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Villain

A villain (also known as a "black hat" or "bad guy"; the feminine form is villainess) is a stock character, whether based on a historical narrative or one of literary fiction. Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines such a character as "a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel; or a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot". The antonym of a villain is a hero.

The villain's structural purpose is to serve as the opposition of the hero character and their motives or evil actions drive a plot along. In contrast to the hero, who is defined by feats of ingenuity and bravery and the pursuit of justice and the greater good, a villain is often defined by their acts of selfishness, evilness, arrogance, cruelty, and cunning, displaying immoral behavior that can oppose or pervert justice.

Etymology
The term villain first came into English from the Anglo-French and Old French vilain, which is further derived from the Late Latin word villanus, which referred to those bound to the soil of the villa and worked on an equivalent of a plantation in Late Antiquity, in Italy or Gaul.

Vilain later shifted to villein, which referred to a person of a less than knightly status, implying a lack of chivalry and politeness. All actions that were unchivalrous or evil (such as treachery or rape) eventually fell under the identity of belonging to a villain in the modern sense of the word. Additionally, villein became used as a term of abuse and eventually took on its modern meaning.

The landed aristocracy of Middle Age Europe used politically and linguistically the Middle English descendant of villanus meaning "villager" (styled as vilain or vilein) with the meaning "a person of uncouth mind and manners". As the common equating of manners with morals gained in strength and currency, the connotations worsened, so that the modern word villain is no unpolished villager, but is instead (among other things) a deliberate scoundrel or criminal.

At the very same time the medieval expression "vilein" or "vilain" is closely influenced by the word "vile", referring to something wicked or worthless. From the late 13th-century vile meant "morally repugnant; morally flawed, corrupt, wicked; of no value; of inferior quality; disgusting, foul, ugly; degrading, humiliating; of low estate, without worldly honor or esteem", from Anglo-French ville, Old French vil, from Latin vilis "cheap, worthless, of low value". Although the relation of these terms became intertwined at some later in time, it is unknown when this happened.

Classical literature
In classical literature, the villain character is not always the same as those that appear in modern and postmodern incarnations, as the lines of morality are often blurred to imply a sense of ambiguity or affected by historical context and cultural ideas. Often the delineation of heroes and villains in this literature is left unclear. That said, there are some exceptions to this such as Grendel from Beowulf who is unambiguously evil.

William Shakespeare modelled the villain archetype to be three-dimensional in characteristics and gave way to the complex nature that villains showcase in modern literature. For instance, he wrote Shylock as a sympathetic character. However, Shakespeare's incarnations of historical figures were influenced by the propaganda pieces coming from Tudor sources, and his works often showed this bias and discredited their reputation. For example, Shakespeare famously portrayed Richard III as a hideous monster who destroyed his family out of spite. Shakespeare also had Iago in Othello and Antonio in The Tempest be completely void of redeeming traits.

Russian fairy tales
In an analysis of Russian fairy tales, Vladimir Propp concluded that the majority of stories had only eight "dramatis personae", one being the villain. This analysis has been widely applied to non-Russian tales. The actions that fell into a villain's sphere were:
 * a story-initiating villainy, where the villain caused harm to the hero or his family
 * a conflict between the hero and the villain, either a fight or other competition
 * pursuing the hero after he has succeeded in winning the fight or obtaining something from the villain

When a character displays these traits, it is not necessarily tropes specific to the fairy tale genre, but it does imply that the one who performs certain acts to be the villain. The villain, therefore, can appear twice in a story to fulfill certain roles: once in the opening of the story, and a second time as the person sought out by the hero.

When a character has only performed actions or displayed traits that coincide with Vladimir Propp's analysis, that character can be identified as a pure villain. Folklore and fairy tale villains can also play a myriad of roles that can influence or drive a story forward. In fairy tales villains can perform an influential role; for example, a witch who fought the hero and ran away, and who lets the hero follow her, is also performing the task of "guidance" and thus acting as a helper.

Propp also proposed another two archetypes of the villain's role within the narrative, in which they can portray themselves as villainous in a more general sense. The first is the false hero: This character is always villainous, presenting a false claim to be the hero that must be rebutted for the happy ending. Examples of characters who display this trait, and interfere with the success of a tale's hero, are the Ugly Stepsisters in Cinderella who chopped off parts of their feet to fit in the shoe.

Another role for the villain would be the dispatcher, who sends the hero on their quest. At the beginning of the story, their request may appear benevolent or innocent, but the dispatcher's real intentions might be to send the hero on a journey in the hopes of being rid of them.

The roles and influences that villains can have over a narrative can also be transferred over to other characters – to continue their role in the narrative through another character. The legacy of the villain is often transferred through that of bloodlines (family) or a devoted follower. For example, if a dragon played the role of a villain but was killed by the hero, another character (such as the dragon's sister) might take on the legacy of the previous villain and pursue the hero out of revenge.

Villain archetypes
The fairy tale genre utilises villains as key components to push the narrative forward and influence the hero's journey. These, while not as rounded as those that appear in other forms of literature, are what is known as archetypes. The archetypal villain is a common occurrence within the genre and come under different categories that have different influences on the protagonist and the narrative.

False donor
The false donor is a villain who utilises trickery to achieve their ends. Often the false donor will pose as a benevolent figure or influence on the protagonist (or those associated with them) to present them with a deal. The deal will present a short-term solution or benefit for whoever accepts it and, in return, benefit the villain in the long term. During the story's climax, the hero often has to find a way to rectify the agreement in order to defeat the villain or achieve the happy ending.

Similarly, the devil archetype is one that also makes an offer to the protagonist (or someone associated with them) and appeals to their needs and desires. However, the devil archetype does not hide their intentions from the protagonist. The subsequent story often follows the protagonist's journey to try and annul the agreement before any damage can be done.

Beast
The beast is a character who relies on their instincts and ability to cause destruction to achieve their ends. The evil intentions of their actions are often easily identified, as they act without concern for others (or their wellbeing) or subtlety. The rampaging villain can take the form of a very powerful individual or a rampaging beast but is still one of the more dangerous villain archetypes due to their affinity for destruction.

Authority figure
The authority figure is one that has already attained a level of command and power but always craves more. They are often driven by their desire for material wealth, distinguished stature or great power and appear as a monarch, corporate climber or other powerful individual. Their end goal is often the total domination of their corporation, nation, or world through mystical means or political manipulation. Often this villain is defeated by their own greed, pride, or arrogance.

Traitor
The traitor is a villain who emphasizes the traits of trickery, manipulation and deception to achieve their goals, which is often to offer or supply information to the protagonist's opposition to halt them on their journey; often in exchange for their own freedom or safety. The traitor's goals are not always evil but the actions they commit to reach their goal can be considered inherently evil.

Animated villains
Animation is home to several different villains. Winsor McCay in How a Mosquito Operates had a cartoon mosquito torment a human being and in 1925, Walt Disney created Pete as an antagonist for the Alice Comedies with Pete later becoming an antagonist of Mickey Mouse and his friends and the first Disney villain. Fleischer Studios later had Bluto as the antagonist of the Popeye cartoons. Hanna-Barbera created Tom as an antagonist of Jerry. Likewise, the Looney Tunes had villains like Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian and Blacque Jacque Shellacque.

In 1937, Disney made the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and it had the Evil Queen as its antagonist. Since then, Disney made a lot of animated movies with villains based on fairy tale villains. Disney Villains became a major part of that franchise.

Saturday-morning cartoons also had villains like Dick Dastardly and Snidely Whiplash. Since then cartoon villains have had a reputation for being one-dimensional.

In modern animation, animated villains that are more significant and fleshed out have become increasingly common as cartoons have begun to be favored by adults. Shows such as Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, and Rick and Morty range from child to adult cartoons, but are all watched by a largely older audience.

Animated villain controversies
It is sometimes alleged that villains in animated works, such as Disney movies, often embody stereotypes in a more direct way than live-action villains. That their character design is based on caricatures of racist, antisemitic, and/or homophobic stereotypes with exaggerated features. That female animated villains are portrayed in ways that feed into misogynistic ideas and traditional gender roles.

Allegations of misogyny
Sattar Sharmin and Sanyat Tania have argued that animated villains frequently fall into two categories: women who exhibit societally undesirable traits, or men displaying feminine traits. In the case of men with feminine traits, this may stem from both a homophobic and misogynistic point of view which is further discussed below.

As for female villains who are portrayed with "displeasing" characteristics, not only are they crafted to look unattractive, but their motivations for becoming evil are rooted in very trivial matters. Debra Bradley's survey on Disney films discovered that 28% of female villains, such as the evil queen and Lady Tremaine, are influenced by jealousy/vanity whereas only 4% of male villains are driven by these same factors. Rather the men, such as Hades and Captain Hook, have motives grounded in wealth and power, giving in to masculine stereotypes and signifying an attachment to the patriarchy.

Additionally, in animation there is a history of mothers and grandmothers being posed as the villains of many stories. Neil Gaiman's Coraline presents this phenomenon through the idea of the other-mother. In Coraline, the Other Mother is a loving, caring parent who welcomes Coraline to a new life, helping in the face of troubles back home. By glorifying this other mother, the story paints Coraline's real mother as negligent, in turn causing her to be the villain of the story. Disney films also take on the motherly stereotypes in their villains.

Other female villains are portrayed as hyper-sexual and powerful beings that are used to juxtapose the beauty or physical characteristics of the heroine; for example, the Lady Tremaine and stepsisters in Cinderella. Male villains also hold several traits that are characteristically feminine. Characters like Jafar (Aladdin) and Hades (Hercules) have features such as shaded eyelids and accentuated facial features, similar to those typically associated with femininity.

Allegations of homophobic stereotypes

Zachary Doiron has argued that animated villains are based on homophobic stereotypes. As an example, he brings up is effeminate men, sometimes referred to by subject experts as "sissy villains," where their mannerisms represent stereotypes relating to gay men. Another example is the depiction of masculine women, which emulates drag queens or butch lesbians. Adelia Brown makes a similar allegation about Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Ursula is closely modelled after the famous drag queen "Divine" with her heavy makeup, hair styled in a mohawk, and her nails painted bright red. Her goal throughout the film is to become queen and disrupt the coupling of Ariel and Prince Eric, both of which connect villainy to drag queens, suggesting that there is inherent evil in those who do drag.

Villainous foil
Villains in fiction commonly function in the dual role of adversary and foil to a story's heroes. In their role as an adversary, the villain serves as an obstacle the hero must struggle to overcome. In their role as a foil, they exemplify characteristics that are diametrically opposed to those of the hero, creating a contrast distinguishing heroic traits from villainous ones.

Other have pointed out that many acts of villains have a hint of wish-fulfillment, which makes some readers or viewers identify with them as characters more strongly than with the heroes. Because of this, a convincing villain must be given a characterization that provides a motive for doing wrong, as well as being a worthy adversary to the hero. As put by film critic Roger Ebert: "Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, only a great villain can transform a good try into a triumph."

Portraying and employing villains in fiction
The actor Tod Slaughter typically portrayed villainous characters on both stage and screen in a melodramatic manner, with mustache-twirling, eye-rolling, leering, cackling, and hand-rubbing.

Villains in film
In 1895, Thomas Edison and Alfred Clark made The Execution of Mary Stuart depicting Mary, Queen of Scots being decapitated. It describes neither Mary nor her executioner as villains (though at the time, it was deemed so realistic that audience members believed an actual woman had been beheaded in the making of that film.) In 1896, Georges Méliès made a horror film titled The House of the Devil which had The Devil as an antagonist. Edison's The Great Train Robbery, released in 1903 had the bandits who rob the train as its villains. In 1909, there was a feature length adaptation of Les Misérables with Javert as a villain and in 1910, Otis Turner had a Wicked Witch as the villain of a short film adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In 1914, Lois Weber made a movie of The Merchant of Venice with Phillips Smalley as a villainous Shylock.

The 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation has "Northern carpetbaggers" inciting black violence as its villains. The 1916 movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea has a man named Charles Denver as its villain. In the same year, Snow White had Queen Brongomar as a villain. The 1923 movie The Ten Commandments has the main character's brother be a villain due to his commitment to breaking all of the Ten Commandments. In 1937, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had the Evil Queen as a villain. In 1939, The Wizard of Oz had Wicked Witch of the West as its villain. In the 1940s, serial films about superhero es introduced supervillains as characters like Dr. Dana in Batman. The 1949 movie Samson and Delilah has Hedy Lamarr as the villainous Delilah and George Sanders as the villainous Prince of Gaza.

In 1953, Byron Haskin made a movie of The War of the Worlds. Like the book, it has Martians as villains.

Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments had two main villains. Ramesses II, played by Yul Brynner and Dathan played by Edward G. Robinson. (It also had Nefertari be a Lady Macbeth figure egging Ramesses on.)

In 1960, the movie Spartacus had Marcus Licinius Crassus as its villain. In the same year, the movie Psycho had Norman Bates as a villainous protagonist. The 1962 movie To Kill a Mockingbird, like the book, had Bob Ewell as its villain. Other 1960s movies like The Guns of Navarone and The Great Escape had Nazis as their villains.

Beginning with Dr. No in 1962, every James Bond movie has had a villain.

There were also villains in 1960s children's movies. For instance, 101 Dalmatians and the 1966 Batman both had villains. The former having Cruella de Vil and the latter being the first time comic book supervillains were adapted to film.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Star Wars movies introduced Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine.

Several 1980s movies also had villains like Khan in Star Trek, John Kreese in The Karate Kid and its sequels, Skynet in the Terminator movies, Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future movies, The Joker in Batman and Dark Helmet in Spaceballs.

Several iconic 1990s movies have also had villains like General Mandible in Antz, Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park, Edgar in Men in Black, Van Pelt in Jumanji, Rameses in The Prince of Egypt, Carrigan in Casper and Shan-Yu in Mulan. The Star Wars prequels also introduced several villains in addition to those the franchise already had.

Early 2000s movies like the Spider-Man trilogy, The Dark Knight Trilogy, the Harry Potter films, The Lord of the Rings movies and Avatar all had villains like, Green Goblin, Two-Face, Lord Voldemort, Saruman and Miles Quaritch.

In the 2010s, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe have had several notable supervillains such as Thanos and General Zod.

Female villain
The term villain is the universal term for characters who pose as catalysts for certain ideals that readers or observers find immoral, but the term "villainess" is often used to highlight specific traits that come with their female identity—separating them, in some aspects, from their male counterparts. The use of the female villain (or villainess) is often to highlight the traits that come specifically with the character and the abilities they possess that are exclusive to them. For example, one of the female villain's greatest weapons is her alluring beauty. The perversion of inherently female traits in storytelling also alludes to the demonic display of the succubus and their affinity for utilizing their beauty as a weapon—a trait utilized by many female villains throughout modern fiction and mythology. However, this is not always the case. As seen often in animated films, female villains are portrayed with "ugly" appearances to contrast the beauty of the protagonist, in turn associating unattractiveness with evil. This paints female villains in a negative light compared to their heroine counterparts, and showcases the duality of the female villain character.

Use of the term "villain" to describe historical figures and real-life people
The ethical dimension of history poses the problem of judging those who acted in the past, and at times, tempts scholars and historians to construct a world of black and white in which the terms "hero" and "villain" are used arbitrary and with the pass of time become interchangeable. These binaries of course are reflected to varying degrees in endless movies, novels, and other fictional and non-fictional narratives.

As processes of globalization connect the world, cultures with different historical trajectories and political traditions will need to find ways to work together not only economically, but also politically. In this evolving framework of globalization, tradition, according to political theorists like Edmund Burke, historical figures perceived and evaluated as either positive or negative become the embodiment of national political cultures that may collude or collide against one another.

The usage of villain to describe a historical figure dates back to Tudor propaganda, pieces of which ended up influencing William Shakespeare's portrayal of Richard III as a spiteful and hunchback tyrant.

Sympathetic villain
The sympathetic villain or anti-villain is one with the typical traits of a villainous character but differs in their motivations. Their intention to cause chaos or commit evil actions is driven by an ambiguous motivation or is not driven by an intent to cause evil. Their intentions may coincide with the ideals of a greater good, or even a desire to make the world a better place, but their actions are inherently evil in nature. An anti-villain is the opposite of an anti-hero. While the anti-hero often fights on the side of good, but with questionable or selfish motives, the anti-villain plays a villain's game, but for a noble cause in a way that the audience or other characters can sympathize with. They may be more noble or heroic than an anti-hero, but the means to achieve their ends are often considered exploitative, immoral, unjust, or simply evil. Characters who fall into this category are often created with the intention of humanizing them, making them more relatable to the reader/viewer by posing the "how" and "why" behind their motivations rather than simply creating a one-dimensional character. Because of their motives, many of these types of villains are commonly nicknamed as "anti-villains".

American writer Brad Warner has argued that "only cartoon villains cackle with glee while rubbing their hands together and dream of ruling the world in the name of all that is wicked and bad". American writer Ben Bova recommends to writers that their works not contain villains. He states, in his Tips for writers:"In the real world there are no villains. No one actually sets out to do evil ... Fiction mirrors life. Or, more accurately, fiction serves as a lens to focus on what they know in life and bring its realities into sharper, clearer understanding for us. There are no villains cackling and rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them."

Following up on Bova's point, American writer David Lubar adds that the villain "may be driven by greed, neuroses, or the conviction that his cause is just, but he's driven by something, not unlike the things that drive a hero."

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Moriarty

Moriarty (name) is an Irish surname. It may also refer to:

Places

 * Moriarty, New Mexico, United States, a city
 * Moriarty Air Force Station, a closed United States Air Force radar station
 * Mount Moriarty, British Columbia, Canada
 * Moriarty, Tasmania, a locality in Tasmania, Australia
 * Moriarty Rocks, Tasmania, Australia
 * 5048 Moriarty, a main-belt asteroid

Fictional characters

 * Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes' nemesis
 * Jim Moriarty, one of the main antagonists in the British TV series Sherlock
 * Jamie Moriarty, aka Irene Adler, in the TV series Elementary
 * Moriarty, aka Mira Troy, in the 2022 movie Enola Holmes 2
 * Jack Moriarty, in the Holmes-inspired television series House
 * Count Jim Moriarty, character in The Goon Show
 * Dean Moriarty, in the novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac
 * Moriarty, in the 1970 film Kelly's Heroes
 * Colin Moriarty, crime boss and owner of Moriarty's Saloon in the video game Fallout 3
 * Mark Moriarty, in the 1993 DOS game Eagle Eye Mysteries

Other

 * Moriarty (band), a French-American group
 * Moriarty (novel), by Anthony Horowitz
 * Moriarty (podcast), a mystery drama podcast

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Moriarty


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ZaSu Pitts

ZaSu Pitts (January 3, 1894 – June 7, 1963) was an American actress who, in a career spanning nearly five decades, starred in many silent film dramas, such as Erich von Stroheim's 1924 epic Greed, and comedies, before transitioning successfully to mostly comedy roles with the advent of sound films. She also appeared on numerous radio shows and, later, made her mark on television. She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 at 6554 Hollywood Blvd.

Early life
ZaSu Pitts was born in Parsons, Kansas, the third of four children of Rulandus and Nelly (née Shay) Pitts. Her father, who had lost a leg while serving in the 76th New York Infantry in the Civil War, had settled the family in Kansas before ZaSu's birth.

The names of her father's sisters, Eliza and Susan, were purportedly the basis for the name "ZaSu", i.e., to satisfy competing family interests. It has been (incorrectly) spelled as Zazu Pitts in some film credits and news articles. Although the name is commonly mispronounced  or , or  , in her 1963 book Candy Hits (pg. 15), published the year of her death, the actress gave the correct pronunciation as "Say Zoo" , recounting that Mary Pickford had predicted "many will mispronounce it", and adding, "How right she was."

However, when introducing herself on the September 4, 1952 episode of I've Got a Secret, she herself pronounced it as Zay-zoo. Her comedy series partner Thelma Todd also clearly addresses her as Zay-zoo in the hospital room scene of Alum and Eve (1932).

In 1903, when Pitts was nine years old, her family moved to Santa Cruz, California, to seek a warmer climate and better job opportunities. Her childhood home at 208 Lincoln Street still stands. She attended Santa Cruz High School, where she participated in school theatricals.

Career
Pitts made her stage debut in 1914–15 doing school and local community theater in Santa Cruz. Going to Los Angeles in 1916, at the age of 22, she spent many months seeking work as a film extra. Finally, she was discovered for substantive roles in films by screenwriter Frances Marion, who cast Pitts as an orphaned slavey (child of work) in the silent film A Little Princess (1917), starring Pickford.

Pitts's popularity grew following a series of Universal one-reeler comedies, and earned her first feature-length lead in King Vidor's Better Times (1919). The following year she married her first husband, Tom Gallery, with whom she was paired in several films, including Heart of Twenty (1920), Bright Eyes, Patsy (both 1921) and A Daughter of Luxury (1922).

Pitts enjoyed her greatest fame in the early 1930s, often starring in B movies and comedy short films, teamed with Thelma Todd. She played secondary parts in many films. Her stock persona (a fretful, flustered, worried spinster) made her instantly recognizable and was often imitated in cartoons and other films. She starred in a number of Hal Roach short films and features, often in partnership with Thelma Todd as two trouble-prone working girls. At Universal she co-starred in a series of feature-length comedies with Slim Summerville. Switching between comedy short films and features, by the advent of sound, she became a specialist in comedy roles.

Dramatic potential
ZaSu Pitts had hidden talents as a dramatic actress. She was given the greatest tragic role of her career in Erich von Stroheim's $7 1/2$-hour epic Greed (1924). The surprise casting initially shocked Hollywood, but showed that Pitts could draw tears with her doleful demeanor, as well as laughs. Having been extensively edited prior to release — the final theatrical cut ran just over two hours — the movie failed initially at the box office, but has since been restored to over four hours and is considered one of the greatest films ever made. Based on her performance, von Stroheim labeled ZaSu Pitts "the greatest dramatic actress." He also featured her in his films The Honeymoon (1928), The Wedding March (1928), and Walking Down Broadway. Pitts's performance in Walking Down Broadway was dramatic, with her character showing a repressed romantic interest in her girlfriend; the studio reshot these scenes with Pitts, now playing the girl's companion for laughs, and von Stroheim's directorial credit was removed from the film. The film was finally released in 1933, much changed, as Hello, Sister!.

ZaSu Pitts was so recognizable in comedies that the public didn't take her dramatic efforts seriously. In the classic war drama All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Pitts was cast as the distraught mother of young soldier Lew Ayres, but at preview screenings her intense performance drew unintentional laughs. Her scenes were refilmed with Beryl Mercer. In 1936 RKO needed a replacement actress for its Hildegarde Withers series of murder mysteries; Edna May Oliver had left the studio and Helen Broderick succeeded Oliver in the role. Pitts was chosen to succeed Broderick. In theory, it was a good idea: Pitts seemed to fit the role of a prim, spinster schoolmistress. However, mystery fans couldn't accept the fluttery Pitts as a brainy sleuth who matched wits with the police, and after her two Withers films the series was abandoned.

Radio and stage
Beginning in the 1930s, Pitts found work in radio. She appeared several times in the earliest Fibber McGee and Molly shows, playing a dizzy dame constantly looking for a husband. When Marian Jordan temporarily withdrew from Fibber McGee and Molly due to illness, Pitts made guest appearances opposite Jim Jordan as Fibber. Pitts also guested on variety shows, trading banter with Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, W.C. Fields, and Rudy Vallee, among others. She played Miss Mamie Wayne in the soap opera Big Sister. , and was heard as Miss Pitts on The New Lum and Abner Show.

In 1944, Pitts tackled Broadway, making her debut in the mystery Ramshackle Inn. The play, written expressly for her, did well, and she took the show on the road in later years. She was also a familiar attraction in summer-stock theaters, playing annually in the Norma Mitchell play Post Road.

Postwar movies and television
Postwar films continued to give her the chance to play comic snoops and flighty relatives in such fare as Life with Father (1947), but in the 1950s, she started focusing on television. This culminated in her best-known series role, playing second banana to Gale Storm in ABC's The Gale Storm Show (1956) (also known as Oh, Susanna), in the role of Elvira Nugent ("Nugie"), the shipboard beautician. In 1961, Pitts was cast opposite Earle Hodgins in the episode "Lonesome's Gal" of the ABC sitcom Guestward, Ho!, set on a dude ranch in New Mexico. In 1962, she appeared in an episode of CBS's Perry Mason, "The Case of the Absent Artist". Her final role was as Gertie, the switchboard operator in the Stanley Kramer comedy epic It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

Personal life
Pitts was married to actor Thomas Sarsfield Gallery from 1920 until their 1933 divorce. Gallery became a Los Angeles boxing promoter and later a TV executive. The couple had two children:
 * ZaSu Ann Gallery
 * Donald Michael "Sonny" Gallery (born Marvin Carville La Marr), whom they adopted and renamed after the 1926 death of Donald's biological mother (and Pitts's friend), actress Barbara La Marr.

In 1933, Pitts married John Edward "Eddie" Woodall, with whom she remained until her death.

Declining health dominated Pitts's later years, particularly after she was diagnosed with cancer in the mid-1950s. She continued to work, appearing on TV and making brief appearances in the films The Thrill of It All and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. She died in Hollywood on June 7, 1963, aged 69, and was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City. Pitts wrote a book of candy recipes, Candy Hits, which was published posthumously in 1963.

Legacy
ZaSu Pitts was inducted to the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960, for her contribution to motion pictures. Her star is on the south side of the 6500 block of Hollywood Boulevard.

In 1994, she was honored with her image on a United States postage stamp along with fellow actors Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow and Charlie Chaplin as part of The Silent Screen Stars stamp set, designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. Her birthplace of Parsons, Kansas, has a star tile at the entrance to the Parsons Theatre to commemorate her.

In the film Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), W.C. Fields asks his niece, played by Gloria Jean, "Don't you want to go to school? You want to grow up and be dumb like ZaSu Pitts?" Gloria Jean replied "She only acts like that in pictures. I like her."

Actress Mae Questel, who performed character voices in Max Fleischer's Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons, reportedly based the fluttering utterances of Olive Oyl on Pitts.

title: ZaSu Pitts


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Bluebeard

"Bluebeard" (Barbe bleue, ) is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom", and "Fitcher's Bird" (also called "Fowler's Fowl") are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word Bluebeard the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb bluebearding has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.

Plot
In one version of the story, Bluebeard is a wealthy and powerful nobleman who has been married six times to beautiful women who have all mysteriously vanished. When he visits his neighbor and asks to marry one of his daughters, they are terrified. After hosting a wonderful banquet, the youngest decides to be his wife and goes to live with him in his rich and luxurious palace in the countryside, away from her family.

Bluebeard announces that he must leave for the country and gives the palace keys to his wife. She is able to open any room with them, each of which contain some of his riches, except for an underground chamber that he strictly forbids her to enter lest she suffer his wrath. He then goes away, leaving the palace and the keys in her hands. She invites her sister, Anne, and her friends and cousins over for a party. However, she is eventually overcome with the desire to see what the secret room holds, and she sneaks away from the party and ventures into it.

She immediately discovers that the room is flooded with blood and the murdered corpses of Bluebeard's previous six wives hanging on hooks from the walls. Horrified, she drops the key in the blood and flees the room. She tries to wipe the blood stain off the key, but the key is magic and the stain cannot be removed from it.

Bluebeard unexpectedly returns and finds the bloody key. In a blind rage, he threatens to kill his wife on the spot, but she asks for one last prayer with Anne. Then, as Bluebeard is about to deliver the fatal blow, Anne and the wife's brothers arrive and kill him. The wife inherits his fortune and castle, and has his six dead wives laid to rest. She uses the fortune to have her siblings married then remarries herself, finally moving on from the horror of her time with Bluebeard.

Commentaries

The fatal effects of female curiosity have long been the subject of story and legend. Pandora and Psyche are examples of women in mythic stories whose curiosity have dire consequences. In giving his wife the keys to his castle, Bluebeard is acting the part of the serpent of the biblical Paradise, and therefore of the devil, and his wife the part of the victim held by the serpent's gaze.

While some scholars interpret the Bluebeard story as a fable preaching obedience to wives (as Perrault's moral suggests), folklorist Maria Tatar has suggested that the tale encourages women not to unquestioningly follow patriarchal rules. Women breaking men's rules in the fairy-tale can be seen as a metaphor for women breaking society's rules and being punished for their transgression. The key can be seen as a sign of disobedience or transgression; it can also be seen as a sign that one should not trust their husband.

Tatar, however, does go on to speak of Bluebeard as something of a "Beauty and the Beast" narrative. The original Beauty and the Beast tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont is said to be a story created to condition young women into the possibility of not only marriage, but marrying young, and to placate their fears of the implications of an older husband. It shows the beast as secretly compassionate, and someone meant to curb the intense sexual fear that young women have of marriage. Though "Beauty and the Beast" holds several similarities in Gothic imagery to "Bluebeard" (such as is shared with Cupid and Psyche as well, in the case of a mysterious captor, a looming castle, and a young, beautiful heroine), Tatar goes on to state that the latter tale lives on the entire opposite side of the spectrum: one in which, instead of female placation, the tale simply aggravates women's apprehension, confirming one's "worst fears about sex".

Jungian psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés refers to the key as "the key of knowing" which gives the wife consciousness. She can choose to not open the door and live as a naive young woman. Instead, she has chosen to open the door of truth.

For psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, Bluebeard can only be considered a fairy-tale because of the magical bleeding key; otherwise, it would just be a monstrous horror story. Bettelheim sees the key as associated with the male sexual organ, "particularly the first intercourse when the hymen is broken and blood gets on it". For Bettelheim, the blood on the key is a symbol of the wife's indiscretion.

For scholar Philip Lewis, the key offered to the wife by Bluebeard represents his superiority, since he knows something she does not. The blood on the key indicates that she now has knowledge. She has erased the difference between them, and in order to return her to her previous state, he must kill her.

Aarne–Thompson classification
According to the Aarne–Thompson system of classifying folktale plots, the tale of Bluebeard is type 312. Another such tale is The White Dove, an oral French variant. The type is closely related to Aarne–Thompson type 311 in which the heroine rescues herself and her sisters, in such tales as Fitcher's Bird, The Old Dame and Her Hen, and How the Devil Married Three Sisters. The tales where the youngest daughter rescues herself and the other sisters from the villain are in fact far more common in oral traditions than this type, where the heroine's brother rescues her. Other such tales do exist, however; the brother is sometimes aided in the rescue by marvelous dogs or wild animals.

Some European variants of the ballad Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, Child ballad 4, closely resemble this tale. This is particularly noteworthy among some German variants, where the heroine calls for help much like Sister Anne calls for help to her brothers in Perrault's Bluebeard.

Bluebeard's wives
It is not explained why Bluebeard murdered his first bride; she could not have entered the forbidden room and found a dead wife. Some scholars have theorized that he was testing his wife's obedience, and that she was killed not for what she discovered there, but because she disobeyed his orders.

In the 1812 version published in Grimm's Fairy-Tales, Wilhelm Grimm, on p. XLI of the annotations, makes the following handwritten comment: "It seems in all Märchen [fairy-tales] of Bluebeard, wherein his Blutrunst [lust for blood] has not rightly explained, the idea to be the basis of himself through bathing in blood to cure of the blue beard; as the lepers. That is also why it is written that the blood is collected in basins."

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote extensively on Bluebeard and his plays name at least six former wives: Sélysette from Aglavaine et Sélysette (1896), Alladine from Alladine et Palomides (1894), both Ygraine and Bellangère from La mort de Tintagiles (1894), Mélisande from Pelléas et Mélisande, and Ariane from Ariane et Barbe-bleue (1907).

In Jacques Offenbach's opera Barbe-bleue (1866), the five previous wives are Héloïse, Eléonore, Isaure, Rosalinde and Blanche, with the sixth and final wife being a peasant girl, Boulotte, who finally reveals his secret when he attempts to have her killed so that he can marry Princess Hermia.

Béla Bartók's opera Bluebeard's Castle (1911), with a libretto by Béla Balázs, names "Judith" as wife number four.

Anatole France's short story "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" names Jeanne de Lespoisse as the last wife before Bluebeard's death. The other wives were Collette Passage, Jeanne de la Cloche, Gigonne, Blanche de Gibeaumex, Angèle de la Garandine, and Alix de Pontalcin.

In Edward Dmytryk's film Bluebeard (1972), Baron von Sepper (Richard J. Burton) is an Austrian aristocrat known as Bluebeard for his blue-toned beard and his appetite for beautiful wives, and his wife is an American named Anne.

In Alex Garland's film Ex Machina (2014), Nathan is an internet mogul who designs robots with a human female body inside his home. Each time he starts a new iteration of the robot, he eliminates the AI of the previous one and puts the robot body inside a cupboard in his vault. Nathan's company is called Blue Book and a key plays a central role in the movie.

"Bluebeard" and Orientalism
Several scholars have noted the presence of Orientalism in illustrations of the tale, particularly those from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, although the trend has been dated as far back as 1805. Artists such as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Harry Clarke, Jennie Harbour, and others portrayed Bluebeard with an Oriental appearance, wearing clothing such as a turban, a vibrantly colored silk robe, and pointed slippers, carrying a scimitar. These motifs often extended to depictions of his castle (which has been likened to "a harem") and the attire of the wife, who usually retained her "European features". Dulac in particular was known for incorporating such themes into his work, and his lavish illustrations of the tale are often cited as prime examples of the trend, with Anna Guiterrez calling them "[an] Oriental [fantasy]". Dulac also notably illustrated a version of Beauty and the Beast with similar overtones.

Folklorist Maria Tatar has claimed the popularity of Sir Richard Francis Burton's 1888 ten-volume translation of the Middle eastern story collection One Thousand and One Nights influenced such depictions, with Victorian and Edwardian artists perhaps seeing a link between Bluebeard and the frame story's Persian king Shahryār, who similarly had a succession of wives whom he killed before the current one, when the story begins. Another recognized influence is the 1798 opera The Grand Dramatic Romance Blue-Beard, or Female Curiosity by George Colman the Younger, composed by Michael Kelly. Pantomime versions of the tale were staged at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London as early as 1798, and continued until at least 1901. Often, these productions set the story in the Ottoman Empire or Persia with elaborate Eastern-inspired costumes and sets. On a psychological level, Marina Warner has noted the similarities between the French words for "beard" and "barbarian" (barbe and barbare, respectively), which she theorized lead to artists such as Rackham portraying the king as "a Turk in pantaloons and turban, who rides an elephant, and grasps his wife by the hair when he prepares to behead her with his scimitar."

Tatar further theorized in a later article that the apparent mismatch between Orientalist illustrations and the story's European origin stemmed from the violent plot clashing with the prim morals of society at the time, writing "After all, it’s much more comforting for the French reader to think of such marital discord and violence as having taken place long ago and far away, rather than at home in today’s France." Kelly Faircloth also noted this discrepancy, citing the illustrations as "pushing the whole disquieting tale into the geographic and cultural distance".

More uncommonly, these Orientalist themes sometimes extended to the text itself, with rewrites moving the setting from the French countryside to a Middle Eastern city such as Baghdad and giving the wife the Arabic name "Fatima", though Bluebeard and the wife's sister Anne often contradictorily retained their European names. New retellings of the story contained Orientalist themes as late as 1933.

Though criticism of this phenomenon did not widely come about until the 21st century, an early detractor was Scottish folklorist Andrew Lang, selector and editor of the popular children's series Lang's Fairy Books. Lang was displeased with the Orientalist themes in then-current illustration, seeing it as a deliberate masking of the story's European origins, and commented in the introduction to the first volume of the series, 1889's The Blue Fairy Book: “Monsieur de la Barbe Bleue was not a Turk!...They were all French folk and Christians; had he been a Turk, Blue Beard need not have wedded to but one wife at a time.” Despite Lang's grievances, the illustrations for the tale in the volume by G.P. Jacomb-Hood portray Bluebeard, his wife, and the castle with a Middle Eastern motif.

Orientalist themes gradually disappeared from retellings in the latter half of the 20th century and beyond, which were increasingly aimed at recontextualizing the morals and themes of the tale (such as Angela Carter's 1979 short story "The Bloody Chamber", which explicitly sets the tale in France).

Real life accounts
Henri Désiré Landru was a French serial killer during the First World War and nicknamed the "Bluebeard of Gambais". His story was lampooned in the Charlie Chaplin black comedy film Monsieur Verdoux (1947).

An eponymous dramatic film, Landru, was released in France in 1963.

Variants

 * "Bluebeard", a fairy-tale (KHM 62a, dropped from later editions) collected by The Brothers Grimm in Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM) (1812)
 * "The Robber Bridegroom", a variant (KHM 40) in Grimms' Fairy Tales (1812)
 * "Fitcher's Bird", another variant (KHM 48) in Grimms' Fairy Tales (1812)
 * "The Castle of Murder" (KHM 73a, dropped from later editions), another variant in Grimms' Fairy Tales (1812)
 * "Mr. Fox", an English variant of Bluebeard
 * "The White Dove" a French variant of Bluebeard

Literature
Other versions of Bluebeard include:
 * Commentaires Apostoliques et Théologiques sur les Saintes Prophéties de l'auteur Sacré de Barbe-Bleue (1779), a satire by Frederick the Great
 * Die Sieben Weiber des Blaubart ("The Seven Wives of Bluebeard") (1797), a novel by Ludwig Tieck
 * "Blaubart" ("Bluebeard") (1850), a fairy tale by Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg
 * "Captain Murderer" (1860), a short story by Charles Dickens
 * "Le Sixième Mariage de Barbe-Bleue" ("Bluebeard's Sixth Marriage") (1892), a short story by Henri de Régnier
 * "Bluebeard's Keys" (1902), a short story by Anne Thackeray Ritchie
 * "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" (1903), a short story by Anatole France
 * Chevalier Blaubarts Liebesgarten ("Knight Bluebeard's Love Garden") (1910), a novel by Joseph August Lux
 * Ritter Blaubart ("Bluebeard the Knight") (1911), a short story by Alfred Döblin
 * The Blue Castle (1926), a novel by L. M. Montgomery
 * Sister Anne (1932), a novella by Beatrix Potter
 * The Robber Bridegroom (1942), a novella by Eudora Welty
 * "The Bloody Chamber" (1979), a short story by Angela Carter
 * Bluebeard (1982), a novel by Max Frisch
 * "Bluebeard's Egg" (1983), a short story by Margaret Atwood in a collection of the same name
 * Blaubarts Letzte Reise ("Bluebeard's Last Journey") (1983), a short story by Peter Rühmkorf
 * "Bluebeard", (1986), a short story by Donald Barthelme
 * Bluebeard (1987), a novel by Kurt Vonnegut
 * "Blue-Bearded Lover" (1987), a short story by Joyce Carol Oates
 * Blaubarts Schatten ("Bluebeard's Shadow") (1991), a novel by Karin Struck
 * "Bluebeard in Ireland"' (1994), a short story by John Updike
 * Fitcher's Brides (2002), a novel by Gregory Frost
 * Barbe-Bleue ("Bluebeard") (2012), a novel by Amélie Nothomb
 * Mr. Fox (2011), a novel by Helen Oyeyemi
 * How to be Eaten (2022), a novel by Maria Adelmann
 * Bluebeard's Castle (2023), a novel by Anna Biller

In Charles Dickens' short story "Captain Murderer", the title character is described as "an offshoot of the Bluebeard family", and is far more bloodthirsty than most Bluebeards: he cannibalises each wife a month after marriage. He meets his demise after his sister-in-law, in revenge for the death of her sister, marries him and consumes a deadly poison just before he devours her.

In Anatole France's The Seven Wives of Bluebeard, Bluebeard is the victim of the tale, and his wives the perpetrators. Bluebeard is a generous, kind-hearted, wealthy nobleman called Bertrand de Montragoux who marries a succession of grotesque, adulterous, difficult, or simple-minded wives. His first six wives all die, flee, or are sent away under unfortunate circumstances, none of which are his fault. His seventh wife deceives him with another lover and murders him for his wealth.

In Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber", Bluebeard is a 1920s decadent with a collection of erotic drawings, and Bluebeard's wife is rescued by her mother, who rides in on a horse and shoots Bluebeard between the eyes, rather than by her brothers as in the original fairy-tale.

In Joyce Carol Oates' short story, "Blue-Bearded Lover", the most recent wife is well aware of Bluebeard's murdered wives: she does not unlock the door to the forbidden room, and therefore avoids death herself. She remains with Bluebeard despite knowing he is a murderer, and gives birth to Bluebeard's children. The book has been interpreted as a feminist struggle for sexual power.

In Helen Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox, Mr. Fox is a writer of slasher novels, with a muse named Mary. Mary questions Mr. Fox about why he writes about killing women who have transgressed patriarchal laws, making him aware of how his words normalize domestic violence. One of the stories in the book is about a girl named Mary who has a fear of serial killers because her father raised her on stories about men who killed women who did not obey them and then killed her mother.

Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard features a painter who calls himself Bluebeard, and who considers his art studio to be a forbidden chamber where his girlfriend Circe Berman is not allowed to go.

In Donald Barthelme's Bluebeard, the wife believes that the carcasses of Bluebeard's previous six wives are behind the door. She loses the key and her lover hides the three duplicates. One afternoon Bluebeard insists that she open the door, so she borrows his key. Inside, she finds the decaying carcasses of six zebras dressed in Coco Chanel gowns.

In theatre

 * Ritter Blaubart ("Knight Bluebeard") (1797), a play by Ludwig Tieck
 * Bluebeard (1895), a ballet by Georges Jacobi, choreographed by Carlo Coppi
 * Bluebeard (1896), a ballet by choreographer Marius Petipa to the music of composer Pyotr Schenk.
 * Ariane et Barbe-bleue (1899), a symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck
 * Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1921), a French farce by Alfred Savoir
 * Saint Joan (1923), a play by George Bernard Shaw, features Gilles de Rais, nicknamed Bluebeard for his tinted beard and believed by some to be a source of the legend
 * Bluebeard (1941), by Jacques Offenbach, choreographed by Michel Fokine
 * Blaubarts Traum (Bluebeard's Dream) (1961), a ballet by Harold Saeverud, choreographed by Yvonne Georgi
 * Bluebeard (1970), an off-Broadway absurdist comedy by Charles Ludlam, adapted from The Island of Dr Moreau
 * Blaubart: Drama giocoso (1985), a play by Martin Mosebach
 * Bluebeard (2015), a ballet based on the novel The Seven Wives of Bluebeard by Anatole France, directed and choreographed by Staša Zurovac and composed by Marjan Nećak
 * Bluebeard's Friends (2019), one of three short plays by Caryl Churchill
 * Blue Beard (2024), a play by Emma Rice

In music

 * Raoul Barbe-bleue (1789), an opera by André Grétry
 * The Grand Dramatic Romance Blue-Beard, or Female Curiosity, a 1798 opera by George Colman the Younger, composed by Michael Kelly.
 * Barbe-bleue (1866), an operetta by Jacques Offenbach
 * Blue Beard, Jr. (1889), musical with a libretto by Clay M. Greene and music by Fred J. Eustis, Richard Maddern, and John Joseph Braham Sr.
 * Bluebeard (1901), comedic musical by J. Hickory Wood and Arthur Collins. A 1903 American production, under the title Mr. Blue Beard, is known for being performed during the Iroquois Theatre fire.
 * Ariane et Barbe-bleue (1907), an opera by Paul Dukas
 * Bluebeard's Castle (1918), an opera by Béla Bartók and Béla Balázs
 * "Bluebeard" (1993), a song by the Cocteau Twins, on the album Four-Calendar Café
 * "Go Long" by Joanna Newsom (2010), on the album Have One on Me
 * "Aoki Hakushaku no Shiro" ("The Blue Marquis' Castle"), a song by Sound Horizon, on the album Märchen
 * "Mrs. Bluebeard", a song by They Might Be Giants, on the album I Like Fun
 * "Bluebeard" (2019) a song by Patty Griffin, on the album Patty Griffin
 * "Nightmares by the Sea", a song by Jeff Buckley on the album Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk
 * Predator, a song by Toni Childs from her album The Woman's Boat.
 * "Eve, Psyche & the Bluebeard's Wife" (2023), a song by Le Sserafim, on the album Unforgiven

In film

 * Barbe-bleue, a 1901 short film by Georges Méliès
 * Bluebeard's 8th Wife, a 1923 silent comedy film directed by Sam Wood and starring Gloria Swanson
 * Miss Bluebeard, a 1925 silent comedy film directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Bebe Daniels, based on the play Little Miss Bluebeard
 * Barbe-bleue, a 1936 claymation short film directed by Jean Painlevé
 * Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, a 1938 remake of the Swanson silent film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper
 * Bluebeard, a 1944 film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, starring John Carradine
 * Gaslight, Rebecca, and Suspicion are classical Hollywood cinema variations on the Bluebeard tale.
 * Monsieur Verdoux, a 1947 black comedy film directed by and starring Charles Chaplin
 * Secret Beyond the Door, a 1948 contemporary adaptation directed by Fritz Lang, starring Michael Redgrave and Joan Bennett
 * Bye, Bye Bluebeard a 1949 Warner Brothers cartoon by Arthur Davis
 * Bluebeard's Six Wives, a 1950 Italian comedy film directed by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, starring Totò
 * Barbe-Bleue (titled Bluebeard in the U.S.), a 1951 German-French film directed by Christian-Jaque, starring Hans Albers
 * Juliette, or Key of Dreams, a 1951 French film based on the 1930 play of the same name
 * Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons, a 1960 British thriller directed by W. Lee Wilder and starring George Sanders
 * Landru (titled Bluebeard in the U.S.), a 1963 French drama directed by Claude Chabrol starring Charles Denner, Michèle Morgan, and Danielle Darrieux
 * Herzog Blaubarts Burg ("Duke Bluebeard's Castle"), a 1963 film directed by Michael Powell
 * Bluebeard, a 1972 film directed by Edward Dmytryk, starring Richard J. Burton, Joey Heatherton, Raquel Welch, and Virna Lisi
 * Очень синяя борода [Ochen' siniya boroda] (Very Blue Beard), a 1979 Soviet animated film
 * La Barbe-bleue, a 1986 French TV movie adaptation directed by Alain Ferrari
 * The Piano, a 1993 film directed by Jane Campion
 * Barbe Bleue, a 2009 film directed by Catherine Breillat
 * Ex Machina, a 2015 film directed by Alex Garland
 * Crimson Peak, a 2015 Gothic horror film
 * Elizabeth Harvest, a 2018 film directed by Sebastian Gutierrez

In poetry

 * "Bluebeard's Closet" (1888), a poem by Rose Terry Cooke
 * "Der Ritter Blaubart" ("The Knight Bluebeard") (1911), a poem by Reinhard Koester
 * "I Seek Another Place" (1917), a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 * "Bluebeard", a poem by Sylvia Plath
 * The story is alluded to in Seamus Heaney's 1966 poem "Blackberry Picking": "Our hands were peppered/With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's."

References in literature

 * In Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre, the narrator describes a hallway in her employer's mansion as "like a corridor in some Bluebeard's castle."
 * In The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, the story of Bluebeard is referred to in Chapter 18, with Sir Percy's bedroom being compared to Bluebeard's chamber, and Marguerite to Bluebeard's wife.
 * In William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, the character Benedick exclaims, "Like the old tale, my lord: It is not so nor 'twas not so but, indeed, God forbid it should be so." Here, Benedick is quoting a phrase from an English variant of Bluebeard, Mr. Fox, referring to it as "the old tale".
 * In Machado de Assis’s story "The Looking Glass" the main character, Jacobina, dreams she is trying to escape Bluebeard.
 * In The Blue Castle, a 1926 novel by Lucy Maude Montgomery, Valancy's mysterious new husband forbids her to open one door in his house, a room they both term "Bluebeard's Chamber".
 * In Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, the main character Van and his father Demon are both referred to as Bluebeards.
 * In Stephen King's The Shining, the character Jack Torrance reads the story of Bluebeard to his three-year-old son Danny, to his wife's disapproval. The Shining also directly references the Bluebeard tale in that there is a secret hotel room which conceals a suicide, a remote 'castle' (The Overlook Hotel), and a husband (Jack) who attempts to kill his wife.
 * In Javier Marías’ 1992 novel, A Heart So White, the narrator’s father is called "worse than Bluebeard" for having lost three wives in succession.
 * In Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James, Mr. Grey has a bloody S & M chamber where he tortures Anastasia, and she refers to him at least once as Bluebeard.
 * "Bones", a short story by Francesca Lia Block, recasts Bluebeard as a sinister L.A. promoter.
 * The short story Trenzas (Braids) by Chilean writer María Luisa Bombal has some paragraphs where the narrator comments on Bluebeard's last wife having long and thick braids that would get tangled in Bluebeard's fingers, and as he struggled to undo them before killing her, he was caught and killed by the woman's protective brothers.
 * In Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House, the author uses the story of Bluebeard to illustrate tolerance in domestic abuse situations.

In television

 * Bluebeard is featured in an episode of Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics as part of its "Grimm Masterpiece Theater" season. The character design for Bluebeard strongly resembles the English King Henry VIII.
 * A 1976 episode of Manga Sekai Mukashi Banashi titled in Japanese "Aohige" depicts the Bluebeard fairytale.
 * Bluebeard is featured in Sandra the Fairytale Detective as the villain in the episode "The Forbidden Room".
 * Bluebeard is featured in Scary Tales, produced by the Discovery Channel, Sony and IMAX, episode one, in 2011. (This series is not related to the Disney collection of the same name.)
 * Bluebeard was the subject of the pilot episode of an aborted television series, Famous Tales (1951), created by and starring Burl Ives with music by Albert Hague.
 * A Korean stage play of the Bluebeard story serves as the backstory and inspiration for the antagonist, a serial kidnapper, in the South Korean television show, Strong Woman Do Bong-soon (2017).
 * In Hannibal, season 3 episode 12 "The Number of the Beast is 666", Bedelia Du Maurier compares herself and the protagonist Will Graham to Bluebeard's brides, referring to their relationships with Hannibal Lecter.
 * You, season 1 episode 10 is called "Bluebeard's Castle", and the heroine Guinevere Beck compares the character Joe Goldberg to Bluebeard and his glass box to Bluebeard's castle.
 * It's Okay to Not Be Okay is a South Korean Drama in which this tale is narrated in episode 6.
 * The TV series Grimm, episode 4, season 1, "Lonely Hearts", is based on Bluebeard. The antagonist is a serial rapist who keeps all of his, still alive, victims in a secret basement room.
 * Succession, season 2, episode 9 when Rhea called Logan 'bluebeard' because she thinks he is trying to kill her by putting her up for the CEO position and takes the fall for the cruise ship coverup.

In other media

 * The fairy-tale of Bluebeard was the inspiration for the Gothic feminine horror game Bluebeard's Bride by Whitney "Strix" Beltrán, Marissa Kelly, and Sarah Richardson published by Magpie Games. It is centered on the premise of the fairy-tale with players acting out emotions and thoughts from the shared perspective of the Bride, each taking on an aspect of her psyche.
 * Image of Bluebeard, a story published in 1965 in issue no. 7 of the comics magazine Creepy, is about a woman who suspects her husband is a modern incarnation of Bluebeard.
 * In DC Comics' Fables series, Bluebeard appears as an amoral character, willing to kill and often suspected of being involved in various nefarious deeds.
 * Bluebeard is a character in the video game The Wolf Among Us by Telltale Games, based on the Fables comics.
 * Bluebeard's Castle, and its sequel Bluebeard's Castle 2: Son of the Heartless, is a hidden object puzzle video game created by Fanda Games and published by Big Fish Games, based on the fairytale Bluebeard.
 * Dark Romance: Curse of Bluebeard is a hidden object puzzle video game created by DominiGames and published by Big Fish Games as part of their Dark Romance series.
 * In the Japanese light novel and manga/anime Fate/Zero, Bluebeard appears as the Caster Servant, where his character largely stems from Gilles de Rais as a serial murderer of children.
 * The Awful History of Bluebeard consists of 7 original drawings by William Makepeace Thackeray from 1833, given as a gift to his cousin on her 11th birthday and published in 1924.
 * A series of photographs published in 1992 by Cindy Sherman illustrate the fairy-tale Fitcher's Bird (a variant of Bluebeard).
 * Bluebeard appears as a minor Darklord in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd ed.) Ravenloft accessory Darklords.
 * In the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, created by Wizards of the Coast, the card "Malevolent Noble" in the Throne of Eldraine expansion depicts Bluebeard.
 * BBC Radio 4 aired a radio play from 2014 called Burning Desires written by Colin Bytheway, about the serial killer Henri Désiré Landru, an early 20th-century killer of women, often called a "Bluebeard".
 * The 1955 film The Night of the Hunter includes a scene at the trial of serial wife killer in which the crowd/mob chants "Bluebeard!" repeatedly.
 * A mausoleum containing the remains of Bluebeard and his wives can be seen at the exit of The Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney World.
 * Ceramic tiles tell the tale of Bluebeard and his wives in Fonthill Castle, the home of Henry Mercer in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
 * Bluebeard and a variation of his tale appears in the manga Ludwig Kakumei.

title: Bluebeard


text:
User:TheOmnilord

"Idiocy knows no bounds."

--TheOmnilord

title: User:TheOmnilord


text:
Roots to Branches

Roots to Branches is the 19th studio album by the British band Jethro Tull released in September 1995. It carries characteristics of Tull's classic 1970s progressive rock and folk rock roots alongside jazz and Arabic and Indian influences. All songs were written by Ian Anderson and recorded at his home studio. This is the last Tull album to feature Dave Pegg on the bass, and the first to feature keyboardist Andrew Giddings as an official band member, although he had contributed to Catfish Rising (1991) on a sessional basis. As a result, the album notably features the five longest serving members to date in Jethro Tull’s history. It was also the final Tull album to be released through long-time label Chrysalis Records.

A remastered edition of the album was released in January 2007.

Production and musical style
In some way, this album was much derived from the visit Ian Anderson made to India. S.A. Allen, in a history of the band, somewhat reductively describes the album as an "Indian Songs from the Wood."

About Roots to Branches, Ian Anderson said: "I see Roots To Branches as the 90s version of Stand Up, because it has a lot of the things that I feel represented the key elements of Jethro Tull: there's lots of flute, lots of riffy guitars and quite a broad palette of influences, from the blues and classical to the Eastern motifs that were apparent on Stand Up ". On the other hand, Anderson also added that "the only thing about it that lets me down is that I made it sound a little too Seventies. I deliberately made the album sound like it was in the context of a live performance, rather than have it sound too 'studio.' But looking back on it, I think it should have been a bit more varied".

Critical reception
AllMusic made an unimpressed but positive review: "All of the songs here have more of a mood of urgency than some of Tull's then-recent albums, and a few even have memorable melodies [...] Anderson's flute occasionally takes flight, Martin Barre's guitar still wails on the breaks, and Doane Perry (drums), Dave Pegg (bass), and Steve Bailey (bass) make up a decent rhythm section. Not nearly as strong as Catfish Rising, but better than anything else since Heavy Horses".

Charts
The album sold less than the predecessor, reaching only No. 114 on the US Billboard Charts, but achieving No. 20 on the UK Albums Chart.

Personnel

 * Jethro Tull
 * Ian Anderson – vocals, flute, acoustic guitar
 * Martin Barre – electric guitar
 * Dave Pegg – bass guitar (on tracks 3, 5 & 11)
 * Andrew Giddings – keyboards
 * Doane Perry – drums, percussion

 * Additional personnel
 * Steve Bailey – bass guitar (on tracks 1, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10)

Release details

 * 1995, UK, Chrysalis 8-35418-4, release date 31 August 1995, Cassette
 * 1995, UK, Chrysalis CDCHR 6109, release date 4 September 1995, CD
 * 1995, UK, Chrysalis CHR 6109, release date 4 September 1995, LP
 * 1995, UK, Chrysalis TCCHR 6109, release date ? ? 1995, Cassette
 * 1995, UK, Chrysalis 8-35418-2, release date ? ? 1995, CD
 * 1995, US, Chrysalis F2 35418, release date 12 September 1995, CD
 * 1995, US, Chrysalis CHR 6109, release date 12 September 1995, LP
 * 1995, Australia, Chrysalis CDCHR 6109, release date 27 October 1995, CD

title: Roots to Branches


text:
Colegio Americano de Quito

The Fundación Colegio Americano de Quito or Colegio Americano de Quito (American School of Quito) is a private college preparatory school in Quito, Ecuador. In 1940 it was founded by the former president of Ecuador and the president of the Organization of American States (OAS) Galo Plaza Lasso, and Boaz Long.

History
The American School of Quito was founded on October 14, 1940 to 162 students. The first directors were Robert E. and Mrs. Hazel J. Tucker, who had just arrived from the United States. The founders of the school lived in a time characterized by the fascist movements in Europe, represented in Ecuador and other South American nations by the German and Italian schools operating.

The school hired English-speaking, U.S.-educated Ecuadorian teachers to teach civics, geography, history of Ecuador, and Spanish classes, while Americans taught the other classes. The Ecuadorian Ministry of Education cooperated with the foundation of the school. The U.S. and Ecuadorian governments did not have plans to financially aid the school. The school used an educational program derived from the Santa Barbara, California public schools and the Columbia University Lincoln School.

In 2022 the American School had over 2,200 students from Nursery to twelfth grade. Among these students are the children and grandchildren of founding families. The school is co-educational, non-religious, and is a non-profit foundation. It is accredited by Cognia and the Ecuadorian Ministry of Education and Culture. It is recognized by the International Baccalaureate Organization and offers both I.B. Programmes: Middle Years and Diploma. American School graduates can obtain three diplomas: a high school diploma accredited in the United States, the Ecuadorian Bachillerato, and the I.B. Diploma.

Student Council
Every year students from high school vote for the Student Council. The student Council is a group of representatives for high school that run activities and organize events. Candidates from the Student Council come from 11th or 12th (Secretary, Treasurer and Vice-President), and 12th grade only (President).

Model United Nations
The School hosts the largest Model United Nations in Spanish each year, which include local schools, thus contributing to the practice of democratic principles and the analysis of global and local issues in Ecuador.

Hymn
Gloria a tí, Colegio Americano

Notable alumni and staff

 * Barbara Morgan taught here from 1978 to 1979. She taught English and science for one year. She was later an astronaut on the Space Shuttle.

 * Marcelo Aguirre, artist
 * Rodrigo Borja, former President of Ecuador;
 * Francisco Carrion, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Ecuador;
 * Diego Fernando Cordova, former Ecuadorian ambassador
 * David Davidovic, Vice-President at Merck, Genentech and Roche
 * Gina Davidovic, President of Bay3000 Corporate Education
 * Freddy Ehlers, journalist, Minister
 * Luis Fierro, economist, writer, former Vice-Minister of Economy of Ecuador
 * Santiago Gangotena González, earned a PhD degree in Physics from University of North Carolina, Chapell Hill and founded the first liberal arts university in Ecuador, Universidad San Francisco de Quito
 * Edna Iturralde, author
 * Joseph J. Kohn, Princeton Maths Professor
 * Carlos Larreategui, former Minister, Chancellor of UDLA (Universidad de Las Americas)
 * César Montúfar, presidential candidate, former Member of the National Assembly, Ph.D. in Political Science
 * Verónica Montúfar, secretaria ejecutiva Amnistía internacional Ecuador (1991-1996), Responsable de Igualdad de género y de trabajadores con discapacidad (ISP Ecuador).

 * Gian-Carlo Rota, mathematician and MIT professor,
 * Guadalupe Mantilla, Director of the newspaper "El Comercio"
 * Alvaro Mantilla, Director of the newspaper "Hoy"
 * Martin Pallares, journalist and writer
 * Rodrigo Paz, former mayor of Quito
 * Frank Wilbauer, Director of the Red Cross, Ecuador
 * Seye Adelekan, Musician
 * Maria Fernanda Rea, Vice-President and Corporate Controller of Geodis Logistics Co.
 * Xavier Ponce, Chairman of the Ecuadorian American Chamber of Commerce

title: Colegio Americano de Quito


text:
Talk:History of Wikipedia

Add comma
In the Timeline section under 2014, it says "On 8 June 15 June," missing a comma. Someone with edit access, please fix that grammar mistake to "On 8 June, 15 June,". Thank you! 73.63.159.191 (talk) 17:51, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅. Thanks for pointing out the error. Deor (talk) 21:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:History of Wikipedia