Thankyou Ernest...

Each year, in a West Village Mexican restaurant, a dinner is held to proclaim the life, the movies, and the man known as Ernest Borgnine.  Guests sit in decorated booths wearing sailor hats and Ernest masks asking and answering questions about celebrated movies, breathtaking individual and ensemble performances, and about a man who seemed, certainly to outsiders, convincingly larger than life.

Ernest appeared in many films over as many years.  He was often pigeonholed as the gnarled, uncomprehending, at time barely incomprehensible, bully.  In 1953's 'From here to Eternity' he played the brutish James 'Fatso' Judson - a man whose sadism reached its peak in his relentless victimisation of Frank 'Maggio' Sinatra - a masterful performance and, possibly, what influenced Sturges to cast him in such a similarly unprepossessing role in his 1955 masterpiece 'Bad Day at Black Rock.'

Borgnine won an Oscar that year for his portrayal of Marty Piletti in Delbert Mann's film of the same first name.  It was an unusual role for him, but it was played with the same thoughtfulness and intelligence that was to characterise all of his performances.  He deserved his Academy award - despite depriving his friend, and the star of 'Bad day...,' Spencer Tracy, from taking the honours.

Although Ernest continued to act regularly on both the big screen and television, he never reached the heights of his earlier films  - with the possible exception of the part of 'Cabbie' in John Carpenter's marvellous 1981 'Escape from New York.'  Again, as was the case in many of his films, it was a smallish part, not a starring role.  But he brought to it a brusque charm and devilish humour, often stealing the show from his illustrious companions - a role he was to reprise with effortless regularity throughout his career.

We will miss him.

Is it really 50 years since 'Carnival of Souls?!'

 

You bet.

In 1962, the, as yet unknown, Herk Harvey decided it was time to make a movie all of his own.

He had ample writing, directing and producing experience prior to this - from the 50's through to the 80's, he worked for Centron (an independent producer of educational and industrial films), making well received docu-pics covering everything from the gloriously unremarkable - 'Manners in School' to the slightly ridiculous - 1963's, 'Pork: The Meal with a Squeal.'

Prior to his interest in meat products however, Harvey co-wrote, directed, produced and starred (well, that's stretching the truth slightly...) in 'Carnival of Souls,' one of the underappreciated genre movies of the early 1960's.

There is no real need to go into the plot - the film, now public domain, is included here for you to see for yourself.  Suffice to say it is like no other motion picture- with the possible exception of Romero's darkly claustrophobic first feature, heavily influenced by Harvey's surrealistic masterpiece, and made some 6 years later. 

Of course, you'll have to bring your own screams - that is if you can hear yourself scream above the macabre Gene Moore soundtrack...but those screams, I can assure you, will come.  Despite being made 50 years ago, the film delivers big time on chilly chills - the kind of sweet otherwordly chills that Hollywood, with few recent exceptions, appears to have neither the guile nor desire to reproduce...

Harvey died in 1996.  But his film, and his own uniquely terrifying performance in it, lives on. 

The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.

It's now almost 50 years since the publication of Rachel Carson's seminal book, 'Silent Spring;' documenting the wholesale detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment, especially on birds and the flora and fauna symbiotically associated with them.

Carson wrote her book to highlight not only these deleterious effects on avian populations, but also, in looking at the wider environmental implications per se, to draw attention to large chemical conglomerates' profligate use of these synthetic chemical pesticides to control both actual and, crucially, perceived threat from biological pests.

As a marine biologist, Carson was aware of the need for balanced ecosystems - her earlier 1951 work 'The Sea Around Us,' argues the importance of this need and fundamental understanding; communicated with the poetic insight and intensity and clarity of vision that became a trademark of all of her subsequent writings.

Throughout her writing career, Carson was vilified by many in the scientific community - and, almost without exception, by agribusiness CEO's, politicians and political commentators on Capitol Hill - as an alarmist, as an extremist, and, by some commentators, as dangerous (witness, as recently as 2007, John Tierney's vituperative assault on Carson whilst writing in the conservative New York Times [on DDT and its use as an anti-malarial agent in Africa]).

Of course, being a hysterical woman hasn't helped...

Despite those rallied and railing against her, Carson remained convinced that she was right.  Although mortally ill, she testified, in 1963, before US Senate committees/sub-committees, on the misuse of chemicals in the environment - leading, eventually, to the curtailing and subsequent banning of DDT agricultural spraying in the United States in 1972 (something that Carson was opposed to - as a scientist she believed that chemicals/their compounds should be investigated for, amongst other things, their aetiological properties).

Rachel Carson 1907-1964.  Biologist.  Writer.  Ecologist.  Read everything she wrote.

Chemical Heritage Foundation

NRDA

silentspring.org