The Echo of a Distant Time: October 2025

Monday, October 20, 2025

“Sometimes I think if I had the same body and the same natural ability and someone else's brain, who knows how good a player I might have been.”

A 1952 Topps baseball card featuring the young Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees, rendered in vivid lithographic colour. Mantle, bat poised upon his shoulder, gazes upward with the unguarded confidence of early promise—a portrait of athletic idealism at the dawn of America’s postwar age. The composition, clean and iconic, captures the sculptural geometry of baseball heroism: cap and uniform crisply defined against a cloudless sky of dreamlike blue. The Yankees’ emblem appears in the lower corner, flanked by Mantle’s printed and facsimile signatures, a subtle interplay between the mechanical and the personal. To later generations, this image would become not merely a collector’s relic but a totem of lost innocence—symbolising both the apotheosis and commodification of mid-century Americana.

Topps c. 1952

One of the rare few who stood among the elite of the elite—brilliant, flawed, immortal: Mickey Mantle, born 20 October 1931 in Oklahoma.

“A goddess sculpted in scandal”: Pauline Bonaparte, born 20 October 1780

An exquisite neoclassical portrait of Pauline Bonaparte, painted circa 1806 by Robert Lefèvre, Napoleon’s favoured court artist. The sitter reclines gracefully upon a green velvet couch, her posture at once languid and deliberate, conveying the self-assurance of a woman accustomed to command attention. Draped in a white empire-line gown of sheer muslin, fastened with a gilt sash that glimmers across her waist, she radiates a delicate sensuality softened by poise. Her head is crowned with a jewelled diadem and a gauze veil, the ensemble evoking both Roman antiquity and early nineteenth-century Parisian elegance. Pauline’s gaze, directed slightly away from the viewer, carries an air of introspective detachment—suggesting both intelligence and ennui, a woman aware of her myth and resigned to it. Lefèvre’s brushwork, of impeccable polish, renders every texture—skin, silk, and gem—with a restraint that exalts her beauty without descending into sentimentality.

Illustration: Robert Lefèvre, c. 1806

“I do not believe that any man in the world is more unfortunate in his family than I am.”—attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.

Born upon this day in 1780 was Pauline Bonaparte—Napoleon’s younger sister and, by the common testimony of her age, the most resplendently ungovernable spirit of that singular house. Beauty and scandal clung to her as fragrance to the rose; she was at once enchantress and provocation—adored and exasperating in the same breath.

From girlhood she displayed an audacity rare even amidst the licentious airs of post-revolutionary France: quick of wit, irreverent in laughter, her appetites untamed by convention or consequence. Marriage to General Leclerc did little to school her passions; widowhood, yet less. When she later became Princess Borghese, it was less an elevation than an improvisation—a courtesan’s art reborn beneath the veil of nobility.

In Rome she became as a living fable. Her snow-white steeds were shod with silver; her raiment so diaphanous that even the world-wearied salons of the Eternal City blushed for shame. Painters adored her; prelates despaired; and ambassadors, once masters of intrigue, found their composure scattered before her smile.

At last, rumour’s tide did reach Paris. Napoleon, ever the jealous sentinel of family decorum, addressed to her a missive befitting a patriarch grown weary—a letter of admonition couched in the language of exile and restraint. She obeyed in semblance, for a season; in spirit, never. No imperial edict could subdue a nature so gloriously insubordinate.

In Pauline the contradictions of the Bonapartes found their most glittering consummation—grace entwined with folly, splendour interlaced with ruin. She was, as one astonished contemporary styled her, ‘a goddess sculpted in scandal’. And perchance, in the vast theatre of human history, she grasped the meaning of fame with an instinct swifter and truer than that of her conquering brother himself. —Arthur Newhook, 20 October 2025.

Thursday, October 16, 2025

Remembering Ace Frehley: 27 April 1951 – 16 October 2025

A striking vision of retro-futurist glamour rendered with painterly precision. A woman with pale blonde hair cascading to her shoulders stands against a deep cosmic backdrop flecked with stars and a faintly glowing red planet. Her face is painted in theatrical blue-black makeup forming winged lightning-bolt motifs around her eyes—an echo of 1970s glam rock iconography—contrasted by her calm, intelligent gaze and crimson lips. She wears a form-fitting silver jumpsuit with sculpted shoulders, its metallic sheen mirroring the night sky’s luminosity, lending her the air of a celestial envoy or interstellar performer. Her poise—one hand on hip, the other resting lightly by her side—balances defiance and serenity, as if she were both muse and messenger of some cosmic art form. The image fuses rock mythology, science-fiction reverie, and portraiture into a single, vividly imagined emblem of beauty transcending both time and gravity.

image generated by ChatGPT

{AP 16 October} ‘Ace Frehley, Kiss’ original lead guitarist and founding member, dies at 74’

Rest in peace, Starman. At this point in my life, I would almost sooner endure Chinese water torture than listen to KISS and their hair-band ilk. Once upon a time—when youth dulled discernment—I lapped up that racket with the same appetite I brought to fast food and the ceaseless blare of televised idiocy. But age, misophonia, and the daily parade of performative imbecility—from the corridors of power down to the trailer park—have conspired to render me a broken-down, jaded 47-year-old, sick to death of all the noise that passes for culture.

Still, fairness demands its due: Ace Frehley was perchance the most competent musician in that crew during the ’70s, and ‘New York Groove’ is better than reason or lineage might allow; a melody whose vulgar birth cannot efface its strange vitality, and superior by a good margin to the rest of the KISS catalogue. The manner of his death—a fall last month leading to a brain bleed—is unsettling, particularly for those of us with parents north of seventy and maybe not always steady on their feet. Life is perilously fragile.

Fragility is the only constant. Godspeed. —Arthur Newhook, 16 October 2025.

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Pretty in pink, velvet and silence her two most loyal companions: the enigmatic Jean Peters, 15 October 1926 – 13 October 2000

20th Century Fox publicity shot, c. 1950. Via Getty Images

Amidst the gilded constellation of 20th Century Fox in the late 1940s and throughout the following decade, Jean Peters held a curious sovereignty—half siren, half mystery. Her renown was fashioned in the portrayal of women whose merest glance might unmake the soul of man: flint beneath velvet, desire alloyed with peril. With a smouldering intensity on screen, she could convincingly embody that species of femme fatale, wherein beauty and destruction are but two syllables of the same breath.

Yet, away from the klieg lights, the actress was consistently described as soft of speech and tender of spirit—a creature whose private nature stood in clear contrariety to the wanton heroines she was bidden to enact. Mistress Peters did inwardly resist the very sexpot image the studio so assiduously cultivated, a quiet rebellion against her own commodification.

This nuanced tension, however, is wholly effaced by the photograph in question, circa 1950, wherein no hint of inward strife may be discerned. Instead, a vision of post-war splendour, wherein all private battle is transfigured into serenity beneath the alchemy of perfect light. —Arthur Newhook, 15 October 2025.

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Lost in a sea of ice, a fragile sparrow in a blizzard of sorrow. The ultimate portrait of the tragic silent heroine, Lillian Gish. Born 14 October 1893 – 27 February 1993.

Lillian Gish drifts ghostlike across a frozen river, her dark gown stark against the blinding expanse of snow and ice. The year is 1920, Way Down East, and cinema itself seems to shiver with her. Every fold of fabric, every tremor in her posture conveys both fragility and moral endurance—the essence of silent-era storytelling distilled into a single image. Her expression, wide-eyed with terror and transcendence, catches the thin light of winter, as though grace itself had taken human form and wandered, lost, into a storm. Around her, the frozen world becomes both stage and crucible: nature as adversary, faith as her only warmth.

United Artists

“I've never been in style, so I can't go out of style.” —Lillian Gish. Seen here as the very embodiment of fragile defiance amid a frozen desolation, her anguish etched against eternity in the shattering finale of Way Down East (1920). The queen of silent sorrow, her face could summon tears where words dared not tread—a creature of such purity and pathos that she seemed less mortal than mythic, the cinema’s first true saint of suffering. —Arthur Newhook, 14 October 2025.

Monday, October 13, 2025

The enduring charm of Laraine Day, 13 October 1920 – 10 November 2007

Laraine Day stands in sunlight by the shore, the very picture of 1940s poise softened by seaside ease. Her floral swimsuit, modest yet flattering, gathers the brightness of the day around her like a halo. Bare feet press into sand still cool from morning tide, and the surfboard beside her becomes both prop and partner—symbol of youthful daring, the kind once immortalised by Hollywood’s golden lens. Her smile is unguarded yet perfectly framed, an expression of open joy caught midway between glamour and sincerity, as though the camera itself were a dear friend rather than an instrument of fame.

photo by Oliver Sigurdson, c. 1945

“Let someone else be the world's greatest actress. I'll be the world's greatest baseball fan.” —a pretty good actress, at least, Laraine Day, born 13 October 1920. Known to millions as the sweetheart of the screen, she won hearts as Nurse Mary Lamont in the beloved Dr Kildare films—her performance a study in luminous poise and wholesome sincerity. Yet to dismiss her as merely the ingénue next door would be to miss the steel within the silk: at only nineteen, she shone under the tutelage of director Alfred Hitchcock, and starring opposite the formidable Joel McCrea, in the excellent Foreign Correspondent (1940, United Artists), acquitting herself with grace and intelligence far beyond her years.

Off-screen, her story was scarcely less vivid. For more than a decade—from 1948 to 1960—she was celebrated as ‘the First Lady of Baseball’, as the wife of the fiery, mercurial manager Leo Durocher, whose temper and genius for the game were legendary. To that end, she hosted a pre-game broadcast for the New York Giants on WMGM 1050 AM (a modern-day ESPN radio affiliate with the call letters WEPN).

A divine and dependable leading lady in every sense, Laraine Day embodied the rare union of warmth and discipline, the professional polish of the studio era tempered by a very human charm. Whether clad in a nurse’s uniform or a designer gown, she embodied the confidence of a woman who knew precisely who she was, and how to remain so in an industry that seldom forgave identity. —Arthur Newhook, 13 October 2025.

“I never meant to fall, darling—but isn’t it delicious when the world catches you softly?” Remembering Barbara Kent, the Canadian-born starlet of Hollywood’s Golden Age, who departed this day in 2011

Barbara Kent tumbles into a snowdrift with a mix of grace and comic surprise, her snowshoes flaring outward like delicate wings caught mid-flutter. The flapper-era knit cap and short skirt evoke a time when youthful daring met new freedom—an age of laughter, lipstick, and cinematic innocence. Even as she slips, there’s poise in her motion: the unstudied art of a silent-film ingénue turning a fall into choreography. Around her, the snow gleams like powdered silver, the whole scene alive with mischief and charm.

Getty Images

Barbara Kent—brought forth amid the snowbound vastness of Alberta on 16 December 1907, and finally granted merciful freedom from this mortal coil on 13 October 2011, having attained the prodigious age of 103—was among the final embers of the first, incandescent epoch of Hollywood, an icon of an era when beauty seemed to respire rather than merely posture.

Having moved California at some point in childhood, Barbara Kent commenced her professional life, aged 17, by being anointed Miss Hollywood of 1925—the very quintessence of her generation’s ideal: soft of voice yet lambent of presence, her allure founded not upon contrivance but upon an exquisite equipoise—an innocence quickened by intelligence, a modesty irradiated by quiet certainty. The diadem secured her passage to the studios, where her cultivated stillness proved eloquent in a medium that conversed through silence alone.

Her big break arrived almost immediately. In Flesh and the Devil (1926), she was cast opposite Greta Garbo and John Gilbert—colossi of the silver screen—yet she did not vanish beneath their conflagration. Her performance served as counterpoint: tender, irreducibly human, the necessary cantus firmus beneath Garbo’s grand operatic blaze.

Over the next five or so years, she graced numerous productions—perhaps most memorably as the benignant Rose Maylie in the 1933 adaptation of Oliver Twist—negotiating the advent of the talkies with unblemished poise (a feat not universally achieved by many of contemporaries). She adapted, endured, and then, with characteristic reticence, withdrew almost entirely from acting following her marriage to the talent agent Harry Edington in late 1932.

To recall Barbara Kent—or those kindred souls who shared her brief effulgence—is to glimpse once more the dawn of cinema itself, when the alchemy of light and motion still shimmered with the shock of creation, and a young woman from the boundless Canadian prairies might step into that radiance and, for one breath of eternity, shine as bright as the sun. —Arthur Newhook, 13 October 2025.

Saturday, October 11, 2025

Bette Davis: satin, suggestion, and a single exposed truth

Bette Davis reclines against a striped sofa, poised between languor and challenge. The photograph, from around 1938, captures her in sculptural chiaroscuro—hair a cascade of marcelled curls, eyes half-lidded but alert, lips precise as punctuation. She wears a fitted white knit bodice with delicate straps and twisted cord detail, its simplicity countered by the bold opulence of her jewellery: a pendant of dark stones ringed in light, twin cuffs studded to match, a ring glinting like a withheld remark. The composition balances warmth and hauteur—one arm draped over the cushion, the other resting lightly near her lap—suggesting both repose and readiness. The lighting isolates her against a field of shadow, drawing the gaze to her shoulders and throat, where elegance becomes eroticism. She embodies her own credo: that the merest glimpse of satin or skin carries more charge than overt display.

“I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed.” —Bette Davis, rather proving the point in this image, circa 1938 via the Everett Collection.

“A mirror keeps my secrets safer than any friend ever could. Before the jazz begins, I give myself a moment of grace — just one breath, one look, one quiet little dream that belongs only to me.”

A 1920s dressing-room tableau: a young woman, adult and assured, braces one foot upon a low bench while fastening her stocking. Her cloche hat—a dark bell with a pale ribbon—shadows waved bobbed hair. A fox-fur stole pours over one shoulder, its softness echoing the brushed nap of her short, dark dress. The lifted hem reveals the clean curve of hip and stocking-top; in the cheval mirror, her backside becomes a second, ghostly subject, framed by carved acanthus and pearls of gesso. Plaited Mary-Jane heels, a tasselled reticule in hand, and a scatter of studio paintings behind her place the scene between boudoir and atelier. The light is high and even—silver rather than sultry—so the mood reads intimate without tipping into salacious. Lines and ovals rhyme throughout: hat brim, mirror ellipse, rounded thigh, bowed bench legs—Art Deco geometry softened by fur and flesh.

source unknown

The 1920s stitched in fabric and rhythm: silk that murmurs of emancipation, stockings that stride to the tempo of the city. Fur whispers of luxury, tassels laugh at restraint. Listen closely—one can almost hear Ravel spinning on the gramophone, and the delicate click of a clasp completing the ritual A century on, the wisdom still glimmers: elegance is not the costume, but the restraint—reveal a breath, conceal a stanza, and let the mirror hum the melody.

A woman who could outshine artifice with a single, unguarded smile: Diane Keaton, photographed by Norman Seeff, c. 1975

A monochrome portrait of actress Diane Keaton, radiating unaffected poise and understated confidence. She poses with her arms raised, hands resting lightly behind her head, allowing her straight, shoulder-length hair to fall freely about her face. The composition is spare and unadorned, yet profoundly intimate—capturing the spontaneous warmth of a woman who has never needed artifice to command attention. Her faint, knowing smile and calm gaze convey a blend of wit and serenity, while the soft interplay of light and shadow accentuates the natural contours of her face and arms. Clad in a simple black tank top, Keaton embodies a timeless minimalism—her beauty emerging not from glamour but from authenticity, the camera recording a moment of quiet self-assurance and self-possession that would later define her screen persona.

“I build a wall around myself. I'm hard to get to know. Any trait you have, it gets worse as you go along.” —Diane Keaton, 1946–2025. She made honesty fashionable. We could use more of that in the world as it is now. She made honesty fashionable—and how rare that seems now. In a world stitched together with pretence, we could use a little more of her kind of truth. —Arthur Newhook, 11 October 2025.

She wore wit like perfume: Diane Keaton, 1946–2025

Diane Keaton sits with effortless bohemian grace upon a wooden chair, her posture caught between thought and laughter. Her auburn hair is tucked neatly beneath a soft beret, while her dress—a swirling tapestry of abstract pattern and late-sixties colour—clings to the lingering optimism of the era. Ribbed tights trace the lines of her crossed legs, and a bold ring catches the light upon her hand as though punctuating her musing. There is a sense of gentle defiance in her gaze, a play of intellect and charm that suggests she knows precisely how the world sees her—and will not let it be the last word.

Diane Keaton, circa 1974. Via Getty Images

{Reuters 11 October} ‘US actress Diane Keaton dies at 79, People reports’

Another day, another light extinguished. Diane Keaton, that singular creature of wit, vulnerability, and eccentric grace, hath been granted merciful release from this prison, aged 79. I do not claim to be an authority on her entire filmography, nor to have found unqualified pleasure in every one of her roles; yet to deny her magnetism would be to deny sunlight, and she did capture hearts with her unique blend of charming neuroticism and profound warmth. An unforgettable leading lady, indeed. —Arthur Newhook, 11 October 2025.

Friday, October 10, 2025

John Lodge, bassist and vocalist of the Moody Blues, 1943 – 2025. Another light gone out in the firmament

Getty Images

{BBC 10 October} ‘Moody Blues singer John Lodge dies, aged 82’

A fond and reverent farewell to John Lodge—not ‘just a singer in a rock and roll band’, as his own lyric once wryly insisted, but one of the true gentlemen and master craftsmen of progressive rock. A quietly noble Englishman who treated music not as commerce but as a vocation. Lodge, bassist, vocalist, songwriter, and spiritual ballast of The Moody Blues, hath departed this unworthy and ungrateful realm aged 82. Born 20 July 1943 in Erdington, Birmingham, he and Justin Hayward joined a reconfigured Moody Blues in 1966, and together they turned what had been a competent R&B outfit into something altogether grander: a vessel of symphonic splendour and celestial vision.

Their 1967 opus, Days of Future Passed, stands as the first proper flowering of what we came to call progressive rock, fusing symphonic orchestration with poetic lyricism and rock instrumentation, creating a sound that could swell the heart and paint pictures in the mind in a way no one had dared attempt before. To list one’s favourite albums is an act of futility—every decade renders one’s own past judgement embarrassing, and I am no whit exempt—yet that record shall always remain in my upper pantheon without any hesitation. It hath the stateliness of a cathedral and the soft grace of a lullaby.

Mr Lodge’s own contributions to the Moody Blues canon are numerous and indelible, and include ‘Ride My See-Saw’, ‘Isn’t Life Strange’, ‘Gemini Dream’, and that deathless confession, ‘I’m Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)’, one of the most honest anthems ever wrought upon the absurdity of the touring life. By all accounts I have ever read or heard—and especially upon this day—he was a warm and generous man of sound judgement and sober mind, untainted by the usual vanities that so oft beset his calling.

A man who did embody the spirit of that golden age when rock music strove not merely to entertain but to elevate—to wed the mind unto the heart, and art unto melody—John Lodge shall be missed. I do pray that the noble legacy of English progressive rock, which he and his peers so bravely fashioned, shall never be cast into oblivion. For in this darkening technological and Orwellian age of ours, wherein history is daily mangled and made to vanish with fearful haste, it behoveth us all the more to hold dear, and remember truly, the pure and human artistry of such men as he.

Rest in Peace, good sir.

—Arthur Newhook, 10 October 2025

{alternate text for the above image} A colour studio portrait of John Lodge, bassist and vocalist of The Moody Blues, captured in the 1970s. His expression is introspective, almost pensive, as though caught mid-thought. Soft, diffused lighting highlights the contours of his face and the gentle sheen of his skin, while his long, wavy brown hair—styled in the characteristic fashion of the era—frames his features in a halo of texture. He wears a patterned shirt, its muted psychedelic design subtly evocative of the period’s aesthetic: colourful yet understated. The photograph embodies the introspective artistry that defined Lodge’s contribution to the band’s sound—lyrical, melodic, and quietly spiritual—while the restrained composition suggests a man more attuned to reflection than spectacle. It is a portrait of a musician at once ordinary and transcendent, poised at the intersection of English reserve and rock’s romantic idealism.

Monday, October 6, 2025

The incomparable Bette Davis—granted merciful release from this ungrateful world thirty-six years ago today (6 October 1989)

Bette Davis in In This Our Life, 1942 WB

Lately I find myself wondering whether the titans of Hollywood—Bette Davis and her contemporaries—would have bothered at all, had they foreseen how fleeting their immortality would prove. Would the great jazz musicians of the mid-twentieth century, or the ballplayers, or the novelists, have poured their souls into their craft if they had known how quickly posterity’s light would fade from them? More to the point, how little the generations to come would cherish their names, or even care to learn them.

In another few decades, even the brightest constellations of the twentieth century—Monroe, Ali, Ruth, The Beatles—will glimmer only faintly, their brilliance dimmed by forgetfulness as the last who remember them pass from the world. Worse still, in an age when artificial intelligence and digital manipulation have placed the machinery of history in the hands of the least scrupulous, what remains may not merely be forgotten but rewritten—or erased altogether.

It falls, then, to those of us who love these figures to keep their memories alive, however humbly. Yet few will trouble themselves, and those who do will never be appreciated. Such is the fate of those who remember in a world that no longer values remembrance, basic decency, and human dignity. —Arthur Newhook, 6 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A black-and-white studio still of Bette Davis captures her seated languidly in an upholstered armchair, exuding both vulnerability and defiance. Dressed in a soft, ruffled blouse and a flowing skirt that reveals one bare leg, she leans back with an expression of distracted contemplation, her luminous eyes lifted slightly upward as if lost in thought or irony. Her hair, styled in loose 1940s waves, frames a face poised between weariness and will. The soft contrast and domestic setting evoke the mood of post-war disillusionment—Davis embodying the archetype of the complex woman: elegant, disenchanted, and indomitable, caught between repose and rebellion.

Saturday, October 4, 2025

Susan Sarandon in a classic showgirl pose, straight out of the Ziegfeld Follies. #BOTD 1946

photo by Timothy White

Plumes, fishnets, and legs aloft—an enduring alchemy of allure that never loses its lustre. She is radiant with delight, that mischievous glint in her eyes proclaiming not mere performance but the joy of a woman entirely alive within her own skin. A creature of fearless artistry and fierce conviction, Susan Sarandon—born 4 October 1946 in New York City—has long stood among cinema’s most versatile and incandescent figures. Never content simply to inhabit a role, she animates each with a formidable intellect and a pulse of raw humanity that renders pretence impossible.

I shall not rehearse her filmography, nor claim to have seen or enjoyed all her work. In one of her more notorious roles, as the sultry oracle of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), she manages to be the best thing in a film I consider an exercise in unmitigated kitsch—a riot of camp exuberance inexplicably adored by a certain subset of viewers. To put it bluntly, I cannot stand the f**king film. To each their own; yet such quibbles matter little. Susan Sarandon hath commanded the screen with an authority few of her contemporaries could ever match: not merely a performer, but a force of nature, an energy that refuses containment. —Arthur Newhook, 4 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} A glamorous portrait by Timothy White features Susan Sarandon reclining against a stark white backdrop, her pose both theatrical and self-assured. Draped in a deep burgundy feather boa that entwines her body with artful suggestion, she wears matching fishnet tights and high-heeled sandals adorned with gold embellishments. Her legs extend elegantly upward, creating a sculptural line that contrasts with the luxuriant cascade of auburn curls framing her face. With red lips and a steady, knowing gaze directed toward the viewer, Sarandon embodies a fusion of classic Hollywood allure and modern sensual intelligence—poised between provocation and poise, playfulness and command.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook), PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

Friday, October 3, 2025

Clad in nothing but charm: Janet Leigh in a towel scene far more blissful than the one for which she is most infamously remembered

“In order to dream, you need to have a springboard which is the facts... It gives it that touch of reality, and I think that's quite important... truth with fiction.” —Janet Leigh (6 July 1927 – 3 October 2004), glimpsed here in Jet Pilot (1957, RKO)—not as a femme fatale, but disarmingly radiant. She embodied that ineffable ‘girl-next-door’ allure—wholesome, all-American charm enlivened by intelligence and irrepressible spirit shining through her eyes. A true doll.

{alternate text for the image above} A monochromatic cinematic still captures the celebrated actress Janet Leigh in a moment of unguarded, coquettish allure. Depicted post-ablutions and clad simply in a terrycloth towel, she casts a puckish glance over her shoulder, her visage a captivating admixture of ingenuous charm and sophisticated seduction. The spartan, bucolic interior, dominated by a formidable cast-iron furnace, provides a striking counterpoint to her intrinsic glamour. The composition thus creates a delightful frisson, juxtaposing rustic simplicity with the ineffable, radiant magnetism of a Hollywood luminary.

Thursday, October 2, 2025

Meditations on the death of Rock Hudson, four decades on

Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson in Giant (Warner Bros., 1956)

1985: Forty years ago to this day, silver-screen idol Rock Hudson—long paraded as the consummate ladies’ man—succumbed at the age of fifty-nine to the then barely comprehended plague of AIDS. I was a child when the news broke, yet I recall with clarity the atmosphere of stunned disbelief among adults, confronted at last with what had long been whispered yet never publicly owned: that this paragon of masculine allure had in truth been homosexual. At that time, AIDS was regarded—even by many of the sympathetic—as an affliction confined to gay men. That illusion began to fracture when a young boy in Indiana contracted the virus through a transfusion, and the cruel refusal of his school district to admit him drew fierce public censure.

The scale of fear and ignorance is captured in one stark fact: after treatment in Paris only months before his death, Hudson was compelled to hire a private jet to return to Los Angeles, for no commercial airline would accept a passenger known to be carrying the virus. Not long thereafter, Elizabeth Taylor herself quietly purchased a bronze plaque for the Hollywood Walk of Fame in his honour—an act at once discreet, loyal, and enduring, sealing her friend’s memory in a gesture of fidelity where others faltered.

{alternate text for the above image} Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson in a publicity still for Giant (1956), captured in a moment of heightened intimacy that borders on theatrical rapture. Taylor, her head arched back and lips parted in anticipation, radiates sensuality and defiance, her dark hair cascading in waves against the pale shimmer of her gown. Hudson, towering and resolute, leans in with a steady, almost reverent intensity, his hand gripping her arm in a gesture that is both protective and possessive. The chiaroscuro of the black-and-white composition accentuates the drama of flesh, fabric, and expression, crystallising the film’s central themes of passion, power, and turbulent human desire within the mythic sweep of Texas.

Atom Heart Mother turns 55

PINK FLOYD – Atom Heart Mother, released 2 October 1970 in the UK. Hardly anyone’s notion of the quintessential Pink Floyd record—and I am no exception. The title suite, a twenty-three–minute tapestry of orchestral bliss, remains a triumph of ambition and atmosphere, and I do love it a great deal: luxuriant, strange, and utterly absorbing. Yet what follows on the second side largely descends into listless filler—inoffensive, faintly agreeable, but lacking any urgency. The closing piece, the thirteen-minute curio 'Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast', is little more than an indulgent sound collage, whimsical in conception but barren in substance: not a song so much as a half-hearted conceit that soon outstays its welcome.

The grandeur of its opening suite and Hipgnosis’s now-iconic cover design make Atom Heart Mother a must own for serious music fans and anyone who appreciates English progressive rock, but in the greater sweep of Floyd’s catalogue it must be placed firmly among their lesser works, though there are worse. —Arthur Newhook, 2 October 2025.

{alternate text for the above image} The cover of Pink Floyd’s 1970 album Atom Heart Mother presents an image of striking simplicity: a Friesian cow, its brown-and-white hide stark against the verdant expanse of an open field, turns its head to gaze back at the viewer with quiet indifference. The composition, devoid of title, lettering, or overt symbolism, rejects the baroque surrealism of contemporaneous rock imagery, embracing instead a blunt pastoral directness that is almost confrontational in its banality. The horizon stretches under a pale, cloudless sky, with only the faintest silhouettes of distant trees punctuating the emptiness, creating a sense of space that is at once serene and faintly absurd. In elevating the ordinary to the monumental, the image embodies both the anti-iconography of post-psychedelic art and the band’s wry refusal to be circumscribed by expectation.

Wednesday, October 1, 2025

“The ocean isn’t the only thing that’s wet tonight…”

Cindy Margolis—once enshrined in the Guinness Book of Records as the most downloaded woman on the Internet—here immortalised in a portrait for Playboy.

{alternate text} Bathed in golden tropic light, model Cindy Margolis sits astride the bar with legs parted in playful provocation, the lace straps of her seafoam lingerie catching the glow as turquoise heels anchor her in decadent poise. A cocktail sweats on the counter below, orchids scatter their petals like whispers of temptation, and the fan hums between her thighs, sending shivers through her sun-kissed skin. Her gaze, half-mischief, half-command, fixes on you as if to ask—will you worship her here in the heat, or wait until the stars rise over the ocean?

Every pool was transfigured into a cathedral when she bent her knee beneath the sun’s benediction: Stella Stevens, born 1 October 1938

Columbia Pictures

Velvet tresses, gilded skin, and a secret to make even the sun envious. A daughter of Yazoo City, Mississippi, Stella Stevens was crowned Playboy’s Playmate of the Month in January 1960 and went on to a career in film and television that spanned more than half a century—perhaps most memorably opposite Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor. Yet, in the twilight of life, she fell victim to the scourge of Alzheimer’s, passing away at the age of 83 on 17 February 2023.

{alternate text} Bathed in the soft radiance of poolside daylight, Stella Stevens kneels with statuesque grace, her form poised in a bikini patterned with rich, paisley swirls that seem to shimmer against her porcelain skin. Her blonde hair, full and sculpted in voluminous waves, frames her face like spun silk, offsetting the sculptural precision of her features. The setting—a tranquil pool and blurred greenery beyond—serves as a stage for her languid poise, a tableau that captures the essence of 1960s glamour: at once sultry and self-assured, yet tinged with wistful allure.

A remarkable life: Dame Jane Goodall has died, aged 91

photo via the Jane Goodall Institute

{AP 1 October} Jane Goodall, conservationist known for chimpanzee research, dies at 91

Jane Goodall, born in London on 3 April 1934, has assured her place among England’s immortals. By decamping to the steaming tangles of Gombe and mucking in with the apes, this great lady unravelled the smug fiction that man was some sacred, tool-wielding exception. Her chimps whittled sticks, formed alliances, and wept for their dead — and with that, the neat wall between ‘us’ and ‘them’ crumbled.

But Jane Goodall was not content to scribble footnotes for zoologists; she spent the rest of her life pleading with the world not to turn every last scrap of wilderness into a strip-mine. Noble work, doomed of course, given the human talent for short-sighted vandalism.

Still, there’s something touching in her stubbornness — a luminous, bloody-minded emblem of curiosity, decency, and hope, however misplaced. She is gone now, and the planet is no less doomed for her efforts, but infinitely richer for her having tried. Rest in peace, dear lady. —Arthur Newhook, 1 October 2025.

Proffering felicitations to President Jimmy Carter—now resident in the celestial sphere—who, had he tarried upon this thankless planet another ten months, would this day have marked his 101st year

Consolidated News Photos

“I've looked on many women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.” —May I too be spared the harshest judgement for the lusts that dwell within my own heart, though I know I am not the man Jimmy Carter was and am decidedly not in God’s favour. No matter: in solemn remembrance of former President of the United States—who departed this life not long ago (29 December 2024), and who today would have marked his 101st birthday (born 1 October 1924 in Plains, Georgia).

{alternate text} In this warmly lit photograph, former US President Jimmy Carter is captured in a moment of unguarded delight, his face illuminated by a broad, genuine smile. His greying hair, neatly brushed back, frames features that radiate both humility and quiet resolve. Dressed in a grey checked suit, a pale blue striped shirt, and a red tie patterned with subtle paisleys, he exudes a modest formality befitting the era. The blurred backdrop, punctuated by the colours of the American flag, situates him unmistakably in the milieu of public service, likely during his presidency (1977–1981). The image conveys Carter’s characteristic warmth and approachability, qualities that underpinned his political persona as a leader of principle, guided more by moral conviction than pomp. It is less the portrait of a statesman cloaked in grandeur than of a man rooted in earnestness, embodying the ideals of decency and integrity he strove to bring to American public life.

In remembrance of Tim Wakefield, upon the second anniversary of his departure from this world

MediaNews Group/Getty Images

Yours truly, a Yankee partisan marooned behind enemy lines, is none too pleased with the Boston Red Sox this morning, having seen New York fall in the first contest of the best-of-three Wild Card series. Tonight must turn the tide, or the Yankees are finished. Yet amidst my ire, let us pause to recall Tim Wakefield—one of the most distinctive pitchers of his generation and in Boston franchise history—who departed this world two years ago today, aged only 53, claimed by pancreatic cancer. A master of the knuckleball, a philanthropist, and laureate of the 2010 Roberto Clemente Award: in short, a consummate sportsman and, by every account, a thoroughly decent man.

(alternate text) Tim Wakefield is captured mid-delivery, his motion frozen at the point just before release. Clad in the team’s iconic scarlet jersey with bold “RED SOX” lettering across the chest, he projects both intensity and composure, the hallmarks of his long career. His right arm is cocked, fingers poised delicately about the baseball—an image suggestive of his signature knuckleball, a pitch as elusive as it is unorthodox. His left hand, gloved in black leather, extends outward to balance the motion, while his gaze fixes unwaveringly on the target. Behind him, the blurred stadium and faintly discernible crowd set the stage without distracting from the clarity of his form. In this image, Wakefield embodies the paradox of his craft: effort harnessed into simplicity, a calm exterior concealing the unpredictable dance of the ball soon to leave his hand. It is at once a portrait of athletic precision and a testament to a pitcher defined by singular artistry.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook) and PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and also at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

“The hem misbehaves, and so might I. A secret uncovered in the hush of the trees—do you only watch, or will you conspire with me?”

source unknown

The forest does not judge—only witnesses: a sylph ensnared in the woodland, baring her tenderest self to sky and bough. It is nothing wicked, but a homecoming: as though the earth itself reclaims her. Between bark and blossom she becomes, at once, woodland nymph and clandestine flame.

(alternate text) In the hush of woodland shade, she drapes herself over the fallen trunk as though surrendering to the earth’s embrace, her skirt carelessly lifted to reveal a secret meant for the forest alone. The socks at her ankles lend an almost girlish innocence, undone entirely by the flagrant boldness of her pose. Nature watches, silent and complicit, as if the trees themselves conspire to shield her wanton abandon from prying eyes. It is a tableau of vulnerability and provocation, where innocence and daring meet in one breathless moment of forbidden allure.

Actress Abby Dalton, posed as a desert-stricken heroine who at last discovers a single drop of water: proof that, at times, the very visage of survival can be the most seductive guise of all

source unknown

A gesture at once parched with longing and sated with abandon—innocent yet erotic, untamed and mischievous, as though a fleeting fragment torn from a summer without end. Abby Dalton, born Gladys Marlene Wasden on 15 August 1932 in Las Vegas, enjoyed a long and varied career as a versatile actress across both cinema and television from the 1950s onward. Yet she is now most widely remembered for embodying the tormented Julia Cumson in the 1980s American prime-time melodrama Falcon Crest.

(alternate text) In a candid black-and-white frame, a sunlit blonde tilts her head back with abandon, lips parted as she drinks from a rustic waterskin. Her bare shoulders gleam in the summer light, a pastoral vision caught between innocence and provocation. The texture of the worn leather against her fingers only sharpens the contrast between rugged wilderness and the soft vitality of her body. With eyes half-closed, she surrenders to the moment, making thirst itself into a sensual performance—an earthy hymn to freedom, youth, and daring.

When nature herself grows restive, she cloaks her unrest in the semblance of a woman’s skin

At once vulnerable and defiant: a maiden venturing bare and unarmoured into the wild, a feral hymn veiled in lace and shadow—she is of the forest, not the world. Model Courtney Smith, captured by Erik Tranberg, c. 2015.

(alternate text) A statuesque beauty stands poised in monochrome, her bare torso luminous against the dark blur of tangled woodland. Her long hair falls untamed over her shoulders, some strands caught in her fingers as if she toys with the wildness of the scene. The lace-trimmed panties cling delicately at her hips, their softness a fragile foil to the boldness of her stance. Her expression—half-defiant, half-dreamlike—conjures the aura of a woodland nymph who has stepped briefly into the mortal world, confident in her allure yet distant, as though she might vanish into shadow at any moment. The photograph hums with tension between raw natural beauty and cultivated sensual poise, an untamed goddess caught by the lens.