Despite the System reviewed in Sunday Times - Orson Welles Versus Hollywood Studios

[jaime marzol]

i'm surprised you don't like macbeth. i like it a lot. the only welles product out there i don't care for is around the world with OW.

[Glenn Anders]

Jeff: You've lit a considerable number of short fuses here. Thank you for the reviews.

I rather like Tony's conclusion that, in the end, it is only the work that matters. In Welles' case, of course, we have been able to see only a few of many works in the form he created them.

Having said that, I wonder if a key to much, really most of Welles' troubles in Hollywood, did not lie in an act that I am sure we have mentioned before, but I do not believe have given sufficient weight: Welles' acceptance of an invitation, in that fateful year of 1942, to become a founder of "The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers." Born of the great, far-reaching U. S. Government vs Paramount law suit which eventually separated the Studios from their life blood theater chains, the Society (later archly known as SIMPP) was more important symbolically than in fact, but it was the kind of organization which was much more insulting to the Moguls Welles said he got along with than anything he might have said to them himself, and it was potentially much more threatening.

Welles, it seems to me, came to Hollywood hoping to make the The Mercury Players or Mercury Productions the equal in motion pictures of what The Mercury Theater had become on Broadway or the Mercury Theater on the Air to Radio. The Society may have seemed to offer him aid in realizing that opportunity.

Think of its members: [Listed now as Founders] Charles Chaplin, Walt Disney, Sam Goldwyn, Alexander Korda, Mary Pickford, David O. Selznick, Walter Wanger, Orson Welles; [Listed as Featured Members], Constance Bennett, Benedict Bogeaus, and the General Service Studio, James Cagney & William Cagney, Bing Crosby, Edward Golden, Howard Hughes, International Pictures: William Goetz & Leo Spitz, Stanley Kramer, Jesse L. Lasky, Sol Lesser, David L. Loew, Charles Einfeld: Enterprise Productions, Leo McCarey, Seymour Nebenzal, Arnold Pressburger, Hal Roach, Charles R. Rogers, Harry Sherman, Jack Skirball, Edward Small, Sam Spiegel, John Huston: Horizon Pictures, Andrew L. Stone, Hunt Stromberg, Preston Sturges, W. Lee Wilder.

Some of these were has-beens in 1942, others non-entities, and still others like Walt Disney, Sam Goldwyn, or Howard Hughes might have been plants or loose cannons, but talented producers, actors or directors like Charles Chaplin, Alexander Korda, Jimmy Cagney, Bing Crosby, David Selznick, Stanley Kramer, Sam Spiegel, John Huston, or Preston Sturges -- certainly Welles -- represented a threat, not just in terms of talent, but in the possible exercise of power in the World of Movies, moreso after the Studio shattering "Consent Decree of 1948." One cannot help noticing how Welles left for Europe about that time, but was associated with a number of these figures during the rest of his career.

An interesting irony (coincidence?) is that the original Executive Secretary of the Society, a lawyer named James Allen, at the beginning of the War, departed to become the head of the Motion Picture Bureau in the Office of War Information. In other words, he would have been instrumental in helping Nelson Rockefeller persuade Welles to abandon his flouishing Radio and Hollywood Motion Picture career to join the War effort by flying to Brazil to make a Good Neighbor Policy movie for Western Hemisphere solidarity.

We discuss the result of that act almost endlessly here.

The Society was widely attacked thereafter, but staggered on until it closed its offices in 1958, the year Welles left the Hollywood Studios for good.

I trust Clinton Heylin deals with this aspect of Welles' career, but for those who have not come across the Society, here is a website celebrating a book on the subject:

http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/index.htm

Glenn

[jaime marzol]

i didn't see any fuses lit, i saw lively forum postings. isn't that what we are here for?

[Tony]

Glenn:

interesting URL; I believe there were many factors creating Welles problems in Hollywood, a few of which were:

1. His arriving at the top, without working his way up
2. His contract which gave him final cut
3. His intellectual character (seen as pretentious)
4. His occasional mean temper, especially to technicians and studio bosses
5. His beard (seen as pretentious)
6. His avoiding the draft
7. His inability to treat the audience like sheep
8. His "hammy" acting style
8. His "artiness": his inabilty to produce "upbeat" material and have happy endings
9. His general liberal attitudes, both socially and politically
10. His inability to kiss up to studio execs
11. His inability to compromise, seen as intractibilty
12. His loss of his lawyer Weissberger, who got for him final cut on Kane
13. His new lawyer Jack Moss who lost for him final cut on Ambersons
14. His inability to be prudent with money, often going over-budget
15. His weight, incresingly seen in America (but nowhere else) as a sign of sloth and lack of discpline
16. His lack of discipline
17. His enormous intellect, which made others feel genuinely inferior
18. His inability to generate profit for the studios (his greatest sin, in the absence of which all the others would be forgiven)
19. His general refusal to play the game
20. His general inability to understand the game
21. His maverick nature


Gee, when I read this list, I wonder how the guy ever got a film made...
???

Oh yeah: and his membership in the society of Independent Motion Picture Producers.

What have I missed?

[Glenn Anders]

Tony: You about cover the waterfront, as I like to say.

The failings you list, one might note, are mostly personal. Three others come to mind: 1) Not only in private or through his art but in public, Welles was a staunch anti-fascist, which he demonstrated many times, something not thought wise, even in the late 1930's; 2) He opposed prejudices like anti-semitism, bigotry, and what we now call racism, both in his work and privately, and he put himself up front about that in various causes; 3) he actually associated publicly and privately -- not for show or to shock -- with people of color, and consorted with women of color such as Delores Del Rio, Billie Holiday and Lena Horne, which was much worse than the first two failings in the eyes of middlebrow Hollywood.

Still, his helping found the Society of Independent Movie Producers, it seems to me, threatened to take power from the moguls. He was aligning himself with the Enemy. The fact that most of his productions lost money for the moguls would not have been so bad because there was a lot to lose. They were unmindful of losing a little caviar from their mouths. There was much to share . . . with "a genius," after all, but the threat of taking power was unforgivable.

Indeed, the process by which we gain, maintain, and lose power was Welles' major theme through much of his career.

But I like your list, Tony. As you suggest, it is amazing Orson Welles got anything done.

Glenn

[Tony]

Glenn:
Thanks for the feedback on my list; I actually had included the all-Black Macbeth, but edited it out of the list as its inclusion could be misunderstood; but you have reminded me that OW dated and married "WOMEN OF OTHER RACES :0 " from the beginning: Delores, Rita, Lina, Eartha, etc. Also he was criticized by a studio spy down in Brazil for filming "a bunch of jigaboos jumping up and down", and for focussing on the fortazelas (the slums) as well as on voodoo ceremonies, instead of just filming a nice, feel-good travelogue which would increase solidarity and especially tourism.

And of course the beginning of his career occurring just at the time the U.S. was gearing up for war, which probably affected the results of the 42 academy awards as well as the editing of and response to Ambersons.

Have you read the issue of Persistence of Vision from back in 1989? It was really a collection of papers which had been presented at a conference, and there's a whole section on It's All True with papers by Robert Stam, Susan Ryan and Catherine Benamou. They really cracked open this whole concept of racism and the Brazil trip; and not just racism but "post-colonialism", the "cultural superiority" assumed by most individuals from the so-called western culture.

Benamou is very interesting and Jonathan Roenbaum has reported that she has almost completed a book on Welles in Brazil, but is a perfectionist and is doing a bit of a Quixote with it, never quite finishing it; but she's a specialist in American (including Latin American) studies. You might recognize her name from the credits of "It's All True" which she was an important part of, but here's a little example of her writing from a web-site devoted to a Brazilian film festival of a couple of years ago:

IT'S ALL TRUE An Event Remembered, An Unfinished Film

"It's All True" is the name of an Orson Welles's four-episode film whose beginning dates back to 1941, when the director still had a contract with the RKO Radio Pictures studios in Hollywood. The movie would have been the second feature film directed by Welles himself - placed somewhere between "Citizen Kane" (1941) and "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942) - and the 5th project proposed to RKO by Welles's Mercury Productions. Welles, who wanted to transpose real-life stories to the screen, created the title. These stories would take place in North America and would include an episode about the life of musician Louis Armstrong, traveling over his origins in New Orleans to his national success in New York and international triumph in Europe. Taking place in different communities and regions, these four episodes would shape a mosaic of America in the face of modernity, illustrating its cultural and racial diversity and evoking its democratic process - with emphasis falling on the worker's dignity.

One of these four episodes began production on September 1941 in the states of Jalisco and Zacatecas, Mexico - the episode based on a story bought at the border of Mexico and the Untied States by the filmmaker Robert Flaherty (1884-1951) - director of influential documentaries such as "Nanook of the North" (1922) and "Man of Aran" (1934), and also co-director of F.W. Murnau in "Taboo - A Story from The South Seas" (1931). This episode has been titled "My Friend Bonito." It was probably inspired in a story, which took place in Mexico City in 1908, about a friendship between a wild bull and his tamer Bonito. Their friendship ended up saving the animal from death, thanks to the public in the bull's ring. The shooting was put on hold on December 1941, when Norman Foster, then a director under the guidance of Welles, was called back to Hollywood to direct "Journey Into Fear" (1942), a low-budget RKO project starring Welles, Joseph Cotten, and Dolores Del Rio - who was having a romantic and committed relationship with Welles at that time.

Welles intended to connect the Mexican episode to two new episodes to be shot in Brazil during a planned trip on request of the politician and businessman Nelson Rockefeller and supported by the strategic agency "Coordination of Inter-American Affairs." Rockefeller was counting on Welles as the "Ambassador of Amity" to tighten the ties between Brazil and The U.S., an endeavor in the cultural sector already initiated by the actress Carmen Miranda during a crucial moment of the war against the Axis. His arrival in Brazil has coincided with the Pan-American Conference, where all the Republics of the hemisphere should prove and display their alliance to the United States' rationale in the defense of the allied countries in exchange of commercial benefits.

The consequences of Latin American countries siding with the United States during the War turned up shortly after in the cinema and industry sectors. In Argentina, a country that formally maintained its neutrality during the War, the movie industry underwent a sudden fall after the cut on U.S. celluloid exports. In Mexico, where film production was decentralized and growing erratically, the movie industry managed to take a hegemonic position and triumph over other Latin American countries during and after the War. Brazil was also dreaming of establishing its own movie industry, supported by the Estado Novo protectionist legislation. Contrary to many Hollywood representatives, Welles announced his intentions to help the growth of the Brazilian movie industry, an undertaking not entirely surprising when considering the content and the strategies of the two Brazilian "It's All True" episodes.

According to the logic of the American version of the movie, the Brazilian episodes should be built on real stories. Like in the Mexican episode, the two filmed in Brazil would be shot in locations corresponding to the events portrayed in the film, mixing well-known actors with people without any familiarity with the film making, who would contribute to the drawing of the characters' contours and the dramatized events with their own experiences. Therefore, "It's All True" might be considered a film parting from Brazil and Mexico "to the outside," instead of just another example of a folkloric or bucolic picture made for consumption of eventual tourists in the audiences of American movie theaters.

The basis of communication and understanding among cultures and nations would be built through the practices of popular culture and the efforts by peoples of each country in the recognition and improvement of the relationship with social and political elites - these were the most important sectors for the commercial, cultural, and martial politics of "Amity." The first episode shot by Welles was "Carnival," a real documentation and celebration of the carnival from Rio de Janeiro, in all its different manifestations and places. The film drew a dramatized portrait of the social geography of samba, from its origins in the shanty-towns, including those slums formed by internal migrations, to more sophisticated places in the cosmopolitan cultural circuit like the Cassino Atlântico, the Cassino da Urca, and the Teatro Municipal.

Two actors were responsible for linking these spaces as well as samba variations such as choro, Afro-Brazilian drumming known as batuque, and samba de enredo: Sebastião de Souza Prata, known as the Grande Otelo, and the singer Peri Ribeiro, the oldest son of Herivelto Martins and Dalva de Oliveira, two great artists of the Brazilian music. Grande Otelo and Peri Ribeiro played respectively the parts of malandro, a streetwise man and controversial figure in the public realm under the Estado Novo regime, and that of a boy, lost in the amusement dance searching for his mother. This episode was entirely shot in Technicolor -- a huge innovation for Brazil at that time -, and would work, in theory, as the Brazilian answer to the episode (only planned, never filmed) "Jazz History" starring Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and other musicians in the cast, with musical arrangements by Duke Ellington.

The second Brazilian episode called "Four Men on a Raft" (or "Jangadeiros," the typical raft riders from Northern Brazil), would round up the South American section. It would dramatize, starring the original protagonists, the courageous odyssey - in both political and physical terms - of four raft riders from the state of Ceará who sailed off the city of Fortaleza to Rio de Janeiro, from September to November 1941. Their objective with this trip was to claim their inclusion, as a working class, in the system of Social Security offered by the Estado Novo to those that worked in the agriculture. President Getúlio Vargas signed a law-decree guaranteeing this protection on November 17, 1941, a decision interpreted by Welles as a sign of the president's goodwill during the democratic process that should follow Brazil's entrance in the War along with the United States.

Unfortunately, the shooting of "Jangadeiros," first done in Technicolor, then in black-and-white, coincided with two devastating events that affected both the community of raft riders in the Fortaleza colonies Z-2 and Z-1 and the future of "It's All True," also impacting Orson Welles' career in the U.S. In May 1942, during the shooting of the raft riders' arrival in Rio de Janeiro, the leader Manoel "Jacaré" Olimpio Meira vanishes in a sea accident at Barra de Tijuca (under some observers' view - the same type of accident that killed the activist Chico Mendes). Jacaré was replaced by his brother, João Jacaré who, in the new plot, travel to Rio with the three survivors. This new plot also demanded the inclusion of the fictitious death scene of a young raft rider called Sobrinho. In June, during Welles's trip to Fortaleza with the small crew formed by Richard and Elizabeth Wilson, the secretary Shifra Haran, and the photographer George Fanto (borrowed temporarily from Cinédia, with the assistant Reginaldo Calmon), the president of RKO George Schaefer resigns from his position. Soon after, Mercury Productions is banished from the studio.

The material filmed in Mexico and Brazil has never been entirely edited by Welles - who wanted to include samba recordings originally composed by Dorival Caymmi, Herivelto Martins, Grande Otelo, and Pixinguinha, and sung by Emilinha Borba, Orlando Silva, Linda Batista, and Chucho Martínez Gil. For the episode "Jangadeiros," the soundtrack of his dreams would comprise Heitor Villa Lobos, and for "My Friend Bonito," the Mexican modern composer Carlos Chávez. The soundless rough copy of the movie, lacking a final script of the Brazilian episodes, has hindered the RKO specialists' task of deciphering the plot and the cultural importance of what had been filmed.

After Welles's departure to Europe in 1947, his studio practically cannibalized his scripts and much of his material recorded on film in movies such as "Pan-American" (John H. Auer, 1945), "Notorious" (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946), and "The Brave One" (Irving Rapper, 1956), among others. As a counterpoint, Welles managed to rescue some of his aesthetic and thematic ideas through a series of quotations made in the following movies: "The Lady from Shangai" (1948), "Macbeth" (1948), "Othello" (1952), "Mr. Arkadin" (or "Confidential Report", 1955), "Touch of Evil" (1958), and "Chimes at Midnight" (1965). However, these quotations were ignored for many years, probably due to the refusal of Welles's critics in Europe and in the U.S. to recognize the existence of a project which, although canceled during its execution, was still almost entirely in the memory and imagination of its Brazilians, Mexicans, and Americans creators.

The film's cultural legacy lives on the Portuguese and Spanish languages. During the years when the material was vanishing, it lives on essays written by critics Tomás Pérez Turrent and Emilio García Riera ( México), Antônio Paranaguá, Paulo Emilio Salles Gomes e Vinícius de Moraes (Brazil), and in the movies by Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Glauber Rocha at the dawning of the Cinema Novo. After its recovery, this legacy has become visible in cinematic homages, like the trilogy by Rogério Sganzerla.

Besides some excerpts, which can be cherished in a copy that this Festival will screen, there is a larger text and story to be rescued from the cans stocked up in the UCLA collection and yet labeled "It's All True." They are 68,145 feet corresponding to "My Friend Bonito"; 32,000 feet in black-and- white, and 3,000 feet in Technicolor corresponding to "Carnival," and 48,500 feet in black-and-white of "Jangadeiros." This material still needs to be preserved - a process that depends not only on the recollection of the events and of such a peculiar project in the continent's history, but also entails the public appreciation of those countries involved in its production. Welles and his collaborators' innovative efforts in a moment of shared artistic inspiration deserve all our support.

Catherine Benamou
Associate Producer and Executive Researcher of "It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles"



We can only hope she finishes her book, as it will be the definitive report on Welles and Brazil. By the way, I know a Brazilian couple, and the fellow is 50, and though not born in 1942, Welles is still a respected legend to him; one can only conclude that Welles touched a sympathetic nerve in Brazil, and a somewhat different kind of nerve in the RKO boardroom.

[Glenn Anders]

Well said and well quoted, Tony.

I have not read Persistence of Vision, but I would note that the San Francisco International Film Festival created an award with that title a few years ago. I have also heard of Catherine Benamou's book.

Does anyone know if she has published it yet?

Thank you for including her note.

Between the lines, do I discern correctly that Welles' American concept for IT'S ALL TRUE was Internationalized, and then because of interference from the very forces who encouraged that process, then muddled and scuttled? Ms. Benamou's account of the film's history strongly reminds me of the probability.

As you may know -- it's been discussed here recently -- the Louis Armstrong segment of IT'S ALL TRUE was eventually made, years later, as a feature film, NEW ORLEANS. It came out on DVD last year, and in the extras, there is a brief discussion of how the Armstrong-Welles' vision eventually became the triumph of Woody Herman and his Herd.

I was also interested in Ms. Benamou's references to the footage from IT'S ALL TRUE, which RKO cannibalized, sold off in some cases, evidently, to provide "local color" in other movies. I have long known of this fact, but it would make an interesting study to determine what parts of some rather distinguished films of the period contain material shot by Welles.

Finally, I might note that Welles worked with the people in France who later made BLACK ORPHEUS, based on a famous Brazillian folkloric story. He wanted to do it himself, perhaps hoping that he could regain possession and incorporate some of the tens of thousands of feet of footage he created for IT'S ALL TRUE. In my memory, he wanted to make his BLACK ORPHEUS in color, and a couple of years ago, an absolutely gorgeous Technicolor remake of BLACK ORPHEUS, called ORFEU, was made by the Brazillians. It was controversial because of the cost of the color stock and process, and criticized for being shallow, but pictorially it gives a strong suggestion of what Orson Welles had in his dream.

Thank you again, Tony.

Glenn

[Tony]

Glenn:

Catherine Benamou's book has not been published, because she has not, as far as I know, finished it; however her web-page states that the book will be published by the University California Press.

About the internationalizing of "It's All True": What you've pointed to is fascinating, because what we're really talking about is Welles' consciousness in general, or the base operating principle underlying everything he did; I absolutely agree with you about this idea, and Welles (as you might well know) made a comment on his 1942 radio show about Brazil which resonates nicely with this thought: "Brazil has the blood of all races in her people". This reminds me that when I asked a Brazilian friend of mine if the blacks were native to Brazil (showing my own profound ignorance) he told me "They were all slaves- any blacks in the western hemisphere were brought over from Africa; in Brazil, you have the natives, the blacks, and the Europeans, often mixed."

As my above post tried to show, Welles affronted the powers that be on so many fronts at once it's kind of astonishing, however I still maintain if his pictures had been moneymakers he would have made more films regardless of any other affront.

As you can see from the Benamou article, the problem now is preserving the extant film shot for "It's All True", including that not used in the 1992 documentary. As nitrate, it has a short life, but who will pay for it's preservation, especially now that the documentary has been made?

I sincerely hope CB publishes her book, as I believe, as do so many, that the Brazilian episode was THE crucial turning point for Welles as an artist, and perhaps as a man also. Benamou is really something; check out this:


Catherine Benamou (Ph.D. 1997, New York University) is Associate Professor of Film and Video Studies and American Culture; she is also on the faculty of the Latino/a Studies Program. She is a film historian specializing in hemispheric and ethnic media and the cinema of Orson Welles. Her teaching (and research) interests include: history and theory of Documentary cinema; international film genres; cinema and Diaspora; Spanish-language television, transmission and reception; indigenous media in the hemisphere; the history of inter-American representation; Brazilian cinema and television.

Her recent publications include: "Rediscovering Orson Welles" MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW 38/4 (Fall, 1999). "Those Earrings, That Accent, That Hair': A Dialogue with Maria Hinojosa on Latino/as and the Media," in Ella Shohat, ed. TAKING VISIONS: MULTICULTURAL FEMINISM IN A TRANSNATIONAL AGE (NY: New Museum of Contemporary Art; Cambridge, MA: MIT press).

In the past year, Dr. Benamou also made presentations to "The Unknown Orson Welles" film conference hosted by the Filmmuseum in Munich, Germany; "Shakespeare on Screen: the Centenary Conference," hosted by the University of Malaga at Benalmadena, Spain; and the Plenary on the State of the Profession, Society for Cinema Studies conference in Chicago, Illinois.

She is currently completing a book manuscript, IT'S ALL TRUE: ORSON WELLES AT WORK IN LATIN AMERICA (University of California Press), and developing a comprehensive research project on the transmission and reception of Spanish- and Portuguese-language television in the diverse Latino/a Communities of Los Angeles, California. Last summer, she launched the IT'S ALL TRUE PRESERVATION PROJECT at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, which will recommence in January with seed funding from the Los Angeles Critics Association (LAFCA). She continues to chair the Latino/a Caucus of the Society for Cinema Studies, and is Co-Chair of the Caucus Coordinating Committee.

Ms. Benamou teaches the following courses at the University of Michigan:
AC 351: RACE AND AMERICAN CINEMA
AC 380/SP380/FV 380: STUDIES IN TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA
AC420/SP 420: LATINAMERICAN AND LATINO/A FILM STUDIES
FV 455: ORSON WELLES IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
AC490/FV451: AMERICAN FILM GENRES
LS505/ FV 603:FILM AND CULTURE.

I must say I really feel unaccomplished when I read this, but I am really impressed with what she has done, and she only got her Phd. in 1997!

Glenn, why don't we e-mail her and encourage her to publish:

email: cbenamou@umich.ed


All the above info, including her e-mail, is from her university web-site; check it out:

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/filmvideo/studies/st_faculty/benamou.html

Thanks for the enthusiasm and interesting thoughts Glenn.

P.S.: Here's a URL for another article Benamou wrote on Welles; I hope I haven't already given this one to you:

http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi....038.421

Here's another mention: French interviewing Rosenbaum:

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Welles was so disorganized, it's lucky that Richard Wilson kept watch over his career files.

JONATHAN ROSENBAUM: Yes, until he sold them to the Lilly Library, which made Welles really angry, but they probably would have been lost forever if he hadn't done that. He still has all these papers that were left behind. My friend Catherine Benamou, who has been working on a book about IT'S ALL TRUE. knows Dick Wilson's son, and she spent some time going through the papers, although she hasn't gone through everything. Catherine should have turned in her book, but she may never turn it in. She has a problem of not being able to complete things. It's virtually done, so it's unfortunate, because there's nobody who knows more about the film than she does. From what she told me, I think UCLA has finally raised some money to preserve the MY FRIEND BONITO footage from IT'S ALL TRUE, but there's still lots of footage that they haven't been able to properly preserve.


Cheers!

[Wilson]

Several years ago, I guess it was '98 or '99, Benamou taught her Welles course at Michigan, and the screenings of his films were presented at a local theater so anyone could attend; she gave a brief talk before each film, and brought in Rosenbaum to present MR ARKADIN, and Gary Graver as well, to show a bunch of things over a weekend. Too bad they never did it again, at least in that format. Hopefully she'll finish the book, which from all indications sounds like a vital addition to the body of work on Welles.

[Roger Ryan]

Make of it what you will, but I have a friend who attended U-M years ago and swears that Ms. Benamou told him personally that she had seen Welles' long version of "Ambersons" at a clandestine screening in Brazil! I'm thinking she was having a bit of fun at my friend's expense...or perhaps he misheard and Ms. Benamou was really talking about the "It's All True" footage.

[Glenn Anders]

Ygad! Roger, Tony, Jeff: it would seem that Ms. Benamou possesses, perhaps, both the veritable Holy Grail and Rosebud of our quests.

I shall certainly Email her, urging that she drop in on us at wellesnet.com -- might she is not lurking here quietly, right now?! I urge everyone to do the same.

[Soon, I hope to be able to share something much less consequential but amusing and fabulous in a literal sense to me, nevertheless.]

Thank you, Tony, for all the interesting facts about Dr. Benamou.

Likewise, thank you, Roger, for your always useful input.

Glenn

[jaime marzol]

cool

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Gang: Tried to contact Ms. Benamou, but the Email address proved to be a klinker.

Perhaps others can do better.

Glenn

[dkovacev]

Dear Gang: Tried to contact Ms. Benamou, but the Email address proved to be a klinker.

Perhaps others can do better.

Glenn

Glenn: I think that Ms.Benamou's e-mail address at her university web site is valid, but just incorrectly written. It must have extension .edu instead of .ed
Try with cbenamou@umich.edu , it should work OK.

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you, dkovacev.

I should like to report that I just had a gracious reply from Dr. Benamou, and she says that she must travel for the next two weeks, but when she comes back, she promises to drop in on us.

Glenn