Erika Lewis at Preservation Hall 4-15-2012

The Genius of Noel Rockmore?????

Genius?  Maybe Not. Maybe he was only so so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Rockmore

More on Noel Rockmore in the link below.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2011/dec/28/noel-rockmore-picasso-of-new-orleans-revisited/?print&page=all
Back in 1965 and 1966 I used to see Larry Borenstein sitting in his gallery on Royal Street and the walls were covered with paintings of local jazz musicians done by Noel Rockmore.
You can read about Larry Borenstein in the link below.
http://www.rightwaywrongway.com/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=65&page=1

If I remember correctly the tourists loved to buy the paintings of jazz musicians done by Rockmore. Borenstein had a good thing going with selling this splashy commerical art.
Some of these paintings are still on the walls of Preservation Hall in New Orleans.

One or two paintings reminded me of the San Francisco art gallery that sold the pictures of the little girls and boys with big eyes crying. In the sense that they were done expressly for the tourist trade.
 In 1969 there was a gallery in North Beach in San Fran that sold Walter Keane paintings and nothing else. Read in the article below that it turned out his wife Margaret did most (if not all)of the paintings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Keane

I see an effort is underway to try and promote Rockmore. I don't think they will get very far. Only 646 people have looked at the video shown above.

Read my posts about Walter Anderson of Ocean Springs, Mississippi to see what a real genius was doing at the same time. Click on the name Walter Anderson in the Label box below.

Storyville in New Orleans Photos of E.J. Bellocq And Jazz And Al Rose, Bill Russell And Larry Borenstein

Click on the link below to read about the book STORYVILLE,NEW ORLEANS by Al Rose.
http://www.amazon.com/Storyville-New-Orleans-Authentic-Illustrated/dp/0817344039#noop


Video above is Sweet Emma Barrett performing at Preservation Hall. She was also known as Sweet Emma The Bell Gal. If you watch the video you will see why.





Here is a link to a good article about 3 important men who kept Jazz Alive in New Orleans. Al Rose who wrote about Storyville and Larry Borenstein who started Preservation Hall in 1961. Somebody had to do it and he did. When Borenstein died he owned about half of the French Quarter. In 1965-1966 I used to see him sitting in his art gallery on Bourbon Street. He had found an artist who painted large canvases of Jazz musicians. The tourists loved them and bought them like the were French donuts or beignets.
Larry Borenstein is also the guy who found the glass negatives of E.J. Bellocq the famous photographer of Storyville. Borenstein sold them to Lee Friedlander who had them published in book form. The pictures also appear in Al Roses' book STORYVILLE published by The University of Alabama Press. The pictures inspired the movie PRETTY BABY starring Brooke Shields.
Here is some information on E.J. Bellocq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._J._Bellocq
And here is the article on Al Rose and Bill Russell and Larry Borenstein.
http://www.rexrose.com/alrose.htm
You can see many more of the photographs of E.J. Bellocq here:
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/B/bellocq/bellocq.html
Click on all the pictures to enlarge them.

Emil Van Horn Hollywood's Most Famous Motion Picture Gorilla

http://members.shaw.ca/gorillagallery2/gorillamenclassic/emil_van_horn.htm
When I moved to New Orleans in 1965 I met Emil Van Horn. He told me his gorilla suit had been taken by his landlady in Pensacola,Florida because he could not pay his back rent. She kept his trunk with all his possessions as well. So his movie days were over. And his nightclub acts of Beauty and The Beast were over. He had been in Miami though prior to New Orleans because he said he worked as an extra in the movie A Hole In The Head.
It was during the filming of The Cincinatti Kid in Jan. 1965 that he walked in the back patio of Preservation Hall.Even though he looked down and out someone said dont laugh at that guy he is a member of Screen Actor's Guild.
Later in 1965 and 1966 I got to know him. At first he was living in a small apt. on Gov. Nicholls Street with a couple of other men possibly merchant seamen. Then they left and he had no means of making a living so he became homeless.
He would often hang out around the French Market Bar. He could get a small glass of wine or beer there for a dime. He drank as much and as often as he could.
He was one of many characters in the French Quarter at that time. There was the famous Ruthie the Duck Girl who walked around followed by a female duck and her ducklings. People and traffic would stop and they would cross the street.
http://www.eccentricneworleans.com/ruthie.htm
There was a poet named John Beecher a descendent of Harriet Beecher Stowe living in the Quarter at that time. Read about him here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Beecher
I used to see Emil Van Horn during the day and he would tell me stories of Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. He told me of drinking with W.C. Fields. He said Fields would sneak off from his set and they would hide out and drink. The movie people would come looking for them calling for Fields but W.C. told Van Horn to be quiet and they kept on hiding out and drinking.
He told me of Clark Gable bringing his new car around to ask Van Horn how he liked it and whether he should paint a small stripe on each side.
One of the things Van Horn still had was a photograph of his own car from around the 1930s. He was very proud of that. It was a very impressive car.
He told me of being the guy in the gorilla suit in the W.C. Fields movie NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK.
Here is a list of movies that Emil Van Horn was in. Click on the link.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0887177/
Once Van Horn came by our apartment when I had somewhow locked myself out wearing only my underwear. I was sitting four flights up outside our door trying to figure out what to do. The doorbell rang. I went downstairs and it was Emil Van Horn standing there in his old overcoat. I told him my predicament. I borrowed his overcoat and told him to wait there for me as I went several blocks to our realty company Caruso Gall to get an extra key. It worked perfectly. Even though I had nothing on underneath the overcoat except my underwear that old battered overcoat did the trick. I guess I was barefoot also but stranger things than that are seen in the French Quarter every day.
The evening Van Horn walked in the back patio of Preservation Hall during the filming of The Cincinatti Kid in the scene with Sweet Emma The Belle Gal I was working as an extra in the film. They let me and some others sit in the back patio during the filming while they filmed in Preservation Hall itself. Also sitting back there were Al Rose and Bill Russell both big names in the music scene in New Orleans at that time.
Steve McQueen was using an apartment further back in the patio as his dressing room. He would walk by back and forth taking breaks from the shooting. He did not seem to speak to anyone.
Sweet Emma complained about the bright lights shining in her eyes. The movie people adjusted the lights. See my post on this blog about The Cincinatti Kid and the filming in New Orleans in Jan. 1965.
There was no part for Van Horn in that movie. Not even as an extra.
I found out some time later that Emil Van Horn died at Charity Hospital in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 1967.
He was a real gentleman. He was not a bum he was just down and out.
Here is a link to the flickr page with many photos of some the movies Emil Van Horn was in and other things.
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=emil+van+horn
I have two other posts about Emil Van Horn. Click on the name Emil Van Horn in the label box below to read them.

WUSA 1970 Movie Made From the Novel Hall of Mirrors by Robert Stone

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in Preservation Hall from the movie WUSA 1970 made from the novel Hall of Mirrors by Robert Stone. Click on the video to go to the YouTube page. On there you will find many other videos of The Preservation Hall Jazz band.


This is clip from the movie WUSA starring Paul Newman. This is a scene near the end of the movie. WUSA was the movie made in 1970 of the novel Hall of Mirrors by Robert Stone. Stone has said he does not like the movie but it had a few good moments that are more or less true to the book and this is one of them.
Here is a link to the International Movie Database page on the film WUSA:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066540/