National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Elvis Presley, Born 74 Years Ago Today

Q. What National Park Service memorial is most closely associated with Elvis Presley?
A. The U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

On this day in 1935, Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. Many stories about the King of Rock and Roll have taken on monumental and mythical status. Most everyone who has heard of Elvis has also heard the story about the King shooting the television set, the late-night exploits of the Memphis Mafia at Graceland, or Elvis flying from Memphis to Denver to pick up a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. Most everyone also has seen the photos of Elvis and President Nixon, as well; that sequence of images has its own location on the “When Nixon Met Elvis” website by the National Archives.

Elvis was the prototype for ensuing generations of rock stars. His madnesses were many and his desire to apologize was minimal; after all, he was traveling in uncharted waters. Elvis established the pattern, and fast cars, beautiful women, and fistfuls of narcotics would quickly become part of the rock and roll milieu.

Wild behavior aside, one aspect of Elvis’s personality—though out of control at times—continues to endear him to millions worldwide: he was a charitable man. For every story about the King blowing apart a television set, there are dozens of stories of Elvis helping a friend in need or buying a car for a total stranger.

In Fortunate Son: The Life of Elvis Presley, biographer Charles Ponce de Leon writes, “Always one to share his wealth, Elvis . . . became impetuously generous toward his family, friends, and business acquaintances—sometimes even perfect strangers. He bought them custom-made rings, necklaces, bracelets, and pendants. His jewelry purchases became so frequent and extravagant that his favorite Memphis jewelers were happy to fly to Las Vegas or wherever he was to take an order or make a special delivery.”

One of Elvis’s acts of benevolence will continue to benefit millions forever.  In March 1961, Elvis gave a concert in Hawaii for the benefit of the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial fund. The association had struggled for years to fund the completion of the memorial at Pearl Harbor, but the end was not in sight. United States Park Service records indicate that Elvis’s charity performance at Bloch Arena in Hawaii yielded almost $55,000 toward funding the monument; the entire memorial cost approximately $516,000, meaning that the concert produced more than 10 percent of the money needed for the project.

Interestingly, without Elvis, there is no way of knowing when the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial would have opened to the public. His 1961 benefit performance was the final fiscal push needed to open the doors to the memorial.

Listen to Warren Perry’s Face-to-Face talk on Elvis Presley (25:28)

The next Face-to-Face talk is tonight (Thursday, January 8), when Anne Goodyear, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, will discuss a portrait of Cindy Sherman by photographer Martin Schoeller. This portrait is on view in the exhibition "Portraiture Now: Feature Photography." The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Elvis Aron Presley/Ralph Wolfe Cowan,1976-1988/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of R.W. Cowan   

For more on Elvis, visit the previous blog post "Isaac And Elvis: The Memphis Music Legacy." For further reading see Fortunate Son: The Life of Elvis Presley by Charles Ponce de Leon, the “When Nixon Met Elvis” website by the National Archives, and the National Park Service Arizona Memorial, FAQ's page.

Portrait of Barack Obama by Martin Schoeller

                      © Martin Schoeller

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a talk about selected portraits on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, Anne Goodyear, who is Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at NPG, discussed this portrait of Barack Obama by photographer Martin Schoeller.  The portrait is on display in the recently opened exhibition "Portraiture Now: Feature Photography."

Martin Schoeller photographed Barack Obama for a December 2004 feature on “Men of the Year,” in Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ), where a variant of this photograph appeared.  Reflecting upon the success of his address at the 2004 Democratic convention, Obama, who would go on to win the presidential election in 2008, observed: “The reason you do this stuff is not to . . . get your face in a magazine . . . You do this stuff because you care about the epic struggle to make America what it can be.”

A native of Germany, Martin Schoeller, who now lives and works in New York, honed his skills by working with Annie Leibovitz.  He has exhibited his portraits internationally and has received numerous awards. Schoeller’s photographs have appeared in many prominent magazines, including the New Yorker, Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ), Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone.

Listen to Anne Goodyear’s Face-to-Face talk on Barack Obama (33:26)

To view more works by Martin Schoeller, and the other artists featured in "Portraiture Now: Feature Photography," be sure to see the online exhibition.  You can learn more about Schoeller’s portrait of Obama in this article from Voice of America. And listen to Martin Schoeller in this audio slideshow from the New Yorker.

The next Face-to-Face talk is this Thursday, January 8, when Anne Goodyear will discuss a portrait of Cindy Sherman, also by Martin Schoeller.  The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m.  January 8 will also feature a special noon-time addition of Face-to-Face, when Warren Perry speaks about the portrait of Elvis Presley by Ralph Cowan.  Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Photograph by Voice of America, taken by David Byrd.

Barack Obama/Martin Schoeller, 2004/Digital C-print/Collection of the artist, courtesy Hasted Hunt, New York City/© Martin Schoeller

The Many Faces of Lincoln

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a talk about selected portraits on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, NPG historian David Ward discussed a few photographs of Lincoln on display in the recently opened exhibition “One Life: Mask of Lincoln.” Ward, who curated the exhibition, spoke mainly about the following portraits:

“Tousled Hair” portrait by Alexander Hesler, c. 1857

This thumb-sized copy of Alexander Hesler’s 1857 “tousled hair” portrait of Lincoln was produced in 1860 so that it could be cut out, placed in a frame, and worn as a pin or locket during the campaign.

Such partisan political symbols had long been a staple of American elections, but the heated political climate of 1860—and the need for the Lincoln organization to mobilize all its supporters—led to a plethora of new and creative ways to energize a public immersed in the political culture of the time.

Portrait by Alexander Gardner, 1861

Lincoln was the first president after photography truly came of age. He embraced the new technology, sitting frequently, and he was interested in both technological issues and composition. Perhaps because of his early struggle to make himself into somebody of substance—to make himself visible—Lincoln was acutely aware of the power of image-making.

When he arrived in Washington, Lincoln quickly arranged to have himself photographed at Alexander Gardner’s studio. These photographs were the first widely disseminated pictures of the president with his newly grown beard.

Portrait by Alexander Gardner, November 8, 1863

On November 8, 1863, Lincoln had this portrait taken by Alexander Gardner. While waiting, he read a newspaper account of the speech that famed orator Edward Everett would make at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg. Lincoln would also speak, but had yet to compose his remarks, promisingly only that they would be “short, short, short.”

“Cracked-plate” portrait by Alexander Gardner, 1865

One of the most haunting images in American history and art, this portrait was taken in February 1865. The picture of Lincoln—hollowed, careworn, and yet with a slight smile still after four years of war—is given added poignancy by the crack that appeared in the negative after it was developed.

Listen to David Ward’s Face-to-Face talk on Lincoln (26:18)

For more on Lincoln, be sure to see the online exhibition.  And read more about the exhibition, in this recent article from the New York Times. Also, hear more from David Ward, in this interview about "One Life: The Mask of Lincoln."

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, December 18, when Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings Anne Goodyear speaks about the portrait of President-elect Barack Obama by Martin Schoeller. This portrait is on display in NPG’s new exhibition “Portraiture Now: Feature Photography.” The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Abraham Lincoln/Unidentified artist, after Alexander Hesler,c. 1857 (printed c. 1860)/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Abraham Lincoln/Alexander Gardner, 1861/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Abraham Lincoln/Alexander Gardner, November 8, 1863/Albumen silver print/Collection of Keya Morgan, New York City

Abraham Lincoln/Alexander Gardner, 1865/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

FDR and the End of Prohibition

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition. As part of the National Portrait Gallery’s regular “Face-to-Face” portrait talks, NPG researcher Warren Perry discussed Roosevelt and his role in turning back Prohibition. This 1945 portrait of FDR, by artist Douglas Granville Chandor, can be viewed in the America’s Presidents exhibition, on the museum’s first floor. 

From Jean Edward Smith’s FDR:

FDR’s attitude toward Prohibition was . . . equivocal.  Never averse to bending an elbow himself, he nevertheless accumulated a perfect voting record in the Senate, according to the Anti-Saloon League.  In January 1913, he actually introduced a local option bill for the League and became the subject of a laudatory editorial (“An Advocate of Christian Patriotism”) in its national magazine. In this instance, Franklin appears to have been too clever by half. Prohibition was anathema in New York City, and his opponents never tired of tying him to it.  Down through 1932 the story persisted that whatever Roosevelt might say, there was a voting record to prove he was “dry” at heart.

By the time of the 1932 election, Prohibition had taken its toll on America. There was huge reluctance on the part of presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt to deny that it had taken money away from federal coffers and placed it into the hands of unsavory characters like Al Capone. As Maureen Ogle records in her barley epic, Ambitious Brew, Roosevelt announced during his campaign that it was “time to correct the ‘stupendous blunder’ that was Prohibition.”

Prohibition was repealed seventy-five years ago today. People went back to work in various brewing and distilling industries, and after work, many of them went home and had a drink.

Listen to Warren Perry’s Face-to-Face talk on Roosevelt and the repeal of prohibition (18:18)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, December 11, when NPG historian David Ward speaks about the portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Hesler. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt/Douglas Granville Chandor, 1945/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Sources and further reading:

Ogle, Maureen.  Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer.
    New York: Harcourt, 2006.

Smith, Jean Edward.  FDR.  New York: Random House, 2008.

Portrait of Sequoyah by Henry Inman

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a portrait talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. Francis Flavin, historian at the U.S. Department of the Interior, discussed this portrait of Sequoyah by artist Henry Inman. You can see this portrait in the “American Origins” exhibition on the first floor.

Sequoyah, the son of a Cherokee chief's daughter and a fur trader from Virginia, was a warrior and hunter and, some say, a silversmith. For twelve years he worked to devise a method of writing for the Cherokee language. His syllabary of eighty-five symbols, representing vowel and consonant sounds, was approved by the Cherokee chiefs in 1821, and the simple utilitarian system made possible a rapid spread of literacy throughout the Cherokee nation. Medicine men set down ceremonies for healing, divination, war, and traditional ball games; missionaries translated hymns and the New Testament into the native language; and in 1828 the Cherokee Phoenix, a weekly bilingual newspaper, began publication at New Echota, Georgia.

The original portrait of Sequoyah, painted by Charles Bird King, was destroyed by the fire that swept through the Smithsonian Castle building in January 1865.

Listen to Francis Flavin’s Face-to-Face talk on Sequoyah (23:17)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is tonight (Thursday, December 4), when NPG researcher Warren Perry speaks about Franklin D. Roosevelt and the seventy-fifth anniversary of prohibition’s repeal. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Sequoyah/Henry Inman, c. 1830/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Portrait of George C. Marshall by Thomas Edgar Stephens

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a portrait talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, NPG Director Martin Sullivan discussed this portrait of George C. Marshall by artist Thomas Edgar Stephens. You can see this portrait in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” exhibition on the third floor.

George C. Marshall was, according to one expert observer, the “perfect” soldier. Endowed with a quick mind, a good memory, and a superb sense of strategy, he did not particularly relish war. Yet as chief of staff during World War II, he proved to be a masterful orchestrator of military mobilization. In 1945 President Harry Truman remarked that millions of Americans had served the country well in that conflict, but it had been Marshall who “gave it victory.”

As capable in peace as in wartime, Marshall later became Truman's secretary of state, and it was he who unveiled in 1947 the American aid program for rebuilding Europe’s war-ravaged economies. Ultimately named the Marshall Plan, this venture became one of the greatest triumphs in the entire history of American diplomacy.

Listen to Martin Sullivan’s Face-to-Face talk on George C. Marshall (34:41)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, November 20, when Francis Flavin speaks about Henry Inman’s portrait of Sequoyah. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

George Catlett Marshall/Thomas Edgar Stephens, c 1949/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art; gift of Ailsa Mellon Bruce, 1951

Portrait of Joseph McCarthy by George Tames

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a portrait talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, NPG historian David Ward discussed this photograph of Joseph McCarthy, taken in 1954 by George Tames. You can see this portrait in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” exhibition on the third floor.

On February 9, 1950, a little known junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, proclaimed that he had a list of 205 Communist Party members who worked in the State Department with the full knowledge of the secretary of state. McCarthy’s speech came shortly after the Communist takeover in China, the U.S.S.R’s successful detonation of an atomic bomb, and suspected spy Alger Hiss’s conviction for perjury.

For many, McCarthy’s charges explained why the West was experiencing setbacks, and made him a formidable political force. It marked the beginning of demagogic red baiting and made the term "McCarthyism" synonymous with hysterical anti-Communism. McCarthy had no evidence for his accusations and was censured by the Senate in 1954; "McCarthyism" would be remembered for its corrosive effect on America’s ability to deal effectively with real Communists abroad and at home.  Sitting to McCarthy’s left is Roy Cohn, lead investigator for McCarthy’s Senate subcommittee.

Listen to David Ward's Face-to-Face talk on Joseph McCarthy (33:27)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, November 6, when National Portrait Gallery Director Martin Sullivan speaks about the temporary installation "Four Indian Kings."  The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn/George Tames, 1954/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Frances O. Tames/ © The New York Times/George Tames

Portrait of Dashiell Hammett by Edward Biberman

                © 1937 Edward Biberman

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents Face-to-Face, a talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this series, NPG historian David Ward discussed Edward Biberman’s 1937 portrait of writer Dashiell Hammett. This painting is on view in the exhibition “20th-Century Americans,” on the museum’s third floor.

Inspired to try his hand at writing mysteries after his years with the Pinkerton Detective Agency, Dashiell Hammett met a warm reception when he published his first two detective novels in 1929. But it was the appearance of The Maltese Falcon a year later that secured him his reputation as one of America's most original mystery writers. The hard-bitten realism and crisp dialogue of that work led critics to compare its author's style to that of Ernest Hemingway.

Hammett's later books, The Thin Man and The Glass Key, drew similar accolades. In defining the main difference between Hammett's works and the far more common drawing-room detective stories of the period, one admirer observed that Hammett had taken murder "out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley," where, after all, it more generally occurred in real life.

Listen to David Ward's Face-to-Face talk on Dashiell Hammett (20:49)

David Ward will speak again at the next Face-to-Face, when he discusses the portrait of Joseph McCarthy by George Tames.  The talk is this Thursday, October 30, and runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Samuel Dashiell Hammett/Edward Biberman,1937/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/© 1937 Edward Biberman

Portrait of Henry Wallace by Jo Davidson

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a portrait talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, NPG curator Brandon Fortune discussed this bronze bust of Henry Wallace, by Jo Davidson. You can see this portrait in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” exhibition on the third floor.

The Iowa-bred Henry Wallace abhorred the backroom politics of the nation’s capital. But his profound concern for the public good kept him involved in that milieu for some fifteen years.

On becoming Franklin’s Roosevelt’s secretary of agriculture in 1933, Wallace told reporters that if he could not help the nation’s Depression-ridden farmers, he would “go back home and raise corn.” Wallace developed the controversial policy of limiting production, paying farmers to destroy crops and slaughter livestock. His policies failed to raise prices as high as they had been, but they achieved some success and became a model for later secretaries of agriculture. He became Roosevelt’s running mate in 1940 but was dropped from the ticket in 1944.  

Listen to Brandon Fortune's Face-to-Face talk on Henry Wallace and Jo Davidson (20:38)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, October 23, when curatorial assistant Amy Baskette speaks about J. Robert Oppenheimer.  The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Henry Agard Wallace/Jo Davidson,1942/Bronze/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mrs. Jean Wallace Douglas, Robert Wallace, and Henry B. Wallace

Portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald by David Silvette

David Silvette studied under his father, artist Ellis Silvette, and later with Cecilia Beaux and Charles Hawthorne. Silvette’s portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald in the National Portrait Gallery is not his only work in Washington, D.C. His portrait of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. can be found in the collection of the Treasury Department. Silvette executed this painting, the only known life-sitting of Fitzgerald, in 1935.  Although the writer had commissioned the portrait, he was unable to pay for it and never owned it.

The image might be characteristic of the Jazz Age myth of the expatriate F. Scott Fitzgerald, professorial and sophisticated, but it is not a portrait of the personal horrors Fitzgerald was experiencing in the 1930s. The 1920s were Fitzgerald’s zenith. He published This Side of Paradise in March of 1920 and enjoyed the fame brought by this work—along with The Beautiful and Damned (1922) and his short stories—for a decade. (The Great Gatsby, which now sells more than a quarter of a million copies annually, hit the literary market with a slight thud in April of 1925.)

By the 1930s Scott was drinking thirty-plus bottles of beer a day, or, on a beerless day, a quart of gin. He smoked constantly, and his wife Zelda bounced in and out of sanitoria from April of 1930 until her death in 1948.

A combination of Zelda’s medical bills and their extravagant lifestyle compelled Scott to seek employment writing in Hollywood.  Of  Fitzgerald’s experience writing for the movies, biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes:

"During his last trip to Hollywood—a life sentence—he failed as a screenwriter. He worked on sixteen films between 1927 and 1940 as one of the highest-paid writers in the business, but received only one credit. He polished ten scripts, worked on three for less than a week, labored on ten that were either rejected or not produced, and was dismissed from three of them. It was a dismal record."

F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on December 21, 1940. He is buried in the cemetery of St. Mary’s Church, Rockville, Maryland.

Listen to Warren Perry's Face-to-Face talk on F. Scott Fitzgerald (16:38)

The birthplace of F. Scott Fitzgerald: 481 Laurel, Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota.  (Photos by Ian Cooke)

 

The 13th annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference will be held at Montgomery College in Rockville on October 25, 2008. More information is available here.

F. Scott Fitzgerald/David Silvette, 1935/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Robert Frost: Modern American Poet

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents Face-to-Face, a talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this series, NPG historian David Ward discussed this bronze bust of poet Robert Frost. This sculpture, by Walker Kirtland Hancock, is on view in the exhibition “20th-Century Americans,” on the museum’s third floor.

Robert Frost was one of the few modern American poets who combined critical with popular acclaim. His best poetry was written in the 1920s and 1930s, as America was discovering its national and regional histories. Frost’s poems about rural life in New England—“West Running Brook” and “Birches,” for example—struck a chord because they were readable, yet imbued with larger questions about human nature, mortality, and man’s fate.

Frost liked to play the naive rustic, but he was a dedicated craftsman and America’s last great formalist poet. Criticizing modern poetry, he said that writing poems without structure was like “playing tennis without a net.”

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, October 2, when NPG historian Sidney Hart will discuss Robert Kennedy. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Listen to David Ward's Face-to-Face talk on Robert Frost (36:18)

Robert Lee Frost/Walker Kirtland Hancock, 1969 cast after 1950 original/Bronze/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the artist

Edwin Booth: Accomplished Actor and Brother of John Wilkes

As part of the National Portrait Gallery’s regular series, “Face-to-Face,” program assistant Maya Foo presented a talk on Edwin Booth, a famous nineteenth-century actor and the brother of John Wilkes Booth, the man who shot Abraham Lincoln. “Face-to-Face” takes place every Thursday evening at NPG from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m., each week spotlighting a different portrait in the museum galleries.

One of the leading tragedians of his time, Edwin Booth was born into a family of actors and first played minor parts in productions featuring his father, Junius Brutus Booth. After honing his craft in theatrical companies on the West Coast, Edwin Booth returned east in 1857, where a series of triumphant appearances secured his reputation and launched a long and respected career.

Unfortunately, Booth’s success in the theater was punctuated by profound personal tragedy. In 1863, the sudden death of his beloved wife left him to care for their young daughter, Edwina (pictured). Two years later, his brother, John Wilkes Booth, assassinated Abraham Lincoln, driving Edwin into temporary retirement. His career revived, however, when he returned to the stage in 1866, and shortly thereafter he opened his own handsomely appointed theater in New York.

This 1864 photograph of Edwin Booth and his daughter Edwina was taken by the Mathew Brady Studio and produced as a carte de visite—a sort of trading card and celebrity collectable. The portrait is on view in NPG’s “American Origins” exhibition, on the museum’s first floor. 

The next “Face-to-Face” portrait talk is this Thursday, September 25, when NPG historian David Ward will discuss Robert Frost. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Listen to Maya Foo's Face-to-Face talk on Edwin Booth (10:30)

Edwin Booth and daughter Edwina/Mathew Brady Studio, 1864/Modern albumen print from wet plate collodion negative/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Ernie Pyle: World War II Journalist

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents Face-to-Face, a talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, NPG historian Jim Barber discussed this 1944 bronze bust of World War II journalist Ernie Pyle. This sculpture, by Jo Davidson, is on view in the exhibition “20th-Century Americans” on the museum’s third floor.

During World War II, John Steinbeck noted that there were two conflicts being reported in the press. The one getting the most attention was about grand strategy and generals, and the other was the war of the common soldier. No journalist told that latter story more poignantly than Ernie Pyle. His chronicling of the enlisted man’s discomforts, terrors, and heroism touched civilians and G.I.s alike. By 1944, he was as much a war hero as any combat medal winner.

When Pyle died while covering the taking of the Pacific island Ie Shima, soldiers marked the spot with a sign declaring that they had “lost a buddy.”

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, September 18, when NPG researcher Warren Perry will discuss F. Scott Fitzgerald.  The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Listen to Jim Barber's Face-to-Face talk on Ernie Pyle (9:04) 

 

Ernie Pyle/Jo Davidson, 1944/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Dr. Maury Leibovitz

Ernie Pyle/Milton J. Pike , 1943/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Rolland White

Portrait of Leopold Stokowski by Edward Steichen

This 1928 portrait was taken during the second phase of conductor Leopold Stokowski’s career, that is, after his divorce from Olga Samaroff and during a period of increasing fame. The photograph is currently on view, as part of the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition "Edward Steichen: Portraits."

This image is much as Stokowski liked to picture himself: large, mysterious, and with the potential for much excitement beneath the surface. Physically, he was six feet, two inches tall, and lithe, and his blond hair, swept straight back, gave him an imposing and apparition-like presence. Over and over again, biographers write of his “golden hair” and allude to him as an Apollo.

Stokowski, for his own part, was very aware of his appearance. Abram Chasins, composer, friend, and Stokowski biographer, records that in 1929, during Stokowski’s tenure with the Philadelphia Orchestra, an assistant came in to prepare the conductor for an event. The maestro insisted that his hair be combed without a part and straight back from the brow, saying, “That is how a conductor should look.”

Beginning in 1912, Stokowski’s work with the Philadelphia Orchestra yielded many superlatives, although he met with the same challenges that art institutions still face today: an an integral part of Philadelphia’s cultural face, the orchestra still had to rely on private funding and ticket sales to get by. The board also questioned Stokowski’s inventive scope of programming, and often he was presented with requests to play works from the traditional canon—works by such greats as Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. Stokowski, however, was unrelenting in his pursuit of new works and in his desire to expose the audience to contemporary serious music.

Chasins records an episode in which the conductor refused to back down from his intention to close a performance with the very modern and quite cacophonous Schoenberg work, Kammersymphonie Number One:

This last, very cerebral work, although not atonal, proved unbearably dissonant, and the Academy’s audience loudly voiced its displeasure during the performance. I was told that in the middle, Stokowski strode off the stage in a fury. When quiet was restored, he returned and started it again from the very beginning. At its conclusion, an intimidated audience, fearful of a third repetition, offered some dutiful applause.

Leopold Stokowski understood the importance of new media forms and, although reluctant to do so at first, eventually embraced recording technology; he assisted in the process of many advancements in recording orchestral works. One of his most well-known endeavors was his collaboration with Walt Disney in the late 1930s in the creation of Fantasia, which premiered to admiring audiences in 1940. And although Fantasia’s animation is its claim to greatness, one of the most memorable moments in the film is the entrance of Mickey Mouse’s silhouette onto the conductor’s pedestal. The equally distinct silhouette of Stokowski is seen then leaning over to shake hands with his friend Mickey, symbolizing Fantasia’s fusion of imagination and art, animation and life, and the unreal and the real.

Perhaps the best tribute ever paid to the conductor was from his friend Sergei Rachmaninoff, who said of Stokowski and his orchestral interpretations, “Stokowski has created a living thing. He knows what you want, he puts it in, and he infuses vitality into every phrase.”

Source:
Abram Chasins, Leopold Stokowski: A Profile (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1979).

Listen here and learn more about Leopold Stokowski, from NPG Researcher Warren Perry (8:03)

Leopold Antoni Stanislaw Boleslawowicz Stokowski/Edward Steichen, 1928/National Portrait Gallery/Acquired in memory of Agnes and Eugene Meyer through the generosity of Katharine Graham and the New York Community Trust, The Island Fund