By about 1200 BC the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean world was in turmoil. War and the movement of peoples around the region abounded as international trade ceased, cities crumbling and civilisations collapsed. With a scarcity of hard evidence for a period of history so very distant from our own, the default explanation of many historians until recent times was that the large-scale collapse and destruction was down to one factor, the emergence of vast hordes of nomadic warriors, enigmatic and mysterious pirates and marauders which have been subsumed under the name “Sea Peoples”𝕒. Very little is known of the Sea Peoples outside of what the ancient Egyptians have recorded about these shadowy invaders of the Eastern Mediterranean littoral…which is problematic for historical enquiry in itself – having “the (hefty) disadvantage of being known only by their enemies” [Duke, T. T. The Classical Journal, vol. 65, no. 3, 1969, pp. 134–37. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296263. Accessed 15 Feb. 2025]
Late Bronze Age (credit: Finn Bjørklid / creativecommons.org)
The assumption that the Sea Peoples were pretty much wholly responsible for the collapse of civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 12th century BC has been challenged by historians of recent time. This revisionist view maintains that other factors could equally have caused the carnage of that world…drought, grave food shortages leading to a state of famine, the effects of climate change. Research into early agro-economies indicates their vulnerability to drought and long-term temperature change owing to general cooling which truncates their crop-growing season [McCormack et al (2012) cited in Wiener, M. H., FISCHER, P. M., & BÜRGE, T. (2017). Causes of Complex Systems Collapse at the End of the Bronze Age. In “Sea Peoples” Up-to-Date: New Research on Transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean in 13th-11th Centuries BCE (1st ed., pp. 43–74). Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvsn.7].
Egyptian hieroglyphics
Historian and archaeologist Eric H Cline in particular argues that rather than being the perpetrators of the mega-devastation that befell the region by ca.1177 BC, the Sea Peoples were victims of the collapse as much as anyone else. Cline describes them as refugees fleeing from the drought and famine of cities and civilisations collapsing asunder [‘The Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Aftermath’, Eric H. Cline with Javier Mejia, YouTube interview 2024].
Medinet Habu: Ramesses III’s memorial temple
Primary sources illuminating the identity of the Sea Peoples:The first reference we have to the Sea Peoples is the Amarna Letters of Upper Egypt (ca.1345 BC), clay tablets mentioning, among other things, the existence of and contact with various foreign peoples named as the Sherden, Lukka and Danuna. The richest source of information on the activities of these mysterious seafaring tribes resides in Medinet Habu, Ramesses III’s memorial temple near Luxor. The inscriptions of the scribes tell the Egyptian version of the story of the Sea Peoples who having defeated all other city-states and settlements in their way, launched an armada and land force led by the kingdom of Ekwesh, attacking the Nile Delta with the objective of establishing settlements on its fertile farmlands𝕓. They launched three attempts at invasion of Egypt over a period of 30-odd years and three times they were defeated by the Egyptians. The temple walls reveal the death toll and punishments of the vanquished Sea Peoples and the enslavement of many of them (some of the captured Shardans were incorporated into the Egyptian army to defend the kingdom’s northern frontiers from the Hittites).
Pictorial depictions (above & below) of the Battle of the Nile Delta (ca.1178 BC) (Medinet Habu)
So, who were the Sea Peoples and where did they come from?: In regard to the identity of the Sea Peoples the extant records give us names but little understanding of who they were. There appears to have been at least nine culturally separate tribal groups–including the Sherdan, the Peleset, the Lukka, the Shekelesh, the Tjekker, the Denyen (or Danuna), the Ekwesh, the Teresh, the Meshwesh and the Weshesh—some much better known than others. They formed themselves into a warring confederation (Egyptian records give it the name the “Nine Bows Confederation” whilst under the leadership of King Meryey of Libya). The question of their origins is more problematic to scholars. The Lukka is associated with the region of Lycia (in Anatolia) although they were thought to be highly mobile. Historians have tended to identify the Peleset with the later Philistines (in the Bible also calledPhlishtim (“invaders”) and located vaguely in the region of the Aegean. The Shekelesh have been associated with the island of Sicily although this wasn’t necessarily their original homeland as it’s also speculated that they may have moved there some time during the Bronze Age. The origins of the Sherden (or Shardan) is equally mysterious, with some archaeologists placing them within the Nuragic civilisation of Sardinia. The Tjekker have been variously linked to Canaan, Eastern Crete and the Sicals of Sicily, but without any conclusiveness. The Ekwesh are thought to have been from or based in the land of Libya, as was the Meshwesh. The origins of other groups are even more shadowy, such as the Denyen (or Danuna), the Karkiya and the Weshesh. Balancing these theories, Cline and other noted scholars hypothesise that the Sea Peoples’ migration began from the Western Mediterranean.
The Sea Peoples wearing distinctive feathered headdresses – as depicted on Ramesses II’s temple (source: Texas A&M University)
As Prof. Cline summed up the enigmatic Sea Peoples story: “the simple answer is that there is no simple answer. It remains an archaeological mystery that is the subject of much debate even today, more than 150 years after the discussions first began”.
𝕒 “Sea Peoples” was not a term used by contemporaries—Egyptians called them simply “Northerners”—but arose out of convenience to describe disparate groups of peoples thought to have come from islands and coastal areas of the Mediterranean (in reality, ironically, some came not from the sea at all!). What is established is that the Sea Peoples pursued a systematic pattern of invading and defeating the smaller empires and states of the region (Hittite kingdom, Mycenae (Greece), Syria, the Levant), culminating in a series of invasions of Egyptian Empire between ca.1213 BC and ca.1177 BC. They were repulsed and routed by the Egyptians (according to the Egyptian inscriptions) during the reigns of three succeeding pharaohs. The final Egyptian victory under Pharaoh Ramesses III was a Pyrrhic one. The war weakened the Egyptian economy to the point of bankruptcy, the empire was greatly diminished in size and by ca.1250 BC the Egyptian New Kingdom was finished.
𝕓 the Sea Peoples were atypical invaders, accompanying the fighting men was an entourage that included the families of the raiders and their livestock. The phenomena was a complete package, it’s objective included migration and the settlement of good farming lands…all of this added weight to the theory that the Sea Peoples were refugees in search of a permanent home
Before the creation of Israel as the national home for the Jewish people in 1947 a raft of potential candidates for a permanent homeland for Jewish refugees from the world war cataclysm were canvassed. Comprising all human–inhabited continents, the long list of proposed likely or unlikely sites (aside from Palestine) included several in the US (one being Alaska), Uganda, Madagascar, Russian Far East, Italian East Africa, British Guiana, Manchuria…and Australia!✪
Proposed area in WA for a Jewish homeland (image: Kununurra Historical Society)
A haven for one million people in the WA wilderness?: Yes Australia…a chapter in the country’s history not particularly well known. The proposed homeland in Western Australia’s sparsely–settled Kimberley region evolved out of an Anglo-Australian plan to settle migrants from the UK overseas in the 1920s. The Group Settlement Scheme had the purpose of expanding the population and economy of Australia’s almost boundless western state. Originally it targeted migrants of British and Irish stock only but the results of the scheme were dismally unsuccessful. Nonetheless the scheme captured the interest and imagination of the London–based Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization and gained concrete form when a Western Australian pastoralist, Michael Durack, offered to sell the League a large tract of his family’s land in WA’s East Kimberley. The proposal was investigated by the League with Issac Steinberg (formerly minister of justice in Lenin’s Bolshevik government) despatched to WA to determine the scheme’s feasibility and to get as many VIPs in Australia onside with the League’s objectives as he could. Steinberg’s PR skills and adept arguments for a Jewish homeland in northern WA were persuasive, managing to snare the support of many political and public figures including the WA premier and the Australasian Unions body (ACTU).
Issac Steinberg, emissary for a Jewish homeland
Despite the headway Steinberg was making on his mission, Australian politicians and the public clearly had mixed feelings about a Jewish settlement on Australian soil. The government in Canberra was committed to the objective of populating northern Australia (which the 75,000 and more refugees fleeing from Nazi persecution in Europe would certainly accomplish) but there was opposition to the plan from various sectors. Xenophobia and racism played its part, some in mainstream society were fearful that the Jewish migrants would not stick it out in the harsh conditions of the Kimberleys but would swarm to the cities, take Australian jobs and their “difference” would lead to social dislocation (‘How the Kimberley nearly became the Jewish homeland’, Ryan Fraser, Australian Geographic, 27-Sep-2018, www.australiangeographic.com.au). Newspapers like the Bulletin opposed the plan and of course no one thought to ask the local indigenous custodians of the region, the Miriwoong people, if they were happy with the plan’s ramifications. Some Australian Jews themselves were against it, fearing a backlash of anti-semitism and that the settlement would undermine the Zionist cause of securing a Palestinian homeland𖤘 (Beverley Hooper, ‘Steinberg, Isaac Nachman (1888–1957)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/steinberg-isaac-nachman-117…, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 28 January 2025).
Kimberley outback, WA
Preserving the monoculture and keeping diversity under wraps: No progress was made on the project for a few years due in part to the onset of WWII. Meanwhile conservative pressure was mounting on the Curtin Commonwealth Labor government from vested interests like the Graziers’ Association and the Australian Natives’ Association to veto the Kimberley plan. Finally in 1944 PM Curtin informed Dr Steinberg that the Australian government would not be altering its policy barring “alien settlements” in Australia of the “exclusive type contemplated by the Freeland League”. Further appeals to Curtin’s (Labor) successors and to the subsequent Menzies Liberal–Country Party government met with the same negative response, which affirmed Canberra’s refusal to budge from the overarching policy of assimilation. The discouraging experience prompted Dr Steinberg to wryly publish a book entitled Australia – the Unpromised Land (Brian Wimborne, ‘A Land of Milk and Honey? A Jewish Settlement Proposal in the Kimberley’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/essay/9/text29448, originally published 22 May 2014, accessed 28 January 2025).
SW Tasmania, an unpopulated wilderness (photo: Discovery Tasmania)
Endnote: An island wilderness for the Promised Land? The Kimberley region was not the only part of Australia that got a look-in as a possible home for Jewish refugees from Europe. One obsessively-determined, young Gentile from Melbourne, Critchley Parker, fostered the prospect of the Tasmanian wilderness providing a home for displaced Jews which, he proposed, would sustain itself on discovered mineral wealth in the area𖥠. Inspired by and infatuated with a Jewish–Australian journalist passionately involved in the Steinberg–led campaign for a Jewish homeland in the Antipodes, Parker set out in 1942, underprepared, on a solo expedition to find the ideal location for his own vision of “New Jerusalem”, but perished in the island-state’s southwest wilderness (‘Before Israel was created, Critchley Parker set off to find a Jewish homeland in Tasmania’s wilderness’, Rachel Edward’s, ABC News, 05-Dec-2020, www.amp.abc.net.au).
✪ not all of these were benevolent and altruistic proposals, Madagascar for instance was a Third Reich plan to forcibly remove European Jewry from the continent
𖤘 Steinberg and the Freeland League were opposed to Zionism
𖥠 the scheme with Jewish backing won the support of the Tasmanian state premier
Some time towards the tail-end of last century China and India changed the standard exonym by which its respective principal city is known to outsiders. Thus, Peking became Beijing and Bombay became Mumbai. Other cities within each country followed suit. At the time this caused some pointed comments and a degree of puzzlement among onlookers and even governments around the world. After being called “Peking” and “Bombay” for what seemed like forever (it wasn’t!), why did the Chinese and Indian governments all of a sudden make such a fundamental switch in nomenclature?
Bombay Mumbai (credit: hayesandjarvis.co.uk)
The reasons why governments up and change the names of their cities and even occasionally the name by which the sovereign state itself is known※※, varies. Quite frequently, it’s about politics or ethnic/cultural identity. Often, it’s a matter of transliteration of writing systems to keep up with the state of contemporary realities – which dovetails neatly into the need for recognition of ethnic identities within the country. In some instances the change of name may be about both the political and the phonetic. Let’s look at a few specific cases from different countries.
Politics of decolonisation: Let’s start with India and Mumbai. “Bombay” was the first to be (officially) cancelled. In 1995 the Shiv Sena—a right-wing Hindu nationalist party—took power in the Maharashtra region (includes Bombay/Mumbai). Shiv Sena changed the city name because it wanted to rid it of a name with the connotation of the British colonial legacy (“Bombay” apparently being a tainted “Raj” name to Hindu nationalists)1⃞. In its place, the regional authority seeking a name which reflected Maratha heritage and identity chose “Mumbai” to honour the Koli goddess Mumbadevi2⃞.
Standardisation of spelling: From 1996 other Indian cities similarly underwent a name change, the most significant of which are Kolkata, replacing the former name “Calcutta”, Chennai, replacing “Madras”, Kozhikode, replacing “Calicut”, and Bengaluru, formally called “Bangalore”. While post-British decolonisation was at the heart of the desire to change names, many of the new names were the result of spelling changes to align with the prevailing local languages/ethnic communities (eg, Kolkata is a Bengali word for a city nearly two-thirds populated by Bengalis)3⃞.
Linguistic map of India
Transliteration:China has quite a track record of changing the name of its cities, during the imperial era it was a regular occurrence. The question most are curious about is how “Peking” got traded in for “Beijing” (which translates as “northern capital”). Well for a start, Beijing is not a new name for the city. Back in 1403, during the Ming Dynasty, it was thus named…hence the wheel has gone full circle. In-between Beijing 1.0 and Beijing 2.0 the city was known variously as Beiping, Peiping and Peking (prior to Beijing 1.0 it was called Dadu when ruled by the Mongols). Which brings us back to the question of why Peking became Beijing. Basically, it was the (delayed) outcome of a change in the Chinese writing system/script, requiring the conversion of text to tally with the new Pinyin romanisation system introduced by the communist authorities. As part of the process the phonetic changes necessitated new spellings of many city names. And as the new system involved replacing Cantonese with Mandarin, this led to “Canton”, the old English name for the great southern Chinese city, being transliterated as “Guangzhou”4⃞. For the same reason “Pusan” in South Korea became “Busan” in 2000.
More politically motivated name swaps: The communist era of the USSR occasioned name changes of some cities to honour Bolshevik supreme leaders – “Tsaritsyn”, the Tsarist era name became “Stalingrad” (after Joseph Stalin), only to change again to “Volgograd”); “St Petersburg” became “Petrograd” before the Bolsheviks renamed it “Leningrad” (after VI Lenin), only for it to revert to St Petersburg after the dissolution of Soviet communism. Turkey’s preeminent city and capital, Istanbul, too has a history of different names, the changes occasioned by the succeeding waves of rulers who in turn conquered the city. Founded as “Byzantium” by the ancient Greeks, later it was renamed “Constantinople” when absorbed into the (eastern) Roman Empire (unofficially also known as “New Rome”), and finally, under the Ottoman conquerors it became and remains “Istanbul”5⃞.
(What) Once was Constantinople is now Istanbul (photo: global-geography.org/)
Endnote: The capital of the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan is arguably the world record-holder for most changes of its name. While it was part of Russia it was originally called Akmoly, this changed to Akmelinsk and then Tselingrad. Since independence the capital has regularly changed autonyms (and at least one change of location and therefore its name as well) – going from Akmola (= “white tomb”, perhaps not the most uplifting name for a city!), to Astana (which simply means “capital”) to Nursultan (named after Kazakhstan’s autocratic first president) back to Astana.
Transformed and modernised Astana (photo: Jose Fuste Raga/Corbis)
※※ Re country name changes see this site’s August 2024 blog Bharat, Türkiye, etc. What’s in a Name?: The Politics of Country Rebranding
𖣴𖣴𖣴 𖣴 𖣴𖣴𖣴
1⃞ “Bombay” (meaning “good bay”) was the name the English adopted during the British Raj which derived from Bombaim, the name the Portuguese chose for the city during their occupation
2⃞ the new name, Mumbai, didn’t trigger a change in the name of the city’s famous film-making complex which remains “Bollywood”
3⃞ Goa, a Portuguese colony for 450 years interestingly has not changed its name…possibly something to do with “Goa” deriving from a South Asian Sanskrit word Gomantak (= “cow’s horn”)
4⃞ Shànghâi already conformed to the Pinyin system and so didn’t require a change of name
5⃞ if we turn our eyes to Europe other politically-motivated changes in the city name include “Danzig” (when a German city), changed to “Gdańsk” (when it came under Polish jurisdiction), and “Königsberg” (historic Prussian name) ➜ “Kaliningrad” (after the USSR took control of it from Germany). The spoils of war also accounts for the change in name of the Vietnamese city “Saigon” to “Ho Chi Minh City” after the North Vietnamese were victorious in the civil war
Exegesis: Relegating the author IN literary and artistic aesthetics the intentional fallacy occurs when readers or viewers use factors outside the text or visual work (such as biographical information) to evaluate its merits, rather than ignoring these “external” factors and relying solely on the textual or visual evidence of the novel, play, poem, painting, etc. to assess the work in question (what’s actually in the text and nothing outside). This key precept of the New Criticism school declares that a poem (or other work of art) does not belong to its author, it is (as stated by the term’s originators WK Wimsatt and MC Beardsley) “detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it”1⃞. Authorial intention is a non-consideration in the assessment of the work. The text or work has an objective status and its meaning belongs solely to the reading or viewing public. The reader’s task in literature, advocates of New Criticism assert, is to eschew subjective or personal aspects such as the lives and psychology of authors and literary history and focus entirely on close reading and explication of the text (A Glossary of Literary Terms (4th edition, 1981), edited by M.H. Abrams).
The intentional fallacy, elaborated in Wimsatt’s 1954 The Verbal Icon
The intentional fallacy doctrine has a corollary in the affective fallacy which adheres to the same principles. Wimsatt and Beardsley affirmed that evaluating a poem by its effects—especially its emotional effects—upon the reader, is an erroneous way of approaching the task. Giving rein to the emotions a work of art evokes in you, negates an appreciation of “the (work’s) inherent qualities and craftsmanship” that an objective analysis permits (Prince Kumar, ‘Understand Affective Fallacy from Example’, LitforIndia, 23-Dec-2023, www.litforindia.com).
(source: cornerstoneduluth.org)
Semantic autonomy, Intentionalism, Anti-intentionalism: The intentional and affective fallacies as prescriptive “rules” of hermeneutics held sway from the 1940s to the 1970s, however this is not to say that there was no pushback from scholarly dissenters. Proponents (primarily American) of what is called “Reader-response theory” reject the claims of New Criticism of this prescribed mode of interpreting and critiquing a work of literature. Some of these objected to the fallacy’s nothing outside the text rigidity for constricting exploration of all possibilities of a work’s meanings. Critic Norman Holland frames it in a psychoanalytical context, the reader, he affirms, will react to a literary text with the same psychological responses he or she brings to events in their daily lives, ie, “the immediate goal of interpretation is to fulfil (one’s) psychological needs and desires” (‘Psychological Reader-response Theory’, Nasrullah Mambrol, Literary Theory and Criticism (2016), www.literariness.org). Theorist ED Hirsch in his “Objective Interpretation” essay also took issue with the expositors of the intentional fallacy thesis, arguing that on the contrary authorial intent (intentionalism) was integral to a full understanding of the work…the only meaning that is permanent and valid is that of the author in question, the reader should confine him or herself to interpreting what the author is trying to say (E.D. Hirsch, Jr, Validity in Interpretation, 1967) .
𖠔 : 𖠔 : 𖠔 : 𖠔 : 𖠔
A quite different kind of fallacious argument is the argument from silence (Latin: argumentum ex silentio). This arises when a conclusion or inference is drawn based on an absence of statements in historical documents and source materials…the argument seeks not to challenge or rebut specific things an author includes in a book or document, but is critical of the author for something they should have said but didn’t! The most common instances of the argument from silence in practice relate to biblical debates and controversies, but a contemporary classic example of a non-theological, historical nature, one generating considerable heated discourse, concerns the 13th century merchant and explorer Marco Polo and the famous book of his travels in the East.
Medieval Venezia at the time of Marco Polo (source: Bodleian Library, Oxford)
Medieval world travelogue guru?: Known by various namesincluding Description of the World (Divisament du monde), Book of the Marvels of the World, Il libro di Marco Polo detto il Milione, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, or simply The Travels of Marco Polo, the book is one of the most celebrated tomes in the annals of literature dealing with the experiences of travellers to distant and unknown lands. The story, told and retold in numerous languages over centuries, presents Marco and his father Niccolò and uncle Maffeo embarking on an epic road trip along the Silk Road to the court of the Great Khan in Khanbaliq (Beijing). The book recounts Marco’s travels in Cathay (North China) and Manji (South China), among other Eastern lands. The consensus among most historians is that Signor Polo, despite a tendency to exaggerate and embellish the tales of his travels2⃞, did nonetheless journey to China as he claimed in the book. The publication of Did Marco Polo Go to China? by Frances Wood in 1995 controversially swam against this tide. Wood infers serious doubts about Polo’s achievements, suggesting that despite his being away from his native Italy for the best part of a quarter-of-a-century, he never reached his intended destination China. According to Wood, he got only as far as Constantinople and the Black Sea where he accumulated all of his information on Chinese society and other Asian lands (his source material for the “Travels”) from picking the brains of visiting Persian merchants.
A page from the Polo travelogue
Doubting “Marco’s millions”: What made Wood so convinced that Marco Polo never visited China? Firstly, there is the book’s puzzling itinerary, it proceeds in a disjointed, incoherent fashion, is not uniformly chronological, has some odd detours and gets some geographical place names in China wrong. Then, while acknowledging The Travels of Marco Polo contains references to porcelain (from Fujian province), coal, rice-wine, paper currency and other items, Wood hones in on the fact that the Venetian traveller failed to mention certain other quintessentially Chinese things—namely the Great Wall of China, tea, chopsticks, cormorant fishing and the practice of foot-binding—in the pages ofhis “Travels’. Wood also picks up on Polo’s failure to learn Chinese during his sojourn in the Middle Kingdom. Allied to these omissions was the absence of Polo’s3⃞ name in any official Chinese document of the period, which Wood believed, further incriminated Marco as the perpetrator of a fraud.
A crumbling section of the not-so-great wall in north China built prior to Polo’s time (photo: John Man, The Great Wall)
Wood herself is perpetrating a pattern of reasoning which is problematic by recourse to an argument from silence. As Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard in The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (2010) (ISBN0-415-96219-6Routledge pp. 64–65) note, “arguments from silence are, as a rule, quite weak; there are many examples where reasoning from silence would lead us astray.” Academic critics have been quick to pinpoint the shortcomings and misconceptions in Wood’s argument. There are, they counter, manifestly valid reasons why Polo would not refer to the Great Wall, for one, it was largely not there in the period of his residency in China! The impressive edifice of the Great Wall as we think of it was primarily a product of the Ming Dynasty (from 1368, three-quarters of a century after the Polos’ stay)…what there was of the not-so-Great Wall prior to that was a much more modest, unprepossessing sight (“a discontinuous series of derelict, pounded earth ramparts”) (‘F. Wood’s Did Marco Polo Go To China?’, A Critical Appraisal byI. de Rachewiltz, http://openresearch–repository.anu.edu.au). With the matter of the Chinese penchant for tea-drinking, perhaps Polo didn’t think the topic simply sufficiently noteworthy to rate a mention4⃞. The question of the omission of foot-binding, chopsticks and Polo’s linguistic ignorance of Chinese in the travelogue can all be accounted for. China and the royal court was under Mongol control (Yuan Dynasty) in Marco’s time, accordingly Polo moved in those circles, tending not to mix with the (Han) Chinese population. and so lacked the motivation (or opportunity) to learn Chinese. Likewise, he wouldn’t have encountered many upper class Chinese women in their homes, this was the strata of society that practiced female foot-binding, not the Mongols. Again, with chopsticks, not a utensil of choice for the Mongols who Polo tended to fraternise with (Morgan, D. O. (1996). Marco Polo in China-Or Not [Review of Did Marco Polo Go to China?, by F. Wood]. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 6(2), 221–225. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25183182). As for “the Travels’” silence on fishing with cormorants, the activity was not a widespread phenomena in China during the Yuan era, confined to the remoter areas of Sichuan Province (‘Cormorant Fishing in China’, Sally Guo, China Travel (Upd. 04-April-2021), www.chinatravel.com).
MP (source: caamadi.com/de/marco-polo-in-venice)
Filtered Marco Polo – Rustichello et al: And there’s another line of thought when considerating the book’s glaring omissions, inconsistencies and inaccuracies that Frances Wood doesn’t seem to have factored into her thesis…The Travels of Marco Polo, the published book we read today, is a different beast in form and content to the original article from the late 1290s. In fact the original manuscript which Polo dictated to his amanuensis, an imaginative romance writer Rustichello de Pisa —who had licence to inject his own theatrical flourishes and flavour into Marco’s original story—was lost early on, so “the Travels” have gone on an untraceable and interminable journey through “dozens of translations of translations, none of which are necessarily accurate” (‘The Travels of Marco Polo: The True Story of a 14th-Century Bestseller’, Anna Bressanin, BBC, 09-Jan-2024, www.bbc.com). Of the 54 extant manuscripts (out of around 150 distinct copies in all languages), no two copies are entirely alike with “improvements” and edits made by each copyist and translator. We should also remember that Marco was in prison, relying on his memory to recount a multitude of events and experiences, some of which stretched back over 20 years, hardly surprising then if readers have to contend with the recollections of a not entirely reliable narrator (‘Marco Polo’s book on China omits tea, chopsticks, bound feet’, Peter Neville-Hadley, South China Morning Post, 04-Oct-2020, www.amp.scmp.com).
The Marco Polo saga has spawned a long history of film and television versions with romantic adventure taking precedence over story accuracy
Heavily redacted archives: The issue of Polo’s claim to have been an official in Kublai Khan’s service—and in particular governor of Yangzhou—was seized on by Dr Wood who pointed out that Marco’s name does not appear in any historical official Chinese archives. Rather than being necessarily proof of Marco fabricating a presence in China as Wood assumes, other factors may explain the discrepancy…no other Italian merchants known to have visited medieval China are mentioned in any Chinese sources, even the Papal envoy to the Great Khan’s court, Giovanni de Marignolli, doesn’t rate a mention (‘Marco Polo was not a swindler. He really did go to China’, Science News, 16-Apr-2012, www.sciencedaily.com). Another factor germane to this is the fact that the Ming (Han) Dynasty that succeeded the Mongol-dominated Yuan Dynasty initiated the practice of erasing the records of earlier non-Han officials (Morgan).
(source: LibriVox)
One particularly vocal critic of Did Marco Polo Go To China?, Sinologist Hans Ulrich Vogel from the University of Tübingen, produced a research paper demonstrating that Marco’s descriptions of currency, salt production and revenues from the salt monopoly in China were of a standard of accuracy and uniqueness of detail5⃞, that produces a very high level of proof that Polo had to have been in China, close to the wheels of power, to be privy to such comprehensive knowledge (www.sciencedaily.com).
Chinese salt production (source: Wellcome Images)
The “logical fallacy of weak induction”: Frances Wood’s iconoclastic book was certainly an attention-grabber, both for medieval scholars and Sinologists and for the general public, causing a furore upon its publication in 1995 and spawning several TV documentaries. China and the world of the Great Khan is a central tenet of the Marco Polo story, making it unthinkable to most scholars, almost a sacrilege, to suggest that the legendary Venetian traveller never set foot in the Middle Kingdom! The weight of the counter-argument unleashed against Wood’s thesis throws a spotlight on the hazards of trying to “treat the absence of evidence as evidence itself”, as Steven Lewis summarises the fallacious nature of the argument from silence (‘The Argument from Silence”, Steven Lewis, SES, www.ses.edu).
(image: silk–road.com)
Frances Wood, Did Marco Polo go to China? (1995, Secker & Warburg, London)
1⃞ Wimsatt and Beardsley’s 1946 ‘Intentional Fallacy’ essay to some extent has its antecedents in the earlier debate between CS Lewis and EMW Tillyard, published as The Personal Heresy: A Controversy (1939), in which Lewis argued that an author’s own personality and biography has negligible to zero impact on the literary text, while Tillyard enunciated the contrary position: that an author’s own imagination and story can have an indelible influence on a work of literature
2⃞ and there had been doubters even in Marco’s time and later about some of his more wilder and fantastic claims, earning him the epithet Il Milione or “the Millions”) (aka “Marchus Paulo Millioni”). Wood’s particular slant on Polo’s book follows the lead of earlier German Mongolists
3⃞ who had claimed to have been an emissary in the emperor’s service
4⃞ Wood herself concedes that Rustichello may have edited out references to tea on the grounds of it being “of no interest to the general public”
Paraguay’s youthful conservative political leader, Santiago Peña, won the presidential election in 2023, promising not to raise taxes, in a country beset by widespread inequality and rising extreme poverty rates. The opposition candidate did the same, grim news for the nation’s legion of poor considering that Paraguay was already an underfunded state with the lowest tax burden in South America, a circumstance which as The Guardian notes, “greatly benefits the wealthiest in society” [William Costa, “Paraguayan looks for change as election looms. But that’s not on the ballot”, The Guardian, 27-Apr-2023, www.theguardian.com].
(image: mandalaprojects.com)
Peña from the dominant Colorado (Republican) Party is on record as stating that the historic dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner was a positive for national stability and that the golpe de estado (coup d’état) that brought the army chief to power in 1954 was actually a “political agreement” [Spanish-language reports, cited in the Wikipedia article on Santiago Peña]. Peña’s controversial and heavily criticised revisionist views–sentiments mirrored by his mentor, the tainted former president Horacio Cartes—underscore the ongoing failure of the Colorado Party and Paraguay conservatism to come squarely to terms with the past𝟙, the excesses of the authoritarian despotic Stronato (or Stronismo) era of Stroessner’ rule, a dark chapter of Paraguay’s history in which the Colorados played an integral role.
Desk general: Alfred Stroessner (photo: Brazilian Report)
Caudillismo tradition: General Stroessner’s seizure of power in 1954, overthrowing the civilian Chaves government, stemmed from an internal power struggle within the ruling Partido Colorado. After a hastily arranged poll Stroessner was elected president unopposed. A military inspired coupwasnothing novel for Paraguay, it had been a recurring feature of Paraguayan politics since independence–all starting with José de Francia (1814–40) whose military dictatorial rule made Paraguay an isolated hermit state–golpes were a constant threat with eight successful coups between the 1930s and 1950s and dozens of curtelazos (barrack revolts), ensuring that “militarism remains the rule rather than the exceptional state in Paraguay” [Paul C. Sondrol, “The Paraguayan Military in Transition and the Evolution of Civil–Military Relations”, Volume 19, Issue 1 (Fall 1992): http://journals.sagepub.com].
The Colorado Party maintained its own ultra-right paramilitary militias, an addition arm of the Stranato repressive appartus
Washington’s relations with Stroessner: Stroessner’s uncompromising anti-communist stance made Paraguay a valued ally for the US in the midst of the Cold War…in the mid-Fifties the president struck up a close working relationship with US ambassador Arthur Ageton who mentored Stroessner on how to best manage internal security and control. Washington money in the form of aid and military funds flowed freely and unquestioningly into Paraguay, at least until the Carter administration in the late Seventies started insisting Stroessner clean up his act in respect of Paraguay’s abysmal human rights record and rampant corruption [Klas Lundstrom, “Remembering the ‘Stronismo’: How the ghost of a brutal dictator haunts Paraguay”, Aljazeera, 29-Jun-2024, www.aljazeera.com].
Personalised fiefdom and praetorianism: Although often characterised as a military dictatorship, historians have emphasised the personalist nature of Stroessner’s rule. Stroessner’s position as head of the military was the vehicle for his attaining power, but once consolidated, El Continuador𝟚, as he was known, developed a cult of leadership based on personal authority. The president adopted a patrimonial style towards his officer corps which politicised the army…loyalty was demanded and rewarded with a share of the corrupt contraband activities widely practiced within the country𝟛.
South American Dictators Club: Pinochet (L) & Stroessner, 1974 (source: Museo de la Buena Memoria)
At the same time spies from the secret police were used for surveillance of army officers, to identify and weed out any opponents of or potential threats to the commander-in-chief. Without any apparent external threats to Paraguay, the usual defence role of the army was subordinated to one of maintaining internal security and guarding against subversion, ie, against the threat of communist insurgence, largely extinguished by the early Sixties (Sondrol, ‘Paraguayan Military in Transition’). Andrew Nickson however argues that armed insurgency by radical groups including the Communist Party continued after this period, but was ultimately unsuccessful due largely to Stroessner’s efficient network of police informers and a ruthless counter-insurgency strategy which grossly violated the human rights of ordinary Paraguayan citizens [Andrew Nickson (01 Apr 2024): Armed opposition to the Stroessner regime in Paraguay: a review article, Small Wars & Insurgencies. DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2024.2333065].
Coalescing military, party and government: The Stronato exercised a similar domination over the Colorado Party, the sole legal political party permitted in the one–party state, which Stroessner himself headed. To further tie the various organs of his power base together under his control Stroessner made membership of the Colorado Party a necessity for all personnel of the armed forces (and for all government employees). And as with the military Stroessner obsessively surveilled the party to purge any dissident groups or individuals detected.
Privatised land monopoly: cattle ranch in the Chaco, land subjected to intensive deforestation (source: earthsight.org.uk)
Tierra mal habida, the “Ill-gotten lands”:Oneof the most egregious acts of the Stroessner regime was its outrageous land colonisation program, the catastrophic ramifications of which are still being acutely felt by rural Paraguayans to this day. Vast swaths of public land was divided up and handed out to the dictator’s family, to Colorado Party cronies and to supporters under a flimsy veneer of supposed “land reform” (Lundstrom). No post-Stronato governments has made any attempt at redressing this massively inequitable land monopolisation—Oxfam estimates that just 1.6% of the Paraguay population owns 80% of land —with the single exception of Fernando Lugo’s progressive Patriotic Alliance for Change government (2008–2012). Lugo came to office promising to distribute land to the teeming masses of landless campesinos but was stymied by the combined efforts of the Colorados and the Liberal Party who forced Lugo’s removal from the presidency in what amounted to a parliamentary coup.
Underworld of illegality: Smuggling, contraband, call it what you like, illicit trade between Paraguay and Brazil was another way the Stronato cashed in big. Stolen cars, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, exotic animals and more, crossed the porous border in increasingly larger quantities, facilitated by officially-approved corruption by the regime𝟜. Stroessner funnelled revenue derived this way largely into paying off military officers and politicians in return for their loyalty and collusion in his political objectives.
Ciudad del Este (hub of the underground economy) ~ originalled named Puerto Presidente Stroessner (source: Wikivoyage)
Open door for “deplorables”: During the Stronismo Paraguay became “a refuge for exiled dictators, drug traffickers, Nazi war criminals and other international pariahs” – a welcome haven for the likes of Anastasio Somoza (exiled Nicaraguan dictator), French heroin kingpin Auguste Ricord and Nazi death camp chief physician Josef Mangele, “ALFREDO STROESSNER: 1912–2006 / Dictator controlled Paraguay for 34 years”, Jack Epstein, SFGATE, 17-Aug-2006, www.sfgate.com].
photo: idsa.in
End of the road for El Continuador: The 1980s arrived and Stroessner, though now ageing and subject to increasing ill-health, was still firmly ensconced at the helm. Disaffection with the Stronato, both within and outside the country𝟝, however was growing, in part due to a worsening economic situation in Paraguay (a recession in 1983). Elements of the armed forces were unhappy with their lot, specifically field-grade officers who found themselves blocked from further promotion by an officer corps that Stroessner had allowed to grow top-heavy. Most seriously of all was the emergence of a division within the ruling Colorados. One group, the Militantes, sided with Stroessner in wanting a continuation of the status quo, another group, the Tradicionalistas, clamoured for change, wanting a transition away from the personalist focus on the leader. The issue that appears to have been the trigger for insurrection however was the vexed issue of succession, Alfredo’s accelerated promotion of his son Gustavo to colonel in the Air Force was taken by Stroessner’s detractors as a signal that he was jockeying his son into position to become the presidential successor (Sondrol, ‘Paraguayan Military in Transition’).
Photo image: Getty Images
Endnote: La Noche de la Candelaria The putsch against Stroessner came in February 1989 from an unexpected source, army general, Andrés Rodríguez, who had previously been a close confidante of Stroessner and the two were in-laws (Rodríguez’s daughter married Stroessner’s son). Rodríguez with Paraguay’s strongest and best-equipped army corps at his command prevailed in a battle lasting several hours with Stroessner’s 700-strong presidential escort guard. The president was arrested and with his son sent into exile in Brasilia, Brazil, never to return to his homeland. Elected president three months later, Rodríguez’s political aims were not to bring democracy to Paraguay but to liberalise society in a limited fashion, to blunt the sharp edges of Stroessner’s authoritarian system, remove the personality cult, rescind the death penalty, allow some pluralism, all while retaining the hold of the Colorado Party over politics in Paraguay [Sondrol, P. C. (2007). Paraguay: A Semi-Authoritarian Regime? Armed Forces & Society, 34(1), 46–66. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48608804], a pattern maintained by his successors for most of the last 30 years.
𝟙 even to the point of expressing an unabashed nostalgia for the Stroessner days
𝟚 “The Continuer”…another, less flattering name bestowed on Stroessner was “the Tyrannosaur”
𝟛 Sondrol describes the Stronismo as equating with the archetypical praetorian society, with the presence of these features, “executive dominance, non-elective rule, golpes, continual military involvement in government and weakness (or absence) of effective countervailing political institutions”. The existence of an elite guard, a presidential escort regime exclusively for Stroessner’s personal protection further underscores the praetorian component of the regime
𝟜 contraband is an even greater problem in Paraguay today—a legacy of the Stronismo—especially the illicit, out-of-control trade in narcotics and cigarettes
As part of the Denazification process (German: Entnazifizierung) after the Second World War and to facilitate the Nuremberg war crimes trial proceedings, the German people were classified into five discrete groups:
• Major offenders (Germ: Hauptschuldige)
• Offenders: activists, militants, or profiteers (Germ: Belastete)
• Lesser offenders (Germ: Minderbelastete)
• Followers (Germ: Mitläufer)
• Exonerated persons (Germ: Entlastete)
Of the five categories, Mitläufer is the most contentious…it absolves the person concerned from having committed any formal Nazi criminal activity but acknowledges that he or she participated in some form of loosely defined, indirect support of Nazi crimes, which might be as minimalist as passively sympathising with Nazi aims and goals [‘Mitläufer’, Wikipedia, en.m.wikipedia.org]. The extent of the offence actually perpetrated however didn’t always equate with the category description – as will clear from the examples below.
Nazi defendants at the International Military Tribunal (Nov. 1945) (source: National Archives and Records Administration)
The German term Mitläufer (fem: Mitläuferin)—literally meaning “with-walker” or “one walking with”—can be defined as “follower” or possibly a “passive follower”. Mitläufereffekt is derived from it, also called the Bandwagon-Effekt (effect), which refers to the effect a perceived success exerts on the willingness of individuals to join the expected success. A characteristic of the Mitläufer is he is not convinced by the ideology of the group followed but merely offers no resistance, such as for lack of courage or for opportunism (ie, giving in to peer pressure) (‘Mitläufer’).
Some observers make a further (slight) distinction from the Mitläufer typology, to allow for the Nazi Mitläufer, a fellow-traveller” (Mitreisende) who sympathised with the Nazis but only indirectly participated in Nazi atrocities such as genocide.
Martin Heidegger: one of the 20th century’s greatest philosophers for his pioneering work on existentialism and phenomenology, all of which has been overshadowed by his controversial association with the German Nazi Party. Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in 1933 – prior to this the philosopher was fundamentally apolitical. As rector of Freiburg University he delivered a number of speeches extolling the Nazi cause and publicly expressed antisemitic opinions. At the end of the world war the knives came out for Heidegger, he was forbidden to teach and lost his West German chair of philosophy (the ban was overturned just three years later). Heidegger, perhaps because of the lofty esteem he was held in as a leading intellectual, was never submitted to any harsher retribution (such as a term of incarceration). Critics have noted Heidegger’s complete failure after 1945 to “honestly reckon with the realities of Nazi Germany’s crimes, including the Holocaust, and his own role in lending support to the regime” [Jürgen Habermas in ‘Heidegger’s Downfall’, Jeffrey Herf, Quillette, 22-Feb-2023, quillette.com]. A very full account of Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism makes it abundantly clear that he was neither a reluctant fellow-traveller nor (…) a nonpolitical scholar, a ‘child’ who got caught by the juggernaut of hideous political events [‘Heil Heidegger’, J.P. Stern, London Review of Books, Vol. 11 No.8, 20-April-1989 (Review of Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie, by Hugo Ott), lrb.co.uk].
Heidegger, intellectual backing for the Nationalist Socialists (image: simplycharly.com)
Leni Riefenstahl: a Berlin-born actress-turned-filmmaker, one of the few German women to direct a motion picture during the Weimar period. A favourite of Hitler, Riefenstahl was an important instrument of the Nazi propaganda machine, producing highly successful propaganda documentary films like Triumph of the Will and Olympia for the Third Reich. After the war Riefenstahl was arrested and found to be a Nazi fellow-traveller, sympathetic to the Nazi movement but not a party member[ᗩ] She however avoided being charged with any crime. Riefenstahl claimed she was an “apolitical naïf” and denied any knowledge of Nazi racial policies or the Holocaust, describing a concentration camp she had visited where the Roma and Sinti were detained as “a relief and welfare camp”[ᗷ] [‘Burying Leni Riefenstahl: one woman’s lifelong crusade against Hitler’s favourite film-maker’, Kate Connolly, The Guardian, 09-Dec-2021, amp.the guardian.com].
Leni: “My favourite dictator”
Wilhelm Stuckart: to the casual observer Wilhelm Stuckart’s steady progress up the Nazi hierarchy corresponds with that of the classic career Nazi. The Nazi lawyer and senior Interior Ministry official’s fingerprints were on some of the most nefarious Nazi concoctions against humanity (eg, co-author of the Nuremberg Laws, involved in the planning of the Final Solution). For someone involved fundamentally in the framing of genocidal policies Stuckart was absurdly classified as category IV (follower), copping a sentence of just three years from the tribunal. The leniency shown to Stuckart and other accomplices, Gruner attributes to the sophisticated defence strategies employed by former Nazis and their lawyers. Only a short time after Stuckart regained his freedom he was back drafting provincial German laws, one of which ended Denazification in Lower Saxony [Gruner, Wolf. The Journal of Modern History, vol. 86, no. 3, 2014, pp. 727–29. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/676745. Accessed 10 July 2024].
Wilhelm Stuckart on his SS uniform. (source: Yad Vershem)
Footnote: As illustrated above, classifying someone as Mitlaüer was a good way of allowing them to avoid the more serious categories and their consequences. Some high-profile unofficial servants of the Nazi regime managed to avoid being categorised as a Mitlaüer altogther. One was famous Austrian conductor Karl Böhm. Böhm was never a member of the NSDAP and never brought before the Denazification tribunal. However, as the historian Oliver Rathkolb has remarked, he was the artist who “had presumably been the most active (non-party) member to provide propaganda for the (Nazis)” and was lavishly rewarded with plumb conducting positions, culminating in his appointment as director of the Vienna State Opera [‘Karl Böhm – Salzburg Festival’,salzburgerfestspiele.at].
[ᗩ] Nazi party membership of itself didn’t necessarily result in a more serious classification than Mitläufer…in the case of the celebrated Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan joined the NSDAP twice (membership nos. 1607525 and 3430914), he was exonerated of illegal activity during the Nazi period at his Denazification tribunal hearing and classified as a Mitläufer
[ᗷ] trenchant critics in the West take an unflinching and unforgiving view of her role, labelling her an “unindicted co-conspirator” (Simon Wiesenthal Center), “a Nazi by association” (Sandra Smith) and “the glib voice of ‘how could we have known?’ defence” (Bach, Steven. “The Puzzle of Leni Riefenstahl.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976—), vol. 26, no. 4, 2002, pp. 43–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40260668. Accessed 11 July 2024)
The “hungry i?” Sounds like a trendy, up-market boîte on Eat Street, but it is—or rather was—a live music and stand-up comedy venue located in the “hip” North Beach neighbourhood of San Francisco. Its original owner, self-styled beatnik Eric “Big Daddy” Nord, sold it to beret-sporting impresario Enrico Banducci in 1951. Under Banducci’s direction the SF joint set about making a cutting edge name for itself. For much of the next two decades the hungry i nightclub became the spot where many of the big acts in American entertainment got their start and others honed their performing skills to perfection❶.
Enrico Banducci rocking a cardy!
Bob Patterson, Examiner columnist (writing as Freddy Francisco)on the hungry i circa 1950s: ❝a basement Disneyland, peopled by beatniks, left-over bohemians, on the nod junkies, and other waifs and strays from reality.❞
Hothouse of new comedy:The roll call of names associated with “the eye” (as it was affectionately known), especially of American comedy, is mightily impressive…it was the launchpad for many famous performers including Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Tom Lehrer and Jonathan Winters. Other iconic comics to perform there at the formative stage of their careers include Woody Allen, Phyllis Diller, Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory, Godfrey Cambridge, Bill Cosby, the Smothers Brothers, (Mike) Nichols and (Elaine) May and Joan Rivers❷. The soon-to-be comedy stand-up legends performed against a red brick wall that later became the standard stage backdrop of comedy clubs across America [‘1960s Folk Music at the hungry i and SF Folk Music Club’, Claire Huang, FoundSF, (2019), www.foundsf.org].
The hungry i at the height of its popularity (source: Barbra Archives)
Banducci embraced the Fifties non-conformism of the emerging “rebel cafe” culture taking root simultaneously in North Beach and in Greenwich Village, NYC. He welcomed musicians, comedians, writers and painters—“bohemians of every stripe, from North Beach bohos to Berkeley brainiacs”—to the nightspot [Stephen Duncan Riley, ‘The Rebel Cafe: America’s Nightclub Underground and the Public Sphere, 1934–1963’, (Unpublished PhD dissertation, 2014, University of Maryland)]. Uncommonly for a nightclub owner Banducci really looked after his charges, unlike many of his contemporaries who were content to sit back and count the night’s takings – Enrico always ensured that the club’s artists performed in a safe and quiet environment…patron chatter during performances was verboten and (remarkably) drinks were not served while the acts were on [‘The hungry i (1963)’, Barbra Archives, www.barbra-archives.info; ‘The ‘I’ That Stormed Through North Beach, Circa 1950’, Art Peterson, hoodline, 06-Jun-2016, www.hoodline.com].
A way-station for aspiring folk and pop artists:The hungry i provided a similar massive leg-up for music performers still in the basement of their careers. The nightspot provided the springboard for some, propelling them on the path to pop and folk music immortality, or at least to national/international recognition. The Kingston Trio, Barbra Streisand (her first gig headlining), Peter, Paul and Mary et al, all cut their teeth at the famous San Fran venue in their early days. The Kingston Trio recorded its first live album at the club (“…from the “Hungry i” (1958)). Glen Yarbrough and the Limeliters were a regular act, John Phillips (of the Mamas and Papas fame) fronted the eye’s house band (The Journeymen) in the early Sixties. By the early 1960s the hungry i had hit its heyday…in 1967 it moved to Ghirardelli Square (San Francisco’s Marina district), by this time it was mainly being used as a rock music venue❸. By 1970, Banducci deep in debt and with a flawed business model was forced to close down his cherished nightclub.
Enrico’s echo of hungry i:Banducci switched his attention to “Enrico’s”, a restaurant-café at 504 Broadway (SF) he had started in 1959. Enrico’s spot played cool jazz and drew in a mixed crowd and was for a time the place in SF to be seen, everyone from celebrities like FF Coppola, Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant to complete nonentities…Banducci’s lack of business acumen again ultimately proved its downfall with Enrico’s folding in 1988. The name “hungry i” lived on somewhat ignominiously in the form of a strip club at 546 Broadway (today operating as a Karaoke bar).
hungry i in its later incarnation
Enrico’s: Banducci’s Broadway café/jazz club (photo: William Martin/Facebook)
Endnote: the Purple OnionThe hungry i, by most observers’ reckoning, was the apex of live venues presenting the new wave of stand-up comics in the 50s and 60s, but it existed very much in a shared universe. The very same up-and-coming but still unknown talents featuring at the eye also plied their trade at other SF venues, most prominently at the hungry i’s local rival the Purple Onion, a small basement club on Columbus Ave with a similar storied history [‘North Beach History: Careers Sprouted For Almost 6 Decades At The Purple Onion’, Art Peterson, hoodline, 20-Jun-2016, www.hoodline.com].
❶ Banducci liked to describe the hungry i as a theatre rather than a nightclub
❷ a less stellar comedy name frequenting the stage at the hungry i was “Professor” Irwin Corey whose unscripted, abstruse improvisational monologues earned him a dedicated cult following
❸ in 1967 you could catch the early Ike and Tina Turner Experience at the eye
The blog preceding this one addressed the German-American phenomena of Turnverein (gymnastics-cum-social-cum-political associations in the US in the 19th and 20th centuries), detailing how the American Turners movement derived its inspiration from the philosophy and gymnastics theory of the Prussian educator Johann Friedrich Jahn. Jahn and the Deutsch Turnenschafts exerted a similar motivational effect on the Czech gymnastics movement’s genesis. Sokol (a Slavic word meaning “falcon”) was founded as a gymnastics, social and fraternal club by two ethnic Germans (Miroslav Tyrš and Jindřich Fügner) in Bohemia in 1862🅰. Sokol’s approach to physical education derived from Tyrš’ PE system placed an emphasis on mass calisthenics.
Mass calisthenics display at Prague’s Strahov Stadium
Just as Turnverein was transplanted into America and took root there, so did Sokol. In 1865 the first American Sokol was formed, just three years after the parent Bohemian organisation started! By 1937 there was nearly 20,000 members of Sokolsocieties in the US. Back in Europe Sokol became both a catalyst for Czech nationalism and patriotism and an expression of Pan-Slavism with Moravia (Slovakia), Poland, Bulgaria, Russia (including Belorussia and the Ukraine) and the southern Slav (Yugoslav) states all adopting a form of Sokol from the Czech prototype.
Sokol women in a mass calisthenics exhibition (source: Reddit)
Sokol cf. Turnverein: the pursuit of physical fitness through the practice of gymnastics and calisthenics was the raison d’être of both Sokol and the American Turners, both movements were essentially male-focused and geared unequivocally towards the demonstration of masculinity. Underlying the physical educational aims of both were other ideals, a determination to use each’s movement to elevate a sense of group identity…in Sokol’s case, to help forge a sense of Czech nationalism (the practice of gymnastics as a national movement), and for German-Americans, to underpin and preserve the distinctive German-ness and cultural values of the immigrants in an non-German society. The question of politics was a point of departure for the two movements. The Turnverein associations were liberals/socialists by persuasion (at least up until the First World War) and actively supported progressive political causes. Sokol on the other hand in its stated principles was avowedly non-political. This in practice caused internal tensions within Sokol between older Czech members and younger ones, the latter openly advocating for the movement to embrace more direct political participation.
Poster for 1901 Slet (source: sokolmuseum.org)
Slet fests: the pinnacle and showcase of the Sokol phenomena was the Slet🅱 festivals, these were mass, open-air extravaganzas for public consumption. Centrepiece of the Slet fest was thousands of athletes in a stadium exhibition of synchronised calisthenics, accompanied by stirring classical music. Complementing this were competitions in gymnastics and other sporting events, gatherings, parades and rallies, celebrations of culture and the arts. The first Slet was held in Prague in 1882, culminating in a mass calisthenics display. By the 1895 All-Sokol Slet Sokol’s growth and expansion was evident with around 5,000 men and boys performing in the stadium. The 1901 Slet was the first to include women as well as international participants from France and the US. The 1926 Slet (in an independent Czechoslovakia) was the first in the massive, purpose-built Strahov Stadium with a spectator capacity of 250,000 and 182,477 participants taking part (‘History of Prague Slets’, SOKOL Museum Library, www.sokolmuseum.org). After the Second World War the new communist regime in Czechoslovakia permitted only one more Slet to be held (1948) before the Slets and Sokol were suppressed, replaced in 1955 by the first Spartakiad, a mass exercises event and propaganda vehicle for the socialist Czechoslovakian regime, purportedly based on the Soviet Spartakiades. The reality was that the Spartakiads wereadopted from the earlier Czech slets and it was only possible for the authorities to organise such a complex, large scale, mega-event with the expertise and active involvement of Sokol organisers (Petr Roubal) (‘The first ever Spartakiad mass exercise and how it was influenced by the Sokol movement’, Thomas McEnchroe, Radio Prague International, 23-Jun-2020, http://english.radio.cz). After the eclipse of communism in the Eastern Bloc, the Sokol Slet was revived in the early 1990s, albeit on a much smaller scale than hitherto.
1948 Slet (source: sokolmuseum.org)
𖤗 mirrors the Turnenfest/American Turners motto
🅰 then part of the Czech lands within the Austro-Hungarian Empire
🅱 in the Czech language meaning “a flock of birds” – to continue Sokol’s ornithological metaphor
Turnverein (Pl. “Turnvereine”) from German: turnen (“to practice gymnastics”) + –verein (“club” or “union”)
𖥠𖥠𖥠𖥠𖥠
The earnest pursuit or physical exercise and a healthy lifestyle isn’t the first thing you think of in regard to fast-foodified, modern America and Americans. But it was the case for many German-Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These immigrants and sons and daughters of immigrants formed themselves into Turnvereins (German gymnastic/athletic clubs) in the US which, inspired by pioneering early 19th century Prussian physical educationalist and nationalist, JFLC ‘Vater’ Jahn (“the Father of Gymnastics”), promoted physical culture, German cultural traditions, freethinking and liberal politics1⃞.
Cincinnati Turners, 1909 (source: Indiana University Library)
The members of these Turnvereins, known as “Turners”, played leading roles in sponsoring gymnastics as an American sport and a subject for school, helping to popularise physical exercise and callisthenics as a way of life. Turner gymnastics, the centerpiece of the societies’ activity, comprised distinctive calisthenics routines and apparatus exercises which emphasised masculine strength and agility [‘Milwaukee Turners’, Encyclopedia of Milwaukee, https://emke.uwm.edu]. The Turners’ clubs and associations (Vereininigte Turnvereins Nordamerika) spread out from the Ohio Valley throughout the US. At one point, around 1894, Turnerism reached its zenith with 317 societies and approximately 40,000 members. The Turnvereins performed a multi-functional purpose, aside from the physical activities they fulfilled a social role for recent arrivals from Germany, helping them to integrate into their new home while facilitating the retention of German culture (the societies’ halls (Turnhalles) were havens for social get-togethers). In so doing the Turners fostered a form of group solidarity among German-Americans by preserving their ethnic culture and identity [Annette R. Hofmann, ‘The American Turners: their past and present, Revista Brasileira de Ciências do Esporte’, Volume 37, Issue 2, 2015, Pages 119-127, ISSN 0101-3289, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rbce.2014.11.020.]
Central Turner Hall, Cincinnati, Oh.
The Turner societies were politically progressive, supporting the liberal brand of Republicanism in the 1850s and 60s.2⃞. Turners were strong abolitionists, both antebellum and during the Civil War, when many of the members fought for the Union side. Later, the Turnen associations embraced homegrown causes in the US such as the struggle to achieve women’s suffrage and equality3⃞ and workers’ rights under capitalism; in the interwar years the Turnvereins were vocal in their opposition to the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe [‘The Milwaukee Turners at Turner Hall’, www.milwaukeeturners.org).
Milwaukee Turners (source: Encyclopedia of Milwaukee)
By the early 20th century the Turnverein impulse in America was losing its intensity, partly this was generational, the American-born Germans were increasingly less fluent in German and more attuned with the mainstream US culture. The associations were less radical and socialist and more conservative in their outlook and American government WWI hostility to Germany and Germans and Prohibition in the decade-plus after it were factors that further undermined Turner solidarity. The pull of assimilation and an inevitable “Americanisation” process severely weakened the cultural affinity with things Germans within the associations and the number of Turner societies dropped off dramatically from the 1920s on 4⃞ (Hofmann).
Today, the Turnen movement in America, massively diminished in size and influence with the number of active clubs having plummeted to under 50 and shorn both of its political activism and its Teutonic focus, maintains its existence as gymnastics (and other sports) clubs and social associations, while espousing the motto “a sound mind in a sound body” and still advocating the core virtues of physical fitness and exercise.
100th anniversary of Baltimore Turners (source: Indiana Memory Hosted Digital Collections)
Endnote: while the gym and physical fitness remains central to the societies’ ethos, the modern American Turner clubs have diversified their repertoire of group activities beyond the exclusive practice of gymnastics. The Riverside Turners (New Jersey) for instance offers a range of activities including darts, shuffleboard, horseshoes, basketball and golf, while the Milwaukee Turners provide members looking for something more challenging with rock and ice climbing walls.
Photo: Facebook, Milwaukee Turners
1⃞ unfortunately Jahn’s training regimen which tended towards the militaristic had a downside…it also directly influenced the Nazis and the Hitler Youth movement of the following century [‘A History of Gymnastics, From Ancient Greece to Tokyo 2020’, Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 26-July-2021, www.smithsonianmag.com]
2⃞ in the 1850s the Turners found themselves in bitter conflict with the short-lived, nativist “Know-Nothing” party
3⃞ which contrasts starkly with the record of gender exclusion within the Turnen societies themselves…women were firmly ensconced in a subordinate role as the Turnvereins remained male preserves right up to recent times
4⃞ German culture was submerged under “Apple pie Americanism” with German references in the organisation’s names such as Demokratischer Turnerbund shelved…from 1938 the national movement officially and permanently became “American Turners”
In the 1950s and ‘60s Berlin, bisected into eastern and western sections, was ground zero for the Cold War. One surprising arena for the head-to-head competition between the rival political systems/ideologies was the public zoological park. Before 1955 there was just one zoo in the divided city, the historic Zoologischer Garten in West Berlin, immensely popular and well patronised, not just by West Berliners but by citizens from the Eastern sector as well𝟙. In that year the East German Communist state established its own (East) Berlin zoo, called the Tierpark (literally “animal park”), to counter the popularity of the Zoologischer Garten. The rivalry between the two Berlin zoos for hegemony sustaining itself over the next 30-plus years would be a personal as well a political one.
Heinrich Dathe (Photo: Katrin Böhme, Ekkehard Hölxtermann, Wolfgang Viebahn: Heinrich Dathe – Zoologe und Tiergärtner aus Leidenschaft)
Zookeepers at 40 paces! The new zoo in the East has the advantage of a dynamic, forceful director, zoologist (Curt) Heinrich Dathe, who managed to wrangle funds out of a cash-strapped GDR to enhance the zoo’s collections and facilities impressively. Construction of the new polar bear habitat for instance was financed by the Stasi (State secret police). When Heinz-Georg Klös took over as director of the Berlin Zoo in 1957 the competitiveness between the two zoos became deeply personal, with a bitter hatred developing and enduring between Dathe and Klös𝟚. The two directors were constantly engaging in contests of oneupmanship…if one zoo acquired a rhinoceros the other zoo got one, or as Jürgen Lange, director of West Berlin Aquarium, described the two men’s relationship: “if one of them buys a miniature donkey, the other buys a mammoth donkey” (Mohnhaupt). Sometimes Klös would get the upper hand…knowing that it was hard for the GDR to get certain exotic animals and that there was a shortage of raw materials in the East, he built an ape house which Dathe couldn’t muster the resources to reciprocate (Mohnhaupt & Frisch). Notwithstanding this, under Dathe the Tierpark was an instant success, so successful that by 1958 it was attracting 1.7 M visitors, 200,000 more than was going through the turnstiles of Berlin Zoo and Aquarium combined.
Source: etsy.com
Baby Vietnamese elephant, Tierpark (Photo: archiv Freunde des Haupstadt)
Proxy cultural warDathe modernised the look of his zoo with innovative flair while the Zoologischer Garten remained more of a traditional zoo…in 1963 the Tierpark opened the Alfred-Brehm-Haus, at that time the largest and most modern animal house in the world. Containing a massive 50,000-foot state-of-the-art facility for big cats, the Brehm-Haus boasted the first barless enclosures for lions and tigers. The Tierpark, with the advantage of boundless space (set on 160 hectares), eventually became the largest zoo in Europe𝟛. The GDR loudly trumpeted its modernised zoo, heralding it as a triumph of socialism over capitalism, the zoo which due to a shortage of labour in East Germany was built partly by citizen-volunteers. Meanwhile Klös anxious to keep up with Dathe, was busy adding to the Berlin Zoo’s species collection, making it the most biodiverse zoo in the world. The duelling zoos in Berlin had become showcases for each side in the Cold War conflict (Rotondi). When either zoo notched up some success it was taken as an endorsement of its political system, a symbol of superiority and the validation of its society.
Zoo Berlin (Source: Reddit)
End of the zoo warsThis cultural competitiveness between East and West, the preoccupation with demonstrating “who’s got the better zoo?”, purportedly asserted to be an indicator of a superior society and way of life, persisted right up tothe collapse of the Eastern Bloc and Wiedervereubugung (German unification) in 1990…it was only in that year that “Professor” Dathe relinquished his iron-grip hold on the Tierpark. With unification came a thaw in the combative climate and a subsequent rapid shift from rivalry to cooperation between the Berlin zoos, symbolised by the appointment in 1991 of a single director in charge of both zoos.
(Elephant Gate, Zoo de Berlin)
Footnote: ZoomaniaAs can be inferred from the above, zoos were and still are a big deal in Germany (in both the bisected and unified eras), a product of the salient fact that the Germans are basically “animal tragics”…it’ssaid that Berliners love animals more than people (Mohnhaupt), a measure of which is the astounding number of zoos Germany has, in a country smaller than the US state of Montana, they number more than 880!
Image source: design-mkt.com
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𝟙 zoos provided the perfect diversion for Berliners from both sectors during the Cold War, availing them of the opportunity to escape from the city of walls and connect with the world of nature (Rotondi)
𝟚the relationship deteriorating even to the point of a physical confrontation between the two zookeepers in Berlin Zoo’s elephant enclosure
𝟛 cf. the much smaller, cramped, inner city Zoologischer Garten with little space to expand
Bibliography
J.W. Mohnhaupt, The Zookeepers’ War, (2020)
‘Even Before the Wall, Berlin’s Zoos Were Already Cold War Rivals’, J.W. Mohnhaupt & Shelley Frisch, Time, 12-Nov-2019, www.time.com
‘The Cold War Rivalry Between Berlin’s Two Zoos’, Jessica Pearce Rotondi, History, 08-May-2023, www.history.com
Non-white names and faces in North American ice hockey are conspicuously absent from the sport at the highest level. Just over five percent of players in the North American men’s National Hockey League (NHL)—the world’s premier ice hockey league—are blacks or people of colour. Compare this to basketball or American football, eighty and seventy-five percent respectively, coloured player participation at elite-level⧼a̼⧽. The absence of non-whites in the sport goes further than that. Participation in ice hockey of non-playing staff including management is similarly heavily skewed towards whites. NHL club owners and coaches have been predominantly white, in 102 years of the League only one coach has been black. The lack of diversity is reinforced by the composition of the NHL’s fan base – over seventy-seven percent are white (cf. basketball, forty-five percent), and the white supporters of ice hockey are more conservative and wealthier than non-white fans (“The NFL Says ‘Hockey Is For Everyone’. Black Players Aren’t So Sure”, Terrence Doyle, FiveThirtyEight, Upd 19 October 2020, www.fivethirtyeight.com).
Why have non-whites in American and Canadian ice hockey always been outliers in the sport? The lack of participation by players of colour starts at the beginner’s level with youngsters not taking up the game in great numbers. The prohibitive cost is a real factor. A recent survey indicates that sixty percent of the parents of young players were forking out more than US$5,000 a year on equipment, competition fees and travel. This alone immediately disadvantages many black parents whose family finances are absorbed by the basic necessities of day-to-day living. Another significant allied factor is that blacks lack prior exposure and access to the game of ice hockey…so, unlike say with basketball or ‘gridiron’, there is for them a disconnect, an absence of cultural affiliation with the sport. With the game’s full-on physical impact aspect, playing ice hockey has long been considered the epitome of “white machismoism”. Budding non-white players tend to find this stereotype of an “affluent white culture” unwelcoming and a deterrent to the majority from progressing with the sport (“Why The Ice Is White”, Wes Judd, Pacific Standard, 14 June 2017, psmag.com). Those who do make it to the NHL (only 70-odd black players in the League’s entire history), often report a feeling of isolation and alienation from the rest of their team and the club.
Underlying all of this is the basic explanation for the out-of-kilter status quo – the persistent, overarching LCD spectre of racism. Those black players who take up the sport, starting at the junior level and proceeding to the senior leagues, have consistently found themselves the targets of racial abuse – from white fans, from opposing players, from their own white team-mates, and from their own coaches and support staffs…in recent years coaches from two NHL teams Carolina Hurricanes and Toronto Maple Leafs were sacked for racially vilifying their coloured players⧼b̼⧽.
With the impulse for diversity and inclusion embracing modern sport as a whole today, the NHL has come under increasing pressure from wider North American society to reform its sport. The response from the governing body so far has been at best tokenism, bereft of any substance, the League’s ”Hockey is for everyone” sloganeering is seen as merely hollow rhetoric when there is follow-up efforts from the League’s administrators to make meaningful reforms to rectify the imbalance. The pressure for reform in ice hockey has In fact come from non-white players within the NHL — such as Matt Dumba (left) from the Minnesota Wild who have come out on record, putting the spotlight on the racial discrimination pervading the sport, in so doing trying to drag a reluctant NHL still digging its heels in towards real action to remedy the inequitable situation (Doyle). Willie O’Ree
Footnote: in 1958 Willie O’Ree, was the first black player to break into the NHL, which meant the Canadian winger was also the first non-white major league hockey player to experience the avalanche of racism hurled in his direction from fans and players alike during his two seasons with the top-flight Boston Bruins side before being traded initially to the Montreal Canadiens and then back to the minor leagues. In his post-playing days O’Ree has become a diversity ambassador for ice hockey.
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⧼a̼⧽ this is not to presume that ice hockey is “Robinson Crusoe” in the exclusion of non-whites from specific sports…sports like golf (take out Tiger Woods) and swimming (often contrasted with athletics) have been massively disproportionately lite-on for black and coloured participation at the highest professional levels
⧼b̼⧽ one of the coaches even physically assaulting their black playing staff
1964 was the year the Beatles made their first world tour. The year they transformed from a UK/West German phenomenon to a global sensation. It was, to obviously understate it, a very busy year for the band. Two of the very many international places the Liverpool lads performed at that hyper-hectic year were Hong Kong and Sydney. The venues in both locations played by the Four Moptops—as is the case with many of the venues they played—no longer exist.
The Beatles without drummer Ringo Starr⌧ touched down at Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong in early June of ‘64 and booked into a suite recently vacated by the President of Indonesia in the President Hotel in Kowloon. The band only stayed in the British crown colony for a couple of days while they played two concerts at the Princess Theatre (130 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui) on the 9th June…long enough though for Beatle Paul and road manager Neil Aspinall get themselves bespoke tailored suits made up in 24 hours.
Note concert date, incorrectly printed as 10-06-64 (Source. ha.com)
The Princess Theatre (above), built in the early Fifties, was better known for screening first-run flicks than teen-hysterics pop concerts. On the bill supporting the Beatles was a New Zealand group, the Māori Hi-Five. Instrumental backing for the headline performers was provided by Sounds Incorporated. The concerts were surprisingly not a sell-out, basically because tickets were priced exorbitantly high, the equivalence of a full week’s wage for the average Hong Kong worker (the best seats fetched HK$75).
The Beatles didn’t find the smallish, old-fashioned venue very vibe conducive and McCartney remarked that the band’s performance at the Princess was pretty flat accordingly. The full complement of Beatles came back to Hong Kong in 1966 on their Far East tour, but only for a stopover on route to the Philippines where the performers and their handlers ran into trouble with a capital T❈❈.
Ownership of the Princess Theatre changed hands in 1970 and the building with theatre seating for 1,722 was demolished in 1973 to make way for a new hotel.
Early boxing bout at the Old Tin Shed (Source: Nat. Lib. of Aust.)
Next destination after Hong Kong for the Beatles was Sydney Airport for a three-week tour of Australia and New Zealand. Sydney’s allotment was six concerts over three nights (18–20 June) at Sydney Stadium in Rushcutters Bay, a venue affectionately known as the “Old Tin Shed”, and hitherto the arrival of Beatlemania probably better known as a boxing stadium. At that time the Stadium was the city’s only large-capacity concert venue. Again, as they did in Hong Kong, the Beatles bedded down close to the concert venue, at the Sheraton Hotel, Potts Point.
Supporting the Beatles on that tour were several local (trans-Tasman) artists including Johnny Chester, Johnny Devlin and The Phantoms, along with Sounds Incorporated who had made the trip from Hong Kong with the Beatles.
Jimmy N, all alone at Melbourne Airport, end of the fairytale
By now Ringo sans tonsils had rejoined the quartet in time for Sydney and Jimmy (or Jimmie) Nichol was unceremoniously cast off and sent home, abruptly closing the door shut on his 15 minutes of fame…it was all downhill in the music caper from there for the Ringo stand-in, less than a year later poor Jimmy was forced to declare himself bankrupt.
Source: ha.com
After some initial hesitancy from audiences the Sydney Stadium concerts were all massive sell-outs with frenzied young women the most conspicuously vocal of fan attendees. Seeing the band in Sydney seemed comparatively more affordable than in Hong Kong, Tickets started at 15s & 6d, ranging up to £1, 17s & 6d.
Boxing matches and rock ‘n roll concerts at Rushcutters Bay are long a thing of the past. In 1970 the six decades old-stadium on the corner of Nield Avenue and New South Head Road closed and was demolished in 1973 to make way for the construction of the Eastern Suburbs Railway.
After Sydney the Beatles headed across the Tasman, taking most of their Australian support acts with them, to shake up the hitherto seemingly hebetudinous youth culture in New Zealand. Just like in Australia, mass turnouts of fans posed the same crowd control problems for Kiwi authorities and level of teen-generated frenzy at the concerts in the four main NZ cities made for deja vu.
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⌧ stuck back in a London hospital with tonsil trouble and substituted by previously unknown drummer Jimmy Nichol
❈❈ see earlier blog on this site ‘Beatles Not For Sale: Public Enemy # 1 in the Philippines’, March 2022
Bibliography
‘The Beatles arrive in Hong Kong’, The Beatles Bible,www.beatlesbible.com
‘Beatle Place: Hong Kong, Princess Theatre‘, FAB4tracks, www.fab4tracks.home.blog
‘Meet Jimmy Nicol, the forgotten Beatle, stand-in drummer for Ringo’, Craig Cook, The Advertiser, 11-Jun-2014, www.adelaide now.com.au
Anyone who grew up in the golden age of milk bars in Australia, from the 1940s to the 1960s, will have a memory of or an association with these erstwhile hubs of suburban and small town social life…for many of that vintage it’d be hanging out inside with friends, indulging in their favourite flavoured milkshake, ice cream or other sweet tooth delight. My own fond recollection is of salivating over chocolate malt sundaes with nuts and taking turns at playing (or tilting) the pinball machine in the back corner of the shop. This treat was an exhilarating antidote to the aftertaste of having spent the preceding six hours toiling away in school confinement.
B&W 4d Milk Bar with mechanical cow & Red Cross-like symbol
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They were such an integral institution during my salad days that I was under the assumption that milk bars had been around forever. In fact they only surfaced in Australia for the first time in the early years of the Depression. The first bonifidé milk bar is generally considered to be the Black and White 4d. Milk Bar which opened its doors at 24 Martin Place, Sydney, in 1932𝕒, it’s conception was the idea of a Greek migrant to the Antipodes, Joachim Tavlaridis, who had Anglicised his name to Mick Adams. Mick had visited the US and had drew on the American diner/soda parlour concept that was flourishing in the US for his inspiration (including American menus, ice creams and chocolate). The distinguishing feature of the Black and White Milk Bar was its singular purpose, it exclusively sold just sodas and milkshakes (in the iconic silver-coloured metal milkshake cups with actual fruit in the shake). Mick was an early entrepreneur in the field, later adding Wollongong, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane shops to his milk bar “empire”. (‘1932: Australia’s first milk bar’, Australian Food Timeline, www.australianfoodtimeline.com). Mick Adams and other Greek-Australian small businessmen like him were the pioneers of the milk bar trade in Australia…typically the shops operating as open-all-hours family businesses, cf. postwar migrant Italians in the vanguard of delicatessen culture in Australia𝕓.
Golden Star Milk Bar, Perth (Photo source: M. Coufos)
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Greek cafes with a large dollop of Hollywood glitz The Greek owner-operators in Australia added glamour to their milk bars by infusing the decor with an vibrant American feel…gleaming chrome, neon illumination, plush leather chairs, mirrors, curvilinear Art Deco interiors, soda fountain pumps, snazzy uniforms, American jukeboxes. These early Greek milk bars (and cafés)𝕔 were purveyors of American dreams along with confectionery and sugary flavoured chilled beverages. Macquarie University history academic Leonard Janiszewski describes the agency of the early milk bars as “a kind of Trojan horse for the Americanisation of Australian culture” (‘The story of Australia’s Greek cafes and milk bars’, ABC Radio, Conversations (broadcast 02 May 2016). The milk bar caught on like wildfire—by 1937 there were around 4,000 in Australia, with names like “Olympia”, “The Orion” and “The Paragon”—as they did across the Tasman in New Zealand where the milk bar is known as “the Dairy”.
Milk bars passéBy the 1970s the heyday of the Australian milk bar was well and truly past its use-by-date. Faced with an inability to compete with supermarket chains and multinational-owned petrol stations plus high rents, milk bar closures (together with that of the community corner store) became an increasingly common sight. 7-Eleven-style convenience stores started to pop up everywhere across suburbia to fill the void (‘Remembering the Milk Bar, Australia’s Vanishing Neighbourhood Staple’, Matthew Sedacca, Saveur, 18 January 2018, www.saveur.com).
Olympia, tea and milkshakes (Source: Daily Mail Australia)
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One Greek milk bar that did manage to defy extinction for much longer than most was the Olympia Milk Bar in the inner-Sydney suburb of Stanmore. Taken over by the Fotiou brothers in 1959, the Olympia under surviving brother Nick achieved a kind of local iconic status in recent years for its anachronistic novelty…open late, and always dimly lit, ancient chocolate bar wrappers plastered all over, a yesteryear-looking shop locked in a time warp. The Olympia somehow survived to 2018, until the Council decided to close down the dilapidated milk bar.
Postscript: Green plaque fiascoAttempts since 2017 to commemorate the Black and White Milk Bar as “the world’s first modern milk bar” with a green plaque have met with a roadblock. The plan had been to place the plaque on the original site of the proto-milk bar in Martin Place, Sydney, now the ANZ Tower. The spanner in the works has been the overseas corporate owner of the building who has steadfastly refused to allow the plaque to be mounted on the structure. The matter remains deadlocked with the City of Sydney Council unable to find an alternate, close-by location acceptable to Mr Adams’ relatives (“‘Disrespect’: Frustration grows over plaque for world’s first modern milk bar in Sydney”, Adriana Simos, Greek Herald, 05-Oct-22, www.greekherald.com.au).
Green plaque in limbo!
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𝕒a staggering 5,000 customers fronted up on the opening day!
𝕓Mick’s concept of a modern milk bar was later replicated overseas in various places within the Commonwealth and Europe
𝕔the nouns “café” and “milk bar” seem to be interchangeable in describing these Greek-Australian run establishments
ALTHOUGH computerised ATM machines didn’t emerge as a mainstream feature of the urban landscape until the 1970s and 1980s, the first Automated Teller Machine was opened as early as 1967. Barclays Bank introduced the ur-ATM machine (branded as Barclaycash) which was located at its Enfield Town, London, branch, with popular 1960s TV comedy actor Reg Varney (above, performing the “celebrity opening”) selected in the role as “Customer No 1”. Designed by John Shepherd-Barron, the DACS machine lacked one essential ingredient of the modern ATM – no magnetic plastic card! Instead, customers inserted a cheque-like token impregnated with a radioactive compound which when matched with the customer’s ID dispensed money (initially limited to a maximum of £10).
Barclaycash (Source: deccanchronicle.com)
The need for ATMs grew out of the service limitations of the highly regulated banking system in a changing modern world. Banks in the UK and elsewhere were hamstrung by quite restricted business hours, often open only around ten to three weekdays. Customers who worked during these hours found their access to personal banking severely curtailed, especially when it came to the withdrawal of cash. In the Sixties project teams in banks in the UK, Sweden and Japan were all working at developing a form of automated cash dispenser. The successful introduction of the ATM in public locations solved the problem, offering instant, 24-hour access to cash.
After the Enfield ATM and it’s successors opened their windows there was some initial reluctance by customers to embrace the radical new way of banking⌖…a wait-and-see attitude prevailed, but not for long. Today ATMs swamp the commercial retail world, at a rough estimate there is over three million units operate globally (there’s even one in Antarctica!)
The pioneer of the PIN 📌 As with the debate over the invention of the first flying machine, Shepherd-Barron’s claim to originality has its challengers. Around the same time development engineer James Goodfellow came up with his own version, a Chubb machine❂ which worked on a PIN number associated with a code token in the form of a plastic card with punched holes. Goodfellow’s innovation was installed in branches of the Westminster Bank one month after the Barclays ATM.
Innovative Scanda
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But can we categorically say with 100% surety that Goodfellow was the sole originator of the PIN? Sweden has a claim here too for pioneering recognition. The Metior Company’s Bankomat came into operation at Uppsala Sparbank just one week after the Barclays’ machine. The Swedish technology, on display at a Stockholm fair in 1964, presented a plastic-coated card and linked PIN. It seems likely that Shepherd-Barron, Goodfellow and the Swedes all devised their ATMs at around the same time independently without any connexion to or cognisance of each other’s projects.
ATM pioneer Simjian (Source: alchetron.com)
Neither Shepherd-Barron or Goodfellow are credited with devising the concept of the ATM itself. The consensus tends to attribute this to Armenian-American inventor Luther George Simjian. Simjian’s Bankograph, patented in 1960 but never fully commercially developed, came up with the idea of a “hole-in-the wall machine” that would allow customers to make financial transactions.
As with the debate over the invention of the world’s first manned flying machine, Shepherd-Barron’s claim to prototype creation has its challengers. Around the same time as the Shepherd-Barron innovation development engineer James Goodfellow came up with his own version, a Chubb machine❂ which worked on a PIN number associated with a code token in the form of a plastic card with punched holes. Goodfellow’s innovation was installed in branches of the Westminster Bank one month after the Barclays ATM.
Introduction of the ATM in America 🏧 The first American ATM was introduced in 1969✪ at the Chemical Bank’s branch in New York’s Rockville Centre (in the US they are sometimes referred to as “cashpoints”). The pioneering 24/7 US ATM (designed by Donald Wetzel) the Docuteller utilised reusable magnetic coded cards.
Lloyd’s Cashpoint (Source: deccanchronicle.com)
On the road to digital banking 🏧
These early dinosaurs of the alternative to face-to-face banking, the 1960s generation of ATMs, were of course all offline. The world’s first computerised ATM, introduced by Lloyds Bank, didn’t have its genesis (again in the UK) until December 1972…installed in Brentwood, Essex, the ATM cash machine was developed in partnership with IBM.
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⌖ prior to the introduction of the ATM and in its formative stage there was unsurprisingly a degree of resistance to them from banking employee unions
❂ the Chubb cash dispensing machine in its earliest iteration retained the user’s card (as proof of receipt), which later was posted back to the owner
✪ coincidentally the same year of the first operating ATM machine in Spain
ROTUND, sardonic Anglo-American auteur Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre comprised over 50 feature films but he was no stranger to unfinished or unrealised film projects. Starting with what was meant to be his directorial debut in “Number 13” (AKA “Mrs. Peabody”) in 1922, for the next 57 years Hitch was at the helm for upward of twenty aborted films. Hardly any of the score of unmade movie projects ever got beyond the pre-production stage[1̲̅].
Alfred’s hitch in making ‘Hamlet’⟡There were various reasons why the films never got made…difficulties in location (Walt Disney, the man, not the corporation, wouldn’t let Hitchcock film ”The Blind Man” at Disneyland supposedly because of his disapproval of Psycho); Hitch’s dissatisfaction with scripts[2]; Hitchcock’s ”Titanic” project was waylaid by a string of obstacles including objections from the British shipping industry; some projects were vetoed by producers and studio heads; Hitchcock couldn’t get the female lead he wanted for ”No Bail for the Judge” (Audrey Hepburn)[3]. Hitch’s great success with The 39 Steps prompted him to try to direct film adaptions of other John Buchan novels featuring spy Richard Hannay, eg, ”Greenmantle”, however he couldn’t afford the rights to the book. He even wanted to direct Shakespeare, his enthusiasm to do a modernised version of Hamlet (with Hitchcock favourite Cary Grant cast as the “Melancholy Dane”) was ultimately blunted by the threat of a lawsuit from a writer who had already penned a modern-day version of Shakespeare’s great tragedy (‘Every Unmade Alfred Hitchcock Movie Explained’, Jordan Williams, Screen Rant, 12-Jun-2021, www.screenrant.com).
The final project pursued by Hitchcock was ”The Short Night”—based on a novel of the same name by Ronald Kirkbride and on the exploits of real-life double agent George Blake—which was to be Hitchcock’s red-hot crack at making a “realistic Bond movie”. In an interview with John Russell Taylor for Sight and Sound Hitchcock outlined the story’s great allure for him: ”It’s a situation that fascinates me: the man falls in love with the wife of a man he’s waiting to kill. It’s like a French farce turned inside-out. If he sees a boat coming across the bay with the husband on it, he can’t hop out of the back window, he has to wait and do what he has to do. And of course he can’t take the wife, who loves him, into his confidence. And so the whole romance is overshadowed by this secret, which gives it a special flavour and atmosphere. That’s what I want to convey”.
Poster for the movie that never materialised⟡Originally conceived in the late 1960s (after two uninspiring earlier Hitchcock Cold War espionage features Torn Curtain and Topaz were coolly received), the director scouted locations in Finland. Hitch wanted the “real deal”, Sean Connery, to play the Bondesque double agent protagonist, the director must have been keen on the film…while the project was still parked in pre-production, without anything about the movie being nailed down, Hitch had a poster designed for the movie (‘Alfred Hitchcock’s unrealized projects’, Wikipedia). Alas, scripts were again a problem, Hitch churned through a bunch of writers and a number of different treatments in the search for the ‘right’ script, but an even bigger problem was Hitch himself! Now 80, Hitchcock‘s health was failing badly, he was unfocused and listless on the set[4], he simply was no longer up to it. Towards the end of 1979 Hitchcock quietly retired from the business and ”The Short Night” project was shelved for good.
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[1̲̅] Hitchcock managed to shoot only a few scenes of “Mrs. Peabody”,before a lack of budget brought the production to a close
[2] the prickly and demanding Hitchcock had fractious relationships with his scriptwriters, he even fell out with his favourites like Ernest Lehman (over Family Plot, contributing to Hitchcock ditching “The Wreck of the Mary Deare” and starting work on the espionage classic North by Northwest
[3] Hitchcock’s uber-creepy obsessiveness with many of his leading ladies (Grace Kelly, Tippi Hedren, Ingrid Bergman among others) has been well documented, eg, Spellbound by Beauty, Donald Spoto (2008)
[4] ”moving in and out of senility” in the view of the last screenwriter parachuted into the project, David Freeman
“Pedestrian”, just a fancy word for walker, you say? Its certainly got nothing to do with the vocational activity we euphemistically call “street walker”, a very different kind of “pedestrian”. As we understand the term today, It’s hard to imagine that pedestrian with the suffix -ism added was the name of a highly popular and seriously competitive sporting pastime 150 years ago.
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Like golf, outdoor tennis, association football and the rugby codes, pedestrianism, a historical name for organised, competitive walking, has its origins in Britain Something of its sort was around in the 1600s but the activity reached a fuller expression in the 18th century, becoming a regular fixture at regional fairs along with horse racing and running.
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Image: Victorian-era.org
One such instance of pedestrian racing involving the exchange of money was within the purview of upper class gentlemen making carriage journeys between English cities and towns. Wagers would be laid by groups of gentlemen on their travels as to which of their footmen can beat the others to the intended destination, going on foot in advance of their masters’ carriages.
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Foster Powell (Poster published by C. Johnson n.d.)
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Fore-walkers of the ultra-marathon
By the late 18th century we start to learn the names of individuals like Foster Powell who devote all of their time and energy to great feats of walking endurance for monetary reward. Powell, the star of long distancing walking in his day (flourished 1760s–1790s) is considered the first leading exponent of the activity, prefiguring the rise of the professional ultra-marathoners in the late 20th century. Powell’s greatest accomplishment was a 640km distance walk—London/York/London—in five days and 18 hours in 1792, the fourth and final time he had attempted and completed the feat [‘Foster Powell, the Great Pedestrian’, Andrew Green, gwalter, 26-Jun-2020, www.gwalter.com].
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Often leading pedestrians would go head-to-head in wagered races (Image: US Lib. of Congress)
⟡Multi-day walkingLater in the 19th century the British enthusiasm for pedestrianism spread overseas to Canada, the US and Australia. In the last quarter of the century Six-day races including for women pedestrians were very popular both in the US and the UK, attracting up to 70,000 paying visitors during the event. The leading exponents included George Littlewood (the Sheffield Flyer) whose 1888 world record for the six days—623 miles, 1,320 yards—remained unbeaten for 96 years! In America serious money could be made…Edward Payton Weston won a $10,000 prize in 1867 for completing a walk of 1,828 km in 30 days (Portland, Maine to Chicago). Powell didn’t achieve the hoped-for riches from his marathon walking, he died in an impoverished state, but many others that followed him found that success in the activity could pay handsomely. Captain Robert Barclay Allardice in 1809 earned himself the sobriquet the “celebrated pedestrian as well as a purse of 1,000 guineas for walking 1,000 miles in 1,000 hours, an amazing test of (strength), stamina and sleep denial” [‘Captain Robert Barclay-Allardyce’, www.nationalgalleries.org]. For Allardice’s numerous extraordinary exploits on the road, the title of “father of modern race-walking” has been ascribed to him.
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Pedestrianism was exceedingly popular in post-bellum USA, drawing great crowds of paying spectators (Image: Alamy/BBC)
Professional pedestrianism in the Victorian era was not confined to males, the most famous and successful woman pedestrian was probably Londoner Ada Anderson. Her accomplishments, particularly the breaking of Capt Allardice’s “1000 in 1000” record prompted the Leeds Times to dub her “Champion Lady Walker of the World” in 1878. Anderson whose preparation included training in severe sleep deprivation, after dominating UK pedestrianism, found great acclaim on the American walking circuit.
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Source: 7 News
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Curbing the proclivity for “speed walking”
As pedestrianism became codified, the “fair heel and toe” rule was established for races. This meant that “the toe of one foot could not leave the ground before the heel of the other foot touched down”𝖆, however in practice “rules were customary and changed with competition” and walkers got away with jogging and trotting in races. [Pedestrianism’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The controversy over what constitutes legal walking has continued to dog the modern sport of race-walking to the present with disqualification of athletes in Olympic 20,000 and 50,000 km road events for “lifting” still a common occurrence.
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Olympic final (men), 3500m Walk, 1908
By the 1890s the Victorians’ vogue for pedestrianism had given way to cycling and other organised team sports. The 1800s activity of competitive walking for monetary gain morphed into the amateur sport of race-walking which found a permanent home in the Summer Olympics in the 1908 London Games. The IAAF/World Athletics organises a series of elite walking events for both men and women including the Olympics and world championships.
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Johnny Day with Nimblefoot 1870 Melb Cup (Image: Herbert James Woodhouse)
Footnote: Prodigy day walker nonpareil
It was not unusual for competitive walkers in the 19th century to turn their hand to other pursuits, some took up cycling, even a few like Ada Anderson ventured into the theatre. In the case of Australian walking wiz-kid Master Johnny Day, he transitioned from wonder boy pedestrian to Melbourne Cup-winning jockey in 1870𝖇. Day by age 10 had won a remarkable 101 walking contests (never beaten) and was hailed as world champion juvenile walker, before pursuing a career as an apprentice jockey in his teens [‘Master Johnny Day, Australian Champion Pedestrian’, National Portrait Gallery, www.portrait.gov.au].
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𝖆competitive walking in thst era was all about technicalities…as well as keeping one foot on the ground at all time walkers were required to ensure that their leading leg remained straight until passed by the trailing leg
𝖇 the premier race on the Australasian racing calendar
Mention the topic of classic European comic strips and the names Astérix and Tintin spring instantly to mind. Previously I delved into the stupendous comic book institution that is Astérix the Gaul in the blog ‘The Astérix Series: High Comic Art with a Few Dark Shadows’ (19 November 2022). The Tintin comic strip shares with Astérix the same high pedestal of best-selling popularity, enduring iconic status and attendant cult following. Tintin is a boy reporter❶ of unspecified age with a distinctive (carrot) blond quiff of hair and trademark plus-fours who embarks on numerous adventures to exotic locations accompanied by his companions: a white wire fox terrier Snowy (Fr: Milou), Captain Haddock the good-hearted dipsomaniac seafarer and Professor Calculus, a genius if absent-minded inventor. Since the publication of the first Tintin comic book in 1929 total sales of Tintin books have clocked up more than 200 million copies, with an appeal that reaches both adults and children❷.
Hergé with a cinematic clone of his fictional boy hero࿏
Graphical style
Tintin’s creator wrote and published under the name of Hergé (real name: Georges Remi)…the Belgian cartoonist pioneered a distinctive drawing style for comic strips which later became known as Ligne claire (“Clear line”) (coined by Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte in 1977). This comprises ”uniform strong lines, flat saturated colour” and “clearly delineated shapes and volumes” (‘The Afterlife of Tintin’, Jenny Hendrix, LA Review of Books, 27-Dec-2022, www.lareviewofbooks.org).
Blighted by propaganda, racism and chauvinismTintin was instantly and massively popular right from the cartoon’s onset—boosted by Hergé’s innovative use of speech bubbles, an American invention unfamiliar to the European comic scene at the time—despite this the comic has garnered its fair share of flak as has Hergé, the author. The first three books, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America, in particular drew the ire of critics. The first with its unsubtle anti-communist message was much disparaged as “cheap right-wing propaganda for small children” (Harry Thompson, Hergé: Tintin and his Creator (2011). The Congo and America books were pilloried in some circles for blatantly racist depictions of native populations. The youthful Hergé, swayed by a conservative Catholic upbringing, was very much a creature of the time and his crude depictions of the Black African tribes in particular reflected a prevailing Eurocentric sense of superiority and prejudice. Tintin Au Congo praises the virtues of colonialism and missionaries and expresses a wholly patronising view of the local Africans who are portrayed as primitive, lazy and infantile❸ (‘Hergé’, Lambiek Comiclopedia, www.lambiek.net). Another criticism of the Tintin comics is the charge of sexism, women are almost completely erased from the stories – the one female figure with anything like a steady presence in the books is operatic diva Bianca Castafiore who is portrayed unflatteringly as foolish and imperceptive (Hergé pointedly is on record as saying women have no part in the stories which “are all about male friendship”).
In the early Sixties there were 2 French-made film adaptations of Tintin࿏Other discordant voices against Tintin’s author surfaced during the Nazi occupation of Belgium during WWII. Hergé worked for collaborationist pro-Nazi newspapers Le Petit Vingtième and Le Soir and elements of Anti-Semitism emerged in his presentation of Jews. Unfortunately it didn’t end with the war, Jewish racial stereotypes also reappear in postwar Tintin stories, eg, Vol 714 pour Sydney (‘Flight 714 to Sydney’). A parody by Belgian cartoonist Dubus depicting a captive Tintin begging businessman Rodwell for his liberty (Source: Sydney Morning Herald)࿏
”Kidnapping” a children’s icon?
Since Hergé’s death in 1983 Tintin’s artistic providence and the author’s estate has been rigidly controlled to the nth degree by his widow Fanny Vlamynck and her second husband Nick Rodwell. Hergé’s heirs through their management firm Moulinsart S.A. Moulinsart spearheaded by an unflinching Rodwell have obsessively pursued a crusade, suing everybody who uses Hergé or Tintin’s name or image without their permission. Not content with cracking down on bootleggers, plagiarists and copyright infringers, perversely they have targeted Tintin parodists, students, collectors, fan clubs, comic stores and people auctioning original artwork as well. They even tried to block journalists from taking unauthorised photographs at the Hergé Museum opening event (Lambiek). Individuals subjected to Moulinsart’s trigger-quick lawsuits include a French novelist who reproduced a drawing of Tintin in a book with a print run of only 200 copies and an elderly artist (and friend of Hergé) who painted the image of Tintin on some old bottles (‘Meet Nick Rodwell, Tintin heir and least popular man in Belgium’, Julien Oeuillet, Sydney Morning Herald, 30-Oct-2015, www.smh.com.au). Bart Beaty, a professor of comics at the University of Calgary, described Moulinsart as being “relentless in the protection of the Tintin copyrights even to the point of discouraging academic study of the Tintin books” (‘Moulinsart Lost A Legal Case At The Hague Over Tintin Rights’, Comics Reporter, 08-Jun-2025, www.comicsreporter.com). Other detractors including Hergé’s nephew have pointed out how under Moulinsart‘s direction “a hero dedicated to children has become the lynchpin of a profit-minded machine that is stifling the enthusiasm of Tintin admirers“ (‘Fans of Tintin cry foul’, Stanley Pignal, Financial Times, 08-May-2010, www.ft.com).
Moulinsart have mined the full depths of Tintin’s merchandising potential, many spin-off items priced at the luxury high-end
Genootschap (Source: www.hergegenootschap.nl/)࿏A small win for Tintinphiles and Tintinologists
The pattern shifted a few years ago when Moulinsart and Rodwell’s attempt to prosecute a small Dutch fanzine of Tintin Hergé Genootschap (Hergé Society (or Fellowship)) for including Hergé’s strip in its newsletter backfired badly❹. In a surprise twist a Dutch court in 2015 ruled that a 1942 contract between Hergé and his publisher Ediciones Casterman presented by the defence gave Casterman, NOT Moulinsart, the rights to publish the 22 Tintin albums. The right “to exploit extracts of the books and pictures” however still belong to the Hergé heirs (‘Tintin and the Copyright Mystery, Carolina Sánchez, Lady Trademark, 06-Oct-2015, www.ladytrademark.blogspot.com).
Fmr Australian prime minster Kevin Rudd satirised as Tintin
Endnote: Imitating Tintin
Parodies and pastiches satirising Tintin have been around since the 1940s. When Hergé compromised his reputation by publishing (Tintin) in a collaborationist-run Belgium newspaper” in war-time, it provoked a satire of Tintin, ‘Tintin au Pays des Nazis’ (‘Tintin in the Land of the Nazis’). Other parodies featuring Tintin include as a disaffected working class English youth who turns to political radicalism; ‘Tintin in Lebanon’ and ‘Tintin in Iraq’, embroiling Hergé’s “golden boy” in the intractable maze of Middle East conflicts; ‘Tintin in The Shire’, Tintin as a stereotypical Sydney bogan, etc.❺
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❶ though he acts more like a detective, investigating crimes and mysteries and at times carries a pistol and even makes arrests
❷ according to Tintin’s publishing house the books are marketed for “the youth between 7 and 77 years old” demographic
❸ to his credit Hergé did redress some of the crude and xenophobic representations of the earlier books in Le Lotus Bleu (‘The Blue Lotus’, 1934-35) in which Hergé depicts China and the Chinese people with more accuracy and evenness (Lambiek)
❹ Rodwell’s attempt to sue a French artist who did mash-ups of Tintin and Edward Hopper paintings was also thrown out of court with the judge determining that the artist’s works were legitimate parodies of Tintin which was fair game
❺ “most of these parodies would probably have remained obscure curiosities, if it weren’t for Moulinsart’s active attempts to hunt the makers down, giving them more publicity” (Lambiek)
“The year is 50BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely . . . One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders.”
𓆸✱✝✱✝✱✝✱✝𓆸
The “indomitable Gauls” in question are the tribe of Astérix, pint-sized Gallic hero of the long-running eponymous French comic strip with its legion of dedicated fans. Like all classic literary modes, be they of a pop cultural kind or more highbrow, the Astérix comic can be read on more than one level. On the surface the impossible but highly comical escapades of its principal cartoon characters (Astérix and his sidekick Obélix) are much loved and savoured by aficionados across the globe. On another level some observers have detected various allegorical meanings delving within the cartoon series.
Astérix’s debut, 1959
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The Astérix comic strip (in France known as a bande dessinée – literally “drawn strip”) made its debut in 1959 in the Franco-Belgian comic magazine Pilote under the the strip title Les aventures d’astérix. The Astérix phenomenon that followed that unassuming beginning was the result of a long and harmonious collaboration between writer René Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo.
Getafix, Druid & grandmaven
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What a Gaul! The basic plot of the comic is that Astérix and his XXL-sized friend Obelix reside in the sole remaining village in Gaul which has not been conquered by the might of the Roman war machine. The reason enabling its continued freedom is that Astérix has access to a magic potion supplied by the village’s Druid Panoramix (in English translations: Getafix) which gives him temporary, superhuman strength (Obelix is already endowed with extraordinary strength courtesy of having fallen into the cauldron of magic potion as a baby). The two companions, usually accompanied by Obelix’s little dog, Idéfix (English: Dogmatix), spend their time roaming around the countryside of Armorica (modern-day Brittany) bashing countless numbers of heads, mostly of the hapless and unsuspecting Roman legionnaires. In many of the books the magic potion-fuelled duo venture out on escapades to lands both far and near from Gaul.
Dubbleosix in ‘The Black Gold’
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Undisguised punnery Much of the humour in Astérix revolves around Goscinny’s and translator Bell’s (see below) use of puns and in-jokes which abound in the character names, Astérix, the comic’s central protagonist is of course “the star” (for which “asterisk” is another word); the monolithic-like Obelix is a carter and shaper of menhirs which are also known as “obelisks”; Bell translated Obelix’s dog’s name as…Dogmatix – what else! A spy Druid in Astérix and the Black Gold with more than a passing resemblance to Sean Connery is given the name Dubbelosix.
Nomenclature of the dramatis personae When sketching out the framework of their fictional First century BC Gaul Goscinny and Uderzo decided on a formula for the names of each of the groups of characters. The Gauls’ men’s names would end in -ix (the inspiration for this was the real-life Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix who revolted against Julius Caesar’s Rome in 52BC), so we have Vitalstatistix (chief of Astérix’s tribe) and his brother Doublehelix; Assurancetourixൠ (English: Cacofonix) (bard and scapegoat of the village); Geriatrix (oldest member of the village); Unhygienix (village fishmonger); Cétautomatix (village smith) (Eng: Fulliautomatix); Saingésix (wine merchant) (Eng: Alcoholix), etc. etc. The Romans mostly are identified by names with the suffix “-us” (although “Julius Caesar” (Fr: Jules César) appears as a fictional character under his own name)…as the “bad guys” the Romans all tend to have derogatory or demeaning names, eg, Pamplemus (Arteriosclerosus); Cadaverus; Caius Fatuous; Caius Flebitus …you get the idea!
‘Astérix and the Normans’
Goscinny employed suffix-identifiers for other national groups in the books. For instance, the names of the fearsome Norman tribesmen were all given -af endings, so we get lots of joke names like Psychopaf, Riffraf, Autograf, Nescaf and Toocleverbyhaf, ad tedium…basically anything preposterous enough Goscinny and Bell could think of that would raise a laugh. The device extends to Britons (-ax)(usually puns on taxation, eg, “Valueaddedtax”), Germans (-ic), Greeks (-os) and Egyptians (-is).
‘Astérix and Cleopatra‘
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Stereotyping and racial tropes
One of the preoccupations of the Astérix comics and the source of much of its humour is ethnic stereotyping. Uderzo and Goscinny delight in lampooning the perceived national traits of different groups of Europeans. The English are depicted as phlegmatic, love to drink lukewarm beer and tend to speak in a chipper, upper-class way. The Iberians (Spanish) are displayed as being full of pride and tend to have choleric tempers. The Normans (Vikings) drink endlessly and fear nothing. Goths (the Germanic tribes) are disciplined and militaristic, but are not unified and fight among themselves. This all reads as a bit problematic especially in this age of political correctness. In the case of the Spanish the generalisations are compounded by Uderzo’s unflattering drawings of them. But the most disturbing element of the books’ stereotyping of races exposing the creators to considerable criticism relates to the bigoted portrayal of Black Africans. Slaves in the series are always Black and sometimes they have have bones through their hair and other cliches (eg, Astérix and Cleopatra). Uderzo also introduced the character of a caricatured Black pirate (Baba)—notoriously depicted with exaggerated racial features, enormous, full red lips—who appears in several books including Astérix in Corsica and Astérix and Obélix All At Sea. For this reason American cartoonist Ronald Wimberly has described the Astérix comics as “blatantly white supremacist” in nature and thus unsuitable for children (’Race and Representation: Relaunching Astérix in America’, Brigid Alverson & Calvin Reid, PW, 19-Aug-2020, www.publishersweekly.com). In recent versions of the comic edited for the US market the overt racialist profiling has been toned down a bit (‘Asterix Comes to America‘, Jo Livingstone, Critical Mass, 17-Jun-2020, www.newrepublic.com).
Black pirate lookout in ‘Astérix in Corsica’
Bravura and the village women in revolt
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Uderzo contra feminism Similarly, Astérix has attracted criticism for its negative portrayal of women in the strips. Asterix and the Secret Weapon for instance introduces a female bard Bravura from Lutetia (Paris) who incites the women of the village to revolt against their husbands and the patriarchy. ’Secret Weapon’ unsubtly parodies feminism and gender equality. By 1991 when the album was published it might have been hoped that Uderzo would have expressed a more enlightened and nuanced perspective on sexual politics, but he and Goscinny were very much products of their time so it probably shouldn’t surprise that the artist/storyteller was still implacably fastened on to his old ideals of male chauvinism and hegemony.
The ludicrous amount of violence dished out in Astérix—the heroic Gallic duo are constantly bashing Roman skulls senselessდ—has also opened the comic strips up to criticism from some quarters. In 2007 the Swiss-based organisation Defence for Children International echoed Wimberly’s sentiments, saying that Astérix, Obélix & Co set a bad example for the young by constantly fighting with everyone, never at peace with their neighbours…adding that the comic series was “too monocultural” in its obsession with “invaders” (The Guardian).
‘Astérix and the Great Crossing’: Astérix & Obélix tango with native Americans – more sterotyping of ”the other”࿏࿏࿏
With Goscinny’s untimely early death in 1977 Uderzo took on responsibility for the Astérix scripts as well as the artwork. Uderzo solo added another nine comic books to the Asterix oeuvre, although he retained the late M Goscinny’s name on the covers as co-creator. The Astérix‘s scripts written by Uderzo were not in the same class of storytelling as Goscinny’s—lacking René’s incisive wit and punchiness—but even so, the Uderzo-penned comic albums still proved bestsellers, such was the lustre of the Astérix brand.
Enter the new generation of Astérix comic artists By 2011, Uderzo in his eighties, was ready to pass the Astérix baton on to two cartoonists who he had been mentoring. The new team, Jean-Yves Ferri (writer) and Didier Conrad (illustrator), having got the master’s nod of approval, produced Astérix and the Picts in 2013, followed by four more Astérix albums thus far. Ferri and Conrad have even introduced new characters with contemporary and topical resonance, eg, Confoundtheirpolitix, a muckraking journalist, spoofing Julian Assange (Astérix and the Missing Scroll). Unfortunately, since becoming custodians of the world’s most famous cartoon Gaul, Messieurs Conrad and Ferri have missed the opportunity to redress the earlier derogatory depiction of Africans drawn by Uderzo. Instead Conrad tactlessly reprised Uderzo’s Black pirate lookout character in 2015 in ‘Missing Scroll’) with the same racist depiction of Baba with bulbous red lips.
‘Astérix en Bretagne‘
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Astérix for AnglosTranslations into English of the iconic comic books began in 1969. Anthea Bell, in collaboration with Derek Hockridge, was the gifted translator who worked with the full sequence of Astérix creators. Bell’s distinctly English expressions and puns as translated won much praise “for keeping the original French spirit intact” (‘Anthea Bell’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org). Bell also shared with Goscinny a delight in the humour of historical anachronisms which filter through the various books.
The Astérix industryAs at 2021, with the publication of the 38th Astérix comic book Astérix and the Griffin, the books have sold a staggering combined total of 385 million copies worldwide. They have been translated into 111 languages and dialects including Afrikaans, Welsh, Hebrew, Occitan, Arabic, Urdu and even Latin. Astérix adaptation to the screen comprise 10 animated films and four live action films (of which only Mission Cleopatra merits any accolades at all). There’s the usual accompaniment of merchandising of course and even a theme park, Le Parc Astérix, north of Paris. The comic books’ following spans the globe, in their heartland, France and Belgium, in Germany, Britain, just about everywhere they have been in vogue with the notable exception of the US.
What’s the secret of the Asterix comics’ success?To M Uderzo the endearing nature of Astérix’s popularity remained a puzzle that he couldn’t fathom, best left to others of which there has been no shortage of opinions aired over the years. Clearly, the character of Astérix is deeply rooted in French popular culture. Two-thirds of the French population had read at least one Astérix books according to a 1969 national survey (‘Going for Gaul: Mary Beard on 40 years of Astérix’, The Guardian, 15-Feb-2002, www.amp.theguardian.com . Some observers put the appeal down to the escapism the comics represented – providing “a world of joyful innocence born in the aftermath of (world) war” ‘My hero: Asterix by Tom Holland‘, The Guardian, 26-Oct-2013, www.amp.theguardian.com . This sentiment is echoed by those who have called the series ”the most brilliant antidote to (the catastrophe of) Vichy in French literature”. Many French people identify with the petit Gaul as a symbol of rebellion, standing up for the “little guy“ against Goliath. To them Astérix’s steely determination to defy the juggernaut of Roman power mirrors the impulse in the hearts of many modern-day French citizens to hold out and not succumb to the all-conquering globalisation driven by the United States⚘. While the French feel an inextinguishable pride in Astérix (“simply French”), to many outsiders the comics personify what they take to be the French character, such as the trait of “infuriating, occasionally endearing contradictions” (John Thornhill, Lunch with the FT: Asterix the national treasure’, Financial Times, 24-Dec-2005, www.financialtimes.com). Another take on Astérix’s popularity beyond the borders of France is that the idea of an heroic “native freedom-fighter” defying Rome struck a resonant tone in countries which had once been subjected to the tyranny of the Roman Empire (Beard).
Footnote: In Astérix in Belgium, the 24th volume in the series໒꒰, village chief Vitalstatistix, Astérix and Obélix head off to Belgae to tangle with an equally fierce tribe of Belgian Gauls. As usual, the comic is saturated with cultural references, Goscinny weaves in a series of gently digs at the Belgians, spoofing famous national celebrities like Walloon actress/singer Annie Cordy and cyclist Eddie Merckx. The comic’s battle scene is a riff on the historical Battle of Waterloo and Uderzo draws in a cameo appearance by fictional detectives Thomson and Thompson from Belgium’s most honoured cartoon strip Tintin (‘Asterix v24: “ Asterix in Belgium”’, Augie De Blieck Jr, Pipeline Comics , 25-Jul-2018, www.pipelinecomics.com).
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ൠ some sort of pun on “insurance”
დ although it should be noted that no one is actually killed in the comics
⚘ shared by Uderzo himself who said in 2005, “the more we are under the sway of globalisation, the more people feel the need to rediscover their roots”, which is what he hoped connecting with France’s ancient Gallic past via his cartoon creation might help achieve
໒꒰ Goscinny died during the comic’s production and this was also the last Astérix that Albert Uderzo’s artist brother, Marcel, worked on
Considering how universally popular and well-known Elvis Presley was𝕒, during the entertainer’s heyday there was much conjecture about why “the King” of the music entertainment industry failed to capitalise on his phenomenal record sales by not touring internationally – like virtually every other successful pop and rock music act did. In fact Elvis only left American shores a couple of times during his entire lifetime, once for a tour of duty in West Germany as part of his compulsory military service, and the other briefly to northern neighbour Canada for two shows each in Toronto and Ottawa in 1957, followed later that year by a single performance in Vancouver (Elvis was not accompanied on his Canadian trips by his manager Tom Parker). At the time Presley’s reluctance to journey overseas was attributed by a number of observers to the singer’s fear of flying – notwithstanding the fact that Elvis regularly took domestic flights within the US to shows.
Elvis For Beginners♬ ♬ ♬
Light was shed on the puzzle of Elvis’s non-event international performing career for me many years ago when I was thumbing through a copy of Elvis For Beginners𝕓 one day at a bookshop. The reason for this striking anomaly in the Elvis career path was apparently all about Elvis’ ubiquitous manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker. The ex-carny Parker was notorious for several things, among them his vice-like grip on Elvis’s career; his way over-the-top fee for managing Elvis’ career (25%, later increased to an outrageous 50%); his insistence on Elvis getting a 50/50 cut in songwriting royalties even though Elvis contributed zero to the actual writing of the songs he recorded, and who hasn’t heard about the story of his “exemplary ethics”(sic) long, long before he got his avaricious mitts on the goldmine that was Elvis – the colonel started his business career by painting sparrows yellow and selling them as canaries! But there was a much darker, clandestine side to Parker’s past that explained the curiosity of Elvis’ stay-at-home career. “The Colonel” was not actually “Tom Parker”, an assumed identity he adopted. Parker’s real name was Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk (alternately rendered in some articles as “Kuijk-Dries” or “Kuyk”) and he was born not in West Virginia as he always claimed but in Breda in the Netherlands. Van Kuijk entered the US illegally (probably via Canada) in the late 1920s and took on the assumed name (and identity of a Southerner) after a short stint in the US Army. Altogether quite a revelation! Seismic even for the history of popular music.
“Elvis the Pelvis” and the “Colonel” (Photo: Getty)♬ ♬ ♬
For reasons only known to himself Parker never tried to acquired an American passport, so he remained an alien all his life in America. Without a passport Parker was housebound within the US, and as keeping a tight rein on Elvis was essential to the Colonel Parker business plan, there was no way he’d let his golden egg go off overseas without him. So apart from the brief trip early on to Canada Elvis the entertainment industry’s number one pin-up boy never got to tour the globe and show international audiences his swivelling hips and velvet voice. As a consequence Parker “turned down dozens of offers, totaling millions of dollars, to have his famous client tour the world”𝕔 (Dash).
Breda, Netherlands♬ ♬ ♬
It was van Kuijk’s own relatives back in the Netherlands who first twigged to Elvis’ manager’s grand deception. Van Kuijk’s sister stumbled by chance upon a photo of Andreas in a Belgian magazine. A subsequent visit by Kuijk’s brother to him in America threatened to blow the Colonel‘s cover but Parker managed to hush it all up, for the time being at least. The truth only emerged very gradually after Elvis’ death. The revelation that Parker was actually Dutch doesn’t get a mention in Peter Guralnick’s acclaimed biography of Elvis Last Train to Memphis which was published as late as 1994.
“Colonel” Tom, 1960♬ ♬ ♬
Footnote: The Colonel’s darkest secret? Rumours about Parker’s mysterious past in Holland have floated around for decades. One theory about the reason for van Kuijk’s sudden departure for America—developed from journalist Alanna Nash’s research—is that the Dutchman brutally murdered a grocer’s wife in Breda in 1929 when he was about 20, and thus was on the run from the law. Van Kuijk was first connected to the crime via a tip-off given to Dutch reporter Dirk Vellenga in the 1970s while he was investigating the Colonel’s past (Giles). Evidence of van Kuijk’s culpability is at best circumstantial (he left the Netherlands for the US the same day as the murder) and nothing has ever been proved.
ྂ࿐ྂ࿐ྂ࿐ྂ࿐ྂྂ࿐ྂ࿐ྂ
𝕒 when Presley died in 1977 a Western news crew visited a village in a very remote part of Siberia to discover that uneducated peasants there—without the aid of modern communication devices like the internet and social media (or even TV)—somehow still knew who Elvis was!
𝕓 a book in the Readers and Writers series of documentary comic books (graphic books)
𝕔 such as an invitation from Buckingham Palace for Elvis to perform at the Royal Variety Show in London
♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
Bibliography
Jill Pearlman, Elvis for Beginners (1986)
’Colonel Tom Parker (1909-1997)’, New Netherland Institute, www.newnetherlandinstitute.org
‘Colonel Parker Managed Elvis’ Career, but Was He a Killer on the Lam?’, Mike Dash, Smithsonian Magazine, 24-Feb-2012, www.smithsonianmag.com
Rosemary Giles, ‘Who Was the Colonel Before He Met Elvis?’, Vintage News, 27-Jun-2022, www.thevintagenews.com
The premier tournament of world football, the quadrennial World Cup, is along with the Olympics the most publicised and prestigious international sporting event on the calendar. The powerhouses of the men’s soccer World Cup, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, Italy and Spain are household names in the world game, but the World Cup pedigree of the likes of Occitania, Sámpi, Padania, Abkhazia and Kurdistan is far less understood. And yet these geographical (and in some cases linguistic) entities have participated in their own football world cup – of sorts!
The VIVA World Cup
FIFA𝟙 is the international governing body which controls association football globally. For a raft of reasons football-playing territories like the above ones have zero prospects of ever joining FIFA (or UEFA𝟚). This has not stopped them from forming “national” soccer teams and organising ‘“friendly” games with fellow non-FIFA teams. These embryonic encounters on the pitch lead eventually to the formation in 2003 of a new para-FIFA body, Nouvelle Fédération Board (AKA N.F.-Board), to represent their interests. In 2006 the N.F.-Board had held its first (downsized) world cup for male players, known as the VIVA World Cup. The organisation of this event however exposed the fragile nature of this association of disparates. Originally VIVA 2006 was intended to be hosted by the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, but member-states fell out over planning and politics and the Board reassigned the holding rights to Occitania (a region linguistically defined and stretching over parts of Spain, France, Monaco and Italy). The organisation of the event, beset by various problems, did go ahead but with only three teams participating…Sámpi (representing the Sámi people of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia) routed Monaco 21–1 in the final.
Tibet v Abkhazia, 2018 World Cup (Photo: Sky Sports)
ConIFA World Cup
N.F.-Board organised several follow-up VIVA World Cups after the maiden event – three have been won by Padania (a would-be independent state in northern Italy proposed by regional separatists) and one by Kurdistan Region. The VIVA World Cup run out of steam however and was disbanded after the 2012 event. In 2013 a new body, ConIFA𝟛, succeeded N.F.-Board and the following year organised the inaugural ConIFA Cup – held in Sweden and won by Countea de Nissa (County of Nice) (France). Subsequent men’s cups have been won by Abkhazia (a partly-recognised breakaway “state” in South Caucasus) and Kárpátalja (representing a Hungarian minority in Carpathian Ruthenia). The 2020 ConIFA World Cup scheduled to be held in North Macedonia was cancelled owing to COVID 19, as was ConIFA Euro 22.
FA Sámpi Women (Source: ConIFA)
Women’s ConIFA Cup
The first women’s ConIFA cup, after a COVID-delayed false start in 2020, finally took place in July 2022. Tibet was the nominal host (though the tournament took place in India), and was only one of two sides to participate. The other “national” team, FA Sámpi, won the two games played and the cup in a woefully lopsided (non–) contest.
The non-FIFA world of international football
The host of soccer-playing entities affiliated with ConIFA derive from various categories of statehood or putative statehood. Some are legally and politically recognised entities, small sovereign states or micro-nations such as Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia, Monaco and the Vatican City, or sub-national territories like Mayotte, Zanzibar and the Falklands Islands. Others are autonomous or autonomous-seeking regions, ethnic minorities and unrecognised states, including Western Sahara, Kurdistan, Somaliland, Catalonia, the Basque Country, Brittany, the Republic of Srpska (within Bosnia/Herzegovina), Northern Cyprus, the Channel Islands, the Romani (people) and even Esperanto (a football team representing the worldwide community of Esperanto speakers). The 2018 World Cup was located in London with the nominal host team, Barawa, representing the Somali diaspora in England. Minorities within states neglected and persecuted by the ruling ethnic/political majority are numbered within the association, eg, the Dafuri (Western Sudan), the Karen and the Rohingya (both from Myanmar).
Beyond football
For many of the players themselves the love of football is not the sole raison d’etre. Engaging in the sport collectively is a means to express their national identity denied to them through official channels, and to take pride in that identity. For the world’s many subsumed and marginalised entities an international football profile provides an opportunity to showcase and preserve their submerged heritages. The fielding of “national” teams on an international stage by the likes of Tibet and Abkhazia also draws attention to the plight of their prevailing political circumstance at the hands of more powerful regional neighbours. Diversity and inclusivity are key terms for ConIFA. The aspirations of it and its predecessor body N.F.-Board are to provide the world’s “underdogs” with a global platform through their football teams, ”a stage for the stateless” and recognition of their cause𝟜.
2018 ConIFA Cup final: Kárpátalja & Northern Cyprus (Photo: Kieran Galvin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Footnote: ConIFA v FIFA FIFA has a checkered history especially of recent times including high profile charges of racketeering, fraud, corruption and conspiracy levelled against its highest office-holders. ConIFA by contrast is not FIFA in microcosmic form. ConIFA under president Swede Per-Anders Blind has been at pains to differentiate itself from the perception of FIFA’s pattern of “gravy train” indulgences, operating on a not-for-profit basis with all staff volunteers and an emphasis on transparency in its dealings. Not that everything has been rosy in the ConIFA garden…bickering between members have been a reoccurrence, Somaliland was forced to give up its hosting rights for (the ultimately cancelled) ConIFA 22 because of member opposition. The politically-eclectic nature of ConIFA has provoked ruptures within the association membership (eg, Northern Cyprus’s refusal to recognise Western Armenia).
FYI: That other men’s football cup takes place in November this year, to be controversially hosted by Qatar
𝟙Fedération Internationale de Football Association (who’s remit also extends to beach football and futsal)
𝟚 Union of European Football Assocations
𝟛 Confederation of Independent Football Assocations
𝟜 the New Yorker tagged the ConIFA Cup as the “the World Cup for Forgotten Nations”
𓂀𝟙𝟚𝟛𓂀
Articles consulted:
‘From Abkhazia to Zanzibar: How CONIFA Are Uniting the World Through Football’, Will Sharp, The Magazine, 04-Jan-2018, www.thesefootballtimes.com
‘The Non-FIFA Renegades’, Steve Menary, Roads and Kingdoms, 07-Apr-2014, www.roadsandkingdoms.com
Gobeithio y gwnewch chi fwynhau eich arhosiad yma.
“We hope you have a pleasant stay in Portmeirion.”
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Image: nytimes.com
British architect Sir (Bertram) Clough Williams-Ellis spent half a century (1925 to 1976) on a pet construction and town planning project in the Snowdonia region of North Wales, handcrafting his ideal of a village from scratch. The eccentric, autodidactic architect with a penchant for wearing knickerbockers called his back country village “Portmeirion”, drawing inspiration for his Welsh labour of love from the Italian Riviera fishing village of Portofino. What Williams-Ellis created was a scaled-down village comprising a picturesque patch-quilt of individual buildings built primarily for decoration, known in the architectural business as follies.
Photo: Pinterest / M Serigrapher
Piecing together the mosaic
Architecturally, Portmeirion is “an eclectic pastiche” (Gruffudd 1965) with stylistic borrowings from Gaudi, the Mediterranean and the Italian Renaissance, from the Arts and Crafts Movement and from Nordic Classicism et al, juxtaposed and intertwined together. Trompe l’oeil windows, Baroque murals, gargoyles, inverted copper cauldron, Classical details, all contributing to a quirky, multi-coloured panorama of buildings with a Mediterranean feel – in North Wales. Williams-Ellis sourced materials from disused estates and ruined castles across the UK for the village. (“Portmeirion Village: Fifty Years Since The Welsh Resort Starred In TV’s Iconic ‘The Prisoner’”, John Oseid, Forbes, 22-Mar-2017, www.forbes.com). Williams-Ellis’s use of salvaged fragments led him to describe his creation as “a home for fallen buildings”.
Reconciling structures with landscape
Williams-Ellis was a champion of preserving rural life, inspiring a Welsh movement, CPRW, guardians of Cymru Wledig…his philosophy applied to architecture was that “the development of a naturally beautiful site need not lead to its defilement”, new buildings, done well, could enhance the landscape (‘Portmeirion: A Passion for Landscape and Buildings’, Rachel Hunt, Gwanwyn, Spring 2018, cprw.org.uk). For the site of his cherished Italianate village William-Ellis choose a “neglected wilderness” which had formerly been part of the Aber Iâ① estate. Over the years the constituent parts of the village took shape – the Citadel (an Italianate campanile (bell tower)), Battery Square, Village Green, Gothic pavilion, Bristol Colonnade, blue-domed Pantheon and statue of Hercules, Italianate landscaped gardens. The Victorian manor from the old estate was transformed into the village hotel. The plan had been to incorporate a 19th century castle, Castell Deudraeth (named after an extinct 12th century castle in the locale), but this didn’t happen in Clough’s lifetime. Since 2001 the castellated building has functioned as a hotel for Portmeirion tourists.
Source: wheretogowithkids.co.uk
Academic architecture hasn’t rated Portmeirion highly, tending to dismiss it as an “idiosyncratic playground of little interest”, a mere “hodge-podge” of differing styles (Manosalva, M.A., 2021. One-man-band: Clough Williams-Ellis’ Architectural Ensemble at Portmeirion. ARENA Journal of Architectural Research, 6(1), p.3. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/ajar.268). Not that this in any way deflected Williams-Ellis from single-mindedly pursuing his own peculiarly personal architectural vision of a “fantasy village”②… the architect freely admitted to taking what he described as “a light opera approach”, wanting to give people architecture that was pleasurable and fun to behold and enjoy.
‘The Prisoner’ being filmed on site (Source: radio times.com)
Sixties‘ TV spy culture augments the Village’s celebrity and tourism
While Portmeirion’s uniqueness guaranteed its fame and its standing as a niche holiday resort, its selection as the set for a cult 1960’s TV series magnified that fame exponentially. The Prisoner, a Sci-fi dystopian series, created by and starring Patrick McGoohan, was filmed in and around the village in 1966-67. The 17-episode series about a government agent who finds himself mysteriously transported to a beautiful, charming but bizarre community—where for inhabitants, imprisoned betwixt mountains and sea, there is no escape — a community impersonalised to the point where everyone is a number and no one knows who’s in charge. The Prisoner‘s enduring cult status has ensured a constant stream of loyal fans from far and near making the pilgrimage to Portmeirion each year (Covid permitting). The local tourist industry has done its bit to capitalise with a Prisoner souvenir shop, tours of the film locations, etc. The giant chessboard in the square which appeared in the TV show has been (permanently) reconstructed to further cash in on the series’ appeal.
Beatle George visits the Village – “fab!” (Source: North Wales Live)
Endnote: Enticing the rich and famous
A host of celebrities can be numbered among the endless throng of visitors to Portmeirion over the decades…GB Shaw, HG Wells, Bertram Russell, Frank Lloyd Wright③, Brian Epstein, George Harrison, to name but a few. Noel Coward wrote the first draft of his comic play Blithe Spirit during a stay at the seaside resort.
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① Welsh: “ice estuary”
② when his architectural “day job”, designing other people’s houses and buildings in various parts of the UK and Ireland allowed it
③ apparently FLW approved of the architecture of the place
IN a 1966 double-A side single the Beatles sung “we all live in a yellow submarine” but in real life the Fab Four (or at least, 75% of them) did want to live together on a secluded Greek island that they intended to buy. It happened the following year, 1967, the boys were holidaying in the Greek islands and were island-hopping when they came upon an ideal island location. Or at least that was what George, John and Paul thought while on acid the whole time of the “inspection”{𝔸}. The island that their eyes lit on was roomy enough, some 80-acres with a fishing village, a large olive grove and four beaches. In addition to the main island there were four smaller islands surrounding it (one for each Beatle!)
The prime mover for the island home scheme was Beatle John. At that point in his life Lennon was edging his way into his glorious hippie phase. The Aegean “Arcadia” represented a chance to live communally, an idyllic place where he and the other three celebs could escape the overwhelming pressures and attentions of superstardom. The plan was for the four musicians and the group’s entourage (manager Epstein, the roadies and the inner circle of assistants plus relatives) to all live together on a huge estate on the island hideaway. Paul and George seemed to have been on-song with John at that hazily propitious moment in time…McCartney: (the island was the means of achieving) “a sort of hippie community…where nobody’d interfere with your lifestyle”…Harrison concurred: “we’ll buy the island, we’ll just go there and drop out” (‘The Beatles in Greece’, Daily Beatle,, 03-Jul-2014, www.wogew.blogspot.com).
Team Beatles hit Greece (Source: Greek City News)
What prompted such an extravagantly fanciful and surreal notion?The short answer would appear simply to be drugs! Narcotic substances may have inspired the germ of the highly romantic and improbable idea. As Beatle Paul explained later, the boys saw in the island jewel a place where they could smoke pot unhindered, without fearing the consequences of the law. Paul attributed the island acquisition project to “drug-induced ambition”. Certainly drug consumption was part of the agenda in coming to Greece – if you accept the word of NEMS staffer Peter Brown. According to Brown, a Beatle associate Yannis Mardas (AKA “Magic Alex”) had brokered a deal with the Greek authorities giving the Fab Four the green light to bring personal supplies of drugs secreted in their carry-on bags into the country in return for photo ops in aid of Hellenic tourism (Daily Beatle).
The rich celebrity artists’ communeRoadie (and later Apple Corps head) Neil Aspinall’s recollection of what John, Paul and George (but especially John) had in mind was a configuration of individual villas for the four Beatles which would all be linked to a central dome of some description. There would also be a recording studio on the main island, plus an entertainment complex and some “knock-up” housing for Beatle staff and visiting friends.
Trinity Is (Source: Culture Trip)
The decision to buy the island paradise was pretty much made on the spot and another NEMS assistant Alistair Taylor was sent back to London to seal the deal. This necessitated the boys buying £90,000 worth of special export dollars to complete the international transaction. But by the time the deal was set up, the Beatles’s initial enthusiasm had waned and they had changed their minds…or maybe they just forgot about the whole grand scheme. Taylor then had to sell the export dollars back to the Greek government, which resulted in an unexpected windfall for the group, courtesy of a favourable exchange rate for the UK£{𝔹}.
Trinity Is is commonly referred to as “guitar-shaped” but with such a profound bend in its “neck” it looks more like one of Pete Townshend’s well-thwacked Fender guitars
In the application to purchase document (held in the British National Archives) the name of the would-be Beatle island—described as “300,000 square metres of arable land, olive trees, beaches and rocks”—is given as “Aegos, Konstadinos”(?), however no such island can be identified among the multitude of Aegean offshore islands. Another name ascribed to the heavily-wooded island fancied by the Liverpudlian musos is “Leslo” which also unfortunately does not exist. The more likely candidate which most people favour is Trinity Island{ℂ}, located to the east of Athens and just off the larger Euboea Island in the Western Aegean ‘The Beatles visit a Greek island they intended to purchase’, The Beatles Bible, Updated 13-Sep-2021, www.beatlesbible.com .
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{𝔸} Ringo wasn’t on the real estate expedition, he bailed after the Greek mainland part of the trip to return to his Weybridge (Surrey) mansion
{𝔹} a profit of £11,400 was forthcoming for the band
{ℂ} sometimes erroneously called Agia Triada (“Holy Trinity” island)
1966 was indeed a watershed year for the world’s most popular band the Beatles. It was the year that at its end the fabled foursome called it quits on overseas touring and live performances. This followed a demanding 12 months of touring, including Germany, Japan, the Philippines and America (the third visit but this time as reluctant tourers). The constant grind, the heavy work load, the culmination of five years of more or less nonstop touring, had left the group exhausted.
Nihonjin cultural lesson for Ringo & John (Source: nippon.com)
This was only one factor in the ultimate decision to pull the plug…increasing dissatisfaction with sound quality at the various venues they played contributed as well as fears about their personal security and safety on tour1⃞ which escalated after John Lennon’s controversial comments about the Beatles being “more popular than Jesus Christ” and his stated prediction that Christianity will wither away.
Fateful words of the leader
John’s spontaneous act of hubris had profound ramifications as the year unfolded. On the “reunion” visit back to Hamburg, Germany, the Beatles received a death threat. In Japan though fans at concerts were rapturous, Japanese traditionalists voiced opposition to them, and were incensed that the Beatles’ gigs were held at the Nippon Budekan, a Japanese shrine for the war dead. But this was all mere turbulence compared to the tsunami greeting them in Manila, the Philippines’ capital. Moments after the boys stepped foot on the tarmac they were separated from manager Epstein and abruptly whisked away by military types to visit some local plutocrat VIP they didn’t know. The two concerts scheduled for the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium for that day (before a Beatle record combined audience of 80,000) though went exceedingly well.
The Marcoses in 1966 (with an American “friend”) (Photo: Yoichi Yokamoto/National Archives)
“Enemies of the state” snubbing the First Family
What brought the tour undone and turned it into a nightmare for the Beatles was Epstein’s declining an invitation for the boys to attend a brunch reception at the presidential palace organised by “First Lady” Imelda Marcos 2⃞. After the no-show by the Fab Four things turned ugly. The Philippine media castigated the Beatles for their grievous insult to the Marcos family, whipping up an instant public frenzy of Beatlephobia in the country.
Manhandling the teen icons
Beatles Alis Dayan!3⃞
All the chickens came home to roost the next day when the Beatles and their entourage tried to leave the country. First, the local promoter refused to pay the group for their performances, then they weren’t allowed to leave the hotel until Epstein coughed up nearly 75,000 pesos in taxes on the performance fees they were never paid! Meanwhile bomb and death threats against the Beatles were phoned in. But it was when they got to the airport that Filipino vengeance displayed its real venom. The Beatles found their protection had disappeared and the airport refused to handle their baggage and gear, forcing them to carry their own luggage (and their roadies to lug all the equipment themselves) to the plane. As they struggling to make their way to the plane, guns were brandished and the entourage was jostled and attacked by thugs (Mal Evans copped a beating, Epstein was hit, even Ringo got clocked with an flailing uppercut!). They were seen off into the aircraft with an equally hostile reception from hundreds of irate Filipinos wishing them good riddance!
But that wasn’t the end of the ordeal for the Beatles and their minders. The authorities suddenly discovered that some of the group’s flight paperwork was awry and roadie Mal and press officer Tony Barrow were forced to leave the safety of the Beatles’ KLM plane and return to the terminal to make amends. So the Beatles’ jet sat idly on the tarmac for another 40 minutes before it was finally allowed to depart. When they arrived back in London (via a stopover in India) the Beatles vowed never to return to the Philippines – an oath that all four musicians kept.
Talking it down…or up? (Photo credit: AP)
Footnote: The Religious Right’s war on the Beatles
The last tour, which Epstein had long pre-committed John, Paul, George and Ringo to was back to the USA. Lennon’s perceived slight on Jesus and Christianity–although he tried to walk the comments back once he arrived in the US—plagued the entire tour4⃞. Southern fundamentalists and the Ku Klux Klan demonstrated against the “degenerate and blasphemous” Liverpool band. More death threats, some radio stations in the South banned Beatle records from the air, some even organised bonfires, inviting listeners to burn the group’s discs and merchandise. Security became a more pressing issue the longer the tour proceeded, crowds of fans broke down barriers on several occasions. The four band members harboured a genuine fear that they may be the victim of an assassin’s bullet while performing on stage. By the tour’s end all four had hardened their resolve to draw a curtain on touring (‘The Beatles’ 1966 US tour’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org).
Postscript: Hello/Goodbye! The Beatle’s final ever concert (leaving aside the impromptu rooftop jam in London in 1969) at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, didn’t play to a full house, resulting in a loss for the local company organising the event.
𒆜𒆜𒆜𒆜𒆜𒆜𒆜𒆜𒆜
1⃞ for which the four performers to some extent blamed Brian Epstein resulting in a loss of confidence by them in his managerial skills
2⃞ “Go Home Beatles!”
3⃞ a disastrous PR move as Epstein had been advised by the British ambassador to accept the invitation as the band’s security while in the country was in the hands of President Marcos (‘A Hard Day’s Night in Manila’, www.beatlesnumber9.com)
4⃞ John in fact proceeded unhelpfully to pour petrol on the fire by criticising the American military intervention in Vietnam which added to the backlash (at that time 90% of Americans still backed the US’ war in Indochina)
This is a story about how Israel missed a golden opportunity to get the Beatles, then on the cusp of greatness, to perform live before Israeli audiences. The “Fab Four” were supposed to tour the country in 1965, concert tickets were even printed for what became a non-event. At the time the official account of why the Israeli government didn’t let the concert tour proceed was the fear of the deleterious effects that the Liverpool band were likely to have on the local youngsters. Citing the teen frenzy created by Cliff Richard’s 1963 concert hullabaloo in Israel, the authorities deny entry to the ‘Rhythm’ Beatles (as they were called in Hebrew) less they ”corrupt the minds of Israeli youth”. A follow-up investigation by a Knesset finance committee finds that “the band has no artistic merit” and reinforces the assertion that they were liable to “cause hysteria and mass disorder among young people” (Resolution 701). The local conservative press echoes the ’outrage’, describing the band’s music in hyperbolic vein as “yeah-yeah–yeah howls which are capable of striking dead a real beetle”.
▪ ▪ ▪ Cliff Richard: not wholesome enough for Israel?
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Thus the Beatles’ fans in the Jewish state never got to see the biggest band on the globe play live⍟. No doubt the desire of Israeli politicians to keep out the ‘pernicious’ influences of “sex, alcohol and rock‘n’roll” in the early 1960s was part of the thinking, however evidence emerged during the Aughts demonstrating that the (official) narratives presented in 1964/1965 were in fact apocryphal. A 2007 Israeli musical documentary Waiting for Godik by Ari Davidovich and subsequent investigations by Israel historians Yoav Kutner and Alon Gan unearths more personal considerations guiding the decision.
▪ ▪ ▪ Giora Godik, Theatrical promoter (Source: Lama Films)
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The true story—apparently—starts in 1962 with the mother of the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein✥, she apparently makes an offer to Israeli music promoter Giora Godik for the not-quite-yet famous Liverpool band to perform in Israel. Godik rejects the offer and instead invites the better known-internationally Cliff Richard to do a concert the following year. Fast forward two years and Godik’s rival Israeli promoter Yaakov Uri trumps him by securing the rights to a Beatles’ concert in the country. To get back at Uri for being “one-upped”, Godik successfully lobbies the Israeli authorities to veto promoters from taking out foreign currency (thereby making the whole undertaking financially unsustainable)…Godik persuades the bureaucrats by apparently playing up the bad publicity engendered from the Cliff Richard concert. A dispute between rival Jewish music promoters – and neither of them got the Beatles!
▪ ▪ ▪The four “Mop Tops”, 1965 with medals
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End-note: In 2008 the state of Israel issued an official apology to the Beatles via a letter to the surviving sister of John Lennon for the 1965 snub, citing lack of budget and the contemporary concerns of some members of the Knesset⌖ as the reason for pulling the tour.
Retro McCartney sparking a mini-Beatlemania revival in Tel Aviv (Source: abc.com.au)
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⍟ though they did finally get to see one-fourth of the band, Paul McCartney, perform there solo in 2008, triggering a new, short-lived wave of Beatlemania in Israel
✥ an Ashkenazi Jew
⌖ at the time of the incident some insiders within the country pointed the finger at Israel’s matronly prime minister Golda Meir
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Articles and sites consulted
‘The Beatles and Israel’, The Beatles Bible, Updated 16-Mar-2018, www.beatlesbible.com)
‘Truth after 42 years: Beatles banned for fear of influence on youth’, Toni O’Loughlin, The Guardian, 22-Sep-2008, www.amp.theguardian.com)
‘A Beatle (finally) coming to Israel’, Matti Friedman, The Inquirer, Aug 28-Aug-2008, www.theinquirer.com
When the Beatles at the top of their fame reflected back on their climb to the summit of pop/rock music, they didn’t understate the early contribution to their success of exceedingly long periods of time spent playing in seedy, red-light night spots in Hamburg, West Germany. John Lennon summed up the immeasurable value of the Hamburg gigs phase to the early Beatles’ development, quipping to a journalist that though he was “born in Liverpool, (he) grew up in Hamburg”. George Harrison echoed John’s sentiments, saying that the band “didn’t have a clue” before the German experience, “Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people”. Paul McCartney concurred that playing to inebriated and often hostile German sailors “galvanised the band into a musical form”. The boys’ repertoire expanded by necessity, forced to learn countless new songs so as to fill in the marathon eight-hours sets in the Reeperbahn precinct clubs (“George Harrison Said The Beatles ‘Didn’t Have a Clue’ Before They Went to Hamburg, Germany”, Hannah Wigandt, Showbiz CheatSheet, 08-Dec-2021, www.cheatsheet.com).
ʰᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᵖʰᵒᵗᵒ﹕ ᵍᵉᵗᵗʸ ⁱᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾
Just before departing for their first stint in Hamburg in 1960, the Beatles (still calling themselves the Silver Beatles) needing a regular drummer to fulfil their contractural obligations took on ex-Blackjacks drummer Pete Best (hired by the band’s manager of sorts Allan Williams). Williams’ business associate Harold Adolphus Phillips (who promoted the band during its Silver Beetles days and occasionally performed himself as “Lord Woodbine”) drove the now five-piece group to Germany.
The band first played at the Indra Club in August 1960 (while sleeping rough in “pigsty” accommodation behind the screen of the nearby Bambi Kino). Later in the year they moved from the Indra down the street to the larger Kaiserkeller, performing late-night to sailors and sex workers, and the more appreciative art students. Both nightclubs were owned by Bruno Koschmider who was paying each of the five Beatles the princely sum of £2.50 a night to perform (although they did score an accommodation upgrade to actual hotels)🏴.
ᴷˡᵃᵘˢ, ᴬˢᵗʳᶦᵈ & ˢᵗᵘ, ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᴾʰᵒᵗᵒ: ᴳᵉᵗᵗʸ ᴵᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾
While they were doing their night sets at the Kaiserkeller, John, Paul and George met Ringo (Starr), also working the club with the (then) more highly regarded Hurricanes band. The Kaiserkeller was also where the boys met Astrid Kirchherr, a Hamburg local who was to have a profound influence on the band’s look …from Astrid they got their signature “mop-top” style haircut. In Hamburg the Beatles wore black leather jackets and cowboy boots, but Astrid’s influence has an effect here too with the rounded collarless jacket she made for Stu Sutcliffe🏴 which became a prototype of the famous 1963 collarless suits worn by the Beatles🇮🇹. Astrid’s Hamburg art college student friends Klaus Voorman and Jürgen Vollmer also formed lasting associations with the Beatles from the Kaiserkeller days (especially artist and session musician Voorman who designed art covers for Beatles’ albums and played bass on post-breakup Beatles’ individual records).
ᵀᵒᵖ ᵀᵉⁿ ᶜˡᵘᵇ . ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴷ & ᴷ ᴴᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ
The following year, while still contracted to Koschmider, the boys were enticed by Peter Eckhorn (Koschmider’s Reeperbahn rival) into defecting to the Top Ten Club on the offer of better money and conditions. Koschmider found out and it’s likely that it was he who turned the underage Harrison in to the police, leading to George’s deportation. When Paul and Pete went back to the Kaiserkeller to get their equipment a fire lit by them caused minor damage to the club. The seriously “pissed-off” Koschmider had McCartney and Best arrested for arson and they too were deported back to England…Lennon eventually followed them back to Liverpool, bringing the Beatles’ engagement at the Top Ten Club in 1961 to an abrupt close.
The Beatles’ residency at the Top Ten did result in a breakthrough of sorts in their career thus far, albeit a low-key one at the time…the boys managed to cut their very first record – backing singer Tony Sheridan (who was also on the Hamburg club circuit at the same time) on a German 45 for the Polydor label. The recording “My Bonnie” at Ernst-Merck-Halle listed the Beatles on the label as the “Beat Brothers”🇦🇺 (‘Tony Sheridan’, The Beatles Bible, Upd. 15-May-2017, www.beatlesbible.com).
ˢᵗᵃʳ⁻ᶜˡᵘᵇ
The following year they were back however, this time performing at the Star-Club, operated by Manfred Weissleder and Horst Fascher🇩🇪. By now the band members’ nightly fee had been upped to £67 each. They did three stints at the Star in 1962—the last two with Ringo in the drummer’s seat for the first time—undertaken reluctantly as the band had already released their first UK single on Parlophone and were champing at the bit to get on with consolidating their burgeoning recording career in the UK. The last live performance by the soon-to-be “Fab Four” in Germany was on New Years Eve 1962.
The tyro Liverpudlian band’s musical education in the north coast German city got a terrific leg-up from getting up close and personal with legendary US rock ‘n roll performers—such as Little Richard, Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis—also working the same St Pauli clubs at the time…Little Richard later recounted helping to hone Paul’s vocal style backstage while the Beatles were opening for the pioneering American rock performer at the Star.
The Chronology of the Beatles’ gig venues in Hamburg, 1960–62Indra Club, Große Freiheit 64, St Pauli. 48 nights, August—October 1960 (37-hr week)Kaiserkeller, Große Freiheit 36, St Pauli. 56 nights, October—November 1960 Top Ten Club, Reeperbahn 136, St Pauli. 92 nights,April—July 1961 (51-hr week)Star-Club, Große Freiheit 39, St Pauli. April—May, November, December, 1962
Live at the Reeperbahn (image: Spotify)
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The intense schedule imposed by the Hamburg club management, forcing the Beatles to play live for hours on end (with the aid of copious amounts of booze and a regular diet of ‘uppers’)🏁 formed the band into a tight musical outfit. This and the band’s increasingly fetzig (“wild”) and unpredictable stage antics and the decibel-shattering volume and raw energy of their playing earned them a loyal following in Hamburg (‘Breaking the Illusion: Hamburg and The Beatles’ Gritty Roots’, Riley Fitzgerald, Happy, 13-Oct-2021, www.happy mag.tv). And when they came back to Merseyside at the very beginning of 1963, the Beatles (–Pete/+Ringo) didn’t come back as nobodies, Hamburg gave them an international reputation to trade on in the future.
Postscript: Return to their roots
The Beatles returned to Hamburg one more time, this time as the hottest musical act on the planet. In 1966 at ‘Beatlemania’s” high-water mark, the group played two nights in Hamburg, not at any of the old haunts they had played as young scruffs but at the more respectable Ernst-Merck-Halle. This was part of the German leg (tagged the “Bravo-Beatles-Blitztournee“) of the band’s ‘66 world tour, which also included concerts in Munich and Essen.
🏴 their booking agent Allan Williams was getting three times what the musicians were!
🏴 Sutcliffe left the group and became engaged to Kirchherr in 1961 before his premature death the following year
🇮🇹 based partly on Pierre Cardin’s design
🇦🇺 it was a customer request in the Liverpool NEMS music store for ‘My Bonnie’ that first alerted Brian Epstein to the existence of the Beatles
🇩🇪 Fascher, a West German amateur boxing champion, doubled as the Beatles’ bodyguard
🏁 “800 hours in the rehearsal room” McCartney called it
There have been untold zillions of words written or spoken about the Beatles—in books, in music mags, in newsprint, on the web, in doco films and videos—over the last six decades. Anyone vaguely following the Liverpudlian Foursome’s stellar musical journey would be familiar with the major secondary personalities that feature prominently in the Beatles’ narrative (manager Epstein, producer Martin, the various wives and girlfriends, a few of the band’s musical peers like Jagger and Clapton, the so-called “Fifth Beatles” and so on), but after wading through weighty Beatles biographies by Hunter Davies and Phillip Norman and others, I’m more curious about the lesser dramatis personae who feature peripherally in the Beatles saga. As the Beatles journey on their irresistible path from provincial obscurity to global mega-celebrity, these less well-known names pop in and out of the various accounts of John, Paul, George and Ringo’s formative days on the nascent Liverpool rock scene…so let’s shift the spotlight away from the quartet of pop music icons momentarily on to some of the background players to note their particular part in the Beatles’ back story — most were fleeting and insignificant, others flitted in and out of the Beatles’ orbit without impact and a few were important participants out of the limelight.
⥉ Lennon & Shotton (Source: forums.stevehoffman.tv)
The bulk of the minor figures getting a mention in the early Beatles story tend to connect directly with John Lennon, not surprisingly as he was the band’s founder and driving force in the rise of the Beatles phenomena. John’s best friend in childhood was Pete Shotton, who attended the same schools as the future ‘First’ Beatle (Dovedale Infants School and Quarry Bank Grammar). Shotton was there at Lennon’s earliest foray into musical bands, initially in John’s mid-1950s skiffle boy band which became the “The Quarrymen”. Other friends of John joined them in the band including Nigel Whalley, Rod Davis Ivan Vaughan, Len Garry, Eric Griffiths, Ken Brown, Colin Hanton, Chas Newby, Bill Smith, John Duff Lowe…and a little later of course Paul McCartney and his baby-faced pal George Harrison and Stu Sutcliffe (Quarrymen membership history was very fluid). Vaughan’s not insignificant claim to fame resides in his being the member/friend who introduced Paul to John at that famous 1957 church fete. Shotton, Vaughan and Whalley had the further distinction of forming the nucleus of John’s “Woolton Gang”…a mischievous, juvenile ”gang of four” imitating and paying homage to Lennon’s all-time favourite hero of children’s fiction, ’William’ from Richmal Cromwell’s Just William books. Of his many childhood friends and associates, John’s connexion with Pete Shotton lasted the longest. When the Beatles achieved fame and fortune Shotton was a beneficiary, managing first a supermarket owned by the Beatles and then the Apple Boutique. Eventually Shotton severed his business nexus with the band and founded his own chain of restaurants, Fatty Arbuckle’s.
⥉ The Quarrymen performing in 1957 (pre-Paul & George)
In 1958 Lennon, having abjectly failed his ‘O’ Level exams at Quarry Bank High, shuffled off to Liverpool Art School. Lennox’s art school period was a key phase in the formation of the scruffy “Teddy boy’s” relationships, meeting his first girlfriend Thelma Pickles, his first wife Cynthia (née Powell) and close friend and early Beatle Stu Sutcliffe whose gifted artistic merit influenced him greatly. John formed other friendships at the art school including with Jeff Mohammed who took on a older brother sort of role in helping John try to cope with the trauma of his mother Julia’s sudden death; and with Bill Harry who went on to create Mersey Beat , a local music publication which helped the band gain early traction in Liverpool music circles. Harry also published Lennon’s poems and drawings in the newspaper.
⥉ Allan Williams (Source: Meet the Beatles for Real)
Before Brian Epstein stumbled upon the Beatles the lads had another manager of sorts, Allan Williams. Williams owned The Jacaranda club in Liverpool which the young John and Paul frequented. Williams‘s role as booking agent and manager for the early Beatles (known variously as “The Quarrymen”, “Johnny and the Moondogs” and “The Silver Beetles” before settling on “The Beatles”) was a somewhat informal relationship, coming to an abrupt end in 1961 over a fee dispute, leaving the way clear for Epstein to assume the grid position and steer the Beatles’s career trajectory⦑1⦒. Williams did make an important contribution to the band’s early development as a musical force, he was the one who arranged for the band to undertake the first of a series of nightclub performances in Hamburg, West Germany, where the Beatles over three visits between 1960 and 1962 really honed their musical skills.
The Cavern Club in Liverpool was synonymous with the early Beatles who debuted in its damp, dingy warehouse cellar as the Quarrymen in 1957⦑2⦒. Ringo Starr then in another skiffle band had already made his first appearance in the club a week earlier (Ringo went on to join Liverpool’s top ‘beat’ band prior to the Beatles’ ascendancy – “Rory Storm and the Hurricanes”). A key Cavern figure was its longtime emcee/DJ Bob Wooler, instrumental along with Bill Harry in helping arrange Brian Epstein‘s first visit to the Cavern to see John, Paul, George and Pete play.
⥉ Pete & Mona (Photo: John Smart/Associated Newspapers/Shutterstock)
Another regular Liverpool venue for the Beatles in their various early incarnations was the Casbah Coffee Club, owned by the mother of the band’s drummer pre-Ringo (Pete), Mona Best. Not only were the Beatles able to perform there on dozens of occasions (tallies differ as to the exact number), Mrs Best allowed the fledgling band use of the Casbah’s basement to practice in.
After Epstein and his NEMS Company⦑3⦒ took over managing the four Liverpudlian ‘Moptops’ he recruited Tony Barrow from Decca to handle publicity for the group. In the full flush of Beatlemania fame Barrow found the task easier with the press now scurrying after him, but he was still there to extinguish any Beatles crises that might occur, such as John’s incendiary “more popular than Jesus” claim. Barrow wrote liner notes for the Beatles’ EPs and albums and was also the one who came up with the “Fab Four” tag.
⥉ Neil Aspinall filling in for George in the “Fab Four” lineup (Source: independent.ie)
When the Beatles started getting bookings outside of Liverpool they got themselves a road manager, Neil Aspinall, who had gone to high school with Paul and George at the Liverpool Institute. An accountant by training, Neil’s main attribute for the ‘roadie’ job—which he scored by being ‘besties’ with Pete Best at the time—was that he owned a battered old Commer van which was used to ferry round the boys and their amps to venues, and to London for their famous Decca audition on New Year’s Day 1962. After Epstein’s death Aspinall became CEO of the flagship Apple Corps and ran the Beatles’ business empire for 40 years⦑4⦒.
Another Beatle backgrounder Epstein put on the payroll was Tony Bramwell. During their Liverpool school years Bramwell was “besties'” with George Harrison and also a friend of Paul McCartney. From roadie in the Beatlemania days Bramwell rose to become CEO of Apple Films. Today, Bramwell is one of the very few surviving Beatles’ insiders.
⥉ Paul & Bodyguard Mal return from safari in Kenya
When Aspinall got promoted to Beatles’ PA in 1963, the doorman at the Cavern, the 1.98m-tall Mal Evans got the ‘roadie’ gig. As well as being ‘roadie’ for the Beatles’ 1964 and 1965 US tours, Mal copped the brunt of the violent backlash by enraged Filipinos against the “Fab Four” during the notorious 1966 tour of that country. Evans also served as the band’s bodyguard and in-attendance ‘gofer’ for any personal items required by any of the four musicians.
⥉ Derek Taylor (Source: Pinterest.co.uk)
While Mal Evans took care of most of the Beatles’ simple day-to-day needs, NEMS employee Derek Taylor was tasked with organising holiday trips for the boys as well as taking care of more complicated matters like copyright issues and acquiring personal properties on behalf of the four members, plus acting as “spin doctor” for the Beatles, for all of which he earned the sobriquet “Mr Fixit”.
Someone else behind the scenes who did very well from his connexion with the Beatles was music publisher Dick James. Just as the Beatles’ juggernaut was starting its ascent in 1963 James brokered a deal with Lennon and McCartney through their manager Epstein which enriched the publisher and his business partner but more crucially resulted in the two principal Beatles songwriters losing control of their own songs for ever!
⥉ George Martin (Source: USA Today)
Footnote: The Fifth Beatle
Beatles watchers have long speculated on particular individuals whose contribution/ role in the band’s story warrant, justified or not, the appellation fifth Beatle…the “would-be” candidates for the title are so manifold that it invites comparison with the list of numerous contenders regularly thrown up for “eighth wonder of the world“. Those ascribed the Fifth Beatle label over the years include George Martin, Brian Epstein, Neil Aspinall, Stuart Sutcliffe, Peter Best, Chas Newby, Jimmy Nichol, Tony Sheridan and Billy Preston.
🎵🎶🎼🎼🎸♫♬
⦑1⦒ securing for Williams the unenviable epithet, “the man who gave the Beatles away”
⦑2⦒ the band didn’t actually play the Cavern as the Beatles until February 1961, but within two-and-a-half years had racked up close to 300 appearances at the venue
⦑3⦒ North End Music Stores
⦑4⦒ after the band broke up Neil became the closest confidant of each of the ex-Beatles
According to Guinness World Records the pop song that has been covered more times than any other record is the 1965 Beatles’ 1965 Paul McCartney-penned Yesterday (a staggering 1,600-plus recorded versions). Conversely The Lion Sleeps Tonight trails far behind the record-holder with a mere 160 or more covers (still a very large number of covers), but few popular songs in the modern era of music can match it’s convoluted, controversial and even tragic history.
The Evening Birds, 1939 (Solomon Linda on the far left)
Ripped off from the debut single
The story starts in the Gallo Recording Studio in Johannesburg in 1939. Migrant labourer Solomon (Ntsele) Linda and his troupe of a capella singers (the Evening Birds) cut a record in the Zulu asisicathamiya style. The tune with its spartan lyrics is called Mbube or perhaps more correctly Imbube (‘lion’ in the Zulu language). The tune they sing is not a particularly remarkable piece of music except for Solomon’s melody. As Cape Town music journalist Rian Malan, who is to play a key role in the Mbube story as it develops, puts it, “there was something terribly compelling about the underlying chant, a dense meshing of low male voices above which (soprano) Solomon yodeled and howled (“a blood-curdling falsetto”) for two exhilarating minutes” improvising as he went along…“a haunting skein of fifteen notes” (’In the Jungle: Inside the Long, Hidden Genealogy of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”’, Rian Malan, Rolling Stone, 14-May-2000, www.rollingstone.com). Recorded, the song sells over 100,000, copies in South Africa by 1948. Linda’s cut, 10 shillings for the recording plus a menial job in the record company (in the process signing over all rights to the song to company proprietor Eric Gallo).
Pete Seeger (Source: Mother Jones) Image: the78prof (YouTube)
From a humble back room recording in Sub-Saharan Africa’s only recording company to the American Top 40
This pattern of exploitation, injustice and racism (both overt and by omission) escalates when the story moves to America. Struggling folksinger Pete Seeger hears Solly and the Original Evening Birds’ 78 record, digs the sound and records it with his group the Weavers. But Seeger misinterprets what Solomon Linda is singing, changing the Zulu refrain ‘Uyimbube’ (“You’re the Lion”) to ‘Wimoweh’ on their recording (‘Mbube’ becomes the song ‘Wimoweh’). It’s a hit in the US in 1952 and Seeger’s career receives a big boost. No credit and no royalties for composer Solomon – although later Seeger motivated by pangs of guilt sends Linda a cheque for $1,000 via TRO/Folkways, however it gets siphoned off on-route and never reaches the impoverished Linda in the slums of Soweto in Jo’burg.
“Paul Campbell” is the only writing credit on ‘Wimoweh’ (a common nom-de-plume ploy used to claim royalties on public domain songs)☥
In 1961 a new chapter in the story opens, “doo-wop” band the Tokens, like all pop music enthusiasts in the US, are familiar with the super-catchy “Wimoweh” refrain and want to record it. Their RCA producers get songwriter George David Weiss to revamp the song. Weiss adds new lyrics (“In the jungle, the mighty jungle”, etc) and shifts the focus of the song on to Linda’s chanting melody. ‘Mbube’ having previously morphed into ‘Wimoweh’ is repackaged by Weiss as ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, all three versions still bearing the essential imprint of Solomon Linda (Malan). The Tokens’ single—with singer Jay Siegel’s distinctive high falsetto—reaches # 1 in the US and internationally, eventually selling more than three million copies§. Again, no credit and no moolah for Linda who dies destitute in 1962 with just $25 in his bank account, leaving a widow and a half-dozen young children behind.
The Tokens (Source: singers.com)
Spreading the largesse to TRO
While credited songwriters Weiss and RCA’s Creatore and Peretti cash in big time on ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’s’ soaring sales, other formidable industry figures in the US were getting in on the act from another angle – again to the exclusion of the song’s original creator. Eric Gallo in South Africa injudiciously trades his rights to Linda’s song in America to big international music publishers TRO, (The Richmond Organisation) cutting himself off from benefitting from the ongoing “gravy train” and enriching TRO founder Howie Richmond and his partner Al Brackman.
Industry eyes only on the prize
Rather than making an act of goodwill or perhaps an atonement of sorts for the wrongs done to Solomon Linda by shuffling a financially meaningful sum in the direction of Linda’s daughters, the major stakeholders, fixating on the riches they see before them, at the beginning of the Nineties dig their heels in, even resorting to wrangling among themselves. TRO and Richmond on one side and Weiss and co-writer Creatore on the other end up fighting each other in arbitration presided over by copyright law judges…”rich white Americans squabbling over ownership of the most famous melody ever to emerge from Africa” (Malan).
‘The Lion King’ jackpot
Disney’s turn to exploit the melody’s popularity
The “golden egg” of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ explodes to new astronomical heights in 1994 when the Disney Corporation releases The Lion King, a blockbuster of a a movie—using ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ song—which by 2019 has raked in $1.65 Bn at the box office, plus spin-offs such as videos and merchandise. Not stopping there, Disney follows it up with a 1998 sequel Lion King II and a Broadway musical theatrical release (highest grossing Broadway production of all time – >$1 Bn). Added to all this is about another thirteen films that includes ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ song, plus its use in television commercials, endless airplay on radio and so on.
The two remaining Ntsele sisters looking at the 1939 photo of their father’s band (Source: Netflix)
The long quest for justice and some light at the end
An amelioration of the unconscionable plight facing Linda’s family only emerges after Rian Malan takes up their cause in the Nineties, writing a penetrating exposé (published in 2000) which gets their predicament publicity and legal support, and also embarrasses the “fat cat” beneficiaries who make some insultingly meagre financial concessions to the family. A series of court cases ensue but untangling the complicated web of ownership of the three versions of ‘Mbube’ is not straightforward – for one thing both Linda and his two surviving daughters have already signed over their rights to ‘Mbube’ in transactions which were legal, also there are issues with expiry of copyright in both RSA and America. In 2004 the Ntsele sisters with the aid of copyright lawyers initiate a lawsuit against Disney. The 2006 ruling acknowledges that ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘ was of South African origin and rooted in Zulu culture (‘Copyright in the Courts: The Return of the Lion’, Owen Dean, Wipo Magazine, April 2006. www.wipo.int). In an (undisclosed) out-of-court settlement Disney (keen to avoid a PR disaster) and Abilene Music❆ agree to make an equitable and substantial payout to Linda’s surviving daughters. (’The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, Lydia Hutchinson, Performing Songwriter, 01-May-2017, www.performingsongwriter.com; ‘In the Jungle, the Unjust Jungle, a Small Victory’, Sharon LeFraniere, New York Times, 22-Mar-2006, www.nytimes.com).
Rian Malan (Source: Writers Write)
Malan estimates (2002) that given the seeming limitless sales potential of ‘Mbube’/‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘ in all its versions and forms, the royalties owing to the song’s composer would lie in the region of US$15 million, a figure that Solomon’s descendants won’t ever see in their bank accounts…however through the unflagging, dogged persistence and refusal of Malan not just to grasp the nettle but to never let go of it⇼, and the stirling pro bono services of lawyers stirred to action by the injustice, the future is now secure for them, and credit for the classic song is now rightfully attributed to their father. One of those South African copyright lawyers Owen Dean expresses optimism that royalties will be secured for “the use of Mbube in all its derivatives, including ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘, for the benefit of the family” (Malan), noting also that there is “some pride in having successfully championed the cause of the small creator among entertainment industry giants” (Dean).
Source: Definitely Owen on YouTube
Postscript:Remastered: The Lion’s Share, a 2019 documentary shows writer and documentarian Malan’s quest to trace the roots of the mega-successful ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight‘ song, one of the most instantly recognisable pop melodies in American music, and his untiring efforts to help get fair compensation for the surviving daughters of the Black South African composer air-brushed from his part in music recording history.
🎶➿🎶➿🎶
—————————————-———————
§ artists to cover ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ include the Springfields, Roger Whittaker, The Tremeloes, Robert John, Glen Campbell, Brian Eno, R.E.M., They Might Be Giants and Tight Fit
☥ another go-to pseudonym—one used by Al Brackman to grab a cut of the songwriting royalty payments pie—was “Albert Stanton” (www.secondhandsongs.com)
❆ who licensed the song to Disney for the movie
⇼ The Guardian aptly summarises this irrepressible trait of the controversial RSA journalist: “Malan is at his best when he finds a story that allows him to employ the full power of (his) instinctive reluctance to take yes for an answer” (Tim Adams, 2nd March 2013).
The Brill Building at 1619 Broadway in Midtown New York City, architecturally, has few distinguishing features to set it apart from most any other homogeneous looking commercial medium high-rise building in the “Big Apple” (save for a rather dazzlingly decorative archway entrance). But for a period from the end of the Fifties to the late Sixties it was the fulcrum (if not quite the epicentre) of innovative and groundbreaking Rock and Pop music-making in the USA.
The young professionals are in the Building! The collaborative and creative energies of the Brill Building produced a conducive environment for young professional songwriters of the period to work with music producers to create highly productively musical outcomes. So there were song-writing teams that emerged around 1960 (often they were couples) – (Carole) King and (Gerry) Goffin, (Barry) Mann and (Cynthia) Weil, (Jeff) Barry and (Ellie) Greenwich – who linked up successfully with young producers like “wonder-kid” Phil Spector※ [‘The Brill Building: Assembly-Line Pop’, (Reebee Garofalo), Encyclopaedia Britannia, www.encyclopaediabritannia.com].
⬆ Kirshner, King & Goffin
But the Brill Building’s genesis as a revolutionary force in 1960s US pop music actually started in a building across the road – at 1650 Broadway. Here in 1958 “pop entrepreneur” Don Kirshner and musician Al Nevins formed Aldon Music✳. Aldon’s reading of the popular music zeitgeist of the day was that rock and roll’s original impact had dissipated and somewhat lost its way. Kirshner’s remedy was “to take its energies and reapply the old-fashioned Tin Pan Alley❁ disciplines to the craft and professionalism of making hits for the youth market” [Inglis, Ian. “‘Some Kind of Wonderful’: The Creative Legacy of the Brill Building.” American Music, vol. 21, no. 2, 2003, pp. 214–235. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3250565]. Kirshner put together a stable of aspiring young songwriters, including Goffin and King, Mann and Weil, as well as Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka.
1619 + 1650 = the Brill Building styleThe term “Brill Building” in the musical context doesn’t confine itself exclusively just to that one building…Brill Buildingas a descriptor for the achievements inNYC pop and rock creativityof the day is an omnibus reference for what was happening at two addresses, 1619 and 1650 Broadway, New York.
The pioneers of the new professionalism that was to become labelled as “Brill Building” were probably the song-writing team of Leiber and Stoller (Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller) who had earlier written for Elvis Presley, started to write hits for the Drifters from the late 50s that mark the starting-off point for Brill [Garofalo, loc.cit.]. A new wave of songwriters began to etch out pop songs from within the walls of 1650 Broadway and 1619 Broadway (the Brill Building adopted Aldon’s ‘hothouse’ style of songwriting from youthful collaborators with a creative overlap between the two addresses)✥ [Inglis, op.cit.].
Distinguishing features of Brill Building musicand music-makersKirshner’s writing staff at 1650 Broadway were not only dedicated professionals, they were remarkably youthful…the eighteen songwriters Kirshner had in his employ in 1961 (roughly equally male and female) were aged between 19 and 26, a clear departure from the status quo ante of “middle-age men churning outnovelty songs” [ibid.].This contemporary generation of songwriters, not much older than their target audience, grasped the idiom of teenagers and wrote exclusively for the youth of the 1960s [Garofalo, loc.cit.]♕.
Other composer/lyricist teams to thrive in the environment ofthe Brill Building included Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart (who later worked with Kirshner and the Monkees) and the extraordinarily prolific hit-making duo of Burt Bacharachand Hal David.
The songwriting teams at Brill allowed women a measure of gender equality unusual for that period. Brill provided a leg-in in the industry for female pop and rock songwriters like King, Weil and Greenwich. Their ascent to the fore corresponded with the rise of the girl groups of the early 60s in the US…these female writers wrote hits for the Shirelles, the Crystals, the Chiffons, the Ronettes and the like [Inglis, op.cit.]✪.
⬇ The Ronettes: “Big hair” sound!
‘Brill’ place, ‘Brill’ music?Recollections of the songwriters’ working conditions at the Brill Building doesn’t suggest an ideal environment to inspire the creation of Top 40 hits: writers were assigned their “respective cubby holes” (Carole King), “a tiny cubicle the size of a closet”…”no window or anything” …(an upright) “piano and a chair” …”we’d go in and write songs all day” (Barry Mann, ibid.). The creators of pop and rock worked in an assembly line fashion in something akin to a standard nine-to-five office job [Garofalo, loc.cit.]. Kirshner would play one young writing team off againstanother to enhance their productivity [Sociology of Rock, Simon Frith (1978)].
The hit factoryAnd yet despite these strictures it somehow worked! The songwriting team did come up with “teenage drivel” from time to time, but collectively, the youthful penners of contemporary Sixties song generated a steady series of musical hits for a Pop-crazy world! Fusing the urgency of R & B with “the brightness of mainstream pop” melodies, Goffin and King, Greenfield and Sedaka and the other B.B. star writing teams came up with perennial pop classics like “Will you Love me Tomorrow?”, “Calendar Girl”, “Leader of the Pack” and the much revered “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” [ibid.].
A vertical integration of the pop music biz on a micro-scaleThe “B.B. factory” was good at matching artists to appropriate material. By 1962 the Brill Building contained 165 separate music businesses. This meant a B.B. musician “could find a publisher and printer, cut a demo, promote the record and cut a deal with radio promoters, all within this one building”, Garofalo, loc.cit.; ‘The Brill Building’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume 8: Genres: North, (Edited by John Shepherd, David Horn), 2013, www.books.google.com.au]
Time call on the Brill BuildingBy the mid to late 1960s the B.B. music line was losing its energy. A new creative force was rapidly filling its void – the rise of the singer-songwriter, heralding a new era of artists who wrote their own material. The new wave led by the phenomenal global success of the Beatles (the unsurpassed potency of the Lennon/McCartney songwriting duo) and the guru-like acclaim afforded Bob Dylan, fairly swiftly relegated the Brill Building writers to the edges of pop music relevance [Garofalo, loc.cit.].
Footnote: A Brill Building ‘sound?’The Brill Building style of songs drew inspiration from diverse strands of earlier music – R & B (rhythm and blues), Latin, jazz and African-American gospel. The result was often referred to as the “Brill Building sound” but there actually wasn’t a specific or distinctive sound at all. The only similarities between the Brill ‘products’ was in the recurring themes and components in the song lyrics (might be described as “First World problems” seen through the eyes of 60s American youth) [‘The Brill Building pioneered assembly line pop music but left a legacy of hits’, (Troy Lennon), The Daily Telegraph, 13-Sep-2017, www.dailytelegraph.com.au]; Inglis, op.cit.].
⚀⚁⚂⚃⚄⚅⚅⚄⚃⚂⚁⚀⚀⚁⚂⚃⚄⚅⚄⚃⚂⚁⚀⚁⚂⚃⚄⚅⚅⚄⚃⚂⚁⚀⚀⚁⚂⚃⚄⚅⚄⚃⚂⚁
※ Spector was both a collaborator with the Brill songwriters and a customer of their compositions
✳ described by Ian Inglis as “a crucial moment in the development of Brill Building’s pop sensibilities”
❁ Tin Pan Alley was a loose collection of composers, lyricists and music publishers based in NYC who dominated the industry for several decades through the first half of the 20th century (Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Sammy Cahn, Hammerstein and Rodgers and many more)
✥ although two of the mainstays of the Brill team, Goffin and King, never actually worked in the Brill Building, producing their entire creative output in the period over at Aldon Music (they did however sell some of their compositions through the Brill Building)
♕ many of the Brill songwriting alumni went on to be highly successful performers in their own right – top of the totem included industry names like Neil Diamond, Gene Pitney, Paul Anka and Paul Simon
✪another interesting juxtaposition emerging from the Brill Building music factory was the ethnic contrast between writer and artist – the songwriters were all white and mostly Jewish, writing largely for emerging black girl groups (Inglis)
In the 1950s and ‘60s Berlin, bisected into eastern and western sections, was ground zero for the Cold War. One surprising arena for the head-to-head competition between the rival political systems/ideologies was the public zoological park. Before 1955 there was just one zoo in the divided city, the historic Zoologischer Garten in West Berlin, immensely popular and well patronised, not just by West Berliners but by citizens from the Eastern sector as well𝟙. In that year the East German Communist state established its own (East) Berlin zoo, called the Tierpark (literally “animal park”), to counter the popularity of the Zoologischer Garten. The rivalry between the two Berlin zoos for hegemony sustaining itself over the next 30-plus years would be a personal as well a political one.
Image source: design-mkt.com
The Beatles flying from London to Hong Kong
The Beatles without drummer Ringo Starr⌧ touched down at Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong in early June of ‘64 and booked into a suite recently vacated by the President of Indonesia in the President Hotel in Kowloon. The band only stayed in the British crown colony for a couple of days while they played two concerts at the Princess Theatre (130 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui) on the 9th June…long enough though for Beatle Paul and road manager Neil Aspinall get themselves bespoke tailored suits made up in 24 hours.
Note concert date, incorrectly printed as 10-06-64 (Source. ha.com)
Early boxing bout at the Old Tin Shed (Source: Nat. Lib. of Aust.)
Jimmy N, all alone at Melbourne Airport, end of the fairytale
Source: ha.com
Staid NZ says “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!” (Source: nzherald.co.nz)B&W 4d Milk Bar with mechanical cow & Red Cross-like symbol
Golden Star Milk Bar, Perth (Photo source: M. Coufos)
Olympia, tea and milkshakes (Source: Daily Mail Australia)
Green plaque in limbo!
Source: art.com
Alfred’s hitch in making ‘Hamlet’
The final project pursued by Hitchcock was ”The Short Night”—based on a novel of the same name by Ronald Kirkbride and on the exploits of real-life double agent George Blake—which was to be Hitchcock’s red-hot crack at making a “realistic Bond movie”. In an interview with John Russell Taylor for Sight and Sound Hitchcock outlined the story’s great allure for him: ”It’s a situation that fascinates me: the man falls in love with the wife of a man he’s waiting to kill. It’s like a French farce turned inside-out. If he sees a boat coming across the bay with the husband on it, he can’t hop out of the back window, he has to wait and do what he has to do. And of course he can’t take the wife, who loves him, into his confidence. And so the whole romance is overshadowed by this secret, which gives it a special flavour and atmosphere. That’s what I want to convey”.
Poster for the movie that never materialised
Image: Victorian-era.org
Foster Powell (Poster published by C. Johnson n.d.)
Often leading pedestrians would go head-to-head in wagered races (Image: US Lib. of Congress)
Pedestrianism was exceedingly popular in post-bellum USA, drawing great crowds of paying spectators (Image: Alamy/BBC)
Source: 7 News
Olympic final (men), 3500m Walk, 1908
Johnny Day with Nimblefoot 1870 Melb Cup (Image: Herbert James Woodhouse)
Hergé with a cinematic clone of his fictional boy hero
In the early Sixties there were 2 French-made film adaptations of Tintin
A parody by Belgian cartoonist Dubus depicting a captive Tintin begging businessman Rodwell for his liberty (Source: Sydney Morning Herald)
Moulinsart have mined the full depths of Tintin’s merchandising potential, many spin-off items priced at the luxury high-end
Genootschap (Source: www.hergegenootschap.nl/)Fmr Australian prime minster Kevin Rudd satirised as Tintin
The “indomitable Gauls” in question are the tribe of Astérix, pint-sized Gallic hero of the long-running eponymous French comic strip with its legion of dedicated fans. Like all classic literary modes, be they of a pop cultural kind or more highbrow, the Astérix comic can be read on more than one level. On the surface the impossible but highly comical escapades of its principal cartoon characters (Astérix and his sidekick Obélix) are much loved and savoured by aficionados across the globe. On another level some observers have detected various allegorical meanings delving within the cartoon series. 
Astérix’s debut, 1959
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Getafix, Druid & grandmaven
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Dubbleosix in ‘The Black Gold’
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Nomenclature of the dramatis personae
When sketching out the framework of their fictional First century BC Gaul Goscinny and Uderzo decided on a formula for the names of each of the groups of characters. The Gauls’ men’s names would end in -ix (the inspiration for this was the real-life Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix who revolted against Julius Caesar’s Rome in 52BC), so we have Vitalstatistix (chief of Astérix’s tribe) and his brother Doublehelix; Assurancetourixൠ (English: Cacofonix) (bard and scapegoat of the village); Geriatrix (oldest member of the village); Unhygienix (village fishmonger); Cétautomatix (village smith) (Eng: Fulliautomatix); Saingésix (wine merchant) (Eng: Alcoholix), etc. etc. The Romans mostly are identified by names with the suffix “-us” (although “Julius Caesar” (Fr: Jules César) appears as a fictional character under his own name)…as the “bad guys” the Romans all tend to have derogatory or demeaning names, eg, Pamplemus (Arteriosclerosus); Cadaverus; Caius Fatuous; Caius Flebitus …you get the idea! 
‘Astérix and the Normans’
‘Astérix and Cleopatra‘
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Black pirate lookout in ‘Astérix in Corsica’
Bravura and the village women in revolt
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‘Astérix and the Great Crossing’: Astérix & Obélix tango with native Americans – more sterotyping of ”the other”࿏ ࿏ ࿏ 
Enter the new generation of Astérix comic artists
By 2011, Uderzo in his eighties, was ready to pass the Astérix baton on to two cartoonists who he had been mentoring. The new team, Jean-Yves Ferri (writer) and Didier Conrad (illustrator), having got the master’s nod of approval, produced Astérix and the Picts in 2013, followed by four more Astérix albums thus far. Ferri and Conrad have even introduced new characters with contemporary and topical resonance, eg, Confoundtheirpolitix, a muckraking journalist, spoofing Julian Assange (Astérix and the Missing Scroll). Unfortunately, since becoming custodians of the world’s most famous cartoon Gaul, Messieurs Conrad and Ferri have missed the opportunity to redress the earlier derogatory depiction of Africans drawn by Uderzo. Instead Conrad tactlessly reprised Uderzo’s Black pirate lookout character in 2015 in ‘Missing Scroll’) with the same racist depiction of Baba with bulbous red lips.
‘Astérix en Bretagne‘
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The Astérix industry
As at 2021, with the publication of the 38th Astérix comic book Astérix and the Griffin, the books have sold a staggering combined total of 385 million copies worldwide. They have been translated into 111 languages and dialects including Afrikaans, Welsh, Hebrew, Occitan, Arabic, Urdu and even Latin. Astérix adaptation to the screen comprise 10 animated films and four live action films (of which only Mission Cleopatra merits any accolades at all). There’s the usual accompaniment of merchandising of course and even a theme park, Le Parc Astérix, north of Paris. The comic books’ following spans the globe, in their heartland, France and Belgium, in Germany, Britain, just about everywhere they have been in vogue with the notable exception of the US.
What’s the secret of the Asterix comics’ success?
To M Uderzo the endearing nature of Astérix’s popularity remained a puzzle that he couldn’t fathom, best left to others of which there has been no shortage of opinions aired over the years. Clearly, the character of Astérix is deeply rooted in French popular culture. Two-thirds of the French population had read at least one Astérix books according to a 1969 national survey (‘Going for Gaul: Mary Beard on 40 years of Astérix’, The Guardian, 15-Feb-2002, www.amp.theguardian.com . Some observers put the appeal down to the escapism the comics represented – providing “a world of joyful innocence born in the aftermath of (world) war” ‘My hero: Asterix by Tom Holland‘, The Guardian, 26-Oct-2013, www.amp.theguardian.com . This sentiment is echoed by those who have called the series ”the most brilliant antidote to (the catastrophe of) Vichy in French literature”. Many French people identify with the petit Gaul as a symbol of rebellion, standing up for the “little guy“ against Goliath. To them Astérix’s steely determination to defy the juggernaut of Roman power mirrors the impulse in the hearts of many modern-day French citizens to hold out and not succumb to the all-conquering globalisation driven by the United States⚘. While the French feel an inextinguishable pride in Astérix (“simply French”), to many outsiders the comics personify what they take to be the French character, such as the trait of “infuriating, occasionally endearing contradictions” (John Thornhill, Lunch with the FT: Asterix the national treasure’, Financial Times, 24-Dec-2005, www.financialtimes.com). Another take on Astérix’s popularity beyond the borders of France is that the idea of an heroic “native freedom-fighter” defying Rome struck a resonant tone in countries which had once been subjected to the tyranny of the Roman Empire (Beard). 
Footnote: In Astérix in Belgium, the 24th volume in the series໒꒰, village chief Vitalstatistix, Astérix and Obélix head off to Belgae to tangle with an equally fierce tribe of Belgian Gauls. As usual, the comic is saturated with cultural references, Goscinny weaves in a series of gently digs at the Belgians, spoofing famous national celebrities like Walloon actress/singer Annie Cordy and cyclist Eddie Merckx. The comic’s battle scene is a riff on the historical Battle of Waterloo and Uderzo draws in a cameo appearance by fictional detectives Thomson and Thompson from Belgium’s most honoured cartoon strip Tintin (‘Asterix v24: “ Asterix in Belgium”’, Augie De Blieck Jr, Pipeline Comics , 25-Jul-2018, www.pipelinecomics.com).
EP in Ottawa 1957 (Source: Elvis Presley Photos)
Elvis For Beginners
“Elvis the Pelvis” and the “Colonel” (Photo: Getty)
Breda, Netherlands
“Colonel” Tom, 1960
The premier tournament of world football, the quadrennial World Cup, is along with the Olympics the most publicised and prestigious international sporting event on the calendar. The powerhouses of the men’s soccer World Cup, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, Italy and Spain are household names in the world game, but the World Cup pedigree of the likes of Occitania, Sámpi, Padania, Abkhazia and Kurdistan is far less understood. And yet these geographical (and in some cases linguistic) entities have participated in their own football world cup – of sorts!
The VIVA World Cup
FIFA𝟙 is the international governing body which controls association football globally. For a raft of reasons football-playing territories like the above ones have zero prospects of ever joining FIFA (or UEFA𝟚). This has not stopped them from forming “national” soccer teams and organising ‘“friendly” games with fellow non-FIFA teams. These embryonic encounters on the pitch lead eventually to the formation in 2003 of a new para-FIFA body, Nouvelle Fédération Board (AKA N.F.-Board), to represent their interests. In 2006 the N.F.-Board had held its first (downsized) world cup for male players, known as the VIVA World Cup. The organisation of this event however exposed the fragile nature of this association of disparates. Originally VIVA 2006 was intended to be hosted by the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, but member-states fell out over planning and politics and the Board reassigned the holding rights to Occitania (a region linguistically defined and stretching over parts of Spain, France, Monaco and Italy). The organisation of the event, beset by various problems, did go ahead but with only three teams participating…Sámpi (representing the Sámi people of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia) routed Monaco 21–1 in the final.
Beyond football
For many of the players themselves the love of football is not the sole raison d’etre. Engaging in the sport collectively is a means to express their national identity denied to them through official channels, and to take pride in that identity. For the world’s many subsumed and marginalised entities an international football profile provides an opportunity to showcase and preserve their submerged heritages. The fielding of “national” teams on an international stage by the likes of Tibet and Abkhazia also draws attention to the plight of their prevailing political circumstance at the hands of more powerful regional neighbours. Diversity and inclusivity are key terms for ConIFA. The aspirations of it and its predecessor body N.F.-Board are to provide the world’s “underdogs” with a global platform through their football teams, ”a stage for the stateless” and recognition of their cause𝟜. 
2018 ConIFA Cup final: Kárpátalja & Northern Cyprus (Photo: Kieran Galvin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
𝟙 Fedération Internationale de Football Association (who’s remit also extends to beach football and futsal)
IN a 1966 double-A side single the Beatles sung “we all live in a yellow submarine” but in real life the Fab Four (or at least, 75% of them) did want to live together on a secluded Greek island that they intended to buy. It happened the following year, 1967, the boys were holidaying in the Greek islands and were island-hopping when they came upon an ideal island location. Or at least that was what George, John and Paul thought while on acid the whole time of the “inspection”{𝔸}. The island that their eyes lit on was roomy enough, some 80-acres with a fishing village, a large olive grove and four beaches. In addition to the main island there were four smaller islands surrounding it (one for each Beatle!) 
The prime mover for the island home scheme was Beatle John. At that point in his life Lennon was edging his way into his glorious hippie phase. The Aegean “Arcadia” represented a chance to live communally, an idyllic place where he and the other three celebs could escape the overwhelming pressures and attentions of superstardom. The plan was for the four musicians and the group’s entourage (manager Epstein, the roadies and the inner circle of assistants plus relatives) to all live together on a huge estate on the island hideaway. Paul and George seemed to have been on-song with John at that hazily propitious moment in time…McCartney: (the island was the means of achieving) “a sort of hippie community…where nobody’d interfere with your lifestyle”…Harrison concurred: “we’ll buy the island, we’ll just go there and drop out” (‘The Beatles in Greece’, Daily Beatle,, 03-Jul-2014, www.wogew.blogspot.com).
Team Beatles hit Greece (Source: Greek City News)
Trinity Is (Source: Culture Trip)
Trinity Is is commonly referred to as “guitar-shaped” but with such a profound bend in its “neck” it looks more like one of Pete Townshend’s well-thwacked Fender guitars
Nihonjin cultural lesson for Ringo & John (Source: nippon.com)
Fateful words of the leader
John’s spontaneous act of hubris had profound ramifications as the year unfolded. On the “reunion” visit back to Hamburg, Germany, the Beatles received a death threat. In Japan though fans at concerts were rapturous, Japanese traditionalists voiced opposition to them, and were incensed that the Beatles’ gigs were held at the Nippon Budekan, a Japanese shrine for the war dead. But this was all mere turbulence compared to the tsunami greeting them in Manila, the Philippines’ capital. Moments after the boys stepped foot on the tarmac they were separated from manager Epstein and abruptly whisked away by military types to visit some local plutocrat VIP they didn’t know. The two concerts scheduled for the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium for that day (before a Beatle record combined audience of 80,000) though went exceedingly well.
The Marcoses in 1966 (with an American “friend”) (Photo: Yoichi Yokamoto/National Archives) 
Manhandling the teen icons
But that wasn’t the end of the ordeal for the Beatles and their minders. The authorities suddenly discovered that some of the group’s flight paperwork was awry and roadie Mal and press officer Tony Barrow were forced to leave the safety of the Beatles’ KLM plane and return to the terminal to make amends. So the Beatles’ jet sat idly on the tarmac for another 40 minutes before it was finally allowed to depart. When they arrived back in London (via a stopover in India) the Beatles vowed never to return to the Philippines – an oath that all four musicians kept.
Talking it down…or up? (Photo credit: AP)
▪ ▪ ▪ Cliff Richard: not wholesome enough for Israel? 
Retro McCartney sparking a mini-Beatlemania revival in Tel Aviv (Source: abc.com.au)
ʰᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᵖʰᵒᵗᵒ﹕ ᵍᵉᵗᵗʸ ⁱᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾
ˢᵉᶜᵒⁿᵈ ᶠᶦᵈᵈˡᵉ ᵗᵒ ᴿᵒʳʸ ˢᵗᵒʳᵐ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᴴᵘʳʳᶦᶜᵃⁿᵉˢ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᵇᵉᵃᵗˡᵉˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ.ᶜᵒᵐ⁾
ᴷˡᵃᵘˢ, ᴬˢᵗʳᶦᵈ & ˢᵗᵘ, ¹⁹⁶¹ ⁽ᴾʰᵒᵗᵒ: ᴳᵉᵗᵗʸ ᴵᵐᵃᵍᵉˢ⁾
ᵀᵒᵖ ᵀᵉⁿ ᶜˡᵘᵇ . ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴷ & ᴷ ᴴᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ
ˢᵗᵃʳ⁻ᶜˡᵘᵇ
ᴷᵃᶦˢᵉʳᵏᵉˡˡᵉʳ. ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴮᵉᵃᵗˡᵉˢ ᴮᶦᵇˡᵉ!
ᴴᵃᵐᵇᵘʳᵍ ᴮᵉᵃᵗˡᵉˢ ʷᶦᵗʰ ᴳᵉⁿᵉ ⱽᶦⁿᶜᵉⁿᵗ ⁽ˢᵒᵘʳᶜᵉ: ᴾᶦⁿᵗᵉʳᵉˢᵗ⁾
🏴 their booking agent Allan Williams was getting three times what the musicians were!
⥉ Lennon & Shotton (Source: forums.stevehoffman.tv)
⥉ The Quarrymen performing in 1957 (pre-Paul & George)
In 1958 Lennon, having abjectly failed his ‘O’ Level exams at Quarry Bank High, shuffled off to Liverpool Art School. Lennox’s art school period was a key phase in the formation of the scruffy “Teddy boy’s” relationships, meeting his first girlfriend Thelma Pickles, his first wife Cynthia (née Powell) and close friend and early Beatle Stu Sutcliffe whose gifted artistic merit influenced him greatly. John formed other friendships at the art school including with Jeff Mohammed who took on a older brother sort of role in helping John try to cope with the trauma of his mother Julia’s sudden death; and with Bill Harry who went on to create Mersey Beat , a local music publication which helped the band gain early traction in Liverpool music circles. Harry also published Lennon’s poems and drawings in the newspaper.
⥉ Allan Williams (Source: Meet the Beatles for Real)
The Cavern Club in Liverpool was synonymous with the early Beatles who debuted in its damp, dingy warehouse cellar as the Quarrymen in 1957⦑2⦒. Ringo Starr then in another skiffle band had already made his first appearance in the club a week earlier (Ringo went on to join Liverpool’s top ‘beat’ band prior to the Beatles’ ascendancy – “Rory Storm and the Hurricanes”). A key Cavern figure was its longtime emcee/DJ Bob Wooler, instrumental along with Bill Harry in helping arrange Brian Epstein‘s first visit to the Cavern to see John, Paul, George and Pete play.
⥉ Pete & Mona (Photo: John Smart/Associated Newspapers/Shutterstock)
⥉ Neil Aspinall filling in for George in the “Fab Four” lineup (Source: independent.ie)
⥉ Paul & Bodyguard Mal return from safari in Kenya
⥉ Derek Taylor (Source: Pinterest.co.uk)
⥉ George Martin (Source: USA Today)
Pete Seeger (Source: Mother Jones)
Image: the78prof (YouTube)
“Paul Campbell” is the only writing credit on ‘Wimoweh’ (a common nom-de-plume ploy used to claim royalties on public domain songs)☥
In 1961 a new chapter in the story opens, “doo-wop” band the Tokens, like all pop music enthusiasts in the US, are familiar with the super-catchy “Wimoweh” refrain and want to record it. Their RCA producers get songwriter George David Weiss to revamp the song. Weiss adds new lyrics (“In the jungle, the mighty jungle”, etc) and shifts the focus of the song on to Linda’s chanting melody. ‘Mbube’ having previously morphed into ‘Wimoweh’ is repackaged by Weiss as ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, all three versions still bearing the essential imprint of Solomon Linda (Malan). The Tokens’ single—with singer Jay Siegel’s distinctive high falsetto—reaches # 1 in the US and internationally, eventually selling more than three million copies§. Again, no credit and no moolah for Linda who dies destitute in 1962 with just $25 in his bank account, leaving a widow and a half-dozen young children behind.
The Tokens (Source: singers.com)
The two remaining Ntsele sisters looking at the 1939 photo of their father’s band (Source: Netflix)
Rian Malan (Source: Writers Write)
Source: Definitely Owen on YouTube
(Photo: https://nypost.com)
⬆ Kirshner, King & Goffin
