Month: December 2022 (Page 8 of 13)

 

‘“Tell me I’m beautiful, it’s nothing. Tell me I’m intellectual, I know it. Tell me I’m funny, and it’s the greatest compliment in the world.” Dancer, actress, model, and popular icon of “sex appeal” as Catwoman in the Batman television series, Julie Newmar (b. Los Angeles, CA, 16 August 1933) would rather have been known as a comedienne. Magnificently “stacked” at 37-23-37, five feet eleven inches tall, with legs well over a yard long in her bare feet, and looking (as she put it herself) “like a racehorse,” she electrified the Broadway stage in a three-minute appearance as Stupefyin’ Jones in Li’l Abner in 1956. But she could act, too, as was demonstrated by the Tony Award she won three years later for her hilarious performance (Best Featured Actress in a Play) in The Marriage-Go-Round with Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer.

‘Julie Newmeyer (as she was then known and billed) appeared, for the most part uncredited, in ten motion pictures as a dancer before she went to New York in 1955. Notable among her performances were “The Gilded Girl” (i.e., the girl covered in gold paint) in Serpent of the Nile (1953), the “Dancer-Assassin” in Slaves of Babylon (1953), and “Dorcas” in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954); she also played chorus and bit parts in The Band Wagon (1953), The Eddie Cantor Story (1953), and Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954).

‘In 1955 Julie made her New York debut as Vera the ballerina in Silk Stockings with Hildegarde Neff and Don Ameche. The show ran for a satisfying 478 performances, and only a few months after it closed she was strutting her stuff as Stupefyin’ Jones in Li’l Abner. Li’l Abner was even more successful at 693 performances, and that was quickly followed by her triumphal comic performance as Katrin Sveg, the Swedish guest who tried to seduce Charles Boyer in The Marriage-Go-Round. (Although the 1959 film version of Li’l Abner was as near a duplicate of the Broadway show as could be made, with almost every member of the cast in his or her original role, the 1961 film of The Marriage-Go-Round preserves only Julie Newmar’s Tony-winning performance, with Susan Hayward and James Mason in the principal roles.) Newmar’s only later Broadway appearance was in Once There Was a Russian (1961), a one-performance flop. Later stage work included national tours of Dames at Sea and Stop the World – I Want to Get Off with Joel Grey, and regional performances as Lola in Damn Yankees and Irma in Irma La Douce.

‘Back in movieland in the sixties, Newmar took on roles in television series that ran from amazon to temptress (often both): an unruly motorcycle-riding heiress (Route 66, 1962), the devil (The Twilight Zone, 1963), an Indian princess (F Troop, 1966), a pregnant space princess (Star Trek, 1967), a double agent posing as a maid (Get Smart, 1968), a cat in human form (Bewitched, 1971), and in the 26-part series My Living Doll (1964–1965), Rhoda the Robot – of necessity a paragon of physical perfection. Her movie roles were similarly diverse: a health addict (For Love or Money, 1963), a vengeful Apache woman (Mackenna’s Gold, 1969), and a Hungarian sexpot (The Maltese Bippy, 1969).

‘Newmar described how she came to take the recurring part of Catwoman on Batman (1966–68), the television role that made her an icon. She was living in New York; her brother had come down from Harvard for a weekend with five or six of his friends. “We were all sitting around the sofa just chatting away, when the phone rang. … It was this agent or someone in Hollywood, who said, ‘Miss Newmar, would you like to play Catwoman on the Batman series? It starts Monday.’” She had never heard of Batman. “I said, ‘What is this?… they never know what they are doing until yesterday.’ Well, my brother leaped off the sofa, I mean he physically levitated, and said, ‘Batman! That’s the favorite show at Harvard. We all quit our classes and quit our studies and run into the TV room and watch this show.’ I said, “They want me to play Catwoman.’ He said, ‘Do it!’”

‘Newmar designed and made her own glittery, skin-tight, hip-belted Catwoman costume, which is now preserved in the Smithsonian Institution. Due to her movie commitments, Julie was able to stay with Batman for only two of its three seasons, but the reruns assured that her image was ever-present. “It was so wonderful being on Batman,” she said, “because you could be nasty and mean. In the ’50s women could never – unless you were some B-picture actress – be mean, bad, and nasty. It was so satisfying. I can’t tell you how satisfying it was.”

‘Playboy Magazine featured her in a pictorial in May 1968. In the early seventies, Julie Newmar appeared in fifteen episodes of Love, American Style; until 1983 she was a one-time guest on fifteen other television series, among them McCloud (1970), Columbo (1973), The Bionic Woman (1976), The Love Boat (1979), CHiPs (1982), Fantasy Island (1983), and Hart to Hart (1983). Her movie career continued with several low-budget films: Love Scenes (1984), Evils of the Night (1985), Deep Space (1988), Cyber-C.H.I.C. (1989), Ghosts Can’t Do It (1989), and Nudity Required (1990).

‘A testament to her indelible celebrity was the title of the 1995 film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Not that the picture had anything to do with Julie Newmar – the story is about three drag queens on a road trip, and the title refers to a signed head-shot. Newmar does make a cameo appearance near the end of the movie.

‘Brainy Julie Newmar is also an inventor, holding three U.S. patents. Two are for her special “cheek”-shaping pantyhose (“Nudemar”), and one for an “invisible” brassiere. She has also been working in the real estate business since the mid-1980s.

‘Newmar was married to John Holt Smith, a lawyer, from 1977 to 1984. They had one child, John Jewl Smith, who is deaf and has Down’s Syndrome. In 2008, Newmar was diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, an incurable neurological disorder that affects balance and ability to walk.

‘She is an avid community advocate. She agitated for a ban on leaf blowers in the City of Los Angeles, arguing that they are unnecessary and too noisy. She also had an issue with her next-door neighbor James Belushi and his noisy air-conditioner: she took out her frustration by throwing an egg at his house, and he retaliated by suing her for four million dollars. The conflict ended amicably in 2006 when it was aired on an episode of Belushi’s sitcom (According to Jim: The Grumpy Guy) in which Julie Newmar co-starred.’ – Lucy E. Cross

 

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1953

Serpent of the Nile is a 1953 Technicolor historical adventure film directed by William Castle. In an early role, actress Julie Newmar (listed as Julie Newmeyer) appears as an exotic dancer clad only in gold paint (and a gold fabric bikini of early 1950s style).

 

“I did a dance with Fred Astaire in the movie ‘Bandwagon.’ I got to waltz just from left of camera to right of camera, and I’m taller than Fred Astaire. Fortunately, I was wearing a long skirt, so I waltzed with bended knees.” — Julie Newmar

 

In William Castle’s Slaves of Babylon, the Jews are taken and made slaves of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. Meanwhile Cyrus king of Persia, who has been living as a shepherd, is proclaimed king Nebuchadnezzar. With a mix of dance with a veil, dagger and ballet, Julie Newmar shines in the performance of a killer dancer.

 

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1954

Set in 1850s Oregon, the film tells the story of a group of unruly lumberjack brothers whose misguided attempts at ‘courting’ love (more commonly referred to today as kidnapping) unleash a fury of both raucous follies and rousing dance numbers. Directed by Stanley Donen, this movie musical stars Howard Keel, Jane Powell, Russ Tamblyn, Julie Newmar, and a fabulous cast of singers and dancers.

 

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1957

This episode of The Phil Silver Show is filled with tremendously funny lines, uttered by a number of people and some the situations are absolutely outrageous. One of them is the appearance of “Susie Stacked,” played by a voluptuous Julie Newmar. The look on Colonel Hall’s face when he sees her in a short mini-type skirt is priceless.

 

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1959

Julie Newmar struts her stuff as Stupefyin’ Jones in the 1959 big screen adaptation of the comic strip Lil’ Abner.

 

In George O’Hanlon’s film The Rookie, two WWII American soldiers and a beautiful actress (played by Julie Newmar) are stranded on an island with a pair of Japanese soldiers.

 

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1961

In Walter Lang’s The Marriage-Go-Round, Julie Newmar repeats her famous towel scene from the stage version.

 

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1962

ROUTE 66 TV S2 E18: The boys are driving through Tucson, AZ, and run across a spicy, captivating blonde (Julie Newmar) motorcycling through town looking for trouble. Arrested, we find out that she is a free-spirit whose rich family recently died and she is lonely looking for attention.

 

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1963

The Twilight Zone: William Feathersmith is a hard-nosed and cold-hearted misanthropic businessman now quite wealthy but bored. It’s clear that what he enjoys is the chase and the acquisition of wealth. He also likes breaking men in the process. While leaving the office one day, he finds himself on the wrong floor (the ominous 13th floor, a number usually associated with bad luck and ill fortune) and in the office of Devlin Travel, run by the statuesque and devilishly attractive Ms. Devlin. In return for his amassed fortune — not his soul because, as she notes, “we got ahold of your soul some time ago” — she offers to send him back in time to his hometown of Cliffordville in 1910 where he can start over and get the pleasure of building his empire all over again. He accepts and once back to the days of his youth begins wheeling and dealing. Nothing quite goes as planned however.

 

Julie Newmar sings and dances to “Simon Says” in this 1963 TV appearance.

 

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1964-1965

In the 1964 TV sitcom My Living Doll, Rhoda (Julie Newmar) is an extremely sexy young woman who lives with womanizing Air Force shrink Bob McDonald. What Bob knows and the rest of the world does not is that Rhoda’s real name is AF 709, and she is actually a sophisticated (yet naive) robot. Bob’s job is to teach Rhoda how to be a “perfect” woman, and keep her identity secret from the world–especially lecherous neighbor Peter. When actor Bob Cummings left the series in early 1965, his character was written out of the series, and Peter was given the duty of taking care of Rhoda.

 

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1966

In an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, Julie Newmar played a Swedish actress who yearns to play a hillbilly moves in with the Clampetts to study backwoods dialect.

 

In the “Yellow Bird” episode of the TV sitcom F Troop, Julie Newmar plays a white woman raised by Indians starts to take after the Captain.

 

The first Catwoman, Julie Newmar played Batman’s crime-stopping partner in the original TV series. With her false eyelashes and heavy, winged shadow, Julie was a prime example of the makeup trends of the ’60s. Even her eyebrows had attitude.

 

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1967

All four Monkees fall in love with the same girl, April Conquest (Julie Newmar), of the local laundromat. Each one tries to woo her by feigning interest in things she likes: Davy paints pop-art, Mickey performs ballet, Peter plays chamber music, and Mike rides a bike.

 

Julie Newmar played Eleen in the Star Trek: The Original Series second season episode “Friday’s Child”. She filmed her scenes on Monday 22 May 1967 and between Wednesday 24 May 1967 and Monday 29 May 1967 at Desilu Stage 9, Stage 10 and on location at Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park.

 

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1968

Ingrid (Julie Newmar) is a KAOS Agent in the 1968 episode “The Laser Blazer” for the TV series of “Get Smart”. Ingrid is a KAOS Agent who gains access to the apartment of Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) and Agent 99 (Barbara Felden), by posing as a maid.

 

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1969

It Takes a Thief: “The Funeral Is on Mundy” (season 2/episode 20) 1969. Julie Newmar (Susannah Sutton) uses karate and judo on Alexander Mundy (Robert Wagner) before he is able to subdue her.

 

Laugh-In’s Rowan and Martin scare up the laughs in this madcap horror/mystery spoof costarring Carol Lynley and Julie Newmar. Kicked out of their office for non-payment of rent, bickering buddies Ernie (Dick Martin) and Sam (Dan Rowan) move into a creepy old house where they tangle with ruthless killers, sinister servants, Hungarian werewolves and a fetching young blonde as they search for a priceless lost diamond. Also starring Mildred Natwick, Fritz Weaver and The Brady Bunch’s Robert Reed. The Maltese Bippy is an off-the-wall farce directed by three-time Oscar nominee Norman Panama.

 

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1970

Up Your Teddy Bear: Julie Newmar (TV’s Catwoman), Wally Cox (Mr. Peepers) and Victor Buono star in this sexy comedy about a nerdy doll maker who is seduced by the voluptous head of a toy company (Newmar)!

 

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1971

The Feminist and the Fuzz: An unusually earthy comic role for Julie Newmar, and she’s got the streetwise speech pattern down perfectly. David Hartman’s the cop, and in this made-for-TV item, Barbara Eden is the feminist. Twisting the plot, Julie Newmar, Farrah Fawcett, Joanne Worley and the late great Harry Morgan.

 

Julie Newmar guest starred on Bewitched as Ophelia, a familiar summoned by Endora to tempt Darrin.

 

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1973

Columbo S 02 E 08: Clifford Paris (Paul Stewart) is a wealthy man with a large fortune. He is about to get married to sexy Lisa Chambers (Julie Newmar), who, as disapproving housekeeper Mrs. Peck (Jeanette Nolan) sniffs, is young enough to be his granddaughter. Television chef Dexter Paris (Martin Landau), Clifford’s nephew and heir to half his fortune, seems to be OK with this, but in reality he isn’t. After leaving the Paris mansion, Dexter sneaks back in and murders his uncle by chucking a turned-on mixer into his uncle’s bath, electrocuting him. Dexter then stages his uncle on an exercise machine to make it look like Clifford had a heart attack.

 

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1976

Frankenstein and the Wolfman encounter Julie Newmar as Ultra Witch on the 1976 TV series “Monster Squad”.

 

This episode of The Bionic Woman (Black Magic) has the most amazing guest cast. Vincent Price! Julie Newmar! Hermione Baddeley!

 

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1979

The Love Boat: A shoe salesman (Don Knotts), who strongly resembles a famous TV star, initially tries to deny it until an attractive woman (Julie Newmar) hits on him; a woman (Jane Wyatt), who was separated from her husband (Jean-Pierre Aumont) in WW II, hopes to reunite with him; Isaac (Ted Lange) decides to become a writer but can’t decide on what kind of genre to write.

 

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1980

Zarina the War Witch (Julie Newmar) is the villainess in the 1980 episode “Flight of the War Witch” for the TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Zarina is the leader of a hostile race known as the Zaads, who are engaged in conflict with the inhabitants of the peaceful planet of Pendar.

 

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1982

CHiPs: On temporary duty Ponch and Bobby hunt a drug dealer and mediate a dispute over a nude beach; guest Julie Newmar.

 

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1983

High School U.S.A. (1984 TV Movie). Julie Newmar: Stripper

 

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1988

Deep Space is a 1988 sci-fi horror film directed by Fred Olen Ray about a monster that terrorizes a city in the United States and the detective who must stop it. Julie Newmar co-stars as Lady Elaine Wentworth.

 

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1992

Julie Newmar struts and crawls along the catwalk in the 1992 clip for George Michaels’s “Too Funky.” Newmar holds her own alongside supermodels of the day like Linda Evangelista and Tyra Banks.

 

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1994

Oblivion: A sleepy western town has been overrun. Not by varmints, but by D-list actor cameos! No amount of fame is too minor or fleeting to warrant disproportionate amounts of screentime! Isaac Hayes! Julie Newmar! And of course a rarely seen acting appearance by professional meme sharer George Takei!

 

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1996

Melrose Place S4.E26: During a business convention, Billy again resorts to hardball tactics when he steals some compromising photos of actress Julie Newmar, so he can get her as a client and get Amanda to give him the power of working with other clients than to Alison.

 

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1999

Her last movie is If… Dog… Rabbit…, a 1999 American crime drama thriller production directed by Matthew Modine. At more than 70, Miss Newmar can still make heads turn as if she was 35 years younger! Otherwise the movie is predictable, unoriginal, and dull.

 

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2003

Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt is a 2003 American made-for-television biographical action-comedy film based on the 1966–1968 Batman television series which features the original stars Adam West and Burt Ward as themselves, with Jack Brewer and Jason Marsden portraying the young West (Batman) and Ward (Robin) in flashbacks. It was broadcast on CBS on March 9, 2003. Apart from West and Ward, a number of actors from the original series also appeared in the film. This includes Frank Gorshin, who played the Riddler, Julie Newmar, who played Catwoman for the first two seasons of the show and Lee Meriwether, who played Catwoman in the Batman theatrical film. Gorshin and Newmar appear as themselves, while Meriwether appears as a waitress.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. (1) A reader of this blog who is either named or calls themself Clarice Dalrymple wrote to me recently asking if they could do a post concerning the veteran oddball character actor Julie Newmar, and naturally I said, Sure, of course, please, bring it on, etc., and today is the shining result. Please enjoy trawling through Ms. Newmar’s career trajectory and do spare a word of some sort for your guest-host Clarice. Thank you! (2) There will not be a post tomorrow for the curious reason that I need to get up very early in the morning and head off to take a tour of a local concrete factory. An unusual venture to be sure, but Zac and I have been coveting just such a tour for a while now, and tomorrow’s the day. There’ll be a new post and me again on Friday. Thank you for your patience. ** Dominik, Hi!!!I was going to say that I guess your BJD counts as a self-Xmas-gift given the timing. What’s the latest on its elusive head, btw? Yes, I’d bought a bunch of Pocky at that weird American junk food store — well, not just American, obviously — and the day before yesterday I pulled out the last Pockys, which were way past expiration date and not wildly delicious therefore, but, even in that haggard state, they tasted so delicious to me that I subsequently craved an army of Pocky that would magically appear without me having to trudge all the way over to that store in the freezing cold. And, hence, my love’s incarnation. Love will try to get his famous time machine up and running and head straight for wherever the presumed prototype for that item was stored and swipe it just for you. Love strangely remembering this silly joke that someone had told him his childhood: ‘A horse walks into a bar, sits down at the bar. The bartender walks up to the horse and says, “Why the long face”?’, G. ** Jack Skelley, You! That Causeway thing was nuts. I had no idea. What an idea. Wow, such a jam-packed week. Pass along your mojo. Hit me up about the blurb. I’m swamped and spacing, and I need a nudge. Love, The Monkees. ** Misanthrope, I’m trying to think of a mood that would make me want to watch ‘Bones and All’, and I just can’t think of one. X <3 M. ** CAUTIVOS, Thanks. Sure, I know Gaudi. I’ve never actually seen his stuff in the flesh, but, yeah, I’ve admired it in photos and jpegs since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I haven’t read Hesse since I was, like, 12 or 13 years old and he was huge with the hippies. I did like Ann Beattie, and I haven’t read her in a million years. What a good idea. I will go buy something of hers I haven’t read. You’re reading a ton. I’m envious. I have so much writing to do right now, so I’m forced to be about 80% output when it comes to words. My favorites list is coming up on Saturday. Bon day! ** _Black_Acrylic, Yeah, say what you want, but that Jobs was a bit of a no small genius. Nice desk! So ultra-minimal and stylish but all business at the same time. Bend it like Beckham, man! ** Bill, I think having that Apple phone would make you very rich man. Our temps are almost scarily dipped. It’s supposed to be -6 Centigrade tonight, yeep. It looks like we’re going to get the ‘Oriental’ fan buche. That seems to be the consensus choice. And it will collapse in our mouths on the 22nd. Plus, the location where I need to retrieve it is two blocks from my apartment, and it’s cold, so there’s that. ** scunnard, Hey, Jared! Very long time no see, pal! How very nice! I’m good, really busy. LA was very successful, and part 2, which needs to be even more successful, is in the offing. Dude, excellent about the new book! What and where and when, pray tell? Hugs! ** tomk, I thought I had been to the Barbican, but I just looked it up to be sure, and, no, I was thinking of the Southbank Centre, which is also kind of Brutalist, isn’t it? Anyway, no. It looks a whole lot more interesting than the Southbank Center in the photos. Naturally I totally get why a novel could be set there based on my initial views. Net time I’m in London, I’ll eyeball it in the real. Strange I never have. Huh. ** Sypha, ‘Star Wars’ turned George Lucas into a total, permanent whore. My sincerest condolences on your cat’s passing. I know Amber was really important to you. I’m so sorry, pal. ** Steve Erickson, In my memory, none remained Christian. Except for the ones who already were Christian and used the Born Again craze to just give theirs a bump. The vast majority of them just went back to being aimless potheads again. I believe you about ‘BaA’, but I still don’t think it’s something that has any potential for me from what I’ve heard, positive or negative. Evetryuopne, Do you want to know what the esteemed critic Steve Erickson thinks are the ten best films of the year? Well, you can! Jump! Your list and my fave films list share one entry this year. ** Jeff J, Yes, I’m pretty sure the Park of Reversible Destiny is still there. I’ve never visited it. Yet. I will let you know if I get any inside scoop of BF’s shuttering, but I strongly suspect it’s for the obvious reason. But, yeah, I’ll dig in. In terms of print, no, there’s nothing remotely on the level of Bookforum. Its death really is the death-knell of offline serious book criticism with any adventurous spirit whatsoever. France has great lit journals, but that’s France. ** malcolm, Hi, Malcom! Great to see you! Pretty eventful week you had there indeed! Congrats, pal. July 1st. I already hear trumpets! They were planning to build one of those reverse skyscrapers in Japan, but of course that came to naught. Good question about how they got that hair. One time when I was a teen I was in an airport waiting to catch a plane, and so was Mickey Dolenz of the The Monkees coincidentally (see: above), and a guy walked up to him and asked if he could snip off a bit of hair, and Mickey Dolenz said sure, so maybe famous people think it’s the least they can do. My only Xmas traditions are eating a Xmas Buche and riding the Xmas-themed dark ride at the Paris Xmas fun fair as often as possible. You? ** NIT, Howdy, S! I don’t know about that book! Ooh, I’ll get it somehow. Thank you, fellow failed architecture liking dude! ** Okay. You already know what is or was in store for you today. And I will see you on Friday.

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Canadian entrepreneur Michael Henderson thought of an out-of-this-world idea in 2002. He envisioned a 250-acre resort on the Vegas Strip complete with a lunar-themed aquatic center, a mall, a biosphere and even moon buggy rides. Other ideas included a crater pool with water slides, a glass underwater walking area, rock climbing wall, a bar with a two-story waterfall, a winter sports-themed area and a vineyard. To be called Moon World Resort, it would have featured 10,000 rooms and cost $5 billion dollars.

 

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COOP HIMMELB(L)AU’S Sky-Arc / Sci-Arc – 24 hour Living, Culture and Arts District (Los Angeles)

 

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In the mid-imperialist flush of the 1800s, a Londoner named Thomas Wilson decided it was about time the city had its very own Egyptian-style pyramid mausoleum, perched atop Primrose Hill (the highest point in the city). It was to be “sufficiently capacious to receive 5,000,000 of the dead”.

 

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In 2004, artist Thomas Hirschhorn was invited to create an “enterable” project in Minneapolis as part of Walker without Walls, the series of programs we presented around town during construction of our new facility. He came up with a Road Side Giant of his own — a 50-foot tall replica of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. The massive tome was to be installed along Lake Street in south Minneapolis and would’ve housed a library of philosophy texts, the production center for a daily philosophy newspaper he and philosopher Marcus Steinweg were to create, a meeting and exhibition space, and, outside, a cafe. The project unfortunately outgrew its budget and was never realized.

 

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The first Apple Phone was conceived and got as far as the prototype stage in 1983. Before the Macintosh. The Apple Phone had a graphical user interface with a touchscreen. It also had a built-in checkbook program that was intended to allow users to use an early form of online checking. It had an address book as well, which would allow users to scroll through a phone list, click with the stylus, and place a phone call.

 

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The Angel City Development Project was designed as an entertainment complex and landmark attraction for the public and visiting tourists of the downtown Los Angeles area. As Brett’s vision the project would incorporate shopping centers, cinemas, museums, hotels, lush gardens, and various showcases. The tower and its surrounding buildings were designed to stand on a 122 acre site which Brett and his City of Angel’s corporation collected and acquired over the course of 2 years. The unique architecture of Angel City incorporates monumental concrete, granite, and stainless steel flying buttresses inspired by great historic European gothic cathedrals. These elements are merged with an original modern structure making it the first of its kind in the world and a uniquely original creation. Due to an eminent domain lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles School Board, the project’s land is no longer available to construct the grand Angel City development.

 

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In 2016 developer Dacra unsuccessfully proposed a small retail building at 4039 NE 42st Avenue, Miami, designed by Chad Oppenheim. It was called Stardust East.

 

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These are the only known photos of these unproduced prototypes for toys that were never released.

 

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Port Disney (Long Beach, CA)

 

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Steven Holl, an American architect, first proposed the idea of a bike lane between two skyscrapers at the mouth of one of Copenhagen’s harbors in 2008. After much discussion among city planners and architects, the project was finally cancelled in 2015.

 

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It’s 1967. Desmond Plummer and the GLC’s abandoned plan for a monorail on Regent Street. It was just going to go overhead. It looks kind of very stylized to that era, but it says a lot that space was prime real estate. They wanted to hang on to as much pavement space as possible. They didn’t want to extend the roads. They wanted to build there, so they thought let’s just cram in as much as we can. Let’s have a monorail, let’s take things above.

 

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Luckman and Alexander’s star-shaped Hollywood Museum atop Griffith Park (Lo Angeles)

 

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1951 Buick Le Sabre

 

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In 2008, Zaha Hadid won an international competition for the proposed art museum, Vilnius Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius. Hadid’s proposal was a “mystical object, hovering over spindled artificial landscape strip” that contrasted with the verticality of surrounding skyscrapers. The museum was initially scheduled to open in 2011, however was terminated due to allegations of corruption.

 

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Phare du Monde was due to be an observation tower at Paris’s 1937 World Fair (tagline: “Pleasure Tower Half Mile High”). It would have been half a mile high, with a restaurant, sun lounge and beacon at the top, and a bizarre spiral road channelling cars up to a parking garage at the top of the tower.

 

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Western Rivers Expedition, intended for Florida’s Walt Disney World, was going to be Frontierland’s version of Pirates of the Caribbean.

 

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Resembling the nest of an insect, the Dystopian Farming project by Eric Vergne, proposed to built along the Skyline Park in Manhattan would have combined farms, worker housing and market places, mixing politically opposing classes – farmers and urban consumers.

 

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Rome Central Train Station

 

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In 1999, Pepsi and George Lucas decided to get together and release some Star Wars themed items together. Unfortunately, the deal fell through. Years later, a few pieces of concept art were leaked out.

 

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9/11 Memorial designed by Jonathan Cape: “All…victims…are represented by an array of wires…connected to the bedrock of the site and at the other end to a series of steel columns. These wires will also attach to a grass ground plane floating at street level. The wires will express a degree of tension by deforming these columns into a wide variety of forms…and by pulling the ground plane into a variety of folds. Placed between each column are a series of fabric veils which will billow in the winds…and are a metaphoric expression of the souls of the victims. The columns will peel away from a large glass plane upon which are inscribed the place and dates of various atrocities that have occurred in the last century; the wires and veils will be symbolically using the deaths of the victims as a means of exposing other atrocities and will remember the countless unidentified victims of past events in our shared global community.”

 

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The Threatening Shadow. Designed for the New York World’s Fair, 1939.

 

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Victor Gruen, the architect best-known as the inventor of the modern shopping mall, almost built a giant housing development on what is currently called Roosevelt Island. The project would have comprised a 22 ft tall, two-level platform with a series of 8 to 50-story apartment towers. Responding to mass housing shortages, the project would have accommodated up to 70,000 people.

 

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The Dragonfly was an urban farm concept for New York City’s Roosevelt Island, modeled after the wings of a dragonfly and designed to provide fresh, local food within an urban environment. Fruit, vegetables, grains, meat and dairy would have been produced on the Dragonfly’s 132 floors and the entire structure would be powered by a combination of solar and wind power.

 

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In 1987 toy maker LJN they planned on turning vicious killers into kid-friendly squirt toys with these Freddy Krueger and Jason water guns. Freddy made it to the prototype stage, while only concept art for the Jason gun was produced. From the looks of the vendor catalog image above, it appears as if Freddy’s gun was supposed to shoot water from his mouth, while pushing down on Jason’s arms would unleash a torrent of water from the head of his trusty axe.

 

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Florida’s Disney World needed a roller coaster on par with California’s Matterhorn. Mount Fuji was planned to be that coaster, deep in the heart of Epcot’s Japan Pavillion. It was said that it was scrapped to avoid a conflict of interest with Kodak, one of the parks main advertising partners. Allegedly they viewed Mount Fuji as a permanent advertisement for their competitor, Fuji Film.

 

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Architect Joseph Urban’s rejected 1926 proposal for the Metropolitan Opera House (NYC)

 

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Imagine what the NYC waterfront would have been like if Samuel Friede’s gargantuan 1906 Coney Island Globe had made it past the cornerstone laying stage. Measuring 300 feet in diameter and 750 feet tall, the bulbous, truss-supported 11-story tower was to be topped with huge spotlights and would have contained a theater, roller-skating rink, dance hall, circus, palm garden, weather observatory, several restaurants and a roof garden.

 

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Proposed extensions to the White House in Washington DC, 1891-1901

 

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The complicated case of the Museum Tower and the adjacent Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas was at one point to be resolved by installing a 400-foot sun-responsive sculpture-design proposal by architecture firms REX and Front. The large Surya sculpture would have shielded Nasher Sculpture Center from the Museum Tower’s intense reflection by expanding its light-sensitive panels as flowers.

 

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Difficulties plagued the project from Day 1 and costs began to escalate. Fourth Grace was cancelled in 2004. (Liverpool)

 

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“We were supposed to have a new national library built by Jan Kaplicky in Prague. Never happened and the guy died.”

 

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Moving sidewalks probably sounded like a civilized solution to the increasingly congested New York City of the 19th century: to ease crowded streets, “moving sidewalks” or “moving platforms” would be built underground. The idea was first proposed in 1871. Widely debated in newspapers at the time, it went no where: Mayor Seth Low killed the project. But it popped back up again around 1910, this time as a network of moving sidewalks at a top speed of about 10 miles per hour that would replace the new subway system.

 

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The Dubai Towers Dubai was a four-tower complex to be built in the city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The developer, Sama Dubai, intended it to form the centerpiece of The Lagoons, a megaproject located on Dubai Creek which was to consist of seven islands. The towers would have between 57 to 94 stories, and although the heights of each are not known, it is believed the tallest would top 400 meters (1,310 ft) while two others would rise beyond 300 meters (980 ft). Due to the economic downturn in Dubai, the project was killed.

 

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In 2005 toy manufacturer NECA planned to release an action figure based on the remake of “The Ring”. The set was to feature a figure of Samara along with two different display bases: a TV set and a well, the two things that Samara can most often be found emerging from. The figure was going to come apart at the waist, allowing us to either display her in front of the well or split her in half and have her coming out of the TV. The hair was even going to be flexible, allowing those two different poses to really come to life. But NECA was unable to acquire the proper licensing to actually release the set.

 

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The Geyser Mountain attraction was originally intended to be placed in the Frontierland area of Disneyland. The storyline was that the guests would ride a drilling machine where they encounter a geyser. This would toss the riders up and down, Tower of Terror style.

 

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Vincent G. Raney’s 1945 design for a United Nations complex in San Francisco’s Twin Peaks neighborhood. San Francisco was a candidate for the U.N. Headquarters but lost out to New York.

 

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Frank Gehry’s new Guggenheim Museum (NYC)

 

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Milwaukee’s “Tourist Tower” was to be 875 feet tall, taller than any building in the world outside of New York City. A slender center core would be fitted seven circular “exhibition areas” with an external, iron latticework helping to support the weight of each floor. Inside the core, glass elevators would zip from the ground level to the rooftop observation deck in two minutes. Other exhibition levels would include a revolving beer garden, an artificial stream where guests could go trout fishing, a complete and working dairy farm, and a restaurant where food would be served to guests on trays as they sat in airline seats, facing out at the landscape – “to give those persons who have never flown in a plane an opportunity to sample airline service,” explained Rasche. Backers of the project estimated it would draw as many as 1 million people to Milwaukee every year.

 

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New York architect Eytan Kaufman’s Sky Bridge Hotel in Abu Dhabi was going to be a 264-room hotel suspended in a blimp-like structure over a bridge that connected the main island to Lulu Island. Financial pressures pushed this design into the trash can.

 

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In 1964 the radical architecture group Archigram created Walking City and imagined a future in which borders and boundaries are abandoned in favor of a nomadic lifestyle among groups of people worldwide. Inspired by NASA’s towering, mobile launch pads, hovercraft, and science fiction comics, Archigram envisioned buildings that travel on land and sea to meet up for parties.

 

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In 1758, Charles Ribard designed an elephant to grace to the Champs-Élysées in the spot where the Arc de Triomphe now stands. It consisted of three levels, to be built in the shape of an elephant, with entry via a spiral staircase in the underbelly. The building was to have a form of air conditioning, and furniture that folded into the walls. A fountain — or perhaps the plumbing — was to flow from the elephant’s trunk.

 

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Super Mario’s Wacky Words would have been a direct continuation of Super Mario World. It was slated for a release on Phillips’ CD-I system. Some heavy work was done on this game before development was shut down due to the CD-I not being able to bring in the money. Three prototype discs are said to be in circulation and the game itself managed to at least reach Alpha stage. As it is a pre-alpha, the prototype is rather limited; Super Mario can only walk both ways and jump, and no powerups exist. He cannot slide or swim, but it would appear that these abilities would have been implemented had development continued.

 

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The Fun Palace was one of architect Cedric Price’s most influential projects and inspired Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano’s early 1970s project, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Using an unenclosed steel structure, fully serviced by travelling gantry cranes the building comprised a ‘kit of parts’: pre-fabricated walls, platforms, floors, stairs, and ceiling modules that could be moved and assembled by the cranes. Virtually every part of the structure was variable. “Its form and structure, resembling a large shipyard in which enclosures such as theatres, cinemas, restaurants, workshops, rally areas, can be assembled, moved, re-arranged and scrapped continuously,” promised Price.

 

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Stanley Tigerman’s Instant City, 1965, proposed a city where prism-shaped offices sheltered grand expressways, leaving wide swatches of green space open to the public.

 

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Like a lot of people at the end of 2001 and beginning of 2002, artist/architect Vito Acconci made a hypothetical proposal for a building to replace the World Trade Center. His reasoning was that if buildings get exploded we could make them already exploded.

 

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In 2008, post-structuralist French architecture firm R&Sie(n) hoped to create a new research station and museum called Waterflux whose strange shape would have suggested ice caves – or the guts of a living thing.

 

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After Alcatraz was a prison and before it was a tourist attraction—Native Americans occupied the island in an effort to claim it as their own, in response to their own land being forcibly taken away by the government. Architect Donald MacDonald proposed this plan for the Alcatraz Center for Indian Life, which included a cultural center, school, museum, council chambers, and shops.

 

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Four Dutch designers—Chris Collaris, Ruben Esser, Sander Bakker and Patrick van der Gronde— envisioned a sustainable design of re-use for a discarded oil tanker as a city in the Southern Gulf Region, which they entitled The Black Gold.

 

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The Santa Monica Causeway

 

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In 1995, Peter Neville, an architect working for Japan’s Taisei Corporation, dreamed up the X-Seed 4000, a 2.5-mile high steel skyscraper in the shape of Mount Fuji that would have been situated in Tokyo. In fact, the X-Seed 4000 was designed to be slightly taller than Japan’s largest mountain. Neville’s futuristic environment could accommodate 500,000 to 1,000,000 inhabitants, who would zip around the 800-floor structure on MagLev trains. The X-Seed 4000 would have cost over $1 trillion to build.

 

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In the Mojave Desert you’ll find California City, a city famous for dreaming big. A huge chunk of it is gridded roads—complete with names, speed limits, and GPS driving directions—with nothing built on the vast majority of those plots. Incorporated in 1965, California City is a living contradiction. Today it’s a working community with roughly 15,000 residents. But it’s simultaneously enormous, having been planned at a scale to rival Los Angeles. The city has over 200 square miles of land.

 

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Though never released, The Car Game got close enough to production that print ads were in circulation. Based upon the relatively obscure 1977 movie The Car, in which a car) goes on a murderous rampage, the game looked as if it would actually be rather a lot of fun. Basically: position The Car at the top of the ramp, and – if it rolls down on your turn – you lose or win dependent on how much debris is knocked out of its path. That’s all well and good, but in the movie that debris was usually made out of living, breathing, people.

 

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Due to Robert Young’s untimely death, this re-imagination of Grand Central was never realized. The newly elected chairman of the New York Central Railroad chose architect I.M. Pei to design the new station, which was released in 1954. Pei’s “Hyperboloid” was a 1,497-foot-tall office tower and transit hub that would cost approximately $100 million and span 108 stories. The proposed nine-acre site would have been the the world’s tallest and most expensive structure. Young died in 1958 and the project was scrapped.

 

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In this never-built Disneyland attraction guests would have walked right into the mouth of an oversized version of the Crocodile from “Peter Pan.” Then — by walking down a set of steps (Which supposedly put Disneyland visitors down inside the croc’s belly!) — they could then peer out plate glass windows at a colorful collection of tropical fish.

 

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Atlantropa was the brainchild of the German architect Herman Sörgel, who tirelessly promoted his project from 1928 until his death in 1952. His experience of World War I, the economic and political turmoil of the 1920s and the rise of Nazism in Germany convinced Sörgel that a new world war could only be avoided if a radical solution was found to European problems of unemployment, overpopulation and, with Saudi oil still a decade away, an impending energy crisis. With little faith in politics, Sörgel turned to technology. Dams across the Strait of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, and eventually between Sicily and Tunisia, each containing gigantic hydroelectric power plants, would form the basis for the new supercontinent. In its final state the Mediterranean would be converted into two basins, with the western part lowered by 100 meters and the eastern part by 200 meters and a total of 660,200 km2 of new land reclaimed from the sea – an area larger than France.

 

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Arakawa and Madeline Gins’ HOTEL REVERSIBLE DESTINY provides you with a meditative architectural context within which to demonstrate and explore your full range of capabilities, not only those generally accepted as part of the human repertoire but also still nascent ones. Through practicing architectural meditation within HOTEL REVERSIBLE DESTINY, visitors will come to know what makes a person tick, the ins and outs of human – and transhuman! – behavior. This architectural meditation site will before you know it have you “talking” for your great benefit with your own genes. HOTEL REVERSIBLE DESTINY makes you as adept at perspicuous bodily thinking as are birds in the sky and fish in the sea, but considerably more so.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Charalampos Tzanakis, Hope you enjoy it. I think my favorite LCTG sequence is the third one, if I had to choose. The deleted scene was originally an extension of that scene that we ended up thinking was unnecessary. I can imagine Zurn having that influence. How cool. ** Tosh Berman, Loy was a Dodger fan? They already existed back then? If I were a real fan, I would know the answer to that question. It’s a really unique and weirdly stylish or stylishly weird novel. I think you’d really like it. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Ha ha, thanks. I topped the slaves! No, buying things for myself in any circumstance is one of my least favorite things to do in the world. I suppose I might treat myself to an unusually interesting meal or something. And I guess my portion of the Buche cost will be kind of a self-gift. Do or will you buy yourself a nice Xmas gift? You most certainly deserve one. ‘Hangry’, ha ha. That is a seriously horrible word. Wow. If someone used it around me, I don’t even know what I would do. Something not dignified. Love making every store of every kind everywhere in the world sell every variety of Pocky, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I hope you like it. It’s very chewy in in the good way. ** Bill, Hi, B. It’s pretty fucking good, man, I think. Ah, I spaced. I’m glad it (the gig) went so well, and I’m sad if the video isn’t up to speed, but I know that can be. It’s good I have wild imagination. And fingers crossed re: the off chance you think it’s salvageable. I don’t think I know the work of Christine Choy. I’ll go correct that. ** CAUTIVOS, Thank you about the post. ‘Shy’ really holds up, I think. I read it again not so long ago, and it still seems really amazing. It took me a while to be okay with that cucumber cover. Not my pick, needless to say. But I get the charm. Thank you for everything, and a salute from France and me to you and yours. ** Steve Erickson, I don’t think I know Sault unless I’m blanking. I’ll find and try the Little Simz album. We’re supposed to get a very initial budget this evening. It’ll need to be heavily refined once we have a shooting schedule and shot list and stuff, but it’ll be an important indicator. Best guess at the moment is the next trip to LA will happen somewhere between Jan 5 and 10. I’ll find Johnny Truant’s channel. I looked at ok.ru initially, and I couldn’t mistake heads or tails of it. Thank you! ** tomk, Hi, Tom. Well, the novel is strangely under-discussed considering. I think you’ll get into it. I hope the Peru trip wipes away the worn out quality. It seems intense there at the moment, no? Commiserations galore on any possible jet lag that ends up hitting you on the other side. Hugs from me! ** Jeff J, Hi. It’s really terrific novel. Her prose is so constantly on its tippy-toes. Curious sounds there on the upcoming EP. Nice. I’ll let you know re: ‘Aftersun’. Any film that has Tilda Swinton in it needs to have a big other allure for me to want to see it. And two roles sounds like a total dealbreaker. I think the only Joanna Hogg film I’ve seen is ‘Archipelago’, and I don’t remember it blowing me away whatsoever. Why, do you like her stuff? I’m totally crushed about Bookforum. That is really, really sad news. I think it was far and away the best lit magazine in the US. One of the very few things I craved and read cover to cover. I assume it’s been killed because it’s a money loser by Artforum’s new owner. I do want to check in with my Editorials friends at AF and get the accurate scoop. But, yeah, that’s very bad news for lit and for all of us writers who try to write towards the sun and moon. ** Misanthrope, That’s quite a little problem. My keyboard is fucked up and won’t type an ‘x’ unless I push down really hard on the key. Very annoying. ‘X’ happens to come up quite a lot. Who’d have thunk. Awesome about the return of the remote. Yeah, I’ll skip ‘Bones and All’. I don’t have a boner for Chalamet, and that director’s earlier films are ugh to me, so that’s that. I should get that/those new McCarthys. Mental note. Well, you showed her! Or your body did! But you’re in charge of your body, obviously, so, no, you showed her! I’m good, but I’m not warm. ** Robert, I don’t consciously try to max out the blog readers’ bank accounts, but I suppose that is the collateral damage. I don’t know ‘Aliss at the Fire’, no. I’ll investigate. Joshua Tree is sweet. The park, that is. Especially on mushrooms. I guess the town itself is sweet too. A bit odd. So not on mushrooms. I can imagine putting something in order could seduce sleep. Something non-stressful to put in order. Hm. When I was in high school there was a point when it became super trendy to become Born Again, and all my friends were getting baptised and stuff. Lasted about a month and a half as I recall. ** Okay. I haven’t made one of these posts in quite a while, so I did. Because they’re kind of fun, no? See you tomorrow.