National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Presidential Trivia for Election Time, part III

The third in a series of blog articles on presidential trivia (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). Next week: Elections, the White House, and odd facts

The middle name of Warren G. Harding (right) was Gamaliel. He was named after the wise man on the Sanhedrin in Acts 5: 34–40. Unfortunately, Harding was not so wise, and he trusted corrupt individuals who eventually brought scandal and shame to his administration.

Calvin Coolidge, the thirtieth President of the United States, was the only president born on the fourth of July, although three presidents have died on that day—John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1826 and James Monroe in 1831.

Before becoming president, Herbert Hoover never held an elected office except in college.

FDR succumbed to death, not in the presence of his wife of forty years, Eleanor, but in the company of one of his longtime mistresses, Lucy Mercer.

The S in Harry S Truman’s name did not stand for anything.

After being supreme commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe and before becoming president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) was president of Columbia University.

John F. Kennedy was a best-selling author (Why England Slept) at the age of twenty-three.

Lyndon Johnson picked fruit, washed dishes, and worked as a janitor before and while earning his bachelor’s degree from Southwest State Teachers College in San Marcos, Texas.

The National Archives and Records Administration maintains a Web feature as part of its site, which describes the historic meeting between Elvis Presley and President Richard Nixon. It can be found here.

Gerald Rudolph Ford was named Leslie Lynch King at birth.

Rather than be inaugurated as James Earl Carter Jr., our thirty-ninth president chose to take the oath of office as Jimmy Carter.

Ronald Reagan is the only president to have been divorced.

George Herbert Walker Bush played baseball for Yale; in 1947 he played in the first College World Series.

Bill Clinton (right) won the 1992 presidential election against two left-handed men: George H. W. Bush and H. Ross Perot. Clinton is also left-handed.

Like father, like son: George W. Bush was in the Skull and Bones society at Yale, as was his father. He was also trained as a pilot. Although he never played in the College World Series, he eventually became part-owner of the Texas Rangers.

Sources:

Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O’Brien
Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts by Isaac Asimov
American Presidents by David C. Whitney
Portraits of the Presidents by Frederick Voss

Warren Gamaliel Harding/Margaret Lindsay Williams, 1923/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Dwight David Eisenhower/Ernest Hamlin Baker,1945/Gouache on board/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; purchased with funds from Rosemary L. Frankeberger

William Jefferson Clinton/Nelson Shanks,2005/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of The Boeing Company, Dr. and Mrs. Ronald I. Dozoretz, Charles H. and Eleanor M. Foster, Norma Lee and Morton Funger, Sam F. and June Hamra, Frank and Marylen Mann Jacobs, S. Lee and Rosalyn H. Kling, Ambassador and Mrs. Philip Lader, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas F. McLarty III, Ruesch Family Foundation, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad, Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser, John and Laurie Sykes, Mallory and Diana Walker

Orson Welles and the 70th Anniversary of War of the Worlds

On Halloween night of 1938, Orson Welles brought to the airwaves the now-classic H. G. Wells’s fantasy War of the Worlds (1898). Many tuned in late, missing the announcement that the program was fiction. As viewers listened to aliens taking over Manhattan, panic set in, and Welles had to interrupt the broadcast to assure listeners it was not real.

Orson Welles is pictured here in a radio studio, at about the time he produced The War of the Worlds. This portrait is on display in the "20th Century American's" exhibition, on the museum's third floor.  

Join us on Friday, October 31, at 1:00 p.m. as National Portrait Gallery historian Amy Henderson discusses Orson Welles and plays some selections from War of the Worlds. This day marks the seventieth anniversary of the Halloween radio broadcast that panicked America. The event is free and open to the public; please meet in the museum’s F Street Lobby.

In this blog post, Henderson tells us more about Orson Welles and his historic broadcast. This article is excerpted from her book, On the Air: Pioneers of American Broadcasting. You can listen to the War of the World's broadcast, on this blog post, from the Smithsonian's "Around The Mall" blog. 

Orson Welles first appeared on radio in 1934–1935, in NBC’s “The March of Time,” a kind of dramatized newsreel for radio sponsored by Time magazine. Even before Welles became well known, his ability to take on roles requiring any accent or age made him one of the most sought-after actors on radio; he once said that by 1935 he never earned “less than $1,000 a week as an unnamed, anonymous radio actor.” In 1937 he was chosen to be Lamont Cranston, the millionaire playboy who foiled evildoers by night in the adventure serial “The Shadow.” (Q: “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?” A: “The Shadow knows…ha-ha-ha!”)

Welles’s theater work brought him into contact with John Houseman, and in late 1937 he and Houseman took over the tiny Comedy Theatre and ensconced their drama troupe in the newly renamed Mercury Theatre. The company enjoyed such success that Welles persuaded CBS to hire them to present a series of plays adapted from masterpieces.

Wells’s work with the Mercury Theatre would be his most innovative effort on radio. Here he created—as director, writer, and actor—the quintessence of what imaginative radio drama could be. With a cast that included Agnes Moorhead, Joseph Cotten, Martin Gabel, and Welles, the “Mercury Theatre on the Air” premiered on radio with Bram Stoker’s Dracula on July 11, 1938.

Programs based on Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, The 39 Steps, Jane Eyre, and others followed in weekly sixty-minute installments. In September the “Mercury Theatre” moved into its regular time slot, opposite the hugely popular “Chase and Sanborn Hour,” starring Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy; Bergen usually pulled in about 35 percent of the audience, while the “Mercury Theatre” would average 3.6 percent.

And so the stage was set for one of the most bizarre events in broadcast history.

For the Halloween program on October 30, 1938, H. G. Wells’s 1898 fantasy, The War of the Worlds, was scheduled. But chief Mercury writer Howard Koch considered the book so antiquated as to be laughable and set busily to work rewriting. Orson Welles joined him in the final rewrite, and somewhere along the line the key modernization occurred: use of the present tense and the addition of staccato-like news bulletins to plot the course of the Martians’ progress toward Manhattan.

The god of serendipity then joined the fray, ordaining that millions of listeners would twirl their radio dials immediately following Bergen and McCarthy’s opening monologue. As Bergen introduced a new and unknown singer, thwack! went dials all over America. When they tuned to the Mercury’s play, many failed to realize that it was, indeed, “play.” They had missed Welles’s warning at the beginning that it was all make-believe, and panic set in.

John Houseman later suggested that the public was made especially susceptible because the Munich crisis had taken place only a month earlier. Jitters grew as the horrific creatures were described pushing their way from Grover’s Mill to midtown Manhattan. Forty minutes into the program, CBS realized that all was not well, and at the break—with New York fictionally suffocating in poisonous black smoke—an announcer said, “You are listening to a CBS presentation of Orson Welles and ‘The Mercury Theatre on the Air,’ in an original dramatization of The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells.”

For the last twenty minutes, Welles narrated the denouement, with the Martians being killed by Earth’s bacteria—but by then, the damage had been wrought. As broadcast historian Erik Barnouw has pointed out, the event, although a high point in radio’s Golden Age of drama, was “in many ways a reenactment of The Fall of the City: men had rushed to prostrate themselves before an empty visor.”

An unrepentant Welles later said that the hoax was possible because of radio’s emergent importance: “The radio was believed in America. That was a voice from heaven, you see. And I wanted to destroy that as dramatically as possible.” Though the little practical joke had exploded out of hand, all that he had actually intended was an appropriate Halloween offering: “the Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush saying boo.”

Listen to Amy Henderson, historian at NPG, discuss Orson Welles and War of the Worlds in a special gallery talk. (9:53)

Orson Welles/Unidentified artist, c.1938/Gelatin silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Portrait of Dashiell Hammett by Edward Biberman

                © 1937 Edward Biberman

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents Face-to-Face, a talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this series, NPG historian David Ward discussed Edward Biberman’s 1937 portrait of writer Dashiell Hammett. This painting is on view in the exhibition “20th-Century Americans,” on the museum’s third floor.

Inspired to try his hand at writing mysteries after his years with the Pinkerton Detective Agency, Dashiell Hammett met a warm reception when he published his first two detective novels in 1929. But it was the appearance of The Maltese Falcon a year later that secured him his reputation as one of America's most original mystery writers. The hard-bitten realism and crisp dialogue of that work led critics to compare its author's style to that of Ernest Hemingway.

Hammett's later books, The Thin Man and The Glass Key, drew similar accolades. In defining the main difference between Hammett's works and the far more common drawing-room detective stories of the period, one admirer observed that Hammett had taken murder "out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley," where, after all, it more generally occurred in real life.

Listen to David Ward's Face-to-Face talk on Dashiell Hammett (20:49)

David Ward will speak again at the next Face-to-Face, when he discusses the portrait of Joseph McCarthy by George Tames.  The talk is this Thursday, October 30, and runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett/Edward Biberman,1937/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/© 1937 Edward Biberman

RECOGNIZE! Last Chance To See Hip Hop Exhibition

As “RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture” draws to a close, we take a moment to reflect on the exhibition’s impact on the community.  See the exhibition while you can; its last day is this Sunday, October 26.  

It was the National Portrait Gallery's honor to be the first Smithsonian Institution museum to stage a significant exhibition with hip hop as its theme. Through visitor counts, positive comment cards, and the enthusiasm about the show witnessed daily in the galleries and in our conversations with friends and colleagues around town and around the nation, we are thrilled with the public’s positive response.

“RECOGNIZE!“ gave the National Portrait Gallery the opportunity to recognize hip hop’s important role in American life today, as it influences the fine arts as well as other elements of our visual culture from advertising to fashion to video games. It was important for us to give our visitors a sense that hip hop is more powerful and has more of an impact on our world than the media’s attention to its negative aspects might suggest.

Through hip hop happy hours, films, and family activities, to programs headlined by Nikki Giovanni and Paul “DJ Spooky” Miller, NPG attempted to maintain the spirit and enthusiasm of the exhibition through events geared to a broad public. “RECOGNIZE!” brought more diverse and younger audiences into the Gallery, many of whom visited for the first time.

Another special aspect of this exhibition was our ability to feature the work of local artists Tim “Con” Conlon, Dave “Arek” Hupp, Jefferson Pinder, and Baltimore-born Shinique Smith (right). It is sometimes difficult to give local artists the support so many of them deserve, but “RECOGNIZE!” enabled us to feature “D.C. flavor.”

As a national museum that is a destination for Americans from all parts of the country, as well as for international visitors, the Portrait Gallery was pleased with the opportunity this exhibition afforded to reflect our role as a local museum for residents of the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

Kehinde Wiley’s portraits of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and L.L. Cool J (left) will remain at the museum on extended loan, reminding us of hip hop music’s relevance to American culture, and keeping “RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture” fresh in our memories. We look forward to seeing more hip hop–related displays and activities develop Smithsonian-wide, particularly associated with the National Museum of American History’s Hip Hop Collecting Initiative.

To all who visited the exhibition or one of the programs associated with it, we hope you will come back to NPG soon and often. There will always be something for each of you at the National Portrait Gallery.

CON/Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, 2007/Montana spray paint on Sintra panel/182.9 x 609.6 cm (72 x 240 in)/Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp

No Thief to Blame/Shinique Smith, 2007-08/Mixed media installation (fabric, cardboard, carpet, paper, ink, spray paint, used clothing, found objects, and collage)

LL Cool J/Kehinde Wiley, 2005/Oil on canvas/243.8 x 182.9 cm (96 x 72 in)/LL Cool J/© Kehinde Wiley

RECOGNIZE! Graffiti Art

The National Portrait Gallery’s “RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture” is closing soon, so be sure to see the exhibition before Sunday, October 26, its final day. The exhibition features six artists: photographer David Scheinbaum, painter Kehinde Wiley, poet Nikki Giovanni, installation artist Shinique Smith, video artist Jefferson Pinder, and graffiti artists Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp.

 In this blog post, we focus on Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, local graffiti artists who created four large murals that line the exhibition’s main hallway. These panels, with their sophisticated lettering style and color combinations, transformed the gallery space, bringing the beats and energy of hip hop to the museum’s walls.

 Using the tags “CON” and “AREK,” Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp began writing together in 2000. Conlon brought a flair for figures to their collaborations, and Hupp excelled at quick, complex lettering. Since graffiti is performed without a public audience, a writer’s pseudonym, or “tag,” is the face he presents to the world—his self-portrait. In their artist statement, Hupp and Conlon write that graffiti is “a lifestyle, an addiction, a dysfunctional marriage of secrecy and fame, for better and for worse. Some see it as an insatiable appetite for destruction, but through this abstracted topography we find our creative vision and achieve our self-expression.”

 In January of 2007, before the opening of “RECOGNIZE!” NPG web developer Benjamin Bloom sat down with Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, and asked them a few questions. You can listen to the complete interview, and see their graffiti murals here.

BB: What makes your style your own, or differentiates it from other people?

TC (shown on right): I think, just of course, the letters—the name that you choose that’s going to separate you from anyone else. I guess style-wise, my style pretty much reflects mostly New York straight-letter style, or straight-letter wild-style. You know something that’s bar-letters, very readable, you can tell what it says—probably has a little Baltimore influence to it.

And there is some West Coast stuff that I’ve added to it, when I lived out in L.A. for a while. Some little tidbits and painting techniques I do, that I remember from out there. I’d say it’s pretty generic, but I’ve painted enough over the years so that people recognize it. Even if they just glance at it, they probably know it’s me before they read the letters. Same probably goes for Dave too.

DH (left): It’s just changed over the years. I don’t do a lot of connections. A lot of single-letter, bar-style—I want it to be readable. When it flies by I want Joe truck driver to be able to read it. You know, the average person. I don’t want it to be some wild crazy stuff that you can’t read. So usually each letter is separate. There maybe some simple connections, but just real bold bar-style letters.

I’m from Baltimore, so it’s got a Baltimore flair. But it’s got a lot of influence from a variety of people I hang with and know. I get influence from a lot of different things, and a lot of different people from all over.

BB: How do you feel about graffiti being in a museum?

DH: Well I’m glad to be alive and be in the Smithsonian. Because I guess not too long ago, you had to be dead to be in the Portrait Gallery, right?

BB: That’s true.

DH: So to be alive and be in it is good! It’s a sign of the times. Some people may say “hey you’re a sell-out.” I look at it like being a musician, and never making an album or putting a CD out. Why are you strumming on that guitar for twenty years, if you can’t make a buck, or be seen, or be heard? And this is a way to be seen and be heard. This is huge—I guess when I walk down that marble floor and through the pillars and see these huge panels affixed to the wall, I’ll be like “damn, that’s our stuff.”

For more on Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, view the audio slideshow below. Tim and Dave take you step-by-step through the creation one of the exhibition’s murals.

AREK by Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, 2007/Montana spray paint on Sintra panel/182.9 x 609.6 cm (72 x 240 in)/Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp

Con/AREK by Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, 2007/Montana spray paint on Sintra panel/182.9 x 609.6 cm (72 x 240 in)/Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp

Presidential Trivia for Election Time, part II

The second in a series of blog articles on presidential trivia (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). Next week: Harding through Bush 43.

Abraham Lincoln (right) is considered by many Americans to be the greatest president; it is estimated that the Emancipation Proclamation freed 3, 500,000 slaves.

Andrew Johnson was a tailor by trade.

Ulysses S. Grant’s name given at birth was Hiram Ulysses Grant; he began calling himself Ulysses Simpson Grant after a mix-up in his application and recommendation to West Point.

Rutherford Hayes was a gutsy soldier who had four horses shot from beneath him during the Civil War.

Another of the Civil War generals who went on to become president, James Garfield was a professor of Latin and Greek before serving as either politician or soldier.

Chester Arthur hired Louis Tiffany to redecorate the White House.

Grover Cleveland’s wedding to Frances Folsom (couple shown on left) on June 2, 1886, is the only wedding of a president to occur inside the White House.  Francis F. Cleveland was a beautiful woman and the marriage did much to improve Cleveland’s image; earlier, during his first run for the presidency, he had admitted to fathering a child out of wedlock.

Benjamin Harrison was the first president to put a Christmas tree in the White House and the last president to wear a beard.

The third president to be assassinated was also the second president to die in Buffalo, New York: William McKinley.  Millard Fillmore died in Buffalo after he left office.

Valentine’s Day 1884 was perhaps the most tragic day in Theodore Roosevelt’s life; both his mother and his wife died on that day.

William Howard Taft (right) is the only president other than John Kennedy to be buried at Arlington Cemetery.

Dr. Thomas Woodrow Wilson received his Ph. D. from Johns Hopkins University and taught at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan University and Princeton.  He coached football while he was at Wesleyan.

Sources:
Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O’Brien
Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts by Isaac Asimov
American Presidents by David C. Whitney
Portraits of the Presidents by Frederick Voss
www.whitehouse.gov/president/holiday/whtree

Abraham Lincoln/Mathew Brady, 1864/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Grover Cleveland and Frances Folsom Cleveland/Donaldson Brothers, c. 1886-1890/Chromolithograph on paper/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of John O'Brien

William Howard Taft/William Valentine Schevill, c. 1910/Oil on artist board/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of William E. Schevill

   

Portrait of Henry Wallace by Jo Davidson

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a portrait talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, NPG curator Brandon Fortune discussed this bronze bust of Henry Wallace, by Jo Davidson. You can see this portrait in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” exhibition on the third floor.

The Iowa-bred Henry Wallace abhorred the backroom politics of the nation’s capital. But his profound concern for the public good kept him involved in that milieu for some fifteen years.

On becoming Franklin’s Roosevelt’s secretary of agriculture in 1933, Wallace told reporters that if he could not help the nation’s Depression-ridden farmers, he would “go back home and raise corn.” Wallace developed the controversial policy of limiting production, paying farmers to destroy crops and slaughter livestock. His policies failed to raise prices as high as they had been, but they achieved some success and became a model for later secretaries of agriculture. He became Roosevelt’s running mate in 1940 but was dropped from the ticket in 1944.  

Listen to Brandon Fortune's Face-to-Face talk on Henry Wallace and Jo Davidson (20:38)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, October 23, when curatorial assistant Amy Baskette speaks about J. Robert Oppenheimer.  The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Henry Agard Wallace/Jo Davidson,1942/Bronze/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mrs. Jean Wallace Douglas, Robert Wallace, and Henry B. Wallace

Presidential Trivia for Election Time, part 1

The first in a series of blog articles on presidential trivia (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4). Next week: Lincoln through Wilson.

The oldest known portrait of George Washington ((left) is at Washington and Lee University; it was executed by Charles Willson Peale in 1772.

Before the recent deaths of Ronald Reagan (2004) and Gerald Ford (2006), John Adams’s lifespan was greater than that of any other president. Adams was ninety years and eight months old at his death. Both Reagan and Ford died at the age of ninety-three.

Before Lucille Ball, Thomas Jefferson was this nation’s most famous redhead.

James Madison was president when the British torched the White House in 1814; one story has it that British Admiral George Cockburn stole one of Madison’s hats before leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in flames.

James Monroe was with George Washington at the Battle of Trenton.

John Quincy Adams served in Congress for eighteen years after his presidency.

Before Andrew Jackson (right) was seventeen years old, he:

• had joined the militia
• was captured and mistreated by British troops
• served time as a prisoner of war
• received a large inheritance which he spent on gambling and drinking.

The first American-born president was Martin Van Buren; the previous seven presidents had been British subjects at birth.

William Henry Harrison was in office for one month—March 4 to April 4, 1841. His inaugural speech of one hour and forty-five minutes, which he delivered in the cold and rain, cost him his life. Harrison contracted pneumonia, and upon his death, the presidency went to. . .

John Tyler. Tyler was the first vice president to ascend to the chief executive office.

The “K” in James K. Polk’s name stood for “Knox.”  Polk (left) was the youngest man to become president and, like so many men, the responsibilities of the office wore on him. He served one term in office and he died within three months of his successor’s inauguration.

Zachary Taylor never voted before running for the presidency.

Millard Fillmore was in the White House when the first bathtub was installed. Fillmore was presented to Queen Victoria in 1855 and she believed him to be the most handsome man she had ever seen.

Franklin Pierce attended Bowdoin College in Maine, where he was a classmate of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

James Buchanan was the only president who never married.

Sources:
Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O’Brien
Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts by Isaac Asimov
American Presidents by David C. Whitney
Portraits of the Presidents by Frederick Voss

 

George Washington/Charles Wilson Peale, 1772/Oil on canvas/Washington-Custis-Lee Collection, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia

James Madison/Chester Harding, undated/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Andrew Jackson/Trevor Thomas Fowler,1840/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

James Knox Polk/E. B. & E. C. Kellogg Lithography Company, c. 1846-1847/Hand-colored lithograph on paper/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald by David Silvette

David Silvette studied under his father, artist Ellis Silvette, and later with Cecilia Beaux and Charles Hawthorne. Silvette’s portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald in the National Portrait Gallery is not his only work in Washington, D.C. His portrait of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. can be found in the collection of the Treasury Department. Silvette executed this painting, the only known life-sitting of Fitzgerald, in 1935.  Although the writer had commissioned the portrait, he was unable to pay for it and never owned it.

The image might be characteristic of the Jazz Age myth of the expatriate F. Scott Fitzgerald, professorial and sophisticated, but it is not a portrait of the personal horrors Fitzgerald was experiencing in the 1930s. The 1920s were Fitzgerald’s zenith. He published This Side of Paradise in March of 1920 and enjoyed the fame brought by this work—along with The Beautiful and Damned (1922) and his short stories—for a decade. (The Great Gatsby, which now sells more than a quarter of a million copies annually, hit the literary market with a slight thud in April of 1925.)

By the 1930s Scott was drinking thirty-plus bottles of beer a day, or, on a beerless day, a quart of gin. He smoked constantly, and his wife Zelda bounced in and out of sanitoria from April of 1930 until her death in 1948.

A combination of Zelda’s medical bills and their extravagant lifestyle compelled Scott to seek employment writing in Hollywood.  Of  Fitzgerald’s experience writing for the movies, biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes:

"During his last trip to Hollywood—a life sentence—he failed as a screenwriter. He worked on sixteen films between 1927 and 1940 as one of the highest-paid writers in the business, but received only one credit. He polished ten scripts, worked on three for less than a week, labored on ten that were either rejected or not produced, and was dismissed from three of them. It was a dismal record."

F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on December 21, 1940. He is buried in the cemetery of St. Mary’s Church, Rockville, Maryland.

Listen to Warren Perry's Face-to-Face talk on F. Scott Fitzgerald (16:38)

The birthplace of F. Scott Fitzgerald: 481 Laurel, Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota.  (Photos by Ian Cooke)

 

The 13th annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference will be held at Montgomery College in Rockville on October 25, 2008. More information is available here.

F. Scott Fitzgerald/David Silvette, 1935/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

The National Portrait Gallery Turns 40!

Forty years ago today, the National Portrait Gallery opened its doors to the public.

A national portrait gallery was an idea long in search of a building. At last in 1958 came the promise of a home in the majestic Old Patent Office (saved from being replaced by a parking facility) once it was vacated by the Civil Service Commission. Legislation formally brought the National Portrait Gallery into being in 1962 and after frustrating delays, it opened its doors to the public on October 7, 1968. “The Gallery will tell for centuries to come the story of American history,” the welcoming proclamation from the District of Columbia affirmed, “by displaying the likenesses of these men and women of all stations of life and of diverse origins.” You can learn more about the history of the Old Patent Office Building in NPG's online exhibition "Temple of Invention: History of a National Landmark." 

 “After a long, hazardous pilgrimage,“ wrote Charles Nagel, the Gallery’s first director, in the initial  catalog, “we have finally come to our premier exhibition.”  Entitled "This New Man A Discourse in Portraits," the exhibition's theme was intended to be an inquiry into the nature of the American national character. The one hundred and sixty eight paintings, sculptures, and photographs were arranged, not chronologically, but in “thought-provoking juxtapositions” which sometimes  “made for strange bedfellows.”

Only thirty-five of the portraits were from the Gallery’s own small collection—the remainder were on loan from individuals and institutions throughout the country and abroad. Explained Nagel, “We’re trying to give an idea of what we’re aiming at, not of what we have.” (A fair number of the borrowed  portraits would find their way,  by gift or purchase, into the Gallery’s permanent collection. )   

In addition to “This New Man” the Gallery assembled an impressive array portraits of all past presidents of the United States—no easy task since the collection included likenesses of only 23 of the 39 men who had held the office. The prize, hung to greet guests as they ascended the stairway to the second floor, was the Gilbert Stuart Lansdowne portrait of George Washington lent by Lord Primrose. The loan request had initially been turned down, but the portrait was secured after Smithsonian Secretary Dillon Ripley asked Lord Mountbatten (with whom he had worked in South East Asia during the World War II) to intervene. (The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation made it possible for the Gallery to purchase the Lansdowne in 2001.)

Not on view was the Peter Hurd portrait of the current president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had denounced it as “the ugliest thing he had ever seen.” Johnson, miffed because the portrait rejected by the White House, had been accepted by the Portrait Gallery as a gift from the artist, had declined an invitation to speak at the opening ceremonies and declared that he wished no likeness of himself to be on view during his term in office.  The special alcove intended for the portrait of the incumbent president was filled instead by his immediate predecessor, John F. Kennedy.

“'This New Man' brings together some truly superb examples of the art of portraiture,” wrote the New York Times art critic, Hilton Kramer, “along with some of the most deplorable pictorial junk ever put on public display.”  The “truly appalling thing,” noted another scribe, was the diorama based on John Trumbull’s “The Signing of the Declaration of Independence” which looked like “handmade Barbie dolls.” (As one of his first acts, the Gallery’s second director, Marvin Sadik, took the Gallery’s one and only diorama off view.)  

That the Portrait Gallery received mixed reviews at its opening, is attributable in part to a misunderstanding of what this new breed of museum was about–it was not a gallery of art as such–although the role of the artist is part of the Gallery’s mission—but rather a place of history where the significance of the sitter—for good or for evil–takes precedence over artistic merit. That the Portrait Gallery, which Charles Nagel and many others thought had been founded one hundred years too late, has been able, over the past forty years, to acquire a collection of images worthy in both history and art, is downright amazing. 

National Portrait Gallery, 1968 aerial view.

The National Portrait Gallery is part of the Donald W. Reynolds Center, along with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. (2007 photo by Ken Rahaim, Smithsonian Institution)

Presidential Politics, 1884

“As the Lord sent upon us an ass in the shape of a preacher and a rainstorm, to lessen our vote in New York,” wrote Republican candidate James G. Blaine two weeks after he had lost the presidential election of 1884, “I am disposed to feel resigned to the dispensation of defeat.” Thanks in no small part to an explosive remark made by the Reverend Samuel D. Burchard, Democrat Grover Cleveland had carried pivotal New York by 1,049 votes and with them the 36 electoral votes that decided the election.

A week before the November 4 election, Burchard (right), minister of the Murray Hill Presbyterian Church and one of a group of several hundred clergymen, greeted Blaine at his Fifth Avenue Hotel and concluded his address by calling Democrats “the party whose antecedents have been RUM, ROMANISM and REBELLION.” Blaine, looking haggard after his six-week, 400- speech tour of the West, ignored the blatant insult to Irish Catholics and expounded on the “conclusive issue” of the campaign, the protective tariff.

In high glee, the Democratic Executive Committee—which had “watching scouts” to take down every word Blaine uttered—saw Burchard’s alliterative phrase quoted in the next day’s issue of the New York World. No time was lost in splashing it on posters and handbills for distribution throughout the city.

Three days passed before Blaine (left) distanced himself from his supporter’s offensive remark. “I have refrained carefully and instinctively from making any disrespectful allusion to the Democratic party,” he protested. In a reference to his Catholic mother, he added, “I should esteem myself of all men the most degraded if under any pressure, or under any temptation, I could in any presence make a disrespectful allusion to that ancient faith in which my mother lived and died.”

It was too late. Irish Catholic voters, who tended to like the charismatic Blaine and who appreciated his propensity to “twist the tail” of the British lion, had second thoughts about straying from the Democratic fold. Blaine afterward declared that he had won “thousands upon thousands” of Irish votes in New York and would have had many more “but for the intolerant and utterly improper remark of Dr. Burchard, which was quoted everywhere to my prejudice and in many places.” He would have carried New York by ten t housand votes, Blaine insisted, “had Dr. Burchard been doing missionary work in Asia Minor or Cochin China.”

Grover Cleveland and James G. Blaine/Unidentified artist, 1884/Chromolithograph/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Milton and Ingrid Rose

Samuel Dickinson Burchard/Mathew Brady Studio, undated/Glass plate collodion negative/Frederick Hill Meserve Collection, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

James Gillespie Blaine/David H. Anderson, c. 1884/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Robert L. Drapkin

Free Film Screenings at NPG: Black and White . . . and Reds All Over!

Visit the National Portrait Gallery in October to see three classic black-and-white films connected by the “red scare” of the 1950s:

   © Warner Independent Pictures

Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)
Friday, October 3, 7:00 p.m.
David Strathairn stars as the newsman Edward R. Murrow in this dramatization of Murrow’s 1954 showdown with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Directed by George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck was nominated for six Oscars. American University history professor Robert Griffith will introduce the film. 

The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Wednesday, October 8, 7:00 p.m.
Based on the 1930 Dashiell Hammett novel, this 1941 film noir stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Sam Spade, who must cut through a web of deceit, greed, and murder to obtain a priceless statuette of a falcon. The Maltese Falcon marks John Huston’s directorial debut. Historian David Ward of the Portrait Gallery will introduce the film

On the Waterfront (1954)
Wednesday, October 15, 7:00 p.m.
Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint star in this 1954 drama about violence and corruption on the docks of New York. On the Waterfront is directed by Elia Kazan and scored by Leonard Bernstein. The film won eight Academy Awards, including best picture, best actor, and best director. Portrait Gallery senior historian Sidney Hart will introduce the film.

All screenings are located in the museum’s Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium. They are free and open to the public; no tickets are required. Doors open at 6:30; seating is first come, first served. More information on NPG's events page.

Portraits of Edward R. Murrow, Joseph McCarthy, Dashiell Hammett, and Marlon Brando are on view now at the National Portrait Gallery. You can learn about these figures and their portraits as part of the regular Thursday-evening Face-to-Face portrait talks this month.

Joseph McCarthy, Roy M Cohn, Ralph Flanders (cropped)/Unidentified Artist,1954/Gelatin silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Caption for Good Night, and Good Luck image: © Warner Independent Pictures. No other uses are permitted without the prior written consent of owner. Use of the material in violation of the foregoing may result in civil and/or criminal penalties.

Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront/Anselmo Ballester,1954/Color photolithographic halftone poster/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution