JAMES H. COBURN III, A TOUGH GUY IN WESTERN FILMS

James Coburn

Today, The Grandma is finishing her holiday and she has decided to do nothing except watching TV. She has chosen some western films interpreted by one of her favourite actors, James Coburn, the eternal tough boy, who was born on a day like today in 1928.

The Grandma thinks the best way to pay homage to him is talking about his life and his amazing career.

James Harrison Coburn III (August 31, 1928-November 18, 2002) was an American actor. He was featured in more than 70 films, largely action roles, and made 100 television appearances during a 45-year career, ultimately winning an Academy Award in 1999 for his supporting role as Glen Whitehouse in Affliction.

Coburn was a capable, rough-hewn leading man, whose toothy grin and lanky physique made him a perfect tough guy in numerous leading and supporting roles in westerns and action films, such as The Magnificent Seven, Hell Is for Heroes, The Great Escape, Charade, Our Man Flint, In Like Flint, Duck, You Sucker!, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Cross of Iron.

Coburn provided the voice of Mr. Waternoose in the Pixar film Monsters, Inc. 

In 2002, he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries nomination for producing The Mists of Avalon.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Coburn cultivated an image synonymous with cool  and, along with such contemporaries as Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood, became one of the prominent tough-guy actors of his day.

More information: CMG Worldwide

Coburn was born James Harrison Coburn III in Laurel, Nebraska on August 31, 1928, the son of James Harrison Coburn II (1902–1975) and Mylet S. Coburn (née Johnson; 1900–1984). His father was of Scotch-Irish ancestry and his mother was an immigrant from Sweden.

Coburn attended Los Angeles City College, where he studied acting alongside Jeff Corey and Stella Adler, and later made his stage debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in Herman Melville's Billy Budd.

Coburn's first professional job was a live television play for Sidney Lumet.

He was selected for a Remington Products razor commercial in which he was able to shave off 11 days of beard growth in less than 60 seconds, while joking that he had more teeth to show on camera than the other 12 candidates for the part.

With Bruce Lee, James Garner & Steve McQueen

Coburn's film debut came in 1959 as the sidekick of Pernell Roberts in the Randolph Scott western Ride Lonesome. He soon got a job in another Western Face of a Fugitive (1959).

Coburn also appeared in dozens of television roles including, with Roberts, several episodes of NBC's Bonanza.

Coburn appeared twice each on two other NBC westerns Tales of Wells Fargo with Dale Robertson, one episode in the role of Butch Cassidy, and The Restless Gun with John Payne in The Pawn and The Way Back, the latter segment alongside Bonanza's Dan Blocker. Butch Cassidy aired in 1958.

Coburn's third film was a major breakthrough for him -as the knife-wielding Britt in The Magnificent Seven (1960), directed by John Sturges for the Mirisch Company. Coburn was hired through the intervention of his friend, Robert Vaughn.

During the 1960 to 1961 season, Coburn co-starred with Ralph Taeger and Joi Lansing in the NBC adventure/drama series, Klondike, set in the Alaskan gold rush town of Skagway.

When Klondike was cancelled, Taeger and Coburn were regrouped as detectives in Mexico in NBC's equally short-lived Acapulco.

Coburn also made two guest appearances on CBS's Perry Mason, both times as the murder victim; in The Case of the Envious Editor and The Case of the Angry Astronaut, respectively.

More information: BBC

In 1962, he portrayed the role of Col. Briscoe in the episode Hostage Child on CBS's Rawhide.

Coburn had a good role in Hell Is for Heroes (1962), a war movie with Steve McQueen. Coburn followed this with another war film with McQueen, The Great Escape (1963), directed by Sturges for the Mirisches; Coburn played an Australian. For the Mirisches, Coburn narrated Kings of the Sun (1963).

Coburn was one of the villains in Charade (1963), starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. He was then cast as a glib naval officer in Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily, replacing James Garner, who had moved up to the lead when William Holden pulled out. This led to Coburn being signed to a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox.

Coburn had another excellent support role as a one-armed Indian tracker in Major Dundee (1965), directed by Sam Peckinpah.

James Coburn

At Fox, he was second-billed in the pirate film A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), supporting Anthony Quinn. He had a cameo in The Loved One (1965).

Coburn became a genuine star following the release of the James Bond parody film Our Man Flint (1966), playing super agent Derek Flint for Fox. The movie was a solid success at the box office. He followed it with What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966), a wartime comedy from Blake Edwards which was made for the Mirisches; Coburn was top billed. The film was a commercial disappointment. Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966) was a crime movie made at Columbia.

Back at Fox, Coburn made a second Flint film, In Like Flint (1967), which was popular but Coburn did not wish to make any more. He went over to Paramount to make a Western comedy, Waterhole No. 3 (1967), and the political satire The President's Analyst (1967). Neither film performed particularly well at the box office but over the years The President's Analyst has become a cult film. In 1967 Coburn was voted the twelfth biggest star in Hollywood.

Over at Columbia, Coburn was in a swinging sixties heist film, Duffy (1968) which flopped. He was one of several stars who had cameos in Candy (1968) then played a hitman in Hard Contract (1969) for Fox, another flop.

Coburn tried a change of pace, an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970) directed by Sidney Lumet, but the film was not popular.

In July 1970 Richard F Zanuck of Fox dropped the $300,000 option it had with Coburn.

More information: GQ

In 1971, Coburn starred in the Zapata Western Duck, You Sucker!, with Rod Steiger and directed by Sergio Leone, as an Irish explosives expert and revolutionary who has fled to Mexico during the time of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. In 1964 Coburn said he would do A Fistful of Dollars if they paid him $25,000, which was too expensive for the production's tiny budget. Duck You Sucker, also called A Fistful of Dynamite, was not as highly regarded as Leone's four previous Westerns but was hugely popular in Europe, especially France.

Back in the US he made another film with Blake Edwards, the thriller The Carey Treatment (1972). It was badly cut by MGM and was commercially unsuccessful. So too was The Honkers (1972), in which Coburn played a rodeo rider.

Coburn went back to Italy to make another Western, A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die (1973). He then re-teamed with director Sam Peckinpah for the 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, in which he played Pat Garrett. In 1973 Coburn was voted the 23rd most popular star in Hollywood.

James Coburn

In 1973, Coburn was among the featured celebrities dressed in prison gear on the cover of the album Band on the Run made by Paul McCartney and his band Wings.

Coburn was one of the pallbearers at the funeral of Bruce Lee along with Steve McQueen, Bruce's brother, Robert Lee, Peter Chin, Danny Inosanto, and Taky Kimura.

Coburn gave a speech: Farewell, Brother. It has been an honor to share this space in time with you. As a friend and a teacher, you have given to me, have brought my physical, spiritual and psychological selves together. Thank you. May peace be with you".

Coburn was one of several stars in the popular The Last of Sheila (1973). He then starred in a series of thrillers: Harry in Your Pocket (1974) and The Internecine Project (1975). Neither was widely seen.

Coburn began to drop back down the credit list: he was third billed in writer-director Richard Brooks' film Bite the Bullet (1975) behind Gene Hackman and Candice Bergen. He co-starred with Charles Bronson in Hard Times (1975), the directorial debut of Walter Hill, but it was very much Bronson's film. The movie was popular.

Coburn played the lead in the action film Sky Riders (1976) then played Charlton Heston's antagonist in The Last Hard Men (1976). He was one of the many stars in Midway (1976) then had the star role in Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron (1977) playing a German soldier. This critically acclaimed war epic performed poorly in the United States but was a huge hit in Europe. Peckinpah and Coburn remained close friends until Peckinpah's death in 1984.

Coburn returned to television in 1978 to star in a three-part mini-series version of a Dashiell Hammett detective novel, The Dain Curse, tailoring his character to bear a physical resemblance to the author. During that same year as a spokesman for the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, he was paid $500,000 to promote its new product in television advertisements by saying only two words: Schlitz. Light.

More information: The Telegraph

In Japan his masculine appearance was so appealing he became an icon for its leading cigarette brand. He also supported himself in later years by exporting rare automobiles to Japan. He was deeply interested in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, and collected sacred Buddhist artwork. He narrated a film about the 16th Karmapa called The Lion's Roar.

Coburn starred in Firepower (1979) with Sophia Loren, replacing Charles Bronson when the latter pulled out. He had a cameo in The Muppet Movie (1979) and had leading roles in Goldengirl (1980) and The Baltimore Bullet (1980). He was Shirley MacLaine's husband in Loving Couples (1980) and had the lead in a Canadian film, Crossover (1980).

Coburn moved almost entirely into supporting roles such as those of the villains in both High Risk (1981) and Looker (1981). He hosted a TV series of the horror-anthology type, Darkroom, in 1981 and 1982.

Coburn also portrayed Dwight Owen Barnes in the PC video game C.E.O., developed by Artdink as a spin-off of its A-Train series.

Because of his severe rheumatoid arthritis, Coburn appeared in very few films during the 1980s, yet he continued working until his death in 2002. This disease had left Coburn's body deformed and in pain. You start to turn to stone, he told ABC News in an April 1999 interview. See, my hand is twisted now because tendons have shortened.

For 20 years, he tried a host of both conventional and unconventional treatments, but none of them worked. There was so much pain that...every time I stood up, I would break into a sweat, he recalled. Then, at the age of 68, Coburn tried something called MSM, methylsulfonylmethane, a sulfur compound available at most health food stores. The result, he said, was nothing short of miraculous. You take this stuff and it starts right away, said Coburn. Everyone I've given it to has had a positive response. Though the MSM did not cure Coburn's arthritis, it did relieve his pain, allowing him to move more freely and resume his career.

Coburn was in a relationship with British singer-songwriter Lynsey de Paul in the late 1970s. They co-wrote her songs Losin' the Blues For You and Melancholy Melon that appeared on her 1979 Tigers and Fireflies album.

Coburn returned to film in the 1990s and appeared in supporting roles in Young Guns II, Hudson Hawk, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Maverick, Eraser, The Nutty Professor, Affliction, and Payback.

Coburn's performance in Affliction eventually earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In addition, he provided the voice of Henry J. Waternoose III in Monsters, Inc., a joint production of Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios.

More information: South China Morning Post

Coburn's interest in fast cars began with his father's garage business and continued throughout his life, as he exported rare cars to Japan.

Coburn was married twice. His first marriage was to Beverly Kelly, in 1959; they had two children together. The couple divorced in 1979 after twenty years of marriage.

He later married actress Paula Murad Coburn, on October 22, 1993 in Versailles, France; they remained married until Coburn's death in 2002.

Coburn was a martial arts student and a friend of fellow actor Bruce Lee. Upon Lee's early death, Coburn was one of his pallbearers at the funeral on July 25, 1973.

Coburn died of a heart attack at the age of 74 on November 18, 2002 while listening to music at his Beverly Hills home. Less than two years later, Paula died of cancer on July 30, 2004, at age 48.

More information: Los Angeles Times

Studios have been trying to get rid of the actor

for a long time and now they can do it.

They got animation.

NO more actor, although for now they still have

to borrow a voice or two.

Anyway, I find it abhorrent.

James Coburn

ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA, SYMBOL OF FREE JOURNALISM

Anna Politkovskaya

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to do nothing except to read and rest. She has been very interested in reread the works of one of the most important and critic journalists of the last decades, Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist, writer, and human rights activist who reported on political events in Russia.

Anna Politkovskaya was born on a day like today in 1958 and today she would celebrate her62nd birthday but she was murdered in 2006. A critic and honest voice, an independent journalist she has become a constant disturb for the political power and powerful deep and dark forces, especially since she reported on the Second Chechen War.

The Grandma, who admires of Anna Politkovskaya and her works, thinks that the best way to pay homage to her is talking about her life, her career, her struggle against corrupt policy and the most important, remembering her and her way of understanding free journalism.

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya, in Russian  Анна Степановна Политковская (30 August 1958-7 October 2006) was a Russian journalist, writer, and human rights activist who reported on political events in Russia, in particular, the Second Chechen War (1999–2005).

It was her reporting from Chechnya that made Politkovskaya's national and international reputation. For seven years she refused to give up reporting on the war despite numerous acts of intimidation and violence.

Politkovskaya was arrested by Russian military forces in Chechnya and subjected to a mock execution.

She was poisoned while flying from Moscow via Rostov-on-Don to help resolve the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, and had to turn back, requiring careful medical treatment in Moscow to restore her health.

More information: Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty

Her post-1999 articles about conditions in Chechnya were turned into books several times; Russian readers' main access to her investigations and publications was through Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper known for its often-critical investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs.

From 2000 onwards, she received numerous international awards for her work. In 2004, she published Vladimir Putin's Russia, a personal account of Russia for a Western readership.

On 7 October 2006, she was murdered in the elevator of her block of flats, an assassination that attracted international attention.

In June 2014, five men were sentenced to prison for the murder, but it is still unclear who ordered or paid for the contract killing. 

A Dirty War by Anna Politkovskaya

Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958, the daughter of Stepan F. Mazepa from Kostobobriv, Ukraine. Some sources say that her birth name was actually Hanna Mazeppa. Other sources state that she was born in Chernihiv region of Ukraine. Her parents, Soviet diplomats at the United Nations, were Ukrainian.

Politkovskaya spent most of her childhood in Moscow; she graduated from Moscow State University's school of journalism in 1980. While there, she defended a thesis about the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva and married fellow student Alexander Politkovsky. They had two children, Vera and Ilya.

At first Alexander was better known, joining TV journalist Vladislav Listyev as one of the hosts on the late-night TV programme Vzglyad. Apart from her childhood years, Politkovskaya spent no more than a few weeks outside Russia at any one time, even when her life came under threat. She was a U.S. citizen and had a U.S. passport, although she never relinquished her Russian citizenship.

Politkovskaya worked for Izvestia from 1982 to 1993 as a reporter and editor of the emergencies and accidents section. From 1994 to 1999, she worked as the assistant chief editor of Obshchaya Gazeta, headed by Yegor Yakovlev, where she wrote frequently about social problems, particularly the plight of refugees.

From June 1999 to 2006, she wrote columns for the biweekly Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper with strong investigative reporting that was critical of the new post-Soviet regime from the outset. She published several award-winning books about Chechnya, life in Russia, and Russia under Vladimir Putin, including Putin's Russia.

Politkovskaya won a number of awards for her work. She used each of these occasions to urge greater concern and responsibility by Western governments that, after the 11 September attacks on the United States, welcomed Putin's contribution to their War on Terror. She talked to officials, the military and the police and also frequently visited hospitals and refugee camps in Chechnya and in neighbouring Ingushetia to interview those injured and uprooted by the renewed fighting. 

More information: English Pen

In numerous articles critical of the war in Chechnya and the pro-Russian regime there, Politkovskaya described alleged abuses committed by Russian military forces, Chechen rebels, and the Russian-backed administration led by Akhmad Kadyrov and his son Ramzan Kadyrov. She also chronicled human rights abuses and policy failures elsewhere in the North Caucasus.

In one characteristic instance in 1999, she not only wrote about the plight of an ethnically-mixed old peoples' home under bombardment in Grozny, but helped to secure the safe evacuation of its elderly inhabitants with the aid of her newspaper and public support.

Her articles, many of which form the basis of A Dirty War (2001) and A Small Corner of Hell (2003), depict a conflict that brutalised both Chechen fighters and conscript soldiers in the federal army, and created hell for the civilians caught between them. 

Anna Politkovskaya

As Politkovskaya reported, the order supposedly restored under the Kadyrovs became a regime of endemic torture, abduction, and murder, by either the new Chechen authorities or the various federal forces based in Chechnya.

One of her last investigations was into the alleged mass poisoning of Chechen schoolchildren by a strong and unknown chemical substance which incapacitated them for many months.

After Politkovskaya became widely known in the West, she was commissioned to write Vladimir Putin's Russia, later subtitled Life in a Failing Democracy, a broader account of her views and experiences after former KGB lieutenant colonel Vladimir Putin became Boris Yeltsin's Prime Minister, and then succeeded him as President of Russia.

In May 2007, Random House posthumously published Politkovskaya's A Russian Diary, containing extracts from her notebook and other writings. Subtitled A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, the book gives her account of the period from December 2003 to August 2005, including what she described as the death of Russian parliamentary democracy, the Beslan school hostage crisis, and the winter and summer of discontent from January to August 2005. Because she was murdered while translation was being completed, final editing had to go ahead without her help, wrote translator Arch Tait in a note to the book.

Who killed Anna and who lay beyond her killer remains unknown, wrote Jon Snow, the main news anchor for the United Kingdom's Channel 4 in his foreword to the book's UK edition. Her murder robbed too many of us of absolutely vital sources of information and contact, he concluded, Yet it may, ultimately, be seen to have at least helped prepare the way for the unmasking of the dark forces at the heart of Russia's current being. I must confess that I finished reading A Russian Diary feeling that it should be taken up and dropped from the air in vast quantities throughout the length and breadth of Mother Russia, for all her people to read." 

More information: The Guardian

Politkovskaya was closely involved in attempts to negotiate the release of hostages in the Moscow theatre hostage crisis of 2002. When the Beslan school hostage crisis erupted in the North Caucasus in early September 2004, Politkovskaya attempted to fly there to act as a mediator, but was taken off the plane, acutely ill due to an attempted poisoning, in Rostov-on-Don.

In Moscow, Politkovskaya was not invited to press conferences or gatherings that Kremlin officials might attend, in case the organisers were suspected of harbouring sympathies toward her. Despite this, many top officials allegedly talked to her when she was writing articles or conducting investigations. According to one of her articles, they did talk to her, but only when they weren't likely to be observed: outside in crowds, or in houses that they approached by different routes, like spies. She also claimed that the Kremlin tried to block her access to information and discredit her.

After Politkovskaya's murder, Vyacheslav Izmailov, her colleague at Novaya Gazeta -a military man who had helped negotiate the release of dozens of hostages in Chechnya before 1999- said that he knew of at least nine previous occasions when Politkovskaya had faced death, commenting Frontline soldiers do not usually go into battle so often and survive.

Anna Politkovskaya

Politkovskaya herself did not deny being afraid, but felt responsible and concerned for her informants. She often received death threats as a result of her work, including being threatened with rape and experiencing a mock execution after being arrested by the military in Chechnya.

Upon leaving the camp, Politkovskaya was detained, interrogated, beaten, and humiliated by Russian troops: the young officers tortured me, skillfully hitting my sore spots. They looked through my children's pictures, making a point of saying what they would like to do to the kids. This went on for about three hours. She was subjected to a mock execution using a BM-21 Grad multiple-launch rocket system, then poisoned with a cup of tea that made her vomit. Her tape records were confiscated.

After the mock execution, the Russian lieutenant colonel said to her: Here's the banya. Take off your clothes. Seeing that his words had no effect, he got very angry: A real lieutenant colonel is courting you, and you say no, you militant bitch.

In 2006, the European Court of Human Rights found the Russian Federation responsible for the forced disappearance of a suspected Ingush militant, Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev. Colonel-General Alexander Baranov, the commander of the Russian Caucasus deployment mentioned by Politkovskaya's camp guide as the one who ordered captured militants to be kept in the pits, was filmed as he ordered Yandiyev to be executed.

While flying south in September 2004 to help negotiate with those who had taken over a thousand hostages in a school in Beslan (North Ossetia), Politkovskaya fell violently ill and lost consciousness after drinking tea given to her by an Aeroflot flight attendant. She had reportedly been poisoned, with some accusing the former Soviet secret police poison facility.

More information: CNN

Politkovskaya was found dead in the lift, in her block of flats in central Moscow on 7 October 2006. She had been shot twice in the chest, once in the shoulder, and once in the head at point-blank range.

The assassination had happened on Vladimir Putin's birthday, and two days after Ramzan Kadyrov's 30th birthday celebrations, raising suspicions that one or both were served up by the contract hit. There was widespread international reaction to the assassination.

The funeral was held on 10 October 2006 at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in the outskirts of Moscow. Before Politkovskaya was buried, more than one thousand mourners filed past her coffin to pay their last respects.

Dozens of Politkovskaya's colleagues, public figures, and admirers of her work gathered at the cemetery. No high-ranking Russian officials could be seen at the ceremony. Politkovskaya was buried near her father, who had died shortly before her.

In May 2007, a large posthumous collection of Anna's articles, entitled With Good Reason, was published by Novaya Gazeta and launched at the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow. The event came soon after the birth of Anna's namesake grandchild: Vera's daughter was named Anna in honour of her grandmother.

A few months later, 10 men were detained on suspicion of various degrees of involvement in Politkovskaya's murder. Four of them were brought before the Moscow District Military Court in October 2008.

More information: The Moscow Times

People sometimes pay with their lives

for saying aloud what they think.

In fact, one can even get killed for giving me information.

I am not the only one in danger.

I have examples that prove it.

Anna Politkovskaya

ISHI, THE LAST OF THE NATIVE AMERICAN YAHI PEOPLE

Ishi

Today, The Grandma has received the amazing visit of one of her closest friends, Joseph de Ca'th Lon. Joseph loves Anthropology, Archaeology and Astronomy and he spends a lot of time talking with her.

They have been talking about Ishi who is considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, and emerged from the wilderness of northeastern California on a day like today in 1911.

Native American is a minority nowadays. They fought against the colonizers, the white man, to preserve their lands and their culture but they were killed, massacred and ignored.

Joseph and The Grandma want to talk about Ishi to pay homage to all of those Native American Tribes that were victims of one the worst genocides of the history.

Ishi (c. 1861-March 25, 1916) was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from the present-day state of California in the United States.

The rest of the Yahi, as well as many members of their parent tribe, the Yana, were killed in the California genocide in the 19th century.

Ishi, who was widely acclaimed as the last wild Indian in America, lived most of his life isolated from modern American culture.

In 1911, aged 50, he emerged near the foothills of Lassen Peak in Northern California.

Ishi, which means man in the Yana language, is an adopted name. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave him this name because in the Yahi culture, tradition demanded that he not speak his own name until formally introduced by another Yahi. When asked his name, he said: I have none, because there were no people to name me, meaning that there was no other Yahi to speak his name on his behalf.

More information: Universitiy of California, San Francisco

Ishi was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who both studied him and hired him as a janitor.

He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco. His life was depicted and discussed in multiple films and books, notably the biographical account Ishi in Two Worlds published by Theodora Kroeber in 1961.

In 1865, Ishi and his family were attacked in the Three Knolls Massacre, in which 40 of their tribesmen were killed. Although 33 Yahi survived to escape, cattlemen killed about half of the survivors.

The last survivors, including Ishi and his family, went into hiding for the next 44 years. Their tribe was popularly believed to be extinct. Prior to the California Gold Rush of 1848–1855, the Yahi population numbered 404 in California, but the total Yana in the larger region numbered 2,997.

Ishi

The gold rush brought tens of thousands of miners and settlers to northern California, putting pressure on native populations. Gold mining damaged water supplies and killed fish; the deer left the area. The settlers brought new infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles.

The northern Yana group became extinct while the central and southern groups, who later became part of Redding Rancheria, and Yahi populations dropped dramatically. Searching for food, they came into conflict with settlers, who set bounties of 50 cents per scalp and 5 dollars per head on the natives. In 1865, the settlers attacked the Yahi while they were still asleep.

In late 1908, a group of surveyors came across the camp inhabited by two men, a middle-aged woman, and an elderly woman. These were Ishi, his uncle, his younger sister, and his mother, respectively. The former three fled while the latter hid herself in blankets to avoid detection, as she was sick and unable to flee. The surveyors ransacked the camp, and Ishi's mother died soon after his return. His sister and uncle never returned.

After the 1908 attack, Ishi spent three more years in the wilderness, alone. Finally, starving and with nowhere to go, at around the age of 50, on August 29, 1911, Ishi was captured attempting to forage for meat near Oroville, California, after forest fires in the area.

More information: All That's Interesting

The local sheriff took the man into custody for his protection. The wild man caught the imagination and attention of thousands of onlookers and curiosity seekers. Professors at the University of California, Berkeley, Museum of Anthropology -now the Phoebe A.

Hearst Museum of Anthropology (PAHMA)- read about him and brought him to their facility, then housed on the University of California, San Francisco campus in an old law school building.

Studied by the university, Ishi also worked as a janitor and lived in an apartment at the museum for most of the remaining five years of his life.

Ishi

In June 1915, he temporarily lived in Berkeley with the anthropologist Thomas Talbot Waterman and his family. Waterman and Alfred L. Kroeber, director of the museum, studied Ishi closely over the years and interviewed him at length in an effort to reconstruct Yahi culture.

He described family units, naming patterns, and the ceremonies that he knew.

Much tradition had already been lost when he was growing up, as there were few older survivors in his group. He identified material items and showed the techniques by which they were made.

Ishi provided valuable information on his native Yana language, which was recorded and studied by the linguist Edward Sapir, who had previously done work on the northern dialects.

Lacking acquired immunity to the diseases common among European Americans, Ishi was often ill. He was treated by Saxton T. Pope, a professor of medicine at UCSF. Pope became close friends with Ishi, and learned from him how to make bows and arrows in the Yahi way. He and Ishi often hunted together.

More information: The Vintage News

Ishi died of tuberculosis on March 25, 1916. It is said his last words were You stay. I go.  His friends at the university tried to prevent an autopsy on Ishi's body, since Yahi tradition called for the body to remain intact. However, the doctors at the University of California medical school performed an autopsy before Waterman could prevent it.

Ishi's brain was preserved and the body cremated. His friends placed grave goods with his remains before cremation: one of his bows, five arrows, a basket of acorn meal, a boxful of shell bead money, a purse full of tobacco, three rings, and some obsidian flakes. Ishi's remains were interred at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Colma, near San Francisco.

Kroeber put Ishi's preserved brain in a deerskin-wrapped Pueblo Indian pottery jar and sent it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1917.

Ishi

It was held there until August 10, 2000, when the Smithsonian repatriated it to the descendants of the Redding Rancheria and Pit River tribes. This was in accordance with the National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989 (NMAI).

According to Robert Fri, director of the National Museum of Natural History, Contrary to commonly-held belief, Ishi was not the last of his kind. In carrying out the repatriation process, we learned that as a Yahi–Yana Indian his closest living descendants are the Yana people of northern California. His remains were also returned from Colma, and the tribal members intended to bury them in a secret place.

In 1994, Steven Shackley of UC Berkeley learned of a paper by Jerald Johnson, who noted morphological evidence that Ishi's facial features and height were more typical of the Wintu and Maidu.

He theorized that under pressure of diminishing populations, members of groups that were once enemies may have intermarried to survive. Johnson also referred to oral histories of the Wintu and Maidu that told of the tribes' intermarrying with the Yahi. The debate on this remains unsettled.

In 1996, Shackley announced work based on a study of Ishi's projectile points and those of the northern tribes. He had found that points made by Ishi were not typical of those recovered from historical Yahi sites.

More information: Smithsonian-Repatriation Office

Because Ishi's production was more typical of points of the Nomlaki or Wintu tribes, and markedly dissimilar to those of Yahi, Shackley suggested that Ishi may have been of mixed ancestry, and related to and raised among members of another of the tribes. He based his conclusion on a study of the points made by Ishi compared to others held by the museum from the Yahi, Nomlaki and Wintu cultures.

Among Ishi's techniques was the use of what is known as an Ishi stick, used to run long pressure flakes. This is known to be a traditional technique of the Nomlaki and Wintu tribes. This suggests that Ishi may have learned the skill directly from a male relative of one of those tribes. These people lived in small bands, close to the Yahi. They were traditional competitors and enemies of the Yahi.

Ishi's story has been compared to that of Ota Benga, an Mbuti pygmy from Congo. His family had died and were not given a mourning ritual. He was taken from his home and culture. During one period, he was displayed as a zoo exhibit. Ota shot himself in the heart on March 20, 1916, five days before Ishi's death.

More information: Boom California

If you won’t believe in yourself, who will?

Ishi

JOHN M. HUSTON, A 'RENAISSANCE MAN' IN HOLLYWOOD

John Huston

Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Claire Fontaine. They have been watching a marathon of classic cinema. They love it. They have chosen some films directed by John Huston, one of the best directors of the history of cinema who died on a day like today in 1987.

Claire and The Grandma think that the best way to pay homage to John Huston is talking about his career and his life.

John Marcellus Huston (August 5, 1906-August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and visual artist.

He travelled widely, settling at various times in France, Mexico, and Ireland. Huston was a citizen of the United States by birth but renounced U.S. citizenship to become an Irish citizen and resident in 1964.

He later returned to the United States, where he lived the rest of his life. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), The Misfits (1961), Fat City (1972), The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Prizzi's Honor (1985).

In his early years, Huston studied and worked as a fine art painter in Paris. He then moved to Mexico, and began writing, first plays and short stories, and later working in Los Angeles as a Hollywood screenwriter, and was nominated for several Academy Awards writing for films directed by William Dieterle and Howard Hawks, among others.

More information: BFI

His directorial debut came with The Maltese Falcon, which despite its small budget became a commercial and critical hit; he would continue to be a successful, if iconoclastic, Hollywood director for the next 45 years.

He explored the visual aspects of his films throughout his career, sketching each scene on paper beforehand, then carefully framing his characters during the shooting. While most directors rely on post-production editing to shape their final work, Huston instead created his films while they were being shot, with little editing needed.

Some of Huston's films were adaptations of important novels, often depicting an heroic quest, as in Moby Dick, or The Red Badge of Courage. In many films, different groups of people, while struggling toward a common goal, would become doomed, forming destructive alliances,  giving the films a dramatic and visual tension. Many of his films involved themes such as religion, meaning, truth, freedom, psychology, colonialism, and war.

While he had done some stage acting in his youth, and had occasionally cast himself in bit parts in his own films, he primarily worked behind the camera until Otto Preminger cast him in the title role for 1963's The Cardinal, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.

With K. Hepburn, H. Bogart, G. Peck & R. Burton

He continued to take prominent supporting roles for the next two decades, including 1974's Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski, and he leant his booming baritone voice as a voice actor and narrator to a number of prominent films.

His last two films, 1985's Prizzi's Honor, and 1987's The Dead, filmed while he was in failing health at the end of his life, were both nominated for multiple Academy Awards. He died shortly after completing his last film.

Huston has been referred to as a titan, a rebel, and a renaissance man in the Hollywood film industry. Author Ian Freer describes him as cinema's Ernest Hemingway -a filmmaker who was never afraid to tackle tough issues head on.

During his 46-year career, Huston received 15 Oscar nominations, winning twice. He directed both his father, Walter Huston, and daughter, Anjelica Huston, to Oscar wins.

John Huston was born on August 5, 1906, in Nevada, Missouri. His father was an actor, initially in vaudeville, and later in films. His mother worked as a sports editor for various publications, but gave it up after John was born. Similarly, his father gave up his stage acting career for steady employment as a civil engineer, although he returned to stage acting within a few years. He later became highly successful on both Broadway and then in motion pictures. He had Scottish, Scots-Irish, English and Welsh ancestry.

During his stay in Mexico, Huston wrote a play called Frankie and Johnny, based on the ballad of the same title. After selling it easily, he decided that writing would be a viable career, and he focused on it. His self-esteem was enhanced when H. L. Mencken, editor of the popular magazine American Mercury, bought two of his stories, Fool and Figures of Fighting Men.

During subsequent years, Huston's stories and feature articles were published in Esquire, Theatre Arts, and The New York Times. He also worked for a period on the New York Graphic.

More information: American Heritage

In 1931, when he was 25, he moved back to Los Angeles in hopes of writing for the blossoming film industry. The silent films had given way to talkies, and writers were in demand. His father had earlier moved there and already gained success in a number of films.

Huston received a script editing contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions but, after six months of receiving no assignments, quit to work for Universal Studios, where his father was a star.

At Universal, he got a job in the script department, and began by writing dialogue for a number of films in 1932, including Murders in the Rue Morgue, A House Divided, and Law and Order. The last two also starred his father, Walter Huston. A House Divided was directed by William Wyler, who gave Huston his first real inside view of the filmmaking process during all stages of production. Wyler and Huston became close friends and collaborators on a number of leading films.

Huston gained a reputation as a lusty, hard-drinking libertine during his first years as a writer in Hollywood. Huston described those years as a series of misadventures and disappointments. His brief career as a Hollywood writer ended suddenly after a car he was driving struck and killed actress Tosca Roulien, wife of actor Raul Roulien. 

John Huston with Orson Wells & Marilyn Monroe

There is a rumor that actor Clark Gable was responsible for the hit and run, but that MGM general manager Eddie Mannix paid Huston to take the blame. A coroner's jury absolved Huston of blame, but the incident left him traumatized. He moved to London and Paris, living as a drifter.

By 1937, the 31-year-old Huston returned to Hollywood intent on being a serious writer. He married again, to Lesley Black. His first job was as scriptwriter with Warner Brothers Studio, and he formed his personal longterm goal to direct his own scripts. For the next four years, he co-wrote scripts for major films such as Jezebel, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Juarez, Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, and Sergeant York (1941).

He was nominated for Academy Awards for his screenplays for both Ehrlich and Sergeant York. Huston wrote that Sergeant York, which was directed by Howard Hawks, has gone down as one of Howard's best pictures, and Gary Cooper had a triumph playing the young mountaineer.

Huston was recognized and respected as a screenwriter. He persuaded Warners to give him a chance to direct, under the condition that his next script also became a hit.

For his first directing assignment, Huston chose Dashiell Hammett's detective thriller, The Maltese Falcon, a film which failed at the box office in two earlier versions by Warners. However, studio head Jack L. Warner approved of Huston's treatment of Hammett's 1930 novel, and he stood by his word to let Huston choose his first subject.

In 1942 Huston served in the United States Army during World War II, making films for the Army Signal Corps. While in uniform with the rank of captain, he directed and produced three films that some critics rank as among the finest made about World War II: Report from the Aleutians (1943), about soldiers preparing for combat; The Battle of San Pietro (1945), the story (censored by the Army) of a failure by America's intelligence agencies that resulted in many deaths, and Let There Be Light (1946), about psychologically damaged veterans. It was censored and suppressed for 35 years, until 1981.

More information: Golden Globes

Huston's next picture, which he wrote, directed, and briefly appeared in as an American asked to help out a fellow American, down on his luck, was The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). It would become one of the films that established his reputation as a leading filmmaker. The film, also starring Humphrey Bogart, was the story of three drifters who band together to prospect for gold. Huston gave a supporting role to his father, Walter Huston.

Also in 1948 Huston directed Key Largo, again starring Humphrey Bogart. It was the story about a disillusioned veteran who clashes with gangsters on a remote Florida key. It co-starred Lauren Bacall, Claire Trevor, Edward G. Robinson, and Lionel Barrymore. The film was an adaptation of the stage play by Maxwell Anderson.

Some viewers complained that it was still overly stage-bound. But the outstanding performances by all the actors saved the film, and Claire Trevor won an Oscar for best supporting actress.

Huston was annoyed that the studio cut several scenes from the final release without his agreement. That, along with some earlier disputes, angered Huston enough that he left the studio when his contract expired. 

With J. Nicholson, K. Turner & A. Huston

In 1950 he wrote and directed The Asphalt Jungle, a film which broke new ground by depicting criminals as somewhat sympathetic characters, simply doing their professional work, an occupation like any other.

Huston described their work as a left-handed form of human endeavor.  

Huston achieved that effect by giving deep attention to the plot, involving a large jewelry theft, by examining the minute, step-by-step details and difficulties each of the characters had of carrying it out. Some critics felt that, by this technique, Huston had achieved an almost documentary style.

Huston's next film, The Red Badge of Courage (1951), was of a completely different subject: war and its effect on soldiers. While in the army during World War II, he became interested in Stephen Crane's classic American Civil War novel of the same title.

Before The Red Badge of Courage opened in theaters, Huston was already in Africa shooting The African Queen (1951), a story based on C. S. Forester's popular novel. It starred Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in a combination of romance, comedy and adventure.

Huston took producing, writing, and directing credits for his next two films: Moulin Rouge (1952); and Beat the Devil (1953).

Moby Dick (1956), however, was written by Ray Bradbury, although Huston had his name added to the screenplay credit after the completion of the project.

Although Huston had personally hired Bradbury to adapt Herman Melville's novel into a screenplay, Bradbury and Huston did not get along during pre-production.

More information: The Guardian

Of Huston's next five films, only The Misfits (1961), gained critical approval. Critics have since noted the retrospective atmosphere of doom which is associated with the film. Clark Gable, the star, died of a heart attack a few weeks after the filming was completed; Marilyn Monroe never finished another film, and died a year later after being suspended during the filming of Something's Got to Give; and costars Montgomery Clift (1966) and Thelma Ritter (1969) also died over the next decade.

He followed The Misfits with Freud: The Secret Passion, a film quite different from most of his others. Besides directing, he also narrates portions of the story. Film historian Stuart M. Kaminsky notes that Huston presents Sigmund Freud, played by Montgomery Clift, as a kind of savior and messiah, with an almost Biblical detachment. As the film begins, Huston describes Freud as a kind of hero or God on a quest for mankin".

For his next film, Huston again traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, after meeting an architect, Guillermo Wulff, who owned property and businesses in the town. The filming took place in a beach cove called Mismaloya, about thirty minutes south of town. Huston adapted the stage play by Tennessee Williams. The film stars Richard Burton and Ava Gardner, and was nominated for several Academy Awards.

John Huston & her daughter, Anjelica.

Producer Dino De Laurentis traveled to Ireland to ask Huston to direct The Bible: In the Beginning. Although De Laurentis had ambitions for a broader story, he realized that the subject could not be adequately covered and limited the story to less than the first half of the Book of Genesis.

After several films that were not well received, Huston returned to critical acclaim with Fat City. Based on Leonard Gardner's 1969 novel of the same name, it was about an aging, washed-up alcoholic boxer in Stockton, California trying to get his name back on the map, while having a new relationship with a world-weary alcoholic.

Perhaps Huston's most highly regarded film of the 1970s, The Man Who Would Be King was both a critical and commercial success. Huston had been planning to make this film since the '50s, originally with his friends Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable. Eventually the lead roles went to Sean Connery and Michael Caine. The movie was filmed on location in North Africa. The film was praised for its use of old-fashioned escapism and entertainment. Steven Spielberg has cited the film as one of the inspirations for his film Raiders of the Lost Ark.

After filming The Man Who Would Be King, Huston took his longest break between directing films. He returned with an offbeat and somewhat controversial film based on the novel Wise Blood. Here, Huston showed his skills as a storyteller, and boldness when it came to difficult subjects such as religion.

More information: History News Network

Huston's last film set in Mexico stars Albert Finney as an alcoholic ambassador during the beginnings of World War II. Adapted from the 1947 novel by Malcolm Lowry, the film was highly praised by critics, most notably for Finney's portrayal of a desperate and depressed alcoholic. The film was a success on the independent circuit.

John Huston's final film is an adaptation of the classic short story by James Joyce. This may have been one of Huston's most personal films, due to his citizenship in Ireland and his passion for classic literature. Huston directed most of the film from a wheelchair, as he needed an oxygen tank to breathe during the last few months of his life.

In the 1996 RTÉ documentary John Huston: An t-Éireannach, Anjelica Huston said that it was very important for my father to make that film. She contends that Huston did not think that it was going to be his last film, but that it was his love letter to Ireland and the Irish.

A heavy smoker, Huston was diagnosed with emphysema in 1978. By the last year of his life he could not breathe for more than twenty minutes without needing oxygen.

He died on August 28, 1987, in his rented home in Middletown, Rhode Island, from pneumonia as a complication of lung disease, three weeks after his 81st birthday. Huston is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood with his mother.

More information: Roger Ebert

The directing of a picture involves coming out

of your individual loneliness

and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world.

A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on.

And one day you die. That is all there is to it.

John Huston