Robin R. Cutler's Blog, page 2

Author Q & A: Why Does Rosa Sutton’s Crusade to Save Her Son’s Soul Still Matter?

For all the details about this case see the website home page, and the tabs for A Soul on Trial. www.robinrcutler.com

Was Rosa Sutton the first mother to challenge the military over the death of her son in a courtroom?

Probably; scholars and reviewers have all said this is a unique story. (See Press tab.)  But many military court documents still lay buried in the National Archives waiting to be discovered. So unless you know of a case, the answer may be unknown. My History News Network essay discusses this case and its relevance today.  http://hnn.us/articles/41493.html  Click here  or cut and paste to your browser.

And here are a few other questions I have been asked in interviews with some answers :

How did you come across this story and what convinced you to write a book about it?

After my mother died in 1987 I found a mysterious locket in a drawer with a photograph of a midshipmen and a lock of his hair. Years later, while going through other papers, I discovered the young officer was her uncle, James Sutton, and his death had caused a national sensation. (The locket had been worn by his sister Rose (then Mrs. Parker)* at the 1909 Annapolis inquiry into Sutton’s death.) It took several months for the wonderful staff at the National Archives to find the court transcripts of both inquiries into the fate of Lieutenant Sutton. The 1907 transcript is full of inconsistencies, and the lengthy report of the second inquiry that captivated Americans throughout 1909 is a fascinating window into military justice before World War I.

I also began searching for articles about the case in papers from Maryland and Washington, D.C. and soon realized what a big story this was and how reporters helped shape its outcome. The 1909 “trial,” as the press called it, was the trial of the decade to many contemporaries. In fact, headlines about Rosa’s crusade appeared all across the United States. An unusual set of circumstances made Rosa Sutton’s quest for justice and redemption for her son unprecedented .

What did you learn about Rosa’s personality? What was she like ?

Rosa was a feisty, funny, devout and irreverent woman devoted to her 5 children, especially her oldest son. She was horrified by the thought he might  have committed suicide–to her that was a mortal sin and much of her mission was shaped by her Catholicism.  Her outspoken temperament was formed in the Pacific Northwest where her parents were pioneers. Rosa’s apparent psychic abilities created quite a stir over one hundred years ago when she came up against the United States government in a military forum. 

Naval officials accused her of being cold and calculating as well as unstable – do you agree ?

Rosa’s mission and her goals changed over the course of her three-year crusade to find out what happened to Jimmie. After judge advocate Harry Leonard and Arthur Birney, the attorney for the young Marine Corps lieutenants, gave her a hard time and accused her of hallucinating, her views hardened ; at times she may have wanted revenge. But she never gave up her belief that her son had been murdered. Rosa had many supporters; she was not unstable. On the contrary, she was very sharp as Dr. James Hyslop proved in his exhaustive study of her premonitions and psychic experiences.  

Why did this story matter so much over a century ago and what makes it timeless ?

I think it mattered then for the same reasons it matters now. It’s an appealing story of a mother desperate to find out the facts about what happened to her son. Rosa was a private citizen taking on big government and speaking truth to power. As I became immersed in the documents I became caught up in how complex it was to decipher the truth in the face of conflicting testimony. Also in 1909  there was a great deal of interest in the paranormal which seems to be true today as well.

Many television programs are based on the paranormal; in fact Pilgrim Studios produced an episode of “Ghost Hunters” about a search for the ghost of Jimmie Sutton in Annapolis  (“A Ghost of a Marine.”  4/18/2012 ). It’s quite a yarn–with several inaccurate bits.( Such as Sutton’s brother was Don not Dan, his mother was Rosa not Rose.) The hunt is popular entertaining fantasy transformed  into a reality show. And almost all the still images in the program are identical to those in my book and the Soul on Trial gallery on this website so that may take a bit of detective work. What is really surprising is the claim that the ghost of Jimmie Sutton is still around Annapolis, and especially Beach Hall, the home of the Naval Institute where the Naval Academy hospital used to be located.

Did Jimmie Sutton commit suicide or was he murdered?

Well that turned out to be a far more intriguing and complicated question than I realized when I started looking into this case . And for the answer you should read the book. It’s a detective story – and I hope readers will have fun following all the threads that I found; each reader will be a historian for a time and make up his or her own mind about what really happened in the early morning of October 13th (Annapolis time), 1907.

*A decade later Rose would become Mrs. Randolph Hicks. Her critical role in the life of her niece and nephew, Jane Hall and Dick Wick Hall, Jr. comes out in the Journeys through History Blog on this site.

PLEASE USE THE CONTACT TAB AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE FOR ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS.

A Patriotic Geranium– Or, Reflections from Oakland, California

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E pluribus unum

Alice is inside today. Usually she’s on the balcony of my 5th floor apartment, but the 97° heat and sharp gusts of northeast wind make that perilous. This geranium, which came from a small cutting given to me by a neighbor a few weeks ago, is a symbol of hope. She is over a foot tall now despite the smoke pollution, fierce arid winds and heat in this unprecedented summer, my first in California. Alice is determined; she is producing a brilliant bloom, the color of Revlon Fire & Ice lipstick, so popular in 1952, when it burst on the scene proclaiming that women should wear make up for themselves and not just for men. The color was a favorite of Jane Hall whose transformation into a glamour girl has been the subject of much of this blog. 

I am intrigued by how each sepal enclosing petals rises on its stamen and opens up slowly, tentatively, until several small flowers become what seems to be one splendid flower. Out of many, one. Alice is joined by a pot of pink geraniums, a gardenia plant, and numerous little succulents in window boxes. These are some of my new friends. Smiling faces of old friends appear in pictures on a bulletin board to remind me of all the people I miss from another lifetime.

I arrived in Oakland in March just in time to shelter in place in a congenial retirement community near, and yet now quite far, from my grandsons. We still cannot visit or have visitors in our apartments. Like so much of the world, we are all in masks (or should be) for the foreseeable future. But what has surprised me the most, coming from a tropical climate, is that it still has not rained. I think of  Dick Wick Hall, my grandfather who loved the desert landscape in western Arizona, as did his daughter, Jane. Yet it was so important to his Oregon wife, Daysie Sutton Hall, that the family travel to Venice or Manhattan Beach, California, every summer to escape the dry, dry climate. California is really dry now, too. But it’s important to be closer to family despite the restrictions on getting together. Once the pandemic hit, adjustment to this whole new world became a full time project. Finally, I’ve been able to get stacked file boxes on shelves so they are accessible; I look forward to writing more posts. 

 Alice remains optimistic though there is less and less morning sun on the east-facing balcony; soon her flower will have opened completely.  E Pluribus Unum. She knows how to do that. But do we?  

This post is to send heartfelt wishes to my readers for good health and serenity as our strife-ridden nation enters a time in which we must find more common ground. Our survival depends on it. Perhaps we may learn something from Alice. 

 

That Old Black Magic on Wheels

 

[image error]For the last several months I’ve been preoccupied with planning a move across the U.S.A. to the East Bay. (Obviously not with writing posts on this blog. That should change soon.)  Both of my daughters and grandsons are permanently in California. So I’ll start a new adventure living in Oakland near Lake Merritt in about 2 more weeks.

Some of you may remember how much my mother, screenwriter Jane Hall, loved “streaking through the dawn” with the top down on her latest convertible. Readers of Such Mad Fun learned about her first black Chrysler convertible, “Hi Toots,” which she took to Hollywood by ship in 1937. Towards the end of the book you can read about another black Chrysler convertible that she purchased in 1957 and hung onto for the rest of her life. By the time Jane died in Virginia in April 1987, the car was in really bad shape; the entire interior had been devoured by rodents. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. But that summer a man came to Poplar Springs with a metal Band-Aid box stuffed with $5000 cash and offered to take it off my hands. I accepted, but I always wondered what happened to the car.

I learned to drive in that Chrysler. And, to my mother’s dismay, I scraped up the large fins trying to get through the stone gate posts in the farmyard at Poplar Springs. Most of all, in those days, I wanted to escape from my parents. So I eagerly agreed to do errands for my mother by driving from the farm into Warrenton.  As soon as I got out of sight of the house, I would put the top down, turn on the radio, and blast songs like “Runaway” by Del Shannon. (Skip the ad and listen here.)

[image error]Cars were definitely a means of escape for my mother as well. This Chrysler 300 C took her on some Intriguing adventures at a time when her life was full of calamities. (Such Mad Fun, Chapter 16.)  But what a surprise I had recently. Days after I sold what is probably the last car I will ever own, a very cool fellow named Dan Granger contacted me through this website to say he has the beautifully restored car. The same car. (Pictured above.) He emailed from the west coast of Florida. A brief and fun correspondence with Dan revealed that that there have been many parallels in our lives. It’s amazing what you can find out these days if you’re serious about tracking down a vehicle. Dan purchased the car from “an ex-judge” in New Jersey who had acquired it from an attorney in New Jersey in 1999. Then he managed to track down the original title from June 1957. So I’m excited to know this Chrysler (which did not have a name that I knew about) is in great shape and may outlive us all.

My mother learned to drive In the 1920s when she and her widowed mother bought their first car. They named it “Teresa.” She drove it hundreds of miles back and forth from California to Salome, Arizona, where she had lived as a young child.

As I now head west, leaving a lifetime of memories behind on the East Coast, I will think of the cars we had, the trips we took, and “the things we’ve done together, a-while our hearts were young.”

Listen to “That Old Black Magic” (Sinatra) here.

 

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Image of a Studebaker like “Teresa”

 

 

 

 

Where Is Dick Wick Hall Now?

Once again, the town of Salome, Arizona, and the surrounding community will celebrate Dick Wick Hall Day.  Years ago, I was fortunate to participate in these festivities with each of my daughters. My grandfather’s most visible legacy still lies in Salome (where he’s pictured here), and in the other towns of the McMullen Valley among people who find creative ways to preserve the past.

Although I never met Dick Wick and Daysie Hall, I have come to know them through what they wrote and what was written about them, as well as by visiting the places where they lived. Hall’s philosophy, his shrewd marketing skills, and his writings put Salome on statewide and national maps. Fry’s Electronics store in Tempe celebrates Arizona’s Golf History with two murals near the software and service departments that feature Dick’s Greasewood Golf Course and Dick, his Salome Frog and the famous stick figure image of Salome in a desert setting.

Dick also survives online and in books, pamphlets, newspapers, and in magazines such as Arizona Highways. Two well-documented articles appeared in the Journal of Arizona History (Winter, 1970 and Spring, 1984). Hall’s business papers can be found at various locations such as the Arizona Historical Society (Tucson and Yuma Branches), and the Arizona State Library (Archives and Public Records) in Phoenix. Several letters from his daughter Jane, written when she was about seven to nine years old, are among the Hall papers in Tucson (MS 321). These moving letters show how much she missed her father, for she was his protégé.

But here’s something only those of you reading this post will know: At the end of November 1936, Jane sent a letter to Robert E. Callahan, the author who hoped to publish a biography of her father. He had kept in touch with her about his progress but was not happy to learn that she and her brother wanted to write something about Dick Wick Hall too. Life’s challenges got in the way; Jane never did write about her father.  Mr. Callahan could have sold his story about Dick to Warner Bros. had fate not intervened: “Will Rogers would have been the lead in the movie had he not passed away [in a plane crash on August 15, 1935].”

Not only had humorist and film star Will Rogers been “deeply interested in the story” of Dick Wick Hall, Callahan wrote, “but one of the studios here took the script and went completely through it and many of our plans were working right at the time of Mr. Rogers’ untimely death so you can see in these ten years I did not lose interest in the life of Dick Wick Hall or the work I did in connection with doing something worthwhile.” Given Jane’s future as a screenwriter at MGM — where, she reported, “so many people remember my father,” — how happy she and her brother Dickie would have been to see this movie made.

Dick Wick Hall was often compared to Will Rogers. We owe a lot to the late Frances D. Nutt who, after years of hard work, published An Arizona Alibi: The Desert Humor of Dick Wick Hall, Sr. — Arizona’s First Famous Humorist in 1990. The Foreword by Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) reveals that he was a big Dick Wick Hall fan. Like the Halls, Senator Goldwater’s family made the trip from Arizona to California every summer when he was a child “to get away from the heat of Phoenix and the desert.” He remembered stopping in Salome. “There will never be another Dick Wick Hall unless another community finds a need for one, ” he wrote, “and then they are going to have to invent him.”

And, in honor of Arizona’s Centennial in 2012,  we published The Laughing Desert  a replica of the 1925-1926 syndicated Salome Sun with a Foreword by the beloved Arizona State Historian Marshall Trimble. It’s available on Amazon.

 

Where Is Dick Wick Hall Now? DWH Day is October 12th this year.

[image error]On October 12, 2019, once again, the town of Salome, Arizona, and the surrounding community will celebrate Dick Wick Hall Day.  (Details below)  Years ago, I was fortunate to participate in these festivities with each of my daughters. My grandfather’s most visible legacy still lies in Salome (where he’s pictured here), and in the other towns of the McMullen Valley among people who find creative ways to preserve the past.

Although I never met Dick Wick and Daysie Hall, I have come to know them through what they wrote and what was written about them, as well as by visiting the places where they lived. Hall’s philosophy, his shrewd marketing skills, and his writings put Salome on statewide and national maps. Fry’s Electronics store in Tempe celebrates Arizona’s Golf History with two murals near the software and service departments that feature Dick’s Greasewood Golf Course and Dick, his Salome Frog and the famous stick figure image of Salome in a desert setting.

Dick also survives online and in books, pamphlets, newspapers, and in magazines such as Arizona Highways. Two well-documented articles appeared in the Journal of Arizona History (Winter, 1970 and Spring, 1984). Hall’s business papers can be found at various locations such as the Arizona Historical Society (Tucson and Yuma Branches), and the Arizona State Library (Archives and Public Records) in Phoenix. Several letters from his daughter Jane, written when she was about seven to nine years old, are among the Hall papers in Tucson (MS 321). These moving letters show how much she missed her father, for she was his protégé.

But here’s something only those of you reading this post will know: At the end of November 1936, Jane sent a letter to Robert E. Callahan, the author who hoped to publish a biography of her father. He had kept in touch with her about his progress but was not happy to learn that she and her brother wanted to write something about Dick Wick Hall too. Life’s challenges got in the way; Jane never did write about her father. Her own story is pretty exciting though. (For two fun articles about Jane’s life see the August and October issues of Piedmont Lifestyle. )  Mr. Callahan could have sold his story about Dick to Warner Bros. had fate not intervened: “Will Rogers would have been the lead in the movie had he not passed away [in a plane crash on August 15, 1935].”

Not only had humorist and film star Will Rogers been “deeply interested in the story” of Dick Wick Hall, Callahan wrote, “but one of the studios here took the script and went completely through it and many of our plans were working right at the time of Mr. Rogers’ untimely death so you can see in these ten years I did not lose interest in the life of Dick Wick Hall or the work I did in connection with doing something worthwhile.” Given Jane’s future as a screenwriter at MGM — where, she reported, “so many people remember my father,” — how happy she and her brother Dickie would have been to see this movie made.

Dick Wick Hall was often compared to Will Rogers. We owe a lot to the late Frances D. Nutt who, after years of hard work, published An Arizona Alibi: The Desert Humor of Dick Wick Hall, Sr. — Arizona’s First Famous Humorist in 1990. The Foreword by Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) reveals that he was a big Dick Wick Hall fan. Like the Halls, Senator Goldwater’s family made the trip from Arizona to California every summer when he was a child “to get away from the heat of Phoenix and the desert.” He remembered stopping in Salome. “There will never be another Dick Wick Hall unless another community finds a need for one, ” he wrote, “and then they are going to have to invent him.”

And, in honor of Arizona’s Centennial in 2012,  we published The Laughing Desert  a replica of the 1925-1926 syndicated Salome Sun with a Foreword by the beloved Arizona State Historian Marshall Trimble. It’s available on Amazon.

For those of you who live in McMullen Valley or the surrounding area why not join the parade, dinner and dancing under the stars at the 74th annual Dick Wick Hall Day this year for a mere $10.00.  Festivities (the parade) start at 4 PM at the Salome Lions Club, 66520 Hall Street (take Center Street North off Highway 60, located on the corner of Center and Hall.) After the parade at 5 enjoy barbecued beef, cowboy beans and coleslaw provided by the La Paz County Stockmen. The ViSaWen Women’s Club will sell their famous pies and cookies. Dancing continues until 9 PM to music by (click to sample)  Gary Zak and the Outbacks.

Thanks, Linda Darland, for your help with these details.

Whatever Happened to Jane Hall’s Ocelot?

For much of my childhood and young adulthood I had an ocelot for a sibling. In fact, many of my friends remember that more than anything else about our family.  My mother, Jane Hall Cutler, was devoted to Menasha Skulnik — she named him after the famed Jewish American actor in spite of her Catholic roots. (She often named pets after people she admired.) The other day, as I sorted though papers, I found an article from The Fauquier Democrat (4/5/1973) by Jane Cutler, “If You Want to Own an Ocelot, Consult Your Nervous System.” It has Jane’s characteristic wit, and the answer to a question I still get — “Whatever happened to that ocelot your mother had?”

The article is really a eulogy:  “Last week, Casanova [Virginia] lost her oldest resident — an ocelot, Menasha Skulnik Cutler. By human standards, he was well over 100 years old. According to Dr. Lee Crandall, former director of New York’s Bronx zoo, the oldest ocelot on record died at age nine years, eight months, seven days. Skulnik was going on 20 years old. And he had all his original equipment, never had the three disarming operations that appeal to so many owners of ‘exotic’ pets. .… Ocelots are beautiful, lovable, and intelligent, but they are also noted for taking on whatever they can overpower — including veterinarians.”

Jane recalled some of Skulnik’s various “jet-pet” adventures. “He spent two summers swimming on Long Island and Cape Cod; winters he lived in a penthouse apartment. One afternoon, before his legal difficulties dictated the move from New York, while we watched, petrified, we saw a six- foot college student come headfirst out the window of his parents 18th floor apartment . . .where, handily, there was a narrow ledge. (That’s how Skulnik got in.)”  The ledge was next to our terrace and protected by a balustrade. “This nice young man appeared visibly shaken. He said he had been fast asleep recovering from exams, when, he said, he heard a sort of roaring and there was this wild animal on his bed, ‘Just staring at me! Can you imagine, in a New York apartment?’ Oh yes, we said. We could.” I remember that incident well though I wasn’t sure, until I saw this article, why Skulnik had to leave Manhattan.

1100 Park Avenue was, I assume, full of well-mannered residents who were not about to put up with a wild animal for a neighbor.  But it didn’t help that a rumor mill distorted the facts a bit. That’s because my parents had a visit from “Cesare,” “a magnificent cheetah made famous by the Disney film, “African Lion.”My mother recalled that as soon as this extraordinary creature came in the front door from the elevator hall, “he lit on our zebra foyer rug and tore it all to pieces. “‘I guess he must be tired,’” she told the handler politely. Soon letters began to arrive on legal letterheads implying that the wildcat in apartment 18A was actually verrrry large. And so, in 1959, Skulnik was forced to retire to Poplar Springs, his Casanova farm.

But how in the world did Skulnik live so long? “Well,” Jane explains, “in addition to Dr. Atkins’ diet, which he discovered in the spring of 1954, we attribute Skulnik’s longevity to green peppers, the occasional aperitif, and TV.… He had two sets — gifts from admirers: one was black and white, one color portable.” While I remember “I Love Lucy” being one of his favorite programs, apparently Skully also loved westerns, auto races and sports. “Soap operas put him quietly to sleep, newscasters sent him underground,” Jane observed. Nor did I realize how much he loved football games. “Each weekend he would watch unblinkingly for hours.” And then, Jane noted wistfully, that Skulnik’s health began to go to pieces after the Dolphins beat the Washington Redskins. Following a rocky winter, he died on the first night of spring 1973.

This was probably the last published article author and MGM screenwriter Jane Hall ever wrote; the topic is not surprising. Her love for her animal companions was legendary.

My most vivid recollection of Skulnik, who was a one-woman kind of guy, comes from his time in NYC. I was about nine years old. On this particular night, my parents were out and I tried to poke some raw hamburger into the chicken wire on Skulnik’s Park Avenue habitat. I wanted so much to be his friend. Unfortunately, I used the closest implement available — a pen that was on my mother’s desk. Skulnik grabbed the pen and the hamburger and took it down into his lair. I panicked and threw the top out an 18th-story window, foolishly thinking he would eat the rest of it. But he didn’t. Unfortunately, that was my grandfather Dick Wick Hall’s pen. Jane adored her father who died when she was eleven. I still have the chewed up bottom of the pen and indelible memories of my mother’s reaction to this fiasco. But that’s not a story for print.

If you want to know what happened to Jane before she met Skulnik, check out Such Mad Fun. Skulnik never made onto the cover of Cosmopolitan as my mother’s wire hair fox terrier, Kate, did. However, this golden-eyed feline is still alive in the memory of so many people. Perhaps today his spirit enjoys the jazz on the new terrace at Poplar Springs which is now an inn and spa. Few visitors know that Skulnik and Kate are both buried there near each other. I was wrong in the book–Skulnik lived with us for nineteen years, not seventeen. And that must be some kind of record.

Turner Classics–Still a Great Escape and Often Provocative

 

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Named by the New York Times as “the best social comedy” of 1939, the film will air again at 2:30 on March 18th.

Despite the loss of its beloved host, Robert J. Osborne, two years ago this month, Turner Classic Movies is still thriving. For those of you who are classic film fans (or Such Mad Fun fans), I strongly suggest subscribing to TCM’s Now Playing Newsletter. In addition to several Irish films, Thursdays devoted to journalism in the movies, a subject dear to my heart, the March programs also include a whole day devoted to social comedies featuring debutantes. And guess what? On Monday, March 18, at 2:30, These Glamour Girls (1939), will air again. You may remember that the backstory for the screenplay of this movie, written by Jane Hall and Marion Parsonnet and based on a story by our own Jane Hall, is explored in great detail in Such Mad Fun.

TCM’s Frank Miller describes the movie, one of Lana Turner’s earliest, as follows:

There’s something light and sweetly appealing about Lana Turner in her earliest MGM films, particularly when she’s cast as a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Before the studio swathed her in glamour, they cast her in this likable social satire as a taxi dancer invited to a big college party by drunken playboy Lew Ayres. What starts as a cruel joke, turns into true love when Ayres finds there’s more to her than most of the high society beauties he’s supposed to be dating. Since Turner wasn’t a big marquee name yet, MGM matched her with a quartet of female co-stars who all add to the film’s luster. Jane Bryan (on loan from Warner Bros.) is Ayres’s society sweetheart, ready to give up her family’s wealth for working-class student Richard Carlson. Ann Rutherford of the Andy Hardy films is a debutante who gets dumped by her date. Anita Louise is the resident mean girl out to make trouble any way she can. And Marsha Hunt, in one of her favorite roles, provides the heavy dramatics as a young woman considered over the hill at 20. Within a few years, Turner would move up to star status, leaving little time for ensemble pieces like this. But while it lasted, she helped bring a youthful buoyancy to MGM’s films that’s hard to resist.

And this comedy-drama about college life, originally set at Princeton University, grapples with many issues that resonate today. For weeks the producers at MGM struggled with the rigid requirements of Joe Breen and his Motion Picture Production Code enforcers who objected to, among other things, the many scenes of drinking in the original script. After multiple rewrites and assurances that none of the characters would be too scantily dressed or too drunk, the script finally passed muster. What few people know is why screenwriter Jane Hall’s worries about the effects of alcoholism go back to her early childhood. For more about that, you may want to check out the book.

 

 

What Movies Teach Us About Being Women-Thank you Manohla Dargis

 

 

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Jane Hall created her own images of women in 1930s movies: Trailer can be seen here

“Movies teach us all sorts of things: how to aspire, whom to fantasize about, (all those princes will come), how to smoke, dress, walk into a room (always like Bette Davis). They teach us whom to love and how, as well as the ostensible necessity of sacrificing love along with careers. . . .movies get into our bodies, making us howl and weep, while their narrative and visual patterns, their ideas and ideologies leave their imprint.” Manohla Dargis, NYT, 12/2/18

HAPPY HOLIDAYS  TO YOU ALL!  I plan to be back on track with more regular posts in 2019.

In the meantime, click here for a recent New York Times article by Manohla Dargis.  that looks at what women learn about themselves from the movies– an Important theme in Such Mad Fun. It’s intriguing to imagine what movies and television programs have done to shape our images of who we are meant to be. And to think about what’s happening to our sense of ourselves –or to the views of our male partners or family members– if we watch movies such as these by women directors, or diverse television programming such as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Crown, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Mme Secretary, or even Hallmark Movies.

A record 1.21 million viewers watched the Hallmark Channel’s holiday-themed movies between October 30 and November 26. Try analyzing the formulas behind some of these. The plots are often clever, even if predictable, and the casts are more diverse than ever. But viewing these is total escape. That’s the charm. There are a surprising number of fantasies that include a young woman who ends up with a prince. (Is that because Hallmark is owned by Crown Media?) And there are also many career women and men who must compromise their goals (or change them) for the sake of true love. Big-city life and all-consuming ambition do not win out over bucolic settings with thousands of Christmas lights, snowball fights, culinary delights, and good-hearted people doing the right thing. Everything always turns out okay, despite a crisis that occurs about 17 minutes before the end of each movie. No wonder the viewership is up at a time when that’s not the case in so many peoples’ lives.

Another theme of Such Mad Fun is the impact of glamour on women in the 1930s and 1940s. Right outside my window sits the Flagler Museum with a superb exhibit related to this topic. To learn more about how Edward Steichen invented glamour photography click here for an illustrated article by Jan Sjostrom. I was blessed to have both my California daughters visit the Flagler (and me!) here in Florida in the last month. Plus one son-in-law and two grandsons. The boys’ favorite moment at high tea at the Flagler was probably the sight of a not-so-glamorous but impressive huge iguana climbing up a palm tree outside the window. But Florida’s invasive species are way beyond the scope of this post.

Best wishes for a joyful and healthy new year to all my followers and visitors to the site! More to come….

Poplar Springs Manor –New Priorities for a Historic Venue

 

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A Section of the Driveway to Poplar Springs Circa 1932

Happy August to you all who have been following Jane Hall’s story and other posts. Please disregard the much older post you just received about Poplar Springs history as it was not supposed to be resent.  I simply looked it up for some info.

But there is news. Poplar Springs has a new owner as of July 11. It will be a reception and event venue (as it was when I originally started doing that in the 1990s in “spare time” in order to keep the property open–it has had two owners since then.) But that means it will no longer be available all the time for individuals to stay at the inn, book for meals at the restaurant, or come for happy hours as was the case with the prior owners (who have been most gracious to deal with.) There will be an opportunity to join the spa or come for the day, and to stay at the Inn when no big events are planned. The new owner, Antonio Cecchi, is an expert in event planning and execution in several places in Northern Virginia already. An article in Fauquier Now (8/8) explains their plans as described by new owner Antonio Cecchi:

“They [have]closed the restaurant, refreshed the buildings and grounds and rebranded the venue as Poplar Springs Manor, dropping inn and spa from its name.

Those two elements will reopen to the public, however. The spa offers a range of services, and patrons may buy passes to its saltwater pool for $15 a day or $100 a month. The pool and spa have limited beverage and food services.

Available first to wedding and events clients, the 21-room inn also will offer its services to the public on a limited basis, Mr. Cecchi explained. An online booking service soon will allow guests to reserve rooms on dates that don’t conflict with events there.

He described the Fauquier property as a natural complement to his company’s other venues, which include Raspberry Plain Manor and Rose Hill Manor near Leesburg. Along with Foxchase Manor in Prince William County, those venues host more than 700 weddings and events a year, according to Mr. Cecchi.

Already, he said, clients have booked Raspberry Plain Manor for every Saturday and Sunday through 2019.

That will create more opportunities for Poplar Springs, which already had a base of events business, and Gala Cuisine, the parent company that offers a range of catering services, Mr. Cecchi said.

“We have venues in Loudoun, Prince William and, now, Fauquier,” he said. “Each one offers something a little different.”

Rental prices for Poplar Springs Manor range from $8,000 to $10,000 for an event. The company offers a range of a la carte options for food, beverages and service. Clients also can use outside caterers.

A client can rent the entire inn for $4,000 a night or a suite for $500.

Will the venue make money?

“Oh, of course,” Mr. Cecchi said. “We don’t start without knowing the outcome we expect . . . .

“Overall, we’re just cleaning it up, giving it the TLC it needs . . . . The building’s in great shape.”

Hoping to learn more about the plans for Poplar Springs, Casanova resident Ike Miller drove up to Foxchse for Tuesday night’s event.

“I’m disappointed that you won’t be open for dinner,” Mr. Miller told Mr. Cecchi. “But, I understand your business model.”

As they talked, dozens of couples wandered around the large ballroom, talking with photographers, DJs, bartenders and caterers eager for their business. With a large, diverse staff, Gala Cuisine handles lots of international weddings, with a range of global food options and customs.

Mr. Miller, who owns a flooring business in Warrenton, later said: “I’m glad someone with experience and means bought (Poplar Springs). They know what they’re doing.”

Poplar Springs will host an open house to showcase its offerings on Sunday night, Nov. 4, Mr. Cecchi said.”

And here is a link from the Smithsonian that describes the real estate success of the family patriarch Giuseppe Cecchi  who built the Watergate and much more.

I will miss the restaurant on the rare occasion I can get to Virginia as will many people who live in the area. The new owners will, however, reach out to the local community. Although I had nothing to do with the sale, I did have a congenial conversation with Antonio Cecchi about some of their plans for the historic property.

 

 

Immigration in Context

[image error]While exercising in the condo’s pool yesterday, I noticed a small brown beetle floating in the water. When I was ready to leave, I realized it was still alive. There was a toy football on the edge of the pool, so I let the beetle climb on it and placed it in the shade. It seemed relieved. Not two minutes later a four-inch lizard came out of the bushes and grabbed the beetle; it stood staring at me for quite a while with the creature in its mouth. Then it flicked a sassy tail and proudly carried it away. Relief? Pride? Is this too much anthropomorphic thinking? In any case, what a no-win situation for a desperate South Florida beetle.

I’d been watching the news before I went to the pool;  perhaps inappropriately, this little incident made me think of all the anguished parents and children struggling to stay alive in perilous conditions, coming here to the USA to be rescued and not finding a safe haven; instead they have been swallowed up in our chaotic bureaucracy.

Yes, immigration has been on our minds lately. The current humanitarian crisis is one that, for most Americans, tears at our heartstrings. Still it is useful to put this refugee crisis in some historical perspective and to understand the way our debates over this subject in the past reveal who and what we are as a nation. Two articles I came across recently give some broader context to the thousands of men, women and children streaming into the U.S. from Central America. Yesterday’s New York Times (6/23/2018, B1) looks at migrants on the rise around the world and the myths about them that are shaping our attitudes. One conclusion is that “people perceive there are more immigrants than there really are.”

The late Peter J. Duignan wrote a thoughtful survey of the complex history of immigration in America (1780-2003) for the Hoover Institution. The suggestions at the end of his essay follow the sentiments you would expect from a conservative public-policy think tank. But no matter what your perspective is on what we should do about immigration, the historical background is invaluable.

I was also curious about attitudes towards those who hoped to escape from persecution by coming to the U.S. during the late 1930s when my mother Jane Hall worked on screenplays for Louis B. Mayer in Hollywood. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, after World War I, “America’s restricted immigration laws reflected the national climate of isolationism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, and economic insecurity.” The 1924 Johnson Reed Act—in place until 1965—set quotas on the number of visas available for specific countries. “The quotas were calculated to privilege ‘desirable’ immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. They limited immigrants considered less ‘racially desirable,’ including southern and eastern European Jews. Many people born in Asia and Africa were barred from immigrating to the United States entirely on racial grounds.” And there was no formal refugee policy at all. In late November 1938, 72% of Americans responded “no” to this question: “Should we allow a larger number of Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the United States to live?” And, after July 1941, when “the State Department centralized all alien visa control in Washington, DC . . . emigration from Nazi occupied territory was virtually impossible.”  We know how that turned out.

These brief forays into our immigration past revealed that much of the language being used today in our heated and bitter current debates, both pro and con immigration, is language that has been used before. Those who wanted to put the most stringent limits on immigration have often stoked fears in the minds of Americans that their jobs will be taken away, or they will be threatened by crime. But the opposite of anthropomorphizing is dehumanizing. And in none of the bare-bones research that I did was there any reference to an American political figure (let alone the president) who described families seeking freedom and safety within our borders as “animals” who want to “infest” our country.