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Dr. Seuss (1970)

In celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday, born on this day in 1904, I present to you Horton Hears a Who!

Horton Hears a Who! is a 1970 animated television special based on the 1954 Dr. Seuss book Horton Hears a Who! It was produced and directed by Chuck Jones and was first broadcast on March 19, 1970. The special contains songs with lyrics by Seuss and music by Eugene Poddany, who previously wrote songs for Seuss’ book, The Cat in the Hat Song Book.

Directed by Chuck Jones and Ben Washam

Voiced by Hans Conried, Chuck Jones, and June Foray

Narrated by Hans Conried

Music by Eugene Poddany

Horton Hears a Who! is a children’s book written and illustrated by Theodor Seuss Geisel under the pen name Dr. Seuss. It was published in 1954 by Random House. This book tells the story of Horton the Elephant and his adventures saving Whoville, a tiny planet located on a speck of dust, from the animals who mock him. These animals attempt to steal and burn the speck of dust, so Horton goes to great lengths to save Whoville from being incinerated.

“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Horton the Elephant

The above quote is the most popular line from Horton Hears a Who! and also serves as the major moral theme that Dr. Seuss conveys to his audience. Horton endures harassment to care for and ensure the safety of the Whos, who represent the insignificant. Horton Hears a Who! has been well-received in libraries, schools, and homes across the world. Much of the plot has been incorporated into the Broadway musical production Seussical.

Creator and fancier of fanciful beasts, your affinity for flying elephants and man-eating mosquitoes makes us rejoice you were not around to be Director of Admissions on Mr. Noah’s ark. But our rejoicing in your career is far more positive: as author and artist you singlehandedly have stood as St. George between a generation of exhausted parents and the demon dragon of unexhausted children on a rainy day. There was an inimitable wriggle in your work long before you became a producer of motion pictures and animated cartoons and, as always with the best of humor, behind the fun there has been intelligence, kindness, and a feel for humankind. An Academy Award winner and holder of the Legion of Merit for war film work, you have stood these many years in the academic shadow of your learned friend Dr. Seuss; and because we are sure the time has come when the good doctor would want you to walk by his side as a full equal and because your College delights to acknowledge the distinction of a loyal son, Dartmouth confers on you her Doctorate of Humane Letters.

You’re wrong as the deuce
And you shouldn’t rejoice
If you’re calling him Seuss.
He pronounces it Soice.

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Jack Kerouac (1958)

In honor of Jack Kerouac’s birthday, born on this day in 1922, I present to you a segment from The Subterraneans, a fictional account of a short romance. Please enjoy.

Jack Kerouac Reads From The Subterraneans

The Subterraneans is a 1958 novella by Jack Kerouac, beat poet and author. It is a semi-fictional account of his short romance with Alene Lee in Greenwich Village, New York. Kerouac met Alene in the late summer of 1953 when she was typing up the manuscripts of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, in Allen’s Lower East Side apartment. In the novella, Kerouac moved the story to San Francisco and renamed Alene Lee “Mardou Fox”. She is described as a carefree spirit who frequents the jazz clubs and bars of the budding Beat scene of San Francisco. Other well-known personalities and friends from the author’s life also appear thinly disguised in the novel. The character Frank Carmody is based on William S. Burroughs, and Adam Moorad on Allen Ginsberg. Even Gore Vidal appears as successful novelist Arial Lavalina. Kerouac’s alter ego is named Leo Percepied, and his long-time friend Neal Cassady is mentioned only in passing as Leroy.

“Because of the objections of my early publishers I was not allowed to use the same personae names in each work.”

Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody

The position of jazz and jazz culture is central to the novel, tying together the themes of Kerouac’s writing here as elsewhere, and expressed in the “spontaneous prose” style in which he composed most of his works.

“Making a new start, starting from fresh in the rain, ‘Why should anyone want to hurt my little heart, my feet, my little hands, my skin that I’m wrapt in because God wants me warm and Inside, my toes—why did God make all this so decayable and dieable and harmable and wants to make me realize and scream—why the wild ground and bodies bare and breaks—I quaked when the giver creamed, when my father screamed, my mother dreamed—I started small and ballooned up and now I’m big and a naked child again and only to cry and fear.—Ah—Protect yourself, angel of no harm, you who’ve never and could never harm and crack another innocent in its shell and thin veiled pain—wrap a robe around you, honeylamb—protect yourself from harm and wait, till Daddy comes again, and Mama throws you warm inside her valley of the moon, loom at the loom of patient time, be happy in the mornings.'”

Mardou Fox
Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis Lebris de KĂ©rouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet of French Canadian ancestry, who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.

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James Algar & Jack Kinney (1949)

The Wind in the Willows is the first segment of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, narrated by Basil Rathbone. The other half of the animated feature was based on the unrelated short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It was reissued as a stand-alone short in the 1950s.

The Wind in the Willows is based on the children’s book by the British novelist Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternating between slow- and fast-paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphic animals: Mole, Rat, Toad, and Badger. They live in a pastoral version of Edwardian England.

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Charles Bukowski (1996)

Your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous.

the gods wait to delight in you.

 
Roll the Dice

 
If you’re going to try, go all the way.

otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the way.

this could mean losing girlfriends,

wives, relatives, jobs

and maybe your mind.

go all the way.

it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.

it could mean freezing on a park bench.

it could mean jail,

it could mean derision,

mockery,

isolation.

isolation is the gift,

all the others are a test of your endurance,

of how much you really want to do it.

and you’ll do it despite rejection

and the worst odds

and it will be better than

anything else you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,

go all the way.

there is no other feeling like that.

you will be alone with the gods

and the nights will flame with fire.

do it, Do It, DO It.

DO IT!

all the way.

ALL THE WAY!

You will ride life straight

to perfect laughter,

it’s the only good fight there is.

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Mike Wallace & Patrick Smith (1958)

“If you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you have to get the consent of the ruled”

– Aldous Huxley

This is an interview by Mike Wallace that took place on May 18, 1958, from the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin, in which Huxley foretells a future when telegenic presidential hopefuls use television to rise to power, technology takes over, drugs grab hold, and frightful dictatorships rule us all.

“This is Aldous Huxley, a man haunted by a vision of hell on earth. Mr. Huxley wrote a Brave New World, a novel that predicted that some day the entire world would live under a frightful dictatorship. Today Mr. Huxley says that his fictional world of horror is probably just around the corner for all of us.”

– MIke wallace

“I’d rather be myself,” he said. “Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.”

– Bernard Marx

*From the Aldous Huxley novel Brave New World published in 1932.

Animated by Patrick Smith

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Compote Collective (2018)

The prisoner strapped under a descending pendulum blade. A raven who refuses to leave the narrator’s chamber. A beating heart buried under the floorboards. Poe’s macabre and innovative stories of gothic horror have left a timeless mark on literature. But just what is it that makes Edgar Allan Poe one of the greatest American authors? Scott Peeples investigates.

Lesson by Scott Peeples.

Directed by Compote Collective.

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Clare Beavan (2015)

It’s a timeless classic of children’s literature and the third most-quoted book in English after the Bible and Shakespeare. But what lies behind the extraordinary appeal of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to generations of adults and children alike? To mark the 150th anniversary of its publication, this documentary explores the life and imagination of the man who wrote it, the Reverend Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. Broadcaster and journalist Martha Kearney delves into the biographies of both Carroll himself and of the young girl, Alice Liddell, who inspired his most famous creation. Kearney’s lifelong passion for Carroll’s work began as a young girl, when she starred as Carroll’s heroine Alice in her local village play. She discusses the book with a range of experts, biographers and distinguished cultural figures – from the actor Richard E Grant to children’s author Philip Pullman – and explores with them the mystery of how a retiring, buttoned-up and meticulous mathematics don, who spent almost his entire life within the cloistered confines of Christ Church Oxford, was able to capture the world of childhood in such a captivating way.

Alice in Wonderland is said to be the most quoted book in print, second only to The Bible, with a passionate army of fans who regularly congregate around the world to celebrate its rich and playful world. But what of its creator, the mild-mannered and unassuming Oxford University Math Don, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka. Lewis Carroll?

Famed not only for his wonderful stories, Carroll is also known for his ambiguous relationship with the young girl who inspired his most beloved creation, Alice Liddell, a seemingly innocent infatuation that he documented in his pioneering photography.

With contributions from the likes of thespian Richard E. Grant, social commentator Will Self and author Philip Pullman, at once adoring and provocative this documentary casts a conflicted eye over the creation of Wonderland. Pouring through historical evidence and stories passed down through generations, hear the tale of Carroll’s first encounter with the three Liddell girls and the first telling of Alice’s tumble down the rabbit hole one summer’s afternoon in a boat upon the River Thames. Documentary first broadcast in 2015.

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Richard Williams & Ken Harris (1971)

A Christmas Carol is Richard Williams’s animated adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella. The film was broadcast on U.S. television by ABC on December 21, 1971, and released theatrically soon after. In 1972, it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Still my favorite animated adaptation of my favorite classic Christmas tale, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

A Christmas Carol, based on the Classic 1843 novel written by Charles Dickens, was directed by Richard Williams and its visual style is also largely due to Ken Harris, credited as “Master Animator”. It starred Alastair Sim as the voice of Ebenezer Scrooge â€” a role Sim had previously performed in the 1951 live-action film Scrooge. Michael Hordern likewise reprised his 1951 performance as Marley’s Ghost in the same film. Michael Redgrave narrated the story and veteran animator Chuck Jones served as executive producer. Williams’ son Alexander Williams, then aged four, provided the voice for Tiny Tim.

This adaptation of A Christmas Carol has a distinctive look, created by multiple pans and zooms and by innovative, unexpected scene transitions. The visual style, which is unusually powerful, is inspired by 19th century engraved illustrations of the original story by John Leech and the pen and ink renderings by illustrator Milo Winter that graced 1930s editions of the book. The intended audience does not include young children, and the film’s bleak mood and emphasis on darkness and shadows lead some to consider it the most frightening of the many dramatizations of the Dickens classic.

Originally produced as a 1971 television special, A Christmas Carol was considered so well done that it was subsequently released theatrically, thereby rendering it eligible for Oscar consideration, and the film did go on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for 1972. Some industry insiders took issue that a short originally shown on television was given the award, and the Academy responded by changing its policy, disqualifying any future works initially shown on television.