ABIE'S IRISH ROSE Photo

Nancy Carroll, Bernard Gorcey, and Thelma Todd in a publicity photo for ABIE'S IRISH ROSE. Nancy Carroll and Bernard Gorcey were actually in the movie, while Thelma Todd seems to have only been in some of the publicity photos.

Bernard Gorcey was the father of Leo Gorcey, one of the original Dead End Kids who was the leader of later versions "The East Side Kids" and "The Bowery Boys". Bernard Gorcey appeared in many of those movies with his son.

A

Bernard Gorcey And ABIE'S IRISH ROSE

Bernard Gorcey was in the stage version of ABIE'S IRISH ROSE. And the movie version. But was Thelma Todd?

Abie's Irish Rose (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Abie's Irish Rose
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Victor Fleming
Produced by	B. P. Schulberg
Written by	Jules Furthman Julian Johnson, Herman Mankiewicz (titles)
Based on	Abie's Irish Rose by Anne Nichols
Starring	Charles "Buddy" Rogers Nancy Carroll Jean Hersholt J. Farrell MacDonald
Music by	J. S. Zamecnik
Cinematography	Harold Rosson
Editing by	Eda Warren
Studio	Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	November 3, 1928 (1928-11-03)
Running time	12 reels (10,471 feet)
Country	USA
Language	English

Abie's Irish Rose is a 1928 early talking (part-talkie) film directed by Victor Fleming, based on the play Abie's Irish Rose by Anne Nichols. It tells the story of a Jewish boy, Abie Levy, who falls in love with and secretly marries Rosemary Murphy, an Irish Catholic girl, but lies to his family, saying that she's Jewish. The fathers of both bride and groom are at first religiously bigoted toward the other but with the birth of twin grandchildren their antagonism fades. Only reels 3-6 and 9-12 survive of this film in a silent incomplete copy. There may also be an incomplete copy of reel 8, unverified. All of the surviving reels of the film are held at The Library of Congress in Washington D.C..^[1]

Cast

• Charles "Buddy" Rogers as Abie Levy
• Nancy Carroll as Rosemary Murphy
• Jean Hersholt as Solomon Levy
• J. Farrell MacDonald as Patrick Murphy
• Bernard Gorcey as Isaac Cohen
• Ida Kramer as Mrs. Isaac Cohen
• Nick Cogley as Father Whalen
• Camillus Pretal as Rabbi Jacob Samuels
• Rosa Rosanova as Sarah

References

1. ^ Abie's Irish Rose at silentera.com database

External links

• Abie's Irish Rose at the Internet Movie Database
• Abie's Irish Rose at Virtual History

I'll give credit where credit is due. Jamie Evangelista showed me the "Abie's Irish Rose" pictures to begin with, and Dave Stevenson said that he thought Thelma Todd was probably only in some publicity pictures, not in the movie itself. He didn't say it to me, but I saw it on yahoo afterwards.

Later, a picture turned up with a caption on the back that said that Thelma Todd was greeting Bernard Gorcey as he arrived in Hollywood.

 

 

 

So that probably is all there was to it.

 

 

Another version, where the blonde menace menaces.

 

 

 

And another again, which is simply the same picture flipped. You see that a lot.

 

 

 

 

The woman in the picture is Ida Kruger, another cast member of ABIE'S IRISH ROSE who came out to Hollywood to work on the movie version. In real life Bernard Gorcey actually was a jewish man married to an Irish woman, as in the play. She had underworld connections, not too unusual in show business at the time, particularly in the New York area. Their sons Leo and David Gorcey would become famous as "Dead End Kids", another stage property that made it into the movies.

 

 

Another picture of Bernard Gorcey from this period :

 

 

 

 

 

Buddy Rogers had come from the same Paramount acting school as Thelma Todd and they made their first movie together, FASCINATING YOUTH. Nancy Carroll was a popular star at the time and Thelma Todd would work with her as well.

 

 

The publicity made much of Nancy Carroll

 

 

 

And Buddy Rogers,

 

 

 

 

But Bernard Gorcey was also featured on some of the posters.

 

 

 

Close-up

 

 

 

This poster symbolically depicts Nancy Carroll as a rose.

 

 

 

 

 

In 1940, Bernard Gorcey was in Charlie Chaplin's first talking ( in the sense that he had dialogue ) picture, THE GREAT DICTATOR.

 

 

In 1942, Bernard Gorcey would make the movie BLACK DRAGONS, a fictional story involving the Black Dragon Society that in real life had plotted to asassinate Charlie Chaplin. His son Leo Gorcey would then make another movie with the Black Dragon Society as villians, LET'S GET TOUGH. The Black Dragon Society was topical at the time as they were partly responsible for the start of World War II.

 

 

In the 1940's, Bernard Gorcey began working with son Leo Gorcey in the popular "East Side Kids" films, a series that had developed out of the old Dead End Kids movies of the 1930's. The series  would eventually become "The Bowery Boys".

 

 

 

NEWS HOUNDS, Bernard Gorcey to the left of Leo Gorcey at center.

 

 

Bobby Jordan is at left, David Gorcey and Huntz Hall at right.

 

 

NEWS HOUNDS also featured the beautiful Christine McIntyre, best known for her work with the Three Stooges. She also starred in a Stan Laurel production of 1938, THE RANGER'S ROUNDUP.

 

 

 

 Bernard Gorcey always played the same character in this series, "Louie Dumbrowski", who was the owner of "Louie's Sweet Shop", where the gang hung out.

David Gorcey, Bernard Gorcey, Billy Bennedict, Leo Gorcey, and Huntz Hall

 

 

This can be seen as similar to "Pop Tate's" Soda Shop in Archie comics. The old jalopy that the bowery boys drove around in was also similar to Archie's car in the comics of that period. The Dead End Kids were basically still playing teenagers here.

 

Bernard Gorcey died in a traffic accident in 1955, leading Leo Gorcey to leave the series. The Bowery Boys films would only continue a short time afterwords before coming to an end.

 

 

ABIE'S IRISH ROSE At The Internet Broadway Database:
http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=1064


ABIE'S IRISH ROSE At The Internet Movie Database:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018613/

Bernard Gorcey On Broadway:
http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=81015

The Bowery ( Yahoo Group )
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/thebowery/

Bowery Gallery At The Age Of Comedy:
http://theageofcomedy.com/bowgall.html

Christine McIntyre:
http://taillefer.tripod.com/ChristineMcIntyre/index.html

Christine McIntyre Westerns:
http://www.b-westerns.com/ladies19.htm

Thelma Todd Club:
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/thelmatoddclub/


Special thanks to Jamie Evangelista for all her help with the "Thelma Todd Club" and for having started "The Bowery" club on yahoo.

 

 Jamie Evangelista standing with the clothes Chaplin wore in Modern Times.

Kill Chaplin

The Black Dragon Society of Japan conspired to murder Charlie Chaplin.

May 15 Incident

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    

Osaka Mainichi Shimbun describing the May 15 Incident and assassination of Prime Minister Inukai

The May 15 Incident (五・一五事件, Goichigo Jiken^?) was an attempted coup d'état in Japan, on May 15, 1932, launched by reactionary elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy, aided by cadets in the Imperial Japanese Army and civilian remnants of the League of Blood Incident. Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by 11 young naval officers. The following trial and popular support of the Japanese population led to light sentences, strengthening military factions, weakening immediately the rule of law, but also, in the long term, the young Japanese democracy.

Background

Main article: League of Blood Incident

As a result of the ratification of the London Naval Treaty limiting the size of the Imperial Japanese Navy, a movement grew within the junior officer corps to overthrow the government, and to replace it with military rule. This movement had parallels in the Sakurakai secret society organized within the Imperial Japanese Army. The naval officers established contacts with the ultranationalist Inoue Nissho and his "League of Blood", and agreed with his philosophy that to bring about a 'Shōwa Restoration', it would be necessary to assassinate leading political and business figures.
In March 1932, in the 'League of Blood Incident', Inoue's group only managed to kill former Finance Minister and head of the Rikken Minseito, Inoue Junnosuke, and Director-General of Mitsui Holding Company, Takuma Dan.

 Incident

On May 15, 1932, the naval officers, aided by Army cadets, and right-wing civilian elements (including Shūmei Ōkawa, Mitsuru Tōyama, and Kosaburo Tachibana) staged their own attempt to complete what had been started in the League of Blood Incident.
Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was shot by eleven young Naval officers (most were just turning twenty years of age) in the Prime Minister's residence. Inukai's last words were roughly If I could speak, you would understand (話せば分かる, hanaseba wakaru^?) to which his killers replied Dialogue is useless (問答無用, mondō muyō^?).^[1] The original assassination plan had included killing the English film star Charlie Chaplin- who had arrived in Japan on May 14 1932 - at a reception for Chaplin, planned by Prime Minister Tsuyoshi. "These activists, eager to ingest a nativist Yamato spirit into politics, recognised the charged political nature of mass culture"; Chaplin's murder would facilitate war with the U.S., and anxiety in Japan, and lead on to "restoration"-in the name of the emperor. ^[2] When the prime minister was killed, his son Inukai Takeru was watching a sumo wrestling match with Charlie Chaplin, which probably saved both their lives.
The insurgents also attacked the residence of Makino Nobuaki, the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, the residence and office of Kimmochi Saionji, head of the Rikken Seiyukai political party, and tossed hand-grenades into Mitsubishi Bank headquarters in Tokyo, and several electrical transformer substations.
Aside from the murder of the Prime Minister, the attempted coup d'état came to nothing, and the rebellion as a whole proved a failure. The participants took a taxi to the police headquarters and surrendered themselves to the Kempeitai without a struggle.

Consequences

The eleven murderers of Prime Minister Inukai were court-martialed; however, before the end of their trial a petition arrived at court containing over 350,000 signatures in blood, which had been signed by sympathizers around the country to plead for a lenient sentence. During the proceedings, the accused used the trial as a platform to proclaim their loyalty to the Emperor and to arouse popular sympathy by appealing for reforms of the government and economy. In addition to the petition, the court also received a request from eleven youths in Niigata, asking that they be executed in place of the Navy officers, and sending eleven severed fingers to the court as a gesture of their sincerity.^[3]
Punishment handed by the court was extremely light, and there was little doubt in the Japanese press that the murderers of Prime Minister Inukai would be released in a couple of years, if not sooner. Failure to severely punish the plotters in the May 15 Incident further eroded the rule of law and the power of the democratic government in Japan to confront the military. Indirectly, it led to the February 26 Incident and the increasing rise of Japanese militarism.^[4]

 Footnotes

^{[page needed]}

1. ^ Tolland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
2. ^ Erotic Grotesque Nonsense:The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times, p.1 - Miriam Silverberg, 2006 Univ of California Press.
3. ^ Spector, Eagle Against the Sun. pp.36
4. ^ Beasley, The Rise of Modern Japan

 References

• Beasley, W.G. (2000). The Rise of Modern Japan, 3rd Edition: Political, Economic, and Social Change since 1850. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-23373-6.
• Borkwith, Mark (1989). Pacific Century: The Emergence of Modern Pacific Asia. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3471-3.
• Oka, Yoshitake (1984). Five Political Leaders of Modern Japan: Ito Hirobumi, Okuma Shigenobu, Hara Takashi, Inukai Tsuyoshi, and Saionji Kimmochi. University of Tokyo Press. ISBN 0-86008-379-9.
• Sims, Richard (2001). Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation 1868-2000. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-23915-7.
• Spector, Ronald (1985). Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan. Vintage. ISBN 0-394-74101-3.
• Toland, John (2003 reprint). The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945. Modern Library. ISBN 0-8129-6858-1.

 External links

• National Diet Library Reference

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                                   Charlie Chaplin was one of the biggest stars of his day. He was popular in different countries and traveled to many of them. He was seen in the company of world leaders.

 

 Charlie Chaplin with Mahatma Ghandi in England, 1931.

 

 

 

 

Charlie Chaplin with Winston Churchill in 1932.

 

 

 And he was also seen in the company of Thelma Todd.

 

 

Thelma Todd with Charlie Chaplin in 1935.

 

 

 The conspirators thought that killing such an important man would surely provoke a war.


Here we see Charlie Chaplin with his servant Kono in Japan. Kono was himself Japanese.

 

 

Today, we also know that Kono was linked to the pro-war element in Japan. Some people thought that Kono might have helped save Chaplin from being killed. In 1934, Paulette Goddard had Chaplin let him go.

 

 

Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard in Tokyo, 1936.

 

 

 

 In 1941, Kono would help to plan the attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

 

Black Dragon Society

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

For the fictional version, see Black Dragon Society (comics).

The Black Dragon Society (Kyūjitai; 黑龍會; Shinjitai: 黒龍会, kokuryūkai^?) was a prominent paramilitary, ultranationalist right-wing group in Japan.

 History

Ryōhei Uchida, founder of the Black Dragon Society

The Kokuryūkai was founded in 1901 by Uchida Ryohei, and was descended from the Genyōsha. (Uchida was a follower of Genyōsha founder Mitsuru Toyama.) Its name is derived from the Amur River, called Heilongjiang or "Black Dragon River" in Chinese (黑龍江^?), read as Kokuryū-kō in Japanese. Its public goal was to support efforts to drive the Russian Empire out of east Asia, south of the Amur River.
The Kokuryūkai initially made strenuous efforts to distance itself from the criminal elements of its predecessor, the Genyōsha. As a result, its membership included Cabinet Ministers and high-ranking military officers as well as professional secret agents. However, as time passed, it found the use of criminal activities to be a convenient "means to an end" for many of its operations.
The Society published a journal, and operated an espionage training school, from which it dispatched agents to gather intelligence on Russian activities in Russia, Manchuria, Korea and China. It also pressured Japanese politicians to adopt a strong foreign policy. The Kokuryukai also supported Pan-Asianism, and lent financial support to revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen, and Emilio Aguinaldo.
During the Russo-Japanese War, annexation of Korea and Siberian Intervention, the Imperial Japanese Army made use of the Kokuryūkai network for espionage, sabotage and assassination. They organized Manchurian guerrillas against the Russians from the Chinese warlords and bandit chieftains in the region, the most important being Marshal Chang Tso-lin. The Black Dragons waged a very successful psychological warfare campaign in conjunction with the Japanese military, spreading disinformation and propaganda throughout the region. They also acted as interpreters for the Japanese army.
The Kokuryūkai assisted the Japanese spy, Colonel Motojiro Akashi. Akashi, who was not directly a member of the Black Dragons, ran successful operations in China, Manchuria, Siberia and established contacts throughout the Muslim world. These contacts in Central Asia were maintained through World War II. The Black Dragons also formed close contact and even alliances with Buddhist sects throughout Asia.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the Kokuryūkai evolved into more of a mainstream political organization, and publicly attacked liberal and leftist thought. Although it never had more than several dozen members at any one time during this period, the close ties of its membership to leading members of the government, military and powerful business leaders gave it a power and influence far greater than most other ultranationalist groups.
Initially directed only against Russia, in the 1930s, the Kokuryūkai expanded its activities around the world, and stationed agents in such diverse places as Ethiopia, Turkey, Morocco, throughout southeast Asia and South America, as well as Europe and the United States.

 Activities in the United States

The organization was mentioned as an influence on the black nationalist organizations which were convicted of sedition in 1942, most notably Mittie Maud Lena Gordon's Peace Movement for Ethiopia. The other two organizations said to be influenced were the Brotherhood of Liberty for the Black People of America and the Nation of Islam.^[1]
On March 27, 1942, FBI agents arrested members of the Black Dragon Society in the San Joaquin Valley, California.^[2]
In the Manzanar Internment Camp a small group of pro-Imperial Japan flew Black Dragon flags and intimidated other Japanese inmates.^[3][4]
The Kokuryūkai was officially disbanded by order of the American Occupation authorities in 1946. According to Brian Daizen Victoria's book, Zen War Stories, the Black Dragon Society was reconstituted in 1961 as the Black Dragon Club (Kokuryū-Kurabu.) The Club never had more than 150 members to succeed in the goals of the former Black Dragon Society.^[5]

 In popular culture

Agents of the Black Dragon Society appeared in the 1938 French film The Shanghai Drama directed by the celebrated Georg Wilhelm Pabst.
Black Dragons appeared as villains in two Sam Katzman 1942 Monogram Pictures releases Black Dragons and Let's Get Tough! as well as a Republic Pictures film serial G-Men vs the Black Dragon that was turned into a Century 66 made for TV movie The Black Dragon of Manzanar. The Black Dragons also appeared as villains in 1942 American comic books published by DC Comics.
In Max Brooks' book The Zombie Survival Guide, the Black Dragons are portrayed as a unit of World War II Japanese military. He asserts that this group was responsible for attempting to create a zombie army by breeding and training the undead in an operation known as Project Cherry Blossom.
They also appear as henchmen to the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond novel You Only Live Twice.
The Black Dragon Society appears in the Thomas Pynchon novel Against the Day.
In the fictional Battletech universe the Black Dragon Society comes out as a Draconis Combine extremist group.
The Black Dragon Society appeared in the movie Bloodsport, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as the hosts of the illegal tournament in which Frank Dux fought.
The Black Dragon appeared as the antagonists in the 1995 televised version of Fist of Fury.

 See also

• Satokata Takahashi
• Kotaro Yoshida

 Notes

1. ^ Time Magazine article
2. ^ 1942 World War II Chronology
3. ^ p.172 Burton, Jeffery F. Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites University of Washington Press, 2002
4. ^ pp 161-162 Inada, Lawson Fusao & the California Historical Society Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience Heyday, 2000
5. ^ Victoria, Brian Daizen Zen War Stories Routledge Curson 2003 p.61

 References

• The Encyclopedia of Espionage by Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen (ISBN 0-517-20269-7)
• Deacon, Richard: A History of the Japanese Secret Service, Berkley Publishing Company, New York, 1983, ISBN 0-425-07458-7
• Jacob, Frank: Die Thule-Gesellschaft und die Kokuryûkai: Geheimgesellschaften im global-historischen Vergleich, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, 2012, ISBN 978-3826049095
• Jacob, Frank (Ed.): Geheimgesellschaften: Kulturhistorische Sozialstudien: Secret Societies: Comparative Studies in Culture, Society and History, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2012, ISBN 978-3826049088

External links

• 1914 Black Dragon statement

      

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The 1941 Frank Capra documentary PRELUDE TO WAR explained the causes of World War II, which involved conspiracies amoung the pro-war elements in different countries. This scene of Japan becoming a black dragon is from that film.

 

 

 The Leader Of The Black Dragon Society

 

 

Toyomo Mitsuru ( left ) meets the Chinese Leader Chiang Kai Sheck ( right ) in Tokyo in 1927. 

 

The Black Dragon Society took it's name from the Black Dragon river, here called the Amur.

Another Map.

 

 

The Black Dragon river was named after a dragon that was supposed to live in it. The name of the dragon was Mur Dur. It is thought that this story may have been inspired by a type of eel.

 

 

 

 

But the Black Dragon River was thought of as the division between the white and yellow races, so the real meaning of the name "Black Dragon Society" would be "Divison Of Races Society" or even something like "Us Versus Them". The Japanese also had slogans such as "Asia for Asiatics", although their real goal was conquest for themselves.

 

HOLLYWOOD AND THE BLACK DRAGON

BLACK DRAGONS starred Bela Lugosi and featured Bernard Gorcey in a small role. Bernard Gorcey had also appeared in THE GREAT DICTATOR with Charlie Chaplin, another World War II related story ( Chaplin played Hitler ).

 

 

The Black Dragon Society

From the 1942 Bela Lugosi movie BLACK DRAGONS

 

 

The Black Dragon Society in LET'S GET TOUGH

 

 

Some of the same people were involved in the production of both these Monogram pictures. Star Leo Gorcey was the son of Bernard Gorcey.

Anna Mae Wong and Black Dragon

 

The Chinese were sometimes blamed for the actions of the Japanese at the time as in LET'S GET TOUGH, but in World War II, China was a victim of Japanese agression.

Charlie Chaplin home movies from 1932, filmed in Java and Balli.





PRELUDE TO WAR ( Frank Capra documentary on the origins of the second World War ):





The Movie BLACK DRAGONS is a fictional story involving the Black Dragon Society.





Black Dragons Rounded Up By FBI March 31, 1942:
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist8/terrorists1.html


Charlie Chaplin ( Official Site ):
http://www.charliechaplin.com/


Google News:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2506&dat=19840513&id=wX9JAAAAIBAJ&sjid=uQsNAAAAIBAJ&pg=2824,4337866


Hollywood In It's Heyday:
http://hollywoodheyday.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html



Japan History - Rise of the nationalists:
http://countrystudies.us/japan/32.htm



Japan Scraps Naval Treaty To Expand Navy:
http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?31537-On-This-Day-In-History..../page16


Pearl Harbor:
http://www.pearlharbor.org/



Sinking Of The USS Panay:
http://www.usspanay.org/