The 1860s

During the 1860s, Twain worked as a journalist in Virginia City, Nevada, and San Francisco and traveled to Europe and the Middle East (most notably Palestine) on an excursion with a group of Americans, which enabled him to write his best-selling Innocents Abroad. Twain met Olivia (Livy) Langdon through her brother, a fellow traveler. His courtship of the religiously devout Livy prompted Twain to reassess his relationship with God and his understanding of Christianity, prayer, and Providence and to declare himself to be a Christian. During this decade, Twain developed friendships with several ministers, battled depression, and struggled to determine his vocation. He also strove to adopt Eastern mores and conventional ethical practices and reinvent himself as a Christian husband who could provide financial security and spiritual guidance for his family. Scholars debate whether his conversion was genuine, self-deluded, or fabricated to please his future wife and her parents.

Ethical Friction

This chapter describes a music program in the Richmond, Virginia, city jail and the ethical ambiguities arising from the author’s overlapping roles as organizer and observer. The author examines the vague boundaries between applied and academic ethnomusicology, voluntarism and work, and personal and institutional ethical standards. An ethnomusicological approach to music in jails and prisons exposes ethical frictions between policies, methodologies, and codes espoused by IRB (or other ethics review) boards, ethnomusicologists, their interlocutors, and academic societies. The tension between the author’s status as a volunteer and ethnographer raises a number of questions: How is ethical knowledge differently defined? Which definitions have more authority and how is that authority established? Where are the epistemological and ethical boundaries between academic and applied ethnomusicology? How is ethnographic knowledge connected to social change? An examination of the ethnomusicology’s relationship to IRBs reveals ongoing ethical ambiguities, especially regarding research on “vulnerable populations.” The author examines the ways in which IRBs might impede the production of public knowledge that would serve the ethical demands of social justice.

The Evolution of the Funny: American Folk Humor and Gimbel’s Cleverness Theory

In 2017, Steven Gimbel published Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophical Account of Humor and Comedy. This book proposes, among other vastly interesting notions, a definition of humor that eschews audience reactions in favor of focusing exclusively on the craft and intention of the responsible comedian. This article intends to provoke that definition and show why humorous performances cannot be crafted without an audience-centric mindset, proving Gimbel’s notion problematic at best. To poke this definition, I draw on the American Folk Humor tradition and compare its historic roots with modern tourist attractions that on the surface appear to channel its spirit. These include the Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue dinner show at Walt Disney World and The Brewery Follies at Virginia City, Montana. After showcasing the differences between these modern performances and the tradition they pretend to espouse, I conclude that Gimbel’s theory cannot account for the evolution of a funny genre.

All This, Jack Warner, and Bette Davis, Too

Jack Warner cancels All This, and Heaven Too, a decision that Hopkins doesn’t take well. They agree that when the film is produced, Hopkins will do it. When her divorce is granted, she returns to Hollywood and is blackmailed by Jack Warner. At an impasse, Hopkins relinquishes All This, and Heaven Too and accepts a role opposite Errol Flynn. On Virginia City, Hopkins battles with Flynn and director Michael Curtiz. Zuckmayer returns to Vermont; Hopkins is devastated. Warner Bros. produces All This, and Heaven Too with Bette Davis. Hopkins is almost broke. She appears in The Guardsman for Bela Blau, but her political differences with Fascist costar Tullio Carminati postpones production and Blau sues Hopkins. Once resolved, Hopkins agrees to do a play by a new writer, Tennessee Williams, but not until she makes her next film, Lady with Red Hair. Hopkins’s battles continue at the studio. She reunites with ex-husband Anatole Litvak, until a scandal ends their relationship.

Reaching Their Majority

Curtiz was assigned to finishBlackwell’s Island.This was followed by his direction of Sons of Liberty, a patriotic short championed by the brothers Warner.The film won an Oscar for Best Short Subject, and Curtiz was given a $3,000 bonus from a grateful Jack Warner. Building on the original success of Four Daughters, he established a successful franchise with Daughters Courageous and Four Wives. Curtiz also beganhis relationship with the renowned cinematographer James Wong Howe, who would shoot four films for him. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essexwas a difficult production because of the dueling egos of Errol Flynn and Bette Davis and the dissatisfaction of Olivia de Havilland, whom Jack Warner deliberately cast in a secondary role to punish her.Curtiz made the picture beautifully, but it was a box-office disappointment. Curtiz also had to cope with a family calamity when his daughter Kitty cut her wrists in a Hollywood hotel room. He was also short of cash owing to his and Bess’s careless financial management. Borrowing money from Jack Warner, he got his mother and two of his brothers out of Hungary and resettled in Hollywood. After directing Virginia City, amid the outbreak of war in Europe, Curtiz prepared for an epic swashbuckler.