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Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Seduction of Old School Movie Magic

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It was one of the most challenging shots in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Sitting before Roman Coppola’s second unit camera was a 50/50 mirror, the kind that was once commonplace in any illusionist’s magic shop, but which hadn’t seen the inside of a Hollywood studio in decades. On the other end of the glass lay Winona Ryder in bed, ostensibly asleep but soon to be bedeviled by a monstrous vampire.

Yet co-star Gary Oldman wasn’t on hand that day. Instead, at about a 90-degree angle away from Ryder’s boudoir, stood a duplicate set of the same size and shape, but buried in black velvet Duvetyne. And in that blackness, smoke created by dry ice was oozing its way around the velvet. When lit by green lights and reflected in the mirror, a sentient emerald mist suddenly appeared in the same room as Ryder. Dracula manifested out of thin air.

“That was a good one, if I may brag a little, in that it was a backwards photography [shot] with a 50/50 mirror,” Roman says in 2020. It’s been nearly three decades since that day on set at the legendary Culver Studios, and Roman Coppola is a bit older and far more seasoned, yet when he looks back at what he and his team achieved on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, he can’t help but marvel. After all, you could now run a video taken by your iPhone in reverse with the swipe of a finger. But there they were in 1991, “puppeteering” dry ice fog in reverse, so it would appear to be sneaking below a mattress when reflected off a mirror and captured at a 45-degree angle in a camera that was running its film backwards.

In truth it’s more or less the same effect John Henry Pepper invented in 1862 to conjure a ghost on stage. Literal smoke and mirrors in the digital age.

When Bram Stoker’s Dracula opened in November 1992, it astonished the industry and silenced many of Francis Ford Coppola’s sharpest critics. Snarked about in the press beforehand as “Bonfire of the Vampires”—a reference to Brian De Palma’s misbegotten Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)—the whispers were that director Coppola had created a lurid and weird vampire movie based on one of the most oversaturated characters in fiction. Well, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was certainly lurid and weird, but in the best possible way.

Originally conceived as a Victorian man’s repressed anxieties about lust and passion being given demonic shape, Coppola’s vision for Dracula was entirely divorced from the pop culture image of Bela Lugosi in a cape. While the movie was marketed as the director of The Godfather going back to the 1897 source novel that no one had ever faithfully adapted (which turned out to be only partially true), the movie’s true appeal lies in its decadent imagery. It’s a marriage of lavish costumes, freaky makeup, and half-forgotten magician’s effects. And the last bit was given new life by Francis’ son, Roman, who became the film’s visual effects director.

Somehow it all came together, with performers such as Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Waits, and Ryder going so big that their cries threatened to burst through the soundstage walls. The hypnotic union thrilled audiences, who made Bram Stoker’s Dracula a surprise holiday blockbuster, and was ultimately celebrated by the industry, which awarded the movie three Oscars, including one for Eiko Ishioka’s dazzling costumes and Greg Cannon’s makeup. The irony is that, in its way, it was the industry’s skepticism toward Francis Ford Coppola that made the movie’s unusual vision possible.

“For some reason I always thought it was unfair I had the reputation of being a director who spent a lot of money, which is not really the case,” Francis said in a recent interview with film critic F.X. Feeney. “The only movie that I really spent a lot of money on, and went way over budget, was Apocalypse Now.”

Be that as it may, when Ryder first piqued Coppola’s interest about making a Dracula movie, which as it turned out was a favorite novel from his youth, he knew the studio would never agree to Coppola’s first inclination: As with going to the jungles of the Philippines on Apocalypse Now or Sicily in The Godfather, Coppola initially imagined shooting Dracula in Transylvania and inside actual crumbling castles.

“I knew the studio would be a little leery of getting this director with three names to do this Dracula picture, and possibly go off to Romania, and it’d be a Heaven’s Gate scenario, or Apocalypse Now scenario, so I played into that. I said, ‘You know, we could go and make the film in Romania, we could go to the real Castle Dracula… or I could make it all in the studio… In fact, I’ll make the entire picture right in a soundstage, a group of soundstages right under your noses. They just loved it, they ate it up.”

That was how Francis pitched himself into the movie, but how he made it worthwhile stemmed from two separate ideas bleeding into one otherworldly vision: First that the laws of physics would never apply when you were in the presence of a vampire; and second, if he was going to attempt to authentically return to the Victorian world of Stoker’s 1897 novel, he also would return to the early world of cinema where the laws of physics were never even considered.

“The period of the turn of the century was the birth of movies,” Francis said. “And movies, as you know, largely came about because of magicians who started to use the cinema to make illusions…. That’s when I became excited about the idea of [having] this story 100 percent shot in soundstages and not only using illusions and magic, and effects, but using effects as they were done at the turn of the century, which was in-camera.”

Thus entered Roman Coppola. Only 26 when Bram Stoker’s Dracula went before cameras, Roman wasn’t necessarily his father’s first choice to lead the visual effects. While Francis’ accounts have varied over the years as to whether his first head of special effects quit or was fired, the one consistency in Francis’ telling is that modern effects experts were exasperated by the idea of using almost no optical printers or new digital effects, and instead focusing on in-camera tricks. “Absurd” was the word Francis heard. But as it so happened, his son already had a passion for magic and the old ways, absurd though they may be.

“I was involved [on the movie] already,” Roman says. “I was going to be second unit [director], and we wanted the effects and second unit all to be one group effort, and do that stuff live. And when I started to take certain leadership and do storyboards, and supervise certain preparation, it was just clear that I was able to direct these efforts in a way that was more in my dad’s wishes, which is to really genuinely, deeply embrace the idea of total adhesion to ‘how would they have done it back in the day?’”

In retrospect Roman taking over leadership on the effects in Bram Stoker’s Dracula—to the point where he’s given the title card of “Visual Effects and Second Unit Director” in the end credits—seems natural. Ever since his uncle David Shire introduced him to theatrical magic as a young child, Roman has had a lifelong fascination with the tricks of illusion and sleight of hand. He still recalls boyhood days spent at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Magic store and San Francisco’s House of Magic, learning the trade of visual trickery, such as John Pepper’s “Pepper’s Ghost,” and staying up to watch Paul Michael Glaser in the 1976 TV movie The Great Houdini. In San Francisco, he saw Tony Slydini on stage.

“After 12 and 13, I stopped being so active,” Roman says. “But later, as a younger person in my 20s, I started to get back into it and get a lot of books, and collect certain apparatuses. It’s just something I found a real love for.”

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It also perfectly positioned him to spearhead Dracula’s visual effects. And one of the first things Roman and his team did was curate a film reel, or “visual library,” of all the points of reference from classic cinema they could use as inspiration.

“The movies that were much more points of reference are a touch later, but still drawing on the same principles,” Roman says when we mention early cinema pioneers, including Georges Méliès. “Jean Cocteau was a particular influence, Beauty and the Beast [1946], Orpheus [1950], and Blood of a Poet [1930]. So those are all movies that we drew a lot of inspiration from.”

Indeed, during the scene where Keanu Reeves’ Jonathan Harker explores Castle Dracula, a single carved arm in the wall is holding a candelabra in homage to Beauty and the Beast. Meanwhile Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960) inspired the nightmarish imagery of Harker’s carriage ride through a desolate mountain range, with the ominous passing tree branches actually being grips whacking the carriage as it was rocked in place.

Other films in the reel might include F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) or Carl Th. Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932), but Roman cites the biggest influences as being actual books on magic he turned to for research. Some were as old as Stoker’s novel itself. Erik Barnouw’s The Magician and the Cinema (1981) was a major touchstone on the movie; Sam Sharpe, author of Neo Magic (1932) and Conjurers’ Optical Secrets (1985) was another; and then crucially there was Magic: Stage Illusions, Special Effects and Trick Photography, which was written by Albert A. Hopkins in 1897.

Explains Roman, “Those books were the bibles of the research, and those have all sorts of references.” For instance, recall the grandiose prologue of the film. With baroque glee the movie begins not in 1897 but 1462. That is the year the real-life Vlad the Impaler repelled the Ottoman Empire and protected Christendom by slaughtering thousands of Turks. The sequence was Francis’ invention, and one he called his “Origin of Batman” scene on the set. But rather than actually film a battle scene, or even actual daylight, the warring portion of the sequence is completely captured via unnatural silhouette, with shadow puppets before a blood-red sky standing in for actual humans as they are impaled on a forest of pikes.

Says Roman, “If you get the book of Hopkins’ Magic, you will see other things like shadowgraphy, which is using shadow puppets. There was a guy named Caran d’Ache, who I think became famous because he’s the namesake of the Swiss colored pencil company. But he was the originator, or at least excelled in, shadowgraphy. And when you see the opening of Dracula, all those shadow puppets, that was inspired by an example from that book.”

This focus on the classical principles of stagecraft and magic, reverse photography and compositing images with a forced perspective, is the secret of Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s lingering appeal. As Roman points out, there were no effects they feared wouldn’t work. If they could achieve how things were done then, they’d appear inexplicable in the dawning age of digital effects.

“There’s a lot of steps and a lot of process that can be painstaking, but I don’t think we did anything that was pushing a boundary,” he says. “I think everything was an accepted principle that we knew, ‘Well, this is going to work if we do it right.’ There was nothing groundbreaking. We adhered to all the old tricks.”

There could certainly be setbacks, Roman recalls during Dracula’s voyage to London on the doomed Demeter that they exposed the same negative to five passes of filming. This is to say they attempted to combine five separately filmed images as the camera swung on the set by rewinding the film before each new pass. But because the frame line was incorrect on one of the passes, the whole multi-step take was ruined.

But the effects they did achieve all have a potency that register as alien to our modern eye. Some can be as simple as running the film backward in the camera, giving a macabre, unnatural sense of movement as Sadie Frost’s newly turned vampire Lucy climbs into her coffin after being accosted with a crucifix. In reality, she was filmed simply climbing out of it. Others might be slightly more complex, such as a black matte box being used over multiple passes.

For instance, when rats appear to run upside down on a girder above Jonathan Harker in the castle, two passes were used. In the first, the camera was upside down with the black matte covering the top of the lens as rats ran across a piece of set; then the camera was turned upright, the film rewound, and the other half of the lens was exposed while the original portion was covered as Reeves was burned into the negative.

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Among my personal favorites is the extreme perspective of Ryder’s 1462 Princess Elisabeta flinging herself from a castle parapet into a river, which Roman reveals “was basically a puppet with a forced perspective, and a little river below, [with] some tricks to make the scale look correct.”

Another was the much more complex series of techniques used during the vignette of Jonathan Harker traveling by train into Transylvania. In the finished film, Reeves sits in a shadowy train compartment with stark mountains out the window. Soon they fade away into darkness as Oldman’s predatory eyes appear on the horizon. Outside the train, Harker’s journal entry about the day’s travel is visible in the frame, running the length of the train track and just below the crossing transport.

“That was done by Gene Warren Jr. at Fantasy II [Film Effects], and that was multi-pass, multiple exposures,” Roman says. Among them was a rear projection created over two passes on the same piece of film. The first was comprised of multiple layers of the mountain range background moving at different speeds from right to left, while the camera moved left to right. In the second pass, the lights were turned out and Oldman’s eyes, as filmed by Roman, were projected as the only source of light onto the same background. All of this was then rear projected behind Reeves in a separate shot while he sat in his carriage. Conversely, in one of his close-ups, a map of 19th century Transylvania appears on his face via front projection.

And as for the journal in the same frame as the train? According to visual effects camera operator Christopher Lee Warren in “In Camera: The Naive Effects of Dracula,” they built a 20-foot wide replica of Harker’s journal entry so it could stand 10 feet in each direction between the camera and a miniature train, all to get the right type of sunset shadow being cast across its pages.

As just one in a string of intricate effects and set-pieces achieved by Roman and his team, the effects’ cumulative impact is immeasurable. In its way, Bram Stoker’s Dracula works on the level Francis wanted: He was able to bring it closer to Stoker’s world and plot, if not necessarily Stoker’s themes. As Francis more openly admits in recent years, when Ryder first approached him with a draft of James V. Hart’s script for Dracula, it was about a gushing love story between the dashing Count and Mina Murray Harker.

Ironically, that may be the element of the film that lingers most on subsequent pop culture depictions of Dracula. But it was Francis’ insistence on the script being rewritten, and rewritten again, to incorporate all of Stoker’s narrative beats, side characters, and supernatural wickedness, as well as the sense of a British society in upheaval. It was the dawn of a new century, the twilight of an old monarch, and an age for scientific discovery and technology, be it in the realm of blood transfusion… or moviemaking.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is at its best when it drinks deeply from its dreamlike environment and atmosphere, capturing the base dread in Victorian culture of suddenly being confronted by what it deemed irrational or lascivious. And those elements mingle to gory delight when the aspects Coppola cared about most took center stage.

“The focus [was] on the actors, the costumes, and this unusual way of doing live-action and multiple take effects done in-camera,” Francis said. And when it’s Hopkins, Richard E. Grant, and the rest of the ensemble standing around Sadie Frost in an extravagant 19th century wedding dress while being filmed in reverse, its sense of tone and style is overwhelming.

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On his end, Roman met that goal, and underlined the movie’s macabre madness, with ideas as primal and orgasmic as firing waves of blood out of air cannons during the scene where Dracula kills Lucy—“That was just a total last minute thing of like… ‘Hey don’t we have a bunch of blood bullets? Let’s put it in those air cannons and see what happens”—and it also paid off in old-fashioned Hollywood bravura, like the climax where Harker and the other vampire hunters chase Dracula down the Borgo Pass.

As second unit director, Roman shot much of that finale—as well as about 20 percent of the finished film—on the same soundstages where Merian C. Cooper filmed King Kong (1933) and David O. Selznick burned Atlanta in Gone with the Wind (1939). And a few years before Jurassic Park changed movie effects forever, Roman and his father were in that space, filming Reeves, Hopkins, and the rest approaching on horseback an enormous looming castle… which was created by Michael Pangrazio and Craig Barron by painting it on matted glass.

“That is remarkable that that would still be done in our time,” Roman reflects. “It’s hard to imagine that will ever happen again, latent image matte painting. It’s a great way to do something, but you need to have the skill to do it… and that’s just sort of a dying art.”

Not that Roman doesn’t still indulge the old ways. Many of his modern collaborators adore miniatures, for example. “I work with Wes Anderson often, and he likes to use miniatures, and he does it pretty liberally,” Roman says. “So I think there’s always a place for that.”

But composite shots? One where you put a sky or castle in the same shot with a miniature and live-action over multiple passes?

“It’s not possible to imagine someone wishing to do that on an optical printer, because for one, they don’t really exist [anymore],” Roman says. “Number two, it degrades the image, and there’s a lot of reason not to.”

Like the in-camera effects that fascinated two generations of Coppolas, even the optical printing techniques they were largely forgoing in 1992 have become obsolete in the age of computer generated imagery. Even the backwards-looking Bram Stoker’s Dracula has a single CG effect, with Roman conceding the transformation at the end of the movie, where demonic Dracula turns back into Prince Vlad in death, was done with CGI. But as Roman says, it was used judiciously at the conclusion as “a real punctuation mark.”

And perhaps Bram Stoker’s Dracula is itself a punctuation mark. A last hurrah for antiquated styles of moviemaking that were long gone, or about to be, and a chance to open a magician’s bag of tricks to fool the eye into believing, as Francis says, “the earth doesn’t rotate at exactly the right speed” in the presence of a vampire. It’s why the movie has aged like fine wine (if you drink the stuff), and likely will continue to do so while many other effects-driven movies are practically timestamped by their imagery.

“It was unique to a time and place,” Roman says. “I’m sure other movies, other horror movies in particular, over time will represent a time and a place, but this seems to be the one that represents that time and place.”

That time, and perhaps that of a century earlier.

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Список фильмов, рекомендуемых Гарвардским университетом для соискателей докторской степени в киноведении

Независимое кино 1. Изгнание / The Exiles, 1961. Кент МакКензи. 2. Двухполосное шоссе / Two-Lane Blacktop, 1971. Монте Хеллман. 3. Пустоши / Badlands, 1973. Т. Малик. 4. Голова-ластик / Eraserhead, 1976. Д. Линч. 5. Ангельский город / Angel City, 1977. Джон Джост. 6. Variety, 1983. Бетт Гордон. 7. Более странно, чем в раю / Stranger than Paradise, 1984. Джим Джармуш. 8. Генри: портрет серийного убийцы / Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, 1986. Джон Макнотон. 9. секс, ложь и видео / sex, lies and videotape, 1989. Стивен Содерберг. 10. Аптечный ковбой / Drugstore Cowboy, 1989. Гас Ван Сэнт. 11. Бездельник / Slacker, 1991. Ричард Линклейтер. 12. Дым / Smoke, 1995. Уэйн Ван, Пол Остер. 13. Гуммо / Gummo, 1997. Хармони Корин. 14. Джордж Вашингтон / George Washington, 2000. Дэвид Гордон Грин. 15. Песни отчаяния Фернанды Хуссейн / The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein, 2001. Жан Джанвито. 16. Трудности перевода / Lost in Translation, 2003. София Коппола. Остальной список: I. Повествовательное кино Огюст и Луи Люмьеры 1. Прибытие поезда на вокзал города Ла-Сьота / L’Arrivee d’un train en gare de la Ciotat (1895). 2. Выход рабочих с фабрики / La Sortie de l’usine Lumiere a Lyon (1895). 3. Политый поливальщик / L’Arroseur arrose (1895). 4. Завтрак младенца / Le Repas de bebe (1895). Жорж Мельес 5. Исчезновение дамы в театре Робера Удена / Escamotage d’une Dame chez Robert-Houdini (1896) 6. Путешествие на Луну / Le Voyage dans la lune (1902). 7. В царстве фей / Le Royaume des fees (1903). 8. Волшебный фонарь / La Lanterne magiquе (1903). 9. Путешествие сквозь невозможное / Le Voyage a travers l’impossible (1904). Фильмы студии Томаса Эдисона 10. Танец «Серпантин» Аннабель (реж. Уильям К.Л. Диксон, Уильям Хейз) / Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895). 11. Поцелуй (реж. Уильям Хейз) / The Kiss (1896). 12. Господин Эдисон за работой в химической лаборатории (реж. Джеймс Х. Уайт) / Mr. Edison at Work in His Chemical Laboratory (1897). 13. Казнь слона / Electrocuting an Elephant (1903). 14. Лоскутушка из страны Оз (реж. Дж. Фаррелл МакДональд) / The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914). Эдвин С. Портер 15. Ужасный Тедди, король Гриззли / Terrible Teddy, the Grizzly King (1901). 16. Круговая панорама Электрик-Тауэр / Circular Panorama of Electric Tower (1901). 17. Панамериканская выставка ночью / Pan-American Exposition by Night (1901). 18. Жизнь американского пожарного / Life of an American Fireman (1902). 19. Дядя Джош на киносеансе / Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show (1902). 20. Хижина дяди Тома / Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903). 21. Веселый продавец обуви / The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903). 22. Romance of the Rails (1903). 23. Большое ограбление поезда / The Great Train Robbery (1903). 24. Плюшевые медвежата / The Teddy Bears (1907). Короткометражные фильмы Д.У. Гриффита D.W. Griffith для студии «Байограф» 25. Одинокая вилла / The Lonely Villa (1909). 26. Спекуляция пшеницей / Corner in Wheat (1909). 27. Его преданность / His Trust (1911). 28. Телеграфистка из Лоундэйла / The Lonedale Operator (1911). 29. Нью-йоркская шляпа / The New York Hat (1912). 30. Мушкетёры Свиной аллеи / The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912). 31. Битва при Элдербушском ущелье / The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (1913). 32. Капустная фея / La Fee aux choux, 1896. Реж. Алис Ги 33. Дело чести / A House Divided, 1913. Алис Ги. 34. Кабирия / Cabiria, 1914, Италия. Джованни Пастроне. 35. Фантомас / Fantomas, 1914, Франция. Луи Фейад. 36. Рождение нации / The Birth of a Nation, 1915, США. Д.У. Гриффит. 37. Вампиры / Les Vampires, 1915, Франция. Луи Фейад. 38. Нетерпимость / Intolerance, 1916, США. Д.У. Гриффит. 39. Обман / The Cheat, 1916, США. Сесил Б. ДеМилль. 40. Иммигрант / The Immigrant, 1917, США. Чарльз Чаплин. 41. Берг Эйвинд и его жена / Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru, 1917, Швеция. Виктор Шёстрём. 42. Сломанные побеги / Broken Blossoms, 1919, США. Д.У. Гриффит. 43. Солнечная сторона / Sunnyside, 1919, США. Ч. Чаплин. 44. Кабинет доктора Калигари / Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari, 1920, Германия. Роберт Вине. 45. Возница / Korkarlen, 1920, Швеция. В. Шёстрём. 46. Пятно / The Blot, 1921, США. Лоис Вебер. 47. Носферату, симфония ужаса / Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, 1922, Германия. Фридрих Вильгельм Мурнау. 48. По закону, 1926, СССР. Лев Кулешов. 49. Ведьмы / Haxan, 1922, Дания. Беньямин Кристенсен. 50. Глупые жёны / Foolish Wives, 1922, США. Эрих фон Штрогейм. 51. Наконец в безопасности! / Safety Last, 1923, США. Фред С. Ньюмейер, Сэм Тейлор. 52. Киноглаз, 1924, СССР. Дзига Вертов. 53. Последний человек / Der Letzte Mann, 1924, Германия. Ф.В. Мурнау. 54. Алчность / Greed, 1924, США. Э. фон Штрогейм. 55. Шерлок младший / Sherlock Junior, 1924, США. Бастер Китон. 56. Сага о Йёсте Берлинге / Gosta Berlings saga, 1924, Швеция. Мориц Стиллер. 57. Бесчеловечность / L’Inhumaine, 1924, Франция. Марсель Л’Эрбье. 58. Железный конь / The Iron Horse, 1924, США. Джон Форд. 59. Броненосец “Потёмкин”, 1925, СССР. Сергей Эйзенштейн. 60. Золотая лихорадка / The Gold Rush, 1925, США. Ч. Чаплин. 61. Тело и душа / Body and Soul, 1925, США. Оскар Мишо. 62. Безрадостный переулок / Die freudlose Gasse, 1925, Германия. Георг Вильгельм Пабст. 63. Паровоз Генерал / The General, 1926, США. Клайд Брукман, Бастер Китон. 64. Жилец / The Lodger, 1926, Великобритания. Альфред Хичкок. 65. Мать, 1926, СССР. Всеволод Пудовкин. 66. Страница безумия / Kurutta ippeji, 1926, Япония. Тэйноскэ Кинугаса. 67. Метрополис / Metropolis, 1927, Германия. Фриц Ланг. 68. Конец Санкт-Петербурга, 1927, СССР. В. Пудовкин. 69. Наполеон / Napoleon, 1927, Франция. Абель Ганс. 70. Восход солнца / Sunrise, 1927, США. Ф.В. Мурнау. 71. Певец джаза / The Jazz Singer, 1927, США. Алан Кросланд. 72. Октябрь, 1927, СССР. С. Эйзенштейн. 73. Деньги / L’Argent, 1928, Франция. М. Л’Эрбье. 74. Толпа / The Crowd, 1928, США. Кинг Видор. 75. Потомок Чингисхана, 1928, СССР. В. Пудовкин. 76. Страсти Жанны д`Арк / La passion de Jeanne d’Arc, 1928, Франция. Карл Теодор Дрейер. 77. Под крышами Парижа / Sous les toits de Paris, 1929, Франция. Рене Клер. 78. Земля, 1930, СССР. Александр Довженко. 79. Голубой ангел / The Blue Angel, 1930, Германия. Джозеф фон Штернберг. 80. Золотой век / L’Age d’Or, 1930, Франция. Луис Бунюэль. 81. Граница / Borderline, 1930, Великобритания. Кеннет Макферсон. 82. М убийца / M, 1931, Германия. Фриц Ланг. 83. Изгнанник / The Exile, 1931, США. Оскар Мишо, Леонард Харпер. 84. Я – беглый каторжник / I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, 1932, США. Мервин ЛеРой. 85. Ноль за поведение / Zero de conduite: Jeunes diables au college, 1933, Франция. Жан Виго. 86. Кристофер Стронг / Christopher Strong, 1933, США. Дороти Арзнер. 87. Дружище Мендоса / El Compadre Mendoza, 1933, Мексика. Фернандо Де Фуэнтес, Хуан Бустильо Оро. 88. Аталанта / L’Atalante, 1934, Франция. Жан Виго. 89. Преступление господина Ланжа / Le crime de monsieur Lange, 1935, Франция. Жан Ренуар. 90. 39 ступеней / The 39 Steps, 1935, Великобритания. А. Хичкок. 91. Новые времена / Modern Times, 1935, США. Ч. Чаплин. 92. Гионские сестры / Gion no shimai, 1936, Япония. Кэндзи Мидзогути. 93. Великая иллюзия / La Grande Illusion, 1937, Франция. Жан Ренуар. 94. Александр Невский, 1938, СССР. С. Эйзенштейн. 95. День начинается / Le Jour se leve, 1939, Франция. Марсель Карне. 96. Мистер Смит едет в Вашингтон / Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939, США. Фрэнк Капра. 97. Правила игры / La Regle du jeu, 1939, Франция. Ж. Ренуар. 98. Багдадский вор / Thief of Bagdad, 1940, Великобритания. Майкл Пауэлл и др. 99. Еврей Зюсс / Jud Suss, 1940, Германия. Файт Харлан. 100. Гражданин Кейн / Citizen Kane, 1941, США. Орсон Уэллс. 101. День гнева / Vredens dag, 1943, Дания. К.Т. Дрейер. 102. Ворон / Le Corbeau, 1943, Франция. Анри-Жорж Клузо. 103. Иван Грозный, 1 серия, 1944, СССР. С. Эйзенштейн. 104. Дети райка / Les Enfants du Paradis, 1945, Франция. М. Карне. 105. Рим, открытый город / Roma, citta aperta, 1945, Италия. Роберто Росселлини. 106. Короткая встреча / Brief Encounter, 1945, Великобритания. Дэвид Лин. 107. Земляк / Paisa, 1946, Италия. Р. Росселлини. 108. Убийцы среди нас / Die Morder sind unter uns, 1946, Германия. Вольфганг Штаудте. 109. Земля дрожит / La Terra Trema, 1948, Италия. Лукино Висконти. 110. Красные башмачки / The Red Shoes, 1948, Великобритания. М. Пауэлл, Эмерик Прессбургер. 111. Похитители велосипедов / Ladri di biciclette, 1948, Италия. Витторио Де Сика. 112. Дневник сельского священника / Journal d’un cure de campagne, 1950, Франция. Робер Брессон. 113. Третий человек / The Third Man, 1950, Великобритания. Кэрол Рид. 114. Забытые / Los Olvidados, 1950, Мексика. Луис Бунюэль. 115. Бульвар Сансет / Sunset Boulevard, 1950, США. Билли Уайлдер. 116. Расёмон / Rashomon, 1950, Япония. Акира куросава. 117. Река / The River, 1951, Франция-Италия. Ж. Ренуар. 118. Запрещённые игры / Les Jeux interdits, 1952, Франция. Рене Клеман. 119. Мадам де… / Madame De, 1953, Франция. Макс Офюльс. 120. Токийская повесть / Tokyo monogatari, 1953, Япония. Ясудзиро Одзу. 121. Плата за страх / Le Salaire de la peur, 1953, Франция. А.-Ж. Клузо. 122. Сказки туманной луны после дождя / Ugetsu Monogatari, 1953, Япония. К. Мидзогути. 123. Каникулы господина Юло / Les Vacances de M. Hulot, 1953, Франция. Жак Тати. 124. Соль Земли / Salt of the Earth, 1953, США. Герберт Дж. Биберман. 125. Путешествие в Италию / Viaggio in Italia, 1953, Италия. Р. Росселлини. 126. Маленький беглец / The Little Fugitive, 1953, США. Рэй Эшли и др. 127. Семь самураев / Shichinin no samurai, 1954, Япония. А. Куросава. 128. Управляющий Сансё / Sansho dayu, 1954, Япония. К. Мидзогути. 129. В порту / On the Waterfront, 1954, США. Элиа Казан. 130. Слово / Ordet, 1954, Дания. К.Т. Дрейер. 131. Дорога / La Strada, 1954, Италия. Федерико Феллини. 132. Песнь дороги / Pather Panchali, 1955, Индия. Сатьяджит Рей. 133. Боб-прожигатель / Bob le Flambeur, 1955, Франция. Жан-Пьер Мельвиль. 134. Смерть велосипедиста / Muerte de un ciclista, 1955, Испания. Хуан Антонио Бардем. 135. Канал / Kanal, 1956, Польша. Анджей Вайда. 136. Красный шар / Le Ballon rouge, 1956, ��ранция. Альбер Ламорис. 137. Бирманская арфа / Biruma no tategoto, 1956, Япония. Кон Итикава. 138. Земляничная поляна / Smultronstallet, 1957, Швеция. Ингмар Бергман. 139. Летят журавли, 1957, СССР. Михаил Калатозов. 140. Ночи Кабирии / Le notti di Cabiria, 1957, Италия. Ф. Феллини. 141. Пепел и алмаз / Popiol i diament, 1958, Польша. А. Вайда. 142. Головокружение / Vertigo, 1958, США. А. Хичкок. 143. Баллада о солдате, 1959, СССР. Григорий Чухрай. 144. На последнем дыхании / A Bout de souffle, 1959, Франция. Жан-Люк Годар. 145. Хиросима, моя любовь / Hiroshima mon Amour, 1959, Франция. Ален Рене. 146. Четыреста ударов / Les quatre cents coups, 1959, Франция. Франсуа Трюффо. 147. Карманник / Pickpocket, 1959, Франция. Р. Брессон. 148. Тени / Shadows, 1959, США. Д. Кассаветес. 149. Мир Апу / Apur Sansar, 1959, Индия. С. Рей. 150. Приключение / L’Avventura, 1960, Италия. Микеланджело Антониони. 151. Служанка / Hanyo, 1960, Южная Корея. Ки-янг Ким. 152. Мать Иоанна от ангелов / Matka Joanna od aniolow, 1960, Польша. Ежи Кавалерович. 153. Рокко и его братья / Rocco e i suoi fratelli, 1960, Италия. Л. Висконти. 154. Звезда за темной тучей / Meghe Dhaka Tara, 1960, Индия. Ритвик Гатак. 155. Подглядывающий / Peeping Tom, 1960, Великобритания. М. Пауэлл. 156. Аккаттоне / Accattone, 1961, Италия. Пьер Паоло Пазолини. 157. В прошлом году в Мариенбаде / L’annee derniere a Marienbad, 1961, Франция. Ален Рене. 158. Голый остров / Hadaka no shima, 1960, Япония. Канэто Синдо. 159. Изгнание / The Exiles, 1961, США. Кент МакКензи. 160. Виридиана / Viridiana, 1961, Испания. Луис Бунюэль. 161. Клео от 5 до 7 / Cleo a 5 de 7, 1961, Франция. Аньес Варда. 162. Связной / The Connection, 1961, США. Ширли Кларк. 163. Вкус сайры / Sanma no aji, 1962, Япония. Я. Одзу. 164. Затмение / L’eclisse, 1962, Италия. М. Антониони. 165. Взлётная полоса / La Jetee, 1962, Франция. Крис Маркер. 166. Восемь с половиной / 8 1/2, 1963, Италия. Ф. Феллини. 167. Леопард / Il gattopardo, 1963, Италия. Л. Висконти. 168. Погубленные жизни / Vidas Secas, 1963, Бразилия. Нелсон Перейра душ Сантуш. 169. Красная пустыня / Il deserto rosso, 1964, Итали��. М. Антониони. 170. Тени забытых предков, 1964, СССР. С. Параджанов. 171. Доктор Стрейнджлав, или Как я научился не волноваться и полюбил атомную бомбу / Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964, Великобритания. Стэнли Кубрик. 172. Вечер трудного дня / A Hard Day’s Night, 1964, Великобритания. Ричард Лестер. 173. Евангелие от Матфея / Il vangelo secondo Matteo, 1964, Италия. П.П. Пазолини. 174. Чернокожая из… / La noire de…, 1965, Сенегал. Усман Сембен. 175. Безумный Пьеро / Pierrot le Fou, 1965, Франция-Италия. Ж.-Л. Годар. 176. Без надежды / Szegenylegenyek, 1965, Венгрия. Миклош Янчо. 177. Магазин на площади / Obchod na korze, 1965, Чехословакия. Ян Кадар, Эльмар Клос. 178. Непримирившиеся, или Где правит насилие, помогает только насилие / Nicht versohnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht, 1965, Германия. Жан-Мари Штрауб, Даниель Юйе. 179. Счастье / Le Bonheur, 1965, Франция. А. Варда. 180. Битва за Алжир / La battaglia di Algeri, 1966, Италия. Джилло Понтекорво. 181. Девушки из Рошфора / Les demoiselles de Rochefort, 1966, Франция. Жак Деми. 182. Отец – Дневник одной веры / Apa, 1966, Венгрия. Иштван Сабо. 183. Фотоувеличение / Blow-up, 1966, Великобритания. М. Антониони. 184. Маргаритки / Sedmikrasky, 1966, Чехословакия. Вера Хитилова. 185. О торжестве и гостях / O slavnosti a hostech, 1966, Чехословакия. Ян Немец. 186. Любовные похождения блондинки / Lasky jedne plavovlasky, 1965, Чехословакия. Милош Форман. 187. Наудачу, Бальтазар / Au Hasard, Balthazar, 1966, Франция-Швеция. Р. Брессон. 188. Андрей Рублев, 1966, СССР. Андрей Тарковский. 189. Персона / Persona, 1966, Швеция. И. Бергман. 190. Птицы большие и малые / Uccellacci e uccellini, 1966, Италия. П.П. Пазолини. 191. Дневник Дэвида Гольцмана / David Holzman’s Diary, 1967, США. Джим МакБрайд. 192. Две или три вещи, которые я знаю о ней / 2 ou 3 Choses que je sais d’elle, 1967, Франция. Ж.-Л. Годар. 193. Время развлечений / Playtime, 1967, Франция. Ж. Тати. 194. Уик-энд / Weeken, 1967, Франция. Ж.-Л. Годар. 195. Дневная красавица / Belle de Jour, 1967, Франция. Л. Бунюэль. 196. Война и мир, 1967, СССР. Сергей Бондарчук. 197. Земля в трансе / Terra em Transe, 1967, Бразилия. Глаубер Роша. 198. Невинность без защиты / Nevinost bez zastite, 1968, Югославия. Душан Макавеев. 199. Если / If, 1968, Великобритания. Линдси Андерсон. 200. Ночь у Мод / Ma Nuit chez Maude, 1968, Франция. Эрик Ромер. 201. Смертная казнь через повешение / Koshikei, 1968, Япония. Нагиса Осима. 202. Однажды на Диком Западе / C’era una volta il West, 1968, Италия. Серджио Леоне. 203. Петулия / Petulia, 1968, США. Ричард Лестер. 204. Воспоминания об отсталости / Memorias del subdesarrollo, 1968, Куба. Томас Гутьеррес Алеа. 205. Конформист / Il conformista, 1969, Италия. Бернардо Бертолуччи. 206. Четыре ночи мечтателя / Quatre nuits d’un reveur, 1971, Франция. Р. Брессон. 207. Тайна племени Харабат / Al-mummia, 1969, Египет. Шади Абдель Салам. 208. Цвет граната, 1969, СССР. С. Параджанов. 209. Беспечный ездок / Easy Rider, 1969, США. Дэннис Хоппер. 210. Кровь кондора / Yawar mallku, 1969, Боливия. Хорхе Санхинес. 211. Дракон зла против святого воителя / O Dragao da Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro, 1969, Бразилия. Глаубер Роша. 212. Лусия / Lucia, 1969, Куба. Умберто Солас. 213. Король Лир, 1970, СССР. Григор

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giancarlonicoli · 3 years

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James Randi, Magician Who Debunked Paranormal Claims, Dies at 92

Known professionally as the Amazing Randi, he dedicated his life to exposing seers who did not see, healers who did not heal and many others.

By Margalit Fox

Oct. 21, 2020

James Randi, a MacArthur award-winning magician who turned his formidable savvy to investigating claims of spoon bending, mind reading, fortunetelling, ghost whispering, water dowsing, faith healing, U.F.O. spotting and sundry varieties of bamboozlement, bunco, chicanery, flimflam, flummery, humbuggery, mountebankery, pettifoggery and out-and-out quacksalvery, as he quite often saw fit to call them, died on Tuesday at his home in Plantation, Fla. He was 92.

His death was announced by the James Randi Educational Foundation.

At once elfin and Mephistophelian, with a bushy white beard and piercing eyes, Mr. Randi — known professionally as the Amazing Randi — was a father of the modern skeptical movement. Much as the biologist and author Thomas Henry Huxley had done in the late 19th century (though with markedly more pizazz), he made it his mission to bring the world of scientific rationalism to laypeople.

What roiled his blood, and was the driving impetus of his existence, Mr. Randi often said, was pseudoscience, in all its immoral irrationality.

“People who are stealing money from the public, cheating them and misinforming them — that’s the kind of thing that I’ve been fighting all my life,” he said in the 2014 documentary “An Honest Liar,” directed by Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein. “Magicians are the most honest people in the world: They tell you they’re going to fool you, and then they do it.”

Mr. Randi began his career in the late 1940s as an illusionist and escape artist. On one occasion he extricated himself from a straitjacket while dangling upside down over Niagara Falls; on another, after almost an hour, from within a vast block of ice (“a cinch,” he later said); and on a third from still another straitjacket, this one suspended over Broadway, where he hung, as The New York Herald Tribune reported, like “a great dead tuna.”

“I wanted to break his records,” Mr. Randi said in the film, invoking the master, Houdini. “I wanted to stay in a sealed metal coffin longer than he did, get out of a straitjacket faster than he did, under chains, out of leg irons, out of handcuffs.”

But in later years, Mr. Randi was not so much an illusionist as a disillusionist. Using a singular combination of reason, showmanship, constitutional cantankerousness and a profound knowledge of the weapons in the modern magician’s arsenal, he traveled the country exposing seers who did not see, healers who did not heal and many others.

Their methods, he often said, were available to any halfway adept student of conjuring — and ought to have been transparent to earlier investigators, who were sometimes taken in.

“These things used to be on the back of cornflakes boxes,” Mr. Randi, his voice italic with derision, once told the television interviewer Larry King. “But apparently some scientists either don’t eat cornflakes, or they don’t read the back of the box.”

The recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant in 1986, Mr. Randi lectured worldwide and appeared often on television; he was a particular favorite of Johnny Carson and, more recently, Penn and Teller.

He wrote many books, among them “Flim Flam! The Truth About Unicorns, Parapsychology, and Other Delusions” (1980); “The Faith Healers” (1987); and “An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural” (1995).

In 1976, with the astronomer Carl Sagan, the writer Isaac Asimov and others, Mr. Randi founded what is now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Based in Amherst, N.Y., the organization promotes the scientific investigation of claims of the paranormal and publishes the magazine Skeptical Inquirer.

Though he was often called a debunker, Mr. Randi preferred the terms “skeptic” or “investigator.”

“I never want to be referred to as a debunker,” he told The Orlando Sentinel in 1991, “because that implies someone who says, ‘This isn’t so, and I’m going to prove it.’ I don’t go in with that attitude. I’m an investigator. I only expect to show that something is not likely.”

In the course of his career, he investigated more than 100 people, including, memorably, Peter Popoff, a well-heeled self-described faith healer whom he exposed on “The Tonight Show.” Mr. Randi was also known for his decades-long sparring match with Uri Geller, the professed mentalist known for his serial abuse of flatware.

Through the James Randi Educational Foundation, Mr. Randi sponsored the Million Dollar Challenge, a contest offering $1 million to the person who, following rigorous scientific protocols, could demonstrate evidence of a paranormal, supernatural or occult phenomenon. Though the challenge attracted more than a thousand aspirants, the prize remained unclaimed on Mr. Randi’s retirement from the foundation in 2015.

Mr. Randi was all but born skeptical. He entered an irrational world, in Toronto, as Randall James Zwinge on Aug. 7, 1928, one of three children of Marie (Paradis) and George Zwinge.

Attending Sunday school as a boy, he was moved often to inquiry.

“They started to read to me from the Bible,” Mr. Randi recalled in 2016. “And I interrupted and said: ‘Excuse me, how do you know that’s true? It sounds strange.’”

In his regular classes, he proved such a gifted student that the local school system soon threw up its hands and let him attend only to take exams. He had the run of the city, and by the time he was 12, after seeing a performance there by the great American stage magician Harry Blackstone Sr., he had found his calling.

At 15, young Randall got his first taste of debunking and its discontents. Hearing of a local preacher who professed to read minds, he attended a service. He saw immediately that the preacher was using a time-honored mentalists’ trick, called the “one ahead,” in which a performer appears to divine the contents of sealed envelopes that he has previously opened and read.

When Randall stood up and exposed the fraud, congregants called the police; he spent several hours in jail before his father came to collect him. It would be the last time a jail cell could hold him, and the first time he became attuned to people’s astonishing willingness to be deceived.

At 17, bored, he dropped out of school altogether. He joined a traveling carnival as a mentalist but soon became an escape artist. After he sprang himself from a Quebec jail cell, a local newspaper christened him “L’Étonnant Randi” — the Amazing Randi. The name stuck.

For a time in the early 1970s, Mr. Randi toured with the rock star Alice Cooper, decapitating him nightly with a trick guillotine.

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He continued his escape acts until he was well into his 50s. But one day, as he rehearsed a television show for which he had been sealed and shackled in an outsize milk can, something went awry.

The lid of the can jammed, trapping Mr. Randi inside. There was little air. Shifting within his scant confines, he heard two of his vertebrae snap.

“I was in deep trouble,” he recalled in the documentary. “I knew that if I panicked, I would be dead — that’s all there is to it.”

At long last, he heard the locks on the can being undone and the lid pried open. He decided it was time to forsake escapism.

“There comes a point,” Mr. Randi said, “where you just don’t want to see a little old guy getting out of a can.”

At 60, he retired from stage magic entirely. By then he had built a parallel career investigating claims of the paranormal, much as Houdini had done.

One of Mr. Randi’s most celebrated investigations was that of Mr. Popoff. A California preacher who professed to heal the sick, Mr. Popoff had a wide following on television and radio. He drew large crowds at revival meetings around the country, at which he called upon audience members by name and correctly identified their afflictions. In 1986, The Los Angeles Times reported, his average gross income was $550,000 a month.

That year, Mr. Randi planted an accomplice with a radio scanner and a tape recorder at one of Mr. Popoff’s public meetings. The scanner picked up Mr. Popoff’s wife relaying information previously gleaned about audience members into a small receiver hidden in his ear.

“Popoff says God tells him these things,” Mr. Randi told U.S. News & World Report in 2002. “Maybe he does. But I didn’t realize God used a frequency of 39.17 megahertz and had a voice exactly like Elizabeth Popoff’s.”

Footage of Mr. Popoff’s service, with the audio of Ms. Popoff’s voice superimposed, was broadcast on “The Tonight Show.” Mr. Popoff ceased operations in 1987, though he later resumed them.

Though his pursuit of Mr. Popoff was a consuming passion, Mr. Randi’s white whale was indisputably Mr. Geller, who had been famed since the 1970s for feats like bending keys and spoons, which he said he accomplished by telepathy.

Not so, said Mr. Randi, who explained that these were ordinary amusements, done by covertly bending the objects in advance.

In 1973, Mr. Geller made a disastrous appearance on “The Tonight Show” in which he was unable to summon his accustomed powers: On Mr. Randi’s advice, the show’s producers had supplied their own props and made sure Mr. Geller had no access to them beforehand.

Mr. Geller’s popularity continued undimmed, however, prompting Mr. Randi to write an exposé, “The Magic of Uri Geller” (1975), republished in 1982 as “The Truth About Uri Geller.”

“Randi is my best unpaid publicist,” Mr. Geller told New Times Broward-Palm Beach, an alternative weekly newspaper, in 2009.

Over the years, Mr. Randi managed to antagonize many, and not merely the targets of his investigations. He cast a wide condemnatory net, speaking out against alternative medicine, chiropractic and religion itself, which he called “the biggest scam of them all.”

His investigative methods were sometimes called deceptive. In one highly publicized stunt intended to show the gullibility of the news media, he had a young associate — his life partner, then known as José Alvarez — pose as a spirit medium named Carlos.

On a tour of Australia in 1988, “Carlos” drew hordes of worshipful followers, and the uncritical attention of many journalists, as he pretended to channel long-dead spirits. When Mr. Randi revealed the ruse, it drew those journalists’ ire.

Mr. Alvarez made headlines again in 2011 when he was arrested by federal authorities at the couple’s home in Plantation and charged with passport fraud and identity theft. Mr. Alvarez, an artist whose original name was Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga, said that he had fled his native Venezuela as a young man to escape antigay death threats.

He had reached the United States on a student visa. After it expired, Mr. Peña assumed the identity of a Puerto Rican man whom he erroneously believed to be dead.

For observers of Mr. Randi’s career, the inevitable question was whether the great deflator of deception had himself been deceived.

“I know who he is, and I know what he is as well,” Mr. Randi said in the 2014 documentary. “He’s my partner, and he’s very, very important to me.”

Mr. Peña, who spent six weeks in jail and faced deportation, later pleaded guilty to a single count of passport fraud.

Over the years, Mr. Randi was the subject of a string of defamation suits, including several by Mr. Geller. Though a Japanese court once ordered him to pay Mr. Geller about $2,000, Mr. Randi said he had never paid a cent to anyone who sued him.

In scientific circles, he remained a revered figure to the end. Among his many honors, he had a minor planet named for him, Asteroid 3163 Randi, discovered in 1981.

Mr. Randi resided for many years in Rumson, N.J., in a house equipped with secret staircases, a talking door knocker and clocks that ran backward. He had lived in Florida since the 1980s.

His survivors include Mr. Peña, whom he married in 2013, as well as a sister, Angela Easton, and a brother, Paul Zwinge, Mr. Peña said.

Though he remained a dyed-in-the-wool rationalist to the last, Mr. Randi did have a contingency plan for the hereafter, as he told New Times in 2009. “I want to be cremated,” he said. “And I want my ashes blown in Uri Geller’s eyes.”

Michael Levenson contributed reporting.

Margalit Fox is a former senior writer on the obituaries desk at The Times. She was previously an editor at the Book Review. She has written the send-offs of some of the best-known cultural figures of our era, including Betty Friedan, Maya Angelou and Seamus Heaney.

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 23, 2020, Section B, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: James Randi, Magician Who Debunked Paranormal Claims, Dies at 92.

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#geller #uri

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ulezak · 7 years

Audio

Putiferio (poltergeist serenade) - chapter 1 (don’t feed the animals)

Internet Archive (download & stream) - Mixcloud - SoundCloud - HearThis

a satanic (aural) comedy courageously mixed/blended & recorded live by maux (aka mauxuam) during the 20/21/22/23 august 2017 at the Ormus Lounge in Frank Zappa Straße, Marzahn.DDR/Berlin.EU. calling the ghosts: Daevid Allen / Negativeland / Alan Vega / Leonard Cohen / Prince / Lucio Battisti / Fabrizio De Andrè / Frank Zappa / Kim Fowley / Snakefinger / Muslimgauze juiced, cut & baked with trust at Sandokan Bay studio incidentally dislocated in Frank Zappa Straße Marzahn.DDR on the early days of september 2017 during the full moon phase .. while desperatly skint sinking too close to the bone .. dedicated to my ghost … forever longing for the Pearl of Labuan.

total play time: 6 hours 13 minutes 34 seconds

TRACKsLISTing: 001 - Johanna M. Beyer : Music Of The Spheres [An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music vol.2 - 1938] 002 - Vincente Price : How To See Ghosts or Surely Bring Them To You [A Hornbook For Witches, Stories and Poems For Halloween - Caedmon Rec. 1976 - LA]003 - Sun Ra : There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You of) [Lanquidity - 1978]004 - Franco Battiato : Il Silenzio del Rumore [Pollution - 1972 - Sicilia]005 - Lucio Battisti : La Collina dei Ciliegi [Il Nostro Caro Angelo - 1973 - Roma]006 - Mono Pause : Come Into The Future [America The Beautiful - Reccomended Rec 1994]007 - Throbbing Gristle : Convincing People [20 Jazz Funk Greats - Industrial Rec. 1979 - London]008 - The Residents : We Are An Happy Family [Commercial Album - Ralph Rec. 1980 - SF]008 - Vampire Rodents : Bosch Erotique [America The Beautiful - Reccomended Rec 1994]010 - Kim Fowley : 1983 - Don't Feed The Animals [Snake Document Masquerade - Island Rec. 1979]011 - Kevin Ayers : Song From The Bottom Of A Well [Whatevershebringswesing - 1974 - UK]012 - Van Der Graaf Generator : Necromancer [The Aerosol Grey Machine - 1969 - London]013 - W. Biggers : Underdog [Television's Greatest Hits vol.2: More From The 50’s & 60'Ss - ? - Hollywood]014 - Wiseblood : Grease Nipples [PTTM - 1991 - NY]015 - The Swingle Singers : Country Dances [The Swingle Singers - Stax Rec. 1973 - Chicago]016 - The Flying Lizards : Mandelay Song [The Flying Lizards - Virgin Rec. 1979 - London]017 - Tuxedomoon : Ninotchka [Divine - Crammed Rec 1982 - SF/Bruxelles]018 - Tomita : Golliwog's Cakewalk [The Newest Sound of Debussy: Snowflakes Are Dancing - 1974 - Japan]019 - Gershon Kingsley & Leonid Hambro : Summertime [Switched-On Gershwin - 1970 - France]020 - The Pointer Sisters : That's How I Feel [The Pointer Sisters - 1973 - ]021 - Frank Zappa : Let Me Take You To The Beach [Studio Tan - 1978]022 - Laibach : Take Me To Heaven [We Come In Peace - Mute Rec 2012 - Lubjana]023 - Bud Tutmarc : My Beautiful King of Kings [Sacred Hawaiian Melodies - ? - Hawaii]024 - Kostas Bezos Hawaiian Orchestra : Ta Aspra Sta Vouna / The White Bird In The Mountains [1930 - Rembetika - Greece/Hawaii]025 - Wilmoth Houdini : Blow Wind Blow [I Dont Feel At Home In This World Anymore 1927—1948 - ?]026 - Leader Cleveland : Babylon Is Falling Down [God Give Me Light 1927-1931 - Missisipi]027 - John Lurie & Tom Waits : World of Adventure [Fishing With John - 1998]028 - Max Steiner : King Kong March [King Kong OST - 1933 - Hollywood]029 - Material feat. Killah Priest : Temple of The Mental [Intonarumori - Axiom 1999 - NY]030 - Lesego Rampolokeng & The Kalahari Surfers : End Beginnings [End Beginnnings - Reccomended Rec 1993 - Soweto]031 - Allen Ginsberg & Hal Wilner : Ode To Failure [The Lion For Real - ? ]032 - Bee Gees : Lay It On Me [Mythology - ? ]033 - Iceberg Slim : Broadway Sam [Reflections - 1994]034 - Douglas Adams : Life Is Terribly Unfair [The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - BBC ? - London]035 - Snakefinger : There Is No Justice In Life [Night of Desirable Objects - Ralph Rec. 1992 - SF]036 - VVV (aka Alan Vega) : Resurrection River [Resurrection River - ? - NY]037 - Tino Contreras : Santo [Astonishing Stuff! - 1966]038 - Zelwer : Evviva l'amore [The Gods Are Angry / Made to Measure vol.36 - Crammed Discs ? - Bruxelles]039 - Tin Hat Trio : Width of The World [Helium - 2000]040 - Lindsay Cooper : Stitch Goes The Needle [Rags - 1980]041 - Exuma : Seance In The Sixth Fret [Exuma - 1970 - Bahamas/NY]042 - Nurse With Wound : Black Teeth [Huffin' Rag Blues - 2008]043 - Wiseblood : Hey Bop A Ree Bop [PTTM - 1991 - NY]044 - The Church Universal and Triumphant : Invocation for judgement against and destruction of rock music [The Sounds of American Doomsday Cults - 1984 - US]045 - Snog : The New Cocksucker Blues [Babes In Consumerland - 2013 - Australia]046 - Black Flag : Family Man [Family Man - 1984 - US]047 - Banta : Banta Trance Speech 1948 [Okkulte Stimmen - Mediale Musik: Recordings Of Unseen Intelligences 1905-2007 - Ubuweb 2016 - Germany]048 - Amanda Lear : It's a Better Life [Diamonds For Breakfast - 1980 - Italia]049 - Diana Ross : No One Gets The Prize [The Boss - 1979 - US]050 - Adriano Celentano : Happy To Be Dancing With You [Geppo Il Folle - 1978 - Italia/Milano]051 - Defunkt : We All Dance Togheter [Defunkt - 1980 - NY]052 - Earth, Wind and Fire : Moment Of Truth [Earth, Wind and Fire - 1971]053 - Prince : Family Name [The Rainbow Children - Parsley Park 2001 - US]054 - James Chance & The Contortions : Dish It Out [No New York - 1978 - NY]055 - The Pop Group : We Are All Prostitutes [We Are All Prostitutes - Rough Trade 1979 - London]056 - Rip Rig & Panic : It's Always Tit For Tac You Foolish Brats [Storm The Reality Asylum - Virgin 1982 - London]057 - Kim Fowley Jr. : Fred Loves Betty [Son of Frankenstein - ]058 - Geza X and The Mommymen : We Need More Power [You Goddam Kids! - 2002 - LA]059 - Germs : What We Do Is Secret [G - 1980 - LA]060 - Bad Brains : Pay To Cum [Bad Brains - 1982 - NY]061 - King Krimson : Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With [The Power To Believe - 2003 - London]062 - Butthole Surfers : The Lord Is A Monkey [Electriclarryland - 1996 - Seattle]063 - Frank Zappa : I'm So Cute [Sheik Yerbouti - 1979 - US]064 - Captain Beefheart : Floppy Boot Stomp [Bat Chain Puller - 1976 - US]065 - Pere Ubu : Rhapsody in Pink [The Art of Walking - 1980 - NY]066 - Snakefinger : The Picture Makers vs. Children Of The Sea [Greener Postures - Ralph Rec. 1980 - SF]067 - Superspirit : We Belong To The Cosmos [Permission To Come Aboard - Tummy Touch 2009 - NY]068 - Rip Rig & Panic : Leave Your Spittle In The Pot [Storm The Reality Asylum - Virgin 1982 - London]069 - David Thrussell : Turn Muzak On It's Head [The Voices of Reason - 2001 - Australia]070 - Robert Ashley : The Bar (side B) [Perfect Lives (The Bar) - Lovely Music 1980 - NY]071 - Harry Hoogstraten : The Do-Dah [K7 Baobab Magazine issue #1 - 1978 - Italia/ ]072 - The Residents : The Moles Are Coming [Intermission - Ralph Rec. 1981 - SF]073 - Akira Mitake : Can't Touch, Even Watch [Out Of Reach - 1983 - Tokyo]074 - Eddy Detroit : Seed of The Oyster [Jungle Captive - 1997]075 - Roger Ruskin Spear : Drop Out [Trouser Freak - 1972]076 - Kim Fowley : Bubble Gum [Bubble Gum - 1967 - US]077 - Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper : This Land Is For Everyone [ - US]078 - Violent Femmes : I'm Not Done [We Can Do Anything - 2016 - US]079 - Tom Waits : Step Right Up [Small Change - 1976 - US]080 - Damon : The Road of Life [Song of A Gypsy - 2009]081 - Charles Manson : Spaceman [Commemoration - 1995 - US]082 - Danielle Dax : When I Was Young [Dark Adapted Eye - 1988 - NL]083 - Edith Piaf : Non, Je Ne Rgrette Rien [Je Ne Rgrette Rien - 2011 - France]084 - Fabrizio De Andrè : Il Gorilla [Volume 3 - 1970 - Genova]085 - Donna salentina : E Mujerima Pe La Musica Pazza Pazza [Musiche Tradizionali del Salento - - Salento/Italia]086 - Carrettiere del Salento : Canto del Carrettiere [Musiche Tradizionali del Salento - - Salento/Italia]087 - Men's Group From Vlore : What Have Ianina's Eyes Seen ? [Albanie: Vocal And Instrumental Polyphony - 1988 - Albania]088 - Francois Muduya : Chant Avec Cithare [Burundi : Musiques Traditionnelles Recorded by Michel Vuylsteke - 1970 - Burundi]089 - Diamanda Galas : I Put A Spell On You [ - Ellakis]090 - Nurse With Wound : Devil Is This The Night [Dark Fat - 2016 - US]091 - X-TG feat. Antony : Janitor of Lunacy [Desertshore / The Final Report - 2012 - London]092 - Lindsay Cooper : The Chartist Anthem [Rags - 1980]093 - Leonard Cohen : First We Take Manhattan [I'm Your Man - 1988 - Canada]094 - Fred Frith : Too Much Too Little [Cheap At Half The Price - Reccomended Rec 1983]095 - Brion Gysin : From Here To Go [10%: File Under Burroughs - 1996 - NY]096 - Queen : Flash [Flash Gordon OST - - London]097 - Art Bears : Freedom [The World As It Is Today - Reccomended Rec 1981]098 - Robert Wyatt : At Last I Am Free [Wanna Buy A Bridge? - Rough Trade 1980 - UK]099 - Rufus Zuphall : I'm On My Way [Phallobst - 1971 - Germany]100 - Kingdom Come Arthur Brown : Simple Man [Galactic Zoo Dossier - 1971 - US]101 - Edith Perrin : When I Die [1941 - somewhere]

#music #podcast #mauxuam #frank zappa #satanic

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tujarzz · 7 years

Video

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Daniel Robert "Danny" Elfman (born May 29, 1953) is an American composer, singer, songwriter, and record producer. Elfman is best known for his work scoring films and television shows, in particular his frequent collaborations with director Tim Burton, and for being the lead singer and songwriter for the band Oingo Boingo from 1974 to 1995.

In 1976 Elfman entered the film industry as an actor. In 1982 he scored his first film, Forbidden Zone, directed by his older brother Richard Elfman. Among his honours are four Academy Award nominations, a Grammy for Batman,[4] an Emmy for Desperate Housewives,[5] the 2002 Richard Kirk Award,[6] and the Disney Legend Award.[7] Danny Elfman was born on May 29, 1953[8] in Los Angeles, California to a Jewish family.[9] He is the son of Blossom Elfman (née Bernstein), a writer and teacher, and Milton Elfman, a teacher who was in the Air Force.[10] He was raised in a racially mixed affluent community in Baldwin Hills, California.[11] He spent much of his time in the neighborhood's local movie theatre, adoring the music of such film composers as Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman. Stating that he hung out with the "band geeks" in high school, he started a ska band. After dropping out of high school, he followed his brother Richard to France,[12] where he performed with Le Grand Magic Circus, an avant-garde musical theater group.He was never officially a student at the CalArts; nonetheless, the instructor encouraged him to continue learning. Elfman stated, "He just laughed, and said, 'Sit. Play.' I continued to sit and play for a couple years."[13] At this time, his brother Richard was forming a new musical theater group.[14]Oingo Boingo[edit]Main article: Oingo BoingoIn 1972 Richard Elfman founded the American new wave band/performance art group, originally called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. They played several shows throughout the 1970s until Richard Elfman left the band to become a filmmaker. As a send-off to the band's original concept, Richard Elfman created the film Forbidden Zone based on their stage performances. Danny Elfman composed his first score for the film and played the role of Satan (the other band members played his minions). By the time the movie was completed, they had taken the name Oingo Boingo and begun recording and touring as a rock group. From 1976 and on, it was led by Danny Elfman, until 1995 when they suddenly retired. The semi-theatrical music and comedy troupe had transformed into a ska-influenced new wave band in 1979, and then changed again towards a more guitar-oriented rock sound, in the late 1980s.[citation needed]. Oingo Boingo, still led by Danny Elfman, performed as themselves in the 1986 movie Back to School. Additionally, Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo guitarist Steve Bartek reunited on October 31, 2015 to perform the song "Dead Man's Party" during an encore at a Halloween celebration at the Hollywood Bowl "for the first time in 20 years to the day", as Elfman said to the audience.[15]Film and television scoring[edit]In 1985, Tim Burton and Paul Reubens invited Elfman to write the score for their first feature film, Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Elfman was apprehensive at first, because of his lack of formal training, but with orchestration assistance from Oingo Boingo guitarist and arranger Steve Bartek, he achieved his goal of emulating the mood of such composers as Nino Rota and Bernard Herrmann.[16] In the booklet for the first volume of Music for a Darkened Theatre, Elfman described the first time he heard his music played by a full orchestra as one of the most thrilling experiences of his life. Elfman immediately developed a rapport with Burton[16] and has gone on to score all but three of Burton's major studio releases: Ed Wood, which was under production while Elfman and Burton were having a serious disagreement,[17] Sweeney Todd, and most recently Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Elfman also provided the singing voice for Jack Skellington in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas and the voices of both Barrel and the "Clown with the Tear-Away Face". Years later he provided the voice for Bonejangles the skeleton in Corpse Bride and the voices of the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.One of Elfman's notable compositions is The Simpsons Theme. He composed the theme in 1989, and it has been in use ever since.In 2002 Elfman composed the opening theme for the Sam Raimi Spider-Man series. This as well as altered versions made its way to all 3 Spider-Man movies. In 2004 Elfman composed Serenada Schizophrana for the American Composers Orchestra. It was conducted by John Mauceri on its recording and by Steven Sloane at its premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York City on February 23, 2005. After its premiere, it was recorded in studio and released onto SACD on October 3, 2006. The meeting with Mauceri proved fruitful as the composer was encouraged then to write a new concert piece for Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Elfman composed an "overture to a non-existent musical" and called the piece "The Overeager Overture". He also continues to compose his film scores in addition to these other projects.In October 2013, Elfman returned to the stage to sing his vocal parts to a handful of Nightmare Before Christmas songs as part of a concert titled Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton.[18][19] He composed the film score for Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), and composed additional music for Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) together with Brian Tyler.Elfman composed the score for the 2017 film Fifty Shades Darker.[20]Elfman's film scores were featured in the 2017 production SCORE: A Film Music Documentary.Other projects[edit]In November 2010, it was reported that Danny Elfman was writing the music for a planned musical based on the life of Harry Houdini.[21] But, as of January 2012, he was no longer attached to the project.[22]In 2011 Elfman composed the music for the Cirque du Soleil show Iris, which was performed at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood from July 21, 2011 to January 19, 2013.[23]In October 2016, Elfman composed a horror score for when Donald Trump "loom[ed]" behind Hillary Clinton at the second United States presidential election debates, 2016.[24][25]

#music #musictalk #danny elfman

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blackkudos · 7 years

Text

Julius Erving

Julius Winfield Erving II (born February 22, 1950), commonly known by the nickname Dr. J, is an American retired basketball player who helped popularize a modern style of play that emphasizes leaping and playing above the rim. Erving helped legitimize the American Basketball Association (ABA) and was the best-known player in that league when it merged with the National Basketball Association (NBA) after the 1975–76 season.

Erving won three championships, four Most Valuable Player Awards, and three scoring titles with the ABA's Virginia Squires and New York Nets (now the NBA's Brooklyn Nets) and the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers. He is the sixth-highest scorer in ABA/NBA history with 30,026 points (NBA and ABA combined). He was well known for slam dunking from the free throw line in slam dunk contests and was the only player voted Most Valuable Player in both the ABA and the NBA.

Erving was inducted in 1993 into the Basketball Hall of Fame and was also named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary All-Time team. In 1994, Erving was named by Sports Illustrated as one of the 40 most important athletes of all time. In 2004, he was inducted into the Nassau County Sports Hall of Fame.

Many consider him one of the most talented players in the history of the NBA; he is widely acknowledged as one of the game's best dunkers. While Connie Hawkins, "Jumping" Johnny Green, Elgin Baylor, Jim Pollard and Gus Johnson performed spectacular dunks before Erving's time, "Dr. J" brought the practice into the mainstream. His signature dunk was the "slam" dunk, since incorporated into the vernacular and basic skill set of the game in the same manner as the "crossover" dribble and the "no look" pass. Before Julius Erving, dunking was a practice most commonly used by the big men (usually standing close to the hoop) to show their brutal strength which was seen as style over substance, even unsportsmanlike, by many purists of the game. However, the way Erving utilized the dunk more as a high-percentage shot made at the end of maneuvers generally starting well away from the basket and not necessarily a "show of force" helped to make the shot an acceptable strategy, especially in trying to avoid a blocked shot. Although the slam dunk is still widely used as a show of power, a method of intimidation and a way to fire up a team (and spectators), Dr. J demonstrated that there can be great artistry and almost balletic style to slamming the ball into the hoop, particularly after a launch several feet from that target.

Career

High school

Erving was born in East Meadow, New York, and raised from the age of 13 in Roosevelt, New York. He played for Roosevelt High School and received the nickname "Doctor" or "Dr. J" from a high school friend named Leon Saunders. He explains,

I have a buddy—his name is Leon Saunders—and he lives in Atlanta, and I started calling him "the professor", and he started calling me "the doctor". So it was just between us...we were buddies, we had our nicknames and we would roll with the nicknames. Lo and behold we graduate from high school together, we both go to U-Mass, and we separated for many years 'cause he went over to Africa and did some stuff, and I went my way. But now he's my golf buddy in Atlanta...and I love him. He's just like a little brother to me even though, you know, there's only months between us. But he's the professor and he was the first one to call me "the doctor". And that's where it came from.

Erving recalled, "[L]ater on, in the Rucker Park league in Harlem, when people started calling me 'Black Moses' and 'Houdini', I told them if they wanted to call me anything, call me 'Doctor,'" Over time, the nickname evolved into "Dr. Julius," and finally "Dr. J."

College

Erving enrolled at the University of Massachusetts in 1968. In two varsity college basketball seasons, he averaged 26.3 points and 20.2 rebounds per game, becoming one of only six players to average more than 20 points and 20 rebounds per game in NCAA Men's Basketball.

At that time, professional basketball was in flux, split between two leagues whose players rapidly switched clubs and leagues. Erving joined the ABA in 1971 as an undrafted free agent with the Squires.

Having left college early to pursue a professional career, Erving earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst through the University Without Walls program in creative leadership and administration in 1986, fulfilling a promise he had made to his mother. Erving also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst

Virginia Squires (ABA)

Erving quickly established himself as a force and gained a reputation for hard and ruthless dunking. He scored 27.3 points per game as a rookie, was selected to the All-ABA Second Team, made the ABA All-Rookie Team, led the ABA in offensive rebounds, and finished second to Artis Gilmore for the ABA Rookie of the Year Award. He led the Squires into the Eastern Division Finals, where they lost to the Rick Barry-led New York Nets in seven games. The Nets would eventually go to the finals, losing to the star-studded Indiana Pacers team.

When he became eligible for the NBA draft in 1972, the Milwaukee Bucks picked him in the first round (12th overall). This move would have brought him together with Oscar Robertson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Instead, the 6 feet 7 inches (2.01 m), 210-pound (95 kg) Erving signed a contract with the Atlanta Hawks before the 1972 draft when he discovered his former agent Steve Arnold happened to work for the Squires, deluding him to sign for a low paying contract.

As attorneys tried to reach an agreement among three teams in two leagues, Erving joined Pete Maravich and the Hawks's training camp, as they prepared for the upcoming season. Erving enjoyed his brief time with Atlanta, and he would later duplicate with George Gervin his after-practice playing with Maravich. He played three exhibition games with the Hawks until, because of a legal injunction, he was obliged by a three-judge panel to return to the ABA Squires. The NBA fined Atlanta $25,000 per game for Erving's Hawks appearances because Milwaukee owned his NBA rights.

Back in the ABA, his game flourished, and he achieved a career-best 31.9 points per game in the 1972–1973 season. The following year, the cash-strapped Squires sold his contract to the New York Nets.

New York Nets (ABA)

The Squires, like most ABA teams, were on rather shaky financial ground. They were forced to trade Erving to the Nets in 1973—a move which eventually sent the Squires into oblivion. Erving led the Nets to their first ABA title in 1973–74, defeating the Utah Stars. Erving established himself as the most important player in the ABA. His spectacular play established the Nets as one of the better teams in the ABA, and brought fans and credibility to the league. The end of the 1975–76 ABA season finally brought the ABA–NBA merger. The Nets and Nuggets had applied for admission to the NBA before the season, in anticipation of the eventual merger that had first been proposed by the two leagues in 1970 but which was delayed for various reasons, including the Oscar Robertson suit. The Erving-led Nets defeated the Denver Nuggets in the swan-song finals of the ABA. In the postseason, Erving averaged 34.7 points and was named Most Valuable Player of the playoffs. That season, he finished in the top 10 in the ABA in points per game, rebounds per game, assists per game, steals per game, blocks per game, free throw percentage, free throws made, free throws attempted, three-point field goal percentage and three-point field goals made.

In all, Erving played five seasons in the ABA. In that time, he won two championships, three MVP trophies, and three scoring titles. He was also a four-time All-ABA First Team selection.

Philadelphia 76ers

The Nets, Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, and San Antonio Spurs joined the NBA for the 1976–77 season. With Erving and Nate Archibald (acquired in a trade with Kansas City), the Nets were poised to pick up right where they left off. However, the New York Knicks upset the Nets' plans when they demanded that the Nets pay them $4.8 million for "invading" the Knicks' NBA territory. Coming on the heels of the fees the Nets had to pay for joining the NBA, owner Roy Boe reneged on a promise to raise Erving's salary. Erving refused to play under these conditions and held out in training camp.

After several teams such as the Milwaukee Bucks, Los Angeles Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers lobbied to obtain him, the Nets offered Erving's contract to the New York Knicks in return for waiving the indemnity, but the Knicks turned it down. This was considered one of the worst decisions in franchise history. The Knicks' Walt Frazier led-dynasty in the 1970s had previously taken a big hit following the 1973–74 season when three of their stars (Jerry Lucas, Dave DeBusschere, and Willis Reed) all retired, dropping the Knicks from perennial contenders to just an average team over the next 2 seasons. The Knicks remained an average team in the 1976-77 season. They had a solid winning season in 1977–78, but then dropped back to average in the 1979-79 and 1979–80 seasons. They won 50 games in the 1980-81 season, went 47-35 in the 1983-84 season, then plummeted to 24-58 in 1984-85, resulting in their acquiring Patrick Ewing from Georgetown with the overall No. 1 draft pick. The Sixers then decided to offer to buy Erving's contract for $3 million—roughly the same amount as the Nets' expansion fee—Boe had little choice but to accept. This would total $6 million overall, with the other half going to Erving. His new jersey number 6 would derive from the $6 million paid by the Philadelphia 76ers; it also matched the team nickname "Sixers". For all intents and purposes, the Nets traded their franchise player for a berth in the NBA. The Erving deal left the Nets in ruin; they promptly crashed to a 22–60 record, the worst in the league. Years later, Boe regretted having to trade Erving, saying, "The merger agreement killed the Nets as an NBA franchise . . . . The merger agreement got us into the NBA, but it forced me to destroy the team by selling Erving to pay the bill."

Erving quickly became the leader of his new club and led them to an exciting 50-win season. However, playing with bigger stars forced his role to diminish. In the ABA, he would be told to do everything for his team. With the Sixers, he focused more on scoring. Despite a smaller role, Erving stayed unselfish. The Sixers, featuring other stars like ABA co-MVP George McGinnis, ABA All-Star Caldwell Jones, future All-Star World B Free (then Lloyd Free), outside shooting threat Henry Bibby (father of Mike Bibby), and the versatile and aggressive Doug Collins (later Michael Jordan's coach during the late 80s), won the Atlantic Division and were the top drawing team in the NBA. The Sixers defeated the defending champions, the Boston Celtics, to win the Eastern Conference. Erving took them into the NBA Finals against the Portland Trail Blazers of Bill Walton. After the Sixers took a 2–0 lead, however, the Blazers defeated them with four straight victories after the famous brawl between Maurice Lucas and Darryl Dawkins which ignited the Blazers' chemistry.

However, Dr. J enjoyed success off the court, becoming one of the first basketball players to endorse many products and to have a shoe marketed under his name. It was at this time that he appeared in television commercials urging young fans asking for his autograph in an airport to refer to him henceforth as "Dr. Chapstick". He also starred in the 1979 basketball comedy film, The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh. A famous TV commercial for Sixers season tickets during the 1977–78 off-season summed up Erving's desire to win an NBA Title. In the commercial, Erving was in the Sixers locker room and he said to fans, "We owe you one" while he held up his index finger. It took a few years for the Sixers franchise to build around Erving. Eventually coach Billy Cunningham and top-level players like Maurice Cheeks, Andrew Toney, and Bobby Jones were added to the mix and the franchise was very successful.

In the following years, Erving coped with a team that was not yet playing at his level. The Sixers were eliminated twice in the Eastern Conference Finals. In 1979, Larry Bird entered the league, reviving the Boston Celtics and the storied Celtics–76ers rivalry; these two teams faced each other in the Eastern Conference Finals in 1980, 1981, 1982, and 1985. The Bird vs. Dr. J matchup became arguably the top personal rivalry in the sport (along with Bird vs. Magic Johnson), inspiring the early Electronic Arts video game One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird.

In 1980, the 76ers prevailed over the Celtics to advance to the NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. There, Erving executed the legendary "Baseline Move", a behind-the-board reverse layup. However, the Lakers won 4–2 with superb play from, among others, Magic Johnson.

Erving again was among the league's best players in the 1980–1981 and 1981–1982 seasons, although more disappointment came as the Sixers stumbled twice in the playoffs: in 1981, the Celtics eliminated them in 7 games in the 1981 Eastern Finals after Philadelphia had a 3–1 series lead, but lost both Game 5 and Game 6 by 2 points and the deciding Game 7 by 1) and in 1982, the Sixers managed to beat the defending champion Celtics in 7 games in the 1982 Eastern Finals but lost the NBA Finals to the Los Angeles Lakers in 6 games. Despite these defeats, Erving was named the NBA MVP in 1981 and was again voted to the 1982 All-NBA First Team.

Finally, for the 1982–83 season, the Sixers obtained the missing element to combat their weakness at their center position, Moses Malone. Armed with one of the most formidable and unstoppable center-forward combinations of all time, the Sixers dominated the whole season, prompting Malone to make the famous playoff prediction of "fo-fo-fo (four-four-four)" in anticipation of the 76ers sweeping the three rounds of the playoffs en route to an NBA title. In fact, the Sixers went four-five-four, losing one game to the Milwaukee Bucks in the conference finals, then sweeping the Lakers to win the NBA title.

Erving maintained his all-star caliber of play into his twilight years, averaging 22.4, 20.0, 18.1, and 16.8 points per game in his final seasons. In 1986, he announced that he would retire after the season, causing every game he played to be sold out with adoring fans. That final season saw opposing teams pay tribute to Erving in the last game Erving would play in their arenas, including in cities such as Boston and Los Angeles, his perennial rivals in the playoffs.

Career summary

Erving retired in 1987 at the age of 37. "A young Julius Erving was like Thomas Edison, he was always inventing something new every night", Johnny Kerr told ABA historian Terry Pluto. He is also one of the few players in modern basketball to have his number retired by two franchises: the Brooklyn Nets (formerly the New York Nets and New Jersey Nets) have retired his No. 32 jersey, and the Philadelphia 76ers his No. 6 jersey. He was an excellent all around player who was also an underrated defender. In his ABA days, he would guard the best forward, whether small forward or power forward, for over 40 minutes a game, and simultaneously be the best passer, ball handler, and clutch scorer every night. Many of Erving's acrobatic highlight feats and clutch moments were unknown because of the ABA's scant television coverage. He is considered by many as the greatest dunker of all time.

In his ABA and NBA careers combined, he scored more than 30,000 points. In 1993, Erving was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. When he retired, Erving ranked in the top 5 in scoring (third), field goals made (third), field goals attempted (fifth) and steals (first). On the combined NBA/ABA scoring list, Erving ranked third with 30,026 points. As of 2013, Erving ranks sixth on the list, behind only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Wilt Chamberlain.

Memorable feats

1976 ABA Slam Dunk Contest

Erving in this memorable contest would face George "The Ice Man" Gervin, All-Star and former teammate Larry Kenon, MVP Artis "The A-Train" Gilmore, and David "The Skywalker" Thompson. Erving would start by dunking two balls in the hoop. Then, he would release a move that brought the slam dunk contest to the national consciousness. He would go all the way to the end of the court and run to release a free throw line dunk. Although dunking from the foul line had been done by other players (Jim Pollard and Wilt Chamberlain in the 1950s, for example), Erving introduced the dunk jumping off the foul line to a wide audience, when he demonstrated the feat in the 1976 ABA All-Star Game Dunking Contest.

Dunk over Bill Walton

This transpired during game 6 of the 1977 NBA Finals. After Portland made a basket, Erving immediately ran full court with the whole Blazers team defending him. He made a cross-over in front of multiple defenders and just glided to the hoop with ease. With the defensive UCLA legend Bill Walton waiting in the post, Erving threw a vicious slam dunk. This dunk is considered by many to be one of the strongest dunks ever attempted considering he ran full court with all five defenders running with him. This move was one of the highlights of his arrival to a more television-exposed NBA.

The Baseline Move

One of his most memorable plays occurred during the 1980 NBA Finals, when he executed a seemingly impossible finger-roll behind the backboard. He drove past Lakers forward Mark Landsberger on the right baseline and went in for a layup. Then 7′2″ center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar crossed his way, blocking the route to the basket and forcing him outwards. In mid-air, it was apparent that Erving would land behind the backboard. But somehow he managed to reach over and score on a right-handed layup despite the fact that his whole body, including his left shoulder, was already behind the hoop. This move, along with his free-throw line dunk, has become one of the signature events of his career. It was called by Sports Illustrated, "The, No Way, even for Dr J, Flying Reverse Lay-up". Dr J called it "just another move".

Rock The Baby over Michael Cooper

Another of Erving's most memorable plays came in the final moments of a regular-season game against the Los Angeles Lakers in 1983. After Sixers point guard Maurice Cheeks deflected a pass by Lakers forward James Worthy, Erving picked up the ball and charged down the court's left side, with one defender to beat—the Lakers' top defensive player Michael Cooper. As he came inside of the 3-point line, he cupped the ball into his wrist and forearm, rocking the ball back and forth before taking off for what Lakers radio broadcaster Chick Hearn best described as a "Rock The Baby" slam dunk: he slung the ball around behind his head and dunked over a ducking Cooper. This dunk is generally regarded as one of the greatest dunks of all time.

Post-basketball career

Erving earned his bachelor's degree in 1986 through the University Without Walls at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After his basketball career ended, he became a businessman, obtaining ownership of a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Philadelphia and doing work as a television analyst. In 1997, he joined the front office of the Orlando Magic as Vice President of RDV Sports and Executive Vice President.

Erving and former NFL running back Joe Washington fielded a NASCAR Busch Series team from 1998 to 2000, becoming the first ever NASCAR racing team at any level owned completely by minorities. The team had secure sponsorship from Dr Pepper for most of its existence. Erving, a racing fan himself, stated that his foray into NASCAR was an attempt to raise interest in NASCAR among African-Americans.

He has also served on the Board of Directors of Converse (prior to their 2001 bankruptcy), Darden Restaurants, Inc., Saks Incorporated and The Sports Authority. As of 2009, Erving was the owner of The Celebrity Golf Club International outside of Atlanta, but the club was forced to file for bankruptcy soon after. He was ranked by ESPN as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th Century.

ABA and NBA career statistics

Regular seasonPlayoffs

Personal life

Erving is a Christian. Erving has spoken about his faith saying, "After searching for the meaning of life for over ten years, I found the meaning in Jesus Christ."

Erving was married to Turquoise Erving from 1972 until 2003. Together they had four children. Their son, Cory, drowned after driving his vehicle into a pond in 2000.

In 1979, Erving began an adulterous affair with sportswriter Samantha Stevenson, resulting in the 1980 birth of American tennis player, Alexandra Stevenson. Although Erving's fatherhood of Alexandra Stevenson was known privately to the families involved, it did not become public knowledge until Stevenson reached the semifinals at Wimbledon in 1999, the first year she qualified to play in the tournament. Erving had provided financial support for Stevenson over the years, but beyond that, had not been a part of her life. The public disclosure of their relationship did not initially lead to contact between father and daughter. However, in 2008, Stevenson contacted him, and they at last did initiate a further relationship with one another. In 2009 Erving attended the Family Circle Cup tennis tournament to see Stevenson play, marking the first time he had attended one of her matches.

In 2003, he fathered a second child outside of his marriage, Justin Kangas, this time with a woman named Dorýs Madden. Julius and Turquoise Erving were subsequently divorced. Erving continued his relationship with Madden, with the couple having three more children together. In 2008, he and Madden were married. Erving has in total fathered nine children.

Wikipedia

#Julius Erving

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elcinelateleymickyandonie · 3 years

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WILFRID HYDE-WHITE.

Filmography

1934 Josser on the Farm

1935 Admirals All

1936 Rembrandt

1936 The Scarab Murder Case

1937 Elephant Boy

1937 Bulldog Drummond at Bay

1938 Murder in the Family

1938 Keep Smiling

1939 Over the Moon

1939 Poison Pen

1939 The Lambeth Walk

1940 The Briggs Family

1941 Turned Out Nice Again

1942 Asking for Trouble

1942 Lady from Lisbon

1943 The Demi-Paradise

1946 Night Boat to Dublin

1946 A Voice in the Night

1946 Appointment with Crime

1947 The Ghosts of Berkeley Square

1947 Meet Me at Dawn

1947 While the Sun Shines

1948 The Winslow Boy

1948 Quartet

1948 My Brother Jonathan

1948 Bond Street

1948 My Brother's Keeper

1949 The Passionate Friends

1949 The Bad Lord Byron

1966 The Sandwich Man

1967 The Million Eyes of Sumuru

1967 Mission: Impossible

1969 Run a Crooked Mile

1969 The Magic Christian

1969 Gaily, Gaily

1969 Skullduggery

1970 Fragment of Fear

1974 The Cherry Picker

1976 Columbo

1976 The Great Houdini

1979 A Touch of the Sun

1979 The Cat and the Canary

1979 Battlestar Galactica

1979 The Rebels

1980 Oh God! Book II

1980 Xanadu

1981 Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

1982 The Toy

1983 Fanny Hill.

Créditos: Tomado de Wikipedia

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Hyde-White

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fatecaster · 6 years

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Revealing the Secret Life of the 23 Most Famous Occult People - Reblog

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Revealing the Secret Life of the 23 Most Famous Occult People

Throughout history, famous and infamous figures have been linked the spiritualism through both their own actions and their associations with controversial figures.

Among the most famous occult people are both leaders and celebrities such as Nancy Reagan, Elvis Presley, and Jack Parsons. As you can imagine, these famous occult people share a fascinating correlation between their secret life of occult practices and public success, with many linking back to the infamous first person on this list, Aleister Crowley.

#1 Aleister Crowley

Source: attackthesystem.com

As an influential figure in modern occultism, Aleister Crowley's shocking lifestyle made him a controversial figure both during his lifetime and continuing into today. His nicknames, "The Great Beast" and "the wickedest man in the world" offer insight to his notoriety formed from his eclectic practice of the magical arts. Although he had previously dabbled in esoteric practices, his fever peaked after his honeymoon.

At that time, he claimed contact with a supernatural messenger, Aiwass. Crowley believed Aiwass to be an ancient Egyptian deity, who existed separate from Crowley and provided him with supernatural knowledge. Aiwass provided him with “The Book of the Law,” a formative, sacred text of Thelema.

From that time, Crowley became an influential prophet of Thelema, or modern paganism, guiding society into the Æon of Horus. His life became devoted to expressing the religion’s core belief “Do What Thou Wilt.” So, his behaviors contrasted the era with open bisexuality, extramarital affairs, hashish use, and practice of dark arts. That shocking, yet influential, life landed him spot seventy-three on the 2002 BBC poll “100 Greatest Britons.”

#2 Alice Bailey

Born to a middle class British family, Alice Bailey was raised in the Anglican church and the Christian faith. However, she experienced an encounter with a visitor at the age of 15 that forever changed her life. The visitor gave her a glimpse into her future, admonishing her to prepare for her future great work.

As a young adult, she joined the Theosophical Society for the purpose of unity and improving self. Although she spent some time with the society, Bailey eventually rejected the society and founded her own order the Lucis Trust.

Part of this society included a quarterly magazine and publishing house, for which Bailey frequently wrote. Her writings included the term “New Age,” influencing the term’s spread throughout the western world. Often, writers credit her as the founder of the New Age Movement and neopaganism.

Her philosophy, found in those writings and practiced by her followers included esoteric astrology, esoteric healing, and a new age view of consciousness. Generally regarded as a prolific writer during her lifetime, Bailey is now considered an instrumental paranormal teacher.

#3 Arthur Conan Doyle

Source: harryhoudinicircumstantialevidence.com

The well-known author of the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, engaged in spiritualism throughout his lifetime. During his childhood, he was raised in the catholic faith but, rejected those beliefs in his youth for agnosticism. Later, he became interested in spiritual mysticism, which shaped his worldview.

Conan Doyle was drawn to well-known mystics. For example, he met Harry Houdini, befriending him and believing in his supernatural powers. Also, Conan Doyle was one of the many people who believed in “The Coming of the Fairies” photographic hoax, where two young cousins staged images of fairy photographs as a prank.

Although the writer is best known for his rational and scientific Holmes character, Conan Doyle’s works delved into mysticism and fantasy in later years. In fact, twenty of his books focus on spiritualism. Throughout his life, Conan Doyle explored writings and teachings related to spiritualism often participating in seances and other psychic experiments.

#4 Daryl Hall

The co-founder and lead vocalist of Hall & Oates, Daryl Hall became interested in mysticism and studied the teachings of Aleister Crowley for a time. In a Pitchfork interview he explained, “A lot of people go through that kind of thing. And I went through it, and I retained a lot of it, and I discarded a lot of it.”

Hall believed it was a way to analyze himself and explore the boundaries of reality, which contributed to his solo album “Sacred Songs.”

That album most definitively explores Hall’s view of the supernatural and his interest in supernatural topics. For example, the lyrics discuss esoteric magic and hint at Hall’s personal philosophy. Notably, the song, “Without Tears” alludes to Aleister Crowley’s book “Magick without Tears.”

Although Hall is less specific about his current beliefs and practices, he has confirmed his interest in magic persists to this day.

#5 David Bowie

David Bowie, born as David Robert Jones, is best known for his unusual performing career as songwriter, singer and actor. From the beginning, his work has included spiritual references, as he showed an interest in many religions and higher powers. This has impacted his work, most notably in his song lyrics like in “Blackstar.”

The song also mentions “the villa of Ormen,” “Ormen” being a creature mentioned in Aleister Crowley’s work. Bowie’s links to Crowley actually began much earlier, as Bowie studied the mysticism in the 1970s. He read books by Aleister Crowley, Louis Pauwel, Jacques Bergier,Israel Regardie, Trevor Ravenscroft, and Dion Fortune.

In fact, his 1976 persona, “the thin white duke” relates to the line from “White Stains”, by Crowley, referencing, “The return of the thin white duke making sure white stains.”

Continuing throughout his career, Bowie explored paranormal topics that often manifested in his performances. Although they are most meaningful to his devoted fans and followers, these metaphors in Bowie’s personas and lyrics reveal a deeper interest in spiritualism and esoteric beliefs.

#6 Elvis Presley

The “King of Rock and Roll”, Elvis Presley typically invokes images of gospel, rock, and Americana. However, his wide-ranging interests and open-minded means of exploring the world led him to experiment with mysticism. During the height of his fame, he was struggling with an addiction to prescription drugs, which contrasted his public image as an American idol.

His wife, Priscilla Presley, explains that this dark time led him to search for a way to find higher levels of consciousness. In her book, “Elvis and Me” Priscilla Presley recounts his spiritual quest to understand metaphysical phenomena.

During this period, he also became celibate and attempted to break his drug habit. In fact, he was reported to have predicted his own death by Jody Ghanam, the wife of one of Elvis’ doctors. However, this interest in the supernatural was outlived by his drug addiction, with his friends and family reporting that his final days as consumed by health and sobriety issues.

#7 Heinrich Himmler

Links between the Nazi party and the Satanic worship have been discussed over the years, with many ties to Heinrich Himmler. Upon Hitler’s order, Himmler set up and controlled the Nazi concentration camps, making him a feared figure of the Nazi movement. Although he was raised Catholic, Himmler rejected the beliefs. His devotion to the mysticism was one that he found compatible to nationalism, anti-semitism and the Nazi Party.

During his lifetime, Himmler was known to perform rituals, often in the German castle Wewelsburg. These acts were meant to give him power and influence. Additionally, he was reported to hold seances and contact spirits for political advice. Although some of his practices have mixed reality with myth and legend, Himmler’s beliefs included spiritualism, witchcraft and other esoteric beliefs.

While some believe spiritualism ultimately led to the Nazi Party’s downfall, others attribute the supernatural to their quick rise and domination in Europe.

#8 Jack Parsons

A rocket engineer, John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons, worked at the California institute of Technology during the height of his career. He pioneered both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets, pushing space travel into a new era. In 1939, Parsons converted to Thelema, making him one of may Crowley apologists.

Thus, he joined the Agape Lodge, a branch of the Thelemite Ordo Templi Orientis. Eventually, he became a leader of that branch, gaining power and influence over the group. His paranormal practices eventually started to conflict with his scientific work, and he struggled to find acceptance in the scientific community. Later in life, he became better known for his esoteric profile, rather than his contributions to rocketry and space science.

#9 Jim Morrison

The eccentric singer, songwriter, and poet, Jim Morrison fronted the Doors as they made rock music history. In fact, he is regarded as one of the most influential frontmen in rock music history. As seen in his song lyrics, Morrison appreciated many philosophies and engaged in eclectic interests, including spiritualism.

Source: unisci24.com

As a Crowley apologist, Jim Morrison was reported to be a Satanist during his lifetime. At times, his references to his alternate persona of the “Lizard King” made people wonder if the singer had become possessed. Regardless, his wild lifestyle included voodoo dolls, pentagrams, and inverted crosses that both shocked and amazed the public.

#10 Jimmy Page

As both the guitarist and found of the rock band, Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page has enjoyed a prolific and successful music career. Like many musicians during his time, Page was reported to have studied the works of Aleister Crowley. This led the public to speculate that he may have agreed to a devil’s bargain in exchange for his talent and fame. Although Page did study Crowley’s teachings, and has since affirmed that philosophy, no one knows for sure whether he used supernatural power for personal success.

Over time, his lyrics seem to indicate a certain mystical aura that has raised questions for both his fans and critics. Recently, Page has remained vague about his beliefs and his involvement with magic, preferring that people focus on his music and find fulfillment in their own exploration of spiritualism.

#11 Margot Adler

Known for her work as a correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR), Margot Adler led a double life as a Wiccan Priestess. She grew up in New York City, as the granddaughter of the well-known psychotherapist, Alfred Adler. As a young adult she studied at the University of California, Berkeley and continued to the Columbia University Graduate school of Journalism.

This launched her active career as a radio journalist, typically as a general assignment reporter. Her personal interests often influenced her work with topics such as computer gaming, geek culture, the death penalty and the drug ecstasy. Adler spoke on top programs for NPR including “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” bringing an esoteric point of view to the programs. She was an elder in the Covenant of the Goddess, as a Wiccan priestess until her death from cancer.

#12 Marie Laveau

Source: spyhollywood.com

Made famous in modern culture by her fictional portrayal in “American Horror Story: Coven”, Marie Laveau was feared during her time as a practitioner of Voodoo. Her followers were vast and devoted, inspired by her power and influence. Magic was her main passion, although Laveau was reported to have worked many jobs including matchmaking and hairdressing.

Her powers seem to have only grown since her passing, as acolytes still venture to her hometown in New Orleans to pay their respects and discover the wonders of her work. Her crypt is still reported to be one of the most haunted cemeteries in America and people have seen her walking around the tombs casting curses on visitors.

#13 Marquis de Sade

Source: http://ift.tt/w3SoG9

The father of sadomasochism, the Marquis de Sade participated in many scandalous activities during his lifetime. Although he is most known for his erotic literature and debaucherous lifestyle, de Sade was rumored to perform Satanic worship during his lifetime.

His preference for violence and taboo sexual behaviors may have been inspired by his esoteric beliefs. His works often portrayed heretical twists on Catholic or Christian rituals like Mass and Holy Communion, displaying his contempt for organized, traditional religions. With time, his fame was aligned with everything unholy, taboo and counter-culture of that era.

#14 Mary Todd Lincoln

The wife of one of America’s most beloved presidents, Mary Todd Lincoln delved into spiritualism for a time. Although some historians contribute her interest to a decline in mental health, Lincoln engaged in seances and tried to communicate with her son, Willie.

Following Willie’s tragic death, Lincoln struggled to engage with reality and devoted her time to the supernatural and ghosts.

She was not a popular first lady and misfortune followed throughout her life. Mary Todd Lincoln struggled for public approval during her lifetime, and the situation worsened after President Lincoln’s assassination. So, her family kept her generally secluded in her later years, until her death.

#15 Nancy Reagan

Bringing the glitz and glam of Hollywood with her to the White House, Nancy Reagan also continued her New Age practices and spiritualism throughout her husband’s political career.

She consulted astrologers, including Joan Quigley, to help her divine meaning within cultural, personal, and political events. In fact, Quigley stayed as the White House astrologer in secret for many years during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

According to Quigley, Hinckley's assassination attempt shook Nancy Reagan, causing a deeper reliance on prophecy to understand and predict the future. Although these activities were kept relatively quiet during Reagan’s term in office, the stories have only gained more notoriety with time in contrast to Reagan’s all-American, Christian persona.

#16 Nostradamus

With prophecies that continue to be researched to this day, Nostradamus may have been the most prolific profit in the world. His followers credit him with predicting many world events. During his lifetime, he was known as both a physician and a seer, highly regarded for his predictive power.

He published many works, most notably “The Prophecies”, which are still read to this day. Most of his power, Nostradamus claimed to have gathered from a study of astrology, using the stars to chart time and space. Although he passed in 1566, his interpretations appear to predict more events that have not yet occurred at this time.

#17 Plato

This classical Greek philosopher influenced the course of Western thinking, along with his teacher, Socrates and his student, Aristotle. As much of his work focused on the metaphysical aspect of existence, he explored reality beyond the physical world.

“Platonism” is often used by scholars to explain the intellectual consequences of denying the reality of the material world. He often questioned what is knowable or actual compared to subjective truth. This exploration of existence, and the realm of supernatural cause, makes Plato an integral part of understanding the supernatural world. Believing in things that cannot be seen or measured is required to appreciate spiritualism.

#18 Pythagoras

As a great mathematician and scientist, Pythagoras founded the Pythagoreanism movement, which appreciated the philosophical implications of mathematics. He also considered himself to be a philosopher, having influenced Plato and thus, Western philosophy. His best known theorem, the Pythagorean theorem, is used to calculate the area of a triangle. This tactic is still taught in schools as part of core geometry curriculum.

Although he is often thought of as a pure scientist, Pythagoras actually claimed to have memory of his previous lives, similar to the belief of reincarnation. Additionally, some works credit him with mythological talents that are described as similar to astral projection.

#19 Queen Victoria

Claiming the throne in 1876, Queen Victoria ruled the United Kingdom for 63 years. Although her reign spanned a great time of industrial, cultural, and scientific change, Queen Victoria became less engaged in politics after her husband Albert’s death in 1861. To contact her late husband, Queen Victoria employed John Brown as a medium.

Reportedly, he would channel messages to and from Queen Victoria and her husband. This relationship became a topic of much gossip, especially as the public became more away of the seances, psychics, and mediums that were an integral part of palace life. Although esoterism is one of the lesser known features of Victoria’s legacy, it still remains one of the most unusual and interesting practices of the monarchy to this day.

We have four more amazing occult people to read about, including Isaac Newton. Drop your email address down below and get the full article in PDF for free.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed this article about the secret life of famous people. Intriguingly, occult people seem to share in success throughout their careers. Whether each of these figures actually believed in the occult, or simply used it as inspiration for their work will never be known. We can only believe what they tell us, in their actions, writings and performances. Let us know what you think in the comments and don’t forget to share the article.

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