Audio/Visual Club

Photo Album: Tom Dennison’s House

| Ted Wheeler

A while back I posted about finally tracking down Tom Dennison’s house in Northwest Omaha at 7510 Military Ave. (Read about it here.) Through the comments section of this post, Dennison’s great-grandson, John Ragan, reached out to me and offered to send a few family photos my way. It was a gracious offer on John’s part, and I appreciate his sending them. He also said it would be okay if I shared them on this blog. So here they are!

ORDER KINGS OF BROKEN THINGS, A NEW NOVEL ABOUT DENNISON-ERA OMAHA!

Photo Album: The Talmadge Sisters

| Ted Wheeler

The Talmadge sisters–mostly Norma, but a little bit Constance and Natalie–were the models for Evelyn Chambers, the female lead of my novel, The Uninitiated. I didn’t know much about them when I came across Norma in a pinup calendar from 1918 (pictured below) but they were really quite an interesting phenomena during the 1920s. And Norma in particular is now most famous for the fact that her star faded so quickly once talkies replaced silent film as the convention.

 

A/V Club-Ken Burns’ Prohibition: The Time is Now

| Ted Wheeler

Has everybody (or anybody) been watching Ken Burns’ new PBS documentary Prohibition this week? It’s really fascinating how much the face of the United States was changed in order to bring about Prohibition–and how it was largely anti-German sentiment surrounding America’s entry into World War I that was finally “the home run” for Prohibitionists, as most of the brewers were German-American, of course.

Below is a section that is period-relevant to the book I’m working on. The bit on the anti-German wave and World War I starts around 8:13.

For some reason I have real trouble getting stuff from PBS to embed correctly, so here’s the link: http://video.pbs.org/video/2082716396. Hopefully that works, and I’ll keep trying.

A/V Club: The Red Baron and the Flying Circus

| Ted Wheeler

Below is the final scene from the Roger Corman film Von Richthofen and Brown (1971) about German ace Manfred von Richthofen (aka The Red Baron) and the Canadian pilot Roy Brown who eventually shot down and killed him. The movie is pretty interesting, by the way. Although not precisely accurate in historical detail, the numerous air combat scenes and sense of camaraderie and competition between enemy squadrons are done quite well, as evidenced by these final shots.

 

 

And here’s some archive footage of Richthofen’s remains after the crash, and his funeral. There was such respect between the rivals that the Red Baron was given a full military funeral by Allied forces. His infamous red triplane, however, was quickly dismantled for souvenirs.