On July 21st, a small but enthusiastic crowd of Dickensians in Salem, MA did its part to combat the growing scourge of boring Dickens.

And how do you spell boring Dickens?  Easy, it’s a three letter word: BBC.  And, of course, let’s not forget its American partner in crime: PBS.

The Salem gathering provided an opportunity to set aside the usual Dickensian Greatest Hits and view three productions that are definitely off the beaten path: an excellent clay animation version of The Chimes, the only extant adaptation of Dickens’s second Christmas Book; the newly rediscovered London by Dickens starring a very young Alan Bates; and Ray Bradbury’s delightful Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby is a Friend of Mine.

The point here is really a question: Why do the powers that be in the worlds of film and television continue to recycle the same Dickensian fare over and over and over again when so much of the Dickens canon remains untouched for decades or, in some cases, has never been touched at all.

I attempted to deal with this issue at length in my November 6, 2011 article entitled An Open Letter to Hollywood and the BBC.   Please check it out and see if you don’t share some of my outrage and bewilderment.

So what’s a Dickensian to do?   I would respectfully suggest a two-pronged approach to the problem.

First of all, why not write to the BBC (and PBS) and tell them that we are sick to death of the self-congratulatory hot air surrounding its recent efforts.   Yes, Edwin Drood was welcome, but did we really need yet another Great Expectations when there has never been a film or television adaptation of The Battle of Life or The Haunted Man?

And secondly, as we embark on the second half of this exciting bicentenary year, why not give those Greatest Hits a rest and dig a little deeper into the existing body of Dickens adaptations.

For a little while at least, forget Alastair Sim and the David Lean masterpieces and check out Monogram’s ambitious take on Oliver Twist or Universal’s equally ambitious Great Expectations.

And let’s give the great Ronald Colman a little vacation and see what Dirk Bogarde and William Farnum or Maurice Costello can bring to the table as Sydney Carton.

And notwithstanding the sheer cosmic brilliance of W. C. Field’s presence in MGM’s David Copperfield, doesn’t a giant like Ralph Richardson deserve a hearing as Wilkins Micawber?

So that, from the for what it’s worth department, is my solution to the problem.   Just one more thing: I would like to propose a minimum five year (ideally ten year) moratorium on new versions of A Christmas Carol in the hope that this hiatus might inspire some enterprising producer to finally “do something” with The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man.

Anyone care to sign a petition?

NOTE: While I definitely felt that I was among kindred spirits at the Salem event mentioned above, I should make clear that the views expressed in this article are my own and do not necessarily reflect the position of the North of Boston Branch of the Dickens Fellowship which sponsored the show.

London by Dickens

If you live in the Boston area, or are up for a road trip, you are cordially invited to a Dickensian Film Festival on Saturday, July 21st, at 2:00 PM.   It is sponsored by the North of Boston Dickens Fellowship and takes place at the Salem Athenaeum, 337 Essex Street, in Salem, MA.   Click here for details.

I will be on hand to introduce three rare Dickensian films:  London by Dickens, The Chimes and Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby is a Friend of Mine.   DVDs of all three will be available for purchase and there will be a free raffle as well.

I will also be peddling my book A Christmas Carol and Its Adaptations: Dickens’s Story on Screen and Television.   This masterpiece stars Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge and a cast of thousands.   And what better time to pick up a copy than the month of July!

If you are even remotely interested in Dickensian adaptations, this will be a golden opportunity to venture off the beaten path and experience three truly original productions!

London by Dickens will be a de facto world premiere of a program that was originally broadcast in New York in 1958.   It stars a very young Alan Bates as Boz and is a highly impressionistic sketch of some of Dickens’s lesser known short writings.   It may well be the freshest approach to Dickens ever attempted by film or television!

The Chimes is an excellent clay animation production and the only extant version of Dickens’s second Christmas Book.   It features narration by Derek Jacobi.

And finally, Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby is a Friend of Mine, is based on a delightful Ray Bradbury short story.   Bradbury himself narrates and it stars Fred Gwynne as an eccentric character who may or may not be Charles Dickens.

We’re at the halfway point of this exciting bicentenary year and this event promises to be an enjoyable way to keep the celebration alive!

If you would like any further information or details, please contact me directly at fredguida44@yahoo.com

Like Dickensians everywhere, I have enjoyed being caught up in the excitement of this bicentenary year.   And while the focus has understandably been on Dickens’s birth and works, June 9th offered a sobering reminder that nearly 150 years have passed since his tragically premature death at the age of 58.

However, for me, and I suspect more than a few others, the recent anniversary of Dickens’s death was overshadowed by the fact that just days earlier, on June 5th, the great Ray Bradbury passed away at age 91.

Like a hero in one of his stories, I thought he would live forever.   Which he will, of course, through his words.   But, like Dickens, he will always be an intimate friend and the passing of his physical body was nevertheless a shock to my own personal cosmos as well as to that larger universe that we all share.   That universe is now a little less bright; a little less hopeful.   But, then again, there are his words and all those seeds that they planted over the past three quarters of a century.

However, it would be presumptuous of me to think that I can add anything substantial or meaningful to the tributes and accolades that have poured in this month, many from people who knew him personally and/or whose work was directly influenced by him.   As such, I would simply like to put in a plug for my own personal favorite Bradbury story and for the excellent adaptation that it has inspired.

First Edition

The story in question is Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby’s Is a Friend of Mine which was first collected in I Sing the Body Electric! in 1969 and is currently available in two collections: I Sing the Body Electric! And Other Stories and Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales.   It was originally published in the January 1966 issue of McCall’s magazine under the title The Best of Times.

It belongs to that fascinatingly autobiographical subcategory of Bradbury’s fiction that is set in his mythical yet delightfully real Green Town, Illinois and concerns a wannabe writer who reinvents himself one day as Charles Dickens.

I really don’t want to give too much away here.  Other than to say that it is a poignant, charming, heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming tale that celebrates the benign lunatic in all of us.

DVD from Monterey Media

Or maybe I can sum it up this way:  Think Charles Dickens visits Mayberry as filtered through one of the more whimsical episodes of The Twilight Zone.   And that is not an attempt to be clever.   It is an accurate characterization that is offered up with love and respect for all involved.

The adaptation in question is Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby Is a Friend of Mine (note the slight modification of the title).   It was produced by Neal Miller’s Rubicon Productions and premiered on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1982.   Mr. Miller is one of America’s leading independent film makers and this production is a quiet little masterpiece that ranks right up there with the best of television’s fabled Golden Age.   Click here to learn more about his important body of work.

Publicity Photo Courtesy Alan Giangregorio of the Greater Boston Dickens Fellowship

This Dickensian gem features a wonderful performance by Fred Gwynne as the lovable eccentric who may or may not be Charles Dickens.   And for a bit of delicious icing on an already tasty cake, Ray Bradbury himself serves as the story’s off-screen narrator!

Sadly, as often happens with great films (and great books), it has receded into the background in recent years.   But what better time than now — the Dickens bicentenary — to give it a much deserved second wind! It is available on DVD from Monterey Media.

And if you’re in the Boston area, I will be introducing a public screening of Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby Is a Friend of Mine, sponsored by the North of Boston Dickens Fellowship, on July 21st.   DVDs will be available for purchase and it will be a rare opportunity to see this great little film up on the big screen!   Click here for details.

So as we enter the second half of this bicentenary year, stay focused on all things Dickensian.   But spare a thought now and then for Ray Bradbury, a voracious reader and book lover who undoubtedly knew his Dickens as well as anyone.

And the best way to remember him is simple:  Just get your hands on a copy of one of his wonderful books!   But let me also recommend the next best thing.

While books were his first love, Ray Bradbury also loved movies and radio.   And Boston based The Colonial Radio Theatre has produced some excellent radio dramatizations that were enthusiastically endorsed by Bradbury himself.   Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Halloween Tree and The Martian Chronicles are all available on delightfully addictive and handsomely packaged CDs.

(Dickens is also represented in the impressive catalog of CDs available from Colonial.   Along with A Christmas Carol, you’ll find The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth and The Seven Poor Travellers.)

So just think about it: Ray Bradbury on the radio.   The ultimate theatre of the mind.   And it’s surely not for nuthin that I Sing The Body Electric! is dedicated to Norman Corwin!

Boz by Bates

Great news!   London by Dickens is now available for purchase on DVD.   And, as noted earlier, the disc contains a second title: Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Each program runs about twenty-five minutes.

This exciting new release is available exclusively from Connecticut based Creative Arts Television.   Click here for details on how to order what may well be the freshest approach to Dickens ever attempted by film or television.

The two titles that comprise this DVD are universal in appeal.   Charles Dickens and Dylan Thomas know no boundaries of time or place or anything else.   And yet they also evoke an age of television, and a New York, that are no more.

Both were broadcast on a Sunday morning on New York’s legendary Camera Three program; London by Dickens (live) on June 1, 1958 and A Child’s Christmas in Wales (on film) on December 24, 1961.

London by Dickens is a delightful and highly original montage of Dickens’s lesser known short writings.   Sketches by Boz serves as its foundation, but it also draws upon The Uncommercial Traveller, Sketches of Young Couples, The Mudfog Papers and The Pic-Nic Papers.   This is a side of Dickens that has rarely been touched on by film and television and the result is a highly impressionistic sketch of London life – which is precisely what Dickens himself set out to do!

It stars a very young Alan Bates who was appearing as Cliff Lewis on Broadway in John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger, a reprise of the role that made him a star in 1956 in his native England.   It is one of his first television appearances and predates his 1960 film debut in The Entertainer.

Look Back In Anger

A Child’s Christmas in Wales features Richard Burton who was appearing on Broadway in Camelot and had earlier starred in the film version of Look Back In Anger.   It opens with a deeply moving meditation on Dylan Thomas’s life and then shifts to an equally moving reading of his best known work.   As Mr. Burton tells us, it is “one little book hovering somewhere between poetry and prose” and it is surely the only work worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as Dickens’s immortal Carol.

And think about it:  With his Welsh roots and stunningly, supernaturally beautiful voice, was Richard Burton not born to read Dylan Thomas?

These programs may be half a century old, but they are not quaint artifacts nor are they out of place in our digitized widescreen world.   Great writers and their words, like great actors, never die.   As you will see, and hear, they are very much alive and well…

Much has been written over the years on the seemingly primordial relationship between Dickens and the cinema.   It has been said that he wrote in a style that anticipated the cinema and there has certainly been some very important scholarship in this area.   Indeed, as the saying goes, it ain’t for nuthin that a cinematic god like Sergei Eisenstein recognized and wrote about these connections.

And then there is the question of adaptation.   Why are there so many?   And why do they just keep coming?   And why are they always so interesting?   And what makes Dickens so adaptable in the first place?

When my book came out, I was grateful that my thoughts on some of these delightfully interconnected issues were well received.   However, for a truly definitive introduction to this complex theoretical/historical web, you must check out Grahame Smith’s Dickens and the dream of cinema.

Like all good scholarly books it is both substantial and authoritative.   However, unlike many such books, but in keeping with its subject matter, it is also a great deal of fun.   Nuthin wrong with that!

More conventionally academic, but also highly recommended, is Dickens on Screen edited by John Glavin.

And I agree with those who feel that, if the movies had been invented a century earlier, Dickens would have adapted his own works for the screen.   And that he probably would have written original screenplays as well.

I also think it goes without saying that he would have been a big fan of simply going to the movies.    He would have loved the escape and the sheer enjoyment and wonder of it all.

And in my best of all possible worlds, I can envision an older Dickens writing a memoir of his cinematic adventures with much the same enthusiasm, taste and exquisite judgment that Edward Wagenknecht brought to bear on the writing of The Movies in the Age of Innocence.

And by extension, it is also interesting to speculate about what his reaction to television might have been.   I certainly don’t see him as a couch potato type.   However, it is no secret that he loved all forms of popular entertainment.   And just as he enjoyed (probably more frequently than the handful of references might suggest) magic lantern shows in the home, I think he would have found an appropriate use for television.   Primarily, I’m willing to bet, for watching movies.

I’m sure that I will have much more to say on these issues in future articles.   I don’t promise that my thoughts will be particularly intelligent or insightful.   I only promise that they are coming.

In any event, for me, the most tantalizing area is the question of what kind of movies Dickens would have enjoyed.   To begin with, while television, once again, would have a place in his life, I think the communal experience of movies on a big screen in a theatre would definitely have been his preference.

Former Lincoln Theatre in New Haven, CT

And as someone who spent countless hours of his formative years alone in the dark in New Haven’s sorely missed Lincoln Theatre, it is fun to imagine Dickens as a fellow movie nut and theatre-going companion.   Can you imagine his boundlessly energetic and scintillatingly opinionated reaction to a screening of Casablanca or Citizen Kane?   (Of course, in those days, my primary goal in life was to find a female movie nut to share a bag of popcorn with.   But that’s a sad story for another day.)

So what kind of movies would Dickens have liked?   I’m not sure although some impressions are starting to form.   What do you think?

It’s a question that I hope to have some fun trying to answer.   And for me it seems to be arising out of a personal cinematic renaissance.   Last year for some reason – probably the impending Dickens bicentenary – I came out of a funk that I was stuck in for several years in which I had lost much of my enthusiasm for movies.

Or maybe it’s just that the past eighteen months or so have featured the release of some unexpectedly wonderful films.   For example, as I have noted in a couple of previous articles, who expected an absolute masterpiece like Hugo?   And, as a serious silent film buff, I was absolutely blown away by The Artist.   I really liked Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris too.

And I had a welcome opportunity to catch up with the recent restoration of Children of Paradise.   The story, needless to say, just gets better and better with each viewing.   But I was positively stunned by the visual quality of this new version.   It pains me to even think this, but have we actually reached the point where only a physicist can tell the difference between digital and 35mm projection?

And less than six months into 2012, I’ve already hit a few cinematic home runs.   Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was an absolute delight; an Ealing comedy for the 21st century.   And The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was also delightful – and poignant without ever losing its elegantly delicate lightness of touch.

I also liked John Carter.   Of course, since I’d been waiting for Hollywood to visit Barsoom since I was about ten years old, I wanted to like it!   (I also liked the original, uncut Heaven’s Gate over thirty years ago…)

And then there is Turn Me On, Dammit!, a film that damn well deserves a lifetime achievement Oscar for being the most hysterically funny and achingly real film that I’ve seen in about a hundred years.   Don’t miss it!

So even though the Lincoln Theatre (at least in its art house incarnation) may be long gone, things are definitely looking up for this particular Dickens & movie nut.   It is, after all, the year 2012; the Dickens bicentenary.   A great year to be alive.   And to be in love with Dickens.   And could there be a better time in which to rediscover one’s love affair with the movies?

Much to my surprise, I have just learned that Scarecrow Press has a few remaining new copies of Michael Pointer’s 1996 book Charles Dickens on the Screen: The Film, Television and Video Adaptations.   I thought it was long out of print!

At $75 this book ain’t cheap.   However, it is an excellent reference tool and anyone even remotely interested in Dickens adaptations should consider owning it.

But here’s a thought: If you don’t want to buy one for yourself then ask your local library to purchase it.   Most libraries have very limited funds these days but, in the context of the Dickens bicentenary, even the most cash strapped library might consider it.

And if you belong to a branch of the Dickens Fellowship why not suggest that your group pick up a copy that would always be available to members at meetings?

I have had a strange relationship with this book going back almost twenty years. In the nineties I was working on essentially the same book for the same publisher.   Michael finished first and the rest is indeed history.

However, I’m a big believer in the old adage that things usually happen for a reason.   And after my initial disappointment, I was forced to regroup and consider what I liked most about Dickens in the first place.   The result was  A Christmas Carol and Its Adaptations which saw the light of day in 2000.

Michael and I corresponded and shared information.   And, when my book came out, I was pleased to acknowledge that several Carols were brought to my attention through his book.

And from the isn’t life strange department: I am currently thinking about embarking on a new edition of Michael’s book.

A healthy dose of insanity is required to take on this kind of project.   As such, I would be grateful for any words of encouragement that might trickle in.   My wife, who does not need another reminder of my insanity, would be grateful to anyone who can talk me out of it…

Boz by Bates

Following up on my recent article about the happy marriage of The Inimitable Boz and a very young Alan Bates (London by Dickens: This Revolution Was Televised – in 1958!), I am delighted to announce that the new DVD should be available in three to four weeks from Connecticut’s own Creative Arts Television.

But that’s not all.   As if a chance to see an incredibly fresh and original take on Dickens were not enough, the DVD will contain a second title.   It is not Dickens related.   Nevertheless, it is absolutely spectacular and will make a delightful companion piece to London by Dickens.

What is it you ask?   It is Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales read by Richard Burton.

Let me repeat that.   Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales!

Dylan Thomas

To invoke a familiar but perfectly accurate cliché, I would pay a lot of money to hear Richard Burton read from a phone book or the classified ad section of my local newspaper.   But I would walk to the moon on my knees to hear him doing Dylan Thomas.   And I would crawl to Pluto to hear him doing the only work worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as the immortal Carol!

Filmed while Burton was appearing on Broadway in Camelot, this fascinating production was broadcast on the legendary Camera Three program, appropriately enough on Christmas Eve, in 1961.   It opens with a deeply moving meditation on Dylan Thomas’s life and then shifts to an equally moving reading of his best known work.

In addition to making several recordings of Dylan Thomas’s works, Richard Burton also appeared in a 1962 British television documentary about Thomas as well as the 1972 film adaptation of Under Milk Wood.

Look Back in Anger

And for an interesting little bit of cosmic serendipity, it is worth noting that shortly before coming to New York for Camelot, Burton starred in the film version of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, the work that brought Alan Bates to Broadway and made him available to appear in London by Dickens.

So watch this web site for more details.   And please support this exciting new DVD when it comes out.

Christmas will be about six months early this year!!!

In the wake of last fall’s long-awaited news that The Stingiest Man in Town would finally be coming out on home video (see An Introduction & An Announcement from October 13, 2011), I am delighted and honored to announce that more Dickensian good news in on the way.   And what better time than now — the Dickens bicentenary!

And while any new Dickens adaptation is automatically important and interesting simply because it involves Dickens, some, whether a brand new production or a rediscovered blast from the past, are more important and more interesting than others.   This is because every now and then a film or television production breaks away from the pack and touches on material that is rarely (if ever) dealt with.

Sketches of Young Couples

That is definitely the case with this latest item.   It is not another Carol or Oliver or Great Expectations.   And for that let us be truly thankful!   It is a fascinating production entitled London by Dickens, running about twenty-five minutes, that deals with Dickens’s shorter and lesser known material!   The primary focus, as one might expect, is on Sketches by Boz.   This is, in fact, one of a literal handful of combined film and television productions over the past 100+ years that has drawn upon Sketches by Boz.

However, this one doesn’t stop there.   It also touches on The Uncommercial Traveller, Sketches of Young Couples, The Mudfog Papers and The Pic-Nic Papers.   How’s that for a badly needed breath of Dickensian fresh air!

Donald Spoto's recent biography of Sir Alan Bates

But it gets better.   The delicious icing on this already tasty cake is that it stars a very young Alan Bates – who as always is excellent – as the on screen personification of Dickens’s delightful narratorial voice.   In essence, Alan Bates is Charles Dickens!

To the best of my knowledge, this was his first professional encounter with Dickens.   He would later appear as Josiah Bounderby in the 1994 BBC adaptation of Hard Times.

What is remarkable about this production is that it does not present its Dickensian vignettes in an orderly or precisely chronological fashion.   Instead, while Sketches by Boz may be said to be its base or anchor, other works weave their way in and out of the proceedings with a delightfully spontaneous kind of energy and drive.   The result is a highly impressionistic sketch of London life — which is precisely what Dickens himself set out to do!

A Small Star in the East

It is fascinating, fun and, at times, very funny.   Just like The Inimitable Boz himself.   But it is well worth noting that it does not overlook the other side of Dickens.   In an inspired touch, it descends into “a wilderness of rags, dirt and hunger” that includes an electrifying dramatization of the discussion of lead poisoning from A Small Star in the East.  Written by a prematurely old man shortly before his death, it rivals any of the powerful social criticism produced decades earlier.

And on a purely aesthetic or artistic level, it is a very impressive production.   Made at the height of television’s fabled “Golden Age,” it exhibits all of the qualities associated with television drama from that period:   The look is stark black-and-white, the feel is undeniably theatrical and yet intensely realistic, and the words, as one would expect from Charles Dickens, are sharp, literate and intelligent.   And it is proof positive of just how good television can be — even with limited budget and resources — when creative people are given free reign to work without commercial constraints or considerations.

London by Dickens was broadcast live on June 1, 1958, in a Sunday morning time slot, on the legendary arts oriented Camera Three program.   Camera Three started out as a locally produced program on New York’s WCBS in May of 1953.   And national broadcasts began in January of 1956.  However, it is unclear as to how many cities, other than New York, may have seen this particular episode.   One 16mm kinescope is known to survive.

Alan Bates and Mary Ure in the 1956 London production of Look Back In Anger

Alan Bates was available to take part in the broadcast  of London by Dickens because he was appearing as Cliff Lewis on Broadway in John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger, a reprise of the role that made him a star in 1956 in his native England.   It is one of his first television appearances and predates his 1960 film debut in The Entertainer.

A DVD release of London by Dickens is in the works and will be available early this summer from Connecticut based Creative Arts Television which boasts a fascinating catalogue of unique performing arts titles.   Check them out at www.catarchive.com and please support this exciting new DVD when it comes out!

A series of public screenings, as part of a package of Dickensian rarities, is also in the works.   So far Boston on July 21 and New Haven this fall (date TBA) are confirmed.   New York, Los Angeles and other cities are under discussion.   Watch this web site for details.

Boz by Bates

London by Dickens may have been made in 1958.   But it is the freshest approach to Dickens to hit screens both big and small in a very long time.   And a small, specialized, quality-minded distributor like Creative Arts Television deserves the thanks and support of Dickensians everywhere!

And to wrap this up on a personal note, I am thrilled to be helping restore this little gem to its rightful place on Alan Bates’s already impressive list of credits.

Like all great actors, he appeared in a few films that were not so great.   However, compared to many others, he had a real knack for choosing interesting and intelligent projects.   And the bottom line is that he himself was always great and frequently brilliant.

I have been a major fan for about forty years.  As an art house type — how I miss New Haven’s Lincoln Theatre — I had seen some of his earlier films; but it was The Go-Between that hooked me.

And it was while watching The Go-Between one night, alone in the dark in a largely empty theatre, that I remember having a kind of momentary subliminal epiphany.   Unprovoked; and yet there it was.

This was at the beginning of of a lengthy period in which I was convinced that I was the only guy on the planet who didn’t have a girlfriend.  (And on this particular occasion, it didn’t help that images of a stunningly beautiful Julie Christie were dancing before my eyes!)   But everything would surely change if only I had Alan Bates’s incredible good looks and obvious charm.   And great hair.   And accent.   And talent…

Young Edward Wagenknecht, Undated

Welcome to Remembering Edward Wagenknecht.

March 28, 2012 is not a milestone birthday like a 100^th or 125^th.    But since it occurs within the context of the Dickens bicentenary celebration – which is also the year of Hugo and The Artist as well as the 50^th anniversary of The Movies in the Age of Innocence – I can’t think of a better time to say thank you and happy birthday to Edward Wagenknecht.   A great gentleman.   A great teacher, writer and scholar.   And, of course, a great Dickensian!

This tribute is presented in four main parts.   In addition to my article which follows below, I am honored and delighted to acknowledge contributions by three distinguished scholars.  I list them here in what is, chronologically speaking, the order in which their lives first intersected with that of Professor Wagenknecht:  Wes Mott, Anthony Slide and Michael Patrick Hearn.   You can click on their names below to be led to their articles.

Wes Mott, Professor of English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, studied under Edward Wagenknecht in the 1960s.   His deeply moving tribute to Professor Wagenknecht as a great teacher is reprinted here by kind permission of Professor Mott and Bostonia, The Alumni Quarterly of Boston University, where it originally appeared in the Fall 2004 issue.

Anthony Slide is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the silent film as well as a prolific author who has written authoritatively on many aspects of popular culture.  He was a close friend of Edward Wagenknecht for over three decades and co-authored two books with him.

Michael Patrick Hearn is the world’s foremost authority on L. Frank Baum’s magical land of Oz, a subject that was near and dear to the heart of Professor Wagenknecht.  His books include The Annotated Wizard of Oz and The Annotated Christmas Carol.

Once again, I thank Wes Mott, Anthony Slide and Michael Patrick Hearn for sharing their thoughts and feelings about this great man.   And I would also like to thank Dr. Walter Wagenknecht for sharing many unique and priceless photographs of (and related to) his father.  And here are some thoughts of my own…

I never met Charles Dickens.   And yet I like to think that I know him well.  He has, in fact, been one of my best friends since I was eight or nine years old.   I have had a similar relationship with Edward Wagenknecht since I was about sixteen although I will always feel privileged that I eventually achieved a degree of direct contact that was not possible with Dickens.

At some point in 1969 I decided that I wanted to take my interest in silent films to the next level and asked a librarian what books were available on the subject.  She gave me two and both were great.   But one was a real life changer.

The first was Joe Franklin’s 1959 Classics of the Silent Screen.  Over the years I began to suspect who actually wrote this book and my suspicions were eventually confirmed.  But that is a story for another day and perhaps another tribute.

Original 1962 Edition

The second was Edward Wagenknecht’s The Movies in the Age of Innocence which was first published in 1962 and, to this day, remains the single most important book on the silent era.   I’m pretty sure that this was my first exposure to a serious scholarly book and yet I do not remember feeling that I was being lectured or that someone was talking over my head.  Instead, I remember being instantly touched by what I can only call its friendly and enthusiastic style and tone.

I was too young and inexperienced, and probably just too dumb, to fully grasp the significance of the credentials that its author brought to bear on the writing of this book.  But I do remember thinking how cool it was that it was written by someone who was actually there in the early days of the movies.   A first-hand account by someone who clearly knew what he was talking about.

And I will also credit The Movies in the Age of Innocence with helping me to take my interest in Dickens to the next level as well.   This is because on the page opposite its dedication to Lillian and Dorothy Gish I encountered a staggering list of other books that Edward Wagenknecht had either written or edited.

1971 Edition

And as I perused this list I learned that in 1929 he wrote a book called The Man Charles Dickens: A Victorian Portrait.   I don’t pretend that, at age sixteen, I fully understood what this book had to say.   But I do credit it with making me aware that there was much more to Dickens than meets the eye.

In truth, the more or less simultaneous discovery of these two books was a real epiphany for me.   It gave me my first awareness that no art is created in a vacuum and that all of the arts, in this case film and literature, are inexorably and delightfully intertwined.   And how wonderful it was to discover a writer who was clearly a master of the two branches of the arts that I cared about most.   And if one is ever looking for a sign that there is some sort of order in the universe, or of proof that God does indeed move in mysterious ways, I suggest you look no further than the fact that Edward Wagenknecht has written that his introduction to Dickens came in 1911 when he and his mother encountered Vitagraph’s three reel production of A Tale of Two Cities on a Saturday night at the Acme Theater in Chicago.

I would, of course, later learn that his areas of interest and expertise were by no means limited to film and literature.   And this is perhaps the key to really coming to terms with the man and the significance of his work.   Today we are all aware of, and pretty much take for granted, the existence of that vast territory known as popular culture.   However, I submit that long before academia staked out a formal claim in this area, Edward Wagenknecht was already there combining serious, world-class scholarship with genuine love and enthusiasm for the incredibly diverse range of subjects that he cared about.

In this context, how many millions over the years have been touched by his wonderful anthologies?   Always serious and yet always accessible.  And always enjoyable.   The Fireside Book of Christmas Stories was a bona fide best seller and even a Book-of-the-Month Club Dividend for the 1945 holiday season.   In a crowded field, it is still the best Christmas anthology ever published.   And its 1948 companion,  A Fireside Book of Yuletide Tales, is a very close second!  (His excellent but lesser known Stories of Christ and Christmas, from 1963, is also worth noting in this context.)

And in the context of the Dickens bicentenary, it is certainly worth mentioning that this year marks the 60^th anniversary of his anthology entitled  An Introduction to Dickens.   In its preface written sixty years ago, Professor Wagenknecht notes that there are many books about Dickens.   And the same is certainly true today only more so.   Much more so.   But there is nothing dated or “old-fashioned” about this book.   It could be reprinted today without changing or adding a word and be just as useful to students, general readers and Dickens specialists as it was in 1952.

And if one is looking for further proof that good writing and scholarship are always relevant and never out of date then please note that his 1958 The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt has recently been reprinted by The Lyons Press in cooperation with the Theodore Roosevelt Association.  It features a wonderfully enthusiastic new introduction by the Pulitzer Prize winning Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris.

And as a final, but by no means insignificant “popular footnote,” let the record show that he also wrote novels and short stories, some under the pseudonym Julian Forrest.

And this area of popular culture is merely one sense – perhaps it would be appropriate to think of it as a kind of over-arching umbrella – in which he was a pioneer.  Someone who was way ahead of the curve in so many specific areas.  And the best way to illustrate this fact may be to simply take note of the date of some of his earliest publications.

For example, in 1929, his Utopia Americana was a modest but groundbreaking work that served notice on interested parties everywhere that L. Frank Baum’s Oz books represented an important and uniquely American contribution to world literature.

And the timing of his 1927 Lillian Gish: An Interpretation clearly indicates that he was one of the first to recognize that “the movies” were a subject worthy of serious attention and scholarship.   And that they were capable of producing art, and artists, that can only be called transcendent.

And the aforementioned The Man Charles Dickens: A Victorian Portrait, which was republished in a revised edition in 1966 by the University of Oklahoma Press, is also worth mentioning again in this context.   Today we take for granted the existence of a thriving, worldwide “Dickens Industry.”  Indeed, this blog (or is it a web site, I really don’t know the difference) is certainly a product of this industry.   And in this bicentenary year it can be hard to believe that, not so very long ago, Dickens was generally frowned upon and certainly not taken too seriously in academic circles.

Most observers feel that the turning point, and the work that is generally credited with launching the modern era of Dickens scholarship, and with effectively declaring that it was suddenly OK to take Dickens seriously, was Edmund Wilson’s 1939 lecture entitled “Dickens: The Two Scrooges” which was included in The Wound and the Bow in 1941.   However, the broader view will remind us that G. K. Chesterton laid some important foundation at the start of the twentieth century, and that Wilson’s work was actually part of a Dickensian trifecta that also included important contributions by George Orwell and Humphrey House.   And the even broader view will take note of George Santayana’s essay on Dickens which appeared in The Dial in 1921 and was collected in Soliloquies in England a year later; Professor Wagenknecht himself has described it as brilliant.

Now this is not the time or place to make any sort of grand pronouncements for the ages or to throw down any literary gauntlets.   And, even if it were, I do not consider myself qualified to do so.  Nevertheless, I do have to respectfully ask why Professor Wagenknecht’s book – written a full decade before the Wilson-Orwell-House explosion just mentioned – is so often overlooked and unmentioned in bibliographies and surveys of twentieth-century Dickens scholarship.

Readers are certainly free to like or dislike Professor Wagenknecht’s book.   And to agree or disagree with the views and interpretations that it contains.   However, its very existence should certainly be acknowledged more frequently than it is.   And, in my opinion, it deserves to be recognized as the major bridge between Chesterton and Wilson-Orwell-House and, indeed, of laying some of the foundation that made Wilson-Orwell-House possible.

Frontispiece 1929 Edition

And on this latter point, I hasten to add that this was not some obscure self-published title or even a small press or university press title that was predestined for obscurity because of the inherently unfair realities of the book business.  It was published by Houghton Mifflin, a major publisher, and received excellent reviews.  And a British edition was released in 1930 by Constable.  As such, this book was “out there” a full decade before Wilson-Orwell-House.   And yet today it is virtually forgotten and its rightful place in the chronology of modern Dickens scholarship largely ignored.   I wish I knew why.

The Man Charles Dickens: A Victorian Portrait is a significant piece of Dickens scholarship and its author’s first major psychographic study, an approach that he did not invent but certainly perfected.   And in the context of the Dickens bicentenary celebration it is a work worthy of recognition, respect and reappraisal.   (Dickensians are also referred to his 1965 Dickens and the Scandalmongers: Essays in Criticism, the centerpiece of which is a substantial discussion of the Ellen Ternan controversy.)

And if one jumps ahead a few decades in time, it is worth noting that even later in life he was still ahead of the curve in many areas.   He was, for example, one of the first writers to treat Marilyn Monroe with seriousness and respect.

And long before expert commentaries started to appear on laserdiscs and DVDs, he was writing authoritative introductions for home movie releases of silent films by the legendary Blackhawk Films.   And how’s this for a prime example of cosmic justice or the hand of Providence in action:  Decades after its theatrical premiere, when Blackhawk released the aforementioned 1911 A Tale of Two Cities for collectors, it was Edward Wagenknecht who wrote the introductory notes!

Mention of which provides an appropriate segue to point out that while Professor Wagenknecht was a scholar and writer of the first rank, one always sensed – and was encouraged to share – his enthusiasm for his subject matter.   And it was always a delight to note the complete lack of pretension or academic pomposity in his work.   Indeed, one does not need to have an advanced degree in Psychology, nor have the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary close at hand, to appreciate his writing on film.   Or, for that matter, his writing on any other subject.

Signing Books at Montgomery Ward in Chicago, ca 1946

And in this regard, even though his books were published by prestigious university presses, and his articles and reviews regularly published by distinguished journals, he also occasionally contributed to Films in Review and Classic Images.   These are publications that the elitists who hijacked film studies long ago would never condescend to even glance at much less read or write for.   The fact that a giant like Professor Wagenknecht felt they were worthy of his attention will tell you much about many things.

And in this context, I am grateful to Anthony Slide for calling to my attention the fact that as early as January 1912 (!) the quality of his writing was recognized by The Motion Picture Story Magazine.   And that a few years later he was contributing to Photo-Play Journal.   A modest start perhaps.   But how delightful it is to juxtapose this early work, and the later contributions to Films in Review and Classic Images, with the fact that his articles and reviews will also be found in publications like The New York Times Book Review, The Yale Review, Boston University Studies in English, The Saturday Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Virginia Quarterly Review and Modern Language Quarterly.   And, of course, The Dickensian!

That was, perhaps, my cue to wrap things up with a few thoughts on my personal interaction with Professor Wagenknecht.

Almost twenty years ago I started working on a history of audio-visual adaptations of A Christmas Carol that would range from the magic lantern era to the late twentieth century.   And as the book began to take shape in my mind, I started to fantasize about it someday seeing the light of day with a foreword by Edward Wagenknecht.   For obvious reasons, there was no one else on the planet who would do.

But how does a nobody, with just a handful of published articles to his credit, approach someone of his stature?   After agonizing over this question for several months, I guess I must have had a big breakfast one morning because I somehow mustered up the nerve to pick up the phone and call Boston University which triggered a process that eventually put me in direct telephone contact with him.

And to make the proverbial long story short, not only did he agree to contribute a foreword to my book, he also offered an invaluable critique of an early version of the manuscript as well as a healthy dose of badly needed encouragement and moral support.

And I will never forget the enormous lump that suddenly appeared in my throat when I opened the package from him that contained his typewritten foreword and the manuscript containing his comments.   I had written to him earlier explaining that while I had no idea how such things worked, I would be happy to pay him whatever fee he wished for writing the foreword.   (I was, in fact, prepared to take out a second mortgage or sell my soul if necessary.)   His response was that there was no charge and that he was happy to do it for a fellow scholar.

To this day, I still cannot quite believe that my book exists with a foreword by Edward Wagenknecht.   As I have noted elsewhere, all I can say is that I know for a fact that at least one famous old saying is perfectly true:  The bigger they are, the nicer they are.

As a little footnote, I’ll mention that I will always feel happy that in a small way I was able to repay some of his kindness.   I had told him in a letter how sorry I was that The Movies in the Age of Innocence was out of print.   And that, on more than one occasion, I had made photocopies of its entire first chapter as a handout for students in classes that I had taught.

And since I was in the process of trying to peddle my manuscript to every publisher under the sun, would he like me to see if anyone was interested in doing a reprint of his book?  Then, as now, I was aware of the absurdity of an unpublished author offering to “help” someone with his track record of publication.   But he said it was certainly worth a shot and that he would be delighted to see the book back in print.

1997 Edition

The punch-line is that while rejection letters were pouring in fast and furious concerning my book, I was able to quickly hook him up with Limelight Editions who published a fine paperback reprint in 1997.   Even if I should write another fifty books before I die, all of them bestsellers, I will always consider having a hand in getting this great book back in print to be the highlight of my professional life.   And written on the eve of its 50th anniversary, this recent story from The New Yorker offers heartening proof that it has lost none of its power to attract, excite and inform new readers.

In closing, I imagine that we can all look back at particular periods in our lives and view that time through the prism of the people who were (and hopefully still are) important to us and who perhaps helped us in some way.   I will always think of a particular decade in my life, which was also the last decade of Edward Wagenknecht’s life, as something very special indeed.

I will always regret that his health and advanced age prevented me from actually meeting him.  But I have treasured letters and Christmas cards from this period, in a couple of which he actually referred to me as his friend.   And I will always remember how good I felt when I sent him a VHS copy of my Kodascope print of My Old Dutch, a film that he was most anxious to see again, for his 100^th birthday.

March 28, 1900 -- May 24, 2004

There is really nothing more that I can say.   Except, perhaps, to repeat the sentiments noted in my introductory remarks.   March 28, 2012 is not a milestone birthday like a 100^th or 125^th.    But since it occurs within the context of the Dickens bicentenary celebration – which is also the year of Hugo and The Artist as well as the 50^th anniversary of The Movies in the Age of Innocence – I can’t think of a better time to say thank you and happy birthday to Edward Wagenknecht.   A great gentleman.   A great teacher, writer and scholar.   And, of course, a great Dickensian!

NOTE:  Professor Wagenknecht’s papers are at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.  Click here for a fascinating overview of its holdings and a brief biography.

NOTE:  For a list of Professor Wagenknecht’s publications click here to access Edward Wagenknecht: An Annotated Bibliography.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:  I once again offer a sincere (but totally inadequate) thank you to Wes Mott, Anthony Slide, Michael Patrick Hearn and Dr. Walter Wagenknecht for their unique and vitally important contributions to this project.

Thanks also to film archivist Dino Everett of the University of Southern California for coming to the rescue with high quality copies of a couple of critical images.

And thank you to the always helpful staff at the James Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford, CT.   Thanks for never saying NO!

And finally, thanks to Lisa Guida for not murdering her husband — a proud 21st century Luddite and general all around idiot when it comes to computers — when he asked how to do something for the 500th time…

First things first: Happy 200th Birthday Mr. Dickens!

This posting is a continuation of my last article entitled Some Thoughts on Favorite Authors and Films, Storytellers and Lonely Children in which I mentioned that Martin Scorsese’s latest film Hugo, and the book that inspired it, are currently making a serious bid to break into my own top ten list of desert island favorites.

With that in mind, my purpose here is simple: To implore anyone and everyone reading this blog to get out and see Hugo before it disappears from theaters.  And if you’ve already seen it, to go out and see it again.   And to spread the word about it to family, friends and anyone else
who will listen.

And do yourself a favor and see it at least once in 3D.   Notwithstanding the dramatic technical advancements that have been made in recent years, this is normally not something that I care about.   However, Hugo is the first 3D film I’ve seen in which use of the process was not an unnecessary gimmick.   It is simply part of the overall story and it works.

And in case this hasn’t convinced you, let me drop the “M” word.   Hugo is a masterpiece pure and simple.

Every once in a while over the course of film history, the stars align perfectly and the right people are brought together at the right time and place.   No one has ever been able to adequately explain this phenomenon and yet every serious movie lover knows that it is true.   Casablanca is certainly such as case.   And The Wizard of Oz and It’s A Wonderful Life.

In the case of Hugo, a great book by an author and illustrator named Selznick crossed paths with a master film maker who not only loves movies but knows their history.   A great screenplay was written and a dream cast assembled.   And the result, once again, is a masterpiece.

Don’t ask me to explain it.   I’m just grateful that it happens and content to simply enjoy and be grateful.   And, I will add, to see it as proof that God does indeed move in mysterious ways and that its corollary that things usually happen for a reason is perfectly true.

So what does this have to do with Dickens?   In my view it has everything to do with Dickens.   In fact, as I mentioned in that earlier article, if Dickens were alive today he would love this film.   He would probably have seen it several times by now and would be eagerly awaiting its release on home video.

And, of course, he would also love the literary masterpiece from which this cinematic masterpiece grew.   The film is based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret which won the 2008 Caldecott Medal – the equivalent of an Oscar for children’s book illustration.

Quite an achievement since The Invention of Hugo Cabret is not a picture book.   It is a novel.   Or is it?

In truth, as author and illustrator Brian Selznick notes in his exclusive discussion of the book for amazon.com, it “…is not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things.”

That pretty much covers it.   All I can think to add is that it is also 500 plus pages of pure magic.   Which is why, like the film adaptation, it too is making a serious bid to appear on my short list of desert island favorites.   And more importantly, which is why there would most definitely be a copy in Dickens’s personal library were he alive today.

When he was a child, specialized, high quality children’s books as we know them didn’t exist.   It’s a different world today, and if Dickens were in it, it is inconceivable that he would not be engaged and involved with our modern children’s book industry on some level.   Certainly as a reader.   And I will say as a writer too.   In fact, I would be willing to bet that somewhere along the line he would pick up a Newberry Medal, in essence the equivalent of an Oscar for best original screenplay.

Writing for children is the most difficult kind of writing there is and, sadly, the world is full of delusional and/or misguided people who think it is easy.   Those who write for children are special people with special gifts.   But it all starts with respect for children and childhood and an understanding of a child’s point of view and voice.   And an unspoken acknowledgement that children have a right to have their own point of view and voice.   Nothwithstanding the fact that he was far from a perfect or ideal father, this is a litmus test that Dickens would have no trouble passing.

Now to return to that question of what this has to do with Dickens, the heart of Hugo – both book and film – is a celebration of something that Dickens thought about often and cared about deeply.   Fancy.   The term seems to be somewhat archaic today.   So, if you prefer, substitute imagination, or fun, or simply finding joy and celebrating life.  Or some combination of all these things and more.

And Hugo celebrates fancy – with all that the word implies – by examining the life of one of the world’s great storytellers, Georges Melies, wonderfully played by Ben Kingsley, and the exciting new medium through which he told his stories.   He did not invent this medium in the sense that he created its requisite technical apparatus.   However, by cultivating ground that had been seeded by his countryman Jules Verne, and by building on his own background as a magician, he was certainly the first to truly grasp its potential.   Its potential to not only tell a story but to create a new kind of magic.   Cinematic magic.

Click here for some information on the exciting restoration of Melies’s most famous film Le voyage dans la lune — A Trip to the Moon — that was made in 1902.   And click here for information on its forthcoming home video release.

It is important to note here the presence of what might be termed a larger Dickensian context.   If Dickens were alive in 1898 or 1902 or 1905, there can be absolutely no doubt that the wonders of the new medium of cinema would not have escaped his attention.   And being a pretty fair magician himself, he would certainly have been a Melies fan.   (He would also have been an R. W. Paul fan, but that’s another story.)

Dickens Conjuring the Spirit of Christmas by "Kyd"

Dickens walked boldly and confidently  through life.   And in spite of the fact that he concerned himself with all manner of serious social questions, and that the prematurely old man who never finished Drood was very different indeed from the supernaturally energetic young man who took the world by storm with Pickwick, he enjoyed life.   He liked to have fun and he wanted everyone else, young and old, rich and poor, to have fun too.   Indeed, as the proprietor of a circus tells us in Hard Times: “People mutht be amuthed.”

In this context, he loved books.   All kinds of books.   He revered Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott.    And he always had a special place in his heart for The Arabian Nights and for fairy tales and ghost stories.

And he loved popular music.   And pantomime.   And the circus.   And magic. And, of course, theatre.

He attended the theatre often, wrote plays, staged his own productions and, by all accounts, was an excellent actor.   Indeed, those fortunate enough to have been present at his legendary public readings witnessed much more than a writer simply reading from one of his books.   And even though he does not have a whole lot to say on the subject, it is inconceivable to think that Dickens, especially the young Dickens, did not know his way around the music halls of London as well as he did its theatres.

And while he did not live long enough to witness the formal launch of the movies, he was nevertheless a witness to their birth.   A witness to what might be termed the dawn of the audio-visual age.   An age in which the invention of photography procreated with an understanding of the persistence of vision and unleashed a horde of thinkers, tinkerers and mad scientists who changed the world.   An age in which, if we look hard enough, and connect the right dots, we will even discover the birth of television.

And it was an age of panoramas and dioramas and stereoscopes and increasingly sophisticated magic lantern shows.   An age in which, long before Betamax and Nintendo, long before the Pathe Baby and the Edison cylinder, people’s parlors and lives were brightened by amazing wonders with strange names like the Thaumatrope and the Phenakistoscope and later the Zoetrope.

None of this was lost on Dickens.

Nothing ever was.

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I interrupt this rambling, but hopefully not entirely incoherent, sermon with a purely personal aside.

Assuming that there are no unpublished manuscripts lying about somewhere, I would venture to say that for most Dickensians the ultimate in the Holy Grail department is the hope that a fully authenticated letter from late in Dickens’s life will one day be discovered.   A letter in which he absolutely, definitively and incontrovertibly sets the record straight about whatever did or didn’t happen with Ellen Ternan.

From the standpoint of Dickens scholarship, such a letter would be earthshaking in importance.   No doubt about it.

However, for me, the ultimate in this type of discovery would be a lengthy letter, also from late in his life, in which Dickens recounts in great detail the wonders of a magic lantern show that he attended the night before.   A show — technically possible by the mid-nineteenth century — featuring actual photographic images fixed on glass slides.   Images of handsome men and pretty women and exciting far off places.

Imagine that it included a detailed statement of his feelings about the magic lantern and similar stimuli and that it discussed the extent to which these things had influenced his writing.

Imagine that it included a speculation, and a prediction, that one day those photographic images would somehow achieve full motion and that they would be used to tell all manner of stories ranging from the realistic to the delightfully unrealistic.

And imagine that such a letter concluded with a confirmation of something that many commentators have wondered about over the years:   That when those images did achieve full, realistic motion, he would be happy to adapt his stories — and create new ones — for the screen.

I guess I just choose to believe in fantastic long shots and tantalizing “what ifs” and “if onlys.”   I can, for example, vividly recall working on a term paper and presentation on my absolute favorite film, Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, in a class that I was once privileged to take under the great Jay Leyda at New York University.

And at the end of my presentation I tossed out my firm belief that before departing on his ill-fated trip to South America, Orson Welles – being Orson Welles and because he was Orson Welles – slipped some anonymous lab technician a hundred dollar bill, or maybe a case of bourbon, to make him a personal and delightfully illegal print of his uncut masterpiece.

And how do we know that Welles didn’t go to his grave smiling in the knowledge that in the office of some twenty-first century Jaggers there rests a letter.   And that if and when the happy day arrives that no individual or corporate entity even remotely connected to RKO can touch his film again, that letter will be opened.   And it will divulge the whereabouts of what I believe would be his greatest gift to the world.   Talk about your ultimate in Wellesian legerdemain…

And over the years I have been both delighted and honored to learn that distinguished writers and scholars like   V. F. Perkins and Grahame Smith,           and I’m sure countless others whose names I will never know, are also true believers.   As such, the complete Ambersons will be found.   And with similar confidence, I await the joyful discovery of that long lost audio-visual manifesto in Dickens’s own hand.

***********************************************************************

A grasp of that audio-visual context is vitally important when trying to understand Dickens, his world and his work.   But before moving on, if I may be permitted one more purely personal aside, I offer no apologies for my use of the term audio-visual.   I think it still works just fine.   And I say a pox upon the HD, IT, widescreen technocrats who have recently declared it obsolete.   The folks who still choke on the inconvenient reality that cumbersome old 35mm film still trumps their precious Blu-ray and who look down their noses at anyone who can tell the difference between a projector and a toaster.

Anyway…   Hugo is also part of another — and ultimately more important — Dickensian context.   A context that is rooted in the basic respect for childhood that was noted above.

But it goes much deeper than that.   And there are numerous examples that can be cited, David Copperfield and the autobiographical fragment about Warren’s Blacking being just the most common and obvious.   And, of course, Oliver Twist.   Although as much as I love Oliver and sympathize with his plight, it is his little friend Dick who breaks my heart.   And Jo the Crossing Sweeper from Bleak House.   And that wild, nameless urchin in The Haunted Man.

And, as I recycle this paragraph from my book, I am deeply moved by the story of Dickens “…finding a deaf and dumb boy, presumably abandoned and in Dickens’s words ‘half dead,’ on the beach at Broadstairs where he was vacationing.   Apart from the fact that Dickens arranged for the boy to be cared for, little is known of this incident or of the boy’s subsequent fate; on the vast canvas of Dickens’s busy life it is a footnote, and a minor one at that.   And yet one would not be wrong in viewing it as a microcosm of the world that Dickens refused to ignore.   In words that could be Dickens’s own, Peter Ackroyd [in his mesmerizing biography of Dickens] describes this boy as ‘one of the thousands of homeless children, many of them in some way disabled from ordinary life, who seem to drift across the landscape of the nineteenth century, discarded and forgotten.’”   And, I would simply add, lonely.

However for me, as I mentioned in my previous article, the issue comes into deep focus in A Christmas Carol when Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past revisit one of his lonely Christmases in which he had been left behind at school with only his books for company.   A Christmas on which, Scrooge assures the Ghost, Ali Baba did come and relieve his loneliness.

Dickens knew — and could never forget — what the world looked and felt like to a lonely child.   And at the risk of coming across as a pretentious jerk, I offer the following quote from my book as another proof of this.   But decide for yourself whether or not it sheds any light on whatever Dickens did or didn’t know about lonely children.   I tend to view it as one of those rare occasions on which maybe, just maybe, I was actually on to something important:

“…what one wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall at some of the Dickens family’s early Christmas celebrations, say in the years just after young Charles’s sojourn at Warren’s Blacking.   A fairly large and undoubtedly boisterous family would be present, and let use assume that John Dickens is a veritable modern Misrule.   (On this latter point, film buffs might think of W. C. Fields’s brilliant portrayal of Wilkins Micawber in MGM’s David Copperfield.   Micawber is known to have been largely inspired by Dickens’s vision of his father.)   Amidst whatever gaiety is taking place might we not observe one young man — still smarting from his experience at the blacking factory and with at least a hint of a faraway look in his eyes — feeling, in a very real sense, alone in a crowd?   Might this explain the lack of a joyous ‘Christmas Chapter’ in David Copperfield?”

This, in my opinion, and for whatever my two cents are worth on this or any other subject, is Hugo’s ultimate Dickensian connection.   That its story is told through the eyes of a lonely child.   If, as noted above, Hugo’s heart is its celebration of fancy, then this is its soul.   And in this regard, Asa Butterfield’s performance in the film’s title role is simply astonishing.   But in a very quiet and subtle way.

And I would add here that the film could almost be called Hugo and Isabelle.   Such is the understated strength and charm of the presence of Chloe Grace Moretz as Isabelle.   What I don’t know about adolescent girls is a lot.   But I do know something about people who take refuge in books and words.   As I see it, she and Hugo are kindred spirits in more ways than one.

Martin Scorsese's Cameo in Hugo

Their relationship is truly touching.   And thankfully the film does not turn it into yet another tedious and predictable teenage romance kind of mess.   In this regard, I positively shudder to think of what a film maker without Martin Scorsese’s obvious respect for, and appreciation of, a great book would have done to The Invention of Hugo Cabret.   And someone without his knowledge of, and love of, the movies.

Yes, given their ages, this — a romance — may indeed be where Hugo and Isabelle are headed after the final fadeout.   And if they do, we wish them well.   However, I choose to focus on those moments that transcend whatever sexual awakenings may indeed be simmering beneath the surface.   Moments in which two human beings are starting to realize — and are maybe asking themselves if it can really be true — that they are no longer alone.

As I say, whatever happens to Hugo and Isabelle, we wish them well.   But unfortunately children do not run the world.   Nor do people like Georges Melies and Charles Dickens.  For all we know, Hugo and Isabelle may perish in the conflagration that will engulf France and the rest of Europe less than a decade later.

Or maybe one of them will break the other’s heart.   It happens.   Although since they have both fallen under the spell of a master magician, I tend to think that this will not be the case.

In her classic book Writing for Young Children, Claudia Lewis tells us that        “…the writer of a story is in the position of the adult who stands before the inquiring, scrutinizing child with his values in his hands.   ‘Show me what the world is like, and what you who have lived here a long time have made of it…’   ‘What can I expect of you?’ the child challenges.”

No one knew better than Dickens that the answer to those questions isn’t always pretty.   But he never gave up.   Even in those later, old-before-his-time years, he was still lighting candles instead of cursing the ever increasing darkness.   He was a storyteller and that is what storytellers do.  They light candles that illuminate our lives and, every once in a while, change the world.

Again, Dickens never gave up.  His famous “Carol Philosophy” was all about making the world a better place through a truly radical revolution.   A moral revolution.   A collective change of heart that started with each and every individual heart in the world.

And if that sounds like some sort of platitude then so be it.   But remember what George Orwell had to say about this in his famous and truly brilliant essay on Dickens, that his “whole message is one that at first glance looks like an enormous platitude: If men would behave decently the world would be decent.”

However, as I note in my book, “…it is a matter of no small significance that a writer like Orwell  — i.e., a writer not inclined to reach for convenient bromides — goes on to wrap up this section of his essay by concluding that ‘If men would behave decently the world would be decent is not such a platitude as it sounds.’”

So there you have it.   A world run by decent people.   What a concept.

Anyway…   I was just about to wrap up this rambling epistle with a brilliant flourish when I thought I heard something.   Did someone just ask “If Dickens was so concerned with decent behavior then why wasn’t he decent to his wife?   Why was he, in fact, so appallingly indecent in his treatment of her?”

That friends is one helluva good question and it will take a better Dickens scholar, and a better psychiatrist, than I can ever hope to be to answer it.   All I can say is that all the genius in the world does not excuse or explain what he did to her.   I’ll side with Catherine on this one.

So now that the three-hundred pound guerilla in the room has been acknowledged, how do I wrap this up on a positive note?   We are, after all, celebrating Dickens’s birth.   A happy occasion, right?   Hardly the appropriate time or place for warts and all biography.

But maybe, for me at least, some sort of an answer, or at least some part of an answer, will be found in an exremely unlikely place.   This may trigger a petition by the worldwide Dickens fraternity to have me committed, or at least conserved, but here goes.

I have always sensed some sort of a vague, cosmic connection between Dickens and one of my very favorite films.   A film that is definitely in my personal top five list of all-time greats.

It is a strange, wild, funny, poignant, inspiring affair that ultimately defies any attempt to fit it into a convenient category or precisely defined genre.   Although if you insist on labeling it, it is commonly referred to as a western.

It is one of the most genuinely lyrical and indescribably poetic films ever made.   It is also one of the greatest love stories ever committed to film; right up there with Rick and Ilsa.   It is about rugged individualism and making something from nothing.   It is about the passage of time and the fleeting nature of happiness.   It is about life and death and love and loneliness and God.   And a lot more.

I refer to Sam Peckinpah’s 1970 The Ballad of Cable Hogue.   I love and revere Ride the High Country and The Wild Bunch.   But for me, this is Peckinpah’s ultimate masterpiece.   It features one of Jason Robards’s finest performances in the title role, as well as equally brilliant turns by Stella Stevens as Hildy the love of his life and David Warner as a delightfully fraudulent preacher named Joshua.

The gist of the story is that an eccentric character named Cable Hogue finds water in the middle of a barren desert and creates his own little bit of of heaven on earth; two acres of land that Joshua refers to as Hogue’s Cactus Eden.   Dickens had his own Cactus Eden.   London.

Now David Warner is a great actor with serious Shakesperean credentials.   But in the film’s memorable finale, he delivers a profoundly moving eulogy for Cable Hogue that surpasses and transcends anything he ever did with Shakespeare on stage or screen.   And for me, the film’s closing words can just as easily have been said of Dickens in June of 1870:  “Take him Lord, but knowing Cable, I suggest you do not take him lightly.   Amen.”

So while we who are still in this world are hopefully trying to behave as decently as we can while looking for our own Cactus Edens, let us be grateful for the storytellers who make the task a little bit easier by giving us hope and lighting our way.   And let us not take Charles Dickens lightly.   Let us be grateful that he – warts and all  — once walked this earth.   And that he never really died.   That through his stories, he is still very much alive and well.   That he just turned 200 and shows no signs of slowing down.

In closing, I hope this little attempt at a birthday tribute makes some sort of sense to others.   And I am well aware of the fact that, along the way, I have no doubt been guilty of all sorts of unprofessional and unscholarly behavior by zigzaging all over the place and by speculating (but hopefully not pontificating) about what Dickens would think and feel and do if he were still with us in body as well as spirit.   If I belonged to any prestigious academic organizations, I’m sure that movements would already be afoot to have me tarred and feathered and my library card revoked.

However, since the main ingredients of this admitedly strange stew are two masters of fancy and all that is fanciful – Charles Dickens and Georges Melies — I offer no apologies.   To quote Mrs. Dilber in the greatest of all Carol adaptations:  ”In keeping with the situation,” none are necessary.

Charles Dickens at Age Eighteen

And one more thing.   If you’re one of those adults who can’t forget what the world looks and feels like to a lonely child and/or adolescent, don’t worry about it.   We’re in good company…