[PHOTO DIARY] Postcard from Padova
[FILM] The Face Behind the Mask (1941)
The Face Behind the Mask is the story of a hopeful new immigrant, Janos Szaby (Peter Lorre), who, on his first day in New York City, is trapped in a hotel fire that leaves his face hideously scarred. Refused employment due to his appearance although he possesses tremendous skill as a watchmaker, the only way he can survive is by turning to theft, using his skilled hands to disable alarms. Eventually he becomes the leader of a gang of thieves, and raises enough money to commission and wear a realistic latex mask of his own face. Janos then falls in love with Helen (Evelyn Keyes) a blind woman who sees only the good in him, and attempts to leave his life of crime behind him. Unfortunately, his gang come to believe that he has betrayed them to the police, and attempt to kill him by car bomb, an attempt on his life that he survives but that Helen does not. In retaliation, Janos disguises himself as the pilot of the private plane the gang is flying out of the city with, which he lands in the Arizona Desert and lets out the fuel, suicidally stranding both the gang and himself without food or water, dooming them all to a slow death. At the film’s end, Janos’s body and that of his enemies are discovered by the police.
Post by Dustin Lynn
Sad Lover’s Eyes
William S. Burroughs looking serious, sad lover’s eyes, afternoon light in window, cover of just-published Junkie propped in shadow above right shoulder, Japanese kite against Lower East Side hot water flat’s old wallpaper. He’d come up from South America & Mexico to stay with me editing Yage Letters and Queer manuscripts. New York Fall 1953. ~ Allen Ginsburg
Let Us Now Praise Androgyny: Clara Bow in The Wild Party
In a publicity shot for sex symbol Clara Bow’s first talkie, ‘The Wild Party’ (1927), she dresses in an unusually masculine style in sleeveless shirt, tie and braces (suspenders).
Lake Rudolf, Eastern Equatorial Africa
Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria (21 August 1858 – 30 January 1889) clashed with his father Emperor Franz Joseph I. Amongst his many gripes, the Prince felt as though he were born at the at the wrong time. In a typically royal way, The Prince was repulsed by any sort of foul laundry that his father dished to the country. Prince Rudolf found refuge from his father in a loveless marriage to Princess Stéphanie and also by taking a mistress, Baroness Maria Vetsera. The two lovers, The Prince and the Baroness’, untimely deaths at the imperial family’s hunting lodge was ruled a combined suicide, yet some are still convinced of foul play. One year prior to this, in March of 1888, Count Sámuel Teleki de Szék of Hungary, whilst on a safari across East Africa, discovered a lake and named it Lake Rudolf, in honor of the Crown Prince. Years later in 1972, Richard Leakey, during an anthropological dig around the lake discovered a two-million-year-old hominid skull. In 1986 a nearly complete skeleton of a homo erectus boy was discovered. And more recently, another skull was discovered and estimated at being 3.5 million years dead. These fossil findings coined the nickname for the area “Cradle of Mankind” or “Cradle of Humankind,” as it has now be called for the sake, no doubt, of political correctness.
After my return from a once in a lifetime safari to Lake Rudolf (now referred to as Lake Turkana or The Jade Sea) in 2005 with fellow artist Fernando Apodaca, I met with Peter Beard at Bungalow in New York City. Before and after the safari to Lake Turkana I stayed on Peter Beard’s Hog Ranch in the ‘knuckle hills’ outside of Nairobi. At that time Peter had I think been banned from Kenya for five years due to numerous, miscellaneous arrests and spats with neighbors – mostly concerning the malnutrition of their animals or his partying. Back in New York with Peter Beard I described the safari, yelling over the club music, ”WE CAMPED AT LAKE TURKANA FOR OVER A WEEK!” Peter forcefully yells back, ”RUDOLF! ITS LAKE RUDOLF!” As if to say, “HOW DARE YOU!?”
Text and photography (excluding the post-mortem image of the Crown Prince) by Dustin Lynn
