How famed director Billy Wilder's career hinged on a crucial face-to-face meeting in Mexico
Also, Abraham Lincoln captured on film and remembering Charles Schulz.
Dear reader,
This week I begin with a story told by Hollywood director Billy Wilder. It’s about his desperate gambit to remain in the United States in the early 1930s. Wilder had fled from his native Austria after witnessing the rise of the Nazi Party and growing antisemitism in neighbouring Germany. When I first read Wilder’s tale, I thought about all the other refugees and immigrants who have followed since then, and wondered how many people have been in a similar predicament.
A couple of other notes this week were motivated by anniversaries. One is related to President Abraham Lincoln and the other to the popular cartoonist and social commentator, Charles Schulz, creator of Snoopy and Charlie Brown.
All three of the people featured in this newsletter are fascinating to me. I hope you, too, find these notes interesting. Let me know.
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Wilder’s journey
Billy (Samuel) Wilder (1906-2002) was one of the most celebrated directors in Hollywood. His films rank among the classics of cinematic history. He directed fourteen different actors in Oscar-winning performances. His movies included Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, The Seven Year Itch, Double Indemnity, The Apartment and Sabrina. There were lots more.
At the 60th Academy Awards ceremony in 1988, he received the Irving Thalberg award for lifetime achievement for his five-decades in the movie business. In his acceptance speech he told this story:
Thank you very much. I understand that this is the most prestigious award you can get, with the possible exception of the Nobel Prize, of course. I would like you to take this [removes trophy from the podium and hands it to Jack Lemmon] because I have a feeling this is gonna break.
I would especially like to thank—after having thanked the governors of the Academy and the members, and all the millions of fans I have all over the world, in the civilized parts of the world—I would very much like to thank one specific gentleman without whose help I would not be standing here tonight. I have forgotten his name but I have never forgotten his compassion. He was the American consul in Mexicali, Mexico.
Now, imagine it's 1934. It's a year after the Hitler putsch. We are all in exile: Zurich, London, Paris.
Then I get lucky. I sell a story to Hollywood and I get the visitor's visa for six months. Then I come here and start working, but six months go by very, very fast.
Well, I don't want to leave. I would like to stay in America. So, I am being told that I need an immigration visa, for which reason you—I mean, you have to leave the country, get the immigration visa and then come back in order to re-enter with the proper papers.
So I go to Mexicali which is the closest American consulate right across the border from California. And as they showed me into the office of the consul I was drenched in sweat. It was not the heat. It was just the panic, the fear.
I knew that I needed a whole bunch of documents: affidavits, official proof of former residence, sworn testaments that I had never been a criminal or an anarchist.
I had nothing, zilch. Just my passport and my birth certificate and some letters from a few American friends vouching that I was harmless. It looked hopeless.
The consul—he looked a little bit like Will Rogers—examined my meager documentation. "Is that all you have?" he asked. And I said, "Yes."
I have to explain that, you know, I had to get out of Berlin on very short notice, like twenty minutes. A neighbor had tipped me off that two men in uniform had been looking for me. I had just enough time to throw in a few things in the suitcase and get on a night train to Paris.
The consul just stared at me and said, "I mean, how do you expect me to, with just those papers?" And I told him, I tried to get them from Nazi Germany but they just would not respond. Of course I could get them if I went back to Germany, then they would put me naturally on the train and ship me off to Dachau.
So, he just kept staring and staring at me and I was not sure whether I was getting through to him. I have heard of whole families who have spent years there waiting for the visa and other guys who never got in. And believe me, I wanted to get back to America. It looked bad.
So we just sat there and stared at each other, the consul and I, in total silence. Finally he asked me, "What do you do? I mean professionally?" And I said, "I write movies." And he said, "That so?" He got up and started pacing, kind of behind me, but I felt that he was measuring me.
Then he came back to the desk, picked up my passport, opened it, and took a rubber stamp and went [thumps twice on the podium], handed me back the passport and he said, "Write some good ones."
That was fifty-four years ago. I've tried ever since. I certainly did not want to disappoint that dear man in Mexicali.
And you know, as I look back, you know, I've lived a charmed life. I never expected something like this, like the Thalberg Award. You are without any doubt the most generous people in the world.
(Source: Turner Classic Movies, Facebook page)
During his influential career, Wilder received twenty-one nominations at the Academy Awards, in categories that included screenwriting, directing and producing. He won six.
~~~
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Abraham Lincoln’s presence
February 12th was the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. His presidency left an indelible mark on American history. And this is likely the most famous photo of the president ever taken.
Striking, isn’t it? The image was captured by Alexander Gardner on November 8th, 1863, during the painful and exhausting Civil War period, just eleven days before he delivered his memorable address at the dedication ceremony for the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The picture brings into sharp relief the lines on his face and his penetrating eyes. It gives us a sense of the man’s uncanny presence.
Another famous photograph of Lincoln was taken three years earlier, in 1860. Here it is:
This week, broadcast journalist Bob Dotson shared an anecdote about the photo-taking session.
When he ran for President the first time, Matthew Brady took his picture, pulling Lincoln's collar high to make his neck look shorter. He also removed some of the deep facial furrows and doctored his drifting left eye. Made him look less gangly.
The president himself recognized the power of a crafted photo.
"Brady made me President,” he said.
~~~
Remembering Charles “Sparky” Schulz
It was also this week 24 years ago that the world lost Charles Schulz, the creator of Snoopy and Charlie Brown and the hugely popular Peanuts comic strip.
Through his characters, Schulz made us smile at the whimsy of childhood. And at the same time he gave us a place where we could transpose our frustrations, anxieties and foibles; a place where we could be reminded that life is bigger than our troubles and more beautiful than we perceive.
Peanuts was syndicated in 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries and translated into 21 languages. It was published for five decades and also spawned a number of television specials.
In Peanuts the artist explored his own demons, chiefly a lifelong sense of alienation and insecurity. He did it through deft and simple artwork, sometimes exuding melancholy, always with a sense of humour. Citing an example, Time magazine noted how this duality was an inherent part of the strip from its beginning in 1950.
"I have deep feelings of depression," a round-faced kid named Charlie Brown said to an imperious girl named Lucy in an early strip. "What can I do about it?"
"Snap out if it," advised Lucy.
Down-to-earth and direct.
In an appreciation of Schulz’s body of work, writer David Michaels highlighted in that same Time article that,
The Peanuts characters conversed in plain language and at the same time questioned the meaning of life itself. Peanuts depicted genuine pain and loss but somehow, as the cartoonist Art Spiegelman observed, "still kept everything warm and fuzzy."
It was that marvellous combination that made the strip so relatable and why it continues to be published in rerun syndication today. The memory of Peanuts will live on, because Charlie Brown and his friends are really us in the mirror.
Flowing water
It has been an unusually warm winter so far in much of the northern hemisphere. I recorded this with my phone along the snow-free banks of the Irvine River in Ontario. Just a brief moment to appreciate the soothing sounds of nature. Take a deep breath and let your troubles float away.
My sketch this week is of the classic Bialetti Moka Express coffee pot. It’s the source of my first cup of coffee every morning. The design dates back to 1933, around the same time that Billy Wilder first moved to Hollywood during the Great Depression.
Some things never go out of style.
Thanks for reading the newsletter. I appreciate you being here. See you next time.
-Renato
Some sources:
Billy Wilder’s speech video: https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1988
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Billy-Wilder
Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Gardner_(photographer)
Charles Schulz Time essay: https://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,93141-1,00.html