text stringlengths 9 2.4k |
|---|
The Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland announced in March 2019 that there was enough evidence to prosecute "Soldier F" for the murders of James Wray and William McKinney, both of whom were shot in the back. He was also charged with four attempted murders. The Saville Inquiry concluded, based on the evidence, that "Soldier F" also killed Michael Kelly, Patrick Doherty and Barney McGuigan, but evidence from the inquiry was inadmissible to the prosecution and "the only evidence capable of identifying the soldier who fired the relevant shots came from "Soldier F"'s co-accused, "Soldier G", who is deceased".
Relatives of the Bloody Sunday victims expressed dismay that only one soldier would face trial for some of the killings. In September 2020, it was ruled that there would be no charges against any other soldiers. The victims' relatives were supported by Irish nationalist political representatives. "Soldier F" received support from some Ulster loyalists and from the group Justice for Northern Ireland Veterans. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) called for former British soldiers to be given immunity from prosecution. Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader and former soldier, Doug Beattie, said that if soldiers "went outside the law, then they have to face the law".
|
In July 2021, the Public Prosecution Service decided it would no longer prosecute "Soldier F" because statements from 1972 were deemed inadmissible as evidence. On 13 July 2021 Social Democratic and Labour Party MP Colum Eastwood revealed the name of "Soldier F" using parliamentary privilege. On 17 July "Village" magazine published the identity of "Soldier F" and some pictures of him at the time of the massacre.
In March 2022, the High Court overturned the decision not to press charges against "Soldier F" following an appeal by the family of William McKinney and ordered the Public Prosecution Service to reconsider the case. The PPS subsequently appealed the court's decision to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, but permission to appeal was refused that September and the PPS were forced to continue with the prosecution. In October 2022, it was announced that the committal hearing against "Soldier F" would resume on 16 January 2023. On 24 January 2023 the case against "Soldier F" was resumed at Derry Magistrate's Court. Following an adjournment, the case resumed on 26 May 2023. On 25 August 2023 Judge Ted Magill ruled that five statements given to the Widgery Report implicating "Soldier F" could be used as evidence at trial.
|
In December 2023, an evidentiary hearing was held to decide whether or not to proceed to trial. Judge Magill ruled that "Soldier F" should face trial at Belfast Crown Court. The soldier appeared in court for the first time on 14 June 2024. In December 2024, "Soldier F" pleaded not guilty to two charges of murder and five of attempted murder after Judge Mr. Justice Fowler overruled attempts by the soldier's lawyers to have the case dismissed. The trial has been scheduled to begin on 15 September 2025.
Impact on Northern Ireland divisions.
When it was first deployed on duty in Northern Ireland during the 1969 Northern Ireland riots, the British Army was welcomed by many Catholics as a neutral force there to protect them from Protestant loyalist mobs, the RUC and the B-Specials. After Bloody Sunday many Catholics turned on the British Army, seeing it no longer as their protector but as their enemy. Young nationalists became increasingly attracted to armed republican groups. With the Official IRA and Official Sinn Féin having moved away from mainstream Irish republicanism towards Marxism, the Provisional IRA began to win the support of newly radicalised, disaffected youth.
|
In the following twenty years, the Provisional IRA and other smaller republican groups such as the Irish National Liberation Army stepped up their armed campaigns against the state and those seen as being in service to it. With rival paramilitary organisations appearing in both the republican and loyalist communities (such as the UDA, Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), etc. on the loyalist side), the Troubles cost the lives of thousands of people.
In 1979, the Provisional IRA killed 18 British soldiers in the Warrenpoint ambush, most of them paratroopers. This happened the same day the IRA assassinated Lord Mountbatten. Republicans portrayed the attack as belated retaliation for Bloody Sunday, with graffiti declaring "13 gone and not forgotten, we got 18 and Mountbatten".
In 2012 a serving British soldier from Belfast was charged with inciting hatred, due to their use of online social media to post sectarian slurs about the killings along with banners of the Parachute Regiment.
In recent years, Parachute Regiment flags have been erected by some loyalists around the time of the Bloody Sunday anniversaries. In January 2013, shortly before the yearly Bloody Sunday remembrance march, several Parachute Regiment flags were flown in loyalist areas of Derry. The flying of the flags was condemned by nationalist politicians and relatives of the Bloody Sunday dead. The MoD also condemned the flying of the flags. The flags were replaced by Union Jacks. Later that year, the Parachute Regiment flag was flown alongside other loyalist flags in other parts of Northern Ireland. In 2014, loyalists erected the flags near the route of a Saint Patrick's Day parade in Cookstown.
|
Artistic reaction.
Paul McCartney (who is of Irish descent) recorded the first song in response only two days after the incident. The single, entitled "Give Ireland Back to the Irish", expressed his views on the matter. This song was one of few McCartney released with Wings to be banned by the BBC.
In March 1972, Irish traditional group Paddywagon released "Sunday Bloody Sunday", responding to the incident; it reached #1 in the Republic of Ireland.
The 1972 John Lennon album "Some Time in New York City" features a song entitled "Sunday Bloody Sunday", inspired by the incident, as well as the song "The Luck of the Irish", which dealt more with the Irish conflict in general. Lennon, who was of Irish descent, also spoke at a protest in New York in support of the victims and families of Bloody Sunday.
Irish poet Thomas Kinsella's 1972 poem "Butcher's Dozen" is a satirical and angry response to the Widgery Tribunal and the events of Bloody Sunday.
Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler (also of Irish descent) wrote the lyrics to the Black Sabbath song "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" on the album of the same name in 1973. Butler stated, "…the Sunday Bloody Sunday thing had just happened in Ireland, when the British troops opened fire on the Irish demonstrators… So I came up with the title 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath', and sort of put it in how the band was feeling at the time, getting away from management, mixed with the state Ireland was in."
|
The Roy Harper song "All Ireland" from the album "Lifemask", written in the days following the incident, is critical of the military but takes a long-term view with regard to a solution. In Harper's book ("The Passions of Great Fortune"), his comment on the song ends "…there must always be some hope that the children of 'Bloody Sunday', on both sides, can grow into some wisdom".
Brian Friel's 1973 play "The Freedom of the City" deals with the incident from the viewpoint of three civilians.
Irish poet Seamus Heaney's "Casualty" (published in "Field Work," 1981) criticises Britain for the death of his friend.
The Irish rock band U2 commemorated the incident in their 1983 protest song "Sunday Bloody Sunday".
Christy Moore's song "Minds Locked Shut" on the album "Graffiti Tongue" is all about the events of the day, and names the dead civilians.
The events of the day have been dramatised in two 2002 television films, "Bloody Sunday" (starring James Nesbitt) and "Sunday" by Jimmy McGovern.
The Celtic metal band Cruachan addressed the incident in a song "Bloody Sunday" from their 2002 album "Folk-Lore".
|
Willie Doherty, a Derry-born artist, has amassed a large body of work which addresses the troubles in Northern Ireland. "30 January 1972" deals specifically with the events of Bloody Sunday.
In mid-2005, the play "", a dramatisation based on the Saville Inquiry, opened in London, and subsequently travelled to Derry and Dublin. The writer, journalist Richard Norton-Taylor, distilled four years of evidence into two hours of stage performance at the Tricycle Theatre. The play received glowing reviews in all the British broadsheets, including "The Times": "The Tricycle's latest recreation of a major inquiry is its most devastating"; "The Daily Telegraph": "I can't praise this enthralling production too highly… exceptionally gripping courtroom drama"; and "The Independent": "A necessary triumph".
In October 2010, T with the Maggies released the song "Domhnach na Fola" (Irish for "Bloody Sunday"), written by Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Moya Brennan, Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill and Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill on their "T with the Maggies" album. |
Bruno of Querfurt
Bruno of Querfurt, O.S.B. Cam., (; 974 – 14 February or 9/14 March 1009), also known as Brun, was a Christian missionary bishop, Camaldolese monk and martyr, who was beheaded near the border of Kievan Rus and Lithuania for trying to spread Christianity. He is also called the second "Apostle of the Prussians".
Biography.
Early life.
Bruno was from a noble family of Querfurt (now in Saxony-Anhalt). He is rumoured to have been a relative of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III. At the age of six, he was sent to be educated at the cathedral school in Magdeburg, the seat of Adalbert of Magdeburg, the teacher and namesake of Adalbert of Prague. While still a youth, he was made a canon of the Cathedral of Magdeburg. The fifteen-year-old Otto III made Bruno a part of his royal court. In 995 Otto III appointed Bruno as his court chaplain.
While in Rome for Otto's imperial coronation, Bruno met Adalbert of Prague, the first "Apostle of the Prussians", killed a year later, which inspired Bruno to write a biography of Adalbert when he reached the recently Christianized and consolidated Kingdom of Hungary himself. Bruno spent much time at the monastery where Adalbert had become a monk and where abbot John Canaparius may have written a life of Adalbert. In 998, Bruno entered a Benedictine monastery near Ravenna that Otto had founded, and later underwent strict ascetic training under the guidance of Romuald.
|
Missionary life.
Otto III hoped to establish a monastery between the Elbe and the Oder (somewhere in the pagan lands that became Brandenburg or Western Pomerania) to help convert the local population to Christianity and colonize the area. In 1001, two monks from his monastery travelled to Poland, while Bruno was with Otto in Italy, studying the language and awaiting the Apostolic appointment by Pope Sylvester II.
In 1003 Pope Sylvester II appointed Bruno, at the age of 33, to head a mission amongst the pagan peoples of Eastern Europe. Bruno left Rome in 1004, and having been named an archbishop was consecrated in February of that year by Archbishop Tagino of Magdeburg. Owing to a regional conflict between the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II and Duke Boleslaus I of Poland, Bruno could not go directly to Poland so he set out for Hungary. There he went to the places that Adalbert of Prague had attended.
Bruno tried to persuade Ahtum, the Duke of Banat, who was under the jurisdiction of Patriarchate of Constantinople to accept the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, but this precipitated a large controversy leading to organized opposition from local monks. Bruno elected to gracefully exit the region after he first finished his book, the famous "Life of Adalbert of Prague," a literary memorial giving a history of the (relatively recent) conversion of the Hungarians.
|
After this diplomatic failure, Bruno went to Kyiv, where Grand Duke Vladimir I authorized him to make Christian converts among the Pechenegs, semi-nomadic Turkic peoples living between the Danube and the Don rivers. Bruno spent five months there and baptized some thirty adults. He helped to bring about a peace treaty between them and the ruler of Kyiv.
Before leaving for Poland, Bruno consecrated a bishop for the Pechenegs. While in Poland he consecrated the first Bishop of Sweden and is said to have sent emissaries to baptize the king of Sweden, whose mother had come from Poland. Bruno found out that his friend Benedict and four companions had been killed by robbers in 1003. Bruno took eyewitness accounts and wrote down a touching history of the so-called Five Martyred Brothers.
Mission to Prussia and death.
In the autumn or at the end of 1008 Bruno and eighteen companions set out to found a mission among the Old Prussians; they succeeded in converting Netimer and then travelled to the east, heading very likely towards Yotvingia.
|
Bruno met opposition in his efforts to evangelize the borderland and when he persisted in disregarding their warnings he was beheaded on 14 February (or 9 or 14 March) 1009, and most of his eighteen companions were hanged by Zebeden, brother of Netimer. Duke Boleslaus the Brave bought the bodies and brought them to Poland. (It was supposed that they were laid to rest in Przemyśl, where some historians place Bruno's diocese; such localization of Bruno's burial place is hardly probable because Przemyśl then belonged to Orthodox Kievan Rus through 1018.) The "Annals of Magdeburg," Thietmar of Merseburg's "Chronicle", the "Annals of Quedlinburg", various works of Magdeburg Bishops, and many other written sources of 11th–15th centuries record this story.
Soon after his death, Bruno and his companions were venerated as martyrs and Bruno was soon after canonized. It was said that Braunsberg was named after Bruno. |
Bo Diddley
Ellas Otha Bates (December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008), known professionally as Bo Diddley, was an American guitarist and singer who played a key role in the transition from the blues to rock and roll. He influenced many artists, including Buddy Holly, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, George Thorogood, Syd Barrett, and the Clash.
His use of African rhythms and a signature beat, a simple five-accent hambone rhythm, is a cornerstone of hip hop, rock, and pop music. In recognition of his achievements, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2003, and the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2017. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Diddley is also recognized for his technical innovations, including his use of tremolo and reverb effects to enhance the sound of his distinctive rectangular guitars.
Early life.
Bo Diddley was born in McComb, Mississippi, as Ellas Otha Bates (also stated as Otha Ellas Bates or Elias Otha Bates). He was the only child of Ethel Wilson, a sharecropper's teenaged daughter, and Eugene Bates, whom he never knew. Wilson was only sixteen, and being unable to support a family, she gave her cousin, Gussie McDaniel, permission to raise her son. McDaniel eventually adopted him, and he assumed her surname. Diddley denied ever having the name "Otha" in a 2001 interview, saying "I don't know where they got that 'Otha' from", but his website, maintained by his estate, confirms it as his middle name.
|
After his adoptive father Robert died in 1934, when Diddley was five years old, Gussie McDaniel moved with him and her three children to the South Side of Chicago; he later dropped Otha from his name and became Ellas McDaniel. He was an active member of Chicago's Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, where he studied the trombone and the violin, becoming so proficient on the violin that the musical director invited him to join the orchestra, in which he played until he was 18. However, he was more interested in the joyful, rhythmic music he heard at a local Pentecostal Church and took up the guitar; his first recordings were based on that frenetic church music. Diddley said he thought that the trance-like rhythm he used in his rhythm and blues music came from the Sanctified churches he had attended as a youth in his Chicago neighborhood.
Career.
Inspired by a John Lee Hooker performance, Diddley supplemented his income as a carpenter and mechanic by playing on street corners with friends, including Jerome Green, in the Hipsters band, later renamed the Langley Avenue Jive Cats. Green became a near-constant member of McDaniel's backing band, the two often trading joking insults with each other during live shows. In the summers of 1943 and 1944, he played at the Maxwell Street market in a band with Earl Hooker. By 1951 he was playing on the street with backing from Roosevelt Jackson on washtub bass and Jody Williams, who had played harmonica as a boy but took up guitar in his teens after he met Diddley at a talent show, with Diddley teaching him some aspects of playing the instrument, including how to play the bass line. Williams later played lead guitar on "Who Do You Love?" (1956).
|
In 1951, he landed a regular spot at the 708 Club, on Chicago's South Side, with a repertoire influenced by Louis Jordan, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters. In late 1954, he teamed up with harmonica player Billy Boy Arnold, drummer Clifton James and bass player Roosevelt Jackson and recorded demos of "I'm a Man" and "Bo Diddley". They re-recorded the songs at Universal Recording Corp. for Chess Records, with a backing ensemble comprising Otis Spann (piano), Lester Davenport (harmonica), Frank Kirkland (drums), and Jerome Green (maracas). The record was released in March 1955, and the A-side, "Bo Diddley", became a number one R&B hit.
Origins of stage name.
The origin of the stage name Bo Diddley is unclear. McDaniel said his peers gave him the name, which he suspected was an insult. "Diddly" is a truncation of "diddly squat", which means "absolutely nothing". Diddley also said that the name first belonged to a singer his adoptive mother knew. Harmonicist Billy Boy Arnold said that it was a local comedian's name, which Leonard Chess adopted as McDaniel's stage name and the title of his first single. McDaniel also stated that his school classmates in Chicago gave him the nickname, which he started using when sparring and boxing in the neighborhood with The Little Neighborhood Golden Gloves Bunch.
|
In the 1921 story "Black Death", by Zora Neale Hurston, Beau Diddely was a womanizer who impregnates a young woman, disavows responsibility, and meets his undoing by the powers of the local hoodoo man. Hurston submitted it in a contest run by the academic journal "" in 1925, where it won an honorable mention, but it was never published during her lifetime.
A diddley bow is a homemade single-string instrument that survived in the American Deep South, especially in Mississippi. Played mainly by children, the diddley bow in its simplest form was made by nailing a length of broom wire to the side of a house, using a rock placed under the string as a movable bridge, and played in the style of a bottleneck guitar, with various objects used as a slider. The apparent consensus among scholars is that the diddley bow is derived from the monochord zithers of central Africa.
Success in the 1950s and 1960s.
On November 20, 1955, Diddley appeared on the popular television program "The Ed Sullivan Show". According to legend, when someone on the show's staff overheard him casually singing "Sixteen Tons" in the dressing room, he was asked to perform the song on the show. One of Diddley's later versions of the story was that upon seeing "Bo Diddley" on the cue card, he thought he was to perform both his self-titled hit single and "Sixteen Tons". Sullivan was furious and banned Diddley from his show, reputedly saying that he would not last six months. Chess Records included Diddley's cover of "Sixteen Tons" on the 1963 album "Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger".
|
Diddley's hit singles continued in the 1950s and 1960s: "Pretty Thing" (1956), "Say Man" (1959), and "You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover" (1962). He also released numerous albums, including "Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger" and "Have Guitar, Will Travel". These bolstered his self-invented legend. Between 1958 and 1963, Checker Records released eleven full-length Bo Diddley albums. In the 1960s, he broke through as a crossover artist with white audiences (appearing at the Alan Freed concerts, for example), but he rarely aimed his compositions at teenagers. Diddley was among those musicians who capitalized on the mid-1960s surfing and beach party craze in the United States, and released the albums "Surfin' with Bo Diddley" and " Bo Diddley's Beach Party". These featured heavy, distorted blues, played on his Gretsch guitar with bended notes and minor key riffs, unlike the clean, undistorted sounds of the Fender guitars used by the California surf bands. The cover of "Surfin' with Bo Diddley" had a photograph of two surfers riding a big wave.
|
In 1963, Diddley starred in a UK concert tour with the Everly Brothers and Little Richard along with the Rolling Stones (a little-known band at that time).
Diddley wrote many songs for himself and also for others. In 1956, he and guitarist Jody Williams co-wrote the pop song "Love Is Strange", a hit for Mickey & Sylvia in 1957, reaching number 11 on the chart. Mickey Baker claimed that he (Baker) and Bo Diddley's wife, Ethel Smith, wrote the song. Diddley also wrote "Mama (Can I Go Out)", which was a minor hit for the pioneering rockabilly singer Jo Ann Campbell, who performed the song in the 1959 rock and roll film "Go Johnny Go".
After moving from Chicago to Washington, D.C., Diddley built his first home recording studio in the basement of his home at 2614 Rhode Island Avenue NE. Frequented by several of Washington, D.C.'s musical luminaries, the studio was the site where he recorded the Checker LP (Checker LP-2977) "Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger". Diddley also produced and recorded several up-and-coming groups from the Washington, D.C. area. One of the first groups he recorded was local doo-wop group the Marquees, featuring Marvin Gaye and baritone-bass Chester Simmons, who moonlighted as Diddley's chauffeur.
|
The Marquees appeared in talent shows at the Lincoln Theatre, and Diddley, impressed by their smooth vocal delivery, let them rehearse in his studio. Diddley got the Marquees signed to Columbia subsidiary label OKeh Records after unsuccessfully attempting to get them a contract with his own label, Chess. The OKeh label rivaled Chess in the promotion of rhythm and blues. On September 25, 1957, Diddley drove the group to New York City to record "Wyatt Earp", a novelty song written by Reese Palmer, lead singer of the Marquees. Diddley produced the session, with the group backed by his own band. They cut their first record, a single with "Wyatt Earp" on the A-side and "Hey Little School Girl" on the B-side, but it failed to become a hit. Diddley persuaded Moonglows founder and backing vocalist Harvey Fuqua to hire Gaye. Gaye joined the Moonglows as first tenor; the group then moved to Detroit with the hope of signing with Motown Records founder Berry Gordy Jr.
Diddley included women in his band: Norma-Jean Wofford, also known as The Duchess; Gloria Jolivet; Peggy Jones, also known as Lady Bo, a lead guitarist (rare for a woman at that time); and Cornelia Redmond, also known as Cookie V.
|
Later years.
In early 1971, writer-musician Michael Lydon, a founding editor of "Rolling Stone", conducted a lengthy, rambling interview of Diddley, at his then home in the San Fernando Valley, California. Lydon described him as a "protean genius" whose songs were "hymns to himself", and led the published piece with a Diddley quote: "Everything I know I taught myself."
Over the decades, Diddley's performing venues ranged from intimate clubs to stadiums. On March 25, 1972, he played with the Grateful Dead at the Academy of Music in New York City. The Grateful Dead released part of this concert as Volume 30 of the band's concert album series, "Dick's Picks". Also in the early 1970s, the soundtrack of the ground-breaking animated film "Fritz the Cat" contained his song "Bo Diddley", in which a crow dances and finger-pops to the track.
Diddley spent some years in New Mexico, living in Los Lunas from 1971 to 1978, while continuing his musical career. He served for two and a half years as a deputy sheriff in the Valencia County Citizens' Patrol; during that time he purchased and donated three highway-patrol pursuit cars. In the late 1970s, he left Los Lunas and moved to Hawthorne, Florida, where he lived on a large estate in a custom-made log cabin, which he helped to build. For the remainder of his life he divided his time between Albuquerque and Florida, living the last 13 years of his life in Archer, Florida, a small farming town near Gainesville.
|
In 1979, he appeared as an opening act for the Clash on their US tour.
In 1983, he made a cameo appearance as a Philadelphia pawn shop owner in the comedy film "Trading Places". He also appeared in George Thorogood's music video for the song "Bad to the Bone," portraying a guitar-slinging pool shark.
In 1985, he appeared on George Thorogood's set, alongside fellow blues legend Albert Collins, on the Live Aid American stage to perform Thorogood's popular cover of Diddley's song Who Do You Love?".
In 1989, Diddley and his management company, Talent Source, entered into a licensing with the sportswear brand. The Wieden & Kennedy-produced commercial in the "Bo Knows" campaign teamed Diddley with dual sportsman Bo Jackson. The agreement ended in 1991, but in 1999, a T-shirt of Diddley's image and "You don't know diddley" slogan was purchased in a Gainesville, Florida, sports apparel store. Diddley felt that Nike should not continue to use the slogan or his likeness and fought Nike over the copyright infringement. Despite the fact that lawyers for both parties could not come to a renewed legal arrangement, Nike allegedly continued marketing the apparel and ignored cease-and-desist orders, and a lawsuit was filed on Diddley's behalf, in Manhattan Federal Court.
|
Diddley played a blues and rock musician named Axman in the 1990 comedy film "Rockula", directed by Luca Bercovici and starring Dean Cameron.
In "Legends of Guitar" (filmed live in Spain in 1991), Diddley performed with Steve Cropper, B.B. King, Les Paul, Albert Collins, and George Benson, among others. He joined the Rolling Stones on their 1994 concert broadcast of "Voodoo Lounge", performing "Who Do You Love?" at Joe Robbie Stadium, in Miami.
In 1996, he released "A Man Amongst Men", his first major-label album (and his final studio album) with guest artists like Keith Richards, Ron Wood and The Shirelles. The album earned a Grammy Award nomination in 1997 for the Best Contemporary Blues Album category.
Diddley performed a number of shows around the country in 2005 and 2006, with fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Johnnie Johnson and his band, consisting of Johnson on keyboards, Richard Hunt on drums and Gus Thornton on bass. In 2006, he participated as the headliner of a grassroots-organized fundraiser concert to benefit the town of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, which had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The "Florida Keys for Katrina Relief" had originally been set for October 23, 2005, when Hurricane Wilma barreled through the Florida Keys on October 24, causing flooding and economic mayhem.
|
In January 2006, the Florida Keys had recovered enough to host the fundraising concert to benefit the more hard-hit community of Ocean Springs. When asked about the fundraiser, Diddley stated, "This is the United States of America. We believe in helping one another". The all-star band included members of the Soul Providers, and famed artists Clarence Clemons of the E Street Band, Joey Covington of Jefferson Airplane, Alfonso Carey of The Village People, and Carl Spagnuolo of Jay & The Techniques. In an interview with Holger Petersen, on "Saturday Night Blues" on CBC Radio in the fall of 2006, he commented on racism in the music industry establishment during his early career. Diddley sold the rights to his songs early on, and until 1989 he received no royalties from the most successful part of his career.
His final guitar performance on a studio album was with the New York Dolls on their 2006 album "One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This". He contributed guitar work to the song "Seventeen", which was included as a bonus track on the limited-edition version of the disc.
|
In May 2007, Diddley suffered a stroke after a concert the previous day in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Nonetheless, he delivered an energetic performance to an enthusiastic crowd. A few months later he had a heart attack. While recovering, Diddley came back to his hometown of McComb, Mississippi, in early November 2007, for the unveiling of a plaque devoted to him on the Mississippi Blues Trail. This marked his achievements and noted that he was "acclaimed as a founder of rock-and-roll." He was not supposed to perform, but as he listened to the music of local musician Jesse Robinson, who sang a song written for this occasion, Robinson sensed that Diddley wanted to perform and handed him a microphone, the only time that he performed publicly after his stroke.
Personal life.
Marriages and children.
Bo Diddley was married four times. His first marriage, at 18, to Louise Willingham, lasted a year. Diddley married his second wife Ethel Mae Smith in 1949; they had two children. He met his third wife, Kay Reynolds, when she was 15, while performing in Birmingham, Alabama. They soon moved in together and married, despite taboos against interracial marriage. They had two daughters. He married his fourth wife, Sylvia Paiz, in 1992; they were divorced at the time of his death.
|
Health problems.
On May 13, 2007, Diddley was admitted to intensive care in Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, following a stroke after a concert the previous day in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Starting the show, he had complained that he did not feel well. He referred to smoke from the wildfires that were ravaging south Georgia and blowing south to the area near his home in Archer, Florida. The next day, as he was heading back home, he seemed dazed and confused at the airport, and 911 was called, and he was immediately taken by ambulance to Creighton University Medical Center where he stayed for several days. He was then flown to Shands Hospital in Gainesville, where it was confirmed that he had suffered a stroke. Diddley had a history of hypertension and diabetes, and the stroke affected the left side of his brain, causing receptive and expressive aphasia (speech impairment). The stroke was followed by a heart attack, which he suffered in Gainesville on August 28, 2007.
Death.
Bo Diddley died on June 2, 2008, of heart failure at his home in Archer, Florida, at the age of 79. Many family members were with him when he died at 1:45 am. EDT at his home. His death was not unexpected. "There was a Gospel song that was sung, at his bedside, and when it was done, he opened his eyes, gave a thumbs up, and said, 'Wow! I'm goin' to Heaven!' The song was 'Walk Around Heaven', and those were his last words."
|
He was survived by his children, Evelyn Kelly, Ellas A. McDaniel, Pamela Jacobs, Steven Jones, Terri Lynn McDaniel-Hines, and Tammi D. McDaniel; a brother, the Rev. Kenneth Haynes; and eighteen grandchildren, fifteen great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.
Diddley's funeral, a four-hour "homegoing" service, took place on June 7, 2008, at Showers of Blessings Church in Gainesville, Florida. Many in attendance chanted "Hey Bo Diddley" as members of his band played a subdued version of the song.
A number of notable musicians sent flowers, including Little Richard, George Thorogood, Tom Petty and Jerry Lee Lewis. Little Richard, who had been asking his audiences to pray for Bo Diddley, throughout his illness, had to fulfill concert commitments in Westbury and New York City, the weekend of the funeral. He remembered Diddley at the concerts, performing his namesake tune. Eric Burdon of the Animals flew to Gainesville to attend the service.
After the funeral service, a tribute concert was held at the Martin Luther King Center in Gainesville, featuring guest performances by his son and daughter, Ellas A. McDaniel and Evelyn "Tan" Cooper; long-time background vocalist (and original Boette), Gloria Jolivet, and long-time bassist and bandleader, Debby Hastings, Eric Burdon, and former Bo Diddley & Offspring guitarist, Scott Free. In the days following his death, tributes were paid by then-President George W. Bush, the United States House of Representatives, and musicians and performers including B. B. King, Ronnie Hawkins, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, George Thorogood, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Robert Plant, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Randolph and the Family Band and Eric Burdon. Burdon used video footage of the McDaniel family, and friends in mourning, for a video promoting his ABKCO Records release "Bo Diddley Special". Hastings is quoted as having said, "He was the rock that the roll was built on."
|
In November 2009, the guitar used by Bo Diddley in his final stage performance sold for $60,000 at auction.
In 2019, members of Bo Diddley's family sued to regain control of the music catalog held in trust by attorney Charles Littell. The family was successful in appointing a new trustee, music industry veteran Kendall Minter. The family was represented by Charles David of Florida Probate Law Group in the 2019 lawsuit.
Accolades.
Bo Diddley was posthumously awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts degree by the University of Florida for his influence on American popular music. In its "People in America" radio series, about influential people in American history, the Voice of America radio service paid tribute to him, describing how "his influence was so widespread that it is hard to imagine what rock and roll would have sounded like without him." Mick Jagger stated that "he was a wonderful, original musician who was an enormous force in music and was a big influence on the Rolling Stones. He was very generous to us in our early years and we learned a lot from him". Jagger also praised the late star as a one-of-a-kind musician, adding, "We will never see his like again". The documentary film "" by director Phil Ranstrom features Bo Diddley's last on-camera interview.
|
He achieved numerous accolades in recognition of his significant role as one of the founding fathers of rock and roll.
In 2003, U.S. Representative John Conyers paid tribute to Bo Diddley in the United States House of Representatives, describing him as "one of the true pioneers of rock and roll, who has influenced generations".
In 2004, Mickey and Sylvia's 1956 recording of "Love Is Strange" (a song first recorded by Bo Diddley but not released until a year before his death) was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as a recording of qualitative or historical significance. Also in 2004, Bo Diddley was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame and was ranked number 20 on "Rolling Stone" magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
In 2005, Bo Diddley celebrated his 50th anniversary in music with successful tours of Australia and Europe and with coast-to-coast shows across North America. He performed his song "Bo Diddley" with Eric Clapton and Robbie Robertson at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 20th annual induction ceremony. In the UK, "Uncut" magazine included his 1957 debut album, "Bo Diddley", in its listing of the '100 Music, Movie & TV Moments That Have Changed the World'.
|
Bo Diddley was honored by the Mississippi Blues Commission with a Mississippi Blues Trail historic marker placed in McComb, his birthplace, in recognition of his enormous contribution to the development of the blues in Mississippi. On June 5, 2009, the city of Gainesville, Florida, officially renamed and dedicated its downtown plaza the Bo Diddley Community Plaza. The plaza was the site of a benefit concert at which Bo Diddley performed to raise awareness about the plight of the homeless in Alachua County and to raise money for local charities, including the Red Cross.
Beat.
The "Bo Diddley beat" is essentially the clave rhythm, one of the most common bell patterns found in sub-Saharan African music traditions. One scholar found this rhythm in 13 rhythm and blues recordings made in the years 1944–55, including two by Johnny Otis from 1948.
Bo Diddley gave different accounts of how he began to use this rhythm. Ned Sublette says, "In the context of the time, and especially those maracas [heard on the record], 'Bo Diddley' has to be understood as a Latin-tinged record. A rejected cut recorded at the same session was titled only 'Rhumba' on the track sheets." The Bo Diddley beat is similar to "hambone", a style used by street performers who play out the beat by slapping and patting their arms, legs, chest, and cheeks while chanting rhymes. Somewhat resembling the "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm, Diddley came across it while trying to play Gene Autry's "(I've Got Spurs That) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle". Three years before his "Bo Diddley", a song with similar syncopation titled "Hambone" was cut by the Red Saunders Orchestra with the Hambone Kids. In 1944, "Rum and Coca Cola", containing the Bo Diddley beat, was recorded by the Andrews Sisters. Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" (1957) and Them's "Mystic Eyes" (1965) used the beat.
|
In its simplest form, the Bo Diddley beat can be counted out as either a one-bar or a two-bar phrase. Here is the count as a one-bar phrase: One e and ah, two e and ah, three e and ah, four e and ah (the boldface counts are the clave rhythm).
Many songs (for example, "Hey Bo Diddley" and "Who Do You Love?") often have no chord changes; that is, the musicians play the same chord throughout the piece, so that the rhythms create the excitement, rather than having the excitement generated by harmonic tension and release. In his other recordings, Bo Diddley used various rhythms, from straight back beat to pop ballad style to doo-wop, frequently with maracas by Jerome Green. His 1955 rhythm and blues hit, "Bo Diddley", had a "driving African rhythm and ham-bone beat". Beginning that same year, Diddley collaborated with various doo-wop vocal groups, using the Moonglows as a backing group on his first album, "Bo Diddley", released in 1958. In one of the most well-known of his 1958 doo-wop sessions, Diddley added harmonies by the Carnations recording as the Teardrops, who sang smooth, polished doo-wop in the backgrounds on the songs "I'm Sorry", "Crackin' Up", and "Don't Let it Go".
|
An influential guitar player, Bo Diddley developed many special effects and other innovations in tone and attack, particularly the "shimmering" tremolo sound, and amp reverb. His trademark instrument was his self-designed, one-of-a-kind, rectangular-bodied "Twang Machine" (referred to as "cigar-box shaped" by music promoter Dick Clark), built by Gretsch. He had other uniquely shaped guitars custom-made for him by other manufacturers throughout the years, most notably the "Cadillac" and the rectangular "Turbo 5-speed" (with built-in envelope filter, flanger and delay) designs, made by Tom Holmes (who also made guitars for ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, among others). In a 2005 interview on JJJ radio in Australia, he implied that the rectangular design sprang from an embarrassing moment. During an early gig, while jumping around on stage with a Gibson L5 guitar, he landed awkwardly, hurting his groin. He then went about designing a smaller, less-restrictive guitar that allowed him to keep jumping around on stage while still playing his guitar. He also played the violin, which is featured on his mournful instrumental "The Clock Strikes Twelve", a twelve-bar blues.
|
Diddley often created lyrics as witty and humorous adaptations of folk music themes. His first hit, "Bo Diddley", was based on hambone rhymes. The first line of his song "Hey Bo Diddley" is derived from the nursery rhyme "Old MacDonald". The song "Who Do You Love?" with its rap-style boasting, and his use of the African-American game known as "the dozens" on the songs "Say Man" and "Say Man, Back Again," are cited as progenitors of hip-hop music; for example, in the dialogue of the song, "Say Man", percussionist Jerome Green says the lines: "You've got the nerve to call somebody ugly. Why, you so ugly till the stork that brought you in the world oughta be arrested." |
Bela Lugosi
Blaskó Béla Ferenc Dezső (; October 20, 1882 – August 16, 1956), better known by the stage name Bela Lugosi ( ; ), was a Hungarian–American actor. He was best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the horror film classic "Dracula" (1931), Ygor in "Son of Frankenstein" (1939) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956.
Lugosi began acting on the Hungarian stage in 1902. After playing in 172 productions in his native Hungary, Lugosi moved on to appear in Hungarian silent films in 1917. He had to suddenly emigrate to Germany after the failed Hungarian Communist Revolution of 1919 because of his former socialist activities (organizing a stage actors' union), leaving his first wife in the process. He acted in several films in Weimar Germany, before arriving in New Orleans as a seaman on a merchant ship, then making his way north to New York City and Ellis Island.
In 1927, he starred as Count Dracula in a Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, moving with the play to the West Coast in 1928 and settling down in Hollywood. He later starred in the 1931 film version of "Dracula" directed by Tod Browning and produced by Universal Pictures. Through the 1930s, he occupied an important niche in horror films, but his notoriety as Dracula and thick Hungarian accent greatly limited the roles offered to him, and he unsuccessfully tried for years to avoid typecasting.
|
He co-starred in a number of films with Boris Karloff, who was able to demand top billing for his status a horror icon and had portrayed characters such as Frankenstein's monster in the horror film "Frankenstein" (1931). Lugosi, a charter member of the American Screen Actors Guild, was frustrated over increasingly being restricted to mad scientist roles because of his inability to speak English more clearly. He was kept employed by the studios principally so that they could put his name on the posters and prevent others from doing so. Among his teamings with Karloff, he performed major roles only in "The Black Cat" (1934), "The Raven" (1935), and "Son of Frankenstein" (1939); even in "The Raven", Karloff received top billing despite Lugosi performing the lead role.
By this time, Lugosi had been receiving regular medication for sciatic neuritis, and he became addicted to doctor-prescribed morphine and methadone. This drug dependence (and his gradually worsening alcoholism) was becoming apparent to producers, and after 1948's "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", the offers dwindled to parts in low-budget films; some of these were directed by Ed Wood, including a brief appearance in Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (released posthumously in 1957).
|
Lugosi married five times and had one son, Bela G. Lugosi (with his fourth wife, Lillian).
Early life.
Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in 1882 in Lugos, Kingdom of Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania) to Hungarian father István Blaskó, a baker who later became a banker, and Serbian-born mother Paula de Vojnich. He was raised in a Catholic family.
At the age of 12, Lugosi dropped out of school and left home to work at a succession of manual labor jobs. His father died during his absence. He began his stage acting career in 1902. His earliest known performances are from provincial theatres in the 1903–04 season, playing small roles in several plays and operettas. He took the last name "Lugosi" in 1903 to honor his birthplace, and went on to perform in Shakespearean plays. After moving to Budapest in 1911, he played dozens of roles with the National Theatre of Hungary between 1913 and 1919. Although Lugosi would later claim that he "became the leading actor of Hungary's Royal National Theatre", many of his roles there were small or supporting parts, which led him to enter the Hungarian film industry.
|
During World War I, he served as an infantry officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army Imperial and Royal 43rd Infantry Regiment from 1914 to 1916, with the rank of lieutenant. He was awarded the Wound Medal for wounds he sustained while serving on the Russian front. Returning to civilian life, Lugosi became an actor in Hungarian silent films, appearing in many of them under the stage name "Arisztid Olt".
Due to his activism in the actors' union in Hungary during the revolution of 1919 and his active participation in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he was forced to flee his homeland when the government changed hands, initially accompanied by his first wife Ilona Szmik. They escaped to Vienna before settling in Berlin (in the Langestrasse), where he began acting in German silent films. During these moves, Ilona lost her unborn child, after which she left Lugosi and returned home to her parents where she filed for divorce, and soon after remarried.
Lugosi eventually travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana, in December 1920 working as a crewman aboard a merchant ship, then made his way north to New York City, where he again took up acting in (and sometimes directing) stage plays in 1921–1922, then worked in the New York silent film industry from 1923 to 1926. In 1921, he met and married his second wife, Ilona von Montagh, a young Hungarian emigree and stage actress whom he had worked with years before in Europe. They only lived together for a few weeks, but their divorce took until October 1925 to be finalized.
|
He later moved to California in 1928 to tour in the "Dracula" stage play, and his Hollywood film career took off. Lugosi claimed he performed the Dracula play around 1,000 times during his lifetime. He eventually became a U.S. citizen in 1931, soon after the release of his film version of "Dracula".
Career.
Early films.
Lugosi's first film appearance was in the 1917 Hungarian silent film "Leoni Leo". When appearing in Hungarian silent films, he mostly used the stage name Arisztid Olt. Lugosi made at least 10 films in Hungary between 1917 and 1918 before leaving for Germany. Following the collapse of Béla Kun's Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, leftists and trade unionists became vulnerable, some being imprisoned or executed in public. Lugosi was proscribed from acting due to his participation in the formation of an actors' union. Exiled in Weimar-era Germany, he co-starred in at least 14 German silent films in 1920, among them "" (1920), "Der Januskopf" (1920) and an adaptation of the Karl May novel "Caravan of Death" (1920).
|
In October 1920, Lugosi left Germany for the United States and entered the country at New Orleans in December. He made his way to New York and was inspected by immigration officers at Ellis Island in March 1921. He only declared his intention to become a US citizen in 1928; on June 26, 1931, he was naturalized.
On his arrival in America, the , Lugosi worked for some time as a laborer, and then entered the theater in New York City's Hungarian immigrant colony. With fellow expatriate Hungarian actors he formed a small stock company that toured Eastern cities, playing for immigrant audiences. Lugosi acted in several Hungarian language plays before starring in his first English Broadway play, "The Red Poppy" in 1922. Three more parts came in 1925–26, including a five-month run in the comedy-fantasy "The Devil in the Cheese". In 1925, he played an Arab Sheik in "Arabesque" which premiered in Buffalo, New York at the Teck Theatre before moving to Broadway.
His first American film role was in the silent melodrama "The Silent Command" (1923) which was filmed in New York. Four other silent roles followed, villains and continental types, all in productions made in the New York area. A rumor has circulated for decades among film historians that Lugosi played an uncredited bit part as a clown in the first film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, "He Who Gets Slapped" (1924) starring Lon Chaney, but this has been heavily disputed. The rumor originated from the discovery of a publicity still from this film found posthumously in Lugosi's scrapbook, which showed an unidentified clown in heavy makeup standing near Lon Chaney in one scene. It was thought to be evidence that Lugosi appeared in the film, but historians all agree that is very unlikely, since Lugosi was in both Chicago (appearing in a play called "The Werewolf") and New York at the time that film was in production in Hollywood.
|
"Dracula".
Lugosi was approached in the summer of 1927 to star in a Broadway theatre production of "Dracula", which had been adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. The Horace Liveright production was successful, running in New York City for 261 performances before touring the United States to much fanfare and critical acclaim throughout 1928 and 1929. In 1928, Lugosi decided to stay in California when the play ended its first West Coast run. His performance had piqued the interest of Fox Film, and he was cast in the Hollywood studio's silent film "The Veiled Woman" (1929). He also appeared in the film "Prisoners" (also 1929), believed lost, which was released in both a silent and partial talkie version.
In 1929, with no other film roles in sight, he returned to the stage as Dracula for a short West Coast tour of the play. Lugosi remained in California where he resumed his film work under contract with Fox, appearing in early talkies often as a heavy or an "exotic sheik". He also continued to lobby for his prized role in the film version of "Dracula".
|
Despite his critically acclaimed performance on stage, Lugosi was not Universal Pictures' first choice for the role of Dracula when the company optioned the rights to the Deane play and began production in 1930. Different prominent actors, such as Paul Muni, Chester Morris, Ian Keith, John Wray, Joseph Schildkraut, Arthur Edmund Carewe, William Courtenay, John Carradine, and Conrad Veidt were considered. Lew Ayres was eventually hired to play Jonathan Harker, only to be replaced by Robert Ames after being cast in a different role in a different Universal Pictures film. Ames was in turn replaced with David Manners. Lugosi had played the role on Broadway, and was considered before director Tod Browning cast him in the role. The film was a major hit, but Lugosi was paid a salary of only $3,500, since he had too eagerly accepted the role.
Typecasting.
Through his association with "Dracula" (in which he appeared with minimal makeup, using his natural, heavily accented voice), Lugosi found himself typecast as a horror villain in films such as "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1932), "The Black Cat" (1934) and "The Raven" (1935) for Universal, and the independent "White Zombie" (1932). His accent, while a part of his image, limited the type of role he could play.
|
Lugosi did attempt to break type by auditioning for other roles. He lost out to Lionel Barrymore for the role of Grigori Rasputin in "Rasputin and the Empress" (also 1932); C. Henry Gordon for the role of Surat Khan in "Charge of the Light Brigade" (1936), and Basil Rathbone for the role of Commissar Dimitri Gorotchenko in "Tovarich" (1937), a role Lugosi had played on stage. He played the elegant, somewhat hot-tempered General Nicholas Strenovsky-Petronovich in "International House" (1933).
Regardless of controversy, five films at Universal – "The Black Cat" (1934), "The Raven" (1935), "The Invisible Ray" (1936), "Son of Frankenstein" (1939), "Black Friday" (1940), plus minor cameo performances in "Gift of Gab" (1934) and two at RKO Pictures, "You'll Find Out" (1940) and "The Body Snatcher" (1945) – paired Lugosi with Boris Karloff. Despite the relative size of their roles, Lugosi inevitably received second billing, below Karloff. There are contradictory reports of Lugosi's attitude toward Karloff, some claiming that he was openly resentful of Karloff's long-term success and ability to gain good roles beyond the horror arena, while others suggested the two actors were – for a time, at least – amicable. Karloff himself in interviews suggested that Lugosi was initially mistrustful of him when they acted together, believing that the Englishman would attempt to upstage him. When this proved not to be the case, according to Karloff, Lugosi settled down and they worked together amicably (though some have further commented that the English Karloff's on-set demand to break from filming for mid-afternoon tea annoyed Lugosi). Lugosi did get a few heroic leads, as in Universal's "The Black Cat" after Karloff had been accorded the more colorful role of the villain, "The Invisible Ray", and a romantic role in producer Sol Lesser's adventure serial "The Return of Chandu" (1934), but his typecasting problem appears to have been too entrenched to be alleviated by those films.
|
Lugosi addressed his plea to be cast in non-horror roles directly to casting directors through his listing in the 1937 "Players Directory", published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in which he (or his agent) calls the idea that he is only fit for horror films "an error."
Career decline.
Lugosi developed severe, chronic sciatica, ostensibly aggravated by injuries received during his military service. Though at first he was treated with benign pain remedies such as asparagus juice, doctors increased the medication to opiates. The growth of his dependence on opiates, particularly morphine and (after 1947, when it became available in America) methadone, was directly proportional to the dwindling of Lugosi's screen offers. The problem first manifested itself in 1937, when Lugosi was forced to withdraw from a leading role in a serial production, "The Secret of Treasure Island", due to constant back pain.
Historian John McElwee reports, in his 2013 book "Showmen, Sell It Hot!", that Bela Lugosi's popularity received a much-needed boost in August 1938, when California theater owner Emil Umann revived "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" as a special double feature. The combination was so successful that Umann scheduled extra shows to accommodate the capacity crowds, and invited Lugosi to appear in person, which thrilled new audiences that had never seen Lugosi's classic performance. "I owe it all to that little man at the Regina Theatre," said Lugosi of exhibitor Umann. "I was dead, and he brought me back to life." Universal took notice of the tremendous business and launched its own national re-release of the same two horror favorites. The studio then rehired Lugosi to star in new films, fortunately just as Lugosi's fourth wife had given birth to a son.
|
Universal cast Lugosi in "Son of Frankenstein" (1939), appearing in the character role of Ygor, a mad blacksmith with a broken neck, in heavy makeup and beard. Lugosi was third-billed with his name above the title alongside Basil Rathbone as Dr. Frankenstein's son and Boris Karloff reprising his role as Frankenstein's monster. Regarding "Son of Frankenstein", the film's director Rowland V. Lee said his crew let Lugosi "work on the characterization; the interpretation he gave us was imaginative and totally unexpected ... when we finished shooting, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he stole the show. Karloff's monster was weak by comparison."
Also in 1939, Lugosi made a rare appearance in an A-list motion picture as a stern Soviet commissar in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer romantic comedy "Ninotchka", starring Greta Garbo and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Lugosi was quite effective in this small but prestigious character part and he even received top billing among the film's supporting cast, all of whom had significantly larger roles. It might have been a turning point for the actor, but within the year he was back on Hollywood's Poverty Row, playing leads for Sam Katzman at Monogram Pictures. At Universal, Bela Lugosi was usually cast for his name value; he often received star billing for what amounted to a supporting part.
|
Lugosi went to 20th Century-Fox for "The Gorilla" (1939), which had him playing straight man (a butler) to Patsy Kelly and the Ritz Brothers. When Lugosi's "Black Friday" premiered in 1940 on a double bill with the Vincent Price film "The House of the Seven Gables", Lugosi and Price both appeared in person at the Chicago Theatre where it opened on Feb. 29, 1940 and remained for four performances. He was finally cast in the role of Frankenstein's monster for Universal's "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" (1943). (At the end of the previous film in the series, "The Ghost of Frankenstein" (1942), Lugosi's voice had been dubbed over that of Lon Chaney Jr. since Ygor's brain was now in the Monster's skull.) But at the last minute, Lugosi's heavily accented dialogue was edited out after the film was completed, along with the idea of the Monster being blind, leaving his performance featuring groping, outstretched arms and moving lips seeming enigmatic (and funny) to audiences.
Lugosi kept busy during the 1940s as a screen menace. In addition to his nine Monogram features, he worked in three features for RKO and one for Columbia ("The Return of the Vampire", 1943). He also accepted the lead in an experimental, economical feature, shot in the semi-professional 16mm film format and blown up to 35mm for theatrical release, "Scared to Death" (completed April 1946, released June 1947). The feature is noteworthy as being Bela Lugosi's only color film.
|
Lugosi played Dracula for a second and final time on film in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948), which was his last "A" movie. For the remainder of his life, he appeared – less and less frequently – in obscure, forgettable, low-budget B features. From 1947 to 1950, he performed in summer stock, often in productions of "Dracula" or "Arsenic and Old Lace", and during the rest of the year, made personal appearances in a touring "spook show", and on early commercial television.
In September 1949, Milton Berle invited Lugosi to appear in a sketch on "Texaco Star Theatre". Lugosi memorized the script for the skit, but became confused on the air when Berle began to ad lib. He also appeared on the anthology series "Suspense" on October 11, 1949, in a live adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado".
In 1951, while in England to play a six-month tour of "Dracula", Lugosi co-starred in a lowbrow film comedy, "Mother Riley Meets the Vampire" (also known as "Vampire Over London" and "My Son, the Vampire"), released the following year. Following his return to the United States, he was interviewed for television, and reflected wistfully on his typecasting in horror parts: "Now I am the boogie man". In the same interview, he expressed a desire to play more comedy, as he had in the "Mother Riley" farce. Independent producer Jack Broder took Lugosi at his word, casting him in a jungle-themed comedy, "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" (1952), starring nightclub comedians Duke Mitchell and Jerry Lewis look-alike Sammy Petrillo, whose act closely resembled that of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (Martin and Lewis). Hal B. Wallis, Martin and Lewis's producer, unsuccessfully sued Broder.
|
Stage and personal appearances.
Lugosi enjoyed a lively career on stage, with plenty of personal appearances. As film offers declined, he became more and more dependent on live venues to support his family. Lugosi took over the role of Jonathan Brewster from Boris Karloff for "Arsenic and Old Lace". Lugosi had also expressed interest in playing Elwood P. Dowd in "Harvey" to help himself professionally. He also made plenty of personal live appearances to promote his horror image or an accompanying film.
The Vincent Price film, "House of Wax" premiered in Los Angeles at the Paramount Theatre on April 16, 1953. The film played at midnight with a number of celebrities in the audience that night (Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Rock Hudson, Broderick Crawford, Gracie Allen, Eddie Cantor, Shelley Winters and others). Producer Alex Gordon, knowing Lugosi was in dire need of cash, arranged for the actor to stand outside the theater wearing a cape and dark glasses, holding a man costumed as a gorilla on a leash. He later allowed himself to be photographed drinking a glass of milk at a Red Cross booth there. When Lugosi playfully attempted to bite the "nurse" in attendance, she overreacted and spilled a glass of milk all over his shirt and cape. Afterward, Lugosi was interviewed by a reporter who botched the interview by asking the prearranged questions out of order, thoroughly confusing the aging star. Embarrassed, Lugosi left abruptly, without attending the screening.
|
Ed Wood and final projects.
Late in his life, Bela Lugosi again received star billing in films when the ambitious but financially limited filmmaker Ed Wood, a fan of Lugosi, found him living in obscurity and near-poverty and offered him roles in his films, such as an anonymous narrator in "Glen or Glenda" (1953) and a mad scientist in "Bride of the Monster" (1955). During post-production of the latter, Lugosi decided to seek treatment for his drug addiction, and the film's premiere was arranged to raise money for Lugosi's hospital expenses (resulting in a paltry amount of money). According to Kitty Kelley's biography of Frank Sinatra, when the entertainer heard of Lugosi's problems, he visited Lugosi at the hospital and gave him a $1,000 check. Sinatra would recall Lugosi's amazement at his visit, since the two men had never met before.
During an impromptu interview upon his release from the treatment center in 1955, Lugosi stated that he was about to begin work on a new Ed Wood film called "The Ghoul Goes West". This was one of several projects proposed by Wood, including "The Phantom Ghoul" and "Dr. Acula". With Lugosi in his Dracula cape, Wood shot impromptu test footage, with no particular storyline in mind, in front of Tor Johnson's home, at a suburban graveyard, and in front of Lugosi's apartment building on Carlton Way. This footage ended up posthumously in Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1957), which was filmed in 1956 soon after Lugosi died. Wood hired Tom Mason, his wife's chiropractor, to double for Lugosi in additional shots. Mason was noticeably taller and thinner than Lugosi, and had the lower half of his face covered with his cape in every shot, as Lugosi sometimes did in "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein".
|
Following his treatment, Lugosi made one final film, in late 1955, "The Black Sleep", for Bel-Air Pictures, which was released in the summer of 1956 through United Artists with a promotional campaign that included several personal appearances by Lugosi and his co-stars, as well as Maila Nurmi (TV's horror host "Vampira"). To Lugosi's disappointment, however, his role in this film was that of a mute butler with no dialogue. Lugosi was intoxicated and very ill during the film's promotional campaign and had to return to L.A. earlier than planned. He never got to see the finished film. Tor Johnson said in interviews that Lugosi kept screaming that he wanted to die the night they shared a hotel room together.
In 1959, a British film called "Lock Up Your Daughters" was theatrically released (in the U.K.), composed of clips from Bela Lugosi's Monogram pictures from the 1940s. The film is lost today, but a March 16, 1959, critical review in the "Kinematograph Weekly" mentioned that the movie contained new Lugosi footage (intriguing since Lugosi had died in 1956). Back in 1950 however, Lugosi had appeared on a one-hour TV program called "Murder and Bela Lugosi" (which WPIX-TV broadcast on Sept. 18, 1950) in which Lugosi was interviewed and provided commentary about a number of his old horror films while clips from the films were being shown; historian Gary Rhodes thinks some of this Lugosi TV production found its way into the 1959 British film, which would finally explain the mystery.
|
Personal life.
Lugosi was married five times. In June 1917, Lugosi married 19-year-old Ilona Szmik (1898–1991) in Hungary. The couple divorced after Lugosi was forced to flee his homeland for political reasons (risking execution if he stayed) and Ilona did not wish to leave her parents. The divorce became final on July 17, 1920, and was uncontested as Lugosi could not show up for the proceedings. (Szmik then married wealthy Hungarian architect Imre Francsek in December 1920, moved with him to Iran in 1930, had two children, and died in 1991.)
After living briefly in Germany, Lugosi left Europe by ship and arrived in New Orleans on October 27, 1920, and, after making his way north, underwent his primary alien inspection at Ellis Island, N.Y. on March 23, 1921.
In September 1921, he married Hungarian actress Ilona von Montagh in New York City, and she filed for divorce on November 11, 1924, charging him with adultery and complaining that he wanted her to abandon her acting career to keep house for him. The divorce became final in October, 1925. (Lugosi learned in 1935 that von Montagh and a female friend were both arrested for shoplifting in New York City, which was the last he heard of her.).
|
Lugosi took his place in Hollywood society and scandal when he married wealthy San Francisco resident Beatrice Woodruff Weeks (1897–1931), widow of architect Charles Peter Weeks, on July 27, 1929. Weeks subsequently filed for divorce on November 4, 1929, accusing Lugosi of infidelity, citing actress Clara Bow as the "other woman", and claimed Lugosi tried to take her checkbook and the key to her safe deposit box away from her. Lugosi complained of her excessive drinking and dancing with other men at social gatherings. The divorce became official on December 9, 1929. (Weeks died 17 months later (at age 34) from alcoholism in Panama, Lugosi never receiving a penny from her fortune.)
On June 26, 1931, Lugosi became a naturalized United States citizen.
In 1933, the 51-year-old Lugosi married 22-year-old Lillian Arch (1911–1981), the daughter of Hungarian immigrants living in Hollywood. Lillian's father was against her marriage to Lugosi at first as the actor was experiencing financial difficulties at the time, so Bela talked her into eloping with him to Las Vegas in January 1933. They remained married for 20 years and they had a child, Bela G. Lugosi, in 1938. (Lugosi eventually had four grandchildren (Greg, Jeff, Tim, and Lynne) and seven great-grandchildren, although he did not live long enough to meet any of them.)
|
Lillian and Bela vacationed on their lakeshore property in Lake Elsinore, California (then called Elsinore), on several lots between 1944 and 1953. Lillian's parents lived on one of their properties, and Lugosi frequented the health spa there. Bela Lugosi Jr. was boarded at the Elsinore Naval and Military School in Lake Elsinore, and also lived with Lillian's parents while she and Bela were touring.
After almost breaking up their marriage in 1944, Lillian and Bela finally divorced on July 17, 1953, at least partially because of Bela's excessive drinking and his jealousy over Lillian taking a full-time job as an assistant to actor Brian Donlevy on Donlevy's radio and television series "Dangerous Assignment". Lillian obtained custody of their son Bela Jr. Lugosi called the police one night after Lillian left him and threatened to commit suicide, but when the police showed up at his apartment, he denied making the call.(Lillian eventually did marry Brian Donlevy in 1966, by which time he had also become an alcoholic, and she died in 1981.)
|
Lugosi married Hope Lininger, his fifth wife, in 1955; she was 37 years his junior. She had been a fan, writing letters to him when he was in the hospital recovering from his drug addiction. She would sign her letters "A dash of Hope". They remained married until his death in 1956. However Bela and Hope were actually discussing getting divorced before he died.
Death.
Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 16, 1956, in the bedroom of his Los Angeles apartment while taking a nap. His wife, Hope, discovered him when she came home from work that evening, apparently having died peacefully in his sleep around 6:45 p.m. according to the medical examiner at the age of 73. The rumor that Lugosi was clutching the script for "The Final Curtain", a planned Ed Wood project, at the time of his death is not true.
Lugosi was buried wearing one of the "Dracula" capes and his full costume as well as his Dracula ring in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Contrary to popular belief, Lugosi never requested to be buried in his cloak; Bela G. Lugosi confirmed on numerous occasions that he and his mother, Lillian, made the decision but believed that it is what his father would have wanted.
|
The funeral was held on Saturday, August 18 at the Utter-McKinley funeral home in Hollywood. Attendees in addition to immediate family included former wife of 20 years Lillian, Forrest J. Ackerman, Ed Wood (pall bearer), Tor Johnson, Conrad Brooks, Richard Sheffield, Norma McCarty, Loretta King, Paul Marco and actor George Becwar. Bela's fourth wife Lillian paid for the cemetery plot and stone (which was inscribed "Beloved Father"), while Hope Lugosi paid for the coffin and the funeral service. Lugosi's will left several inexpensive pieces of real estate in Elsinore and only $1,000 cash to his son, but since the will had been written on Jan. 12, 1954 (before Lugosi's fifth marriage), Bela Jr. had to share the thousand dollars evenly with Hope Lugosi.
Hope later gave most of Lugosi's personal belongings and memorabilia to Bela's young neighborhood friend Richard Sheffield, who gave Lugosi's duplicate Dracula cape to Bela Jr. and sold some of the other items to Forrest J. Ackerman. Hope told Sheffield she had searched the apartment for several days looking for $3,000 she suspected Lugosi had hidden there, but she never found it. Sheffield said years later "Lugosi had probably spent it all on alcohol." Hope later moved to Hawaii, where she worked for many years as a caregiver in a leper colony. Hope died in Hawaii in 1997, at age 78, having never remarried. Before her death, she gave several interviews to the fan press.
|
California Supreme Court decision on personality rights.
In 1979, the "Lugosi v. Universal Pictures" decision by the California Supreme Court held that Lugosi's personality rights could not pass to his heirs, as a copyright would have. The court ruled that under California law, any rights of publicity, including the right to his image, terminated with Lugosi's death. Six years later the law was changed by the California Celebrities Rights Act.
Legacy.
The cape Lugosi wore in "Dracula" (1931) was in the possession of his son until it was put up for auction in 2011. It was expected to sell for up to $2 million, but has since been listed again by Bonhams in 2018. In 2019, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures announced acquisition of the cape via partial donation from the Lugosi family. In 2019 it was announced that the cape would be on display the following year.
Andy Warhol's 1963 silkscreen "The Kiss" depicts Lugosi from "Dracula" about to bite into the neck of co-star Helen Chandler, who played Mina Harker. A copy sold for $798,000 at Christie's in May 2000.
|
Lugosi was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. His star is mentioned in "Celluloid Heroes", a song performed by The Kinks and written by their lead vocalist and principal songwriter, Ray Davies. It appeared on their 1972 album "Everybody's in Show-Biz".
In 1979, a song called "Bela Lugosi's Dead" was released by UK post-punk band Bauhaus and is a pioneering song in the gothic rock genre. On choosing the topic of the song, the band's bassist David J remarked "There was a season of old horror films on TV and I was telling Daniel about how much I loved them. The one that had been on the night before was Dracula [1931]. I was saying how Bela Lugosi was the quintessential Dracula, the elegant depiction of the character."
An episode of "Sledge Hammer!" titled "Last of the Red Hot Vampires" was an homage to Bela Lugosi; at the end of the episode, it was dedicated to "Mr. Blasko".
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff are referenced in the Curtis Stigers' song "Sleeping with the Lights On", from the 1991 album "Curtis Stigers".
|
In Tim Burton's "Ed Wood", Bela Lugosi is portrayed by Martin Landau, who received the 1994 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the performance. According to Bela G. Lugosi (his son), Forrest Ackerman, Dolores Fuller and Richard Sheffield, the film's portrayal of Lugosi is inaccurate: In real life, he never used profanity, did not hate Karloff, owned no small dogs, nor did he sleep in a coffin. Also Ed Wood did not meet Lugosi in a funeral parlor, but rather through his roommate Alex Gordon.
Péter Müller's 1998 theatrical play "Lugosi – the Shadow of the Vampire" () is based on Lugosi's life, telling the story of his life as he became typecast as Dracula and as his drug addiction worsened. In the Hungarian production, directed by István Szabó, Lugosi was played by Ivan Darvas.
In 2001, BBC Radio 4 broadcast "There Are Such Things" by Steven McNicoll and Mark McDonnell. Focusing on Lugosi and his well-documented struggle to escape from the role that had typecast him, the play went on to receive the Hamilton Deane Award for best dramatic presentation from the Dracula Society in 2002.
|
On July 19, 2003, German artist Hartmut Zech erected a bust of Lugosi on one of the corners of Vajdahunyad Castle in Budapest.
The Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York City features a live 30-minute play that focuses on Lugosi's illegal entry into the country via New Orleans and his arrival at Ellis Island months later to enter the country legally.
In 2013 the Hungarian electronic music band Žagar recorded a song entitled "Mr. Lugosi", which contains a recording of the voice of Bela Lugosi. The song was a part of the "Light Leaks" record.
According to Paru Itagaki, the creator of the Japanese manga/anime "Beastars", the main character Legoshi was inspired by Bela Lugosi (regarding the similar-sounding names).
In 2020, Legendary Comics published an adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 "Dracula" novel, which used the likeness of Lugosi.
A 2021 hardcover graphic novel depicting the life of Bela Lugosi was written and drawn by Koren Shadmi, entitled "Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Dracula." |
Bride of the Monster
Bride of the Monster is a 1955 American independent science fiction horror film, co-written, produced and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr., and starring Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson with a supporting cast featuring Tony McCoy and Loretta King.
The film is considered to have Wood's biggest budget ($70,000). Production commenced in 1954 but, due to further financial problems, was not completed until 1955. It was released in May 1955, initially on a double bill with "Macumba".
Plot.
In a stretch of woods, two hunters are caught in a thunderstorm. They decide to seek refuge in Willows House, supposedly abandoned and haunted. They find Willows House occupied, and the current owner, scientist Dr. Eric Vornoff, denies them hospitality. They attempt to force their entry into the house, but a giant octopus is released from its tank and sent after them. The octopus kills one of the hunters while Vornoff's mute assistant Lobo captures the other. Vornoff experiments on the unwilling hunter, who dies on the operating table.
|
There are now twelve missing victims. Reporter Janet Lawton vows to go to Lake Marsh to investigate. Officer Tom Robbins and Lieutenant Dick Craig, Janet's fiancé, talk to Professor Vladimir Strowski, an intellectual from Europe who agrees to assist in investigating the Marsh but not at night. That night, another storm begins. Janet drives alone to Lake Marsh, but visibility is poor, and she drives off the road and into a ravine. Lobo rescues her.
Janet awakens to find herself a prisoner of Vornoff, who uses hypnosis to put her back to sleep. The following day, Craig and Robbins drive to the area around Lake Marsh, a swamp. The partners discuss the strange weather and mention that the newspapers could be right about "the atom bomb explosions distorting the atmosphere". The duo eventually discovers Janet's abandoned car; she becomes the thirteenth missing victim. They leave the swamp while Strowski drives a rented car to the swamp.
Janet awakens at Willows House. Vornoff assures her that Lobo is harmless, but the giant seems fascinated with Janet. Lobo is human, and Vornoff found him in the "wilderness of Tibet". Vornoff hypnotically places Janet back to sleep. He orders Lobo to transport her to Vornoff's private quarters.
|
Meanwhile, Strowski approaches Willows House and enters through the unlocked front door. While Strowski searches the house, Vornoff arrives to greet him. Their country of origin is interested in Vornoff's experiments with atomic energy and wants to recruit him. Two decades prior, Vornoff had suggested using experiments with nuclear power, which could create superhumans of great strength and size. In response, he was branded a madman and exiled by his country. Strowski dreams of conquest in their country's name, while Vornoff dreams of his creations conquering in his own name. Strowski is then attacked and forced into a cage, where the octopus kills him. Meanwhile, Craig and Robbins return to the swamp and discover Strowski's abandoned car. The partners split up to search the area, Craig heading towards Willows House. In the secret laboratory, Vornoff uses a wave of his hand to telepathically summon Janet to his current location. She arrives dressed as a bride. Vornoff has decided to use her as the next subject of his experiments. Lobo is reluctant to participate in this experiment, and Vornoff uses a whip to re-assert his control over him. Meanwhile, Craig enters the house and accidentally discovers a secret passage. He is himself captured by Vornoff and Lobo.
|
As the experiment is about to begin, Lobo is distressed. He decides to rebel and knocks Vornoff out. Lobo then releases Janet and transports the unconscious Vornoff to the operating table. Vornoff becomes the subject of his own human experiment. This time the experiment works and Vornoff transforms into an atomic-powered superhuman being. He and Lobo physically struggle, and their fight destroys the laboratory and starts a fire. Vornoff grabs Janet and escapes from the flames. Robbins and other officers arrive to help Craig. The police pursue Vornoff through the woods. There is another thunderstorm, and a lightning strike further destroys Willows House. With his home and equipment destroyed, a distressed Vornoff abandons Janet and attempts to escape. Craig rolls a rock at him and lands him in the water with the octopus. They struggle until a nuclear explosion obliterates both combatants. Apparently, the end result of the chain reaction started at the destroyed laboratory. Robbins says of Vornoff "he tampered in God's domain".
|
Production and release.
The first incarnation of the film was a 1953 script by Alex Gordon titled "The Atomic Monster", but a lack of financing prevented any production. Later Ed Wood revived the project as "The Monster of the Marshes". Actual shooting began in October 1954 at the Ted Allan Studios, but further money problems quickly halted the production. The required funds were supplied by a meat packing plant owner named Donald McCoy, who became credited as the film's producer on the condition that his son Tony was to star as the film's hero. According to screenwriter Dennis Rodriguez, casting the younger McCoy as a protagonist was one of two terms Donald imposed on Wood. The other term was to include an atomic explosion at the film's finale. Production resumed in 1955 at Centaur Studios.
Actor George Becwar, who played the bearded Russian agent Strowski, after getting paid for his one day of work on the film, complained that he had been underpaid to the Screen Actors Guild and caused the production to be temporarily shut down for an investigation. Wood as a result had to raise more money from backers and lost another piece of the ownership of the film as a result. An actor friend of Wood's, John Andrews, said in an interview: "Eddie hated, loathed, despised, wanted murdered, George Becwar ...I'm not overdoin' it man, I'm telling you straight. He hated George Becwar to the day he deceased, and I mean with a passion!"
|
The film premiered at Hollywood's Paramount theater on May 11, 1955, under the title "Bride of the Atom". Wood related the story of how, after the film played, he asked the theater's manager what he thought of the picture, to which the manager replied "Stinks". Wood took scissors and physically cut the man out of an 8 X 10 group shot that was taken that night after the premiere as a publicity photo. When asked "Who was that you cut out?", Wood replied "Well, he's not there any more, so it doesn't matter".
The film was reportedly completed and released through a deal with attorney Samuel Z. Arkoff. Arkoff profited from the film more than Wood, and his earnings contributed to the funding of his American International Pictures. Wood had oversold shares in the picture and wound up owning none of it himself. The ending credits identify the copyright holder of the film as "Filmakers Releasing Organization". Distribution rights were held by Banner Films in the United States, and by Exclusive in the United Kingdom.
Analysis.
|
Genre and background.
The film combines elements of science fiction and horror fiction, genres which were frequently combined in films of the 1950s. Like many of these contemporaries, "Bride" serves in part as a Cold War propaganda film. The country of origin for Vornoff and Strowski is left unnamed. The only clues is that it is European and has its own dreams of conquest. By implication, the country which exiled Vornoff in the 1930s could be Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Their role as villains for the American cinema had already been solidified by the 1950s, and Wood could be alluding to both of them. Strowski uses the term master race, which is a key concept in Nazism.
Both the working title "Bride of the Atom" and the final title "Bride of the Monster" allude to the film "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935). The film otherwise follows the template of the Poverty Row horror films of the 1940s. The Atomic Age influences the film in its ominous implications concerning nuclear weapons and the threat they posed towards human civilization.
|
Content.
This was Bela Lugosi's last speaking role in a feature film. Lugosi subsequently played a silent part in "The Black Sleep" (1956). "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1957) uses silent archive footage of Lugosi, since he died prior to the creation of its script. "Lock Up Your Daughters" (1959) recycled footage from Lugosi's earlier films, possibly mixed with some new material.
According to Rob Craig, in "Bride", Lugosi for the last time plays "a charismatic villain whose megalomania leads to downfall and destruction". Craig considers this to be one of Lugosi's finest roles, citing the surprisingly energetic performance of the aging actor. The scenes involving hypnosis contain close-ups of Lugosi's eyes. Wood was probably trying to recreate similar scenes from an older film of Lugosi's, "White Zombie" (1932). Lugosi did not actually play Vornoff in the scenes demanding physicality. The film made use of body doubles for Lugosi: Eddie Parker and Red Reagan. Parker was also the body-double of Lugosi in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" (1943). Lugosi's fee for the film is estimated to have been $1,000.00.
|
The story is similar to an earlier Bela Lugosi movie, "The Corpse Vanishes" (1942). In both movies, each bride at her wedding was given an orchid, which she sniffed before passing out. In "The Corpse Vanishes", Lugosi played a doctor who captured the brides and took some kind of liquid from each bride's body and injected it into his wife to make her temporarily young again. Characters included his wife, an old woman, the old woman's grown son, and a dwarf. In "Bride of the Monster", Lugosi again plays a doctor doing experiments, but his only housemate/assistant is Lobo, and when his experiment fails to turn someone into an "atomic-powered superman", he throws the dead subject to an octopus or an alligator, similar to Lugosi throwing a body into a river in "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1932).
The hunters of the opening scenes, Jake Long and Blake "Mac" McCreigh, were played by John Warren and Bud Osborne. The police station scenes feature cameos by a drunk and a newspaper seller. The former is played by Ben Frommer (known for playing Count Bloodcount in "Transylvania 6-5000"). The latter is played by William Benedict (known as one of The Bowery Boys). Janet Lawton briefly speaks with a co-worker called Margie. Margie is played by Dolores Fuller (Ed Wood's girlfriend at the time). Dick Craig's partner, Martin, is played by Don Nagel. Both Fuller and Nagel had worked with Wood in Wood's previous film "Jail Bait" (1954).
|
The film uses stock footage of a real octopus, and a fake, rubber octopus in scenes where "the monster" interacts with the actors. It is widely believed this was a prop from the John Wayne film "Wake of the Red Witch" (1948). Contradictory accounts claim that Wood either stole or legally rented the prop from Republic Pictures, which produced the earlier film. The struggle between Vornoff and the octopus was filmed at Griffith Park.
Craig comments that there is a stark contrast between the characters of Dick Craig and Janet Lawton. Dick speaks in a deadpan unemotional way and seems to be a rather lethargic character. Janet is a "brassy girl reporter", a dynamic character with a sense of autonomy. The role of Janet was reportedly intended for Dolores Fuller. According to Fuller's recollections, Loretta King bribed Wood into casting her as Janet, with promises of securing further funding for the film. Fuller was thus reduced to playing a cameo role, "Margie", and this led to her later breakup with Ed Wood and her moving to New York to start a songwriting career with Elvis Presley. King always vehemently denied bribing Wood in any way, saying the story was ridiculous since she never had any money to invest in films in the 1950s.
|
In a subplot of the film, there are storms every night for three months and strange weather patterns. The characters attribute the phenomenon to the effects the nuclear explosions have on the atmosphere. This probably reflects actual anxiety of the 1950s about potential climate change. Until the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963), atmospheric nuclear weapons testing was used widely and recklessly. Rob Craig suggests that the months of constant storms could be inspired by the Genesis flood narrative. In the context of the film, the strange weather is implied to be a side-effect of the experiments of Vornoff which apparently release radioactivity into the atmosphere.
The dialogue of the film includes lines such as "Home? I have no home!", "One is always considered mad, when one discovers something which others cannot grasp", and the closing "He tampered in God's domain." The phrases could well apply to the fates of avant-garde artists and thinkers. The title "Bride of the Atom", which Vornoff uses for Janet in the bridal dress, is inexplicable unless the scientist is actually attempting to use Janet to replace his long-lost wife. One of his reassuring lines to Janet concerning the experiment, "It hurts, just for a moment, but then you will emerge a woman...", sounds as if he is preparing her for the loss of her virginity. The scene of a young woman, in a bridal gown, restrained by leather shackles seems to be sadomasochistic in nature.
|
Throughout the film, the mute Lobo is implied to have an unspecified intellectual disability and to be of sub-human intelligence. Yet he successfully operates complex machinery as if trained to do so. Craig views this scene as implying that supposedly "dumb" servants can have a capacity of learning the secrets of their masters.
The final scenes, with the mushroom cloud of the nuclear explosion, use stock footage from the blast of a thermonuclear weapon ("hydrogen bomb").
The apparent fetish of Lobo with angora wool is a reflection of Wood's own fetish for the material. This serves as the film's connection to "Glen or Glenda" (1953), where the fetish plays a more prominent role. In 1961's "The Beast of Yucca Flats", Johnson strangely pets and hugs a rabbit as he dies in that film's finale.
The character of Lobo appeared again in Wood's "Night of the Ghouls", horribly burned but still alive. This film serves as a sequel of sorts to "Bride". Vornoff is absent from the later film, but there are references to the activities of "the mad doctor". Tor Johnson also plays a character called Lobo in "The Unearthly" (1957) who also serves as a henchman to the main villain.
|
This film is part of what Wood aficionados refer to as "The Kelton Trilogy", a trio of films featuring Paul Marco as Officer Kelton, a whining, reluctant policeman. The other two films are "Plan 9 from Outer Space" and "Night of the Ghouls". Kelton is the only character to appear in all three films.
Critical reception.
Writing for "Famous Monsters" in 1962, Joe Dante, Jr. included "Bride of the Monster" on his list of the worst horror films of all time. Dante declared it as "definitely one of the most inexpensive thrillers ever. The sets were cardboard, and the direction card-boring." Film critic Glenn Erickson wrote in DVD Talk that "nearly every dialogue exchange is an embarrassment and every camera setup somehow wrong," but noted that Lugosi's performance "is better than okay, rising to the demands of the awful script," and that the film is "too endearing to hate." A review by Bruce Eder in AllMovie noted that the film "is ineptly made and it has seams - including mismatched interior and exterior sets and scenery that shakes during the fight scenes," that it has "some of the strangest incidental dialogue that anyone had ever heard," and that "there is a lot to laugh at in the movie, most of it unintentional." A review of the film in TV Guide described it as a "masterpiece of involuntary farce," that the "marvelously idiotic dialog keeps things moving along without stopping for breath [or] logic," and that the "final images of poor old decrepit Lugosi struggling in the arms of a motionless rubber octopus are incomparably bathetic."
|
Legacy.
In 1986, the film was featured in the syndicated series the "Canned Film Festival", and was later featured on the comedy series, "Mystery Science Theater 3000". The episode also features a musical parody of the Jam Handy short film "Hired!", with Joel Robinson, Crow T. Robot, Tom Servo and Gypsy performing "Hired! The Musical".
The late 1990s dream trance track "Alright", by DJ Taucher, sampled a monologue from Bela Lugosi during the interlude of the song.
In 2005, "The Devil's Rejects" footage of the film was played in the movie.
In 2008, a colorized version was released by Legend Films. This version was also released on Amazon Video on Demand.
In 2010, a retrospective on the movie entitled "Citizen Wood: Making 'The Bride', Unmaking the Legend" was included in the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" Volume 19 DVD set as a bonus feature for said episode featuring the movie. Horror host Mr. Lobo is among the interviewees of the 27 minute documentary.
Controversies.
In 1980, the book "The Golden Turkey Awards" claims that Lugosi's character declares his manservant Lobo (Tor Johnson) is "as harmless as a kitchen" . This allegedly misspoken line is cited as evidence of either Lugosi's failing health/mental faculties, or as further evidence of Wood's incompetence as a director. However, a viewing of the film itself reveals that Lugosi said this line correctly, the exact words being, "Don't be afraid of Lobo; he's as gentle as a kitten." The easier explanation would be that authors Michael Medved and Harry Medved saw the film in a theater setting with inferior sound quality, or viewed a damaged print. A single viewing in such conditions could result in mishearing some lines of dialogue. The inaccurate claim managed to achieve urban legend status, and continues circulating.
|
The biopic "Ed Wood" portrays the filmmakers stealing the mechanical octopus (previously used in the film "Wake of the Red Witch") from the Republic Studios backlot, while failing to steal the motor which enabled the prop to move realistically. These events are alleged to have actually occurred in the 2004 documentary "The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made". However, other stories circulated that Wood legitimately rented the octopus, along with some cars, for the picture. To remedy the lack of movement from the octopus prop, whenever someone was killed by the monster in the film, they simply flailed around in the shallow water while holding the tentacles around themselves to imitate its movements.
Rudolph Grey's book "Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr." contains anecdotes regarding the making of this film. Grey notes that participants in the original events sometimes contradict one another, but he relates each person's information for posterity. He also includes Ed Wood's claim that only one of his films made a profit and surmises that it was most likely "Bride of the Monster", but that Wood had oversold the film and could not reimburse all of the backers afterward. Most biographies mention "The Violent Years" as being Wood's most profitable film.
References.
Sources. |
Berry paradox
The Berry paradox is a self-referential paradox arising from an expression like "The smallest positive integer not definable in under sixty letters" (a phrase with fifty-seven letters).
Bertrand Russell, the first to discuss the paradox in print, attributed it to G. G. Berry (1867–1928), a junior librarian at Oxford's Bodleian Library. Russell called Berry "the only person in Oxford who understood mathematical logic". The paradox was called "Richard's paradox" by Jean-Yves Girard.
Overview.
Consider the expression:
Since there are only twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, there are finitely many phrases of under sixty letters, and hence finitely many positive integers that are defined by phrases of under sixty letters. Since there are infinitely many positive integers, this means that there are positive integers that cannot be defined by phrases of under sixty letters. If there are positive integers that satisfy a given property, then there is a "smallest" positive integer that satisfies that property; therefore, there is a smallest positive integer satisfying the property "not definable in under sixty letters". This is the integer to which the above expression refers. But the above expression is only fifty-seven letters long, therefore it "is" definable in under sixty letters, and is "not" the smallest positive integer not definable in under sixty letters, and is "not" defined by this expression. This is a paradox: there must be an integer defined by this expression, but since the expression is self-contradictory (any integer it defines is definable in under sixty letters), there cannot be any integer defined by it.
|
Mathematician and computer scientist Gregory Chaitin in "The Unknowable" (1999) adds this comment: "Well, the Mexican mathematical historian Alejandro Garcidiego has taken the trouble to find that letter [of Berry's from which Russell penned his remarks], and it is rather a different paradox. Berry’s letter actually talks about the first ordinal that can’t be named in a finite number of words. According to Cantor’s theory such an ordinal must exist, but we’ve just named it in a finite number of words, which is a contradiction."
Resolution.
The Berry paradox as formulated above arises because of systematic ambiguity in the word "definable". In other formulations of the Berry paradox, such as one that instead reads: "...not nameable in less..." the term "nameable" is also one that has this systematic ambiguity. Terms of this kind give rise to vicious circle fallacies. Other terms with this type of ambiguity are: satisfiable, true, false, function, property, class, relation, cardinal, and ordinal. To resolve one of these paradoxes means to pinpoint exactly where our use of language went wrong and to provide restrictions on the use of language which may avoid them.
|
This family of paradoxes can be resolved by incorporating stratifications of meaning in language. Terms with systematic ambiguity may be written with subscripts denoting that one level of meaning is considered a higher priority than another in their interpretation. "The number not nameable0 in less than eleven words" may be nameable1 in less than eleven words under this scheme.
However, one can read Alfred Tarski's contributions to the Liar Paradox to find how this resolution in languages falls short. Alfred Tarski diagnosed the paradox as arising only in languages that are "semantically closed", by which he meant a language in which it is possible for one sentence to predicate truth (or falsehood) of another sentence in the same language (or even of itself). To avoid self-contradiction, it is necessary when discussing truth values to envision levels of languages, each of which can predicate truth (or falsehood) only of languages at a lower level. So, when one sentence refers to the truth-value of another, it is semantically higher. The sentence referred to is part of the "object language", while the referring sentence is considered to be a part of a "meta-language" with respect to the object language. It is legitimate for sentences in "languages" higher on the semantic hierarchy to refer to sentences lower in the "language" hierarchy, but not the other way around. This prevents a system from becoming self-referential.
|
However, this system is incomplete. One would like to be able to make statements such as "For every statement in level "α" of the hierarchy, there is a statement at level "α"+1 which asserts that the first statement is false." This is a true, meaningful statement about the hierarchy that Tarski defines, but it refers to statements at every level of the hierarchy, so it must be above every level of the hierarchy, and is therefore not possible within the hierarchy (although bounded versions of the sentence are possible). Saul Kripke is credited with identifying this incompleteness in Tarski's hierarchy in his highly cited paper "Outline of a theory of truth," and it is recognized as a general problem in hierarchical languages.
Formal analogues.
Using programs or proofs of bounded lengths, it is possible to construct an analogue of the Berry expression in a formal mathematical language, as has been done by Gregory Chaitin. Though the formal analogue does not lead to a logical contradiction, it does prove certain impossibility results.
|
built on a formalized version of Berry's paradox to prove Gödel's incompleteness theorem in a new and much simpler way. The basic idea of his proof is that a proposition that holds of "x" if and only if "x" = "n" for some natural number "n" can be called a "definition" for "n", and that the set {("n", "k"): "n" has a definition that is "k" symbols long} can be shown to be representable (using Gödel numbers). Then the proposition ""m" is the first number not definable in less than "k" symbols" can be formalized and shown to be a definition in the sense just stated.
Relationship with Kolmogorov complexity.
It is not possible in general to unambiguously define what is the minimal number of symbols required to describe a given string (given a specific description mechanism). In this context, the terms "string" and "number" may be used interchangeably, since a number is actually a string of symbols, e.g. an English word (like the word "eleven" used in the paradox) while, on the other hand, it is possible to refer to any word with a number, e.g. by the number of its position in a given dictionary or by suitable encoding. Some long strings can be described exactly using fewer symbols than those required by their full representation, as is often achieved using data compression. The complexity of a given string is then defined as the minimal length that a description requires in order to (unambiguously) refer to the full representation of that string.
|
The Kolmogorov complexity is defined using formal languages, or Turing machines which avoids ambiguities about which string results from a given description. It can be proven that the Kolmogorov complexity is not computable. The proof by contradiction shows that if it were possible to compute the Kolmogorov complexity, then it would also be possible to systematically generate paradoxes similar to this one, i.e. descriptions shorter than what the complexity of the described string implies. That is to say, the definition of the Berry number is paradoxical because it is not actually possible to compute how many words are required to define a number, and we know that such computation is not possible because of the paradox. |
List of Olympic medalists in biathlon
This is the complete list of Olympic medalists in biathlon.
Medalists in military patrol, a precursor to biathlon, are listed separately.
Men.
The numbers in brackets denotes biathletes who won gold medal in corresponding disciplines more than one time. Bold numbers denotes record number of victories in certain disciplines.
Women.
The numbers in brackets denotes biathletes who won gold medal in corresponding disciplines more than one time. Bold numbers denotes record number of victories in certain disciplines.
Relay (4×6 km).
The women's relay event has been competed over three different distances:
Statistics.
Medal table.
Note
Biathletes with most victories.
Top 10 biathletes who won more gold medals at the Winter Olympics are listed below. Boldface denotes active biathletes and highest medal count among all biathletes (including those not in the tables) per type. |
Biathlon World Championships
The first Biathlon World Championships (BWCH) was held in 1958, with individual and team contests for men. The original team event, Team (time), was held for the last time in 1965, to be replaced in 1966 by the team event, Relay (4 × 7.5 km), which we know today. The number of events has grown significantly over the years. Beginning in 1984, women biathletes had their own World Championships, and finally, from 1989, both genders have been participating in joint Biathlon World Championships. In 1978 the development was enhanced by the change from the large army rifle calibre to a small bore rifle, while the range to the target was reduced from 150 to 50 meters.
Venues.
The Biathlon World Championships of the season takes place during February or March. Some years it has been necessary to schedule parts of the Championships at other than the main venue because of weather and/or snow conditions. Full, joint Biathlon World Championships have never been held in Olympic Winter Games seasons. Biathlon World Championships in non-IOC events, however, have been held in Olympic seasons. In 2005, the then new event of Mixed Relay (two legs done by women, two legs by men) was arranged separately from the ordinary Championships.
|
Past Championships:
Upcoming:
Men.
Numbers in brackets denotes number of victories in corresponding disciplines. Boldface denotes record number of victories.
Individual (20 km).
This event was first held in 1958.
Medal table
Sprint (10 km).
This event was first held in 1974.
Medal table
Pursuit (12.5 km).
This event was first held in 1997.
Medal table
Mass start (15 km).
This event was first held in 1999.
Medal table
Relay (4 × 7.5 km).
This event was first held unofficially in 1965. It was a success, and replaced
the team competition as an official event in 1966.
Medal table
Team (time).
This event was held from 1958 to 1965. The times of the top 3 athletes from each country in the 20 km individual were added together
(in 1958 the top 4).
Medal table
Team.
This event, a patrol race, was held from 1989 to 1998. 1989–93: 20 km. 1994–98: 10 km.
Medal table
Women.
Numbers in brackets denotes number of victories in corresponding disciplines. Boldface denotes record number of victories.
Individual (15 km).
This event was first held in 1984. Through 1988 the distance was 10 km.
|
Medal table
Sprint (7.5 km).
This event was first held in 1984. Through 1988 the distance was 5 km.
Medal table
Pursuit (10 km).
This event was first held in 1997.
Medal table
Mass start (12.5 km).
This event was first held in 1999.
Medal table
Relay (4 × 6 km).
This event was first held in 1984. Through 1988, the event was 3 × 5 km. 1989–91: 3 × 7.5 km. 1993–2001: 4 × 7.5 km. In 2003, the leg distance was set to 6 km.
Medal table
Team.
This event, a patrol race, was held from 1989 to 1998. 1989–93: 15 km. 1994–98: 7.5 km.
Medal table
Mixed.
Numbers in brackets denotes number of victories in corresponding disciplines. Boldface denotes record number of victories.
Mixed relay.
This event was first held in 2005, at the Biathlon World Cup finals in Khanty-Mansiysk. In 2005–20, the women biathletes did the first two legs and the men did the following two (except 2006 when sequence was woman–man–woman–man), the women's ski legs were 6 km each while men ski legs were 7.5 km each (except 2005, 2006 and 2020 when ski legs were 6 km each for all relay members). In 2021, the starting gender became the result of an alternation: for the first time, men opened the relay and women closed it. Since then, this sequence alternates for each following edition. The distance skied became the same for all genders and depending on the one running the first leg (7.5 km if men run first, 6 km if women do), but in 2024 it became 6 km for every relay member no matter who runs first leg.
|
Medal table
Single mixed relay.
This event was first held in 2019. Each team consists of two members - man and woman. The first of the team members runs the first and third legs (3 km each), the other team member – the second and fourth legs (3 km and 4.5 km respectively). In 2019 and 2020 the women biathletes started single mixed relay and the men biathletes finished it, in 2021 this order was reversed. Since then, this order alternates for each following edition.
Medal table
Total medals by country.
Updated after the 2025 Championships.
Multiple medalists.
Boldface denotes active biathletes and highest medal count among all biathletes (including these who not included in these tables) per type. |
Inedia
Inedia (Latin for 'fasting') or breatharianism ( ) is the claimed ability for a person to live without consuming food, and in some cases water. It is a pseudoscientific practice, and several adherents of these practices have died from starvation or dehydration.
Scientific assessment.
Documented studies on the physiological effects of food restriction clearly show that fasting for extended periods leads to starvation, dehydration, and eventual death. In the absence of food intake, the body normally burns its own reserves of glycogen, body fat, and muscle. Breatharians claim that their bodies do not consume these reserves while fasting.
Some breatharians have submitted themselves to medical testing, including a hospital's observation of Indian mystic Prahlad Jani appearing to survive without food or water for 15 days. However, the hospital Jani attended has not published official documentation about the event. In other cases, people have attempted to survive on sunlight alone, only to abandon the effort after losing a large percentage of their body weight.
|
In a handful of documented cases, individuals attempting breatharian fasting have died. Scientific societies such as the British Dietetic Association strongly disadvise the breatharian diet, qualifying it as "dangerous", and stating that "the basic fact is we all need food and liquid in our diet to live."
Alleged practitioners.
Rosicrucianism.
The 1670 Rosicrucian text "Comte de Gabalis" attributed the practice to the physician and occultist Paracelsus (1493–1541) who was described as having lived "several years by taking only one-half scrupule of Solar Quintessence". In this book, it is also stated that "Paracelsus affirms that He has seen many of the Sages fast twenty years without eating anything whatsoever."
Ram Bahadur Bomjon ("Bakji").
Ram Bahadur Bomjon is a Nepalese Buddhist monk who lives as an ascetic in a remote area of Nepal. Bomjon appears to go for long periods of time without ingesting either food or water. One such period was chronicled in a 2006 Discovery Channel documentary titled "The Boy With Divine Powers", which reported that Bomjon neither moved, ate, nor drank anything during 96 hours of filming. The documentary makers were, however, prevented from filming Bomjon continuously for that period of time. His claims have never been objectively verified.
|
Prahlad Jani ("Mataji").
Prahlad Jani was an Indian sadhu who claimed to have lived without food and water for more than 70 years. Doctors at Sterling Hospital investigated his claims in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in 2003 and 2010. The study concluded that Prahlad Jani was able to survive under observation for ten days without food and water, and had passed no urine or stool, with no need for dialysis. Interviews with the researchers speak of strict observation and relate that round-the-clock observation was ensured by multiple CCTV cameras. Jani was subjected to multiple medical tests. The research team could not comment on his claim of having been able to survive in this way for decades.
The case has attracted criticism, both after the 2003 tests and the 2010 tests. Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, criticized the 2010 experiment for allowing Jani to move out of a certain CCTV camera's field of view, meet devotees, and leave the sealed test room to sunbathe. Edamaruku stated that the regular gargling and bathing activities were not sufficiently monitored and accused Jani of having had some "influential protectors" who denied Edamaruku permission to inspect the project during its operation.
|
Jasmuheen.
Jasmuheen (born Ellen Greve) was a prominent advocate of breatharianism in the 1990s. She said, "I can go for months and months without having anything at all other than a cup of tea. My body runs on a different kind of nourishment." Interviewers found her house stocked with food; Jasmuheen claimed the food was for her husband and daughter. In 1999, she volunteered to be monitored closely by the Australian television program "60 Minutes" for one week without eating to demonstrate her methods.
Jasmuheen stated that she found it difficult on the third day of the test because the hotel room in which she was confined was located near a busy road, causing stress and pollution that prevented absorption of required nutrients from the air. "I asked for fresh air. Seventy per cent of my nutrients come from fresh air. I couldn’t even breathe," she said. On the third day, the test was moved to a mountainside retreat, where her condition continued to deteriorate. After Jasmuheen had fasted for four days, Berris Wink, president of the Queensland branch of the Australian Medical Association, urged her to stop the test.
|
According to Wink, Jasmuheen's pupils were dilated, her speech was slow, and she was "quite dehydrated, probably over 10%, getting up to 11%". Towards the end of the test, she said, "Her pulse is about double what it was when she started. The risks if she goes any further are kidney failure. "60 Minutes" would be culpable if they encouraged her to continue. She should stop now." The test was stopped. Wink said, "Unfortunately there are a few people who may believe what she says, and I'm sure it's only a few, but I think it's quite irresponsible for somebody to be trying to encourage others to do something that is so detrimental to their health." Jasmuheen challenged the results of the program, saying, "Look, 6,000 people have done this around the world without any problem."
Jasmuheen was awarded the Bent Spoon Award by Australian Skeptics in 2000 ("presented to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudoscientific piffle"). She also won the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize for Literature for "Living on Light". Jasmuheen claims that their beliefs are based on the writings and "more recent channelled material" from St. Germain. She stated that some people's DNA has expanded from 2 to 12 strands, to "absorb more hydrogen". When offered $30,000 to prove her claim with a blood test, she said that she did not understand the relevance as she was not referring to herself.
|
, five deaths had been directly linked to breatharianism as a result of Jasmuheen's publications. Jasmuheen has denied any responsibility for three of the deaths.
Wiley Brooks.
Wiley Brooks (1936–2016) was the founder of the Breatharian Institute of America. He was first introduced to the public in 1980 when he appeared on the TV show "That's Incredible!" Brooks stopped teaching shortly before his death in 2016 to "devote 100% of his time on solving the problem as to why he needed to eat some type of food to keep his physical body alive and allow his light body to manifest completely". Brooks claims to have found "four major deterrents" which prevented him from living without food: "people pollution", "food pollution", "air pollution", and "electro pollution".
In 1983, he was reportedly observed leaving a Santa Cruz 7-Eleven with a Slurpee, a hot dog, and Twinkies. He told "Colors" magazine in 2003 that he periodically breaks his fasting with a cheeseburger and a cola, explaining that when he's surrounded by junk culture and junk food, consuming them adds balance.
|
Brooks later claimed that "All McDonalds are constructed on properties that are protected by 5th Dimensional high energy/spiritual portals", encouraging the consumption of Diet Coke and McDonald's Double-Quarter-Pounder/with cheese meal ("It is also acceptable to combine 2 quarter-pounder with cheese burgers to make one double-quarter pounder if you can't get the double-quarter-pounder with cheese where you live"), and discouraging the consumption of "water of any kind". The idea of separate but interconnected 5D and 3D worlds was a major part of Brooks' ideology, and Brooks encouraged his followers to only eat these special 5D foods, as well as to meditate on a set of magical 5D words.
Brooks's institute has set various prices for prospective clients wishing to learn how to live without food, ranging from US$100,000 with an initial deposit of $10,000, to fifty billion dollars, to be paid via bank wire transfer with a preliminary deposit of $100,000, for a session called an "Immortality workshop". A payment plan was also offered. These charges were typically presented as limited time offers exclusively for billionaires.
|
Hira Ratan Manek.
Hira Ratan Manek (1937–2022) claimed that since 18 June 1995, he lived on water and occasionally tea, coffee, and buttermilk. Manek stated that sungazing was the key to his health, citing yogis, ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, Mayas, and Native Americans as practitioners of the art. While he and his proponents stated that medical experts confirmed his ability to draw sustenance by gazing at the Sun, a method which came to be known as "HRM phenomenon" (by his initials), he was caught on camera eating a big meal in a San Francisco restaurant in the 2011 documentary "Eat the Sun".
Ray Maor.
In a television documentary produced by the Israeli television investigative show "The Real Face" (פנים אמיתיות), hosted by Amnon Levy, Israeli practitioner of inedia Ray Maor (ריי מאור) appeared to survive without food or water for eight days and eight nights. According to the documentary, he was restricted to a small villa and placed under constant video surveillance, with medical supervision that included daily blood testing. The documentary claimed Maor was in good spirits throughout the experiment; that he lost after eight days; that blood tests showed no change before, during or after the experiment; and that cardiologist Ilan Kitsis from Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center was "baffled".
|
Mythology and religion.
Hinduism.
Some Hindu religious texts contain accounts of saints and hermits practising what would be called inedia, breatharianism or Sustenance through Light in modern terms. In Valmiki's "Ramayana", Book III, Canto VI, an account of anchorites and holy men is given, who flocked around Rama when he came to Śarabhanga's hermitage. These included, among others, the "...saints who live on rays which moon and daystar give" and "those ... whose food the wave of air supplies". In Canto XI of the same book, a hermit named Māṇḍakarṇi is mentioned: "For he, great votarist, intent – On strictest rule his stern life spent – ... – Ten thousand years on air he fed..." (English quotations are from Ralph T. H. Griffith's translation).
Paramahansa Yogananda's 1946 book "Autobiography of a Yogi" details two alleged historical examples of breatharianism, Hari Giri Bala and Therese Neumann.
There are claims that Devraha Baba lived without food.
Some breatharians claim that humans can be sustained solely by "prana", the vital life force in Hinduism. According to Ayurveda, sunlight is one of the main sources of prana, and some practitioners believe that it is possible for a person to survive on sunlight alone.
|
Taoism.
Bigu (grain avoidance) is a fasting technique with various different interpretations, from simply avoiding eating specific grains, to avoiding all grains, to eating no food at all, and drawing sustenance from gulps of air.
Jainism.
There are varying types of fasts practised by followers of Jainism. Some Jain monks and laities continuously fast for months. These fasts last six months or even longer. A Jain monk, Sahaj Muni Maharaj, is said to have completed his 365-day fast on 1 May 1998. Another Jain monk Hansaratna Vijayji was said to have completed 423-day fast in 494 days in 2015. He had previously claimed to have fasted for 108 days in 2013 and for 180 days in 2014. Several others have claimed to have fasted for six months. |
Bihar (disambiguation)
Bihar is a state in India.
Bihar may also refer to: |
Belfast
Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel. It is the second-largest city in Ireland (after Dublin), with an estimated population of in , and a metropolitan area population of 671,559.
First chartered as an English settlement in 1613, the town's early growth was driven by an influx of Scottish Presbyterians. Their descendants' disaffection with Ireland's Anglican establishment contributed to the rebellion of 1798, and to the union with Great Britain in 1800—later regarded as a key to the town's industrial transformation. When granted city status in 1888, Belfast was the world's largest centre of linen manufacture, and by the 1900s her shipyards were building up to a quarter of total United Kingdom tonnage.
Sectarian tensions existed with the Irish Catholic population that was drawn by mill and factory employment from western districts. Heightened by division over Ireland's future in the United Kingdom, these twice erupted in periods of sustained violence: in 1920–22, as Belfast emerged as the capital of the six northeast counties retaining the British connection, and over three decades from the late 1960s during which the British Army was continually deployed on the streets. A legacy of conflict is the barrier-reinforced separation of Protestant and Catholic working-class districts.
|
Since the Good Friday Agreement, the electoral balance in the once unionist-controlled city has shifted, albeit with no overall majority, in favour of Irish nationalists. At the same time, new immigrants are adding to the growing number of residents unwilling to identify with either of the two communal traditions.
Belfast has seen significant services sector growth, with important contributions from financial technology (fintech), from tourism and, with facilities in the redeveloped Harbour Estate, from film. It retains a port with commercial and industrial docks, including a reduced Harland & Wolff shipyard and aerospace and defence contractors. Post Brexit, Belfast and Northern Ireland remain, uniquely, within both the British domestic and European Single trading areas for goods.
The city is served by two airports: George Best Belfast City Airport, located on the Lough shore, and Belfast International Airport (also known as Aldergrove), located west of the city. It supports two universities: on the north-side of the city centre, Ulster University, and on the southside the longer established Queens University. Since 2021, Belfast has been a UNESCO designated City of Music.
|
History.
Name.
The name Belfast derives from the Irish (), "Mouth of the Farset", a river whose name in the Irish, "Feirste," refers to a sandbar or tidal ford. This was formed where the river ran—until culverted late in the 18th century, down High Street— into the Lagan. It was at this crossing, located under or close to the current Queen's Bridge, that the early settlement developed.
The compilers of Ulster-Scots use various transcriptions of local pronunciations of "Belfast" (with which they sometimes are also content) including "Bilfawst", "Bilfaust" or "Baelfawst."
As a legacy of emigration, Belfast has lent its name to more than a dozen settlements in the United States, of which the largest is Belfast, Maine, and to one each in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.
Early settlements.
The site of Belfast has been occupied since the Bronze Age. The Giant's Ring, a 5,000-year-old henge, is located near the city, and the remains of Iron Age hill forts can still be seen in the surrounding hills. At the beginning of the 14th century, Papal tax rolls record two churches: the "Chapel of Dundela" at Knock (Irish: , meaning "hill") in the east, connected by some accounts to the 7th-century evangelist St. Colmcille,and, the "Chapel of the Ford", which may have been a successor to a much older parish church on the present Shankill "(Seanchill", "Old Church") Road, dating back to the 9th, and possibly to St. Patrick in the mid 5th, century.
|
A Norman settlement at the ford, comprising the parish church (now St. George's), a watermill, and a small fort, was an outpost of Carrickfergus Castle. Established in the late 12th century, out along the north shore of the Lough, Carrickfergus was to remain the principal English foothold in the north-east until the scorched- earth Nine Years' War at the end of the 16th century broke the remaining Irish power, the O'Neills.
Developing port, radical politics.
With a commission from King James VI and I, in 1613 Sir Arthur Chichester undertook the Plantation of Belfast and the surrounding area, attracting mainly English and Manx settlers. The subsequent arrival of Scottish Presbyterians embroiled Belfast in its only recorded siege: denounced from London by John Milton as "ungrateful and treacherous guests", in 1649 the newcomers were temporarily expelled by an English Parliamentarian army. In 1689, Catholic Jacobite forces, briefly in command of the town, abandoned it in advance of the landing at Carrickfergus of William, Prince of Orange, who proceeded through Belfast to his celebrated victory on 12 July 1690 at the Boyne.
|
Together with French Huguenots, the Scots introduced the production of linen, a flax-spinning industry that in the 18th century carried Belfast trade to the Americas. Fortunes were made carrying rough linen clothing and salted provisions to the slave plantations of the West Indies; sugar and rum to Baltimore and New York City; and for the return to Belfast flaxseed and tobacco from the colonies. From the 1760s, profits from the trade financed improvements in the town's commercial infrastructure, including the Lagan Canal, new docks and quays, and the construction of the White Linen Hall which together attracted to Belfast the linen trade that had formerly gone through Dublin. Abolitionist sentiment, however, defeated the proposal of the greatest of the merchant houses, Cunningham and Greg, in 1786 to commission ships for the Middle Passage.As "Dissenters" from the established Anglican church (with its episcopacy and ritual), Presbyterians were conscious of sharing, if only in part, the disabilities of Ireland's dispossessed Roman Catholic majority; and of being denied representation in the Irish Parliament. Belfast's two MPs remained nominees of the Chichesters (Marquesses of Donegall). With their emigrant kinsmen in America, the region's Presbyterians were to share a growing disaffection from the Crown.
|
When early in the American War of Independence, Belfast Lough was raided by the privateer John Paul Jones, the townspeople assembled their own Volunteer militia. Formed ostensibly for defence of the Kingdom, Volunteer corps were soon pressing their own protest against "taxation without representation". Further emboldened by the French Revolution, a more radical element in the town, the Society of United Irishmen, called for Catholic emancipation and a representative national government. In hopes of French assistance, in 1798 the Society organised a republican insurrection. The rebel tradesmen and tenant farmers were defeated north of the town at the Battle of Antrim and to the south at the Battle of Ballynahinch.
Britain seized on the rebellion to abolish the Irish Parliament, unlamented in Belfast, and to incorporate Ireland in a United Kingdom. In 1832, British parliamentary reform permitted the town its first electoral contest – an occasion for an early and lethal sectarian riot.
Industrial expansion, sectarian division.
|
While other Irish towns experienced a loss of manufacturing, from the 1820s Belfast underwent rapid industrial expansion. After a cotton boom and bust, the town emerged as the global leader in the production of linen goods (mill, and finishing, work largely employing women and children), winning the moniker "Linenopolis". Shipbuilding led the development of heavier industry. By the 1900s, her shipyards were building up to a quarter of the total United Kingdom tonnage, and on the eve of the Great War, in 1914, close one eighth of world production. This included from the yard of Harland & Wolff the ill-fated RMS "Titanic," at the time of her launch in 1911 the largest ship afloat."" Other major export industries included textile machinery, rope, tobacco and mineral waters.
Industry drew in a new Catholic population settling largely in the west of the town—refugees from a rural poverty intensified by Belfast's mechanisation of spinning and weaving and, in the 1840s, by famine. The plentiful supply of cheap labour helped attract English and Scottish capital to Belfast, but it was also a cause of insecurity. Protestant workers organised and dominated the apprenticed trades and gave a new lease of life to the once largely rural Orange Order. Sectarian tensions, which frequently broke out in riots and workplace expulsions, were also driven by the "constitutional question": the prospect of a restored Irish parliament in which Protestants (and northern industry) feared being a minority interest.
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.