Quantcast
Channel: oz.Typewriter
Viewing all 1889 articles
Browse latest View live
↧

Westbrook Pegler and The Loaded Typewriter

October 24, 2016, 5:56 pm
$
0
0
When legendary American journalist Westbrook Pegler died, in Tucson, Arizona, on June 24, 1969, aged 74, newspapers across the country ran the story on page one and paid Pegler the ultimate tributes. One paper headlined its story “Acid-pen columnist dies”, another said Pegler was “Irascible, free-swinging”. Lauding him as “Pegler of the Thorny Prose”, The Cincinnati Enquirer said he “used his typewriter as other men have used a broadsword or a meat-axe”. He had been “the master of the vituperative epithet”, “a 50-year journeyman in the practice of invective”. For a typewriter-wielding newspaperman, it just didn’t get much better than that.
To be “hit by Pegler’s typewriter”, in defence of his perception of American values and the American way of life, was to be “Peglerised”, and that meant being condemned to eternal damnation. Fellow columnist Bob Considine wrote that Pegler’s typewriter “couldn’t write gray”, and that Pegler was both the most beloved and hated columnist in American “at one and the same time”.
         A Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent (the youngest in World War I) and sports writer, Pegler was both fearless and peerless. He had labelled Franklin D. Roosevelt a “feeble-minded fuehrer” and “Moosejaw”, Harry S. Truman a “hick” and a “thin-lipped hater”, J. Edgar Hoover a “nightclub fly-cop”, and Vice-President Henry A. Wallace “Bubblehead” and a “messianic fumbler”. Roosevelt asked Hoover to investigate Pegler, but the FBI found no evidence of sedition. Many other political and union leaders “came out of Pegler’s typewriter no less scathed”. One can only imagine what he would have made of Donald Trump. He might well have liked him.
         Pegler’s column “Fair Enough”, which started in the New York World-Telegram in 1933, was syndicated by United Features of the Scripps-Howard organisation and later Hearst’s King Features to 186 newspapers until 1962. He was the first columnist to win a Pulitzer for reporting. His career had started as a 16-year-old in Chicago (where his father was himself a legendary journalist), covering the 1912 Republican National Convention.
         At the height of his typewriting powers, in October 1938, Time said, “ … Pegler's place as the great dissenter for the common man is unchallenged. Six days a week, for an estimated $65,000 a year, in 116 papers reaching nearly 6,000,000 readers, Mister Pegler is invariably irritated, inexhaustibly scornful. Unhampered by coordinated convictions of his own, Pegler applies himself to presidents and peanut vendors with equal zeal and skill. Dissension is his philosophy.”
        Here is a piece Pegler wrote from the 1936 Winter Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria:
Paul Gallico
↧
Search

The Divided States of America: How David Mamet and his Olympic Portable Typewriter Foresaw the American Nightmare

October 29, 2016, 6:55 pm
$
0
0
Brigitte Lacombe’s iconic New Yorker magazine image of David Mamet writing his Oscar-nominated adapted screenplay for Wag the Dog in his cedar cabin on his farmhouse in Cabot, Vermont, in 1997. He is using an Olympic SM portable typewriter.
My American friends appear to be deeply divided over who to vote for on Tuesday week. Herman Price, no doubt, would have been keeping his fingers crossed that politics stayed out of the equation when the faithful gathered in West Virginia for the annual QWERTY Award fest this weekend - though there were some rednecks in the mix. I can empathise. With just 240 hours left until E-Day, there remains a choice between a candidate accused of making advances to young women, the unwelcome involvement of a government intelligence agency, a potential whistleblower who was knocked off and, in the background, a war - of sorts (and not all that distant from Syria). Sound familiar?
'Truth, justice and other special effects'
         Yep, last night we got out the DVD of Barry Levinson’s 1997 black comedy Wag the Dog, adapted screenplay by David Mamet, and reminded ourselves that there’s really very little new in the wacky world of United States Presidential election campaigns. The movie’s 20th anniversary will be marked by the inauguration next year of the 58th US president and commander-in-chief, two full decades after the candidates came straight from Mamet’s lurid imagination. The action in the screenplay, eerily, starts 11 days out from a presidential election. OK, so Wag the Dog is heavily coated-on cynicism, but how else can one view from this considerable distance the shambles that is the showdown between Mr Trump and Madam Clinton?
Mamet’s screenplay was an original rewrite after an earlier adaption by Hilary Henkin of Larry Beinhart's book American Hero, which came out in 1993 as a satirical conspiracy theory novel. It hypothesised that Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait in early 1991 had been scripted and choreographed as a ploy to get George H.W. Bush re-elected (taking a cue from Margaret Thatcher's similar war in the Falkland Islands). Mamet has Washington spin doctor Conrad Brean (played by Robert De Niro) set out to distract the electorate from a presidential sex scandal. Brean hires a Hollywood film producer (Stanley Motss, based squarely on Robert Evans and played brilliantly by Dustin Hoffman, a role for which Hoffman won a best actor Oscar nomination) to construct a fake war with Albania. Kirsten Dunst plays a young actress playing a supposed Albanian civilian war victim, presumably the real-life grand-daughter of the left-behind-in-Vienna Harry Lime (this is clever stuff from Mamet). The CIA gets involved, first wanting to expose the phony war then abruptly electing to end it. Wag the Dog, even more eerily, was released a month before the outbreak of the Lewinsky scandaland the subsequent bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan by the Clinton administration.

In the great tradition of Dr Strangelove, Mamet’s wonderfully drawn characters include a seriously deranged soldier (Sergeant William ‘The Old Shoe’ Schumann), played with much conviction by Woody Harrelson. Anne Heche is equally impressive at Brean’s assistant Winifred Ames.

At the time of Wag the Dog’s release, Chicago Sun-Timesreviewer Roger Ebert said, “The movie is a satire that contains just enough realistic ballast to be teasingly plausible; like Dr Strangelove, it makes you laugh, and then it makes you wonder.” The wondering, I’m afraid, is over. Little did Ebert know that in 2016, Wag the Dog would become frighteningly less satirical and take on a great deal more realistic ballast. It is no longer teasingly plausible, but an actual commentary on the presidential election. Oh, how clearly Mamet saw it coming!
↧
↧

Fallout: Nevil Shute's Vision of the End of the World

October 31, 2016, 4:40 pm
$
0
0
"For self-expression, some people turn to the ukulele. I turned to the typewriter."
 -Nevil Shute, quoted in The West Australian, June 26, 1954.
Above, Shute at his portable typewriter, London, April 1950. Below, a scene from Fallout.
The timing of the Special Broadcasting Service's screening on Sunday night of Lawrence Johnston's outstanding 2013 documentary Fallout, about Nevil Shute's 1957 post-apocalyptic novel On the Beach and the 1959 Stanley Kramer movie based on it, was, I thought, a bit pointed.
The more so because, toward the end of it, journalist Gideon Haigh ponders the on-going relevance of Shute's vision of the end of the world. Haigh, saying the threat of nuclear destruction is probably more likely now then ever before, added, "the world is an ammunition dump which one stray spark could set off." SBS seemed to be posing the now appropriate question: Is that "stray spark" - or loose cannon -  about to be put in charge of the nuclear codes?
How we were taught to avoid annihilation.
Not that suitably alarmed Australian viewers can do anything about it, but next week's US Presidential election is of some reasonable concern for those of us living Down Under. After all, in Shute's book, this is where the world ends. And I have a keen recollection of the very real fear On the Beach instilled in us when it was first published - a fear subsequently enhanced by the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.
A family album snap of Shute with his portable typewriter and writing desk at his home at Pond Head, Hayling Island, Hampshire, England.
Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960) was an English-born novelist and aeronautical engineer who spent his later years in Australia. His story of the nuclear holocaust, written at his home at Langwarrin, south-east of Melbourne, originally appeared as a four-part series, The Last Days on Earth, in the London weekly periodical Sunday Graphic in April 1957. It was expanded into the novel On the Beach.
Shute began writing fiction as a sort of "nancy" sideline in the early 1920s - using a second-hand Blickensderfer typewriter. His first two novellas, Stephen Morris in 1923, and the continuation, Pilotage in 1924, both typed on the Blick, remained unpublished until 1961, a year after his death.
Shute started work as an engineer for the De Havilland Aircraft Company in 1922 and his earnings enabled him to buy a more up-to-date, new portable typewriter in the mid-20s. His first published novel, Marazan (1926), was typed on that. Shute felt it may not have been "quite a coincidence".
This later typewriter, depicted in the mural above, was used in "Bedroom No 8 in the Oxford and Cambridge Club. In this room, in the bad years between July 1940 and September 1944, I wrote three novels: Pied Piper, Most Secret and Pastoral."
A large part of Kramer's movie version of On the Beach was filmed on location in Melbourne. Female lead Ava Gardner was none too impressed with the then ultra-conservative city, and was alleged to have said, "On the Beach is a story about the end of the world, and Melbournesure is the right place to film it." These words, however, were actually put together on a portable typewriter by a young Sydney journalist, Neil Jillet, who was covering the filming. Jillet, unable to get an interview with Gardner, typed: "It has not been confirmed that Miss Gardner, as has been rumoured at third-hand from a usually unreliable source, if given the chance, would seriously consider whether, if she managed to think of it, would like to have put on the record that she said: 'On the Beach is a story about the end of the world, and Melbourne sure is the right place to film it.'" Unfortunately, a clumsy sub-editor put these words in Gardner's mouth, and she had to live with them for the next 30 years.
"Get me out of this bloody dump," pleads Ava.
↧

Chicago Cubs win first World Series since 1908: Blickensderfer Typewriters Celebrate!

November 2, 2016, 10:15 pm
$
0
0
The Chicago Cubs have broken the longest title drought in American sports, beating Cleveland in a thrilling Game 7 to claim a first World Series baseball title since 1908.The Cubs won 8-7 in the first extra inning to complete a remarkable comeback from 3-1 down in the best-of-seven series.
↧

Ticking All The Boxes

November 12, 2016, 9:11 pm
$
0
0
One-time Cincinnati lass. the 4ft 9in tall Brenda Lee, and, left, Benny Green.
My L.C. Smith No 8
Who connects an L.C. Smith No 8 with Tom Furrier of Cambridge Typewriter, Wisdencricket almanacks,
P. G.Wodehouse, Cincinnati and my Top 12 all-time music heroes: Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Ben E. King, Bo Diddley, Ray Charles, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck? Surely someone very, very special indeed …
Dominic Green
B
ACK in 2010, James Buchan wrote in a Guardianreview of the book Armies of God: Islam and Empire on the Nile, 1869-99 - The First Jihad of the Modern Era that author and jazz guitarist “Dominic Green's qualifications for writing about the Mahdist state established in Sudan between 1881 and 1898 are a degree in English from Oxford and a stint playing guitar behind Dionne Warwick. It proves a model education.”
In the six years since, Green has ticked even more boxes, and become, at least in my eyes, a model citizen of the world.
Bernard Whimpress
My friend Bernard Whimpress of Adelaide, one of Australia’s leading book reviewers, has pointed me in the direction of Green’s article “The Pulpit” in last month’s edition of the Literary Review. Green opened the piece by revealing he’d written it using a L.C. Smith No 8 standard typewriter. Green, who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, then went on to say he’d bought the machine from none other than Typospherian Tom Furrier of Cambridge Typewriter, Arlington MA.
Digging a little deeper into the life and times of Dominic Green (1970-), I found he is the son of legendary British saxophonist Bernard “Benny” Green (1927-98) and the brother of another remarkable saxophonist, Leo Green (1972-). These family ties link Dominic Green with all of the above.
For me, the pinnacle of Benny Green’s achievements was that he was a member of that wonderful late 50s British band Lord Rockingham’s XI.  The name of the group is a clear pointer to Green’s passion for cricket, and sure enough Benny edited and published theWisden Anthologies, a summary of the famous cricketing annual. These four volumes cover the highlights from Wisden Cricketers' Almanack from its inception in 1864 until 1989 and stand as a major milestone in cricketing literature.
Lord Rockingham's XI was the house band on ITV's rock 'n' roll show Oh Boy! Its biggest single success was one of those long forgotten one-hit wonders, Hoots Mon, which reached No 1 on the British charts for three weeks in November-December 1958. Another track, Fried Onions, made the US Billboard Top 100. Lord Rockingham's XI  backed Marty Wilde, Cuddly Dudley and Cincinnati’s Brenda Lee (1944-). (Well, I say Cincinnati for obvious reasons, though the 4ft 9in tall Lee, as Brenda Mae Tarpley, lived there only briefly in the mid-50s - she was actually from Atlanta, Georgia. In Ohio she performed at the Jimmy Skinner Music Center.)
Tom Furrier at Cambridge Typewriter
Hoots Mon is a rocked-up version of the traditional Scottish song A Hundred Pipers, complete with such stage Scotticisms as “Hoots mon” (the Australian version of which is “Gidday, mate, how they hangin’?”), “och aye” (yes), "It's a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht tanicht" ("It's a fine, bright moonlit night tonight") and “there's a moose loose aboot this hoose [about this house]".
P.G.Wodehouse
Benny Green loved the work of P. G. Wodehouse and wrote a literary biography about Wodehouse– who gets a mention in Dominic Green’s Literary Review article. As a keen student of English literature (at St John’s College, Oxford), a musician and an author, Dominic Green closely followed in his father's footsteps. He also studied the history of religion at Harvard.
Leo Green
      Similarly, his younger brother Leo Green became a musician, broadcaster, producer, actor, musical arranger and concert promoter. Leo played sax for Jerry Lee Lewis and was long-serving a member of Van Morrison's band. By the age of 30, he had worked with Ben E. King, Bo Diddley, Bob Dylan, , Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Dionne Warwick, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton, Georgie Fame, James Brown, Jeff Beck, Lionel Richie, Little Richard, Paul McCartney, Ray Charles, Ray Davies and Ronnie Wood, to name but a few. Leo Green was the musical director and conductor for Burt Bacharach and Hal David during their show at the Royal Albert Hall. 
      And so, just to summarise, Dominic Green ticks all my boxes because:
1. He likes typewriters.
2. He uses a typewriter.
3. He has met Tom Furrier.
4. His dad loved cricket, edited my favourite cricket books, and wrote about Wodehouse.
5. His dad played on Hoots Mon
6. And his brother has recorded with all 12 of my all-time music heroes.
Enough said?
Ring Lardner
Donald Barthelme
Richard Wilbur
↧
↧

The Great Sydney Typewriter Gathering

November 23, 2016, 3:45 pm
$
0
0
Excitement is mounting to fever pitch as we enter the last three weeks before the Great Sydney Typewriter Gathering on December 14. It won't so much feel like Santa has arrived early, as like all of our Christmases have come at once!
This unique event will bring together, for the first time, typewriter technicians Phil Card, Warren Ingrey and Terry Cooksley of Sydney, Melbourne's Michael Klein (an occasional contributor to this blog) and Canberra collector Jim Franklin, who once worked here for Sydney Pincombe Pty Ltd.
These five typewriter wizards will joined on December 14 by renowned collector Richard Amery, just back from cruising around earthquake-shaken New Zealand, and Charlie Foxtrot owners Phil and Julie Chapman, plus their new business partners. In an attempt to further lower the average age of attendees, another typewriter collector going to Sydney will be the brilliant young Canberra journalist Jasper Lindell. So the occasion promises to be one for the ages.
Also invited to this first-ever national typewriter gathering is technician-collector David Lawrence of Auckland, New Zealand, whose presence would turn an already mouth-watering event into an international one. Here's hoping he can make it, otherwise I'll have to wear the Kiwi colours myself. Either way, a never-to-be-forgotten day of typewriter talk and typewriter action is assured ... the Mother of All Typewriter Gatherings Down Under.
 Warren Ingrey
 Phil Card, left, and Richard Amery
 Terry Cooksley
 Michael Klein
Jim Franklin
 Jasper Lindell
Julie and Phil Chapman
↧

My Kinda Gal: I Stopped Typing for a Bump on the Stairs with Sarah Miles

November 24, 2016, 6:13 pm
$
0
0
Above: Screenwriter Robert Bolt at his Olympia in 1966.
Below: A much older and feebler Bolt with his wife Sarah Miles (they married twice). A fall down the stairs by Miles in 1967 fall didn't disrupt Bolt's typewriting.
In 1967, English actress Sarah Miles decided to marry screenwriter Robert Bolt, based purely on Bolt's single-minded devotion to his Olympia semi-portable typewriter. Now there's one sensible lady!
Miles and Bolt were living together when Miles took a tumble down the stairs. "Robert was typing in the sitting room and I fell down harshly, bang, and twisted my ankle," Miles recalled. "His typewriter never changed rhythm and I thought, ‘This is the man I'm going to marry'. Until then I'd been suffocated by men." Miles said she was attracted to Bolt's implacable self-discipline and dedication to work - and to his typewriter.
Miles with Irish actor Cyril Cusack, my one-time housemate.
Miles, who turns 75 at the end of this year, played Patricia in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966) and Vera in Joseph Losey's The Servant (1963). But she is probably best remembered for her Oscar-nominated title role as Rosy Ryan in the 1970 David Lean movie Ryan's Daughter, written by Bolt. It was filmed on Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry in Ireland. A few years ago I returned to Dingle and followed Miles' footsteps down Coumeenoole Beach there. But it was by no means the closest I'd ever come to this delectable and quite fascinating lady. I used to share a house in Dublin with Irish actor Cyril Cusack (the house belonged to his ex-wife), a close friend of John Mills, who won an Oscar for his role as the simpleton Michael in Ryan's Daughter. Miles once visited Cusack and I encountered her on the stairs - I DID disrupt my typing to do so, but she DIDN'T take a tumble!
Above, Miles as Rosy Ryan on Coumeenoole Beach at Dingle in Ryan's Daughter. Below, me looking down on Inch Strand in 2010. Below that is Australian actor Leo McKern playing Ryan, at the wedding of his "daughter" [Miles] to Robert Mitchum.
Bolt (1924-95) wrote and directed the 1972 film Lady Caroline Lamb, in which Miles played the eponymous heroine, the lover of Lord Byron and wife of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (later Prime Minister). He also wrote the screenplays for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Man for All Seasons, the last two of which won him Oscars.
In 1979 Bolt suffered a severe heart attack and stroke which left paralysed down the right side of his body. He could not walk or talk for two years, and he was never able to use his typewriter again. He replaced the Olympia with a word processor and taught himself to tap out screenplays with his left hand.
↧

The Tasmanian and the Revolutionary: Swashbuckling Errol Flynn and Fidèl Castro

November 27, 2016, 5:34 am
$
0
0
Toward the end of his debauched life, fading Tasmanian-born Hollywood star Errol Flynn spurned the swords and the green tights, grabbed his Royal portable typewriter and headed for Havana for Hearst Newspapers.
He arrived in Cuba with photographer Bill Crespinell just as Fidèl Castro’s rebels were preparing to sweep down from the Sierra Maestra to topple the corrupt Batista dictatorship. “He was in the fighting zone as a kind of war correspondent,” Castro later told the Los Angeles Times. Flynn's stated rationale? "Ever since boyhood I have been drawn, perhaps romantically, to the ideas of causes, crusades. I wanted to see what makes an idealist tick." And his finding? "Anyone with intelligence is a Communist at 20, anyone who's a Communist at 40 is a fool." But was the real reason an attempt to butter up to Castro to save his investment in a Havana movie theatre, post-revolution?
Flynn stands beside Che Guevara listening to Castro in Sierra Maestra
Flynn wrote features headlined "Me and Castro" and "I fought with Castro" for the New York Journal-American after a mere five days, from Christmas Day 1958, in the mountains with Castro. "I feel that the citizens will know who you are ... and it will cheer them to know that someone from the United States, whom they perhaps have seen on the screen, is interested enough to come and see them," Castro told him. In return Flynn gave Castro lessons in public speaking.  
Flynn stayed long enough to see Castro sworn in as Cuban president in February 1959. Back in the US, he appeared on CBC’s Front Page Challenge and naively defended Castro. Nonetheless, his documentary, The Cuban Story, which played once in Moscow and was then lost until a print turned up in 2004, has become one of the key accounts of Castro's revolution. Flynn died in Vancouver, aged 50, on October 14, 1959.
↧
Search

Cruisin''n' Typin'

December 4, 2016, 7:53 pm
$
0
0
The Emerald Princess under the Sydney Harbour Bridge
Sydney typewriter collector Richard Amery has returned from a cruise on the Emerald Princess to earthquake-rattled New Zealand, in good time for next week's Great Sydney Typewriter Gathering (December 14). Richard never misses a trick when it comes to typewriters - or a day without using one - and naturally he took a machine with him (an Olivetti Lettera 22 portable) on his voyage to the Shaky Isles. Here is a typecast from a letter he sent me:
The Emerald Princess in Sydney Harbour
The Emerald Princess in Milford Sound, New Zealand
 Richard Amery, centre, and Terry Cooksley, right, admire a Blick Ninety
now owned by Richard Polt.
Another typewriter collector headed for the Great Sydney Typewriter Gathering is Jasper Lindell, seen here marking the anniversary of the infamous "Dismissal" on the steps of Old Parliament House in Canberra. "It's Time" all right - for the biggest typewriter event in Australia ever!
↧
↧

David Bowie's Olivetti Valentine Typewriter Sells For $A74,263

December 5, 2016, 5:32 pm
$
0
0
David Bowie's Olivetti Valentine portable typewriter sold at an auction at Sotheby's in London last month for a staggering £45,000 - that's $74,263 Australian and $56,565 United States money. But it's still far from a record for a typewriter, which belongs to Cormac McCarthy's Olivetti Lettera 32, sold at Christie’s for $US254,500 (£199,919 or $A341,511 at today's rates) in December 2009, and Ian Fleming's gold-plated Royal Quiet Deluxe, sold at Christie's in May 1995 to Irish actor Pierce Brosnan for £56,250 ($US71,606, or $A96,058 at today's rates). Mind you, Sotheby's had estimated Bowie's Valentine would fetch between £300 and £500 ($495-$825 Australian or $377-$629 US).
The Valentine was part of the auction of Bowie's personal collection of fine art and design pieces. The auction grossed $US41.1 million (the art collection sold for $US30.2 million and the design collection for an additional $US10.8 million). The works sold represented about 65 per cent of Bowie’s total collection. The rest remains with his family and estate. 
Bowie was obviously keen on Ettore Sottsass designs. The salt and peppers shakers sold for £7500.
 An eye-catching custom radio-phonograph by Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglioni Brionvega from 1965 sold for £257,000 at Bowie's auction.
 Bowie at a much more practical if more prosaic Smith-Corona typewriter in Los Angeles in 1975.
↧

Oh, How I Miss The Days of Copytakers!

December 7, 2016, 7:29 pm
$
0
0
Moira Foot and Benny Hill (as Dickie Davies) in the Benny Hill Show's "World of Sport" skit (February 18, 1976). Exaggeration? Not a bit of it. Here's the Real McCoy, mini skirts and all:
↧

RIP A.A.Gill (1954-2016): Lily the Dog Shat in his Typewriter

December 10, 2016, 8:18 pm
$
0
0
I fear I'm letting Richard Polt down here by posting on a deceased writer without an image of said writer at a typewriter. The problem is A.A. Gill rarely used a typewriter, because he suffered from severe dyslexia and almost all of his writing was dictated. During a visit to Australia for the Sydney Writers' Festival in 2011, Gill explained that "I've never been able to write properly", but that he could read from what he had written. "I then read it to you, and as I read it, I edit it. Because I write in the first-person, I think it's got to sound like the first person, that it has a voice. Ideally what should happen is when you read what I've written you should hear a voice talking it to you. All first-person writing should be desiccated talk - it should be a perfect, long discursive monologue, and when you read it you add the mental liquid that brings it back to being sound, and you should hear it. That's why it's important for me to read it out loud - so I know what it sounds like, and I can tell when it's clunky or needs another word. I also think that writing is all about rhythm."
During his heavy drinking days, in his late 20s, Gill did once borrow a typewriter from the wife of a friend. However, he went on a bender over several days, leaving his dog Lily locked inside his house. Lily defecated into the typewriter and Gill returned it as was. (See Pour Me: A Life, p40, for the full gory details.)
At 30, Gill gave up drink but kept on smoking. In July 1999 he wrote in The Sunday Times: "When on occasion I'm asked by groups of aspiring writers what they should do to get on, my advice is always, emphatically, smoke. Smoke often and smoke with gusto. It's a little known, indeed little researched, fact of literature and journalism that no non-smoker is worth reading. And writers who give up become crashing bores."
Adrian Anthony Gill has died at the aged of 62 from smoking-related cancer. He was diagnosed just three weeks ago, writing at the time in The Sunday Times, "I've got an embarrassment of cancer, the full English. There is barely a morsel of offal that is not included. I have a trucker's gut-buster, gimpy, malevolent, meaty malignancy."
Gill was born in Edinburgh on June 28, 1954, and came to be regarded as one of the finest writers in the English language. As a columnist for The Sunday Times, Vanity Fair and Esquire, Gill said in print the things others might have thought but were always afraid to write. He described the Welsh as "loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls". 
The younger, heavy drinking, heavy smoking, dog trapping Gill.
On Britain remaining in the European Union, Gill said, "We all know what ‘getting our country back’ means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective 'yesterday' with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty."
On public relations people: "I have never acted on a press release or gone out to dinner with a PR. I think PR is a ridiculous job. They are the headlice of civilisation."
On American exceptionalism: "America didn’t bypass or escape civilisation. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilisation could be."
On success: "The interesting adults are always the school failures, the weird ones, the losers, the malcontents. This isn’t wishful thinking. It’s the rule."
On journalists: "Freedom of speech is what all other human rights and freedoms balance on. That may sound like unspeakable arrogance when applied to restaurant reviews or gossip columns. But that’s not the point. Journalism isn’t an individual sport like books and plays; it’s a team effort. The power of the press is cumulative. It has a conscious human momentum. You can – and probably do – pick up bits of it and sneer or sigh or fling them with great force at the dog. But together they make up the most precious thing we own."
On eating pasta: "Pasta is eaten by happy smiley people having fun with people they love or fancy and are about to shag. Noodles are eaten by people who have no friends.”
On Prince Charles: "Prince Charles’s vocal chords are plainly trying to strangle him. He may well become the first monarch to lose his head from the inside out.”
On Celine Dion: "She is a symbol of cultural rot, a corny, calculated act for clueless, obese fans.” 
↧

Tomorrow Never Knows

December 13, 2016, 1:05 am
↧
↧

The 'Blind' Typing Test: Big Sydney Typewriter Bash - Julie Chapman versus Jasper Lindell using a Willy Scheidegger Princess Matic

December 14, 2016, 12:12 pm
↧

The Big Sydney Typewriter Bash

December 15, 2016, 5:53 pm
$
0
0
Wednesday's Big Sydney Typewriter Bash very much lived up to its advance billing. The 100-degree temperature cooled no-one's ardour for the occasion, and the six-hour typewriter talk fest steamed on, hot and heavy. It was a lot of fun, and definitely the best typewriter event I've attended since the sixth annual Herman Price gathering at the Chestnut Ridge Typewriter Museum at Fairmont, West Virginia, in October 2013. Not since then I have I seen so many genuine typewriter wizards huddled around machines, pouring their collective expertise into the mix. In truth, there were probably more trained typewriter technicians at Rooty Hill on Wednesday than there were at Chestnut Ridge in 2013. What's more, these masters of their trade each brought along bits and pieces of memorabilia from their days in the once-flourishing Australian typewriter industry, and spoke at length about their experiences. What memories they shared, and what memories we all will now have of this unique typewriter-saluting day.
Five of the best: back row, from left - Michael Klein from Melbourne, Jim Franklin from Canberra, Phil Card of Colyton; seated - Warren Ingrey of Stanhope Gardens and Terry Cooksley of Blackett.
Host Richard Amery greeted us with displays of typewriters fore and aft, plus some associated reading material. This included the latest book from Peter Weil and Paul Robert, Typewriter: A Celebration of the Ultimate Writing Machine. Judging by the comments made about it, I'm sure this new tome from the Newark-based "Weil-werke" will be getting heaps of sales Down Under.
One of the main reasons for the Sydney gathering (as if any excuse was needed) was to farewell Julie and Philip Chapman, whose company Charlie Foxtrot has introduced a new era for typewriter sales in Australia. Julie and Philip are leaving for England next month to start a British branch of Charlie Foxtrot, and I feel sure their impact on the typewriter trade in that country will be as great as it has been here over the past five or six years. The Australian Charlie Foxtrot business will remain in operation under new owners and readers of this blog will be getting a lot more information on both the British and Australian outlets in the coming weeks.
In the image above, Julie and Philip were presented with a set of gold Smith-Corona blazer buttons, produced to mark SCM's golden jubilee in 1962. Then host Richard Amery, donning his 1970 SCM supervisor's clambake apron and chef's hat, rolled out the pre-Christmas spread:
Above, examples of Michael Klein's old work sheets, showing him servicing typewriters at up to 10 workplaces a day in Melbourne, along with a couple of his work tools. Below, some of the single type elements Michael has collected over the years, including a deceptively small type drum from a teletype machine and a more elaborate one from Olivetti. 
One of the highlights of the day was the "blind" typing test match between Julie Chapman and young Canberran Jasper Lindell, using a Willy Scheidegger Princess Matic with coloured caps on the keytops. Jasper did extremely well with the Scheidegger, but the "go-to" machine he took to the gathering was a Hermes Baby given to him by Georg Sommeregger in Switzerland a few years back.  "You can't leave Switzerland without a Hermes Baby," Georg told him.
Afterwards, Phil Card, Warren Ingrey and Michael Klein set to getting Terry Cooksley's "new"Imperial Model B portable operational. With such enormous typewriter brain power going into the effort, it was little wonder the machine was soon working like new.
Future posts will show some Warren Ingrey typewriter poetry and Michael Klein typewriter literature.
↧
Search

LIFE at Christmas: Part I - 50 Years Ago (1966)

December 17, 2016, 2:15 pm
$
0
0
This is the start of a four-part series using LIFE magazine to wander down memory lane and look at Yuletide advertising and topics of the day from 50, 60, 70 and 80 years ago. This post will be followed by selected pages from LIFE from Christmas 1956, 1946 and finally 1936.
It was unusual to find "house ads" in LIFE
1966 fashions
Yet more Middle East conflict,
less than six-months out from the Six-Day War. 
Colour TV, nine years before it was fully implemented in Australia.
Admiral forced Jack Tramiel to use 'Commodore' for his typewriters.
I have no idea what this gadget did, but it looks very impressive.
Cars were actually getting much smaller. This Ford ad line reminds one of the colour-driven mid-1920s Royal portable typewriter advertising campaign.
Remember cap guns? Or in this case capless.
Oh what fun we had with Polaroid cameras. Trouble is, the images didn't last so well.
'Flameless' clothes dryers and $200 dishwashers:
Next: 1956
↧

LIFE at Christmas: Part II - 60 Years Ago (1956)

December 17, 2016, 9:22 pm
$
0
0

LIFE devoted its special Christmas edition of 1956 to a "state of the nation" look at "The American Woman: Her Achievements and Troubles". The image of an FBI typing pool, above, was spread across two pages of the magazine.
The sexes were still, apparently, at loggerheads, and women's lib a way off yet ...
But LIFE laid the facts on the line:
And this is what the 20-year-old American woman looked for in a prospective husband:
One of the featured women was Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who used a state-of-the-art Royal portable typewriter:
The only mention of the trade name Remington was for this electric razor. Cars were ENORMOUS - but very beautiful:
Howard Johnson's looked far healthier than McDonald's (and no doubt was), but spaghetti dinner from a packet? And sausages with maple sugar syrup? Yuck!
Women's fashion, like typewriters, had reached its zenith, and some of the "typical" young women of California, Texas, Paris and Israel packed rifles, but were eternally stunning nonetheless:
Still, it seemed that for most, a women's place remained in the home, albeit with all mod cons:
Yuletide punches looked absolutely delicious - I'm going to try these 60-year-old (and more) recipes this coming Christmas:
↧
↧

LIFE at Christmas: Part III - 70 Years Ago (1946)

December 18, 2016, 2:26 pm
↧

LIFE at Christmas: Part IV and last - 80 Years Ago (1936)

December 19, 2016, 2:06 am
$
0
0
In its Christmas 1936 edition, LIFE magazine declared "Australian" actress Merle Oberon"the next movie queen". It added that Oberon's alleged birth in Tasmania was "a romantic fact" (I kid you not!). Oberon was, in fact, born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson in Mumbai (then Bombay) on February 19, 1911, the daughter of a 12-year-old mother, Constance Selby (herself the daughter of a 14-year-old mother,  Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Sri Lanka [Ceylon] with part Māori heritage). Oberon suffered a stroke and died in Malibu, California, on November 23, 1979, aged 68.
With the abdication of her uncle, to marry an American divorcee, Britain's now Queen Elizabeth II became the new heir to the English throne.
Tattoos were LIFE news:
An updated version of this ad appeared in LIFE 20 years later, in the Christmas 1956 edition.
↧

Typewriter Books for Christmas

December 22, 2016, 4:51 pm
$
0
0
The book publishing event of any genre in 2015 was undoubtedly Richard Polt's The Typewriter Revolution, an exceedingly hard act to follow. Happily, however, four other typewriter collector-historians have since been game enough to tackle that task. There are now three new typewriter-related works available for those looking for that very special gift for the discerning friend or partner for Christmas 2016.
Peter Weil and Paul Robert have put out Typewriter: A Celebration of the Ultimate Writing Machine, Tyler Anderson has The Fox Typewriter Company available online, and Typex editor Michael A. Brown has released a second volume of his Stolen Typewriters, nine years after the first came out.
Peter Weil very kindly express-posted me a signed copy of Typewriter and my nose has been so deeply buried in it ever since it arrived that I haven't even got around to thanking him for it yet (shame on me, utter shame). My main excuse is that Peter's book has inspired me to start work on my own new book, A History of Typewriters in Australasia - so inspired, indeed, that I have already written more than 27,000 words and 12 chapters in a month - maybe it will reach its very limited market by Christmas 2017!? 
As with Mike Brown's Stolen Typewriters, Typewriter comes nine years after Peter's and Paul's previous joint effort, The Typewriter Sketchbook, to which Flavio Mantelli and Richard Milton were other contributors. Typewriter follows with a hard cover, many more fine images and a stylish layout. 
The price makes it exceptionally good value, too. I took the copy Peter sent me to the Big Sydney Typewriter Bash last week and it immediately caught the eye of the many typewriter devotees who were there. I know that at least a couple have already ordered copies online and I suspect there will be quite a few more sales in this country. Of course, an embossed cover image of an Imperial Model B (I also took the real thing with me to Sydney) helped, at least in the case of Imperial aficionado Richard Amery, host of the bash. Yes, Richard is one of those who has already bought his own copy of Typewriters. A review of Typewriters by Martin Howard appears in the December issue of ETCetera.
Unlike the various versions of Imperial typewriters, the Fox was never a big seller in Australia. One reason might be indicated by an amusing incident at a meeting of the Hurstville council in Sydney in 1909. Purchasing a Fox was recommended, but when a councillor asked about the maker of the machine, he was told "Reynard and Co."
Had Tyler Anderson been around back then, he would have been able to better inform the councillors. Tyler, perhaps best known to Typospherians as blogger "Words Are Winged", of Spokane, Washington, has written a history of the Fox Typewriter Company, as well as an article on the fortunes of the Fox portable which appears in the latest (December) edition of ETCetera, winging its way to Australia as I write. (It's not too late, by the way, to consider an ETCetera subscription as what would be a greatly appreciated Christmas present.)  Tyler has also air-mailed me, and I was delighted to receive this surprise Christmas greetings postcard a couple of weeks ago. The "It's a Fox" advert seen above was on the front of the card. Tyler's Fox book is available online through Lulu, as was Jett Morton's Oliver Typewriter Company history in 2011.
This full-page spot colour advert for the Fox portable appeared in the May 1917 edition of Typewriter Topics. I used it in my own blog post on the Fox portable, which appeared in April 2013. See it here.
Above is the cover of Mike Brown's first volume of Stolen Typewriters. For a copy of the second volume, contact Mike directly at the Typewriter Exchange (Typex).
↧
Viewing all 1889 articles
Browse latest View live
Search