The Corcoran Gallery Of Art Washington D.C. Click on the photo to enlarge. The above is from The Washington Daily News May 1,1970. Walter tells of his plans for the Corcoran. Click and double click if necessary to read it. The above picture is of Washington D.C. Art People from 1970. Unfortunately I do not have a list of their names. Those who know can pick out themselves. Click on these pictures to enlarge them. Walter Hopps as he looked when he was Director of The Corcoran Gallery Of Art in 1970 and 1971.
Click on the video to enlarge it and go to youtube where you can see it full screen.
Note: Bruce Nauman is the guy in blue jeans. This is one of the very few videos on youtube where you can see the artist himself. Note also he does not even speak here even when given a chance. I really like artists that let their work speak for them.
In the post below I wrote a little bit about meeting Bruce Nauman in July of 1969. He was living in Walter Hopps' house in Pasadena at that time.
Bruce was kind enough to offer me a glass of Jack Daniels Black label whiskey.
I remember being very exhausted after driving a truck all the way across the country to Los Angeles to return an art exhibit for Walter Hopps who was the Director of The Corcoran Gallery Dupont Center at that time. His Assistant Nina Osnos had given me the job.
Tiger Joe Marsh is the bald guy in the video shown above. Click to enlarge and go to Youtube to view full screen. As you can see from this video from Lost in Space Tiger Joe was a big tough guy. Not someone you would want to argue with.
Click on the pictures above to enlarge. Both of the pictures are of Tiger Joe Marsh. Here is more information about him from International Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0550675/
Tiger Joe was a wrestling champion and then he had a movie career. In July of 1969 my friend Jeff Barr was living in Tiger Joe's house in Hollywood,California.
I had been hired to drive an art show to LA by Walter Hopps who was Director of the Washington Gallery Of Modern Art at that time. I and another fellow took a train to Chattanooga,Tenn. to pick up the art show at the art museum there and then rented a truck to drive it across country to LA and return it to the artist.
The story of our cross country trip is another story so I will skip that and go right to LA where after we returned the art to the artist(we had spent the night before that in Pasadena,Ca. at a house Walter Hopps owned. See below for more on that and who was living in Walter's house at that time) we headed to look for my friend Jeff Barr. Jeff and I had roomed together in college.
We found the address in Hollywood but no one was home. It was early in the afternoon. So we waited.
When Tiger Joe got home he wanted to know who we were.
My partner said "We are friends of Jeff Barr and we are going to stay here tonight".
Tiger Joe said, "No, you are not".
Tiger Joe was not going to let two strangers sleep in his house.
Tiger Joe's dining room table was piled high with signed 8" by 10" glossies of Hollywood stars. Right on top of the pile was an 8" by 10" glossy photograph of Marilyn Monroe signed, "To Tiger Joe, Marilyn Monroe".
That was on July 8th 1969. We ended up sleeping in the back of the 12 foot U Haul truck. At least we had some of those blankets that U-Haul provides to wrap furniture in.
The next morning I woke up in the back of the truck. It was July 9th 1969. It was my birthday. I was 29 years old.
P.S. I should mention that on the night of July 7th 1969 we had stayed in Pasadena,California at the home Walter Hopps owned there. He had told me we could stay there. That was the first place we went when we got to LA.
Living in Walter Hopps' home at that time was the artist Bruce Nauman. So I got to meet Bruce Nauman. I even showed him our truck with the junk art in it. He didn't seem impressed.
The picture above is of Admiral Semmes. Click to enlarge. You can read about him down below. His statue is in Mobile right above Bankhead Tunnel.
Click to enlarge these photos of the Bankhead Tunnel in Mobile,Alabama.
In the picture above you can see the statue of Admiral Semmes in the background. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphael_Semmes
The picture above shows the tunnel heading east out onto the causeway.
The picture below is coming from the east heading west.
Click on the picture above to enlarge the old postcard.
Here is information on the Bankhead Tunnel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankhead_Tunnel
I was driving a taxi cab in Mobile Alabama in the Fall of 1964 while waiting to go in the Peace Corps. I was 24 years old.
One night a merchant seaman approached me and asked me if I would take him back to his ship. He said he had no money but would pay me when we got to his ship. Several other taxi drivers had turned him down. He told me I could hold his watch as security.
I was nearby the Bankhead Tunnel and we would have to go through the tunnel to get to the pier where his ship was docked. I said OK.
Once we got through the tunnel he directed me to where his merchant ship was docked. I parked the cab. He told me to follow him onto the ship to so he could get the taxi fare for me.
It was dark and we made out way onto the ship and down to the galley. There were several seamen sitting around a table playing cards.
The seaman got some money from one of them and paid me the taxi fare. I gave him back his watch.
He then offered me something to eat and drink. So we sat down and watched the men play cards. One of them explained to me that the only reason he shipped out on a merchant ship was so he could play cards and gamble.
After some period of time I decided to go on back to the cab.
When I got back to the cab(it had been maybe an hour since I got out of the cab to go on the ship) I could hear the radio calling me.
The dispatcher asked me where I had been. I told him the story.
He said "You are not supposed to leave the cab". I had not told him where I was going.
I drove on back into Mobile through the Bankhead Tunnel coming out on Government Street. It had been a nice little adventure in a boring evening.
Click(and double click if necessary) on the picture above to enlarge it.
This is another of my true Hotel Detective stories. Scroll down to look for more I have posted in the last month.
We had one suicide that I know of while I was working at the International Inn in Washington D.C. as a Hotel Detective. I am not sure of the exact date or even the exact year but it was sometime in the 1980s when deaths by AIDS were rising steadily in the U.S.A. and Washington D.C.
I remember it happened on a weekend. Sunday afternoon I believe. The body was discovered with a bible on the man's chest and a bullet hole through the bible. The man had AIDS. He had checked into the hotel on Sunday and had committed suicide by placing the bible over his chest and then shooting himself through the bible.
I was told about it when I came to work on Monday morning.
Where There Is Smoke There Is A Fire
And here is a short one about a call for a fire in one of the hotel rooms. I went up to the room with the Director of Security. There we found a woman who told us her little boy had set fire to the bed in the hotel room. He had gotten some matches and crawled under the bed and set it on fire.
We started to make out a report form. We asked what their address was. She responded, "We don't have a house he burned it down".
At that point the Director of Security told her "We can't have that. You have to check out of the hotel right away".
End of story. Case closed.
Click on the label Hotel Detective below to read more true Hotel Detective stories from Washington D.C.
The video above is the trailer for the movie PRICELESS. It is one of the best movies about hotels I have ever seen. It is also a comedy and fantasy about what could happen to an ordinary hotel worker. Click and double click on these videos to enlarge and go to Youtube. There you can watch full screen.
Double click to enlarge and go to youtube. This is a wonderful movie. I had to really think to remember where I had heard this song. SORT ME OUT.
FRANTIC is one of the best movies I have ever seen about how hotels really operate.
One of the best(if not the best)movie about hotels is the movie GRAND HOTEL. I think I got the idea of wanting to work in a hotel from watching the movie GRAND HOTEL and also from watching the movie HOTEL which was based on the book HOTEL by Arthur Hailey. An interesting fact is the the hotel that Hailey's book was based on was the old Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans. Hailey lived there and did some of his research there. The Fairmont in New Orleans has the same architecture as The Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C. You can enter the lobby from one street and walk all the way through the lobby and come out on another street.
Hotels have a lot to hide someone once said. The lobby and meeting rooms and restaurants and guest rooms are what the public sees but backstage in the kitchens and the basements is another world. It is very much like a large cruise ship or ocean liner. Read Eugene O'Niell's THE HAIRY APE play for a good look at a large ocean liner and how it is in the boiler room and in the engine rooms far below first class.
More music from FRANTIC. This is Grace Jones singing. In the movie Michelle has a Grace Jones poster on the wall in her apartment. This is the dance scene in the club called Touch Of Class. Roman Polanski directed FRANTIC and the female lead actress is his wife in real life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantic_(film)
And here if you have the time you can watch the full movie of PRICELESS via YouTube. This is part one. All the rest of it with English subtitles in also on Youtube. Click to enlarge and go to Youtube to find the other parts.
I have just found all of FRANTIC on YouTube. Click on the video below and double click to go to YouTube where you will find all of FRANTIC, This is part one.
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