Of composers and film studios

[selenak]

More pictures, as I visited the home of Arnold Schönberg, aka He Who Invented Atonal Music, and the Universal Studios.




The former is due to having met Barbara Schönberg over a decade ago when I lived here for three months and was interviewing people who had to do with the emigrés left and right. Barbara is a lovely lady, now around 60, daughter of composer Erich Zeisl, which meant that when she married Ronnie Schönberg, son of Arnold, it was a union of musical dynasties in exile, so to speak. Even if she's a translator and her husband is a judge (retired). On a tangentially "small world" note, back over a decade ago they had just had some minor problem with reporters because Ronnie S. was on the periphery of the OJ Simpson craziness - he had been the judge a couple of years earlier when Nicole Simpson was still alive and OJ was at court for wife beating. Most crazy question: "Mr. Schönberg, your father came into this country as a refugee from Hitler - wouldn't he be ashamed of you?"

Anyway. My two favourite Arnold Schönberg anecdotes are probably

a) The one where George Gershwin, whom he was friends with, gets him an interview with MGM and the producer - Barbara thinks it was Thalberg, but it might have been too late for Thalberg - opens the conversation with "Mr. Schönberg, I heard some lovely tunes of yours on the radio and..." Quoth the genius, icily and with his strongest Austrian accent: "I. Don't. Write. Lovely. Music." Yeah, no kidding.

b) The one where, after hearing from Alma Mahler-Werfel that Thomas Mann had the syphilitic hero of his novel Dr. Faustus invent the atonal music, he meets Marta Feuchtwanger at Brentwood and yells at her across the market: "Frau Feuchtwanger, I do not have syphilis!"

His home, where Barbara and Ronnie live to this day, captures something unique to homes of emigrés - at least I've found this to be the case - a mixture of Europe and America, but not the Europe of today, the Europe of 60 years ago. Very beautiful. Look:





Note the "Arnold is back" poster at the wall of the next one. This cracks me up, I must admit. Though I don't think the other Arnold is a blip on the radar of most Schönberg fanatics...






Today, I couldn't resist and visited the Universal Studios again. Expensive as ever, but it does spell Hollywood and Los Angeles for me, so....






The backlot:



And while driving through said backlot on the tour, I could not resist catering my fannish obsessions again:




This is a Mexican street of many a movie which also used to be a Roman one in Spartacus:



Western street:



Amity, of Jaws fame:



I would have gotten a perfectly good shot of the, well, jaws of the bloody shark, but no, the guy next to me had to interfere:




Where they shot the Grinch movie:



The Bates motel, with Bates residence in the background, for the Hitchcock fans:






And this is especially for likeadeuce and harmonyangel:






Farewell, studios!

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know a dozen apartments in New York which have EXACTLY that old lived-in, atmospheric early 20th century European feel, but their owners are getting on and slowly disappearing (and so are the apartments.) Nothing there is precious, but every object has a rare history, and the bookshelves are groaning under not terribly well-ordered books. Your pictures make me amazingly nostalgic for at least two whose owners now have died. One belonged to the daughter of Moscow's mayor under Kerensky, a fantastic woman who became one of Paris's three pre-WWII women barristers with their own practice (the other two were Suzanne Blum, who became the Duke & Duchess of Windsor's lawyer, and Violette Gorny.) She had dandled aged 3 on Lenin's knee in 1903 in Geneva, when both Vladimir Illitch & her father were chess-playing émigrés. "What did Lenin SAY???" I asked when she told me. "Oh, something stupid like 'what a pretty little girl'," she shot back. (Lenin later sent her father back to Siberia, where he'd already spent quite a bit of time under the Czar. He got the message and emigrated to Paris.) She moved to the US in 1940 for the obvious reasons, worked for the Free French Mission with my cousin Andrée, and then - still with my cousin - for the French Embassy's New York offices. When they told her she had to retire at 65 she joined a Madison Avenue law firm where she remained until she was 88. She died aged 101. God I loved her.)

LoveloveLOVE the Schönberg quotes, esp. "I. Don't. Write. Lovely. Music." (Snape as Dodecaphonist.) Why oh why the crazy question? Was someone already playing the race card (black footballers do NOT beat up their wives)?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

What an awesome story; thanks for telling!

"Snape as Dodecaphonist" is an ideal description for Arnold Schönberg.*g* Re: crazy question: no, it the reasoning was that if Ronnie had put O.J. in jail then for the wife beating instead of sending him to counselling Nicole would not have died. However, this ignores that the prosecution didn't demand anything more than counselling (plus damages), and the judge couldn't hand out sentences higher than the prosecution demanded. Also, what this has to do with Schönberg coming into the country as a refugee from Hitler is anyone's guess, but there you go.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Aww, Cap!

Great pictures, as always.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I knew you'd appreciate him.*g* (And note you did so over Wolverine.*veg*)

[harmonyangel.livejournal.com]

Hee, Marvel people! Awesome!

I sort of want to add speech bubbles to Cap and Spidey's little conversation there.

(As I was about to post this, Hugh Jackman's Boy From Oz version of "I Go to Rio" came on my iTunes, so I think that means I should mention Logan, too. I love how he's crouched.)

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Feel free to add speech bubbles (and speech!). *g* And hey, clearly Storm and Cap are the adults here, while Logan got into a crouching competition with Peter...

[mimesh.livejournal.com]

I'm totally geeking out over the Hollywood studio shots over here. But what is this? You didn't hop off the tour train and sneaked into the Heroes studios to get some scoop for us? *g*

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I'm a coward, what can I say.*g*