OLD FILM REVIEW
 |
NIGHTMARE
ALLEY (1947)....In 1974 film critic, Clive T. Miller, wrote..........."Nightmare Alley (1947) is the quintessential B
movie spoiled by an A production. If the studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, had
left well enough alone, Nightmare Alley would have be hard and nasty. Or
if they had turned it into a full-fledged A project, it would have become a
classic." That's wrong. It is a classic - a carnie adventure beginning as a slow whimsical romp and ending as a deeply disturbing moral tale of ambition and deceit. It's based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, a largely unsuccessful writer who, at 53, suicided in a Times Square hotel leaving behind a business card saying: NO ADDRESS, NO PHONE,
RETIRED, NO BUSINESS, NO MONEY. (Available on Youtube)
THE OVERLANDERS (1946)
THE HARDER THEY COME (1972)....A pioneering film that set the stage for the big reggae boom of the mid-1970's. Starring Jimmy Cliff, its the story of a country boy's misadventures when he travels to the city to become a pop star. Manipulated and ripped-off by an evil record exec, the boy, Ivan Martin, enters the gangster world of guns, easy money and the adoration of the underclass who view him as an outlaw hero. The end is not unexpected, and armed with a couple of pistols and some fancy clothes, he tries to fight off a small army of soldiers who thwart his escape to Cuba. The film would probably be largely forgotten now except for the soundtrack - a desert island disc that should stand proud in any record collection worth its salt. Jimmy Cliff, The Melodians, The Mayals.,The Slickers, Desmond Dekker. (Available on Youtube)
THE SUN SETS AT DAWN (1950)
A noir crime melodrama that fills in time on a rainy weekend. The story of an innocent man waiting to be executed in an unnamed US jail. Despite religious overtones its entertaining, comic in places and looks good. B grader that critics of the time though was OK. (Available on YouTube)
KISS OF DEATH (1947)
I always though Victor Mature was one of those mid-C20 actors, like Ronald Reagan, who were everywhere but did nothing special. I picture him dressed as a Centurion, or in a robe or toga, or in a loin cloth fighting lions and baddies in the the Coliseum, or being whipped on the back by a guard as he rowed a Roman galleon across the Mediterranean while Frank Thring ate grapes on the top deck. I still do, but in Kiss of Death he breaks the mould as he plays a "good bad guy" in this thriller of note. A young and sneering Richard Widmark also appears. He's a really, really bad guy, and together with Victor he jostles for survival in the mean world of noir. My tip to watch came when the film got a passing mention in James lee Burke's book New Iberia Blues. John Ford's My Darling Clementine was a major focus point of that novel. It also featured Victor who played a tubercular 'Doc' Holliday alongside Henry Fonda who played Earp. Good for a rainy day. (Available on Youtube)
BOOK REVIEWS
(Old, new and unavailable)
THE CRY OF THE OWL (Patricia Highsmith)
Another pearler from this 1962 offering by Patricia Highsmith. Not her best but that doesn't matter. The story of implied guilt where a woman falls in love with a prowler and mayhem breaks loose. In love with death. In fear of death. A howl hooting in the night. Crickets singing at sunset. Gunshots through the window. Seconal galore. Being blamed for a crime you didn't commit. Nasty people driving through darkened laneways in the twilight. (Still in print.)
NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRIA (Robert K. Massie).
A man dies in a Paris street on a beautiful spring day. Somebody takes a photograph, and when it appears in the newspaper, he is identified as three different people. Is he a murderer? Did he make a fortune as an owner of an African mine? Is a woman mistaken when she claims she was once his mistress?
The body, guarded jealously by the concierge of his apartment building, lays in his room while the police try to work it all out....
Simenon is famous for creating the French detective Maigret, a pipe smoking sleuth, whose adventures are always worth a read. A favourite of the French intellectual class. Camus in particular. Probably much loved by the patrons of Les Deux Magots, (The Two Maggots), a famous cafe in Paris.
(Bought second hand for $1, but still in print...).
THE BLUNDERER by Patricia Highsmith
Jim Falk is a private detective in the northwest Tasmanian town of Plover. His brother and fellow PI, Ray, is bashed outside a local hotel with a cricket bat and …
That’s the start of The Malicious Egg - a three-part illustrated novel by Australian artist Reg Lynch, a hard boiled number that begins with a plane crash and ends in a punk bar in New York City. On the way there are revolutions, plenty of rye whiskey drinking and people who are out for good time.There’s lots of neat drawings and funny lines, as well…
(Jim talking to a detective investigating Ray’s bashing and wanting to know if he had any enemies…)
“There was a bit off a scuffle with some fishermen about a month ago. They, um, objected to being filmed unloading the catch.”
“What was the boat called?”
“The Red Herring.”
He had to think about that one……
In Reg’s words… “The Malicious Egg is a wry, yet compelling mystery story of cruelty, violence, love, duty, myths, madness, hats, and some seriously unresolved family issues..” In my mind that covers everything.(Copies and enquries; reglynch@bigpond.com)
SOMEBODY IN BOOTS by Nelson Algren
Self described as “ primitive and politically naive” Nelson Algren’s first novel, Somebody’s In Boots, still packs a big punch. Better known for his later works, Walk on The Wild Side and The Man with Golden Arm,
Algren was a mid-twentieth century wildcard of American literature,
famous for both his affair with Simone de Beauvoir and his political
views during McCarthyism.
Somebody in Boots, first published in 1935, tells the story of Cass, the teenage son of a lowly paid railway worker in a shanty town on the Texas/Mexico border. It’s depression time, jobs are non-existent, and heavy drinking eases the pain of a futile existence. Violence, in turn, is a way of life, and when his father, a fighting man, murders a fellow worker for no real reason, Cass leaves his sister and drunken brother and heads out in search of some form of happiness.
The freight train odyssey takes him around the the hobo jungles of impoverished southern states and finally to Chicago where heavy gun-related crime crime begins to dominate his life.... Drunks. Conmen. Grifters. He meets them all many times over.... And there's no redemption. Losers remain losers, and those at the top of the pile consolidate their positions.... A hard-edged Woody Guthrie-like narrative with echoes of John Steinbeck and other social document writers of the day. Cormac McCarthy’s Sutree also comes to mind…(Bought from a second hand book dealer at Surry Hills markets. Out of print, but several editions available online)
THE LIFE OF BUFFALO BILL by William Cody
“In
1857 I was barely eleven when I shot my first Indian. He was chief. I
knew that from his headdress. His name I never learned. Here is the
story….”
A great opening line from The Life of Buffalo Bill, an autobiography penned at early the last century when William Cody’s legend status had reached its zenith and before the 'Elvis-on-horseback' image had faded into myth, movies and merchandise.
Born in Iowa in 1846, William Cody probably would have gone unnoticed had not fate intervened when his abolitionist father died from stab wounds after a fight with a pro-slaver. From that point, when young Bill took his first job on wagon train carrying supplies for the US Army’s brief war with the Mormans in Utah, violence wasn’t too far away. By the age of 11 he’d fought and killed a grizzly bear, and was deaf in one ear when he froze in a snow blizzard.
By fourteen, as a cowboy with a reputation as a master tracker and marksman, he’d hunted down thieves, murderers, joined the pony express as an early recruit and killed more Indians. A stint as a scout for the Union Army during the Civil war further boosted the legend and by the age of thirty his reputation allowed him to wear spangled buckskin suits and parade the prairies on his prancing steed, the legend culminating when a remnant band of Indians, cowboy rough riders, unbroken broncos and small herd of buffalo all joined forces and travelled the world in his wild west show.
Along the way we meet George Custer, the infamous Red Cloud, Black Kettle and Little Beaver, and hear of massacres, that in their time, were considered necessary for white man’s progress westward. Bravery and courage were words of the day.
An interesting read for those who understand that a lot of bad shit went down in history, and that, in most cases, the damage can’t be repaired. Its also in interesting to understand that the Buffalo Bill’s of their time can only be judged as pawns. They did what they were allowed and bathed in the accolades. Don't pull down their statues. Erect signs to expose their folly. History CAN be re-written but its bad parts SHOULD NOT be hidden away.
(Found as a give-away at a Vinnies in Canowrinda, NSW. Probably uniavailable)
GRIMM'S FAIRY TAKES by The Grimm Brothers
Published
under the pseudonym of Don Holliday in 1962, this little pearler is
about sex. Boy-girl sex, boy-boy sex, girl-girl sex, girl-boy-girl sex,
oral sex, every type of sex you can imagine or read about. And while all
this is happening a crazed, razor-toting maniac is roaming the street
of Juarez and El Paso killing women. Beatniks, teenage runaways,
gamblers and ramblers dominate the narrative as we follow the killer's
trail from Oklahoma to Mexico.... Lawrence Block, a successful author
of over 100 novels, including the acclaimed Matt Scudder series, learned
his craft churning out such material under various pen names including
Jill Emerson, Paul Kavanagh, Sheldon Lord, Andrew Shaw, Lesley Evans,
Lee Duncan, Anne Campbell Clark, and Ben Christopher. In 1960-61 he
totalled 18 books in all. That's a lot of words. And a lot of sex. Great cover, as well.. (Bought
at garage sale in Glebe but the re-release is is probably still
available in book shops.)
HELL'S ANGEL by Ralph 'Sonny' Barger
There are many
by-products of war both human and technological. My guess is that
Adolf Hitler, if he'd been a GI in WW2 and not a defeated and
disillusioned German patriot in WW1 he would have been in a bike gang.
Maybe even formed his own. Wars have a habit of creating monsters who
didn't exist prior to the first shots being fired. Biker culture in the
US, for example, came to the forefront in the late 1940s and early
1950s when ex-soldiers with no jobs and nowhere to call home, sought
comraderie in the disciplined world of gangs. Machinery not used in the
war was cheap and surplus clothing was abundant. In summer a T-Shirt
would keep you cool, and in winter a leather flying jacket would keep
you warm. All that was now needed was to find a bunch of like minded
people and a gang would materialise. The personal story of Sonny Barger, an
early Hell Angel, is similar, and although he was too young for fight in
WW2 he would've loved the experience and quite willingly died fighting for his definition of 'freedom' which to him meant doing anything he wanted and fuck everybody else - a loser out to justify a shitty life where law, governments, cops, schoolteachers and anybody with in authority was 'anti-freedom' and needed to taught a lesson on how to behave. The book suggests the Angels were just a bunch of normal good-time blokes who liked to ride Harleys and party hard. They never did anything wrong, were all hard working young men who attracted trouble because they were expressing their God-given right to enjoy their 'liberty'. We learn that he didn't like Mick Jagger and that the Hell's Angel's pool cue bashing at the Altamont Rolling Stones concert was the fault of the organisers. We also hear that he liked to take drugs but was never guilty of being a big dealer. We also learn that it was always somebody else's fault when he found himself in trouble, that he was always set-up for stuff he didn't do....Just a ' 'naughty' boy fighting for the American way of life...In short, background details are far more interesting that the overall narrative....(Bought at Vinnies for $2. A big seller and still available)
CARTOON IDEAS
1.
Inside her tent, the fortune teller is dressed in a turban and looking deep into her crystal ball on the table. Sitting opposite is a very nervous man. Behind him on ogre has raised an axe and is about to bring it down on his head. The fortune teller says, "You will die a horrible death."
2.
Bored housewife sits on the living room couch smoking a cigarette. An elephants stands in front of her on the carpet. "Thought it was you," she says, "At least you could have knocked."
3.
Drawn with simple line, a la Saul Steinberg or Reg Lynch, the image in my mind depicts a man and woman standing in an art gallery. Paintings adorn the walls and sculptures dot the room. Against the wall there is a pile of human cadavers, a pool of blood around them on the floor. The man strokes his chin and says. "That's well executed."
4.
Two well-dressed sophistocates, a man and woman, stand at the bar of a rough pub. Tuxedo, furs and jewellery. They've been to an opera or a premiere or something similar. Through the window we can see a chauffeur standing by a limousine. Next to him a prostitute leans against a light pole. Inside, in the background, a man has collapsed on a tabletop, the contents of his spilled drink on the floor with cigarette butts and other detritus. A couple of burly blokes are throwing darts. There's a horse race on the television. The bartender, cigarette in between fingers and hairs from ears and nose, is holding a bottle of champagne. He says, "Sorry ma'am. But because we haven't got any ice buckets I won't charge for the bubbles, OK?" (
5. A man lies on an examination table in a doctor's surgery. One of his feet is huge - a least a metre tall. The rest of his body is normal. The doctor studies the foot and says: "And when did you first notice this problem?"
6. Two women of normal stature stand on the street talking. One holds a leash of a four metre high dog. She says, "Either the vet gave me the wrong tablets or the pet shop was lying."
FAMOUS ODD BODS
JOHN ROMULUS BRINKLEY was an American physician, a dodgy entrepreneur, and one of the first big promoters of country and western music, when back in the 19930's, he established a million watt radio station in Mexico that drowned out the less sonically powerful US competitors and allowed him control of the southern airwaves. As a result, one of his favourite acts, THE CARTER FAMILY, became the first country music superstars when, due to considerable radio play, sold lots of records and raked in the bucks. Brinkley, loaded already, made his fortune in a far less conventional manner, accruing his wealth in the 1920's by pedaling questionable cures and specialising in what he termed as revitalization surgery...This involved transplanting goat testicles into older men eager to reclaim their youthful vitality. He kept a small herd of animals penned behind his surgery or, of you wanted you could bring your own. He died in 1942 from a heart attack after a leg amputation.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, also know as William the Bastard, was so fat when he died that his body exploded when forced into a stone sarcophagus in the Caen church where was to be entombed. The stink lasted for weeks.
MARCUS AURELIUS, Roman Emperor (AD 121-180), was one of the first documented drug addicts, his medicinal doses of opium prescribed by his personal physician, Galen of Pergamon, a man well-known as a vivisector of live apes. Galen preferred the rhesus and macaques monkey as they had rounded faces and resembled humans.They were tied to boards to stop them struggling while their ribs and beating hearts were removed. In his writing he made no mention of their pain. His findings were still being used as reference by others until the 17th century.
RUPERT BROOKE, like many of his generation, imagined himself as a romantic warrior who believed that death on the battlefield was greater than life itself. “I had not imaged fate could be so kind,” he wrote before he departed for Gallipoli in 1915. “….Never been so pervasively happy; like a stream flowing entirely to one end. I suddenly realised that my ambition in life has been - since I was two - to go on a military expedition against Constantinople.”
NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRIA (Robert K. Massie).
An excellent look at the intrigues of the last of members Romanov dynasty. An explanation as to what happened in pre-revolutionary Russia and why. A revealing portrait of Rasputin, his mesmeratic power over Alexandria and her consequential manipulations of the country's political landscape. A story of family life and the horrors of heir, Alexis's, battle with haemophilia, and how Queen Victoria of Britain, unintentionally and unbeknownst to her, was the family's initial gene carrier of the disease. Reading like a thriller, the story ends with the justified collapse of the autocracy and the unnecessary execution of the family. (Bought at Vinnies for $2, but still in print)
HOW TO SELL YOUR CAR
FOR MORE THAN IT'S WORTH
(Gregory C. Hill)
An historical romance about buying cars in the 1970's.
All the tricks used car dealers use to make an ordinary
car appear to be something special. The art of detailing.
Blackening the wheels. Cleaning the engine. Shining the
chrome. Long out of print and probably unavailable
anywhere, the book is still relevant for those with a
low budget and a need to travel. Even if there is no
carburetors anymore. (Discovered in a suitcase at the
bottom of my wardrobe during a clean-out)
TOBACCO ROAD
(Erskine Caldwell)
Depression time in the 1930s. Southern white trash. A story of dodgy survival. Raw in content and style, a big seller in its time that was adapted to an equally successful Broadway play. An book of its time that probably wouldn't be published nowadays because of its sexual and racial references. The cover is a perfect illustration of the first 30-odd pages. Another six drawings and you'd have a graphic novel. (Still available. This copy was lifted from a pile of old books in a friend's shed.)
INQUEST ON BOUVET by George Simenon
A man dies in a Paris street on a beautiful spring day. Somebody takes a photograph, and when it appears in the newspaper, he is identified as three different people. Is he a murderer? Did he make a fortune as an owner of an African mine? Is a woman mistaken when she claims she was once his mistress?
The body, guarded jealously by the concierge of his apartment building, lays in his room while the police try to work it all out....
Simenon is famous for creating the French detective Maigret, a pipe smoking sleuth, whose adventures are always worth a read. A favourite of the French intellectual class. Camus in particular. Probably much loved by the patrons of Les Deux Magots, (The Two Maggots), a famous cafe in Paris.
(Bought second hand for $1, but still in print...).
THE BLUNDERER by Patricia Highsmith
…A classic from the early 1950’s The Blunderer is a story of bad situation becoming worse when a husband, a New York lawyer, fantasises the murder of his wife only to discover his dreams are realised when she’s found dead at the bottom of a cliff. He didn’t kill her, of course, but his prior and subsequent actions drag him into the centre of police inquiries. It’s also about upper middle class manners where maids do the cooking, everybody sips martinis after work and back lawns are decorated with afternoon cocktail parties. Mind games are to the forefront as the characters - husband, murderer and cop - mentally spar their way to a nifty conclusion. Highsmith is best know for her debut novel Strangers on A Train and the series of books featuring society murderer, Tom Ripley. Menacing.
PS. Highsmith, apparently, didn’t like Koreans because “they ate dogs.” (Found in a bargain bin but still in print)
THE MALICIOUS EGG by Reg Lynch
That’s the start of The Malicious Egg - a three-part illustrated novel by Australian artist Reg Lynch, a hard boiled number that begins with a plane crash and ends in a punk bar in New York City. On the way there are revolutions, plenty of rye whiskey drinking and people who are out for good time.There’s lots of neat drawings and funny lines, as well…
(Jim talking to a detective investigating Ray’s bashing and wanting to know if he had any enemies…)
“There was a bit off a scuffle with some fishermen about a month ago. They, um, objected to being filmed unloading the catch.”
“What was the boat called?”
“The Red Herring.”
He had to think about that one……
In Reg’s words… “The Malicious Egg is a wry, yet compelling mystery story of cruelty, violence, love, duty, myths, madness, hats, and some seriously unresolved family issues..” In my mind that covers everything.(Copies and enquries; reglynch@bigpond.com)
SOMEBODY IN BOOTS by Nelson Algren
Somebody in Boots, first published in 1935, tells the story of Cass, the teenage son of a lowly paid railway worker in a shanty town on the Texas/Mexico border. It’s depression time, jobs are non-existent, and heavy drinking eases the pain of a futile existence. Violence, in turn, is a way of life, and when his father, a fighting man, murders a fellow worker for no real reason, Cass leaves his sister and drunken brother and heads out in search of some form of happiness.
The freight train odyssey takes him around the the hobo jungles of impoverished southern states and finally to Chicago where heavy gun-related crime crime begins to dominate his life.... Drunks. Conmen. Grifters. He meets them all many times over.... And there's no redemption. Losers remain losers, and those at the top of the pile consolidate their positions.... A hard-edged Woody Guthrie-like narrative with echoes of John Steinbeck and other social document writers of the day. Cormac McCarthy’s Sutree also comes to mind…(Bought from a second hand book dealer at Surry Hills markets. Out of print, but several editions available online)
THE LIFE OF BUFFALO BILL by William Cody
A great opening line from The Life of Buffalo Bill, an autobiography penned at early the last century when William Cody’s legend status had reached its zenith and before the 'Elvis-on-horseback' image had faded into myth, movies and merchandise.
Born in Iowa in 1846, William Cody probably would have gone unnoticed had not fate intervened when his abolitionist father died from stab wounds after a fight with a pro-slaver. From that point, when young Bill took his first job on wagon train carrying supplies for the US Army’s brief war with the Mormans in Utah, violence wasn’t too far away. By the age of 11 he’d fought and killed a grizzly bear, and was deaf in one ear when he froze in a snow blizzard.
By fourteen, as a cowboy with a reputation as a master tracker and marksman, he’d hunted down thieves, murderers, joined the pony express as an early recruit and killed more Indians. A stint as a scout for the Union Army during the Civil war further boosted the legend and by the age of thirty his reputation allowed him to wear spangled buckskin suits and parade the prairies on his prancing steed, the legend culminating when a remnant band of Indians, cowboy rough riders, unbroken broncos and small herd of buffalo all joined forces and travelled the world in his wild west show.
Along the way we meet George Custer, the infamous Red Cloud, Black Kettle and Little Beaver, and hear of massacres, that in their time, were considered necessary for white man’s progress westward. Bravery and courage were words of the day.
An interesting read for those who understand that a lot of bad shit went down in history, and that, in most cases, the damage can’t be repaired. Its also in interesting to understand that the Buffalo Bill’s of their time can only be judged as pawns. They did what they were allowed and bathed in the accolades. Don't pull down their statues. Erect signs to expose their folly. History CAN be re-written but its bad parts SHOULD NOT be hidden away.
(Found as a give-away at a Vinnies in Canowrinda, NSW. Probably uniavailable)
GRIMM'S FAIRY TAKES by The Grimm Brothers
A 1950's first edition. Fifty stories. Good read. Talking frogs
and other animals. Robbers in the dark forests. Good brothers and bad
brothers.Innocent princesses. Greedy landlords. Multi-layered ed moral tales. Everything you need to
know. And more.
(Bought in ten
bucks in a Canberra second-hand shop.)
BORDERLINE by Lawrence Block.
HELL'S ANGEL by Ralph 'Sonny' Barger
CARTOON IDEAS
1.
Inside her tent, the fortune teller is dressed in a turban and looking deep into her crystal ball on the table. Sitting opposite is a very nervous man. Behind him on ogre has raised an axe and is about to bring it down on his head. The fortune teller says, "You will die a horrible death."
2.
Bored housewife sits on the living room couch smoking a cigarette. An elephants stands in front of her on the carpet. "Thought it was you," she says, "At least you could have knocked."
3.
Drawn with simple line, a la Saul Steinberg or Reg Lynch, the image in my mind depicts a man and woman standing in an art gallery. Paintings adorn the walls and sculptures dot the room. Against the wall there is a pile of human cadavers, a pool of blood around them on the floor. The man strokes his chin and says. "That's well executed."
4.
Two well-dressed sophistocates, a man and woman, stand at the bar of a rough pub. Tuxedo, furs and jewellery. They've been to an opera or a premiere or something similar. Through the window we can see a chauffeur standing by a limousine. Next to him a prostitute leans against a light pole. Inside, in the background, a man has collapsed on a tabletop, the contents of his spilled drink on the floor with cigarette butts and other detritus. A couple of burly blokes are throwing darts. There's a horse race on the television. The bartender, cigarette in between fingers and hairs from ears and nose, is holding a bottle of champagne. He says, "Sorry ma'am. But because we haven't got any ice buckets I won't charge for the bubbles, OK?" (
5. A man lies on an examination table in a doctor's surgery. One of his feet is huge - a least a metre tall. The rest of his body is normal. The doctor studies the foot and says: "And when did you first notice this problem?"
6. Two women of normal stature stand on the street talking. One holds a leash of a four metre high dog. She says, "Either the vet gave me the wrong tablets or the pet shop was lying."
FAMOUS ODD BODS
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, also know as William the Bastard, was so fat when he died that his body exploded when forced into a stone sarcophagus in the Caen church where was to be entombed. The stink lasted for weeks.
MARCUS AURELIUS, Roman Emperor (AD 121-180), was one of the first documented drug addicts, his medicinal doses of opium prescribed by his personal physician, Galen of Pergamon, a man well-known as a vivisector of live apes. Galen preferred the rhesus and macaques monkey as they had rounded faces and resembled humans.They were tied to boards to stop them struggling while their ribs and beating hearts were removed. In his writing he made no mention of their pain. His findings were still being used as reference by others until the 17th century.
RUPERT BROOKE, like many of his generation, imagined himself as a romantic warrior who believed that death on the battlefield was greater than life itself. “I had not imaged fate could be so kind,” he wrote before he departed for Gallipoli in 1915. “….Never been so pervasively happy; like a stream flowing entirely to one end. I suddenly realised that my ambition in life has been - since I was two - to go on a military expedition against Constantinople.”
These days, that statement would be considered almost fanatical and now, if uttered with zeal and passion, there’d probably be a knock on the door by blokes
dressed in black, holding guns and protected by kevlar jackets.
Rupert, of course, is famous for his poem,
The Soldier.
Now God be thanked who has
matched us with his hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us
from sleeping
Blow out your bugles over the
rich dead!
If I should die think only this of
me;
That there is some corner in a
foreign field
That is forever England.
As
historian Alan Morehead wrote in his book Gallipoli - “All this - the charged life, the
beauty, the immense promise of his talents, was now to be risked in battle in the
classical Aegean. Its was indeed almost too wonderful for belief.”
Born in
Warwickshire in 1887, Rupert dripped with talent and good looks, and before the
Great War, flirted with the all the notables of London including Oscar Wilde
and the Bloomsbury group of writers. He attended Rugby School and King's
College Cambridge, and on the outbreak of hostilities, was commissioned in the
Royal Navy as a Sub-Lieutenant on the recommendation of Winston Churchill.
He sailed for
Gallipoli on the February 28, 1915, but sadly never fulfilled his
Constantinople dream and died on April 23, two days before landing, from a mosquito
bite infection. He’s buried on the Greek island of Skyros. His friend, William
Denis Browne, wrote of his resting place: “No one could have wished for a
quieter or a calmer end than in that lovely bay, shielded by the mountains and
fragrant with sage and thyme.”
