American Beauty Rose
Showing posts with label Carl Van Vechten. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carl Van Vechten. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Sunday, December 20, 2009
These Three Kings - A Christmas Carl. Part 3
Today we celebrate Carl Van Vechten, June 17, 1880 – December 21, 1964, on the anniversary of his passing.
Though, in all fairness, I suppose one would have to say bisexual. He was married twice. For 5 years beginning in 1907, he was the husband of Anna Snyder, a childhood friend from Cedar Rapids. Then in 1914 he wed Russian born actress Fania Marinoff. They remained married for 50 years until his death. But a glance at the "self portrait" below, will tell you he wasn't the butchest thing on the planet!
Through all my research there is almost nothing that elaborates on the matter. Most sources simply say, "though married, an open homosexual." or "his personal papers were locked for 25 years following his death but when opened, letters and scrapbooks were found dealing with the matter". I did manage to find out, however, that he sat on the panel of judges for the gala drag balls hosted by the Savoy Ballroom. Now there's a fun job!
But really, the only research needed is ones eyes. When you look at the pictures, no matter their subject (authors, actors, dancers, or boys at the Harlem Public Swimming Pool) It's all there in black and white. And color.
Marlon Brando
Boy at pool
Dancer
Dancer
Dancer
Dancer
Dancer
Truman Capote
So today on my official Carl Van Vechten Day we say Thanks! Now go put on a Bessie Smith record and mix up a pitcher of Sidecars!
TITLE #3- QUEER!!
Though, in all fairness, I suppose one would have to say bisexual. He was married twice. For 5 years beginning in 1907, he was the husband of Anna Snyder, a childhood friend from Cedar Rapids. Then in 1914 he wed Russian born actress Fania Marinoff. They remained married for 50 years until his death. But a glance at the "self portrait" below, will tell you he wasn't the butchest thing on the planet!
Through all my research there is almost nothing that elaborates on the matter. Most sources simply say, "though married, an open homosexual." or "his personal papers were locked for 25 years following his death but when opened, letters and scrapbooks were found dealing with the matter". I did manage to find out, however, that he sat on the panel of judges for the gala drag balls hosted by the Savoy Ballroom. Now there's a fun job!But really, the only research needed is ones eyes. When you look at the pictures, no matter their subject (authors, actors, dancers, or boys at the Harlem Public Swimming Pool) It's all there in black and white. And color.
Marlon Brando
Boy at pool
Dancer
Dancer
Dancer
Dancer
Dancer
Truman CapoteSo today on my official Carl Van Vechten Day we say Thanks! Now go put on a Bessie Smith record and mix up a pitcher of Sidecars!
These Three Kings - A Christmas Carl. Part 2
Today we celebrate Carl Van Vechten, June 17, 1880 – December 21, 1964, on the anniversary of his passing.
His next title is actually a three parter.
After the death of his brother left him an inheritance of roughly six million dollars, he bought his first Leica 35mm camera in 1932. Chinese American actress (and Goddess) Anna May Wong was his first official sitting on April 20th of that year.
A small sampling of names that he would eventually shoot are: Judith Anderson, James Baldwin, Tallulah Bankhead, Jane Bowles, Marlon Brando, Erskine Caldwell, Truman Capote, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Ruby Dee, Ella Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lynn Fontaine, Billie Holiday, Horst P. Horst, Mahalia Jackson, Frida Kalo, Sydney Lumet, Alfred Lunt, Norman Mailer, Somerset Maugham, Henry Miller, Georgia O'Keeffe, Lawrence Olivier, Diego Rivera, Cesar Romero, Beverly Sills, Gertrude Stein, James Stewart, Alfred Stieglitz, Bessie Smith, Gore Vidal and Orson Welles.
Billie Holiday and Mister
Harry Belafonte
Jane Bowles
Lady Day
Orson Welles
By 1924 Van Vechten became immersed in the Harlem Renaissance and in Harlem itself. Some of the members of this electric time of creativity were, novelist and NAACP co-founder James Weldon Johnson, nightclub propietrix Bricktop, novelist Zora Neale Hurston, and poets Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. He interceded with Knopf on behalf of the latter so that the groundbreaking collection of Hughes's verse, The Weary Blues, appeared in print in 1926.
Beginning in 1925, he wrote a series of articles in Vanity Fair on blues singers like Bessie Smith and invested in a staging of African American spirituals performed by Paul Robeson.
At the very height of his career as an author he invited controversy with the release of his novel, "Nigger Heaven". The shocking (then as now) title had many critics from both races. The phrase nigger heaven had two meanings. Firstly, it was Harlem's nickname by it's own residents, and it was also the term used for the theater balconies where blacks were made to sit, even in their own neighborhood. But for all the detractors, there were equal in numbers of supporters. In an essay in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Bruce Kellner termed the novel "a deliberate attempt to educate Van Vechten's already large white reading public, the novel presents Harlem as a complex society fractured and united by individual and social groups of diverse interests, talents, and values." James Weldon Johnson stated in his review for Opportunity that Van Vechten "pays colored people the rare tribute of writing about them as people rather than puppets."
Zora Neale Hurston
The Weary Blues bookjacket
Bricktop
Smalls nightclub
Club Rendezvous
The Apollo Theater
Harlem Catholic Church
The Big Apple
Van Vechten's *sensitivity* to the arts and artists, both black and white was not merely intellectual.....
...Which will bring us to ...PART 3.
His next title is actually a three parter.
TITLE #2 - Photographer. Photo-Documentarian of the
International Modernist Crowd.
Champion of The Harlem Renaissance and it's Members.
International Modernist Crowd.
Champion of The Harlem Renaissance and it's Members.
After the death of his brother left him an inheritance of roughly six million dollars, he bought his first Leica 35mm camera in 1932. Chinese American actress (and Goddess) Anna May Wong was his first official sitting on April 20th of that year.
A small sampling of names that he would eventually shoot are: Judith Anderson, James Baldwin, Tallulah Bankhead, Jane Bowles, Marlon Brando, Erskine Caldwell, Truman Capote, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Ruby Dee, Ella Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lynn Fontaine, Billie Holiday, Horst P. Horst, Mahalia Jackson, Frida Kalo, Sydney Lumet, Alfred Lunt, Norman Mailer, Somerset Maugham, Henry Miller, Georgia O'Keeffe, Lawrence Olivier, Diego Rivera, Cesar Romero, Beverly Sills, Gertrude Stein, James Stewart, Alfred Stieglitz, Bessie Smith, Gore Vidal and Orson Welles.
Billie Holiday and Mister
Harry Belafonte
Jane Bowles
Lady Day
Orson WellesBeginning in 1925, he wrote a series of articles in Vanity Fair on blues singers like Bessie Smith and invested in a staging of African American spirituals performed by Paul Robeson.
At the very height of his career as an author he invited controversy with the release of his novel, "Nigger Heaven". The shocking (then as now) title had many critics from both races. The phrase nigger heaven had two meanings. Firstly, it was Harlem's nickname by it's own residents, and it was also the term used for the theater balconies where blacks were made to sit, even in their own neighborhood. But for all the detractors, there were equal in numbers of supporters. In an essay in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Bruce Kellner termed the novel "a deliberate attempt to educate Van Vechten's already large white reading public, the novel presents Harlem as a complex society fractured and united by individual and social groups of diverse interests, talents, and values." James Weldon Johnson stated in his review for Opportunity that Van Vechten "pays colored people the rare tribute of writing about them as people rather than puppets."
Zora Neale Hurston
The Weary Blues bookjacket
Bricktop
Smalls nightclub
Club Rendezvous
The Apollo Theater
Harlem Catholic Church
The Big AppleVan Vechten's *sensitivity* to the arts and artists, both black and white was not merely intellectual.....
...Which will bring us to ...PART 3.
These Three Kings - A Christmas Carl. Part 1
Well it's really one monarch with three different titles.
Today we celebrate
Carl Van Vechten, June 17, 1880 – December 21, 1964,
on the anniversary of his passing.
TITLE #1 - The Author.
In my cradle days (seventeen to be exact) I one day ventured into the Lambda Rising bookstore. It was then in a row house on S st., NW just east of Connecticut Ave. in our nations capital. About five minutes into my browsing, a paperback caught my eye. It was on the bottom shelf as the books were displayed in alphabetical order by author. It was called "Parties" by Carl Van Vechten.
I picked it up really for the cover art. It made me happy. Reading the back cover it seemed to have something to do with New York in the twenties. Well I had always kinda felt that I had been born in the wrong era, and the twenties seemed to be interesting enough from what I had heard: speakeasies, bathtub gin, flappers and what not. This might just be fun to read. Then I looked at the publishing date, 1930! Holly cow, a book about the twenties, written in the twenties. Sign me up! So to the sales counter I went. One copy of Parties and a free copy of the "Washington Blade" and off I went.
I loved that book. I devoured that book! And it began for me, not a constant and avid, but a never abated fascination with Mr. Van Vechten. Since that long ago day in 1977 I've only managed to read one other of his books (The Tattooed Countess) but the fascination in the man, and my research on him, has mined riches.
About "Parties": It concerns a group of beautiful rich young do-nothings each with their own fabulous art deco penthouse. Their lives being spent on a succession of days that go something like this: Four pm, wake up as the butler brings in a bed tray of sidecars. At six-ish or so, it's off to a favorite speakeasy. Around ten, to some glorious home for a dinner party. One am, head to a jazz spot in Harlem. Sometime after dawn, home to pass out. Then rinse and repeat.
And it's floridly descriptive of fashions, of Harlem, of cocaine use and of bisexual and interracial affairs. In short - it's dreamy. He started writing the book days after the '29 crash and it is, in fact, about the death of the roaring twenties. How funny it is that I should find the book in the late '70's (the gay community's equivalent of the Roaring Twenties.)
Van Vechten started off as a journalist, critic, reviewer and social commentator. He was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and went to college in Chicago. In 1906 he moved to New York and was hired as the Assistant Music Editor for the New York Times. He was at the Times for the next several years eventually becoming the first American critic of modern dance. Collections of his essays and articles were published through the late teens and finally Knopf Publishing put out seven of his novels between 1922 and 1930, ending with Parties.
By 1930 his career as an author was basically over. So what did he do with the remaining 34 years of his life, you may wonder.
Well, that's a story that takes us to.......
...Part 2!
Today we celebrate
Carl Van Vechten, June 17, 1880 – December 21, 1964,on the anniversary of his passing.
TITLE #1 - The Author.
In my cradle days (seventeen to be exact) I one day ventured into the Lambda Rising bookstore. It was then in a row house on S st., NW just east of Connecticut Ave. in our nations capital. About five minutes into my browsing, a paperback caught my eye. It was on the bottom shelf as the books were displayed in alphabetical order by author. It was called "Parties" by Carl Van Vechten.
I picked it up really for the cover art. It made me happy. Reading the back cover it seemed to have something to do with New York in the twenties. Well I had always kinda felt that I had been born in the wrong era, and the twenties seemed to be interesting enough from what I had heard: speakeasies, bathtub gin, flappers and what not. This might just be fun to read. Then I looked at the publishing date, 1930! Holly cow, a book about the twenties, written in the twenties. Sign me up! So to the sales counter I went. One copy of Parties and a free copy of the "Washington Blade" and off I went.
I loved that book. I devoured that book! And it began for me, not a constant and avid, but a never abated fascination with Mr. Van Vechten. Since that long ago day in 1977 I've only managed to read one other of his books (The Tattooed Countess) but the fascination in the man, and my research on him, has mined riches.
About "Parties": It concerns a group of beautiful rich young do-nothings each with their own fabulous art deco penthouse. Their lives being spent on a succession of days that go something like this: Four pm, wake up as the butler brings in a bed tray of sidecars. At six-ish or so, it's off to a favorite speakeasy. Around ten, to some glorious home for a dinner party. One am, head to a jazz spot in Harlem. Sometime after dawn, home to pass out. Then rinse and repeat.
And it's floridly descriptive of fashions, of Harlem, of cocaine use and of bisexual and interracial affairs. In short - it's dreamy. He started writing the book days after the '29 crash and it is, in fact, about the death of the roaring twenties. How funny it is that I should find the book in the late '70's (the gay community's equivalent of the Roaring Twenties.)
Van Vechten started off as a journalist, critic, reviewer and social commentator. He was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and went to college in Chicago. In 1906 he moved to New York and was hired as the Assistant Music Editor for the New York Times. He was at the Times for the next several years eventually becoming the first American critic of modern dance. Collections of his essays and articles were published through the late teens and finally Knopf Publishing put out seven of his novels between 1922 and 1930, ending with Parties.
By 1930 his career as an author was basically over. So what did he do with the remaining 34 years of his life, you may wonder.
Well, that's a story that takes us to.......
...Part 2!
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