Does anybody read Lucius Beebe these days?

[wanswheel]

Kurt Weill Foundaton says she's at a train station in Germany.

http://www.kwf.org/lotte-lenya/chronology-of-career

October 18, 1898
Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer born...in Vienna

Summer 1921?
Karoline Blamauer adopts the stage name Lotte Lenja (changed to Lenya shortly after she moves to the U.S.)... "Lotte" comes from one of her given names, Charlotte...

Early 1933
Begins divorce proceedings against Weill in Germany. The divorce may be partly tactical, as it will allow Lenya to recover some of Weill's assets which would otherwise be seized by the Nazis...

March 1933
Weill is now in some danger from the Nazis... he leaves Germany for good...

10 September 1935
Lenya and Weill arrive in New York...

19 January 1937
Lenya and Weill remarry...

5 May 1944
Becomes an American citizen.

3 April 1950
Weill dies of a heart attack...

20 September 1955
Re-opens as Jenny in The Threepenny Opera...wins a Tony Award in 1956...

28 September 1955
Attends recording session for "Mack the Knife" with Louis Armstrong and his All-Stars, in New York. Armstrong includes Lenya's name in the lyrics, an innovation other singers will take up. "Mack the Knife" has already been recorded as a popular song, and it will be recorded several more times in the 1950s, by Bobby Darin, Ella Fitzgerald, and Frank Sinatra, among others. At the same session, the band makes another recording of "Mack the Knife" with Lenya singing...

April-July 1963
Films From Russia with Love in Europe...Lenya's performance as Russian spymaster Rosa Klebb, including hand-to-hand (or foot-to-hand) combat with Sean Connery as James Bond at the end of the film, introduces her to the widest audience yet.

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Interesting track arrangment behind that woman (  ) in the upper photo, Mike (wanswheel).

- Paul North. 

[wanswheel]

Look out to Miss Lotte Lenya

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5362wt7-dEM

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

schlimm

  

wanswheel

The Threepenny Opera “by playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), was first performed in its original German as Die Dreigroschenoper at Berlin’s Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on August 31, 1928, with Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya, in the role of Jenny Diver.

Lotte Lenya (died 1981) played ex-KGB and SPECTRE villainess Rosa Klebb in the James Bond hit feature,"From Russia with Love" (1963). 

Yeah, I knew that - a lot of which took place on a train (I'm keeping this thread rail-related, you see).

[Firelock76]

You're welcome Paul!  I'll tell you, Beebe was an original, no doubt about it.  He went his own way and didn't give a damn what anyone else thought about it.

Whether I would have been able to stand being in the same room with him is another matter, he being a pate' de foie gras and champagne individual and me being a "burger and beer" guy, but who knows?  Steam freaks do have a way of accomodating one another.  At least I THINK we do.

Wayne

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Firelock76

[snipped - PDN] . . . My favorite Beebe quote?  In the lead up to election day 1948 an aquaintance of Beebe's said "If Dewey is elected President it'll set the country back 50 years!"  Lucius' response?  "And just WHAT was so wrong with 1898?" . . .

Thanks much for the details of that quote.  As you'll see, I attempted to replicate that in the "Hickory Creek" observation car thread yesterday.

- Paul North. 

[erikem]

Rosa Klebb being the prototype as it were for Frau Farbissina from the Austin Powers movies.

[schlimm]

wanswheel

The Threepenny Opera “by playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), was first performed in its original German as Die Dreigroschenoper at Berlin’s Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on August 31, 1928, with Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya, in the role of Jenny Diver.

Lotte Lenya (died 1981) played ex-KGB and SPECTRE villainess Rosa Klebb in the James Bond hit feature,"From Russia with Love" (1963).

[samfp1943]

wanswheel

Sam, thanks for taking a look at the CV, which my grandfather was an engineer on.  Here’s a picture of Hungerford and a locomotive named Sam, in Cleveland for the city's centenniel exposition in 1936.  --Mike

 

 

Thank You! Mike !  On a couple of trips to Vermont, I got a chance to see the CV up close... amazing scenery and territory.  Enjoyed the Photo.

P.S. Hope you enjoyed the e-book  on Edward Hungerford's Modern Railroads and the photos!

Wonder if he (Ed Hungerford) was  related to the Clarke Hungerford that was the President of the FRISCO in the late 1940's, early 50's??? 

[NKP guy]

Judging from the building in the upper right (Cleveland city hall), this locomotive is sitting exactly where the Amtrak station is.  

I always enjoy reading Hungerford, especially his Men of Erie.

As always, Wanswheel's photos capture my attention.

 

 

[wanswheel]

Sam, thanks for taking a look at the CV, which my grandfather was an engineer on.  Here’s a picture of Hungerford and a locomotive named Sam, in Cleveland for the city's centenniel exposition in 1936.  --Mike

 

[samfp1943]

To Mike ( wanswheel): And some of the others here who enjoy older volumes with interesting photographs of by-gone railroad scenes.            Really interesting links; I enjoyed the read about the Central Vermont , and the historical tour of the Threepenny opera was interesting.

  I had had no idea who Edward Hungerford was, so I was doing a little Internet searching.  While doing so I stumbled on the following link to an e-book linked @ http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40242/40242-h/40242-h.htm

called The Modern Railroad   by Edward Hungerford  released in July of 2012 by Project Gutenberg.

   It is a pretty long, but I think, an interesting read; followed at the end by an alphabetized Index. Which includes 'active' page numbers to link to photos included in the text of the book.  Hope you can enjoy it.   It is a littel off the topic but it fits in with the discussion of Beebe's books and his era.

 

[Firelock76]

"Mack the Knife"?  Bobby Darrin nailed it!  The definative version!

[wanswheel]

Edward Hungerford was the principal author of a history of the Central Vermont, in which he explained why St. Albans had a magnificent station.

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3866496;view=1up;seq=41

http://www.1939nyworldsfair.com/ftp/39_RR_PlayBill.PDF

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20090705/COL03/307059997

The Threepenny Opera “by playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), was first performed in its original German as Die Dreigroschenoper at Berlin’s Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on August 31, 1928, with Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya, in the role of Jenny Diver. The show quickly became an international sensation and its opening number, “Mack the Knife,” achieved iconic status as one of the most popular songs of the century.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPG9GcykPIY  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnOWikgTG2Q 

[schlimm]

daveklepper

Kurt Wile (Sp?) wrote the music for Railroads on Parade at the 1939  1940 WF, which I attended several times.   He was a Jewish refugee from Germany, already famous as a composer with his Three Penny Opera still a regular at opera houses, and earned a living in the USA mostly at Hollyhwood for film scores and defense training films.  After WWII, the East German government invited him back to Germany to revive classical music, and he put away his political qualms and did return and lived out his remaining life there.  I believe he died before the Berlin Wall came down and before the Unification.  His musical creativity seemed to dimimish with his return to Germany.

It's Weill and you have your story wrong.   he did not return to Germany, lived out his life in Rockland County and died in 1950 in NYC.

[daveklepper]

I found Beebe's article on Hungerford excellent.  Hungerford had a colulmn in Trains in the '40's and possibly the early '50's.   Kurt Wile (Sp?) wrote the music for Railroads on Parade at the 1939  1940 WF, which I attended several times.   He was a Jewish refugee from Germany, already famous as a composer with his Three Penny Opera still a regular at opera houses, and earned a living in the USA mostly at Hollyhwood for film scores and defense training films.  After WWII, the East German government invited him back to Germany to revive classical music, and he put away his political qualms and did return and lived out his remaining life there.  I believe he died before the Berlin Wall came down and before the Unification.  His musical creativity seemed to dimimish with his return to Germany.

[Firelock76]

I've got several Lucius Beebe books, enjoy re-reading them from time to time.

Lucius' prose does take a bit of getting used to, not quite 20th Century but not quite 19th either, if you know what I mean.  Once you "get it" it's OK.

Beebe supposedly pulled the greatest prank on record at Yale, hiring an airplane to toilet paper bomb J.P. Morgan's yacht, with Lucius as the bombardier.  Got him expelled, too.

That's an interesting film clip. Lucius is supposed to be in a Thirties movie called "Cafe Society" playing himself.  Haven't seen it myself, though.

My favorite Beebe quote?  In the lead up to election day 1948 an aquaintance of Beebe's said "If Dewey is elected President it'll set the country back 50 years!"  Lucius' response?  "And just WHAT was so wrong with 1898?"

Just as well Beebe died when he did, the post-Sixties world would have driven him insane.

By the way, gossip columnist Walter Winchell used to call Beebe "Luscious Lucius", but I doubt it was to his face.  Beebe was one formidable looking individual!

 

[wanswheel]

Excerpt from Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from the New Yorker

When Lucius Beebe came to the Herald Tribune from the Boston Transcript, in June, 1929, he was twenty-seven years old, six feet four inches tall, and weighed in the neighborhood of a hundred and eighty pounds. His blond hair was closely cropped, and he looked strongly Germanic, like an especially rubicund officer in the Potsdam Guard. When he was introduced to Stanley Walker, the city editor, he said “sir” in a tone of booming deference, to the grateful amazement of the Tribune staff, which was not itself inclined to be punctilious.

Mr. Walker had never seen a reporter of such baroque design, but he was no man to recoil from the unknown, and he hired Beebe for thirty-five dollars a week. Thus began a career which may be tritely described as unique in American journalism, although it can never be said that Mr. Beebe was much of a reporter. He had an apathy about facts which verged closely on actual dislike, and the tangled wildwood of his prose was poorly adapted to describing small fires and negligible thefts. His splendid plumage and a certain jovial condescension in his manner were probably a source of either terror or indignation to the homely citizens who provide the bulk of routine news. We hear of him, in a top hat and opera cape, arriving fashionably late for the annual dinner of the Landscape Gardening Society, and there is a story that he attended a fire in a morning coat.

Nor was he always very clear about his assignments. Told to cover a banquet of the New York Central Railroad Engineers, he appeared somehow at one sponsored by the Caledonian Club, and after lingering only long enough to get a prepared copy of the principal speech, went back to his office to report that the President of the Central had incomprehensibly chosen to talk to his men about Scotland. He was astonished by the clamor which the publication of this item aroused, being clearly of the opinion that one damn dull dinner was very much like another.

Real Trains Are His Toys by Lucius Beebe, about Edward Hungerford, on these 2 pages:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19390319&id=_6VQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MCIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5931,5301427

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=_6VQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MCIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3143%2C5340801

[rfpjohn]

I recieved a copy of "Highball" for my sixth birthday, from my parents. I loved the real train pictures and my dad would read me sections at bed time. The adult words were beyond me, but I learned a little about the big railroad world beyond the Pennsy branch which passed my grandparents house and those Budd cars to the shore. I know dad bought it for the "Pennsy and the Pacific" chapter, but "Some little railroads" was always my favorite.

[cefinkjr]

The piano caper is a great story; very worthy of Beebe.  Reminds me of the prank described in A Chorus Line about breaking into a house and stealing nothing but rearranging all of the furniture.

 

[wanswheel]

Beebe had a sister, Lucia, who was an ambulance driver at Camp Devens during World War I, a brother, Junius, who served in France, and a brother he never met, also named Junius.

Beebe’s grandparents

Beebe’s father

https://archive.org/details/luciusbeebeofwak00wild

[erikem]

Myrick was better at those mundane details... Thought it was kind of fun to read Beebe's tale on how the entire Nevada legislature was bought off...

[MidlandMike]

I have a few Beebe books in my collection.  I bought the first one about 50 years ago.  He was more of a story teller than a historian.  I would read his books hoping to find out about the construction of the subject RR.  He would usually skip thru such mundane matters, but would go into great detail over the dedication ceremony and grand party at the completion of the rail line.

[daveklepper]

Beebe would not be too hard on Ambrak as long as they would handle his private car.  And he would possitively delight in the variety of private cars that are handled.   As I am delighted.  

and would be happy with UP's and NS's steam programs.

[schlimm]

dknelson

I had his "Trains in Transition" as a boy -- available then as a cheap reprint -- and I suspect most of us got to know his black and white photography in less than optimal reproductions.  His fondness for the 3/4 wedge might seem monotonous to us now (and in fact not all the pictures in his books were so stereotyped as that) but he was shooting in the early days of fast shutter speeds.   

One famous (non railroad) story about Lucius Beebe that I recall reading.  He hired a moving man and a crew of movers, and dressed himself in a fine suit.  He picked one of the most fashionable residental streets in Manhattan and knocked on the door which given the neighborhood would invariably be answered by a butler or a maid.  "We've come for the piano" he'd announce, and his diction and dress gave him such authority that he and his crew were admitted without question.  There was invariably a Steinway grand in the home and his crew would remove it.  He went up and down both sides of the street and took several pianos.

Then he reversed the procedure, would knock on the doors and proclaim "We're here with the new piano" -- again with total authority and no questions were asked, no servant would think to question or doubt -- and would deliver a piano which he tried to make sure generally belonged to the people across the street.  By the end of the day all sorts of people had someone else's piano.  Wonder if they ever noticed?

 

Dave Nelson

 

 

Apparently never prosecuted for his actions?

[dknelson]

I had his "Trains in Transition" as a boy -- available then as a cheap reprint -- and I suspect most of us got to know his black and white photography in less than optimal reproductions.  His fondness for the 3/4 wedge might seem monotonous to us now (and in fact not all the pictures in his books were so stereotyped as that) but he was shooting in the early days of fast shutter speeds.   

One famous (non railroad) story about Lucius Beebe that I recall reading.  He hired a moving man and a crew of movers, and dressed himself in a fine suit.  He picked one of the most fashionable residental streets in Manhattan and knocked on the door which given the neighborhood would invariably be answered by a butler or a maid.  "We've come for the piano" he'd announce, and his diction and dress gave him such authority that he and his crew were admitted without question.  There was invariably a Steinway grand in the home and his crew would remove it.  He went up and down both sides of the street and took several pianos.

Then he reversed the procedure, would knock on the doors and proclaim "We're here with the new piano" -- again with total authority and no questions were asked, no servant would think to question or doubt -- and would deliver a piano which he tried to make sure generally belonged to the people across the street.  By the end of the day all sorts of people had someone else's piano.  Wonder if they ever noticed?

 

Dave Nelson

[ACY Tom]

Pretty shocking to hear his pajamas describerd as "groovy" in 1944.  I thought my generation invented that word about 22 years later!

Wonder how he reacted to hearing about that song.  Hard to imagine him watching and listening in the theater.

Tom

[CShaveRR]

Yes, there was some interesting prose, and good photography, but the guy lost me when he mangled factual information (and he was a newspaper man!).  I remember a description on a typical wedge shot of an Alton steam locomotive passing an "unusual hollowed-out semaphore signal".

It was a B&O-style CPL.

[DSchmitt]

Wizlish

Wizlish wrote the following post an hour ago: "Hold the Vanderbilt, stab the Mail Annul the Limited, flag the Flyer, leave the Iroquois in a fix; This is the World, revealed and true: Give green to twenty-five and six; The 20th Century must go through!"

Trains Oct 1965 page 30

[Wizlish]

"Hold the Vanderbilt, stab the Mail
Annul the Limited, flag the Flyer,
leave the Iroquois in a fix;
This is the World, revealed and true:
Give green to twenty-five and six;
The 20th Century must go through!"