Christopher Magee Memorial

Although Christopher Magee, the boss of the Pittsburgh political machine during the Gilded Age, and his partner William Flynn were called the most corrupt politicians in the country by muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens, Magee still managed to receive a memorial, which stands outside the Carnegie Library's Main Branch in Oakland.

In his book “Pittsburgh: A New Portrait,” Pitt professor Franklin Toker writes that Magee's help in getting city land for the library probably explains its erection and dedication in 1908.

It also didn’t hurt when Magee, who also was the transit baron of Pittsburgh, came to Andrew Carnegie’s aid again when he offered a cabbage farm he owned for the site of Carnegie Technical School, now Carnegie Mellon University.

However, according to Toker, the powers that be — possibly Carnegie  himself — vetoed the addition of a bust of Magee to the monument.

Noted architect Stanford White designed the base. But after White's 1906 murder at the hands of crazed Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw at New York’s Madison Square Garden, it was left to Henry Bacon, who later was the architect of the Lincoln Memorial, to execute White’s design.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the creator of the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common, the Sherman monument in New York and the nude statue of Diana on the tower of White’s Madison Square Garden that scandalized Manhattan, designed the bronze relief.

Unfortunately, both Magee and Saint-Gaudens were dead before the monument’s dedication July 4, 1908. Henry Hering, Saint-Gaudens’ longtime assistant, completed the work.

A 2008 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story published for the memorial’s centennial offers more information about Magee and Saint-Gaudens, whose studio and home in Cornish, N.H., is a National Historic Site. 

The Christopher Magee Memorial
features lines from Shakespeare's
"The Merchant of Venice."

No Happy Ending for Bogart

Dix Steele (Humphrey Bogart) and Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame)
share a touching moment on the beach in "In a Lonely Place."

In a Lonely Place (1950, Columbia)

Starring Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame,

Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid;

Screenplay by Andrew Solt; Directed by Nicholas Ray

Screen legend Humphrey Bogart gave magnificent performances in a number of iconic films, such as “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “The Big Sleep,” “The African Queen,” and, of course, “Casablanca.” His portrayal of Dixon “Dix” Steele in “In a Lonely Place” deserves to be among them.

An often dark story about a man who pays a terrible price because of his inner demons, “In a Lonely Place” also shines a less-than-flattering light on Hollywood and celebrity in a film powered more by character development than plot.

Dix is an antisocial, down-and-out screenwriter whose violent tendencies are displayed shortly after the credits end when he gets out of his car to fight another motorist. They turned up again a few minutes later when he punches a bar patron. Although he hasn’t had a hit screenplay “since before the war,” Dix bristles when his agent brings him an offer to write a script based on a trashy novel.

That doesn’t stop him from bringing home a hatcheck girl to tell him the plot of the novel so he doesn’t have to read it, however. When she’s found dead the next morning, the police take Dix downtown. Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), his neighbor across the courtyard, lifts the suspicion briefly when she tells detectives she saw the hatcheck girl leave Dix’s apartment that night. But despite an attempt by his cop friend Brub (Frank Lovejoy) to take some of the heat off of him, Brub’s captain (Carl Benton Reid) believes Dix is guilty and works hard to get the proof.

In many films, that plot line would be center stage. But here it takes a backseat to the love story that grows between Laurel and Dix. She tempers Dix’s dark side, takes care of him and becomes his muse as he writes a script that towers above its source material. The lovely Laurel inspires him to write this line: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me,” which I dare anyone to top.

But pressure from the police investigation begins to ignite his temper and Dix reverts to his old self. Those episodes prompt Laurel to believe that Dix is capable of murder, and she begins to fear that soon she will be a target of his wrath. It all culminates in one of the saddest film endings ever, one that touched me personally because my own demons cost me the love of a good woman as well.

As good as Bogart is, the quality of Grahame’s performance matches his. Known mostly for femme fatale roles in film noir, she is wonderful in the role of the sympathetic Laurel because she also makes the bitter Dix sympathetic. Even though you know their love is doomed, it’s hard not to root for things to work out.

I know I did.

Pardon me, boy, is that the Pennsylvania Station?

In 1898, Alexander Cassatt, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad and brother of painter Mary Cassatt, commissioned Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham to design a station/hotel/office building to serve Pittsburgh.

Burnham, a skyscraper pioneer who created the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, and supervised the "White City" of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, designed this classic structure for Cassatt and the PRR.

The finest feature of Union Station, which was completed in 1903, is the elaborately styled rotunda that sheltered passengers dismounting from their carriages.

Above is a view of the rotunda and its skylight. Below is a design element inside the rotunda that features Pittsburg with its missing "h," which was removed by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in 1891. It was restored in 1911.

The building was converted to apartments and ground-floor office space in the mid-1980s, and a rudimentary station serves Amtrak.

The rotunda entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 while the entire building joined in 1976. Both also have been recognized by the Pittsburgh History and Landmark Foundation.

For more on Burnham's fascinating career, see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Burnham

A Romance for all Time

It Happened One Night (1934, Columbia)

Starring Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly;
Screenplay by Robert Riskin; Directed by Frank Capra

Romantic comedies have been a staple for decades because the usual plot of boy and girl who “meet cute,” struggle through difficulty and find themselves together for the mandated happy ending, is timeless. From There’s Something About Mary to Sleepless in Seattle to just about every movie with Drew Barrymore, audiences still enjoy these films. Those titles, as well as hundreds of others, owe a huge debt to a nearly 80-year-old film, It Happened One Night, which helped launch the genre and quite possibly is the best example of it.

Spoiled rich girl Ellen Andrews (Colbert) runs away from her father (Connolly) by diving into Miami harbor and swimming to shore, where she meets cynical reporter Peter Warne (Gable) on a bus leaving Miami for New York. They take an instant dislike to each other, but when he discovers Ellen’s identity, Peter offers to shepherd her to New York and to her “front-page phony” husband if she gives him an exclusive story.

Most of the movie from this point on details the mishaps and escapades the couple fall into as they make their way up the East Coast. In the process, Ellen’s exposure to regular people and real situations brings her down to earth. Peter sees this happening, which causes him to soften his prickly attitude toward Ellen. They even collaborate to throw the detectives sent by Ellen’s father to find her off the scent by staging a loud shouting match between “a plumber’s daughter” and her “husband.”

Of course, Ellen and Peter eventually find themselves falling in love, until a misunderstanding tears them apart and pushes her into the arms of her smarmy husband. At a lavish formal wedding (they had first been married by a justice of the peace), Ellen’s father talks up Peter as he escorts his daughter toward the altar. Before the “I Wills” are exchanged, she flees the outdoor altar and speeds away toward a reunion with Peter.

Again, it’s a very familiar scenario for us, but the execution here is so nearly perfect that few RomComs have ever come close. The writing is superb, the dialog sparkling and witty, Gable is the perfect man’s man to make it work, and Colbert pulled off the tough task of making the snooty woman likable. Although he had only four weeks for filming, Capra brought it all together so well that the film attracted Oscars for Gable (his only win), Colbert, Riskin, Capra and the prize for best picture.

Some might be put off by the age of the film, and there are parts that are rooted in the time it was produced. But this tale of two people who find love in an unusual, and very funny, situation will never grow old.