The right profile

Everybody say, is he all right?
And everybody say, what’s he like?
Everybody say, he sure look funny.
That’s...Montgomery Clift, honey!

- The Clash

Montgomery Clift was known for his pretty-boy face and his intense acting style until his soft features were crushed in a car accident as he was driving home from a party at Elizabeth Taylor’s house. He underwent reconstructive surgery, but his face would never be the same.

Monty Clift was gay. In 1950s Hollywood, this was considered a liability. In today’s Hollywood, it still is. And in 1950s America it was considered a sin. In today’s America some would like us to believe that it still is. As a leading man, he was forced to lead a double life. ‘Monty’ was a role he was never able to step out of. The stress and pressure of maintaining this façade drove him to vodka and anti-depressants.

Monty died at age 45 of a drug related cardiac arrest. Hollywood insiders called his death the longest suicide in Hollywood. Frank Taylor, the producer of The Misfits, is credited as saying, ‘Monty and Marilyn [Monroe] were psychic twins. They recognized disaster in each other's faces and giggled about it.’ Marilyn herself described him as ‘the only person I know who is in worse shape than I am.’

This is a photo of a young Montgomery Clift, a rising star who intimidated the likes of Marlon Brando. He casts a dreamy gaze past the camera into the distance, staring straight into the face of endless possibility. Yet his reflection gazes solemnly up at the paperclip, almost in prayer. There he is faced with his own humanity and mortality. It alludes to things to come.

El gordo y el flaco

Laurel and Hardy were a universally loved British-American comedy team who made over 106 films together. They were a wonderful juxtaposition of extremes - skinny/fat; slow/clever; English/American. They were two of the few actors of the silent-film era to successfully make the transition to talkies. In fact, it is said that their differing accents, revealing their different origins, added to the dimensions of the characters and their relationship with each other.

In the early years of talking films, Hollywood would often make the same film in various languages. Producers would replace secondary characters with foreigners and coach the stars to phonetically interpret their lines in a variety of foreign languages. They did try to make the same film with, let's say, Spanish actors. But no one in Latin America or Spain wanted to see Diego Grantile. They wanted Cary Grant.

As film-making became more expense, Hollywood soon realized that reshooting the same film four or five times was not a wise investment. And so the dubbing industry quickly took off in Latin America and Europe, an unfortunate enterprise that still persists to this day, especially in Spain and Italy.

Laurel and Hardy were among this group of actors that interpreted their own films in various languages. In fact, they insisted on doing so for as long as possible, fearing that artificial dubbing would rob their slapstick of its spontaneity and of its humanity.

Perhaps they were right.

Their films were invariably world-wide hits. It is thought that, with their universal humor, enhanced by their silly Spanish, French and German accents, they reached more audiences than anyone.

People loved them.

So much so, that when Spain's dubbing industry took off, Spanish voice-over actors imitated the flawed accents of Laurel and Hardy speaking Spanish in the hopes of appealing to a wider audience.

They say that today English is the universal language. They're wrong, of course. Laughter, especially the physical, clown-like laughter that Laurel and Hardy brought to millions, is more universal than any spoken language could ever be.

Sometimes words hinder understanding, rather than promote it. That is why symbols are so important: a smile; a tear; an outstretched hand; a football; a green light; a, dare I say, paperclip - designed to bring things, and often ideas, together.

Moonwalk

On July 20, 1969, 500 million people watched as Neil Armstrong took the first step on the moon. We are all familiar with his famous quote: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. I remember thinking that this was quite an enigmatic thing to say. I would lie in bed and wonder how Armstrong differeniated between man and mankind. I thought that, on top of being the world's most famous astronaut, he must also be a prolific philospher.

Some time later I found out that that wasn't what he wanted to say. Radio transmissions were unable to pick up the "a". That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

The exclusion of one little article, one of the smallest words in the English language, had me engaged in an internal battle to discover what Armstrong had meant that lasted years.

Sometimes the smallest things are the most meaningful. We overlook them, and things cease to make sense.

While Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin secured their place in history by becoming the first men to step foot on the moon, Michael Collins orbited above them. He was to guide them home again, but no one knows his name.

We have all seen images of man's visits to the moon and of what was left behind.

The American flag, rigid and forbidding. A flag's grace comes on the breeze. It is useless without it.

The footprints. The sole of the astronaut stamped for hundreds of years, so they tell us, on the soft soil of the moon's surface.

The family photograph. A snapshot of Charles Duke and his family in their Houston, Texas, backyard left in 1972.

A paperclip, perfect in its design and purpose, yet so often overlooked.

Elvis

Before Elvis there was nothing. - John Lennon
I'm sort of getting tired of being Elvis Presley. - Elvis Presley

This photo, perhaps more than any other, embodies the meaning conveyed in my current series. It highlights the unity of the extraordinary and the ordinary. Elvis’s fan mail represents the role that each individual plays in forming the cultural zeitgeist. It seems fitting, then, to include here fans’ thoughts on Elvis.

Always an Elvis fan...I truly was more impacted by his death than that of my own father. I have been to Graceland 6 times and each trip is better than the last. I picked up a couple pieces of gravel from around Meditation Garden and carry them anytime things are likely to be stressful. My "Elvis Rocks" have helped me through many a tough situation in my lifetime. I loved Elvis.
- Curt Robinette, age 62

I can't remember the first time I saw or heard Elvis. For me, he was always there.
Elvis' death did something to me inside. I felt, even at that young age, that I had lost the love of my life. He has been gone for 30 years now, and I love him just as much today as I did back then, maybe even more. I was in love with Elvis then, I am in love with Elvis now, and I will always be in love with love Elvis.
- Ann, 43

LOVE ELVIS... AM GREAT FAN OF ELVIS..He was a kind, gentle, caring, loving, generous, gifted man who will be loved and remembered for ever. God Bless.
- Ajay, 27

I born with Elvis PRESLEY music, I grow up with Elvis PERSLEY music, I sing Elvis PRESLEY music for long time (nearly 25 years) and I will died with ELVIS PRESLEY music, but his music will NEVER DIED
- Mario, 55

MY DARLING ELVIS WE KNOW YOU PASSED OVER, WE MISS YOU SO MUCH AND NO ONE CAN EVERY REPLACE THE JOY YOU BROUGHT TO MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD. I WISH THAT I COULD TAKE YOUR HAND AND LEAD YOU BACK TO THE STAGE WHERE YOU BELONG.
YOU ARE LOVED BY SO MANY PEOPLE AND THAT LOVE WILL NEVER GO AWAY.
THANK YOU FOR JUST BEING YOU AND GIVING US SO MUCH. WE LOVE YOU ELVIS AND ALWAYS WILL.
- TERESA AND ROB EDWARDS (READING IN BERKSHIRE, UK), 46

I'm only nine years old but I know pretty much everything about Elvis Aaron Presley. When I grow up I'm gonna be an Elvis impersanator. I mainly like the 1956 Elvis. I wish I could just slip on my blue suede shoes and rock back to that one year when a Mississippi truck driver became famous from his love of singing. I geuss I first became an Elvis Presley fan one day while I was looking on my dads Ipod I saw the name Elvis. At that time I just thought he was some fat guy who died on his toilet seat. But once I listened to the songs I liked it so much that now i'm running the local fan club. Some people just think he was a fat piece of white trash but he was more than that. He touched the hearts of millions of souls. He was a man. A very special man.
- Nathan, 9

Marilyn

The original photograph was taken by André de Dienes, a fashion photographer who, in 1945, met a young aspiring model named Norma Jean Dougherty. He fell in love and the two were briefly engaged.

de Dienes’s secret memoirs, which were discovered when Marilyn fans ravaged his house upon his death in 1985, tell the story of love and friendship between the photographer and Norma Jean. It took him a long time to get used to calling her Marilyn. The following is an excerpt from those memoirs.

Soon after that day in the cemetery, I entered a second-hand bookshop I passed by. I supposed I reacted to Marilyn's suggestion that I ought to bring an unsual kind of book! I was browsing from shelf to shelf, having absolutely no fixed idea of what I wanted. I was about to leave when my eyes fell on an old leather-bound volume. I pulled it out. The cover looked worn and torn, and handwritten pages were loose and about to fall out. There were small, very old engravings pasted on the pages here and there of famous people, like Pascal, Boccaccio, Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, and small engravings of landscapes from Italy and Germany and Scotland. The book dealer, with a gesture of nonchalance and lack of concern, said that I could have the book for fifteen dollars. I paid and hurriedly left, fearing he might change his mind, declaring he had made a mistake; the book was worth far more!

I went to a restaurant to sit and study what I had bought. I read the beautiful, handwritten poems and studied the pictures. It was an album by a lady in Scotland around 1830. In it, she wrote her thoughts, her own poems, and poems she'd copied of famous people. I called Marilyn to tell her I'd found something very unusual, a book I must show her, share with her, so we can read it together. That agreement we had made in the cemetery that we would go out to the seashore and read some more could come through, due to the book I'd found. A few days later, Marilyn and I were far out at the seashore, north of Malibu on a deserted beach, where we read the pages of the book with a magnifier to decipher the small but beautiful handwriting.