot is played by a  young Robert Stack troubled and sweating for something we don’t know, but probably has to do with family problems. Stack is all tightly wound up and when disaster strikes he folds up ready to crash the plane into the sea until Wayne gives him a good smack across his pretty face, and tells him not to give up, even though they have less then 30 gallons of fuel left and two of the four propellers are shot to hell. The tension and boredom mounts. 

The passengers are played by a mixed group  including Claire Trevor as an aging party girl who has done too much partying and is winding down and out. Claire has done this part many times before and even won an Oscar for playing a younger dish in 1948’s “Key Largo”  She takes a liking to fellow passenger David Brian who when disaster strikes also folds up. There is a lot of folding up on this trip. Also around for the ride is Jan Sterling who scared me as a child of 7 when I first saw this romp of a disaster movie.

In one of the best scenes she removes all her make-up, the reason which I won’t go into but the sight of her cold creaming off her face scared me more than Raymond Burr in “Rear Window”, “King Kong”, “The Leopard Man” and “Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein” all seen by me at my local neighborhood Brooklyn movie theatre at this early age.

Both Trevor and Sterling for some reason got Oscar nominations for their startling turns. There are many more cliché-ridden stories sitting in seats on this plane, and floating above it all is the musical theme that was a popular highlight of the year, and was whistled through the film and our lives. Lyrics were put to the whistling and many singers covered it. The cast has a lot of familiar looking character actors and actresses playing ticket sellers, airport personal, passengers and the like who in one outrageous scene get busy throwing out their luggage and belongings to make the plane lighter so it won’t crash into the water. Wayne throws open the door and is held back by Robert Newton  so he won’t fly out with the luggage which in real life would never happen. Open a door on a plane and out everyone goes. Screenplay by Ernest K. Gann based on his novel with direction by William Wellman who received an Oscar nomination.

It Must Have Been Moonglow

The first time I saw Picnic was from the smoke filled balcony of my neighborhood Loew’s theatre in Brooklyn on a warm spring Friday night in 1955. I was eight years old and was there with my mother who had left the care of the luncheonette to my Uncle Natie and her friend Anna who sometimes worked part time there so that we could go see Picnic. I kept falling asleep and waking up with my eyes watery from all the smoke. This was the first time I saw Kim Novak in a movie and I immediately fell in love with her thinking that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Now all these many years later and after seeing Picnic several times, the last being several months ago on the newly restored letterboxed dvd, I can happily state that Picnic is still fine and tasty after all these years. Although no longer in love with Ms.Novak I still think she was one of the best looking female movie stars of the 1950’s and also somewhat underrated as an actress. Picnic was based on the well received play by the tragic William Inge who killed himself in the early 70’s, and both the play and film covers a short span of time in the lives of a family living in a small town in Kansas. Theres the single mom Flo Owens played by the fine Betty Field and her two daughters, beautiful Madge (Novak) and younger tomboy Millie (a stand-in perhaps for a young Inge) played by Susan Strasberg. Into their dreary lives comes William Holden a drifter with a past and a real nice smooth chest that we get to see a lot of during the film. He soon turns things and lives upside down & inside out and although its been pointed out many times that Holden was too old for the role, I have to disagree. Watching him sway, swagger and move you can understand why Novak and most of the other women in the film would be taken in by him, you can feel the sexual tension crackling and sizzling like a Summer lightning storm. Novak is engaged to the town rich kid played by Cliff Robertson also young and handsome but as soon as Novak catches sight of Holden without his shirt on, its bye bye Cliff and hello Bill. Momma Betty is aghast at the thought of her daughter and future “Queen” of the picnic giving up her chance for the good life with Robertson. Holden who it just so happens went to college with Robertson but dropped out is in town to look Cliff up and hit him for a job in his old man’s plant. Also hanging around is Rosalind Russell who is a spinster schoolteacher boarding with the Owens and her timid boyfriend Howard played by Arthur O’Connell. Both are fine and Russell especially has some wonderful moments including her drunken scene at the picnic and the scene with her begging Howard to marry her. Silly Roz gave up her sure shot of winning a supporting Oscar for this film because she refused to be considered as a supporting player and was not nominated. Big egos sometimes get no little golden men statues. Of course I cannot fail to mention the sexy erotic dance at the picnic between Novak and Holden which to this day is still one of the great sex scenes ever filmed. Joshua Logan who filmed on location used many of the town folks as extras especially in the lengthy and leisurely paced picnic sequence, and this gives the film a nice touch of reality. Also of note are James Wong Howe’s beautiful soft pastel cinematography, George Dunning’s score, Jo Mielziner’s production design and the great aerial shot at the end of the movie. Nominated for 6 Oscars including Best Picture, it won 2 for art direction and film editing. One of the memorable films of the 1950’s.

Tony Walton 1934-2022

 

Artworks 8 postcards

 Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 300 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS) two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists' Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.

Art 7 sculptures

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 300 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS) two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists' Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.