Sinbad the Sailor

Told you I'd be back to the "Winter of Fairbanks Jr." with Lisa from Boondock Ramblings again this week!
Today we will enter the world of 1,001 Nights with Sinbad the Sailor. Well, kind of because the movie of the same name from 1947 is about the eighth voyage of Sinbad, but there were only seven told in 1,001 Nights.
 

By RKO Radio Pictures -
http://www.c1n3.org/w/wallace01r/Images/142.html,
Fair use,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43488069

Sinbad's audience has become tired of him telling them about his seven voyages over and over, so he tells them about the one he has just come back from - as the Prince of Deryabar.

Deryabar is a fabled island where the treasure of Alexander the Great is supposed to be hidden.
Sinbad and his friend Abbu salvage a ship called "Prince Ahmed" whose complete crew has died from poisoned water.
Sinbad doesn't only find a glass window looking like the medaillon he's wearing, but also a chart showing the way to Deryabar. When he turns around, however, the chart has disappeared mysteriously.

The mysterious lady Shireen from the Emir of Daibul's harem tries to buy the ship (a baggala, by the way, spelled that way in the subtitles, and I can't tell you how quickly I tired of hearing the word baggala) and of course Sinbad falls for her right away.
When he visits her in her garden later, she tells him of the mysterious and evil Jamal who indeed tries to kill Sinbad right there and then.

If you now wonder why I keep using the word "mysterious", that's on purpose. Everything is very mysterious.
Shireen is acting on behalf of the Emir although you feel she's drawn to Sinbad somehow. Both she and the Emir think Sinbad is the actual Prince Ahmed of Deryabar and will lead them to the island while Sinbad had hoped Shireen knew the way and would travel there with him.
And of course we know Jamal wants the treasure as well, but who is he and where is he now?

Sinbad and his crew travel to Daibul where he abducts Shireen and escapes daringly, but the Emir follows them and they all meet - Sinbad, Shireen, the Emir, and Jamal (who had posed as the ship's barber). Of course, the Emir wants to get rid of Sinbad right away, but Jamal convinces him that it is best if they all work together.
On reaching Deryabar, they find Aga who's living in an empty palace. He tries to show them that happiness can't be found in treasure, but of course that doesn't work with that kind of people.
Although Sinbad admits that he's not Aga's son when the Emir tries to kill him, Aga reveals the hiding spot of the treasure. While the others are busy with the treasure, he also tells Sinbad that he had given his son to sailors in order to protect him and that Sinbad is in fact Ahmed.
It is also revealed that Jamal has intended to poison the Emir  who makes him drink the poison himself. He dies sitting in the treasure. Meanwhile Sinbad has taken off to free his crew on the Emir's ship and they shoot Greek fire at the boat the Emir took to come back with.

Back home Sinbad tries to spread Aga's moral of happiness being in the heart and the head, but his audience is just interested in the gold and jewels he's showing them.

I didn't sound very enthusiastic, did I?
This was the first on-screen appearance of Sinbad the Sailor which pretty much set our image of him as the bold, romantic hero with the irresistible smile.
Bosley Crowther stated in this New York Times article from January 1947 that "it is quite a pleasure - and quite a reminder, too - to watch young Mr. Fairbanks cut loose in a gymnastic role".
He was of course reminded of the senior in his classic "The Thief of Bagdad" from 1924, the smile, the movements, the bravado.

I have to agree with Crowther, however, about everybody constantly talking in a flowery style and there being very little adventure which can make 108 minutes seem very long. I found myself wishing they would finally shut up and do something.
And where are the monsters? Having grown up with a children's edition of 1,001 Nights, I think it's not asking too much if I want to see Sinbad in a fight with a monster, maybe a little one? According to the German commentary, Ray Harryhausen felt the same which inspired him to do his own Sinbad movies, and who could forget the fabulous monsters in those?!

I think the actors didn't really get much opportunity to shine.
Douglas Fairbanks jr. makes a very good romantic hero, no doubt about that.
Maureen O'Hara is beautiful of course.
Anthony Quinn looks very handsome as the Emir.
Walter Slezak made an interesting villain although I don't really see him as a sword wielding assassin.
All that talking, though!

I was a fan of the cloak Sinbad was wearing on the journey, it fell and swung beautifully which I noticed every time he moved.
The costumes were really rich and lovely, and so were the colors of the movie, but the talking ... I really wanted to like the movie more than I did; and who knows, maybe if there had been a monster for me and if the movie had been a bit shorter and there had been more swordplay and a lot less talking ... actually I think I might have liked it a lot better then.

I started watching the movie with the German commentary  (there was no English one) of Dr. Rolf Giesen, a film scientist and journalist and one of the leading German experts on the fantastic film.
He didn't just talk about the movie, but also shared facts about everyone involved, and so far it has been almost more interesting the movie itself, but of course I love watching documentaries.

It's not as if I didn't enjoy any part of the movie (beside the cloak 🤣), don't get me wrong, but it could have been better.

P.S. They may not fit the "Winter of Fairbanks jr.", but I will be watching the 1940 "Thief of Bagdad" and the first Harryhausen Sinbad next 😉
Give me monsters!
Maybe I will even be tackling the 2 1/2 hours of the 1924 "Thief" eventually.

Nostalgia - The Hoffmann's cat

Some years ago when I still did the "Finds of the week" posts, I had some called "I'm a collector" in which I shared vintage items. Over time my collections have mostly stopped growing due to different reasons, but they are still there and still loved. I also have vintage items, some inherited, some gifts, some from fleamarkets, some more interesting than others. So I thought it could be fun to share some of them every, now and then and tell their story.

This collection hardly deserves the name, though, it's more a sub-collection of the cat related items around the place, the ex found them here and there.
Have you ever heard of "Hoffmann's Stärkefabriken", translated "Hoffmann's Starch Factories" (1850 - 1990, after that taken over by an English company)? I don't want to go into its history because that would take a while; this post is mainly about Hoffmann's logo - the grooming cat representing cleanliness.

Fedor Flinzer ("Sächsischer Katzen-Raffael"), Logo HSF, via Wikipedia

The logo was registered nationally in 1876 and internationally in 1922.
It was made into sculptures, it appeared on Hoffmann's products of course, but also on postcards and many different kinds of promotional items of which I only have a few.

by Wewoewi, CC BY-SA 3.0
via Wikimedia Commons

Hoffmann's produced several kinds of starch products. They started out with potato starch, then changed to wheat and corn, later to rice when it could be imported duty-free for the starch production.
The starch could either be used for laundry before ironing or for cooking, some for both.

There was for example the "Silber-Glanz-Stärke" = "Silver shine starch" which made the laundry get "a dazzling white with a silver sheen and elastic, stiff finish".

Yes, this package is still full although it's probably around 70 or 80 years old at least.
I've seen older packages with prices on it - mine shows the weight instead - or saying it can't be used for food which mine doesn't, so I think it's on the older side, also because later packs I've seen looked differently.

Then there was the ordinary rice starch. Yup, this one is also still full except for the bit that fell out from a tiny tear on the back.

It could be used for laundry, but also food according to the instructions on the back including a recipe for "delicious starch pudding" (blancmange style).

One way of advertising were promotional stamps, a lot of companies had these - Steiff for example - this one guarantees us a maximum of purity for this starch.

Of course a child couldn't have a toy shop without stocking Hoffmann's starch. This is probably from the 70s.

"Practical advice" for the housewife - a booklet with instructions on how to starch laundry and with pudding recipes.
My guess is that it's from the 50s.

I also have very old wooden chests in different sizes. The only one which is in a condition to be shown, however, is on top of my wardrobe and has been used as throne and bed by several of my cats. Der Dekan too likes it as a throne. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture in which you could see it well and I wasn't up to climb a ladder.

Now to my favorites.

First there's the perpetual calendar. Don't wonder why it's set to October 25, it hangs high up over a door and I'm not going to climb a ladder every day to set it.
That also explains the weird angle, I didn't climb a ladder to take the picture, either.

These 3D cardboard cats came in different sizes and two colors and as you can see also in different languages, Spanish, Danish, and German in this case.
Interesting is that the cat has turned from a white one into tabbies, something you also see a lot in the promotional postcards. I guess they just couldn't resist the variety of cats, who can?

Last but not least, here are pictures of business meetings on the Stairs to Nowhere.
They must have been very confidential from the looks I got although I think Greebo looked quite casual, maybe it was a lunch meeting 😉

The Fürstenberg China Factory produced collectible plates with cat images for Hoffmann's, some of them after existing pieces of art, but you'd need a big empty wall, even if you'd put up just a few of them. Not only don't I have one of those, you can also imagine what my brat cat would be able to do with porcelain plates on a wall 😂
In 1950, they also made a white porcelain cat after the logo for the 100th year anniversary. I like that one, but definitely not for the price I've seen it offered for. Also - right, brat cat (who's sitting on my wardrobe right now threatening to move over to my DVD shelf 🙄 no peace with that little punk around)!

Random Saturday - Children's book illustrations

I have a cabinet full of children's books. Most of them are books from my own childhood.
Some were my own childhood books or those of family members that made their way into my collection.
Some are books I had to hunt down over the years because I had borrowed them from the city or the school library, but wanted them for myself. Obviously the internet helped immensely with that, even for the few whose titles I didn't remember correctly.
Just a few I got at fleamarkets although I had not read them before, they just seemed to fit the collection.

I had my first own library card at the age of about six if I remember that right. Well, it was in fact not a card back then, it was like a booklet in which the details were noted and then stamped with the due date. Fines were 10 Pfennig per day at the time. That was a lot of money, just the thought of being overdue made me feel bad.
My booklet had the number 5542, isn't it funny how you still remember details like that forever?
Something else I will never forget is the sound of the stamp, one of those big old roller date stamps. I wanted to use one so badly myself.
Every time I walk by the building that used to be the city library  - just an ordinary house of flats now since the library moved to the "Adelberger Kornhaus" in 1981 - I have flashbacks of how it felt to open the entrance door, the circulation desk, and the rooms dedicated to different topics, which books stood where and how they looked on the shelf. I even dreamed about it every, now and then.
It really was a happy place for me, and although the new library was so much more beautiful, modern, with open levels instead of individual rooms, and definitely much more practical for the staff (something I only learned to appreciate when I became a librarian myself), I never got the same feeling from it and visited it less and less.

Sometimes I grab one of my children's books for a quick read, a quick escape from reality, a quick memory.
For the coming week's film post I looked for my copy of 1,001 Nights. It was actually not my personal copy, it belonged to the family like our old edition of Grimms'. It had beautiful illustrations one of which I wanted to use for the post because I had always loved it so much. It was a picture of four colorful fish along the side of the text, I remember it so vividly.
However, the book is not in my collection. I remember it was missing at last part of its cover, so maybe it was finally thrown away, and you can imagine how hard it would be to find that exact edition under the many there are.

Looking for it, I got lost in memories as it can happen when you are going through your books, and this time specifically in memories of other illustrations from my favorite books.
There was the "old Parre", the wise cavewoman from "Rulaman", Detective Teffan Tiegelmann (his German name) who couldn't pronounce the s right, a picture that shows that kids can be rather bloodthirsty - the T. Rex bringing down the Triceratops - Michael from "Mary Poppins" on the Cat Star (not colored in by me, this was an Internet find), Half-and-Half (I guess that was his name in English) the Shetland pony foal (not a horse girl, but these drawings are too cute for words), Kästner's Little Man and Little Miss, Sir Oblong Fitz Oblong painting Easter eggs with his friends, The Witch Family, and Andersen's Thumbelina.
And these are just a few examples I pulled out. I could easily have kept going, with authors from Germany, the UK, the USA, Denmark and elsewhere.

If you are anything like me, you may remember the illustrations from your childhood and stubbornly refuse new editions with new, maybe more modern ones because these characters are so familiar to you that it's not possible for them to get new faces just like that (here I have for example a video about a very modern edition of Alice in Wonderland in mind which didn't work for me at all, and from the comments I wasn't the only one).

On the other hand, though, I know of course - and it also makes sense to me - that illustrations for classics evolve and that they can add an interpretation of their own to fairy tales, novels or short stories.
It might be interesting to have a collection of children's books in which there are several editions of the same books to see what different illustrators made of them.
It would even be interesting to see if one artist would change his or her own illustrations for the same book over the years.

My little collection, however, is not for research, it represents a part of my personal childhood, and looking at these images never fails to bring back moments of it which make me smile - yes, even the poor Triceratops.

Do you have favorite book illustrations?

If you are interested in the history of illustration in children's books, here are a few sources. I have to admit that so far I have only browsed through them myself.
- Cynthia Burlingham: Picturing Childhood: The Evolution of the Illustrated Children's Book (1997)
- Corryn Kosik: Children's Book Illustrators in the Golden Age of Illustration, posted June 26, 2018 on Illustration History
- Kelsi Colman: History, Methods, and Psychology of Illustrations in Children's Literature (2023). Honors Theses 863, Scholarly Commons @ Ouachita

Angels Over Broadway

I hadn't thought there would be a post today for the "Winter of Fairbanks Jr." with Lisa from Boondock Ramblings because I had decided to skip the chosen movie when I saw that Douglas Fairbanks jr. was actually just the narrator.
However, Lisa has changed the movie for today, so I'm here after all.

Today's movie is Angels Over Broadway from 1940.

Fair use via Wikipedia

Charles Engle has embezzled $3,000 to give to his wife, but she has passed them on to the man she really loves. Now his partner wants the money back the next morning, but Charles has already decided to kill himself.
He goes to a nightclub and his generous spending makes everyone think he's a rich man. He also catches the eye of Bill O'Brien who thinks he's the perfect victim to take to a gangster's poker game for a cut. Bill enlists showgirl Nina to help him with luring Charles there.
By now disillusioned and drunk playwright Gene Gibbons has made it to Charles' table after being giving the wrong coat and finding the suicide letter in it.

He persuades Bill to change the plan by taking Charles to the game, but as soon as the gangsters have let him win enough to make him keep playing, Charles is supposed to escape with the money. Bill isn't enthusiastic about the plan, but finally accepts it, with one little addition. If Charles wins more than the needed money, he's supposed to give that surplus to Bill.

Things don't go quite according to plan as Gene, drunk as he is, forgets everything and leaves for home and one of the gangsters discovers the escape plan.
In the end, however, everything works out.
Charles escapes by being arrested, but is set free and can give back the money. Gene goes back home to his wife who has forgiven him. Bill - although beat up by the gangster - and Nina escape as well and find they are in love.

Let's start with my opinion about that plan.
Trust a drunk, no matter how witty, to come up with such a plan.
Did they really think a bunch of gangsters - who don't pull something like this for the first time - would just let an intended mark walk off with thousands of dollars trusting him to "just look in on his drunk friend" and then run down the stairs and disappear?
Did they really expect there to be no consequences at all for the people bringing Charles to the game if he disappeared?
That part of the story is simply too weak for me and I think they all were very lucky to survive this. Also, if I were Bill and Nina, I'd get out of there quickly and not sit down for some coffee. Gangsters have their methods to find people and they are not very forgiving, right?

There's quite a lot of talking in the movie, people persuading one another to do stuff, people talking about the plan, people talking about why people do something.
Four strangers meeting and being teamed up for a little while until they get scattered again in the big city.
I liked the performances of Charles' angels (please note that I didn't succumb to the pun "Charlie's Angels"). Gene was witty, Nina beautiful and emphatic, and Bill showed the right amount of cynicism before showing some heart himself.
I found Charles a bit one-dimensional in his depression, though.
Maybe I'm too much of a cynic myself, but although they all got their happy ending, I'm not sure I would expect that ending to stay that happy. Actually I immediately imagined what would happen to them afterwards.
It is possible, though, that my pessimism was enhanced by being sick when watching the movie and writing this. On the other hand, it shows you that it's not a difficult movie to follow if I could do it with my eyes half shut 😉

Will this movie have a huge impact on your life? I doubt it.
Was it still entertaining, though? Yes, I think so.

The "Queens of Crime" and more - Introduction

Do you know the four "Queens of Crime"? They were the most dominant female crime writers in the 20s and 30s, maybe you have heard of all of them, maybe not, but I'm quite sure you know the one I'll be starting with.

Their names are Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham.
On a book shop site I read that some would also include Gladys Mitchell and Josephine Tey in the club. Like in the case of Margery Allingham, I have heard the name of their best known characters, but haven't read any of their books. Yet. I had just had an Allingham book arrive a few days ago and hopefully I will find one or some of both Mitchell and Tey as well. And while I'm at it, I may dive into my library and add someone you may not know that well as a crime author, but for a different genre instead - Georgette Heyer.

Of course, I won't be able to do a review of the complete works, I won't even be able to read their complete works (except Sayers and Heyer, I think I own all of their crime books), maybe because I don't want to or because it's too much or because I wouldn't be able to get my hands on them at all.

One hope I have is to get over my reading slump again now that I'm not able to craft every day anymore, even if some of it will be re-reads, and I like the idea of keeping the posts limited to older crime novels for now. Maybe I will even discover someone completely new to me?
Maybe I will want to review individual books by those authors eventually and maybe I will just end up with short explanations why I like one author more than another, maybe I will even change my own mind about an author during the re-reads or maybe it will turn into something completely different?
I will see. You will see.

P.S. I took this picture in my library. This leather pouf has always been there, and as you can see, it has been abused by generations of cats. No matter how it looks, I wouldn't dare to throw it away, it holds so many memories.

Muffin Boy

When der Dekan moved in here end of June 2021, I decided to give bead looming a break.
This was one crazy kitten growing into a crazy cat. He doesn't do things by halves. When he sleeps, he turns into a big heavy sand bag that is really hard to move. His sleep is so deep sometimes that I can softly roll him off my legs, for example, and he will only wake up after the roll when touching the bed, sometimes not even right away.

When he has what I call "his five minutes", even if it can take much longer, he's insufferable. He throws tantrums and he throws things off shelves, the wardrobe, the nightstand or tries to knock certain pictures off the wall. It can mean he's hungry because the portion was too small or the food was obviously unacceptable (even if two days ago it was the best food he ever had - that's cats for you).
It can also just be too much energy, though, the kind of energy that ordinary playtime is not enough for.
Those five minutes can end as abruptly as they started or they can take forever, at all times of day or night. They don't happen every day, but when they do, it can be exhausting with that little whirlwind because he knows exactly which buttons to push! I'm quite easy to train and he's has always been fast at learning what works on me.
He looks harmless enough here, but actually this was shortly before he jumped on the wardrobe to knock down one of my Steiff fish.

What I'm trying to explain is that not all crafts are safe around him when he's awake and it's not necessarily predictable when he's going to jump all over the place, try to steal things - he can be amazingly stealthy and fast - and open bead cups to step in are not that good an idea, either.
Even Ponder and Esme, who loved walking across my bead tray with the bead cups, had one or the other mishap, but that usually just meant a few beads. They were both big jumpers, but amazingly well-behaved around my beads and I never worried around them much. Ponder's weakness was my wire, but that's a lot easier to deal with than tiny flying beads.

Since der Dekan has been living and jumping here, I managed to make two bead loomed pieces and I worked from very tiny stacks of beads which I refilled from the tubes constantly which didn't exactly made looming any quicker or real fun.
The other day I talked about bead cups and bead trays with a friend and she said it was a pity there weren't bead trays with holes for the cups to put in.
Unlike other beaders I don't work from a bead mat which has to do with my not working at a table.
I keep my bead cups to the side and pick the beads up with my fingers from where I put them on my needle. That may sound very awkward to others, but it works perfectly for me and I'm actually faster that way than with a bead mat.

Of course I know there are also all kinds of bead organizers, but they are quite flat and I don't trust somecat around that.
That's when I thought of my muffin trays (I got two of them at a super sale at the outlet, but only ever used one, anyway).
What if I tried putting the beads in there to keep them all together instead of using individual cups? And what if I found a box to fit the tray in to minimize the danger of a not so little cat stepping on one side of the tray and send it up flying?

It was practically a miracle that there was a parcel I hadn't opened up yet, otherwise I would have thrown the box out already. It looked the perfect size - and it was.
I cut off the flaps, but not completely, so the edges of the muffin tray would rest on them. It would have been nice if the tray had a hole on either side to attach it to the box, but it doesn't, so I used double sided tape.
To make the whole construction heavier and thus more stable, I had put a thermos I don't use anymore into the box. I wrapped it up in thick paper and added bubble wrap on the sides, so it won't move around.

Here you see Muffin Boy check it out because nothing here can go unsupervised by him. He's probably making plans now how to deal with this new challenge.

I think I can safely say that this is the weirdest piece of beading "equipment" I have ever put together and it's definitely not beautiful. If it works, though, I finally might be able to go back to work with more bead colors again without being stressed out too much and that's all that counts.

A lid for the tray would be perfect, but I couldn't find anything that worked and I don't want to buy a new tray just for the lid.
Maybe another box? Wait, I could just put my second muffin tray over it 😂
Anyhow, I'll let you know how it goes.

Random Saturday - Cookbooks, Teil 2

In 2012, I told you about the Gas-Koch- und Backrezeptkalender, here and here, and in 2014 I even made something from it!
It translates to "Gas Cooking and Baking Recipe Calendar".
Being a librarian, I wanted to look up when it was first published and for how long, but the listings in the different library catalogs differ.
For example, one listing says that it was first published in 1927 under the title "Hamburger Gaskalender" - I don't think I need to translate that - and under the long title from 1959 until 1973. Here it says that's when it ended, there it says it still exists, but without indication of any holdings. Several listings say it started under the longer title in 1952, however, which is also not true as I happen to own one from 1950, but don't mention the Gaskalender at all although they were all published by the Gasworks in Hamburg.
You probably wonder why I'm even telling you all that, but it's an occupational disease. It drives me nuts not to know exactly!

Fact is that I have several of them myself - with another one on the way - between 1950 and 1970, some are smaller, some are taller (sorry, couldn't resist). Only two of them are missing the top leaf.
I think it's fabulous that calendars from that time, whose leaves were meant to be torn off, still exist at all today. I remember that we often had the grocery store's calendar hanging in our kitchen which also had stories on the back of the leaves if I remember that right, but it was actually used.

The calendars are full of information, recipes, and little stories praising the advantages of gas-operated appliances.
The one from 1956 the extra info is all about spices, for example.

I think my favorite is the story - also from the 1956 one which has been the latest addition - about a lady inviting her friends for a "Kaffeekränzchen", a gathering of ladies for coffee and cake. They have to be on time, though, which surprises them all. They are even more surprised when their hostess ushers them down to the laundry room telling them her "big wash" is about to start; they are almost afraid they are going to be asked to help.
But no, their hostess has taken them there to show them her new gas-operated washing machine. Not quite convinced at first, the guests are quickly changing their mind when they hear that the machine does it all itself, even turning off!
Can you imagine being without a washing machine? I think I would have been just as enthusiastic about it and am not surprised the hostess felt the need to brag a little.

Of course I also chose another recipe for you, not randomly this time, but the recipe of my birthday 1950 (no, I'm not that old, but I don't have the calendar from the year of my birth).
Remember that this was not too long after the war and the Wirtschaftswunder had only just begun, so the ingredients are not too unusual.

It's a sponge cake with potato marzipan for four people.

Sponge:
3 separated eggs, 3 - 4 tbsp. water, 150 grams of sugar, 1 baggie of vanilla sugar, 150 of grams flour, 50 grams of starch, 2 level tsp. baking powder

Filling:
3 tbsp. jam
for the potato marzipan: 200 grams of unsalted boiled potatos, 125 grams of sugar, bitter almond aroma
for the cream: 1/2 pack of instant pudding, 1/4 liter of cider, sugar to taste

Decoration:
50 grams of oatmeal, 25 grams of fat, 1 tbsp. sugar

Make the sponge and cut it twice.
Put the potatoes through a fine sieve, mix well with the sugar and add the almond aroma.
Use the cider, sugar and instant pudding to make a blancmange and stir until cold.
Spread the jam and 2/3 of the potato marzipan on the bottom layer and the cream on the second layer.
Use the rest of the marzipan for the top and around the cake and add the roasted oatmeal.

What do you think, would that have made a good birthday cake for me? 😉
Actually, a family member of mine has birthday tomorrow, I think he would be quite surprised if I offered him this cake!