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- June 28, 1914: “But if ever a man went anywhere of his own free will, Franz Ferdinand went to Sarajevo.”
- “I know why the caged bird sings, ah me…” — poet Paul Laurence Dunbar
- “[Poetry is] a way of trying to come to peace with the world.” — poet Lucille Clifton
- “The films that I love are very straightforward stories, like really old-fashioned stuff.” — Paul Thomas Anderson
- A Personal Memory: or: What Dog Day Afternoon Means to Me
- Happy Birthday, Hediyeh Tehrani
- “All I actually wanted was for my work to be useful.”–Claudius Afolabi Siffre
- “I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.” — George Orwell
- “People are always asking me if I thought Elvis was a handsome man and my answer is ‘I am not blind you know’!” — Millie Kirkham
- Physical Media Booklet Essay: The Podcast
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Twelfth Night: or, What You Will
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- sheila on Physical Media Booklet Essay: Being scholarly about movies that don’t exist
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
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Category Archives: On This Day
“I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.” — Rebecca West
It’s her birthday today. It is hard to talk about her without referencing the generations of writers she inspired, all of whom admit their debt. Robert Kaplan is the most open about it (in Balkan Ghosts, which launched his career, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Austria, Balkans, D.H. Lawrence, Ford Madox Ford, France, George Bernard Shaw, Germany, Katherine Mansfield, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, nonfiction, politics, Rebecca West, Roman empire, Russia, Serbia, W.B. Yeats, war, Warren Beatty, Yugoslavia
21 Comments
Elvis: “It’s a duty I’ve got to fill and I’m going to do it.”
On December 20, 1957, Elvis received his draft notice. He was given a deferment so he could finish the movie King Creole This picture went out onto the wires. It was international news. He would be “gone” for … TWO … Continue reading
“But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.” – Happy Birthday, Maud Gonne
Maud Gonne, revolutionary, feminist, radical, and … lifelong muse of William Butler Yeats, was born on December 20 in 1865. After a couple of love affairs with men (none of whom were Yeats), after birthing a couple of illegitimate children, … Continue reading
“I sucked my fingers for 12 years. I never spoke … but I was a great observer.” — Cicely Tyson
It’s her birthday today. One of my earliest memories seeing a movie – I had to be 7 or 8 – was watching Sounder with my parents. I sat on the floor in front of the television. My parents sat … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day, Television, Theatre
6 Comments
5 Things About Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy
It’s her birthday today. 5 Things About Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy Introduction Joseph Lewis’ brilliant, erotic, and influential Gun Crazy was originally called Deadly Is the Female (which could be an alternate title for almost every film noir ever … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day
Tagged crime movies, film noir, Gun Crazy, Joseph H. Lewis, Peggy Cummins
52 Comments
Happy birthday KEEF
It’s Keith Richards’ birthday. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: If you are feeling introverted, if you are feeling lonely for conversation and human contact, read Keith Richards’ spectacular autobiography in public. People will come up to … Continue reading
“I can only work against bourgeois society. I can never work with it or through it.” — Erwin Piscator
It’s Erwin Piscator’s birthday. Even if you didn’t set OUT to learn about him, if you have done any reading about actors/theatre in the 20th century – either in Germany or in America – you will run into his name … Continue reading
“Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.” — W.H. Auden on Jane Austen
“The little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush.” — Jane Austen on her writing In 2020 – which feels like it was 1,000 years ago, I reviewed the new film adaptation … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, fiction, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Truman Capote, W.H. Auden
6 Comments
“The best thing that can come with success is the knowledge that it is nothing to long for.” — Liv Ullmann
It’s her birthday today. In 2018 I was assigned by the Criterion Collection to write tributes to four of Ingmar Bergman’s actresses: Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, (Liv and Bibi were paired together in one video – Bergman saw them as … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Directors, Movies, On This Day
Tagged Ingmar Bergman, Liv Ullmann, Norway, women directors
2 Comments
“The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.” — Edna O’Brien
Today is the birthday of the great Irish writer Edna O’Brien, who just died this past summer at the age of 93. I came to her Country Girls trilogy fairly young. I was in college. I think that might be … Continue reading
Posted in On This Day, writers
Tagged documentary, Edna O'Brien, fiction, Ireland, women directors
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