Robin Hood Color

In case piles of dirty snow have left your eyes starved for pure color, here are pictures from The Adventures of Robin Hood, which came out in 1938.  I expected a black & white movie, then thought it had been colorized -- incredibly well, but 25% too lush for real life.  It turns out they shot it in Technicolor way back then.

The movie flaunts its color with constant costume changes for everyone but the peasants (and Robin Hood).  You'd expect the evil Bishop, the King, a lady in waiting, and an outlaw musician (clockwise from top-left, left) to be stylish.

But Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian is radiant -- Northern Renaissance portrait-ready -- in all of the eight outfits I noticed, on top here and just below.


The evil nobles (usurping the King, who's on his way back from scourging the Holy Land for Christ) are preening peacocks, especially Claude Rains as Prince John, below left, and Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy, below right.


Though Basil does look pretty smooth for a grown man in action-hero pajamas, Claude has every right to admire himself in the mirror, below left.  Meanwhile Errol Flynn as Robin doesn't waste time on finery, unless you include the dead stag he's draped with when he crashes a dinner party at the castle, below right.


And finally, below, a peacock kangaroo court -- Melville Cooper as the High Sheriff, Basil, and some extra in purple tights -- delivers its verdict: There is no such thing as too much color!

Gilded Catwalk NYC

Aristocrats frolic in the window at 51st St. & 7th Ave.
I remember the trolls in the comments at Curbed used to (still do?) claim that you have to either let developers have their way or cede the streets to crackheads.

Unsurprisingly, their hero Mayor Bloomberg comes up with his own false choice of extremes, on whether to allow Wal-Mart to build here: "You should let the marketplace decide," he said.  "Anybody who has tried to manage the marketplace, it has not turned out very well.  I think the Soviet Union is as good an example as you'd ever need of that."

I love it how people who can afford to escape the negative effects of The Market preach its innate wisdom, no matter how money's made or spent, and see moral superiority and a lesson for others in their singular ability to take as much as possible from the world without choking on it.

But Bloomberg's never seen anything special in NYC anyway, and never cared to find the balance point that could preserve what made NYC special: the humility, and the respect for millions of humble lives lived in proximity, that left enough air for people at the bottom to breathe.  Instead he's done everything he can to turn NYC into a gilded catwalk where arrogant aristocrats flaunt their wealth and admire each other.

Searching for the key to maintaining a "healthy" city, I keep coming back to this simple thought: There is nothing noble in poverty, but there is in humility.  And the arrogance of wealth is what's destroying NYC, block by block.

Three Sights

Pink sheet construction, Northern Blvd. at Queens Plaza
Summer shade, Rockefeller Center
Mountainous facade at 17th & Park Ave. South

Colonel Blimp's Trophies

Colonel Blimp, a movie based on a British cartoon character's life from the Boer War to WWII, is oddly entertaining, full of bluster and regret.  A strange but believable twist has the Colonel falling for one copy of Deborah Kerr after another.  And obviously, his trophy room caught my eye.


To keep busy between wars or after losing a copy of Deborah, he would fulfill his duty as a gentleman and rid the empire of exotic animals.


Note The Hun trophy above right.  And below, the Colonel's German opposite and friend, sick of war and barely hanging on, admires the centerpiece of the trophy room -- an awful oil portrait of Deborah Kerr -- and says "It's a strange place to hang such a lovely picture."

Signs of Snow

In Queens again.  Above, a fresh snow carpet matches the whitewashed sign at the oil facility on the Queens side of the Greenpoint Ave. bridge.  Below left, the CitiBank Queens tower looms in the distance past the LIRR tracks near 50th Ave.


Meanwhile, above right and below, from 51st Ave. near 21st St., traffic climbs the LIE from the Midtown Tunnel under a mountain of signs.

Freezing Eagles

Above and to the left, on 5th Ave. looking west down 26th St., past the Croisic Building's corner eagle toward the St. James Building on Broadway.

Below, the matching eagle further north on 5th.