Gags, Censorship, and Gagging

The Wolfsonian Library recently opened an installation titled: Tyrants and Terrorists: Satirists Bite Back. The exhibition includes nearly a dozen original late 20^th century anti-Nazi cartoons drawn by Sam Gross, as well as some works from our own collection that lampooned Hitler and the Nazis as they rose to power and dragged the world into a Second World War. While brainstorming ideas for promoting the exhibition in social media, since Mr. Gross was such a prolific cartoonist and his archives could supply us with an endless stream of material, we though that we might try launching a site with a “Gag a Day.” Towards that end, I naively opened an Instagram account, uploaded a couple of images and a sentence of two of context, and sent it out into the web. Attempting to get back to the site the following day, I discovered to my surprise that the post had been taken down and my account had been suspended.

Over the next couple of days, I pondered where I might have gone wrong. My post, which admittedly included parodies of Hitler and Nazis, could not have been considered pro-Nazi or a form of hate speech by anyone actually examining the images or reading the brief descriptive text. Perhaps neo-Nazis might have been offended by the content, but that had not tied me up in knots.

Courtesy of Sam Gross

I could only guess from the swiftness of the act of suspension was that the post had not been flagged by a human censor, but rather had fallen afoul of some algorithm designed to detect and reject certain trigger words or images. I admit that I had probably been remiss in failing to carefully read the rules of the website before choosing a platform for promoting the installation. It is commendable (if also condescending) that a site would wish to protect its subscribers from hate speech, and vitriolic trolls in this age of extreme political partisanship and division. Upon reflection, I also became concerned about the free speech and censorship implications of someone, or more likely, some anonymous algorithm, determining what the public ought and ought not see and judge for themselves. The ultimate irony is that two of the three images I had attempted to post on Instagram dealt with satirists mocking Hitler and the Nazis for their penchant for censoring artists or dictating the content of their artwork.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Ironically, one of the artists censored from public view by Instagram had courageously organized a one-man exhibition of anti-Fascist artwork in his native Copenhagen just days before Hitler and his army invaded the country, closed the show, and set the Gestapo on his trail. One of the paintings exhibited in that prematurely closed exhibition, Harakiri, attempted to warn his compatriots of the dangers of Nazi and Japanese military aggression which he feared was plunging the world into yet another suicidal world war.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The painting is currently on display at The Wolfsonian museum in Plotting Power: Maps and the Modern Age, an exhibition organized by my colleague, Lea Nickless, focusing on how images of globes and maps were often turned into weapons of manipulation by commercial and political propagandists.    

Today’s blog post on gags and gagging will consequently wrestle with the themes of cartoons and caricatures, and satire and censorship. Satire has for centuries, if not millennia, been a proven form of deflating the pretensions of autocratic and dictatorial regimes. During the First World War, many artists and cartoonists turned their talents to satire in the service of the war to ridicule the militaristic proclivities of the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gifts of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

While artists in the belligerent nations could be expected to provide propaganda aimed at the enemy, even cartoonists in neutral nations shaped public opinion about the war. Greatly incensed by Germany’s invasion and occupation of neutral Belgium and other wartime atrocities, the Dutch cartoonist, Louis Raemaekers penned hundreds of cartoons critical of the Kaiser and the war that he unleashed, and had a price put on his head for doing so. Some of his artwork also graces the gallery of the Plotting Power exhibition at The Wolfsonian, while other of his influential editorial cartoons mocking the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, and Germany’s macabre “dance of death” were republished after the war in voluminous tomes.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Satirists and cartoonists did not put down their pens after the First World War ended. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, caricature evolved in Cuba as an important means of promoting culture and attacking social ills and political corruption. Artists such as Conrado W. Massaguer, Hercar, Juan David, Arroyito, and others penned and published tens of thousands of biting satires of politicians, frequently enduring arrest and jail time, and even risking death threats and force exile. When Cuban President Gerardo Machado decided to remain in office for another term and to dispatch paramilitary thugs to silence his enemies, Massaguer published several critical cartoons that irked the thin-skinned president so much so that the publisher and cartoonist was forced to flee the country for his life as his popular publications were suppressed and temporarily shut down.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Promised gift of Vicki Gold Levi

Some non-political artwork of Massaguer is on display in Turn the Beat Around, a Wolfsonian exhibition focusing on Afro-Cuban music and its impact on the American dance music scene from the 1930s through the 1970s and beyond. Many of Massaguer’s cartoonist colleagues suffered similar experiences after Fulgencio Batista ruled Cuba from behind the scenes after the overthrow of President Machado in 1933.

Cartoonists were especially active during the era of the Great Depression, heaping scorn on the capitalists deemed responsible or to the political opportunists who took advantage of the economic crisis to scramble to power. Left-leaning artists like Hugo Gellert ridiculed capitalists such as J. P. Morgan, conservative media moguls such as William Randolph Hearst, right-wing radio pundits like the “Radio Priest” Charles Coughlin, as well as presidential aspirants like Huey P. Long of Louisiana whose campaign song promised to make “Every Man a King.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Other members of the Communist Party faithful also attacked Hearst for accepting money from the Nazis in return for no longer publishing critical editorials of Hitler and his henchmen and trampling on Americans’ civil liberties.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of August Mecklem Estate

Even if coming from a source that many Americans disliked and distrusted, such critical cartoons provided an important counterbalance to the slanted news promulgated by Hearst and his media empire and challenged Americans to educate themselves and to form their own opinions.

Too many on the left remained dangerously quiet on the disquieting realities in the Russian Worker’s Paradise, where millions of Ukrainian peasants were deliberately starved to death by Stalin. There is an irony that can be derived from viewing Soviet propaganda posters and pamphlets of the era today (on view in The Wolfsonian Plotting Power exhibition), which ludicrously lauded the collectivization of the farmland that brought on the politically motivated famine.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Audrey Feldman

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

In France, the artist Paul Iribe penned many cartoons equally critical of the Communists, Socialists, and National Socialists he deemed to be the greatest threat and danger to French liberty. As Hitler repudiated the disarmament dictates set out in the Treaty of Versailles, Iribe ridiculed English Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain’s attempts to appease Hitler, picturing the latter in drag and a blond wig as a means of lampooning the brunette leader of the blond master race!

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Other French cartoonists also weighed in on the type of justice to be expected under Stalin’s dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The modern totalitarian regimes of the Fascists, Nazis, and Communists perverted the relatively new medium of photography and cinema to promote positive images of life under their “benevolent” dictatorships.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Before the advent of computer software and Photoshop, critics such as John Heartfield hand cut and pasted some of those staged images to create photographic collages (or photo-montages) that hinted at the sordid reality beneath the gelatin silver prints published by Nazi propagandists.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Similarly, caricaturists and cartoonists used their pens and their imagination to similarly ridicule dangerous demagogues and would-be tyrants. The Mexican ethnographer and artist, Miguel Covarrubias, for example, helped shape public opinion when his irreverent lampoon of Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini graced the cover of the popular American magazine, Vanity Fair.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

After seizing power in Germany, Nazis burned books, hindered people from seeing films they disliked, discouraged people from listening to Jazz music, and organized exhibitions dictating what constituted “good” versus “degenerate” art.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Michael Rosenfeld

But despite Nazi attempts to ban artwork and censor content they didn’t like, freedom-loving cartoonists hammered away at Nazi ideology and repression, especially after Hitler’s armies began invading and occupying neighboring nations. At great peril, artists in Nazi-occupied territories let the world know what they thought about Hitler, with Dutch and Danish artists transforming Der Führer into a ghoulish skull or reinterpreting Hans Christian Anderson’s The Evil Prince into an anti-Hitler children’s propaganda book.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Purchase, Collectors’ Council Fund

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Pamela K. Harer

Even in the Western Hemisphere, cartoonists attacked Hitler and the Axis Powers on the covers of popular magazines.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gifts of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

When the Second World War ended and ushered in the Cold War, there were elements in America who, well before the era of McCarthyism, pushed legislation designed to outlaw the publication of materials deemed communistic. Far from suppressing such sentiment, such misguided acts provided these groups with a legitimate First Amendment grievance which they used to rally support for their cause.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Perhaps we might learn from such mistakes in the past. Rather than providing undemocratic hate groups with a legitimate First Amendment grievance, maybe we should allow them to rant and vent their views but encourage the Late Night satirists (like Jordan Klepper) and cartoonists (like Sam Gross) to ridicule, debunk, and deride their odious ideas and crazy conspiracy theories.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Leonard A. Lauder

Dr. Laurence Miller: Librarian, Mentor, Friend, and Cruise Line Collector

The staff at The Wolfsonian Library were saddened to learn this week of the passing of our colleague, donor, volunteer cataloguer, booster, and most importantly, great friend, Dr. Laurence Miller. I had been working in our rare book and special collections library when the museum and research center were gifted by our founder, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. to Florida International University, and I soon after met Dr. Miller. Larry was one of the founding directors of the university’s libraries when it was still in its infancy and had accordingly and affectionately picked up the nickname “Moses Miller.” As executive director of libraries at FIU, he helped lead the library through the transformative growth from a three-story building to its eight-floor configuration as the Green Library. It was also largely through the fund-raising and grant-writing efforts under his direction that FIU libraries actively pursued and embraced digital growth, with the establishment of the Digital Collection Center, Digital Library of the Caribbean, and the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Center.

As our own museum library remained miles from the FIU campus, integration into the university library system proceeded more slowly, though Dr. Miller encouraged us to organize library installations of our materials in the Green Library to help increase our presence on campus.

Knowing Larry’s reputation as a cruise line aficionado and enthusiast, we decided to show off some of our own founder’s ocean liner materials in an exhibition titled, Bon Voyage, which we launched on December 1, 2003 and which remained on view through February 1, 2004.

The exhibition was divided into sections focusing on promotional materials that highlighted the exotic lands and peoples to be visited, or the opportunities for meeting others aboard ship; the promotion of specific ships by focusing on their size or prowess; and finally on how even as larger numbers of persons were able to experience the luxury of oceanic travel, first, second, and third or tourist class accommodations perpetuated the old class system, especially on European ships.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised gift

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Laurence Miller Collection

After the installation came down, our digital photographer designed an online version of the installation, which, though a bit dated technologically, still remains afloat, providing virtual access to the exhibition some twenty years later.

After twenty-five years of service, Dr. Miller retired as executive director of libraries at FIU in 2005, although even before retiring, as a life-long lover of ships, he devoted much of his vacation time to cruising the seas.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Laurence Miller Collection

He was an avid cruise line enthusiast who traveled on more than three hundred ocean voyages, contributing articles about the cruise line industry for over three decades for a variety of publications, including Cruise Travel, Travel Weekly, Travel Agent Magazine. After retiring, Dr. Miller also served as a board member of the Steamship Historical Society of America (SSHSA) and contributed articles to their publication PowerShips.

In 2008, Dr. Miller and his wife invited my colleague and I to visit him to discuss making The Wolfsonian Library the permanent home for his own incredibly comprehensive collection of cruise line industry promotional materials. Larry had begun collecting the materials when he was still a teenager in the mid-1950s; growing up landlocked in Pennsylvania, he would write to the chief stewards of ocean liners and ask them to send him brochures, menus, and other ephemera. Later, he traveled to New York harbor to visit the ships berthed there, and as an adult became an avid cruiser, often sailing on inaugural voyages, hobnobbing with the industry titans and the ship’s captains as he wrote reviews for travel industry publications.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Laurence Miller Collection

Given Miami’s important position in the cruise line industry, it made sense to us to extend our collection beyond our normal 1850 to 1950 parameters. Since the bulk of the items in his collection were from the post-World War II era, they did not duplicate, but rather perfectly complemented our own collection of ocean liner ephemera. Soon after that initial meeting, Larry donated tens of thousands of printed materials including passenger accommodation and deck plans, advertisements, announcements, newsletters, schedules, price lists, menus, programs, postcards, promotional leaflets, luggage labels, and company stationery and letterhead.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Laurence Miller Collection

He also gifted us his extensive collection of reference books and periodicals documenting the era of ocean voyages, including the transition from ocean crossing to cruising. True to form, Larry was not only generous in donating this extraordinarily rich and near comprehensive collection to us; when he was not off sailing the seas, he regularly began to brave Miami traffic to volunteer and offer his expertise to help us organize and catalog the materials.

He also used his contacts and influence with other cruise line enthusiasts to encourage them also to consider making our library a permanent home for their collections. Through his efforts, our repository of printed ocean liner and cruise line promotional materials rival the great collections even of more narrowly focused maritime museums.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Thomas Ragan, Jr. Collection

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Elise and Bill Holloway Collection

I was personally greatly distressed to hear of Larry’s passing. But it is comforting to know that though he has left us, as a librarian and mentor he left behind a great legacy at FIU. As a cruise line aficionado, he also helped make The Wolfsonian Library one of the great repositories of ocean liner materials. He will be missed.

Some Things Gross: Scatological Humor Aimed at Hitler and his Henchmen

On the first of March, The Wolfsonian Library opened a new installation in our foyer to our museum visitors: Tyrants and Terrorists: Satirists Bite Back.

Photograph courtesy of Lynton Gardiner

While the scale of the exhibition is somewhat modest considering the space we had to work with, the materials in the exhibit deliver a surprisingly powerful one-two punch and wallop. Tyrants and Terrorists combines World War II era anti-Axis ephemera from our collection with nearly a dozen satirical cartoons made by cartoonist Sam Gross, the latter ridiculing the contemporary resurgence of Nazi symbols and thuggery.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

The son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants arriving in America in the early twentieth century, Sam Gross was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City. Gross began drawing cartoons in 1962 and over the decades has contributed to The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, and Esquire magazines, as well as served as cartoon editor for National Lampoon.

I first encountered Sam Gross’ cartoons many decades ago as a youth when an older cousin showed me a “scandalous” copy of the December 1970 issue of National Lampoon. In it was a now famous Sam Gross cartoon of a scene in a restaurant with a sign inviting patrons to “Try our frog legs” and a woman seated at a table staring down at a legless frog in a cart.

From that moment on, I was hooked on Gross’ dark humor. Lacoste shirts were all the rage among the prep school crowd when I went away to college. Eager to strike a different tone, I used to cover up the crocodile logo embroidered on the chest of my own shirts with a button picturing an amputee frog based on Sam’s National Lampoon cartoon.

Courtesy of Busy Beaver Button Museum

Consequently, when a board member of the museum put me in touch with her famous cartoonist cousin, I was thrilled to be able to visit Mr. Gross in New York with the aim of securing the loan of some of his cartoons for a planned library installation. There, in an office filled with filing cases stuffed with copies of his 30,000 or so cartoons, we sifted through the incredible archive of his life’s work. The most difficult task was having to select a mere dozen or so original drawings to include in our modest proposal for an installation of anti-Nazi cartoons. Outraged by the resurgence of Nazi symbols and hate-crimes, Sam had for some decades applied his own irreverent brand of humor to ridicule neo-Nazis and their swastika symbol in a manner that echoes cartoons in our collection that attacked the Nazis during the Second World War.

For the purposes of this brief blog post, I have decided to provide only a teaser, focusing on the scatological humor directed against Hitler and his henchmen and their misguided contemporary followers.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Jeffrey G. Fischer and Michael Smith

Sam Gross, Loan

As the Nazis rose to power in the 1930s and then waged war in the 1940s to expand their regime of hatred, much of the humor aimed at Axis enemies by the Allies deployed bathroom humor and scatological attacks. During the Second World War, satirists pictured Nazis and their Axis allies occupying latrines; staring out from, or being flushed down, toilet bowls; or hanging from toilet paper rolls!

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gifts of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

One manufacturer even created a miniature chamber post and put Hitler’s likeness at its bottom!

American propagandists even created a fake—(I sincerely hope)—lacquered turd and packaged it in an illustrated box titled: “Right in der Fuehrer’s Eye.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Many of Gross’ anti-Nazi cartoons provide a perfect contemporary complement to our historical artifacts, ridiculing the swastika symbol while deploying similar bathroom humor.

Sam Gross, Loans

If you live here, or find yourself here in Miami Beach on Spring Break and are looking for some sunscreen protection, I hope that the small sampling of materials from the installation included in this post will encourage you to explore the wider range of materials included in the exhibit.

Turning the Beat Around at a Concert With Palo!

Last Thursday I was thrilled to attend Grammy-nominated Afro-Cuban funk ensemble, Palo! for their twentieth anniversary concert at the Miami Beach Bandshell on Thursday, February 16. Not only did I have the privilege to go backstage as the band prepared for their performance, but I also had the opportunity to step on stage just before the band came out.

Photograph courtesy of the author

Addressing the 600-plus persons attending the free concert, I provided them with a brief visual presentation on the history of Afro-Cuban music’s impact on the American dance music scene from the 1930s through the 60s (and beyond). We hope that many of the Afro-Cuban Funk enthusiasts will avail themselves of an opportunity to visit the Turn the Beat Around exhibition which will remain on view at The Wolfsonian–FIU museum on South Beach through the end of April.

In addressing the crowd, I made a shout out first to Vicki Gold Levi, a long-term library supporter and collector whose promised gifts were the core of The Wolfsonian exhibition. Over the course of two decades, Ms. Levi has donated thousands of artifacts and materials documenting the period of cordial relations between the United States and Cuba that prevailed before the Castro-led revolution of 1959. Her generosity has resulted in the creation of several Cuba-themed exhibitions at The Wolfsonian, including: Turn the Beat Around (Oct. 28, 2022-April 30, 2023), Cuban Caricature and Culture: The Art of Massaguer (June 7, 2019-Mar. 10. 2020), and Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure, American Seduction (May 6-Aug. 21, 2016). That collaboration also resulted in the creation of several library installations: Caricaturas (Aug. 29, 2019-Jan. 26, 2020), Boxeo y Béisbol: The Cuba-U.S. Sports Exchange (May 26-Aug. 14, 2016), and Cuba: From Gunboat Diplomacy to Good Neighbor Policy (Feb. 25-May 24, 2016).

Photographs courtesy of Lynton Gardiner

My next note of appreciation went to out to The Wolfsonian’s senior graphic designer, Brittany Ballinger. As part of the pre-concert entertainment, Brittany spliced together a mix of historic film clips featuring Cuban musicians and performers and audiences dancing to rumba, conga, mambo, and the cha-cha-cha.

Photograph courtesy of the author

She even added avocado-green and papaya-orange filters to the design to reflect the color schemes used in Turn the Beat Around by our exhibition designer, Richard Miltner.   

Sent out onstage ten minutes before the band was scheduled to come out and play, I provided the crowd with a visual teaser of still and moving images culled from Turn the Beat Around. Here are just a few of those images:

Of course, it was Palo! that really moved the audience. Founded by bandleader Steve Roitstein in 2003, this local group combines Cuban music with Latin Jazz and Funk.

Photographs courtesy of the author

Photographs courtesy of OS Photography Studio

The audience responded enthusiastically to the music, swarming to the area between the stage and the first row of seats to strut their stuff and show off their dance moves.   

Photographs courtesy of OS Photography Studio

Finally, on behalf of The Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab and the staff who worked to make this event happen, I wish to acknowledge and thank our partners: the Rhythm Foundation and Miami Soundscapes, and most importantly, Palo! for an incredible performance.

Afro-Cuban Dance Music in Hollywood and Mexican Movies

Last week, The Wolfsonian museum partnered with Florida International University’s Cuban Research Institute to organize a panel discussion and lecture about the impact of Afro-Cuban music on the American dance music scene.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The panel discussion, The Beat Goes On: Afro-Cuban Music and Its Impact on the United States, took place at the Patricia & Philip Frost Art Museum and included presentations by Francis Luca, curator of Turn The Beat Around exhibition on view at The Wolfsonian museum through April 30, 2023; Robin Moore, Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas, Austin; and Eva Silot-Bravo, Professor of Spanish at The Branson School, Marin County, California. Associate Professor of Anthropology Andrea Queeley at FIU introduced the speakers and moderated the question-and-answer session that followed the talks.

The talks proceeded chronologically, beginning with my own presentation covering the 1930s through the 1950s and focusing on how Hollywood- and Mexican-produced movies helped to promote rumba, conga, Afro-Cuban jazz, mambo, and cha-cha-chá music and dance.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

Afterwards, Professor Moore described how Cuban-influenced music continued to thrive in the United States despite the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the Cuban Missile Crisis ending the earlier decades of warm relations between the U.S. and Cuba. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Puerto Ricans, Nuyoricans, Dominicans, and Cuban exiles and expatriates kept Afro-Cuban music alive in New York under the brand of “Salsa.”  

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

Finally, Professor Silot-Bravo brought us into the present, talking about the importance of timba and reggaeton in the late 1980s and noting the latest musical developments and trends in Cuba and their international impact.

Today’s post will focus on the period 1930s through 1960 and explore the part played by Hollywood and Mexican motion picture studios in promoting Afro-Cuban music in the United States.

Although Cuba had a robust radio and television broadcasting tradition before the Cuban Revolution of 1959, no more than eighty full-length movies were produced on the island and the fledgling motion picture industry remained dependent on Mexican and Hollywood filmmakers and producers.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Once tourists began visiting the island in ever-increasing numbers in the 1920s and 1930s and became entranced by the “exotic” rhythms and dances they encountered, U.S. and Mexican filmmakers saw the potential for producing musical films set in Cuba, or else filmed on studio sets elsewhere but featuring performances by famous Cuban bands, musicians, performers, and dancers.  

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

One of Cuba’s leading orchestral directors, Don Azpiazú traveled to New York City in 1930 with his Havana Casino Orchestra and introduced the rumba song, “El Manicero” [The Peanut Vendor], to an American audience.

Once the lyrics were translated into English its popularity skyrocketed in the United States and the song became one of the all-time greatest hits in Cuban history. It sold well over a million copies and was played, re-arranged, and re-recorded by a wide variety of musicians and orchestras.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

Hollywood immediately capitalized on the song’s popularity. Released in 1931, the movie The Cuban Love Song included a fictional story of the origins of “The Peanut Vendor” and a charming duet of the song performed by the film’s stars, Lawrence Tibbett and Lupe Velez.  

Rumba originated as percussion-driven dance of the streets associated with the solares (or slum dwellings) in the poor Afro-Cuban neighborhoods in Havana and Matanzas. Rumbas were often danced in rough-and-tumble taverns and clubs of such barrios.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

A brief scene in the 1955 Mexican movie, Un Extraño en la Escalera [A Stranger on the Stairs], was filmed in the Rumba Palace and focuses on an Afro-Cuban woman dancing frenetically to the drumming of the famous Cuban timbalero, Silvano “Chori” Shueg.

In 1920s and ’30s Cuba, this sort of percussion-based rumba was denigrated as risqué and low-class, until elevated by the addition of a full ensemble and transformed into cabaret and dance hall music.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Most American tourists encountered and experienced rumba as a sensual cabaret dance performance accompanied by a full orchestra. In jumping from island to U.S. mainland, the rumba underwent yet another transformation. Promoters often added a “h” to make Rhumba music appear classier as was taught by Arthur Murray, Inc. and other ballroom dance studios and emerged as a foxtrot set to Latin music.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

The aptly named Hollywood film, Rumba was released in 1935, starring actors George Raft and Carole Lombard. The niece of Cuban bandleader Xavier Cugat’s wife, Margo, also appeared in the film as Raft’s dance partner.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

The film includes a cabaret rumba dance scene set in a Cuban nightclub and concludes with the two stars, dressed in tuxedo and gown, dancing a ballroom version on stage in New York City.

Given the prejudices of the era, most American audiences preferred to see blondes or light-skinned mulattas in rumba performances.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Had it not been for the popularity of the Cuban dance partners, René Rivero Guillén and Ramona Ajón, most Americans might never have seen or recognized the Afro-Cuban origins of son and rumba dance rhythms.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Born in Matanzas, Cuba, at a young age René Rivero Guillén moved with his family to the Los Sitios neighborhood in Havana, another port city and urban center that served as the birthplace of rumba and the Abakuá religious traditions. There, he grew up listening and dancing to Afro-Cuban music with his sister in the drinking establishment she owned, El Bar de Hilda. The bar was known both for the slower and softer strains of the soneros, whose acoustic instruments encouraged couples to dance more closely together, as well as the more raucous jam sessions of percussion-driven rumberos. The constant (if prohibited) bare-handed drumming drew in scores of local percussionists, including Chano Pozo, while the more than occasional bare-fisted brawls that erupted in the bar also provoked frequent police raids. Pairing up with another Afro-Cuban dancer, Ramona Ajón, Rivero and his new partner adopted the stage names René and Estela and took their dance moves to the Century of Progress International Exhibition in Chicago (1933/34).

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

In this era of discrimination, segregation, and Jim Crow laws, this dance pair were virtually the only Afro-Cubans performing in the United States where they presented a more refined and elegant rumba. After their appearance at the world’s fair, René and Estela moved to New York City and regularly performed at the Havana-Madrid nightclub on Broadway and 51^st Street. There they taught Americans to dance to a variety of Afro-Cuban music (as often as not lumped together indiscriminately under the “Rumba” umbrella).

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

In 1938, the pair performed a graceful and acrobatic rumba in the Mexican film, Tierra Brava. In the opening musical number, René danced while simultaneously balancing a full glass of water on his head as he dipped to the floor and returned to a standing position!

The following year, the couple performed their famous courtship dance on the movie set of Another Thin Man (1939) to a slower son rhythm.

The longevity of the rumba hit, “The Peanut Vendor,” is borne out by the fact that Xavier Cugat and His Orchestra were still playing the song more than a decade after its first release.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

Cugat conducts his orchestra in playing the popular “Peanut Vendor” in the Hollywood musical, Luxury Liner (1948), much to the chagrin of opera-star aspirant, Jane Powell determined to add her own operatic trills to the “popular” arrangement.

By the early 1940s, however, most American dance-enthusiasts had already moved from the rumba to the conga. Conga drumming and dancing had been popular in Cuba’s carnival parades for many decades, despite the (unsuccessful) efforts of Desiderio Alberto Arnaz II to ban African drums and other musical instruments from carnival celebrations while serving as mayor of Santiago de Cuba between 1923 and 1932.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Ironically, after Arnaz and his family fled to the United States some months after the Cuban revolution of 1933, it was his son, Desi Arnaz, who popularized conga line dancing and Afro-Cuban music in their adopted country.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Desi starred in several Hollywood films before securing lasting fame playing “Ricky Ricardo,” the fictional Cuban bandleader in America’s most popular 1950s television sitcom, I Love Lucy. He met Lucille Ball while acting and leading a conga on the set of Too Many Girls (1940). The couple eloped that same year.

Later that decade Desi Arnaz was still promoting Cuban music and culture, starring in the Hollywood musical, Holiday in Havana.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

Later in the decade, jazz enthusiasts were swaying to Afro-Cuban polyrhythms once Cuba’s most famous percussionist, Chano Pozo, joined other Cuban musicians in New York City and teamed up with jazz trumpeter and bandleader, Dizzy Gillespie.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

But it was mambo music that enthralled American audience in the late forties and early fifties, with Mexican melodramas and Hollywood musicals again doing their part to popularize this music blending American swing and big band music with Afro-Cuban polyrhythms. Though many Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians and bandleaders in East Harlem contributed to the development of the New York style mambo, it was Pérez Prado who did the most to create an international mambo craze.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Finding only limited enthusiasm for his big band music in his hometown of Matanzas, Cuba, Prado moved to Mexico in 1949. There, he signed a contract with the international division of RCA-Victor, developed an upbeat mambo adaptation of the Cuban danzón, and appeared in a dozen or so Rumberas films playing mambo music over the next few years.

This was the golden age of cinema in Mexico. Many film noirs and melodramas were produced and marketed by showing off the beauty and song and dance talents of famous Cuban and Mexican rumberas and sex symbols, such as Ninón Sevilla, María Antonieta Pons, and Lilia Prado.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

If the Cuban rumba was seen as a dance of courtship and seduction, Prado claimed that his fast-paced mambo cut straight to orgasm, with the brass riffs and saxophone counterpoint inspiring the dancers to move their bodies energetically and frenetically from start to finish. Prado personally led and danced to his big band’s mambos on screen and stage, and although his mambos were largely instrumental, the music was frequently punctuated by Prado’s trademark “¡Dilo!” and similar ejaculations.

The popular appeal of Prado’s music crossed the border and in 1951 RCA-Victor producers began promoting him in the United States. Soon, Prado and his mambos and cha-cha-chás began appearing in Hollywood films. The bandleader appeared briefly in Howard Hughes’ Underwater! (1954), playing a cha-cha-chá version of “Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White.” His arrangement of this song sold more than a million copies and earned him a gold disc.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

In 1956, the producers responsible for promoting Bill Haley & His Comets in Rock Around the Clock produced another film showcasing the mambo and cha-cha-chá music of Pérez Prado. Shot on a low-budget, Cha- Cha- Cha- Boom! was not a box office smash, and besides the great dance music performed by Prado, could be written off as a bust!

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

As the mania for mambo waned and the appetite for cha-cha-chás grew, the “King of the Mambo” made the shift and continued to top the charts. Prado’s instrumental arrangement of the song “Patricia” plays twice in the background of Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960).

While the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the subsequent strain in U.S.-Cuba relations eroded American interest in Cuban culture, Puerto Ricans, Nuyoricans, and Dominicans kept the music alive under the “Salsa” brand. But by the late 1960s and ’70s, Latin musicians had to compete with Rock & Rock concerts for the attention of younger audiences. While there remained an international appetite for the new Latin sound, in the United States Latin musicians increasingly appealed to Latin rather than mainstream audiences.

Spotlight on Machito and the Titos–The Three Kings of Mambo By Far

Today’s post focuses on the careers of a trio of “Mambo Kings” included in the exhibition, Turn the Beat Around, on view at The Wolfsonian–FIU museum in Miami Beach through the end of April. While Cuban bandleader Pérez Prado did much to promote and popularize mambo music in Mexico and the United States and was often referred to in the press as the “King of the Mambo,” there were others equally worthy of the title. This “Three Kings Day” I thought I would recognize the contributions of three other musicians and contenders for the crown: Machito (Frank Grillo), Tito Puente, and Tito Rodríguez.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Both Machito and his future brother-in-law and musical collaborator Mario Bauzá were born in different barrios of Havana a year apart from one another: the former in the Jesus María district in 1912, the latter in Cayo Hueso in 1911. Machito’s father was a singer who traveled the length and breadth of Cuba, providing his son with the distinctive rhythms and sounds of the island’s diverse population and with contacts to influential composers and musicians, including Arsenio Rodríguez. As an adult, Machito’s association with Bauzá pulled him into the orbit of such singers as Miguelito Valdés and percussionists such as Chano Pozo. Although Bauzá studied classical flute and played with the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra, both he and Machito were restricted by class and color barriers. Both men worked as mechanics and moonlighted as musicians before moving to New York City where the pair would ultimately infuse Cuban rhythms into and transform jazz music.   

Bauzá was the first to break into the New York City jazz scene when he recorded there with Antonio Maria Romeu’s charanga orchestra in 1926. The experience inspired him to take up the saxophone and to become a jazz aficionado. He returned in 1930, playing the trumpet for Antonio Machin, and later for the Missourians in the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. In 1933 he began playing trumpet for Chick Webb’s Orchestra, and was leading the band in 1936. Machito joined him in New York the following year to sing with Las Estrellas Habaneras and Bauzá convinced him to remain.  

Machito, Mario Bauzá, and René Hernández, pioneers of mambo in New York

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

In 1939, Machito joined Orchestra Siboney, the resident band at the Club Cuba.

Soon afterwards he was performing with Cab Calloway’s band and assuming the moniker “Machito.” Collaborating with jazz great Dizzy Gillespie in after-hours jam sessions, Bauzá and Machito introduced African ancestral music and improvisation into the mix and helped pioneer Cuban bebop (Afro-Cuban jazz or Cubop).  

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

In 1940 Machito formed his own band, Machito and His Afro-Cubans; Bauzá joined the group as its musical director the following year.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The band quickly gained traction and prominence, playing gigs at La Conga nightclub in 1942.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

That same year, Bauzá brought Tito Puente, a Nuyorcan timbalero drummer, into the band.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

In 1946, Machito and Bauzá convinced the “godfather of Latin music” Federico Pagani to breathe some new life into a neglected ballroom. The band played a few Sunday matinee gigs and dubbed the new venue, “Blen Blen Club” after the Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo’s hit song title. Their matinee performances were so popular that Pagani decided to make Latin music a permanent part of the Wednesday night rotation, organizing contests, courting celebrities, and enticing dancers into the rechristened “Palladium Ballroom.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

Machito and His Afro-Cubans continued to thrive and draw in other important Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians. Bauzá convinced Chano Pozo to come to New York City in 1947, introduced him to Dizzy Gillespie, and furthered the development of Afro-Cuban jazz.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Machito played maracas and his percussionists recorded with jazz bandleader Stan Kenton on his 1948 Afro-Cuban jazz reinterpretation of the old rumba favorite, “The Peanut Vendor.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

In the same year, Machito was asked by music producer Norman Grantz to record with him and with other jazz legends such as Charlie Parker.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

By 1949, Machito and His Afro-Cubans and their Cubop music had reached new heights as the group appeared frequently at the newly opened nightclub, Cubop City, but also regularly performed in the “Borscht Belt”—the stately summer resorts of the Catskills in upstate New York.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The band’s timbalero, Ernesto Antonio “Tito” Puente, had been born in New York City on April 20, 1923, and was encouraged from an early age to pursue his interest in music and dance by his Puerto Rican parents. He and his sister entered dance contests, and Puente was crowned as king four times on Stars of the Future before a bicycle accident sidelined his dance dreams. Inspired by the American jazz percussionist Gene Krupa, Puente took up the trap drum, and the little drummer boy soon acquired the skills and proficiency in his early teens to play semi-professionally in Federico Pagani’s Happy Boys in 1938. Finding a mentor in José Montesino, Puente absorbed many of the authentic Cuban rhythms for which he would soon gain renown. By the age of 16 he landed his first paid gig, playing drums for the Noro Morales Orchestra at the Stork Club, and was afterwards offered a three-month contract to play with José Curbelo’s Telleria Society Orchestra at the Beach Club in Miami, Florida.

Playing drums for Johnny Rodriguez’s band in the Stork Club back in New York City, Puente encountered and became friends with his brother, Tito Rodriguez, though the friendship soon devolved into a bitter rivalry. In 1941, Puente joined Machito and His Afro-Cubans, considered to be the most important Latin band performing in the United States. Distinctively, Puente played standing rather than sitting, allowing him to remain open to visual cues from the rest of the band and to dance and move to the music while staying on beat.

Puente’s time with Machito and His Afro-Cubans was cut short when America entered the Second World War and he was called to service. He continued to play and began to compose and arrange music even while in the service. After the war he made use of the G.I. Bill to further his education, studying at the Julliard School of Music. By 1946 he had returned to playing in Curbelo’s band as swing music waned and the mambo begin to catch on. A year later, Puente had formed his own conjunto even as Pagani’s Palladium nightclub began showcasing Latin music. In 1949, Tito Puente and His Orchestra released the song “Abaniquito,” (or, Little Fan), one of the first mambos to become a hit outside of Latin audiences and reach the charts. Tito and his band first performed in the humble “cuchifrito circuit”—the working class dance halls of New York where many musicians established a reputation and later in the Borscht Belt. But it was at the Birdland and the nearby Palladium dance hall that the mambo began to spread like wildfire in the early 1950s, with Tito Puente, Machito, and Tito Rodriguez fanning the flames and releasing records with Tico Records.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

At the height of the mambo craze, Tito Puente convinced Tico Records to allow him to record an album paying tribute to the importance of drums in African and Afro-Cuban music and culture. They agreed, and his collaboration with fellow percussionists Willie Bobo, Carlos Patato Valés, and Mongo Santamaria and bassist Bobby Rodriguez resulted in the groundbreaking album “Puente in Percussion.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Although Puente released nearly a dozen records with Tico Records, he was eager to sign with RCA-Victor hoping to reach a wider audience. Ultimately, Puente felt slighted by RCA, whose executives he felt more actively promoted his rival for the title “King of Mambo,” Pérez Prado. Nevertheless, he released several important albums with RCA, including “Mambo on Broadway” (1954), “Cuban Carnival” (1956), “Mucho Puente” (1957), “Top Percussion” (1958), “Dance Mania” (1958), “Mucho Cha Cha” (1959), “Dancing Under Latin Skies” (1959), “Cha Cha With Tito Puente at Grossinger’s” (1960), and others.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

A police raid on the Palladium in April 1961 resulted in the revocation of the club’s liquor license and an end to the dance club’s reign, though Puente retained his following even as Rock and Roll pushed Afro-Cuban and Latin music from mainstream to the sidelines. The “King of the Mambo” continued to perform at hotels and other venues alongside singers such as La Lupe and Celia Cruz.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

In the 1970s he hosted a television show, recorded with the Fania All-Stars at their live concert in the Village, and continued to play the Afro-Cuban music he had always played, now being marketed as “Salsa.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

In the same decade, his “Homenaje a Beny Moré” won him a Grammy. He performed for presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, and was recognized internationally as a goodwill ambassador for Latin Music. He made television appearances on Sesame Street, the popular animated sitcom, The Simpsons, and he even played himself in the 1992 Warner Bros. film, The Mambo Kings.

Born in the Santurce neighborhood of San Juan, Puerto Rico, on January 4, 1923, Tito Rodriguez was surrounded by music from an early age. His older brother, Johnny, made a name for himself as a bandleader and composer and encouraged Tito’s musical ambitions. As a teenager, he sang vocals for several Puerto Rican bands, and in 1939 he joined his brother Johnny who had been living in East Harlem and had formed the Conjunto Siboney. Tito began to sing and play the maracas with his brother’s ensemble, recording with the group in 1940.

In the first half of the decade, Tito Rodriguez sang and played the maracas and bongos with a number of Latin ensembles including Cuarteto Caney, Enrique Madriguera, and Xavier Cugat’s orchestras alongside Machito and Miguelito Valdés. He also sang and recorded with Noro Morales and José Curbelo. When mambo first gained traction in the U.S. music scene in 1947, Rodriguez formed the conjunto Mambo Devils, which later became Tito Rodriguez and his Orchestra. Tito Rodriguez and Tito Puente’s bands were the innovators and providers of the musical tinder for the mambo madness that would spread like wildfire in the mid-1950s, and in combination with Machito, these three kings would perfect the sound of the New York mambo style.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

While mambo became all the rage in New York, it reached a national audience largely through the rising influence of Pérez Prado, who, after promoting the music in a dozen Mexican movies, received a contract with RCA and appeared in Hollywood films.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

But even as the press crowned Prado “King of the Mambo,” Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez contested his coronation and squabbled between themselves over which of them was the better contender. The two Titos jockeyed for top billing on the Palladium’s marquee in 1951, though the public dispute might have owed more to the desire to generate publicity than to actual animosity. Tito Rodriguez managed to make the Palladium ballroom his venue.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

After 1952, the Palladium catered exclusively to the mambo crowd and Rodriguez’s band helped turn mambo into a mania.

The mambo frenzy peaked in 1954, after which it was rather quickly supplanted by the cha- cha- chá. The newer Afro-Cuban music had the advantage of offering its listeners lyrics and its dancers tamer and easier-to-master steps. Many New York-based bands, including Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez’s orchestras, treated cha-cha-chá melodies as mambos and remained vibrant and popular.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

In 1960, Rodriguez became the only Latin musician signed to the United Artists Records, and he recorded and released two live albums with this label: “Tito Rodriguez at the Palladium, Live!” (1960) and “Live at Birdland” (1963).

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

The Cuban bassist Israel “Cachao” López also played with Rodriguez’s band and helped popularize mambo music in the U.S. between 1964 and 1966, when the band broke up and Rodriguez pursued a solo career.  

Rodriguez returned to Puerto Rico in the 1970s, but continued to tour and perform in New York, Florida, and the island. He hosted the television program “El Show de Tito Rodriguez” and also founded his own recording studio, TR Records.

As the dance hall days were overshadowed by rock concerts, Tito Rodriguez continued to record Latin music. On February 2, 1973, he performed with Machito in Madison Square Garden, marking his last public appearance before passing away from leukemia that same month.

That the sons and namesakes of each of these three Latin music legends will be performing together at the Miami Beach Bandshell tomorrow evening for the Big 3 Palladium Orchestra‘s South Florida premier bodes well for their fathers’ legacies and the future of music they pioneered and popularized.

My thanks to library intern Victoria Calveira for her help in researching and arranging some of the materials used in the creation of this post.

“Seeing Sounds” and “Geo-graphic” Flash Exhibits and Swinging Latin Jazz

This past Sunday, December 11, The Wolfsonian–FIU museum hosted a couple of “pop-up” exhibitions featuring works by Florida International University graphic design and printmaking students.

The two “flash” installations included printed materials inspired by two Wolfsonian exhibitions: “Turn the Beat Around” and “Plotting Power.” After the artists and their families and friends had the opportunity to view the installations, the visitors were entertained by FIU’s Latin Jazz Ensemble, playing tunes also inspired by the Afro-Cuban music celebrated in “Turn the Beat Around.”

As curator of “Turn the Beat Around,” I had been invited earlier in the semester by Professor Silvia Pease to address her Graphic Design III students. Via a Zoom link, I presented the students with some images of movie posters, lobby cards, sheet music and album covers, as well as some historic music video clips featuring Afro-Cuban musicians, bands, and dancers included in the show.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Palacio Luca

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gifts of Vicki Gold Levi

Professor Pease had challenged her students to consider “what a song looks like” and given them the assignment of designing a “seeing sound poster.” She encouraged them to use printed images and shapes, magazine clippings, and typography to create impactful imagery.

The students’ graphic responses to the music were collected and exhibited at The Wolfsonian in their “Seeing Sounds” installation on Sunday. There they shared their work with friends and relatives and toured the galleries to see the actual artifacts that had served as their sources of inspiration.

In creating their original “Seeing Sound” posters, the students noted having been inspired by scenes in which Hollywood actors George Raft and Margo danced a cabaret-style rumba in the aptly named Hollywood movie, Rumba (1935); Cuban dancers René and Estela performed a graceful son “courtship” version of Rumba in a scene from Another Thin Man (1939); Desi Arnaz played the conga and led a conga line in Too Many Girls (1940); Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo and American jazz trumpeter and bandleader Dizzy Gillespie collaborated on the Latin Jazz hit, “Manteca”; bandleader Tito Rodriguez inspired some frenetic dance moves to his “Mambo Madness” set; and Pérez Prado led his band in a rousing rendition of Mambo No. 8 in the less-aptly titled movie, Cha- Cha- Cha- Boom!

My colleague Lea Nickless also had the opportunity to share her conception of “Plotting Power” with students enrolled in an Intermediate and Advanced Printmaking course taught by FIU Professor Printz. The students had the chance to see and be moved by images of globes and pictorial maps included in that exhibition and to create their own unique responses to those works. The resultant silkscreens and colorful prints, grouped together under the title, “Geo-graphic,” were also on display in The Wolfsonian museum lobby on Sunday.

While impressed by the caliber of all the work exhibited, I thought I must single out one for special notice, given that it was produced by Victoria Calveira, an FIU senior who had spent the last two semesters interning in The Wolfsonian Library. Her piece, she confessed, was indirectly inspired by that internship—or more accurately, the terrible congestion that characterized her commute to and from the library from her home. Traffic was foremost in her mind as she worked on her piece that grapples with the issues of infrastructure and urban density.

After the visitors had sufficient opportunity to see the pop-up installation, they also had the chance to see the exhibitions that inspired the artwork.

Afterwards, the student artists and their guests retired to our auditorium, doubling as exhibition space and strewn with movie musical posters and other memorabilia. There they listened to a performance by FIU’s Latin Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of Professor Michael Eckroth. I had also been in communication with Professor Eckroth earlier in the semester, and together we had discussed what music might complement the installation. The band decided on a number of popular Rumba, Latin jazz, and Mambo pieces.

Accompanied by the vocals of Claudia Moltalvo, the band’s set included such classic Cuban favorites as: “El Manisero” [The Peanut Vendor]—the first Rumba to soar to popularity in the United States in the 1930s; Afro-Cuban jazz hits composed by Cuban percussionist, Chano Pozo; and a couple of mambos popularized by Cuban bandleader, Pérez Prado.

The staff here at The Wolfsonian are thrilled to have had such positive collaborations with the FIU faculty and student body.

Turning the Beat Around: Spotlight on Xavier Cugat

Last night we celebrated Turn the Beat Around with a party for Vicki Gold Levi, the collector whose donations made The Wolfsonian exhibition possible. More than a hundred guests showed up to have a look at the installation before sitting down for a catered dinner.

Of course, not all of the gifted artifacts nor all the research that went into the planning of the exhibition made the final cut for the show. Consequently, I have been publishing a series of blog posts utilizing some of these materials and notes to focus on some of the key personalities associated with Afro-Cuban music and its impact on the American dance music scene from the 1930s to the 60s and beyond. Today’s post focuses on the life and career of Xavier Cugat, the flamboyant bandleader arguably most responsible for promoting and popularizing Latin American music in the United States in this era.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Xavier Cugat was born in picturesque Gerona, Catalonia, Spain on New Year’s day, at the dawn of the twentieth century, and the same day his father, a radical democrat, was pardoned and released from prison for the crime of having voiced some “rebellious talk” against the royal government.

Xavier Cugat caricature from Rumba Is My Life, The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Cugat’s father remained a stubborn and vocal critic of the monarchy, however, and faced with the choice of exile or execution, he took ship with his extended family for a planned move to Mexico when young Xavier was but four years old. After a sixty-five day voyage that paused for a brief stop-over in Havana Harbor, the patriarch went ashore, met another Catalan, secured employment, and decided to remain in Cuba with his family.

Xavier Cugat caricature from Rumba Is My Life, The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Consequently, Xavier spent his formative years in the Cuban capital city, where he was first exposed to music at the nearby shop of a guitar and violin maker. At a very young age, Cugat studied classical violin, played at Cuban cafes, and joined a trio that provided live background music for silent movies.

Xavier Cugat caricature from Rumba Is My Life, The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Soon enough, Cugat was performing as the first chair violinist for Havana’s Orquesta Sinfónica del Teatro Nacional. He also had a gift for drawing amusing caricatures, which he learned from Conrado Massaguer, the famous caricaturist and then-editor of El Grafico. When the famous tenor Enrico Caruso arrived in Havana in 1920 for a singing engagement with the Metropolitan Opera Company at the Teatro Nacional, the singer and the boy violinist each sketched the other. Cugat’s talent as a caricaturist would later manifest itself in the cover art of some of the many albums he produced over his long and successful career.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gifts

In 1921, the fifteen-year-old violin prodigy performed as a soloist in a benefit concert at the Teatro Nacional intended to raise funds for another planned familial move, this time to New York City. Sufficient monies were raised to book first class passage aboard the S.S. Saratoga for the entire Cugat clan. Upon their arrival in New York Harbor, the family first stayed at the Capdevila Hotel before moving to a more spacious apartment in Washington Heights. Cugat continued to play the violin, but a concert at Carnegie Hall failed to win him the popular and critical acclaim he craved. He accompanied his homesick family back to Spain where he conducted a more prosperous European tour before returning to New York. As fame as a classical concert violinist eluded him still, Cugat’s friends convinced him to play popular music, and he joined Vincent Lopez’s celebrated orchestra for their opening of the night club, Casa Lopez, on Broadway.

Cugat left for the West Coast in 1927, and finding audiences there generally uninterested in classical music, he found work instead as a caricaturist of the Hollywood scene for the Los Angeles Times.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Cugat’s big break occurred when he was contacted by Charlie Chaplin and asked to provide a soundtrack for his latest motion picture production—the first of many musical assignments from the Hollywood movie studios. It was then that he met, wooed, and wed the Mexican singer and sometime actress, Carmen Castillo. As the tango had become all the rage, Cugat’s new wife and the silent film star, Rudolf Valentino encouraged him to start a Latin-American dance band. Cugat’s The Gigalos septet soon became a hit at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, a mecca for Hollywood celebrities; his wife, Carmen, and her young niece and guardian, Margo, sang and danced with the band. In 1935, Margo would dance with George Raft in the Hollywood production, Rumba (1935).

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

The Gigolos began playing for Warner Brothers films, and provided the music for films such as In Gay Madrid (1930) and Ten Cents a Dance (1931).

In 1933, Cugat and his band traveled back to the East Coast when invited to play at the opening of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel’s exclusive Starlight Roof in New York for $500 a week. The band’s popularity and success was such that Cugat reigned as the resident bandleader for 16 consecutive years, earning in excess of $7,000 a week towards the end of his contract. Much of Cugat’s popularity derived from his gifts as a recruiter, as the bandleader included in his orchestra such talented singers and performers as Miguelito Valdés, Desi Arnaz, Tito Rodriguez, Yma Sumac, and many others. His band was renown for popularizing tango, rumba, conga, mambo, and cha-cha-cha. A Conga-land songbook published in 1940 featuring such outstanding composers as Ernesto Lecuona, Eliseo Grenet Sánchez, Xavier Cugat, and others also included some of Cugat’s wonderful caricatures!

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

Cugat never cut ties with the West Coast crowd, however, shuttling back and forth between New York and Los Angeles for thirty years. Not only did Cugat and his band play evenings at the Cafe Trocadero in Hollywood in the 1930s, but he later owned and operated the Mexican dinner club, Casa Cugat, in West Hollywood from the 1940s through the 1980s.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Cugat consulted on several movie productions. In 1942, he scrambled from the set of the Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth film, You Were Never Lovelier to another where he taught actress Rosalind Russell the conga for a comic scene in the film, My Sister Eileen.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Cugat appeared in numerous Hollywood movies and musicals boosting the popularity of Latin music, including: Go West, Young Man (1936), The Heat’s On (1943), Bathing Beauty (1944), Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), Holiday in Mexico (1946), A Date With Judy (1948), On an Island With You (1948), Luxury Liner (1948), Neptune’s Daughter (1949), and Chicago Syndicate (1955).

Cugat also earned a reputation for divorcing and remarrying singers and actresses with whom he associated. After divorcing Lorraine Allen in 1952, he immediately after married singer Abbe Lane.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Together they broke into the television marketplace with the short-lived The Xavier Cugat Show airing on NBC in 1957.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Abbe and Xavier would also appear on the Ed Sullivan Show before the couple divorced in 1964. Cugat’s last marriage would be to Spanish guitarist and comic actress, Charo.

Today Cugat is most remembered as an entertainer who blended together and presented different Latin American elements in a amalgamation of rhythms and styles and made them palatable to an American audience. He was often seen onstage or on the silver screen leading his bands, alternatively clutching a violin or pet chihuahua under one arm.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

After many appearances on stage, radio, film, and television screen, he retired from public life in 1971 after suffering a stroke. He returned to his Catalonia homeland where he passed away on October 27, 1990.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Gift of Juan Montenegro

It is my hope that those of my readers living in or visiting South Florida between now and the end of April, 2023, will come to The Wolfsonian museum and experience Turn the Beat Around in person.

Turning the Beat Around: Spotlight on Chano Pozo

It all began with Chano Pozo. Some months back, long-time supporter and library donor, Vicki Gold Levi contacted me and asked if we would be interested in another gift of Cuba-related materials. This latest batch, she told me, focused on Cuba’s most famous–if short-lived–percussionist, Luciano (“Chano”) Pozo González. Over the course of two decades, Vicki had donated thousands of rare ephemeral items to The Wolfsonian Library at Florida International University–materials documenting the warm relations and cultural exchange that had characterized U.S.-Cuba relations before the revolution in 1959 fractured those “ties of singular intimacy.” Those previous gifts had resulted in several library installations and two larger exhibitions: Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure, American Seduction (2016) and Cuban Caricature and Culture: The Art of Massaguer (2019/2020). As boxes and packages began arriving, it became obvious to me that the trove of treasures did far more than document the career of Chano Pozo and deserved more than a small installation in the library foyer. Thus began the work of putting together an exhibition focusing on Afro-Cuban music and its impact on the American dance music scene from the 1930s through the 1950s and beyond. After months of selecting items, conducting research, writing and revising exhibition text and descriptive labels, Turn the Beat Around has opened to the public.

With the curatorial work complete, I have begun sifting through some of the leftover research notes and images of artifacts that had been culled from the installation due to considerations of space to put together a post focusing on the Cuban percussionist whose life and career was the inspiration and genesis of this exhibition. Chano Pozo is considered to have been one of Cuba’s greatest percussionists; he also composed more than forty songs over the course of his short life. His music was recorded and performed and promoted internationally by his lifelong friend and singer, Miguelito Valdés as well as by Mario Bauzá and his brother-in-law’s band, Machito and His Afro-Cubans. At the height of his popularity Pozo earned thousands of dollars in royalties every two or three months. Pozo’s decision to join fellow Cuban musicians and performers in New York City and his collaboration with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie resulted in the creation of the music variously referred to as Cuban bebop, Cubop, or Afro-Cuban jazz.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Luciano Pozo González was born in the winter months of 1915 in the Pueblo Nuevo, a barrio of Havana open to indiscriminate settlement by impoverished families, black or white, crammed together into squalid and overcrowded slums. After the death of his mother just before Chano turned eight, his father worked as a shoe-shine to support his family, took up with another woman, and moved his combined family to El África, a poor and sordid tenement that greatly impacted Pozo’s early life and development. Experiences of deprivation and violence were simultaneously relieved by contact with Afro-Cuban religious and musical traditions. Rumba, a percussion-driven Afro-Cuban dance of the streets was born in such solares (or tenement slums) and Chano imbibed its communal rhythms as he grew to maturity. One of his step-siblings, Félix Chappottin Lage, would later be recognized as one of Cuba’s most extraordinary trumpet players.

If El África introduced Chano to Afro-Cuban spiritual and secular musical traditions, the poverty and violence of slum life also forged his character and destiny. Dark of skin and big-framed, young Chano dropped out of school after the third grade and is said to have wandered the streets leading a rowdy vagabond-like existence. His older brother would be convicted of stabbing a man to death in a fight involving his younger brother and would die in prison. Fond of singing, dancing, and playing the drums, the young percussionist apparently struck up a friendship with another street urchin, a mestizo (mixed race person of Indian-Spanish heritage) named Miguelito Valdés, who lived just four blocks away in the adjacent Cayo Hueso neighborhood. The duo reputedly would sing and dance rumbas in front of local bars and cafes in the hopes of collecting some coins, though they parted company in 1928, when Miguelito joined the Jovenes del Cayo septet. Given the strict racial discrimination laws in Cuba that restricted black musicians from playing in certain venues, Pozo would continue to dance and play drums on the streets for spare change until his truancy, drinking, and violent and petty criminal behavior earned the thirteen-year-old youth a three-year sentence in the Guanajay Reformatory School that same year. Although Chano learned to read and write, acquired vocational training in auto body repair, and had plenty of time to refine his percussive skills during his detention, his experiences at that institution provoked less a reformation of character than fostered the development of his “tough-guy” persona. Leaving the reformatory at the age of eighteen, he returned to El África, and won renown as a rumbero (rumba dancer), sonero (improvisational singer), and conga player. Even later in his life after his musical career took off and he led Los Dandy de Belén comparsa, dressed in the best tailor shops in Havana, and drove an expensive automobile, he never left the tenements where rumba was born as Afro-Cuba music of the streets.

Los Dandys at the Havana Carnival

with Chano Pozo (circled in red) and composer/rumbero Silvestre Méndez (in green)

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

It was in the solares (or tenements) that Pozo learned about Afro-Cuban religious cults, was initiated into the Abakuá sect, and began practicing Santeriá. Pozo would embrace these sacred percussive traditions and also transform them into the secular conga drumming rhythms that would define his identity as Cuba’s premier percussionist. He would ultimately play as many as five congas to achieve the poly-rhythms that made him famous. Even while earning a meager living as an auto mechanic, he made music banging out dents and straightening out fenders; in his leisure hours he played the congas whenever possible with the local comparsas–the street musicians who paraded on patron saint’s days and during carnival. Chano continued to find himself on the wrong side of the law and served another prison term ending in 1935.

Later that decade, Chano resumed his friendship with Miguelito Valdés, and together with his step-brother, Félix, the three young men would forge a musical alliance in the late 1930s that would take them off the streets, into studios, and onto stages as popular entertainers.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

In 1938, Chano was invited to play lead conga for Los Melodicos, who had obtained a choice gig at the Hotel Presidente. Gaining in popularity, he next played to a sold-out crowd at the legendary Teatro Marti, though segregation customs prevented him from entering some recording studios. His friend, Miguelito Valdés, had become a local sensation, singing with the Orquesta Casino de la Playa. Even as Miguelito encouraged Chano to compose, the band’s pianist and arranger, Anselmo Sacasas transcribed and translated what Chano sang into musical notes. Miguelito sang and the Casino de la Playa band recorded Chano’s first musical composition, “Blen, Blen, Blen” in 1939; it became an instant hit. Other popular songs followed in the early 1940s, including: “Ariñáñara,” “Muna Sangangfimba,” and “Guagüina Yerabo.”

In 1940, Pozo found work as a bodyguard for a local senator, who in turn introduced him to Amado Trinidad Velazco, the owner of the Cadena Azul radio station in Havana. He soon began rehearsing with maestro Leonardo Timor and joined his RHC Cadena Azul band for their evening shows in an era when it was quite rare for a jazz band to feature Cuban percussion. As his reputation grew, so too did his access to exclusive venues. In 1941, the clean-shaven, finely-dressed, Pozo became the percussionist for the Hotel Nacional Orquesta.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Sporting a white tuxedo, shoes, top hat, and tails, Pozo continued to lead Los Dandy de Belén, transforming the comparsa into the hottest parade group in Havana in the early 1940s. Los Dandy even promoted a song about themselves “Conga de Los Dandys,” a song popularized by Latin big bandleader Xavier Cugat in New York, with Miguelito Valdés providing the vocals. In 1942, Miguelito recorded and made a hit of one of Chano’s compositions, “Nague,” this time performing with Machito and His Afro-Cuban Boys.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

“Nague” would go on to become an international sensation, translated from Spanish into English and French and performed and recorded by a variety of musicians.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Other compositions of his were published the same year, though none were as successful as “Nague.”

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Even as the rumba craze was gradually being replaced by the conga in 1940s Hollywood musicals, Chano found a new way to earn a living. Renting a couple of quarters in the solar El Ataúd in the Colón neighborhood, he knocked down the walls separating the rooms and opened a dance studio where he taught rumba dancing to Hollywood celebrities visiting Cuba. One of the most recognized participants in the Havana comparsas, his notoriety as a percussionist and rumba dancer made him a natural final casting choice for the Tropicana nightclub’s first great musical revue, “Conga Pantera.” Pozo not only appeared as the first dancer in the film, but also played the conga and composed the show’s main theme song, “Parampampin.” So popular had Pozo become in Havana that an entire article about and an original composition by the percussionist was published in the June 14, 1942 issue of Carteles, one of Cuba’s most popular magazines.

Vicki Gold Levi Loan

In 1944, Pozo was invited to join Humberto Cané’s new all-star band as percussionist. The band, which included Pozo’s step-brother Félix Chappottin playing trumpet, soon became a feature at the RHC radio station. Soon after, Chano assumed the role of bandleader of the renamed Conjunto Azul. The band made recordings for Musicraft, Victor, and Pan-Art record companies and their music could be heard on jukeboxes throughout Cuba even as Miguelito and Machito were popularizing his compositions in the United States. But Chano had a way of spending his pesos even faster than they accrued. Believing that he was being swindled out of his royalties, Pozo barged into his manager’s office at the Writer’s Society, tore the place apart when Ernesto Roca counseled patience, and threatened violence if he weren’t given his due the following afternoon. Roca hired Santo Ramírez, a percussionist, fellow Abakuá, and great friend of Chano Pozo to intervene and pacify him, but their encounter ended in violence. After Pozo struck Ramírez, the latter pulled a gun and shot him several times, with one bullet being impossible to safely remove. Pozo would recover but would also suffer from back aches ever after.

Pozo’s childhood friend, Miguelito Valdés returned to Cuba in 1946 and urged the percussionist to forego his troubles in Havana and to travel with him to the United States where his music was already well-known given that he, Xavier Cugat, and Machito had been performing his songs. Chano left Cuba and arrived in New York City in January 1947 and first performed at the La Conga cabaret.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Soon after, he participated as one of the trio of drummers in the dance revue, Bal Nègre, choreographed by Katherine Dunham and staged at the Roxy Theatre on Seventh Avenue. Miguelito helped him secure recording sessions with Coda Records, introduced him to Machito and his Afro-Cubans, Arsenio Rodríguez, and Puerto Rican singers and performers, Tito Rodríguez and Joe Loco.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

Those connections resulted in three compositions being released under the name of Chano Pozo y su Orquesta, but the songs did not reach a national audience. When jazz trumpeter and bandleader Dizzy Gillespie sought out a percussionist who might integrate some African-inspired poly-rhythms into their jam sessions, Mario Bauzá at once introduced him to Chano Pozo and Afro-Cuban jazz was born. Dizzy and Chano’s first collaborative concert featuring an Afro-Cuban suite took place at Carnegie Hall on September 29, 1947. At a Boston venue the following month, Pozo was brought center stage where he danced, played a conga solo, and sang an Abakuá chant.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

On December 30^th, 1947, Chano recorded “Manteca” with RCA Victor, which has since became lauded as a Latin jazz classic. In January 1948, Pozo joined Dizzy Gillespie’s band on its very successful tour across Europe and the United States. When his conga was stolen in North Carolina, Pozo returned to New York to replace it, and left the tour, finding the segregated South too much to stomach. By December 1, 1948, Pozo was arguably at the height of his popularity in the United States when a dispute with a Puerto Rican over the purchase of some inferior marijuana escalated into a public row in which Pozo slapped and publicly humiliated the dealer. The following day, while Pozo was performing in the River Bar Grill, the dealer entered and shot the percussionist six times. Pozo’s tragic end was memorialized in the 2010 animated film Chico y Rita.

The day after Pozo was cut down at the age of 33, Miguelito Valdés made arrangements for the remains of Cuba’s most famous percussionist to be shipped back to his homeland for burial in the Colon Cemetery in Havana. Despite having been cut off in the prime of his life, Chano Pozo’s legacy has endured, with many of his original Afro-Cuban jazz recordings remaining highly sought after and many of his compositions being continually re-released.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Vicki Gold Levi Promised Gift

If you happen to be in the Miami Beach area between now and the end of April, please be sure to come to The Wolfsonian–Florida International University museum located at the corner of 10th and Washington Avenue on South Beach to see Turn the Beat Around.

For Spanish-language readers interested in a definitive biography of the Cuban percussionist, I recommend Rosa Marquetti Torres’ Chano Pozo, La Vida (1915–1948), published in 2019.

A Night for Celebrating Heroines

Last night, The Wolfsonian–Florida International University hosted its latest “Into the Stacks” public programming presentation—a themed behind-the-scenes exploration of the museum and rare book and special collections library holdings not readily accessible to the public. Hosted by Bookleggers Library director Nathaniel Sandler, last evening’s event focused on heroines—women ranging from allegorical beings, mythological goddesses, and real-life female figures. The public program also included presentations by two Wolfsonian staffers: office manager and HR liaison Sandra Solis Hazim and shop visual merchandizer Carlton Maloney. After their talks, the visitors had the opportunity to view some rare museum and library artifacts displayed in our conference room.

Nathaniel Sandler kicked off the night’s entertainment by noting that a search for “heroine” in Wikipedia automatically redirected the researcher to the more gender-neutral “hero”—even if the entry did at least include a few celebrated females such as Joan of Arc.

Sandra Hazim focused her attention on images of “Rosie the Riveter” and the actual women who left their homes to work in the war industries during the Second World War.

In addition to the most well-known image of “Rosie” showing off her muscles, Ms. Hazim included in her talk an illustration of a female riveter by Norman Rockwell. This patriotic woman was posed in a deliberate echo of Michelangelo’s depiction of the prophet Isaiah painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Ms. Hazim also noted that while many African American women worked in factories during the Second World War, there appear to have been no posters depicting persons of color engaged in such work, but only some photographs printed in Life magazine documenting their war service.

Carlton Maloney brought us back from reality and into the realm of legend with a display of some highlights from his personal collection of materials related to the comic book legend of Wonder Woman.

Obsessed with her since his early childhood, Carlton even sports a Wonder Woman tattoo on his arm!

Carlton has amassed an impressive store of vintage DC comics and figurines and he shared with the visitors treasured items from his private collection and a wealth of personal knowledge about this super-heroine and her various incarnations in everything from comic books to television shows and movies.

Carlton Maloney, Private Collection

Following the trio of presentations in our café and gift shop, the visitors were guided upstairs to our second-floor conference room. There they perused a display of museum objects and library artifacts primarily focused on Joan of Arc as well as “ordinary” heroines who served as nurses and war workers during the First and Second World Wars.

The Wolfsonian Library possesses two copies of Jeanne D’Arc written and illustrated by Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel (French, 1851–1913): one, a slender illustrated children’s book; the other, identical in content but published as a deluxe oversized portfolio edition with color chromolithographs mounted on large plates. The books chronicle the heroic life of the girl who claimed to have been visited by an angel and urged to take up arms to liberate France, ending with her being captured and burned at the stake by English enemies but declared a saint by the Catholic Church.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Both versions of the book contain an illustrated title page that anachronistically depicts the sword-wielding girl atop a warhorse in a full suit of armor leading a charge of bayonet-wielding French soldiers and dying Prussian soldiers, all wearing late nineteenth-century uniforms. Published in 1896, the books are an example of French “Revanchism” (revenge-ism) that grew out of their humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1 and bitterness at their loss of the territories of Alsace-Lorraine, whose return became a French war aim during the First World War.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Collection

Joan of Arc returned as a heroic figure with the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. Her silhouette graced the cover of one musical score in our collection and her legendary heroism was depicted in propaganda posters and in a recently acquired children’s book published towards the end of the war.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, gift of Francis Xavier Luca & Clara Helena Palacio Luca

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Purchased with funds donated by Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.

Written by Robert Burnand (French, 1882–1953) and illustrated by Edouard-Garcia Benito (Spanish, 1891–1981), Reims: la Cathédrale was published by Berger-Levrault in Paris in 1918 using the pochoir (stencilwork) printing process to produce vibrantly-colored illustrations. This children’s book tells the story of a French soldier wounded in battle during the Great War. Taken from the front to a hospital, he receives a visitation by an angel and has a hallucinatory dream recounting hundreds of years of history associated with Reims, the traditional location for the coronation of French monarchs and site of the Gothic cathedral, Notre-Dame de Reims.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Purchased with funds donated by Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.

Considered a place of sanctuary and used as a Red Cross hospital for the wounded, the gothic cathedral was nevertheless targeted and severely damaged by German bombardment and fire to the great indignation of the French. When the wounded soldier awakes from his dream in the story, he finds an earthly rather than a heavenly angel at his bedside: a heroic nurse tending to his wounds.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Purchased with funds donated by Mitchell Wolfson, Jr.

The pochoir books and illustrations on the table published as WWI propaganda attracted the most attention and comment last evening, including two works illustrated by Guy Arnoux (French, 1886–1951). The first was a series of four color pochoir plates depicting heroic French women making bandages and nursing war-wounded men to health from the Middle Ages to the Great War.

The Wolfsonian–FIU, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Promised gift

In closing, I have included a single page from a slim booklet illustrated by Arnoux expressing French gratitude for American intervention in the war. The image lauds the young, single American women who heroically volunteered to serve as Red Cross nurses on the front lines, or who traded fashionable dresses for durable coveralls to work in munitions factories and help win the war.