Print Fall/Winter issue

FALL/WINTER 2015
Let Us Entertain You
Trees in a Time of Drought
Blue Boy & Co.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
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SENIOR STAFF OF THE HUNTINGTON
LAURA SKANDERA TROMBLEY
President
CATHERINE ALLGOR
Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education
JAMES P. FOLSOM
Marge and Sherm Telleen/Marion and Earle Jorgensen
Director of the Botanical Gardens
ANNE GUSTUS
Executive Assistant to the President
STEVE HINDLE
W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research
COREEN A. RODGERS
Anne and Jim Rothenberg Vice President for Financial Affairs
KEVIN SALATINO
Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Collections
RANDY SHULMAN
Vice President for Advancement
LAURIE SOWD
Vice President for Operations
SUSAN TURNER-LOWE
Vice President for Communications and Marketing
DAVID S. ZEIDBERG
Avery Director of the Library
MAGAZINE STAFF
EDITOR
Kevin Durkin
DESIGNER
Lori Ann Achzet
Huntington Frontiers is published semiannually by the
Office of Communications and Marketing. It strives to connect
readers with the rich intellectual life of The Huntington,
capturing in news and features the work of researchers,
educators, curators, and others across a range of disciplines.
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Kevin Durkin, Editor, Huntington Frontiers
1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA 91108
[email protected]
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Maggie Malone at Cultural Media, 312-945-5977
Unless otherwise acknowledged, photography is provided by
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© 2015 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical
Gardens. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of the
contents, in whole or in part, without permission of the
publisher, is prohibited.
FROM THE EDITOR
Shop online
beverlyhills.oska.com
LONG AGO, RIGHT NOW
I
n this issue, we take you on journeys into the past and explorations of
the here and now that you won’t soon forget.
In the cover feature, Jennifer A. Watts, The Huntington’s curator
of photographs, shares remarkable images from the heyday of Fanchon
and Marco, a formidable brother-sister team that mass-produced live dance
and music shows for movie theaters across the nation in the 1920s and
1930s, building an entertainment empire that helped launch the careers of
some of Hollywood’s biggest stars (see pg. 20).
Then we take you right to the frontline of the battle to save Southern
California’s trees from the devastating impact of pests and disease, compounded
by the state’s long drought. Freelance writer and former Los Angeles Times
reporter Lynne Heffley writes about the race to find solutions to this complicated, confounding problem, one led by Huntington staff botanists and area
scientists (see pg. 14).
Kevin Salatino, The Huntington’s Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the
Art Collections, provides a poignant perspective on the most famous work in
The Huntington’s art collection, Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy (see pg. 10).
And Andrea Denny-Brown, associate professor of English at University of
California, Riverside, recalls her first encounter at The Huntington with a
mysterious medieval manuscript of a poem that meditates on Christ’s crucifixion (see pg. 26).
Be sure to check out new departments in this issue, including Social Scene
(see pg. 8), a roundup of images and news items from The Huntington’s social
media sites, and Back Page (see pg. 36), which features a flip-book animation
inspired by the works of Edward Hopper and Alexander Calder.
Here at The Huntington, you can experience the wonders of the past and
the innovations of the present succeeding one another with vertiginous rapidity.
Turn the pages ahead to experience the whirligig of time.
Kevin Durkin
Kevin Durkin is editor of Huntington Frontiers and managing editor in
The Huntington’s Office of Communications and Marketing.
Correction: After the publication of our Spring/Summer 2015 issue, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in
Hawaii let us know that the photograph of the Nihoa millerbird on page 32 of that issue was not by the
USFWS’s Mark MacDonald, as we had originally been told, but by Robby Kohley, working on behalf of
American Bird Conservancy. We wish to thank Chris Farmer, Hawaii Program Director for American Bird
Conservancy, for alerting the USFWS and us and setting the record straight.
On the Cover: Producers Fanchon and Marco’s “Aerial Ballet Idea,” 1927, featuring 20 young women trained,
according to the San Jose News, “in the clock-like work of an aerial performer. They are seen working 60 feet
above the stage footlights, dangling at arm’s length on glistening cords, against the background of a
mammoth curtain covering the entire stage.” Photograph by Harry Wenger.
1151 Oxford Road | San Marino, California 91108 | huntington.org
Beverly Hills / Chicago / Edina / Healdsburg / Mill Valley / New York / Pasadena / Seattle / Calgary / Vancouver / callidas in Edmonton
London / Paris / Munich / Amsterdam / Stockholm
volume 11, issue 1
Contents
FALL/WINTER 2015
20
FEATURES
TREES IN A TIME OF DROUGHT14
The Huntington is ground zero in a race to save Southern California’s trees
By Lynne Heffley
LET US ENTERTAIN YOU
Fanchon and Marco’s big “Ideas” revolutionized the 1920s theater world
By Jennifer A. Watts
20
DEPARTMENTS
SOCIAL SCENE
14
10
6huntington.org
A CLOSER LOOK
Poignant Portrait of Youth
By Kevin Salatino
SCHOLAR’S INSIGHT
Mysterious Manuscript in a Silk Purse
By Andrea Denny-Brown
8
10
26
IN PRINT
Recommended Reading
34
BACK PAGE
You’re Gonna Flip!
By Kate Lain
36
Top: Producers Fanchon and Marco’s “Spangles Idea,” 1928, featuring the Pyramid Girls. According to the Los
Angeles Times, the “Spangles Idea” was a “California Folies Bergère with the sets and costumes reproduced from
originals at the Folies Bergère at Paris.” Photograph by Harry Wenger. Center: Wielding a chainsaw, gardener
Rafael Gutierrez lops the limbs off a Liquidambar tree weakened by drought and ravaged by the polyphagous
shot hole borer. Photograph by Lisa Blackburn. Bottom: Detail from Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy (1770).
Call Nadine Black at 310.300.3050 or email [email protected]
WEALTH ADVISORY | INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT
GLOBAL CAPITAL MARKETS | RETIREMENT PLAN SERVICES
©2015 Wilmington Trust Corporation and its affiliates. All rights reserved.
SOCIAL SCENE
A PEEK AT WHAT WE’RE UP TO ONLINE
12
3
4
5
ON VERSO, THE BLOG…
Read about these stories and more at huntingtonblogs.com
How do we conserve a classic book on sunspots?
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/05/conserving-a-classic-book-on-sunspots/
Renaissance literature, history of medicine, and more—
a new cadre of research fellows dives into our Library collections.
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/05/coveted-research-fellowships/
Teenage writers find inspiration in Octavia Butler’s fiction
at a recent WriteGirl workshop.
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/06/writing-herself-in/
The key to growing edibles in a time of drought: healthy soil.
The head of our Ranch project has some tips for you.
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/06/its-all-about-the-soil/
Nearly two centuries ago, painter David Wilkie left behind an unfinished
painting. It’s now part of our European art collection.
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/05/new-home-for-a-hidden-treasure/
6
Los Angeles photographer John C. Lewis comes to
The Huntington to revisit two panorama photographs from 1915.
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/05/taking-the-long-view/
8huntington.org
ON INSTAGRAM…
From galleries to gardens and everything in between, we’ve got you covered. Follow @thehuntingtonlibrary
ON iTUNES U…
These lectures are only a tiny fraction of the Huntington audio available for free on iTunes U.
Searching for the Spirit of the Sages:
The Japanese Tea Ceremony for Sencha
by Patricia J. Graham
Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
Capital Dames
by Cokie Roberts
What We’ve Forgotten about Lincoln’s Body,
and What We’ve Never Known
by Richard Wightman Fox
Admiral Nelson’s Women: Female Masculinity and
Body Politics in the French and Napoleonic Wars
by Kathleen Wilson
We’re also on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more! Links at huntington.org
huntington.org9
SOCIAL SCENE
A PEEK AT WHAT WE’RE UP TO ONLINE
12
3
4
5
ON VERSO, THE BLOG…
Read about these stories and more at huntingtonblogs.com
How do we conserve a classic book on sunspots?
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/05/conserving-a-classic-book-on-sunspots/
Renaissance literature, history of medicine, and more—
a new cadre of research fellows dives into our Library collections.
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/05/coveted-research-fellowships/
Teenage writers find inspiration in Octavia Butler’s fiction
at a recent WriteGirl workshop.
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/06/writing-herself-in/
The key to growing edibles in a time of drought: healthy soil.
The head of our Ranch project has some tips for you.
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/06/its-all-about-the-soil/
Nearly two centuries ago, painter David Wilkie left behind an unfinished
painting. It’s now part of our European art collection.
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/05/new-home-for-a-hidden-treasure/
6
Los Angeles photographer John C. Lewis comes to
The Huntington to revisit two panorama photographs from 1915.
huntingtonblogs.org/2015/05/taking-the-long-view/
8huntington.org
ON INSTAGRAM…
From galleries to gardens and everything in between, we’ve got you covered. Follow @thehuntingtonlibrary
ON iTUNES U…
These lectures are only a tiny fraction of the Huntington audio available for free on iTunes U.
Searching for the Spirit of the Sages:
The Japanese Tea Ceremony for Sencha
by Patricia J. Graham
Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
Capital Dames
by Cokie Roberts
What We’ve Forgotten about Lincoln’s Body,
and What We’ve Never Known
by Richard Wightman Fox
Admiral Nelson’s Women: Female Masculinity and
Body Politics in the French and Napoleonic Wars
by Kathleen Wilson
We’re also on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more! Links at huntington.org
huntington.org9
L O C A L E X P E R T S,
G L O B A L R E A C H
a closer look
Poignant Portrait of Youth
CONTEMPLATING THE IMPACT OF BLUE BOY’S
DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND
Bonhams is one of the world’s largest auctioneers of fine
art and antiques, with hundreds of auctions annually in
dozens of collecting categories. Call today to arrange a
complimentary auction estimate of your property.
By Kevin Salatino
CHARLES MARION RUSSELL
A Scouting Party
watercolor on paper
+1 (323) 850 7500
[email protected]
This fall, Huntington art curators Catherine Hess
and Melinda McCurdy unveil Blue Boy & Co.,
a 179-page book highlighting the richness and
diversity of The Huntington’s European collection.
The book opens with a foreword by Kevin Salatino,
Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art
Collections, who shares how the departure of
Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy from England
to Southern California in the 1920s stirred the
emotions of the British public not long after the
end of World War I. What follows is an excerpt
from the foreword.
BLU E BOY BLU E S
As a painting you must have heard a lot about me,
For I lived here for many happy years;
Never dreaming that you could ever do without me
Till you sold me in spite of all my tears.
It’s a long way from gilded galleries in Park Lane
To the Wild West across the winter sea.
If you don’t know quite what I mean,
Simply ask Sir Joseph Duveen
And he’ll tell you what he gave ’em for me.
For I’m the Blue Boy;
The beautiful Blue Boy;
And I am forced to admit
I’m feeling a bit depressed.
A silver dollar took me and my collar
To show the slow cowboys
Just how boys
In England used to be dressed.
C
ole Porter, the great 20th-century
American songwriter, wrote this amusing
ditty in 1922, ostensibly for the London
revue Mayfair and Montmartre. It
lampoons railroad tycoon Henry E. Huntington’s
celebrated purchase a few months earlier of what
was then arguably the most famous painting in the
world: Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, painted
in 1770. Huntington had acquired it through the
10huntington.org
Kevin Salatino, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art
Collections at The Huntington, with Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy
(1770). Photograph by Kate Lain.
business-savvy machinations of the most flamboyant art dealer of the day, Joseph Duveen, from
its owner the Duke of Westminster for what was said
to be the largest price ever paid for a work of art.
Duveen, the Duke of Westminster, and the swooninducing price Huntington paid are all directly or
indirectly mentioned in Porter’s witty and highly
topical song, while its references to cowboys and
the Wild West flattered an urbane audience quick
to equate California with the caricatures found in
cheap novels and the nascent film industry.
Before shipping Blue Boy to California, Duveen—
ever the showman—arranged for it to be exhibited
at London’s National Gallery for a month. An
astonishing 90,000 people came to pay their respects,
and the Gallery’s director famously wrote “au revoir”
on the back of the painting in the hope, no doubt,
that it would someday return. It has never, however, left the estate to which Huntington brought
it. The public reaction to the painting’s departure
for America (and California, of all places!) was a
combination of sorrow, anger, dismay, and national
pride. To understand this response, we should
remember the extraordinary popular fame the
bonhams.com/la
© 2015 Bonhams & Butterfields Auctioneers Corp. All rights reserved. Principal Auctioneer: Patrick Meade. NYC License No. 1183066-DCA
BLUE BOY & Co.
picture had achieved in the
century and a half since it
had been made. We should
also credit Duveen’s brilliant
marketing skills. Equally
important, though, was what
Blue Boy symbolized to the
British people, and for that
we must recall the great
war they had just endured
european art
from 1914–18, the memory
at the
huntington
of which was still vivid.
Of the 8.5 million to
10 million soldiers killed
in the war as a whole, more
than 700,000 were from
the United Kingdom and
an additional 200,000
came from the British colonies. Additionally,
2 million British (and British colonial) soldiers were
wounded, many grievously. “Indiscriminate
slaughter” is a phrase often used to describe the
brutality of this, the first fully mechanized war
on a massive scale. In a single day of the Battle of
the Somme, the British army alone suffered more
than 57,000 casualties. By 1921, three years after
the war’s conclusion, the wounded were still
everywhere in sight, on the streets of every city and
village in Britain. The ceremonial funeral for the
“Unknown British Warrior”—the most poignant
and cathartic of all post-war commemoratives,
attended by hundreds of thousands—had been
held in November of 1920, less than a year before
Blue Boy’s sale.
It is difficult not to conclude that at least part
of the anguish of Blue Boy’s leave-taking was its
commingling in the public’s mind with the leavetaking of their sons and brothers for the war, many
of them never to return. An entire generation of
young, healthy, handsome boys killed or mutilated,
and now this: another son, another brother, symbolizing unutterable loss. And though the association of Blue Boy with Britain’s heroic fighting men
may strike us as improbable, given Blue Boy’s undeniably androgynous appearance to modern eyes,
it is useful to note that in the 19th century the
painting was described as “the most firm, spirited,
and manly portrait of youth ever painted.” “Youth”
is the operative word here, for youth is what the
Great War utterly smashed, and this beautiful
boy—pretty enough to appeal to both sexes—
struck a nationalist and deeply emotional chord.
B L U E B OY
& Co.
european art
at t h e h u n t i n g t o n
BLUE
BOY
&
Co.
DelMonico • Prestel
Blue Boy & Co. highlights the
richness and diversity of The
Huntington’s European collection.
Images of more than 100 of the
most impressive works housed
at The Huntington—including
paintings, sculptures, decorative
arts, and works on paper—are
published together for the first
time in this handsome catalog
(available fall 2015).
12huntington.org
european art
at t h e h u n t i n g t o n
C at h e r i n e h e s s
a n d M e l i n d a M C C u r d y,
with Contributions
by John brewer
a n d K e v i n s a l at i n o
One of the world’s great cultural and research
centers, The Huntington, located in San Marino,
California, is home to a celebrated library, art
collection, and botanical gardens. While famous for
its British art, especially Thomas Gainsborough’s
iconic painting, Blue Boy, The Huntington also
holds a remarkably wide-ranging collection of
continental European art, particularly French and
Italian but including fine examples of Dutch and
Flemish as well. Over one hundred of the finest
European works at The Huntington—including
paintings, sculpture, decorative art, and drawings—
are published together for the first time in this
beautifully illustrated catalog, accompanied by
thoughtful historical essays. Innovatively juxtaposing
medium, style, and cultural origin, Blue Boy & Co.
is a visually stunning selection of masterworks
that will serve as both a guide to The Huntington's
holdings and an enlightening compendium for
anyone interested in the art of Europe.
Blue Boy’s fame remained undiminished for
generations, its elegant form gracing every imaginable consumer product from tea towels to
Christmas ornaments, devolving finally to kitsch,
the surest sign of celebrity. But that fame, while
not yet on life support, has been compromised in
recent years, and what was once universally recognized now just as easily elicits a blank stare.
This volume—the first ever devoted to a wide-ranging
overview of The Huntington’s collection of European
art—hopes, in part, to reverse this trend. Blue Boy
& Co. presents its eponymous subject in the rejuvenating context of its distinguished kin—paintings, sculpture, furniture, and decorative art of the
highest quality—collected first by Henry and Arabella
Huntington and substantially enlarged by subsequent
curators and directors of the Huntington Art
Collections from the 1930s to the present. And
yet while Gainsborough’s Blue Boy and Thomas
Lawrence’s Pinkie retain their minor celebrity
status, and while The Huntington’s collection of
18th-century British “Grand Manner” portraits is
rightly known by many as the finest in the world,
large parts of The Huntington’s holdings of European art remain unfamiliar to the wider public.
At the same time, the “meaning” of Blue Boy—
a painting once nearly as iconic as the Mona Lisa—
has shifted and continues to shift over time. What,
to contemporary audiences, do Blue Boy, or Joshua
Reynolds’ Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse, or
John Constable’s View on the Stour near Dedham,
or Madame de Pompadour’s tea service mean to
today’s audiences? What, for that matter, does it mean
to have a major collection in Southern California
of 18th- and 19th-century British art, accompanied
by superb, if smaller, collections of Italian Renaissance, French 18th-century, and a smattering of
Dutch and Flemish art? This book will not answer
those questions. What it will do, we hope, is invite
a second look at and a rethinking of these beautiful
and compelling objects. It is gratifying that artists
from Robert Rauschenberg (whose first acquaintance with Blue Boy, Pinkie, and Sarah Siddons as
the Tragic Muse was transformational) to Kehinde
Wiley (whose artistic practice is informed by his
early experience of The Huntington’s Grand Manner
portraits) have found inspiration in The Huntington
Art Collections. It is our hope that every visitor
will have such epiphanies at The Huntington; this
book is a tool in the service of that goal.
Kevin Salatino is Hannah and Russel Kully Director
of the Art Collections at The Huntington.
One Colorado
48 Hugus Alley
Pasadena CA 91103
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626.577.7001
Trees in a Time of Drought
THE HUNTINGTON SERVES AS GROUND ZERO IN A RACE TO RESEARCH, AND ULTIMATELY
KILL, THE PESTS THAT THREATEN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S TREES
By Lynne Heffley
Four years of historic drought. Restricted water use. The Darth Vader of tree pests
and assorted other destructive bugs, diseases, fungi, and root rot. To protect and
maintain the health of the thousands of trees on its property, The Huntington faces
urgent challenges on multiple fronts.
During a golf-cart tour, The Huntington’s arborist Daniel Goyette spots one
victim of California’s sustained drought: a dead pine tree rising from a stand of
leafy carrotwoods. Minutes later, he indicates a Chinese mahogany, between
10 and 20 years old, that has succumbed and is slated for removal.
14huntington.org
“As we get further and further into the severe
drought,” Goyette says, “we’re seeing different
species here start to die off. The European white
birch trees were the first to start to go. Alder trees.
Some Southern magnolias are going.”
Over the next half hour, Goyette points out
numerous areas of concern. Water-intensive stands
of bamboo. Japanese cedars, turning brown without the moisture they are used to in their native
country. Some historic redwoods, too, are showing
their distress.
“Lack of humidity, lack of rainfall,” Goyette
says. “They need a deep soaking, and that’s the
only thing we can replicate well, by getting some
drip irrigation out along the drip line of those
trees and allowing it to percolate into the ground.”
A combination of drought and increased heat
seems to be creating a “tipping point” for the state’s
native oaks as well, says Rosi Dagit, senior conservation biologist for the Resource Conservation
District of the Santa Monica Mountains and an
arborist for the California Oak Foundation (as well
as author of the children’s book Grandmother Oak).
Oaks are “inordinately well-evolved to adapt to
drought conditions,” she says. “What’s changed is
the number of days that are over 90 degrees. You
can have lack of rain for months on end, and if the
temperatures are not extreme, that is one level of
stress. Increase the temperatures and number of
days and months over which those high temperatures are found, and you’ve added a whole other
layer of stress.”
The stubby remains of an oak tree at The
Huntington, its dying limbs lopped off, illustrate
Dagit’s point. “Now it is more a tall oak shrub than
an oak tree,” Goyette says. “At some point, we’re
going to have to say we’ve spent enough time and
energy on it. Is the tree worth saving? Can we put
something in its place that will be less susceptible
to drought and pests?”
Losing it will be “a sad day,” he says.
Like home- and landowners up and down the
state, The Huntington is under a mandate to cut
water usage—in its case, by a third. It is in the
process of installing water-conserving drip irrigation
systems, part of a conversion that includes eliminating sections of lawn and revamping current
irrigation methods.
Watering restrictions translate to 15 minutes of
above ground irrigation, two days a week, Goyette
says. Any new drip irrigation system must take into
account the varied amounts of water required by
different species of trees, their location, and the
competition for water that will come from nearby
plants. And because windblown dirt and dust remain
on dry leaves, inhibiting life-sustaining photosynthesis, some overhead irrigation must continue.
“We’re doing our best to irrigate within the
guidelines we’ve been given,” Goyette says. “We’re
in reevaluation mode right now.”
(Water limits are a concern, too, for The Huntington’s Valencia orange and avocado groves and
recently established grapevines. Since 2011, more
than 81,000 pounds of the Valencias have gone to
Food Forward, picked by the nonprofit organization’s
volunteers for distribution to charitable groups
across Southern California.)
As a microcosm of trees and plants that grow
all over the world, The Huntington must also
maintain a meticulous lookout for harmful insects,
bacteria, and diseases on its grounds—and monitor
those that turn up in surrounding urban, park, and
wild landscapes.
“Unfortunately, in the fourth year of drought,”
says Tim Thibault, The Huntington’s curator of
woody plant materials, “we’ve got some significant
pests on the grounds here.”
“It’s a challenging situation,” he says. “We have
trees that are already drought stressed, so they
have pests and disease; in turn, the continued
drought stress is making the problems with those
pests worse.”
Left: The leaf canopy of a healthy
cork oak (Quercus suber), with its
wonderfully craggy bark, provides
green shade for visitors to The
Huntington during a time of
intense drought. Below: Daniel
Goyette, The Huntington’s arborist,
measures the circumference of a
diseased Liquidambar’s trunk and
takes notes on its condition before
the tree is removed. Yellow stains
on the trunk indicate the presence
of the destructive Fusarium fungus
introduced by the polyphagous shot
hole borer, a tiny invasive beetle.
Photographs by Lisa Blackburn.
huntington.org15
Trees in a Time of Drought
THE HUNTINGTON SERVES AS GROUND ZERO IN A RACE TO RESEARCH, AND ULTIMATELY
KILL, THE PESTS THAT THREATEN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S TREES
By Lynne Heffley
Four years of historic drought. Restricted water use. The Darth Vader of tree pests
and assorted other destructive bugs, diseases, fungi, and root rot. To protect and
maintain the health of the thousands of trees on its property, The Huntington faces
urgent challenges on multiple fronts.
During a golf-cart tour, The Huntington’s arborist Daniel Goyette spots one
victim of California’s sustained drought: a dead pine tree rising from a stand of
leafy carrotwoods. Minutes later, he indicates a Chinese mahogany, between
10 and 20 years old, that has succumbed and is slated for removal.
14huntington.org
“As we get further and further into the severe
drought,” Goyette says, “we’re seeing different
species here start to die off. The European white
birch trees were the first to start to go. Alder trees.
Some Southern magnolias are going.”
Over the next half hour, Goyette points out
numerous areas of concern. Water-intensive stands
of bamboo. Japanese cedars, turning brown without the moisture they are used to in their native
country. Some historic redwoods, too, are showing
their distress.
“Lack of humidity, lack of rainfall,” Goyette
says. “They need a deep soaking, and that’s the
only thing we can replicate well, by getting some
drip irrigation out along the drip line of those
trees and allowing it to percolate into the ground.”
A combination of drought and increased heat
seems to be creating a “tipping point” for the state’s
native oaks as well, says Rosi Dagit, senior conservation biologist for the Resource Conservation
District of the Santa Monica Mountains and an
arborist for the California Oak Foundation (as well
as author of the children’s book Grandmother Oak).
Oaks are “inordinately well-evolved to adapt to
drought conditions,” she says. “What’s changed is
the number of days that are over 90 degrees. You
can have lack of rain for months on end, and if the
temperatures are not extreme, that is one level of
stress. Increase the temperatures and number of
days and months over which those high temperatures are found, and you’ve added a whole other
layer of stress.”
The stubby remains of an oak tree at The
Huntington, its dying limbs lopped off, illustrate
Dagit’s point. “Now it is more a tall oak shrub than
an oak tree,” Goyette says. “At some point, we’re
going to have to say we’ve spent enough time and
energy on it. Is the tree worth saving? Can we put
something in its place that will be less susceptible
to drought and pests?”
Losing it will be “a sad day,” he says.
Like home- and landowners up and down the
state, The Huntington is under a mandate to cut
water usage—in its case, by a third. It is in the
process of installing water-conserving drip irrigation
systems, part of a conversion that includes eliminating sections of lawn and revamping current
irrigation methods.
Watering restrictions translate to 15 minutes of
above ground irrigation, two days a week, Goyette
says. Any new drip irrigation system must take into
account the varied amounts of water required by
different species of trees, their location, and the
competition for water that will come from nearby
plants. And because windblown dirt and dust remain
on dry leaves, inhibiting life-sustaining photosynthesis, some overhead irrigation must continue.
“We’re doing our best to irrigate within the
guidelines we’ve been given,” Goyette says. “We’re
in reevaluation mode right now.”
(Water limits are a concern, too, for The Huntington’s Valencia orange and avocado groves and
recently established grapevines. Since 2011, more
than 81,000 pounds of the Valencias have gone to
Food Forward, picked by the nonprofit organization’s
volunteers for distribution to charitable groups
across Southern California.)
As a microcosm of trees and plants that grow
all over the world, The Huntington must also
maintain a meticulous lookout for harmful insects,
bacteria, and diseases on its grounds—and monitor
those that turn up in surrounding urban, park, and
wild landscapes.
“Unfortunately, in the fourth year of drought,”
says Tim Thibault, The Huntington’s curator of
woody plant materials, “we’ve got some significant
pests on the grounds here.”
“It’s a challenging situation,” he says. “We have
trees that are already drought stressed, so they
have pests and disease; in turn, the continued
drought stress is making the problems with those
pests worse.”
Left: The leaf canopy of a healthy
cork oak (Quercus suber), with its
wonderfully craggy bark, provides
green shade for visitors to The
Huntington during a time of
intense drought. Below: Daniel
Goyette, The Huntington’s arborist,
measures the circumference of a
diseased Liquidambar’s trunk and
takes notes on its condition before
the tree is removed. Yellow stains
on the trunk indicate the presence
of the destructive Fusarium fungus
introduced by the polyphagous shot
hole borer, a tiny invasive beetle.
Photographs by Lisa Blackburn.
huntington.org15
Top: The black holes and chambers
in this box elder’s wood indicate
damage caused by the
polyphagous shot hole borer.
Bottom: Nursery manager Dan
Berry holds five polyphagous
shot hole borers—each smaller
than a sesame seed—in the
palm of his hand. Photographs
by Lisa Blackburn.
16huntington.org
Among them: the twig girdler (it gnaws the ends of tree branches), the
defoliating lerp psyllid (a eucalyptus pest), spider mites, root rot fungi, and
the Asian citrus psyllid, which can vector bacteria, but “thankfully,” Thibault,
says, “it is not that much of a problem here.” More serious, he feels, is a
drought-driven infestation of the California five-spined ips, or bark beetle.
In an overgrown area north of the Chinese Garden—where there are plans to
replicate a mountainous pine forest in China—truncated, barren pines produce
an uncanny graveyard feel. Deodars have succumbed to the drought, but two
Canary Island pines and a Torrey pine are victims of the opportunistic ips.
“We’ve been trying to remove trees as they are identified as being affected,”
Thibault says, “but we’re at a point now in the Los Angeles Basin where we’ve
got both drought-stressed trees and a population of bark beetles that is high
enough to take them out, even if they weren’t drought stressed.”
“It’s a bad time to be a pine tree,” he adds.
Bark beetles, says Tom Coleman, a Southern California forest entomologist
with the USDA Forest Service, “kill more trees than wildfire does every year,
basically throughout North America. When a healthy tree has enough water
and enough resin, it can push these beetles out when they start to attack. When
they’re extremely stressed out, they can’t do that.”
Aerial surveys of forest areas in Southern California reveal an all-you-caneat bark beetle smorgasbord: an estimated 2 million dead trees, mostly pines,
lost to the drought.
With some pests, vigilance and tried-and-true remedies aren’t enough.
Along a winding path through The Huntington’s Desert Garden, it is hard
to miss: the enormous stump of a sycamore, one lone branch remaining of its
once-lofty height of 80 feet. After some 100 years of growth, the venerable
tree was felled by an insect smaller than a sesame seed: the polyphagous shot
hole borer.
This tiny invader, a new species of ambrosia borer beetle not identified
until 2012, is a carrier of pathogenic fungi. It has wiped out all but one of
The Huntington’s box elders, and has oaks, sycamores, and numerous other
tree species in its indiscriminate sights.
It is spreading its destruction over wide and growing swaths throughout
San Diego, Los Angeles, and Riverside Counties. For plant pathologists
and entomologists from the University of California, Riverside, The Huntington, home to virtually every tree species of interest to the bug, has become ground zero for research as they work feverishly in collaboration with
Thibault, his Huntington colleagues, Coleman, and others to find ways to
curb or neutralize the threat it poses.
“This beetle was first identified as coming into California as the tea shot
hole borer,” says Timothy Paine, UC Riverside professor of entomology. “It’s
been in the state for probably 10 years or so, but it wasn’t recognized as a
problem here until two or three years ago.”
Plant pathologist Akif Eskalen, head of UC Riverside’s Eskalen Lab, made the link in early 2012 when
he was asked to examine a South Gate homeowner’s damaged backyard avocado tree. Eskalen found the
trunk riddled with tiny holes and stained by an unfamiliar fungal infection.
UC Riverside entomologist Richard Stouthamer’s DNA analysis of the beetle responsible showed
that, while morphologically identical to the tea shot hole borer (a wide-ranging Asian ambrosia beetle)
and of the same genus, it had “14 percent genetic differences in the so-called barcoding gene.” These
variations, Stouthamer said, proved it to be a separate species.
DNA fingerprinting would show, too, that this same species, deemed a threat to California’s multimillion dollar avocado industry, previously had wreaked havoc in Israel’s avocado orchards (where it
had also been misidentified as the tea shot hole borer.)
When Eskalen began a survey of trees affected
by the newly identified and newly named polyphagous shot hole borer, an effort first funded by
the California Avocado Commission, his scouting
led to The Huntington. (The Los Angeles County
Arboretum is another research site for the UC
Riverside scientists.)
“We had called [Eskalen] out to look at our
avocados,” Thibault says, “and we had a large
English oak by the entry that was dying and
asked him to look at that.” The culprit in both
cases was Fusarium dieback, vectored by the polyphagous shot hole borer through the pathogenic
species of Fusarium (fungi) that it carries.
“That’s when Akif got really interested, and
my life changed,” says Thibault. As a result of
their joint findings, Thibault coauthored with
Eskalen, Stouthamer, and other UC Riverside
scientists a paper on the beetle and its symbiotic
Fusarium, published in the July 2013 issue of
Plant Disease, a journal of the American Phytopathological Society.
As the research continues, other surprises have
turned up.
Stouthamer has found that the polyphagous shot
hole borer in Los Angeles differs genetically from
the San Diego invaders. Eskalen’s recent research
reveals that it also carries and disseminates not one
but three types of fungi (Fusarium euwallaceae,
Graphium sp., and Acremonium sp.). The beetle
population in San Diego carries two.
“The Los Angeles beetle has spread from Sylmar
to now close to Dana Point,” says Stouthamer. “At
some point, the two are going to meet, and we’re
worried about that, because then you can get new
combinations of beetles and fungi. And we don’t
know what that’s going to do.”
Essentially “fungi farmers,” these beetles are not
wood eaters but symbiotic vectors for the pathogenic fungi they carry. Inoculating the tree with
fungal spores, they grow the fungi—the sole diet
of both adults and larvae. In the process, the fungi
colonize the tree’s vascular tissues and compromise,
often fatally, its ability to transport water and
nutrients from its roots.
(Signs of the beetle/fungi presence include leaf
discoloration, branch die-off, moist, dark staining
and/or whitish powdery exudates around the tiny,
precision-drilled holes.)
“In the sense that you have the perfect storm,
this beetle is the perfect pest,” says Stouthamer.
Once in the tree, it is inaccessible, and the com-
promised transport system inhibits pesticides or
fungicides from reaching either the beetle or its
source of nourishment.
The search for an effective pesticide and/or a
parasitic fungus, however, is still on. “There are a
lot of different ways we may be able to kill these
darn things,” Stouthamer says, “but it’s a process
that takes time. In the meantime, 100-year-old
sycamores go.”
Determining what effect, if any, the drought has
on the infestations is another area of exploration.
UC Riverside entomology graduate student Colin
Umeda is running an experiment in a field at The
Huntington to see if the beetle is drawn to wellhydrated or drier trees. He has brought in 64 young
box elders, staked them out in an inviting grid, and
is using tensiometers to measure soil moisture levels.
Box elders are “one of the most susceptible
hosts for the beetle,” says Paine, chosen because
“we want to be sure the beetles are going to attack
at some point. It’s unfortunate as far as the tree
goes, but it does let us get additional information
that we might not be able to get otherwise.”
Umeda is also monitoring the rate of beetle
development under different temperatures in a
quarantine facility at the UC Riverside Center for
Invasive Species Research to “identify which temperatures are the limits that the beetle can reproduce
in, and in which the beetles perform especially
well,” he says.
The discovery of a bait attractive to the beetles
in their flying phase enabled the creation of odoremitting funnel traps at The Huntington. Counting
the number of beetles in the traps is providing an
estimate of beetle population development.
Top: Pines north of the Chinese
Garden that succumbed to the
bark beetle (also known as the
five-spined ips) had to be cut
down and removed. Bottom:
Gardener Jose Lopez views
Fusarium damage in a crosssection of a Liquidambar tree
that fell victim to the
polyphagous shot hole borer.
Photographs by Lisa Blackburn.
huntington.org17
Top: The black holes and chambers
in this box elder’s wood indicate
damage caused by the
polyphagous shot hole borer.
Bottom: Nursery manager Dan
Berry holds five polyphagous
shot hole borers—each smaller
than a sesame seed—in the
palm of his hand. Photographs
by Lisa Blackburn.
16huntington.org
Among them: the twig girdler (it gnaws the ends of tree branches), the
defoliating lerp psyllid (a eucalyptus pest), spider mites, root rot fungi, and
the Asian citrus psyllid, which can vector bacteria, but “thankfully,” Thibault,
says, “it is not that much of a problem here.” More serious, he feels, is a
drought-driven infestation of the California five-spined ips, or bark beetle.
In an overgrown area north of the Chinese Garden—where there are plans to
replicate a mountainous pine forest in China—truncated, barren pines produce
an uncanny graveyard feel. Deodars have succumbed to the drought, but two
Canary Island pines and a Torrey pine are victims of the opportunistic ips.
“We’ve been trying to remove trees as they are identified as being affected,”
Thibault says, “but we’re at a point now in the Los Angeles Basin where we’ve
got both drought-stressed trees and a population of bark beetles that is high
enough to take them out, even if they weren’t drought stressed.”
“It’s a bad time to be a pine tree,” he adds.
Bark beetles, says Tom Coleman, a Southern California forest entomologist
with the USDA Forest Service, “kill more trees than wildfire does every year,
basically throughout North America. When a healthy tree has enough water
and enough resin, it can push these beetles out when they start to attack. When
they’re extremely stressed out, they can’t do that.”
Aerial surveys of forest areas in Southern California reveal an all-you-caneat bark beetle smorgasbord: an estimated 2 million dead trees, mostly pines,
lost to the drought.
With some pests, vigilance and tried-and-true remedies aren’t enough.
Along a winding path through The Huntington’s Desert Garden, it is hard
to miss: the enormous stump of a sycamore, one lone branch remaining of its
once-lofty height of 80 feet. After some 100 years of growth, the venerable
tree was felled by an insect smaller than a sesame seed: the polyphagous shot
hole borer.
This tiny invader, a new species of ambrosia borer beetle not identified
until 2012, is a carrier of pathogenic fungi. It has wiped out all but one of
The Huntington’s box elders, and has oaks, sycamores, and numerous other
tree species in its indiscriminate sights.
It is spreading its destruction over wide and growing swaths throughout
San Diego, Los Angeles, and Riverside Counties. For plant pathologists
and entomologists from the University of California, Riverside, The Huntington, home to virtually every tree species of interest to the bug, has become ground zero for research as they work feverishly in collaboration with
Thibault, his Huntington colleagues, Coleman, and others to find ways to
curb or neutralize the threat it poses.
“This beetle was first identified as coming into California as the tea shot
hole borer,” says Timothy Paine, UC Riverside professor of entomology. “It’s
been in the state for probably 10 years or so, but it wasn’t recognized as a
problem here until two or three years ago.”
Plant pathologist Akif Eskalen, head of UC Riverside’s Eskalen Lab, made the link in early 2012 when
he was asked to examine a South Gate homeowner’s damaged backyard avocado tree. Eskalen found the
trunk riddled with tiny holes and stained by an unfamiliar fungal infection.
UC Riverside entomologist Richard Stouthamer’s DNA analysis of the beetle responsible showed
that, while morphologically identical to the tea shot hole borer (a wide-ranging Asian ambrosia beetle)
and of the same genus, it had “14 percent genetic differences in the so-called barcoding gene.” These
variations, Stouthamer said, proved it to be a separate species.
DNA fingerprinting would show, too, that this same species, deemed a threat to California’s multimillion dollar avocado industry, previously had wreaked havoc in Israel’s avocado orchards (where it
had also been misidentified as the tea shot hole borer.)
When Eskalen began a survey of trees affected
by the newly identified and newly named polyphagous shot hole borer, an effort first funded by
the California Avocado Commission, his scouting
led to The Huntington. (The Los Angeles County
Arboretum is another research site for the UC
Riverside scientists.)
“We had called [Eskalen] out to look at our
avocados,” Thibault says, “and we had a large
English oak by the entry that was dying and
asked him to look at that.” The culprit in both
cases was Fusarium dieback, vectored by the polyphagous shot hole borer through the pathogenic
species of Fusarium (fungi) that it carries.
“That’s when Akif got really interested, and
my life changed,” says Thibault. As a result of
their joint findings, Thibault coauthored with
Eskalen, Stouthamer, and other UC Riverside
scientists a paper on the beetle and its symbiotic
Fusarium, published in the July 2013 issue of
Plant Disease, a journal of the American Phytopathological Society.
As the research continues, other surprises have
turned up.
Stouthamer has found that the polyphagous shot
hole borer in Los Angeles differs genetically from
the San Diego invaders. Eskalen’s recent research
reveals that it also carries and disseminates not one
but three types of fungi (Fusarium euwallaceae,
Graphium sp., and Acremonium sp.). The beetle
population in San Diego carries two.
“The Los Angeles beetle has spread from Sylmar
to now close to Dana Point,” says Stouthamer. “At
some point, the two are going to meet, and we’re
worried about that, because then you can get new
combinations of beetles and fungi. And we don’t
know what that’s going to do.”
Essentially “fungi farmers,” these beetles are not
wood eaters but symbiotic vectors for the pathogenic fungi they carry. Inoculating the tree with
fungal spores, they grow the fungi—the sole diet
of both adults and larvae. In the process, the fungi
colonize the tree’s vascular tissues and compromise,
often fatally, its ability to transport water and
nutrients from its roots.
(Signs of the beetle/fungi presence include leaf
discoloration, branch die-off, moist, dark staining
and/or whitish powdery exudates around the tiny,
precision-drilled holes.)
“In the sense that you have the perfect storm,
this beetle is the perfect pest,” says Stouthamer.
Once in the tree, it is inaccessible, and the com-
promised transport system inhibits pesticides or
fungicides from reaching either the beetle or its
source of nourishment.
The search for an effective pesticide and/or a
parasitic fungus, however, is still on. “There are a
lot of different ways we may be able to kill these
darn things,” Stouthamer says, “but it’s a process
that takes time. In the meantime, 100-year-old
sycamores go.”
Determining what effect, if any, the drought has
on the infestations is another area of exploration.
UC Riverside entomology graduate student Colin
Umeda is running an experiment in a field at The
Huntington to see if the beetle is drawn to wellhydrated or drier trees. He has brought in 64 young
box elders, staked them out in an inviting grid, and
is using tensiometers to measure soil moisture levels.
Box elders are “one of the most susceptible
hosts for the beetle,” says Paine, chosen because
“we want to be sure the beetles are going to attack
at some point. It’s unfortunate as far as the tree
goes, but it does let us get additional information
that we might not be able to get otherwise.”
Umeda is also monitoring the rate of beetle
development under different temperatures in a
quarantine facility at the UC Riverside Center for
Invasive Species Research to “identify which temperatures are the limits that the beetle can reproduce
in, and in which the beetles perform especially
well,” he says.
The discovery of a bait attractive to the beetles
in their flying phase enabled the creation of odoremitting funnel traps at The Huntington. Counting
the number of beetles in the traps is providing an
estimate of beetle population development.
Top: Pines north of the Chinese
Garden that succumbed to the
bark beetle (also known as the
five-spined ips) had to be cut
down and removed. Bottom:
Gardener Jose Lopez views
Fusarium damage in a crosssection of a Liquidambar tree
that fell victim to the
polyphagous shot hole borer.
Photographs by Lisa Blackburn.
huntington.org17
T H E L A NG H A M H U N T I NG TO N , P A S A D E N A
Top: Tim Thibault (left), curator
of woody plant materials at The
Huntington, and Richard
Stouthamer, entomologist at
University of California, Riverside,
collect polyphagous shot hole
borers from odor-emitting funnel
traps to estimate the size of their
population. Bottom: Colin Umeda,
an entomology graduate student
at UC Riverside, conducts an
experiment with 64 young box
elders at The Huntington,
recording soil moisture levels to
determine if polyphagous shot
hole borers are drawn to wellhydrated or drier trees.
Photographs by Lisa Blackburn.
18huntington.org
(“We’ve also tried some ‘things that are so
crazy they just might work,’ ” Thibault says. Bioacoustical control, for example, involves the playback of recorded sounds made by the beetles;
researchers at Northern Arizona University have
had some success with this bark beetle control in
their laboratory.)
While it isn’t clear how the polyphagous shot
hole borer migrated to Southern California via
two separate routes, the human factor is likely,
Paine says.
“People don’t recognize what serious problems
they might cause by not being careful about bringing in plant material from overseas. I mean, the
signs at the international terminals at airports are
not there by accident.”
At present, just under four dozen tree species
are the beetle’s favored reproductive hosts. The
number of tree species that it targets? More than
350 and counting.
There is one promising development. During
trips to Vietnam and Taiwan—home to genetic
matches for the L.A. and San Diego polyphagous
shot hole borer populations, respectively—Eskalen,
Stouthamer, and Thibault have found species of a
predatory wasp and of a fly that seem to target this
beetle. The insects require further study in the
field and in the lab (a process of years, not months,
considering quarantine and permission requirements), but Stouthamer has hopes that the wasp,
in particular, may be the key to substantially reducing Southern California’s beetle populations.
(UC Riverside, which has a long history with
plant management through biological controls, has
also identified a parasitic wasp that successfully
targets the Asian citrus psyllid, a major threat to
California’s citrus industry and home growers.)
Long committed to the limited use of chemical
pesticides, The Huntington would certainly prefer
a biotic solution, Thibault says.
“We’ve got 700,000 visitors a year, not to mention
concerns for our own safety,” he points out. “The
current theory in integrated pest management is
to spray as little as possible, and we do as little as
we possibly can.”
Meanwhile, Goyette canvases the gardens daily
for drought and pest damage. In any given week,
he walks and drives—via golf cart—around all 207
acres of The Huntington property, “just to be
sure nothing new is dying, staying aware of
what’s happening.”
“Something I need to look at now,” he says, “is
a willow in the Shakespeare Garden. Apparently
there is something attacking that. It could be,” he
adds with optimistic cheer, “just a nuisance pest
that will come and go.”
For his part, Thibault, even as the hunt for a
solution to the polyphagous shot hole borer and
its killer fungi continues with crime scene urgency,
is concerned about two bad bugs not yet on site:
the South American palm weevil—“it is right on
the border in Tijuana,” he notes—and the goldspotted oak borer.
The latter “is now in Orange County, and
there’s a continuity of oak trees, coupled with the
flight range of the insect, that could ladder it to us.”
“And you never know,” Thibault says, “when
somebody is going to throw a load of infected
firewood in the back of their pickup and bring it
right to Pasadena.”
Lynne Heffley is a freelance writer based in South
Pasadena, Calif.
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Let Us Entertain You
FANCHON AND MARCO’S BIG “IDEAS” REVOLUTIONIZED
THE 1920S THEATER WORLD
By Jennifer A. Watts
Chances are you’ve never heard of Fanchon and Marco. But in the 1920s, millions
of Americans had. A wildly successful theatrical firm founded in 1923 by Fanchon
Wolff Simon (1892–1965) and her brother, Marco Wolff (1894–1977), produced live
stage shows that dazzled moviegoers from Los Angeles to New York. The Fanchon
and Marco brand became synonymous with fast-paced extravaganzas that featured
elaborate sets and row upon row of winsome chorus girls. In 1932, at the height of
the Great Depression, the outfit reported earnings in the seven figures, and Fanchon
estimated that she had trained more than 10,000 dancers all told, including some
who would go on to become big-time stars, such as Shirley Temple and Ginger Rogers.
The press dubbed the sister and brother the “Henry Fords of entertainment” for their
assembly-line approach to mass-producing shows. With the recent acquisition of
1,400 photographs donated by the family, The Huntington now has a rare group of
pictures depicting hundreds of Fanchon and Marco sets and performers between
1923 and 1935, the organization’s heyday.
Far left: “The San Francisco
Beauties,” the first female tap
dance lineup on the West Coast,
1927. The dancers are (left to right):
Alice Sullivan, Zeta Harrison, Reva
Howitt (stage name “Lollipop”),
Marge Hacker, Alice Haas, Idis
Hacker. In her book, Lollipop:
Vaudeville Turns with a Fanchon
and Marco Dancer, Howitt wrote
that, at the end of 1925, she was
selected to be “one of the San
Francisco Beauties, Fanchon
and Marco’s premiere showgirls.”
Photograph by Harry Wenger.
Center: Marco Wolff, far left,
with three unidentified women
outside the Los Angeles home
office of West Coast Theatres,
one of the largest theater owners
and operators in the country.
Fanchon and Marco did business
with them and provided shows
for all of their theaters. Photograph
by Harry Wenger. Right: Fanchon
Wolff, far left, and performers
rehearsing for the “Opportunity
Idea,” 1928. Unidentified
photographer.
huntington.org21
Let Us Entertain You
FANCHON AND MARCO’S BIG “IDEAS” REVOLUTIONIZED
THE 1920S THEATER WORLD
By Jennifer A. Watts
Chances are you’ve never heard of Fanchon and Marco. But in the 1920s, millions
of Americans had. A wildly successful theatrical firm founded in 1923 by Fanchon
Wolff Simon (1892–1965) and her brother, Marco Wolff (1894–1977), produced live
stage shows that dazzled moviegoers from Los Angeles to New York. The Fanchon
and Marco brand became synonymous with fast-paced extravaganzas that featured
elaborate sets and row upon row of winsome chorus girls. In 1932, at the height of
the Great Depression, the outfit reported earnings in the seven figures, and Fanchon
estimated that she had trained more than 10,000 dancers all told, including some
who would go on to become big-time stars, such as Shirley Temple and Ginger Rogers.
The press dubbed the sister and brother the “Henry Fords of entertainment” for their
assembly-line approach to mass-producing shows. With the recent acquisition of
1,400 photographs donated by the family, The Huntington now has a rare group of
pictures depicting hundreds of Fanchon and Marco sets and performers between
1923 and 1935, the organization’s heyday.
Far left: “The San Francisco
Beauties,” the first female tap
dance lineup on the West Coast,
1927. The dancers are (left to right):
Alice Sullivan, Zeta Harrison, Reva
Howitt (stage name “Lollipop”),
Marge Hacker, Alice Haas, Idis
Hacker. In her book, Lollipop:
Vaudeville Turns with a Fanchon
and Marco Dancer, Howitt wrote
that, at the end of 1925, she was
selected to be “one of the San
Francisco Beauties, Fanchon
and Marco’s premiere showgirls.”
Photograph by Harry Wenger.
Center: Marco Wolff, far left,
with three unidentified women
outside the Los Angeles home
office of West Coast Theatres,
one of the largest theater owners
and operators in the country.
Fanchon and Marco did business
with them and provided shows
for all of their theaters. Photograph
by Harry Wenger. Right: Fanchon
Wolff, far left, and performers
rehearsing for the “Opportunity
Idea,” 1928. Unidentified
photographer.
huntington.org21
Born and raised in a large Jewish family in
turn-of-the-century Los Angeles, Fanchon and
Marco Wolff caught the show business bug early
on. As teenagers, the duo cut their teeth on the
vaudeville circuit performing a violin and ballroom dance act. By 1919, they had migrated behind the scenes to produce musical revues. An
epiphany came with their 1920 California-themed
production “Sun-Kist,” starring a line of highkicking beauties. A frenetic mash-up, according to
one contemporary critic, “Sun-Kist” whirled between burlesque and grand opera, “with dashes
of musical comedy and vaudeville in between.”
West Coast audiences gobbled it up. The two
sensed a lucrative opportunity at the historic
crossroads where vaudeville overlapped with the
movie industry’s meteoric rise and huge audiences.
A movie ticket to a big city theater in the early
1920s often included a full-fledged musical revue
with live song and dance. Called “prologues,”
these stage shows preceded and often promoted
the film. Audiences loved them—often more than
the silent film itself. Movie executives and savvy
theater owners saw them as a high-profile way to
keep filling seats. The problem? A show was costly and fleeting, as it often related to a specific
film. A prologue typically closed when a movie
left the theater after a brief one- to two-week run.
Smaller houses simply could not afford them, given
the logistics and expense. Enter Fanchon and Marco.
These two vaudevillians-turned-producers hit upon
an enterprising scheme to generate hundreds of
touring prologues, meeting a nationwide demand
for them in a big way.
“The secret to a good prologue,” Fanchon told
one reporter who had asked for an accounting of
F&M’s success, “is to have the most entertainment
in the least amount of time.” Fanchon and Marco
entered the prologue business in 1923 with an
innovation they called the “Idea,” a compressed
entertainment grab bag based on a broad and
Top: “Hoops M’Idea,” 1927. From a display advertisement in the Los
Angeles Times for the Loew’s State Theater: “On the stage…Fanchon &
Marco’s ‘Hoops M’Idea’ featuring Renoff and Renova, world’s greatest
classical dancers, Sunkist Beauties—All Beauts! Juanita Wray, prima
donna of ‘Castles in the Air’ – The Lovetts – Scotty Westen, Natalie
Harrison.” Photograph by Harry Wenger. Center: “Stairway of Dreams
Idea,” 1928. From a display advertisement in the San Jose Evening
News: “Fanchon and Marco’s ‘Stairway of Dreams.’ Biggest stage
spectacle in months with 20 great girls. Flo and Ollie Walters, Woods
Miller, and of course, Milt Franklyn and his band!” Unidentified
photographer. Bottom: “Masks Idea,” 1927. According to the Los
Angeles Times: “On the stage, Rube Wolf ‘world’s homeliest musical
shriek’ makes his debut at the Metropolitan in Fanchon and Marco’s
‘Masks.’” Rube Wolf, who dropped one f from his surname, was
Fanchon and Marco’s brother and an orchestra leader for the
company; he also played trumpet. Photograph by Harry Wenger.
often nebulous theme. An F&M Idea promised big
laughs, lavish costumes, and a grand finale in a
snappy 40 minutes, tops. Themes ran from the fairly
predictable (“Hollywood Beauties,” “Dancelogue,”
“Romance”) to the timely (“Radio,” “Aviation”) to
the outré (“Hot Mama Goose”) to the downright
weird. The “Salad Idea” was one such oddity, a
production from the fertile mind of Fanchon, who
dreamed it up over dinner one night. Musicians
played in chef’s caps while dancers, dressed like
lettuce leaves and asparagus stalks, emerged on
stage from a colossal bowl. According to one of the
company’s long-term chorus-line hoofers, Reva
Howitt (aka Lollipop), the dancers were not amused.
Aside from offering entertainment value that
packed a swift punch, sheer volume proved an
equally important element to the duo’s success.
Ideas were churned out at the rate of one per week
in a block-long Hollywood facility that employed
a phalanx of choreographers, musicians, carpenters, electricians, seamstresses, “advance men,”
stage directors, scenic painters, and the hundreds
of others needed to create and promote these prepackaged shows. Ideas required a deep well of talent, and Los Angeles provided an ample, everrenewable supply. More than 1,000 performers
were cast in the dozens of F&M Ideas circulating
around the nation in 1932. Marco, who oversaw
the business side of things, ticked off an extensive
list that included novelty acts (whistlers, mind
readers, “iron jaw experts,” and “punching bag
artists”); animals (dogs, elephants, horses, four
grizzly bears); musicians; acrobats; contortionists;
a plethora of comics (including a “nut comic” and
a “Dutch comic”); and dancers of all sorts. Fanchon openly credited the company’s Southern
California locale: “If you need a Japanese knife
thrower or a Hindu snake charmer, or a rainmaker or a long-haired prophet—there they are, as
quick as you can get them on the phone…Los Angeles is the most amazing place in the world!”
Above all else, chorus lines of young women
became the signature Fanchon and Marco touch.
There were the Sunkist Beauties and San Francisco
Beauties, small troupes of six to eight. Yet, the Fanchonettes were the pièce de résistance. The groups
of two dozen dancers—enough to fill a stage—
were the creative brainchild of Fanchon, as the
name suggests. She supervised each Fanchonette’s
selection and artistic training through the popular
dance school F&M opened in 1926. Fanchon
prized “youth and naturalness” in her dancers
Clockwise from upper left: A dancer wearing an “asparagus top” headpiece for the “Salad Idea,” photograph by
Harry Wenger; a dancer in the “Peacock Idea,” 1927, photograph by Paralta Studios; a dancer in the “Masks Idea,”
1927, photograph by Paralta Studios; Norma Wilson in the “Masks Idea,” 1927, photograph by Paralta Studios.
(most of whom ranged between 15 and 20 years of
age), giving high marks to intelligence as well. All
the better to swiftly learn the complicated and
ever-changing dance numbers, many of which
Fanchon devised herself.
To be a Fanchonette required precision timing and
stamina, not to mention guts. A crowd-pleasing
number might draw on a repertoire of steps from
ballroom, ballet, tap, and jazz. A Fanchonette
could be required to perform an arabesque aloft
while clutching a rope or suspended from a swing.
She might be wearing an elaborate spider costume
while crawling across a giant web or a cumbersome
hoopskirt that concealed a pair of stilts. The “Pirate
huntington.org23
Born and raised in a large Jewish family in
turn-of-the-century Los Angeles, Fanchon and
Marco Wolff caught the show business bug early
on. As teenagers, the duo cut their teeth on the
vaudeville circuit performing a violin and ballroom dance act. By 1919, they had migrated behind the scenes to produce musical revues. An
epiphany came with their 1920 California-themed
production “Sun-Kist,” starring a line of highkicking beauties. A frenetic mash-up, according to
one contemporary critic, “Sun-Kist” whirled between burlesque and grand opera, “with dashes
of musical comedy and vaudeville in between.”
West Coast audiences gobbled it up. The two
sensed a lucrative opportunity at the historic
crossroads where vaudeville overlapped with the
movie industry’s meteoric rise and huge audiences.
A movie ticket to a big city theater in the early
1920s often included a full-fledged musical revue
with live song and dance. Called “prologues,”
these stage shows preceded and often promoted
the film. Audiences loved them—often more than
the silent film itself. Movie executives and savvy
theater owners saw them as a high-profile way to
keep filling seats. The problem? A show was costly and fleeting, as it often related to a specific
film. A prologue typically closed when a movie
left the theater after a brief one- to two-week run.
Smaller houses simply could not afford them, given
the logistics and expense. Enter Fanchon and Marco.
These two vaudevillians-turned-producers hit upon
an enterprising scheme to generate hundreds of
touring prologues, meeting a nationwide demand
for them in a big way.
“The secret to a good prologue,” Fanchon told
one reporter who had asked for an accounting of
F&M’s success, “is to have the most entertainment
in the least amount of time.” Fanchon and Marco
entered the prologue business in 1923 with an
innovation they called the “Idea,” a compressed
entertainment grab bag based on a broad and
Top: “Hoops M’Idea,” 1927. From a display advertisement in the Los
Angeles Times for the Loew’s State Theater: “On the stage…Fanchon &
Marco’s ‘Hoops M’Idea’ featuring Renoff and Renova, world’s greatest
classical dancers, Sunkist Beauties—All Beauts! Juanita Wray, prima
donna of ‘Castles in the Air’ – The Lovetts – Scotty Westen, Natalie
Harrison.” Photograph by Harry Wenger. Center: “Stairway of Dreams
Idea,” 1928. From a display advertisement in the San Jose Evening
News: “Fanchon and Marco’s ‘Stairway of Dreams.’ Biggest stage
spectacle in months with 20 great girls. Flo and Ollie Walters, Woods
Miller, and of course, Milt Franklyn and his band!” Unidentified
photographer. Bottom: “Masks Idea,” 1927. According to the Los
Angeles Times: “On the stage, Rube Wolf ‘world’s homeliest musical
shriek’ makes his debut at the Metropolitan in Fanchon and Marco’s
‘Masks.’” Rube Wolf, who dropped one f from his surname, was
Fanchon and Marco’s brother and an orchestra leader for the
company; he also played trumpet. Photograph by Harry Wenger.
often nebulous theme. An F&M Idea promised big
laughs, lavish costumes, and a grand finale in a
snappy 40 minutes, tops. Themes ran from the fairly
predictable (“Hollywood Beauties,” “Dancelogue,”
“Romance”) to the timely (“Radio,” “Aviation”) to
the outré (“Hot Mama Goose”) to the downright
weird. The “Salad Idea” was one such oddity, a
production from the fertile mind of Fanchon, who
dreamed it up over dinner one night. Musicians
played in chef’s caps while dancers, dressed like
lettuce leaves and asparagus stalks, emerged on
stage from a colossal bowl. According to one of the
company’s long-term chorus-line hoofers, Reva
Howitt (aka Lollipop), the dancers were not amused.
Aside from offering entertainment value that
packed a swift punch, sheer volume proved an
equally important element to the duo’s success.
Ideas were churned out at the rate of one per week
in a block-long Hollywood facility that employed
a phalanx of choreographers, musicians, carpenters, electricians, seamstresses, “advance men,”
stage directors, scenic painters, and the hundreds
of others needed to create and promote these prepackaged shows. Ideas required a deep well of talent, and Los Angeles provided an ample, everrenewable supply. More than 1,000 performers
were cast in the dozens of F&M Ideas circulating
around the nation in 1932. Marco, who oversaw
the business side of things, ticked off an extensive
list that included novelty acts (whistlers, mind
readers, “iron jaw experts,” and “punching bag
artists”); animals (dogs, elephants, horses, four
grizzly bears); musicians; acrobats; contortionists;
a plethora of comics (including a “nut comic” and
a “Dutch comic”); and dancers of all sorts. Fanchon openly credited the company’s Southern
California locale: “If you need a Japanese knife
thrower or a Hindu snake charmer, or a rainmaker or a long-haired prophet—there they are, as
quick as you can get them on the phone…Los Angeles is the most amazing place in the world!”
Above all else, chorus lines of young women
became the signature Fanchon and Marco touch.
There were the Sunkist Beauties and San Francisco
Beauties, small troupes of six to eight. Yet, the Fanchonettes were the pièce de résistance. The groups
of two dozen dancers—enough to fill a stage—
were the creative brainchild of Fanchon, as the
name suggests. She supervised each Fanchonette’s
selection and artistic training through the popular
dance school F&M opened in 1926. Fanchon
prized “youth and naturalness” in her dancers
Clockwise from upper left: A dancer wearing an “asparagus top” headpiece for the “Salad Idea,” photograph by
Harry Wenger; a dancer in the “Peacock Idea,” 1927, photograph by Paralta Studios; a dancer in the “Masks Idea,”
1927, photograph by Paralta Studios; Norma Wilson in the “Masks Idea,” 1927, photograph by Paralta Studios.
(most of whom ranged between 15 and 20 years of
age), giving high marks to intelligence as well. All
the better to swiftly learn the complicated and
ever-changing dance numbers, many of which
Fanchon devised herself.
To be a Fanchonette required precision timing and
stamina, not to mention guts. A crowd-pleasing
number might draw on a repertoire of steps from
ballroom, ballet, tap, and jazz. A Fanchonette
could be required to perform an arabesque aloft
while clutching a rope or suspended from a swing.
She might be wearing an elaborate spider costume
while crawling across a giant web or a cumbersome
hoopskirt that concealed a pair of stilts. The “Pirate
huntington.org23
Idea” required shoot-outs, ladder climbing, and a
grand finale that included doing the splits. The
aforementioned Lollipop remembered whirling
from a “spectacular peacock number in a very
scanty costume” to a Red Riding Hood number
24huntington.org
to a frenetic grand finale in which her tin-soled shoes
threw off blue sparks! In the popular naval-themed
“Gobs of Joy” (gob being a slang term for a sailor),
a pair of Fanchonettes sat astride enormous battleship guns that discharged a pyrotechnic finish
(see opposite, top right).
The life of a Fanchon and Marco performer
could be grueling, and never more so than when
out on the road. By 1928, F&M Ideas were playing in more than 100 theaters from San Diego to
Vancouver on the West Coast, and across the
country in Colorado, Montana, Illinois, Missouri,
and New York, in cities large and small. A show
complete with sets, costumes, and a cast of 40 to
50 would arrive at a venue to perform four to five
shows each day. After a week or two, the production would take an overnight train, repeating the
entire process at a new venue with rarely a day off.
Dancers were paid a little more than $30 per week
and typically made the six-month circuit two times,
three at the most. Even so, one wide-eyed Fanchonette from Iowa expressed the sentiments of many
an up-and-coming young dancer in appraising
her F&M tour as “glamorous and well-paying.”
Despite the ascendency of the “talkies” and the
catastrophic Great Depression, Fanchon and Marco
continued to do surprisingly well into the 1930s.
F&M opened a theatrical school in 1933, training
myriad wannabes and budding stars, including
the likes of Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, and Cyd
Charisse, among others. Even so, by 1936, entertainment appetites had shifted, and F&M shuttered
the Hollywood production facility for good.
Fanchon and Marco may have burned brightly
as the impresarios of those strange theatrical
amalgams called “prologues,” but demand for the
genre was over in a flash. While neither the first
nor only people in the prologue business, the two
cornered the niche market with efficient panache
and grand, go-for-broke style. Today little F&M
business history exists: no records, receipts, ledgers,
or files, despite F&M’s having employed thousands
of people in its day. This fact makes The Huntington’s
15 volumes of photographs and small group of
clippings and programs an indispensable resource
for scholars. The volumes, which appear to have
been organized chronologically, contain images—
often four to a page—that served as a corporate
inventory of hundreds of the Ideas, both sets and
performers. Though accompanying information
is scant, several theater and dance specialists have
already begun to identify members of specific casts,
such as the Mexican-American Romero brothers,
called the “Aristocrats of Dance,” who appeared in
many Spanish-themed Ideas.
In later years, Reva Howitt reminisced that she
and many fellow performers considered their brief
time with F&M to be a labor of love. “I speak for
my hundreds of counterparts…who are lost in
obscurity but who provided entertainment for the
public with zest, enthusiasm, proficiency, responsibility, and color,” she wrote. “Hurrah for us!”
Opposite (top left): “Seeing Double Idea,” 1930. A reviewer in the Los Angeles Times commented: “whether
they are real twins or stage twins, in every case, doesn’t matter. Each pair looks convincingly alike, and they
include comedians, tumblers, fun-makers, and dancers.” Photograph by Harry Wenger. Opposite (top right):
The Four Covans (1928), a tap dance group featuring dancing sensation Willie Covan (third from left), his
brother Dewey, and their wives. Photograph by Paralta Studios. Opposite (bottom): Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle
and Nita Martan, stars of “College Capers Idea,” 1928. According to the Los Angeles Times: “F&M, gunning for
big names for their stage Ideas, have just signed…Arbuckle to star in person in ‘College Capers’…in the role
of the fat campus freshie.” Photograph by Harry Wenger. Top (left): “Yachting Idea,” 1926. Unidentified
photographer. Top (right): “Gobs of Joy Idea,” 1929. Photograph by Harry Wenger. Bottom: “Moonlit Waters
Idea,” 1927. Variety commented: “F&M have taken advantage of the pop song of the same title and utilized
other ‘moon’ songs for this newest of Ideas.”
Jennifer A. Watts is curator of photographs at
The Huntington.
huntington.org25
Idea” required shoot-outs, ladder climbing, and a
grand finale that included doing the splits. The
aforementioned Lollipop remembered whirling
from a “spectacular peacock number in a very
scanty costume” to a Red Riding Hood number
24huntington.org
to a frenetic grand finale in which her tin-soled shoes
threw off blue sparks! In the popular naval-themed
“Gobs of Joy” (gob being a slang term for a sailor),
a pair of Fanchonettes sat astride enormous battleship guns that discharged a pyrotechnic finish
(see opposite, top right).
The life of a Fanchon and Marco performer
could be grueling, and never more so than when
out on the road. By 1928, F&M Ideas were playing in more than 100 theaters from San Diego to
Vancouver on the West Coast, and across the
country in Colorado, Montana, Illinois, Missouri,
and New York, in cities large and small. A show
complete with sets, costumes, and a cast of 40 to
50 would arrive at a venue to perform four to five
shows each day. After a week or two, the production would take an overnight train, repeating the
entire process at a new venue with rarely a day off.
Dancers were paid a little more than $30 per week
and typically made the six-month circuit two times,
three at the most. Even so, one wide-eyed Fanchonette from Iowa expressed the sentiments of many
an up-and-coming young dancer in appraising
her F&M tour as “glamorous and well-paying.”
Despite the ascendency of the “talkies” and the
catastrophic Great Depression, Fanchon and Marco
continued to do surprisingly well into the 1930s.
F&M opened a theatrical school in 1933, training
myriad wannabes and budding stars, including
the likes of Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, and Cyd
Charisse, among others. Even so, by 1936, entertainment appetites had shifted, and F&M shuttered
the Hollywood production facility for good.
Fanchon and Marco may have burned brightly
as the impresarios of those strange theatrical
amalgams called “prologues,” but demand for the
genre was over in a flash. While neither the first
nor only people in the prologue business, the two
cornered the niche market with efficient panache
and grand, go-for-broke style. Today little F&M
business history exists: no records, receipts, ledgers,
or files, despite F&M’s having employed thousands
of people in its day. This fact makes The Huntington’s
15 volumes of photographs and small group of
clippings and programs an indispensable resource
for scholars. The volumes, which appear to have
been organized chronologically, contain images—
often four to a page—that served as a corporate
inventory of hundreds of the Ideas, both sets and
performers. Though accompanying information
is scant, several theater and dance specialists have
already begun to identify members of specific casts,
such as the Mexican-American Romero brothers,
called the “Aristocrats of Dance,” who appeared in
many Spanish-themed Ideas.
In later years, Reva Howitt reminisced that she
and many fellow performers considered their brief
time with F&M to be a labor of love. “I speak for
my hundreds of counterparts…who are lost in
obscurity but who provided entertainment for the
public with zest, enthusiasm, proficiency, responsibility, and color,” she wrote. “Hurrah for us!”
Opposite (top left): “Seeing Double Idea,” 1930. A reviewer in the Los Angeles Times commented: “whether
they are real twins or stage twins, in every case, doesn’t matter. Each pair looks convincingly alike, and they
include comedians, tumblers, fun-makers, and dancers.” Photograph by Harry Wenger. Opposite (top right):
The Four Covans (1928), a tap dance group featuring dancing sensation Willie Covan (third from left), his
brother Dewey, and their wives. Photograph by Paralta Studios. Opposite (bottom): Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle
and Nita Martan, stars of “College Capers Idea,” 1928. According to the Los Angeles Times: “F&M, gunning for
big names for their stage Ideas, have just signed…Arbuckle to star in person in ‘College Capers’…in the role
of the fat campus freshie.” Photograph by Harry Wenger. Top (left): “Yachting Idea,” 1926. Unidentified
photographer. Top (right): “Gobs of Joy Idea,” 1929. Photograph by Harry Wenger. Bottom: “Moonlit Waters
Idea,” 1927. Variety commented: “F&M have taken advantage of the pop song of the same title and utilized
other ‘moon’ songs for this newest of Ideas.”
Jennifer A. Watts is curator of photographs at
The Huntington.
huntington.org25
scholar’s insight
Mysterious Manuscript in a Silk Purse
AN INTIMATE GLIMPSE AT A MEDIEVAL POEM PUT TO A SURPRISING USE
By Andrea Denny-Brown
A
s a graduate student doing research in
the library at The Huntington in the
summer of 2002, I examined a manuscript that surprised me so much that it
would take me more than 10 years to fully articulate my response. At the time, I was writing a
doctoral dissertation on the symbolic nature of
clothing in medieval English poetry, and I knew
that this particular manuscript recorded a unique
Middle English poem I had recently begun to
Top: The Huntington Library’s
manuscript of a 15th-century
English poem written on a scroll
of parchment approximately four
inches wide and five feet long.
The illustration and opening
lines of the poem depict the
Christological artifact known as
Veronica’s veil. Christ’s face is
just visible in the center of the
image. Bottom: In the Middle
Ages, the tiny roll was most likely
carried in a leather pouch. For
several decades, however, it has
been kept in this Victorian silk
purse with golden drawstrings.
Photographs by Kate Lain.
study. I asked to see it, along with a series of
other rare manuscripts, because I knew from its
catalogue description that it had illustrations to
accompany the poem, which was about various
sacred objects associated with Christ’s life and death.
That manuscript ended up being a tiny roll identified
by the call number HM 26054. When I went to pick
it up from the librarian at the call desk in the reading
room, it arrived in an emerald green silk bag with
golden drawstrings, the whole thing not much
larger than the palm of my hand.
I should admit that in this early period of my
archival research, I didn’t always have a full grasp
of the size or shape of the manuscript I had called
up to examine, and I was often surprised by the
material presence of an item as I brought it back to
my desk for closer study. But this object was even
more startling than usual; the delicate 19th-century
silk bag implied that the mysterious manuscript
inside was to be treated like a precious piece of
jewelry. More used to carrying heavy, slightly
bulky, brown leather books back to my research
station, I felt this time like I was carrying an intimate possession—a lady’s reticule with unknown
personal items inside.
T H E O RI GI N A L
CO N V E RT I B L E
The year-round beautiful weather in Los Angeles
creates the irresistible urge to cruise along the
coast with the top down. Even the charioteers on
display at the Getty Villa can’t resist the feeling
of the wind through their hair. Come visit them
and the more than 1,200 antiquities on display.
The Getty Villa. One mile north of Sunset on PCH.
Reserve your free ticket today.
Admission is free. An advance timed-entry ticket is required.
Prize Vessel with Athena, Greek (Attic), 490–480 B.C. Terracotta. The
J. Paul Getty Museum. Text and Design © 2014 J. Paul Getty Trust
26huntington.org
getty.edu
The manuscript is illustrated with
objects related to the Crucifixion
and its aftermath, as narrated by
the gospels of the New Testament
(from right to left): the lance that
the soldier Longinus used to
pierce Christ’s side, creating his
fifth wound; the ladder needed
to take Christ’s body down from
the cross; and the hammer and
tongs used to remove the nails
from Christ’s hands and feet.
Photograph by Kate Lain.
28huntington.org
That day in the library, as I somewhat selfconsciously opened the silk bag and unrolled the
narrow but unexpectedly long manuscript (roughly
four inches wide and five feet long), I became painfully aware of the vast and often obscuring difference between reading a medieval poem in a modern
edition and reading it in its original format. While
my initial interest in the poem written in this
manuscript was its curious fixation with the
material objects of Christ’s Passion, I had until
that moment been blind to just how curious the
poem’s own material circumstances were. Why
was this manuscript so narrow and long? Why was
it in roll format at all, a form used primarily for
administrative court documents and royal genealogies? Why were its 24 illustrations, while
charming in their simplicity, so crudely drawn?
All worthy questions, but unfortunately not
related to the topic of my dissertation. Most of
the analysis I originally wrote on this poem was
dropped from the final draft of my doctoral work,
and what I did manage to keep in that document
was eventually cut from my first monograph. But
I always planned to return to the arma Christi
manuscript—I was on intimate terms with it now,
and its mystery would not let me go.
CURIOUS OBJECT ABOUT CURIOUS OBJECTS
The so-called arma Christi poem—a Latin phrase
meaning the “arms” or “instruments” of Christ­­—
was written in Middle English in the 15th century
and survives in 20 manuscripts, two of which are
housed at the Huntington Library (HM 26054 and
HM 142). This fascinating poem is simultaneously
a prayer, an ode, and a visual study of the many
material objects associated with Christ’s Passion.
Some of these objects presented in the poem are
clearly miraculous, such as Veronica’s veil and the
famously “seamless” garment worn by Christ, but
most, such as the pillar, ropes, and blindfold used in
Christ’s mocking, and the ladder, hammer, and nails
used during and after the crucifixion, are more mundane—a cluster of otherwise unremarkable things
made spectacular by their role in this singular event.
My interest in this poem originated in one
particular stanza, the verses that deal with Christ’s
garments. In the Bible, Christ wears two main items
of clothing. The tunica inconsutilis, or “unseamed
tunic,” is Christ’s own garment, so called because
it was made without a seam, meaning that it was not
made by a human hand; the vestis purpurea, or
“purple garment,” is the garment in which he is
dressed during his mocking, when his captors
ridicule him by costuming him like a king. Each
of the four gospels in the New Testament tells the
story of the soldiers who play lots (gamble) for
Christ’s garment. As the story goes, right after the
crucifixion itself, the soldiers decide to divide the
seamless garment among themselves; when they
realize that it has no seams (and thus cannot easily
This manuscript pulls out all the stops—
it synchronizes the power of words,
images, and objects—to ask for, and to
offer, spiritual guidance and protection
for a human life necessarily lived
among material things.
be divided), they instead play lots to see who will
take the whole garment. The episode is a crucial
one in the story of the Passion, and it is usually
understood to symbolize the indivisible unity of
the body of Christ and of the Church.
But in the arma Christi poem, this biblical
episode takes on new meaning. The poem mentions
the seamless garment, but it insists that the purple
garment is the one the soldiers gambled for. This
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was an easy switch to make: Christ’s seamless robe
was, we are to understand, simple and unadorned,
whereas the purple robe used to mock him was made
of the most luxurious and valuable materials—
those only a king could afford. If the soldiers were
going to fight over a garment, the purple one seems
like the more obvious choice. The poem offers up
the contrast between Christ’s two very different
garments, therefore, as a point of contemplation
for people who might desire beautiful but morally
dubious things. A related stanza is reproduced here
in its original Middle English and in a modern
English translation:
Thyn own cot þt had sem noon The purpure þt þey layd lot upon
Lorde be my socoure & my helpynge
Þt my body hath used mys clothynge.
the HUNTINGTON STORE
Your own coat that had seams none,
The purple one that they laid lots upon:
Lord, be my succor and my helping
That my body has misused clothing.
Here the speaker’s description of Christ’s garments (he or she speaks directly to Christ, calling
the garment “Your coat”) invokes a kind of protection against the vice of “misused clothing,” which
could have meant anything from coveting beautiful
clothing to wearing clothes that were expensive,
luxurious, or fashionable. Look at Christ’s clothing,
the stanza says, and contemplate more carefully the
clothes that you yourself wear or covet.
This stanza is especially interesting because of
the image that accompanies it. Unlike most English
poems written during this time, the arma Christi
poem is almost always illustrated. Christ’s purple
garment is one of the larger illustrations in HM
26054, and the dice associated with it (dice, in the
Middle Ages, having replaced the lots described in
the biblical narrative) have been superimposed on
the garment itself, as if meant to represent buttons
or brooches. Like the nails illustrated later on in the
poem, the dice are depicted as life-size—the size
of actual medieval dice—ostensibly to enhance
their effect as objects of meditative concentration.
A STARTLING REALIZATION
The roll format of manuscripts of this poem has
always intrigued and mystified scholars. One of its
earliest critics, Rossell Hope Robbins, suggested in
1939 that the roll format was meant for congrega-
30huntington.org
This detail from the manuscript shows Christ’s garment, along with the
dice that Roman soldiers are said to have used to gamble for it. In the
“O Vernicle” stanza below the garment, these objects are used to help
protect the speaker from wearing or coveting inappropriate clothing.
tional use, to be hung in churches for public worship.
Most recent scholars have rejected this understanding, arguing that the poem’s form, words, and
images seem best suited for private devotion such
as prayer, introspection, and meditation. For one
thing, the various manuscripts of the poem are
relatively small—too small for their images and
words to be observed from the congregation if they
were hung on a church wall. The poem’s language,
including the personal way the speaker of the poem
addresses Christ as “you,” also suggests a more
intimate reading experience. Many stanzas invoke
the reader’s experience of his or her five senses, yet
another personal element: the blindfold that was
used to cover Christ’s eyes during his mocking, for
example, offers contemplation of vices experienced
through the reader’s eyes and nose; the nails used
in the crucifixion serve as objects of meditation
about sins perpetrated by one’s hands and feet.
The tongs used to remove the nails after Christ’s
death are also included in the poem, portrayed as
instruments that can help “loosen” any sins from
the poem’s speaker or reader, just as they helped
physically to loosen Christ from the cross.
theHuntingtonStore.org
But this manuscript seems to
have had an even more unique personal use. Scholar Mary Agnes Edsall
has recently published evidence that
the most narrow arma Christi rolls
were likely used for an astonishing
purpose: as birth girdles, textual
talismans that could be wrapped
around a woman’s belly to protect
her and her baby during labor. Such
girdles were made from long strips
of parchment sewn together, like
The Huntington’s manuscript, and
OUT OF THE PURSE AND INTO PRINT
Almost 10 years after encountering my first arma
Christi manuscript, I finally started a book project
with my colleague and co-editor Lisa H. Cooper
in an attempt to explain not only HM 26054,
but also all kinds of other curious medieval and
Renaissance objects that used the arma Christi as
their central unifying theme: manuscripts, heraldic
shields, tombstones, sculptures, textiles, paintings,
and printings. We invited junior and senior scholars
from many disciplines to think through the cultural
and artistic uses of these objects, and with them,
we produced the first critical volume to address
the arma Christi as its own cultural phenomenon.
Part of this project was to produce, with scholar Ann
Eljenholm Nichols, a new critical edition of the
poem I first encountered in that green silk purse—
now renamed “O Vernicle,” for the opening line
of the poem, which is about Veronica’s veil. The
book, published by Ashgate and titled The Arma
Christi in Medieval and Early Modern Material
Culture: With a Critical Edition of ‘O Vernicle,’
represents a very happy conclusion to one of my most
felicitous early encounters with The Huntington’s
medieval manuscripts.
Above: Andrea Denny-Brown,
former Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation Fellow at The
Huntington, holds the silk purse
that contains the arma Christi
manuscript. Photograph by Kate
Lain. Right: The Arma Christi in
Medieval and Early Modern
Material Culture With a Critical
Edition of “O Vernicle” opens
with an introduction that surveys
previous scholarship and situates
the arma Christi in their historical
and aesthetic contexts. The 10
essays that follow explore
representative examples of the
instruments of the Passion across
a broad swath of history, from
some of their earliest formulations
in late antiquity to their reformulations in early modern
Europe. Together, they offer the
first large-scale attempt to
understand the arma Christi as
a unique cultural phenomenon
of its own, one that resonated
across centuries in multiple
languages, genres, and media.
they usually included prayers, charms, and spiritual
symbols, such as the arma Christi. This would
explain not only the curiously long and narrow
size and shape of The Huntington’s manuscript,
but also its obvious portability and well-used
physical condition: this manuscript had a practical
function. It likely belonged to a medieval midwife
or a female family member, perhaps passed down
through generations of women in the same family
or line of work.
32huntington.org
This manuscript pulls out all the stops—it
synchronizes the power of words, images, and
objects—to ask for, and to offer, spiritual guidance
and protection for a human life necessarily lived
among material things. Such a call for supernatural
protection is equally apt for a mother facing the very
real dangers of illness or death during labor and
for a child about to enter the world for the first time.
As a birth girdle, the Huntington manuscript
known as HM 26054 would have served both
purposes admirably, and—in my somewhat biased
opinion—exquisitely.
Andrea Denny-Brown is associate professor of
English at University of California, Riverside,
and a former Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Fellow at The Huntington.
Art. Appreciation.
Seems we have quite
a lot in common.
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In Print
A SAMPLING OF BOOKS BASED ON RESEARCH IN THE COLLECTIONS
BRITISH HISTORY FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE 18TH CENTURY
In Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015),
E.R. Truitt, assistant professor of history at Bryn Mawr College, recovers the forgotten history
of real and imagined automata—including talking statues, mechanical animals, and silent metal
guardians—that captivated Europe between the 9th and 14th centuries. Variously ascribed to
artisanal genius, cosmic forces, or demonic powers, these fabrications raised fundamental
questions about knowledge, nature, and divine purpose in the Middle Ages.
J. Sears McGee, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, provides the first full-length
biography of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602–1650) in An Industrious Mind: The Worlds of Sir Simonds D’Ewes
(Stanford University Press, 2015). D’Ewes collected one of the largest private libraries of books and manuscripts
in England in his era. His autobiography, correspondence, and journal of the Long Parliament (1640–48), offer
a comprehensive view of the life of a 17th-century English gentleman.
Arabella and Henry Huntington
HERITAGE SOCIETY
Honoring friends who have
made a commitment to the
future of The Huntington by
including it in their estate plans.
Create your Huntington legacy today.
For more information, please contact
Cris Lutz, Planned Giving Director, at
626-405-2212 or at [email protected].
Girl With a Parrot, 1744,
by Allan Ramsay (purchased
with funds from the estate
of Frances Crandall Dyke)
Winner of the award for Best First Book from the United Kingdom’s Society for Army Historical Research, Erica
Charters’ Disease, War, and the Imperial State: The Welfare of the British Armed Forces during the Seven Years’
War (University of Chicago Press, 2014) demonstrates how disease played a vital role in shaping strategy, British
state policy, and imperial relations during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). Charters is associate professor of the
history of medicine at the University of Oxford.
STUDIES OF CALIFORNIA AND THE FIGHT FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM
David Samuel Torres-Rouff, assistant professor of history at the University of California, Merced,
expands borderlands history by examining the past and original urban infrastructure of Los
Angeles in Before L.A.: Race, Space, and Municipal Power in Los Angeles, 1781–1894 (Yale
University Press, 2013). His study reveals how an innovative intercultural community developed
along racial lines, and how immigrants from the United States engineered a profound shift in civic
ideals and the physical environment, creating a social and spatial rupture that endures to this day.
the HUNTINGTON STORE
In Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), independent historian
Amina Hassan tells the story of one of the nation’s most prominent civil rights attorneys from the 1940s through
the early 1960s in the fields of housing and education. With co-counsel Thurgood Marshall, Miller argued two
landmark civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, whose decisions effectively abolished racially restrictive
housing covenants. Hassan also describes Miller’s early career as a radical journalist and his ownership of the
California Eagle, one of the longest-running African-American newspapers in the West.
Jack London (1876–1916) found fame with his wolf-dog tales and sagas of the frozen North, but Cecelia Tichi—
William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English and professor of American studies at Vanderbilt University—challenges
the long-standing view of London as merely a mass-market producer of potboilers in Jack London: A Writer’s Fight
for a Better America (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Tracing the arc of London’s work, Tichi examines
how London leveraged his written words into a force for social change.
theHuntingtonStore.org
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You’re Gonna Flip!
BREAK OUT THE SCISSORS—IT’S TIME TO ANIMATE THE HOPPER
By Kate Lain
WHEN YOU NEED A LAWYER,
Flash back to April Fool’s Day, 2015. To celebrate the day on our Tumblr site, we posted a short animated loop I’d made showing what might sit
atop the distant hill obscured by the boat in Edward Hopper’s painting The Long Leg—could it possibly be an Alexander Calder sculpture? You
can now make your own flip-book version of the animation using the images on this page.
1. Cut along the dotted lines. Be sure not to cut off the white strip on the left side of each image.
2. Stack the images in order, with 1 on top. (Or with 1 on bottom, to play them in reverse.)
3. Secure the stack along the white strip with a binder clip, rubber band, heavy-duty staple, or your finger and thumb.
4. Flip away!
You can find the original animation at huntingtonlibrary.tumblr.com by typing “hopper calder” in the search bar.
Kate Lain is the new media developer at The Huntington.
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