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Garden of Allah Hotel

The Garden of Allah was a famous hotel in West Hollywood, California, United States (then an unincorporated area of Los Angeles which was usually considered a part of Hollywood), at 8152 Sunset Boulevard between Crescent Heights and Havenhurst, at the east end of the Sunset Strip.

Originally a 2.5 acre estate called Hayvenhurst, it was built in 1913 as the private residence of real estate developer William H. Hay. Alla Nazimova acquired the property in 1919: she converted it into a residential hotel in 1926 by adding 25 villas around the residence, which opened as the "Garden of Alla Hotel" in January 1927. In 1930, new owners renamed it the "Garden of Allah Hotel" (adding an 'h'). The property operated under a succession of owners for three decades until the last, Bart Lytton, owner of Lytton Savings & Loan, demolished the hotel in 1959 and replaced it with his bank's main branch. The Lytton Savings main branch was later demolished along with a strip mall next to it to make way for a mixed-use development designed by Frank Gehry.

Hayvenhurst
The estate that later became the Garden of Allah Hotel was built in 1913 by real estate developer William H. Hay in the northwest corner of the Crescent Heights neighborhood, a 160 acre tract bounded by Sunset Boulevard on the north, Santa Monica Boulevard on the south, Crescent Avenue (later renamed Fairfax Avenue) on the east and Sweetzer Avenue on the west, which Hay had subdivided and developed starting in 1905.

The estate's original address was 8080 Sunset Boulevard but was later changed to 8152. It occupied a 2.5 acre lot that fronted Sunset Boulevard and was bounded by Crescent Heights Boulevard on the east and Hayvenhurst (now spelled Havenhurst) Drive on the west. The property's southern boundary was also the border between the Hollywood district of the city of Los Angeles and the then-unincorporated area that later became the city of West Hollywood.

Hay and his wife Katherine personally supervised construction of the estate. The house had twelve rooms and four bathrooms. The finishes were all in Circassian walnut that the Hays had collected on a trip to the Philippines in 1912. The interior walls were covered in canvas and hand-painted. The garage had bays for two cars—a rarity in those days—with rooms upstairs for live-in servants. Construction and landscaping cost an estimated $30,000.

The Hays' stay at Hayvenhurst was short-lived. Within a few years they had built and moved into a new house a few blocks east, at 7920 Sunset Boulevard, the site today of the Directors Guild of America headquarters. William Hay also purchased Encino Ranch, a large tract of land in the San Fernando Valley that he would later develop into the upscale Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles. Hayvenhurst reportedly stood unoccupied for several years.

Garden of Alla
Stage and screen actress Alla Nazimova leased Hayvenhurst from William Hay not long after she moved to Los Angeles from New York in 1918. She purchased it outright in 1919. Nazimova jokingly called her new home "The Garden of Alla", which was a reference to her own name and the best-selling 1904 novel The Garden of Allah, by British author Robert S. Hichens.

Faced with a financial crisis in the mid-1920s after her screen career derailed, Nazimova put her property to work generating an income by building a complex of 25 rental "villas" around the original house. The opening party for "The Garden of Alla Hotel" was held on January 9, 1927. She found her role as a hotel manager unsuitable and discovered that her unscrupulous partners in the enterprise had nearly bankrupted her, so in 1928 she sold out her remaining interest in the property, auctioned off most of her furniture and other household goods, and went back to the Broadway stage. By 1930, the owners had normalized the spelling in the hotel's name to "Allah".

After Nazimova's renewed Broadway success was cut short by illness in 1938, she returned to Hollywood and rented Villa 24, where she lived until her death in 1945.

Garden of Allah Hotel
Catering to both short-term and long-term guests, the hotel soon gained a reputation as a place where the famous could enjoy living in a quaint, cozy, village-like setting, conveniently located yet shielded from gawking tourists and autograph seekers by discreet security patrols, under a management that was not inclined to probe, judge or interfere with the private — and sometimes public — activities of its often unconventional patrons.

The Garden of Allah became home to many celebrities and literary figures. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived there for several months in 1937–38 at the beginning of his final stay in Hollywood. He wrote himself a postcard while there: "Dear Scott — How are you? Have been meaning to come in and see you. I have living [sic] at the Garden of Allah. Yours, Scott Fitzgerald." Fitzgerald's biographer and lover Sheilah Graham later wrote a book about the place, titled simply The Garden of Allah.

Humorist and actor Robert Benchley was a frequent resident. An array of Golden Age Hollywood stars and featured players, ranging from Greta Garbo to Ronald Reagan, stayed there at least briefly, and so did classical music giants Sergei Rachmaninoff (who was musically assaulted there by an annoyed Harpo Marx), Igor Stravinsky and Jascha Heifetz. Humphrey Bogart lived in villa 8, where Errol Flynn stayed when Bogart was out of town. Gloria Stuart and Arthur Sheekman lived at villa 12. Dance band leaders Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw and vocalist Frank Sinatra were among the pop music personalities. Kay Thompson, then designing musical numbers for Judy Garland and her own nightclub act with The Williams Brothers, lived there; Thompson later wrote about a little girl who also lived in a hotel, Eloise.

Purchase by Lytton Savings and the site today
Although celebrities such as Errol Flynn were still calling it home as late as 1957, by that time the hotel's architectural style was long out of fashion and its environs had become more tacky than glamorous. Land values were rising, historic preservation was still an eccentric notion, and "redevelopment" was a popular civic buzzword.

On April 11, 1959, Bart Lytton, president of Lytton Savings and Loan, announced that he had purchased the Garden of Allah Hotel from Beatrice Rosenus and Morris Markowitz for $755,000. Lytton's plans for the property included razing the hotel to make way for a new main branch for his bank, which had formerly been headquartered in the Canoga Park neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.

On August 22, 1959, Lytton hosted a farewell party on the grounds of the hotel. Among the attendees was silent film star Francis X. Bushman, who had been at the opening party in 1927. Some other guests came costumed as old-time stars. In a nod to the hotel's creator, Nazimova's experimental 1923 silent film Salomé was shown on a large poolside screen. On August 30, an on-site public auction liquidated all the furnishings, fixtures and equipment, along with odds and ends valuable only as souvenirs. Demolition permits were issued on November 2. Within days, all traces of the hotel were gone and construction of the bank building, designed by the Los Angeles-based architect Kurt Meyer in the Brutalist architectural style, had begun. The bank building was completed by 1960. By 1962, the bank building received an adjacent addition consisting of a museum and an auditorium called the Lytton Center. By 1968, only eight years after the bank building's completion, Lytton Savings was forced to declare bankruptcy, resulting in the closure of the bank building. The adjacent Lytton Center was later closed the following year and converted into a strip mall. By the time the 2010s rolled around, the building was now home to a Chase bank. In 2016, the building was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. However, in the same year, real estate developer Townscapes Partners secured approvals for a mixed-use development designed by architect Frank Gehry, which would require the razing of the former bank building. In response to this, the Los Angeles Conservancy and Friends of Lytton Savings advocacy group waged a preservation campaign to help prevent the building's demolition but ultimately, it was unsuccessful. By April 2021, the building was demolished while the adjacent strip mall (formerly Lytton Center) was demolished much later. As of 2023, the redevelopment of the site failed to push through, leaving the site nothing but an empty lot.

Miniature model
In 1960, the Garden of Allah reappeared on the site in the form of a detailed miniature model of the complex. For many years, this was on display outside Lytton's building, in a small plaza at the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights, sheltered from the elements in a sort of shrine with a lofty domed pavilion. It was later moved indoors and eventually disappeared. It resurfaced in private hands in the early 2010s, architecturally intact and with its built-in miniature electric lighting system restored.

Source of the name
The hotel's name was not a direct reference to Islam but rather to Nazimova's first name and the title of a 1905 novel, The Garden of Allah, by British writer Robert S. Hichens. The novel was adapted into a play first produced in London in 1909. Mary Mannering acted in the play in 1910. The novel also served as the basis for three movies, the final one of which starred Marlene Dietrich, who was once a resident of the hotel.

Quotes about the Garden of Allah
"It reminds me of Hollywood."

"I'll be damned if I'll believe anyone lives in a place called the Garden of Allah."

"Nothing interrupted the continual tumult that was life at the Garden of Allah. Now and then the men in white came with a van and took somebody away, or bankruptcy or divorce or even jail claimed a participant in its strictly unstately sarabands. Nobody paid any mind."

"A light-hearted, unrealistic place."

"There is no place for a Garden of Allah that, for one brief moment, was Camelot. It was inevitable that Hollywood as we knew it, and its satellite, Alla's garden, should disappear together."

"Hollywood's and thus America's most unconventional hotel, actually 'notorious' would be a more descriptive word."

"In that lavish heyday of the parvenu, when everything was built to look like something it wasn't, a bungalow court with accommodations indistinguishable from a hundred other bungalow courts came to be called the Garden of Allah"

Famous residents and guests
A representative list of the Garden of Allah Hotel's famous guests:

 * Lauren Bacall
 * Tallulah Bankhead
 * John Barrymore
 * Donn Beach
 * Lucius Beebe
 * Robert Benchley
 * Humphrey Bogart
 * Clara Bow
 * Louis Bromfield
 * Louise Brooks
 * Edgar Rice Burroughs
 * Charles Butterworth
 * Louis Calhern
 * John Carradine
 * Virginia Cherrill
 * Mickey Cohen
 * Buster Collier
 * Ronald Colman
 * Marc Connelly
 * Gary Cooper
 * Joan Crawford
 * Jean Dalrymple
 * Lili Damita
 * Vic Damone
 * Florence Desmond
 * Marlene Dietrich
 * F. Scott Fitzgerald
 * Errol Flynn
 * Greta Garbo
 * Ava Gardner
 * Dorothy Gish
 * Jackie Gleason
 * Jimmy Gleason
 * Elinor Glyn
 * Benny Goodman
 * Frances Goodrich
 * Ruth Gordon
 * Sheilah Graham
 * D.W. Griffith
 * Albert Hackett
 * Jon Hall
 * Jed Harris
 * Jascha Heifetz
 * Lillian Hellman
 * Ernest Hemingway
 * Woody Herman
 * Madeline Hurlock
 * Garson Kanin
 * George S. Kaufman
 * Buster Keaton
 * Muriel King
 * Eartha Kitt
 * Alexander Korda
 * Elsa Lanchester
 * Charles Laughton
 * Frank Lawton
 * Lila Lee
 * John Loder
 * Anita Louise
 * Bessie Love
 * Ernst Lubitsch
 * Charles MacArthur
 * Frances Marion
 * Harpo Marx
 * Zeppo Marx
 * Groucho Marx
 * Sam Marx
 * Glesca Marshall
 * Somerset Maugham
 * Patty McCormack
 * Ward Morehouse
 * Nita Naldi
 * Ramon Novarro
 * Alla Nazimova
 * David Niven
 * John O'Hara
 * Maureen O'Hara
 * Walter O'Keefe
 * Maureen O'Sullivan
 * Clifford Odets
 * Laurence Olivier
 * Dorothy Parker
 * Johnny Roselli
 * S.J. Perelman
 * Roland Petit
 * Tyrone Power
 * Sergei Rachmaninoff
 * Ronald Reagan
 * Flora Robson
 * Ginger Rogers
 * Harry Ruby
 * Natalie Schafer
 * Leon Shamroy
 * Artie Shaw
 * Mildred Shay
 * Arthur Sheekman
 * Robert E. Sherwood
 * Frank Sinatra
 * Red Skelton
 * Everett Sloane
 * Barbara Stanwyck
 * John Steinbeck
 * Donald Ogden Stewart
 * Leopold Stokowski
 * Igor Stravinsky
 * Gloria Stuart
 * Margaret Sullavan
 * Kay Thompson
 * Whitney Tower
 * Forrest Tucker
 * H.B. Warner
 * Orson Welles
 * Dame May Whitty
 * Herbert Wilcox
 * Hugh Williams
 * Hope Williams
 * John Hay "Jock" Whitney
 * Alexander Woollcott
 * Vincent Youmans

In popular culture

 * In 1956, just a few years before its demise, the Garden of Allah was one of the settings for Pamela Moore's novel Chocolates for Breakfast, the story of a teenage girl growing up with an actress mother.
 * The Garden of Allah Hotel is mentioned in chapter 2 of the Ronald Reagan biography Killing Reagan by Bill O'Reilly. In the late 1940s it was where "Reagan reaches bottom when he wakes up one morning at the Garden of Allah Hotel on Sunset Boulevard and does not know the name of the woman lying next to him".
 * The Mambo Kings (1992) used the location as a set in the film
 * Herman Wouk called the Garden "Rainbow's End" in Youngblood Hawke, his novel about a successful writer who goes to Hollywood.
 * It is apparently an urban legend that the bulldozing of the Garden of Allah in 1959 inspired the line in Joni Mitchell's song "Big Yellow Taxi", "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot". Indeed, Mitchell later lived in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood in the hills north of the site. However, in an interview in the early 1970s, Mitchell stated that the lyrics were inspired in 1970 by her first trip to Hawaii, where she was struck by a jarring juxtaposition of nature and modern civilization. Also, the next line after "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" is "With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot", which does not reflect what happened to the Garden of Allah site itself, on which a bank building was erected. There was, however, also a large parking lot on the site to serve that building; the nearby Chateau Marmont hotel and at least one other big, pinkish and even nearer residential building overlooked it; boutiques abounded on the Sunset Strip; and the "swinging", politically hot Pandora's Box nightclub was directly across Crescent Heights in the 1960s. The existence of a secondary source of inspiration has apparently not been explicitly denied in Mitchell's published comments.
 * A 1985 play Across from the Garden of Allah by Charles Wood starred Glenda Jackson and Nigel Hawthorne. It was a marital drama set in a hotel across the street from the Garden of Allah.
 * The hotel is the setting for a series of historical novels by Martin Turnbull that began with The Garden on Sunset (2012).
 * In the 2013 film Gangster Squad, a signboard reading "Garden of Allah" is seen outside the apartment in which Ryan Gosling's character resides, just before the scene in which he wakes up with Emma Stone.
 * The location of the Garden of Allah, which is now a bank building, is prominently displayed in a comical scene from the 1987 movie Barfly starring Mickey Rourke.
 * Former Eagles singer and drummer Don Henley released the 1995 song Garden of Allah in honor of the hotel.
 * Jonathan Winters, then appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, described getting drunk one time with Johnny Carson at the hotel, years before becoming sober.

title: Garden of Allah Hotel


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Dick Molpus

Richard Henderson Molpus Jr. (born September 7, 1949) is an American businessman and Democratic Party politician who served as Secretary of State of Mississippi from 1984 until 1996. He unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1995 against Republican incumbent Kirk Fordice. He later established a timberland management company. Throughout his public life he has pushed for reforms to support public education and promote racial reconciliation.

Born in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and educated at the University of Mississippi, Molpus worked at his family's lumber company before its sale in the 1980s. A staffer for William F. Winter's gubernatorial campaigns in 1967, 1975, and 1979, the governor appointed him executive director of the Governor's Office of Federal-State Programs. He also lobbied on the governor's behalf for education reform in the state legislature.

Molpus successfully ran for secretary of state in 1983, campaigning on his managerial experience and promises to reform the office. Reelected in 1987 and 1991, he reorganized the office through the creation of four departments and shifted its purpose away from clerical duties and towards more active policy engagement. He oversaw the digitization of the office's records, the renegotiation of thousands of leases on public lands to raise money for public education, reformed the state's election laws, and sought reforms in corporate law and lobbying rules. Molpus unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 1988, losing the Democratic nomination to Wayne Dowdy and accruing the third highest campaign debt for any senatorial candidate nationwide. In his unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1995, his apology for the Mississippi Burning murders, the first by a statewide office holder, was used against him. He started a timberland investment management organization in 1996 and was appointed to the United States Endowment for Forestry and Communities in 2006.

Early life and education
Richard Henderson Molpus Jr. was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on September 7, 1949, to Richard Henderson Molpus Sr. and Frances Blount. He graduated from Philadelphia High School in 1967, and from the University of Mississippi with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1971. While there he served as president of the Sigma Chi fraternity chapter, and unsuccessfully pushed for the fraternity to racially integrate. He married Sally Galbraith Nash, with whom he had two children, in 1971.

His grandfather, Richard Hezekiah Molpus, established the first sawmill in Philadelphia in 1905 as part of a general merchandise venture, the Henderson-Molpus Company. The corporation later transformed into the Molpus Lumber Company in 1957, focusing its business in wood, and passed to Dick's father. Molpus began working for the company at a young age. By the time he was a teenager, he was a certified lumber inspector. He returned to work for the company after graduating from college, assuming temporary control after his father suffered a stroke. He rose to the position of vice president for manufacturing and oversaw the establishment of a second lumber facility in Morton in 1975. The lumber company was sold in the mid-1980s. Molpus served on the board of directors and executive committee of the Mississippi Forestry Association, vice-president of the Mississippi Lumber Manufacturers Association, and on the board of directors of the Morton chamber of commerce.

Early activities and Winter administration

During the 1967 Mississippi gubernatorial election, Molpus worked as a youth coordinator in Neshoba County for Democrat William F. Winter's unsuccessful campaign. He co-chaired a blue ribbon highway study committee during Governor Bill Waller's tenure. He volunteered for Winter's 1975 campaign and for his successful 1979 gubernatorial campaign. His father was one of Winter's leading supporters during the 1967 and 1975 elections, but later supported Republican nominee Gil Carmichael in the 1975 election and Jim Herring in the 1979 Democratic primary. Molpus was Winter's first announced appointee when he was selected as executive director of the Governor's Office of Federal-State Programs, on November 15, 1979. The office coordinated actions between federal and state agencies.

Together with the state director of administration, Molpus consolidated the office's 17 agencies into seven, reducing administrative expenses by 25%. For his work in reducing staff and improving the agency's efficiency, he was selected in 1983 as Mississippi's Public Administrator of the Year by the American Society for Public Administration. He also helped Winter lobby the Mississippi State Legislature to pass the 1982 Education Reform Act, hosting the governor's staff at a cabin he owned for strategy sessions, delivering over 35 speeches to build public support for the bill, and organizing a phone call campaign to pressure a state senator to support the creation of public kindergartens. State Senator Ellis B. Bodron, who was broadly opposed to the legislation, denounced Molpus and other young Winter aides—including Ray Mabus, David Crews, Bill Gartin, Andy P. Mullins, and John Henegan—as the "Boys of Spring", a moniker in which they thereafter took pride.

Elections
Winter's tenure sparked a decade of political interest in reforming state government and led to like-minded candidates—many being former members of his administration—to seek elective office. Mississippi Secretary of State Edwin L. Pittman announced that he would run in the 1983 gubernatorial election. Molpus was considered a candidate to succeed Pittman and he considered running for either secretary of state or public service commissioner from the Central District. Molpus announced his resignation from Winter's administration effective May 9, and launched his campaign for secretary of state on May 16, 1983. He was the second member of Winter's staff to run for statewide office after Mabus announced his campaign for state auditor. During the campaign he was endorsed by the National Women's Political Caucus and AFL–CIO. Pledging to reorganize the office, he won the Democratic nomination after defeating John Ed Ainsworth in a runoff. Molpus and Ainsworth did not engage in negative campaigning, stating that they had a mutual respect for each other. In the general election he defeated Republican legislator Jerry Gilbreath after he campaigned on his managerial experience and record of helping Winter's education reforms succeed.

Molpus announced that he would seek reelection on May 5, 1987, and won in the election. In 1989, he announced that he would run for reelection in the 1991 election and was considering running in the 1995 gubernatorial election. He announced his campaign on January 11, 1991, and facing no opposition in the primary or general elections was elected unopposed.

Tenure
Before taking office Molpus announced a reorganization plan for the office in which he would create four new departments to handle administration, public lands and elections, policy development, and securities regulations. He wanted to shift the focus of the secretary of state from clerical and administrative duties to handling education, public lands, securities, and elections. Molpus assumed office on January 5, 1984. The director of the Mississippi NAACP criticized Molpus, among other state officials, for the low number of black people he appointed to office despite having significant black electoral support in the 1983 election.

In 1989 The Neshoba Democrat editor Stanley Dearman invited Molpus to partake in a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Mississippi Burning murders of three civil rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, an event which had stigmatized the town to outsiders and was regarded as politically controversial. Despite concerns from some of his advisers that his involvement in a commemoration would ruin his political career, Molpus agreed to attend and helped to organize a planning committee for the event. He also convinced Governor Mabus to attend with him. On June 21, 1989, Molpus officially apologized to the families of the murdered civil rights workers, saying, "We deeply regret what happened here 25 years ago. We wish we could undo it. We wish we could bring them back. Every decent person here feels that way. My heart is full because today we have found a way to ease the burden that this community has borne." The statement made him the first Mississippi state official to apologize for the murders.

Dearman summarized the public reaction to the speech, saying, "A lot of people were opposed to it, but a lot of people were glad he said it." Many white Mississippians disagreed with Molpus' remarks; he received several critical letters and threatening phone calls in response, including 26 death threats. Some Mississippians credited Molpus with restarting public discussion of the murders and their significance in the state. Reflecting on his statements and their impact on his political prospects in 2021, Molpus said, "It was not a mistake to say those words. Things are more important than winning. Governors come and go, but those words are something I still feel good about."

Molpus supported Steve Patterson's bid for the chairmanship of the Mississippi Democratic Party in 1984. He endorsed Mike Espy during his campaign for a seat in the United States House of Representatives during the 1986 election and Epsy's victory made him the first black person to represent Mississippi in the United States Congress since the Reconstruction era. He endorsed Bill Clinton during the 1992 Democratic presidential primaries and was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. After several potential candidates declined to serve, Molpus acted as the Mississippi delegation's secretary.

Molpus and 41 others founded a Mississippi chapter of the Democratic Leadership Council in 1990. He was elected to the board of officers of the National Association of Secretaries of State, being the only Southerner on the board and became its secretary in 1987, its treasurer in 1988, its vice-president in 1989, and was selected as its president in 1993. He was succeeded by Eric Clark at the secretariat of state on January 4, 1996.

Commerce
The secretary of state was responsible for administering the Mississippi Business Corporation Law and the Uniform Commercial Code, overseeing public lands and elections, and issuing publications on behalf of the state's executive offices and legislature. At that time, the office required $200,000 per year from the state treasury to remain operational. Molpus convinced the legislature to raise the office's filing and brokerage fees to the Southeastern average rates in 1985, switching the office's source of money from the state general fund to a special self-generated fund. Despite this change, that year the office required an over $70,000 subsidy from the general fund to operate. Molpus also oversaw a $4 million effort in automating the office's processes with technology and digitize records. Combined with an uptick in corporate registrations in Mississippi, by the end of the 1992 fiscal year these measures allowed the office to collect enough money to be self-funded and deposit $1.1 million in surplus into the state treasury. Molpus also appointed a 29-person Business Law Reform Task Force in 1986 to lobby for revisions of laws pertaining to corporations, nonprofit organizations, limited parties, and securities. Several reforms were adopted by the legislature in 1987. For his efforts to reorganize the secretary of state's office, in 1985 Molpus received the American Society for Public Administration's Elected Official of the Year Award.

The secretary of state was ex offico the Lands Commissioner of Mississippi and thus supervised more than 600000 acre of 16th Section Land that had been set aside in the early 19th century to raise money for the public schools. In the 1980s much of the property was being leased to private entities for cents an acre under 99-year contracts. The state Reform Act of 1978 stipulated that 16th Section Lands be leased at fair market values. In 1984, Molpus began enforcing the act in order to aid education funding, thus triggering the renegotiation of about 5,000 below-market leases and increasing the amount of revenue to the public schools from those properties during his tenure by $24 million. He conducted the first price inventory of the 9,561 leases of the 16th Section Lands in the state's history and found that less than 15% of the land was being leased for more than $20 per acre while almost half were being leased for less than 50¢ per acre and one-third were being leased for less than 20¢ per acre. The revenue from the leases rose by 28% from $6.9 million in 1983 to $8.9 million in 1985.

Molpus faced opposition from the leaseholders. Some of them demanded that the Mississippi Ethics Commission investigate Molpus, claiming that he was reclassifying the land into forest land to benefit his family's lumber business, although his family had sold the business in December 1983, before he took office. Steve Turney, whose land lease rose from 25¢ per acre to around $7 per acre, was one of the opponents. The ethics complaint filed by Turney and 56 others was dismissed by a unanimous vote. Turney filed a lawsuit against Molpus in July 1985, claiming that he was "neglecting his duty with advocating five percent of market value". He withdrew the lawsuit a few months later due to a jurisdictional error. He later requested that the state attorney general pursue action against Molpus before filing a new lawsuit against Molpus in November, claiming that the secretary of state was using his position to make financial gains through the land reclassification, but he lost and the judge ordered him to pay for the expenses of the lawsuit. The Supreme Court of Mississippi ruled on November 27, affirming the raise in Turney's lease. Turney camped outside of Molpus' office for 23 days in 1986 to protest the changes and ran against him in the 1987 Democratic primary.

Education
As secretary of state, Molpus held a seat on the Mississippi Board of Education. Molpus and Governor William Allain called for the creation of an education trust fund as revenue meant to implement the Education Reform Act was instead being used by the state legislature to prevent budget deficits. Their proposal was opposed by Speaker Buddie Newman and Sonny Meredith, the chair of the House Ways and Means committee. He co-founded Parents for Public Schools, a group which sought to promote the improvement of public schools, in 1989. Initially confined to a group of largely white-middle-class parents in Jackson, Mississippi who sought to support the local school district, by 1997 it had expanded to 50 chapters scattered across the United States.

Electoral matters
Governor Allain, Attorney General Pittman, and Molpus were ex officio the three members of Mississippi Election Commission. He proposed election reforms which would eliminate the dual voter registration law that required voters to register at the city and county levels, allow circuit clerks to accept voter registration outside of county courthouses, and end runoff elections. He oversaw the 1984 presidential election in the state which was the first time that voters directly voted for the presidential candidates rather than their electors. Molpus successfully pushed for the legislature to reform lobbyist laws to require lobbyists to report all money spent on public officials.

Molpus announced a twenty-five member task force on June 19, 1984, to review Mississippi's election laws and recommend improvements. The task force made recommendations that included the at-large election of municipal officials, requiring the usage of electronic voting systems, having a statewide voter registration list compiled by the secretary of state, simplifying the wording for constitution amendment referendums, and requiring political action committees to submit financials reports for state and local elections. At the time forty-nine counties still used paper ballots and would save $473,000 per year by changing to electronic voting. There was also no statewide voter registration list with each county reporting its number of voters which produced figures that were not up-to-date.

Legislation encompassing some of the proposals was passed in 1986, including the extension of voting hours, reduction of the minimum number of poll workers, standardization of prohibited campaign areas, constitutional amendment summaries on ballots, requiring the usage of automated devices to count ballots by counties before 1989, the denial of the right to vote for felons, increasing the number of election commissioners, repealing anti-single shot voting legislation, and other provisions. It was approved by the United States Department of Justice, as required by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, on January 2, 1987. He also supported the revival of state ballot initiatives in 1992.

1988 U.S. Senate campaign

Molpus stated in 1987, that he would consider running in the 1988 U.S. Senate election, if John C. Stennis chose not to seek reelection, and campaign correspondence in October showed his interest in running. Stennis stated that he would not run for reelection in the 1988 election. Molpus announced his campaign for the Democratic senatorial nomination on December 1, 1987, with Crews, who worked as Winter's press secretary, as his campaign manager. He was criticized for running for another office as he was reelected in 1987. He faced U.S. Representative Wayne Dowdy in the primary. Both men stressed the need for better educational opportunities and economic development. Dowdy won the Democratic nomination. During the campaign he criticized Dowdy for his low voting attendance of 68 percent, a line of rhetoric which was later used by Republican nominee Trent Lott in the general election. Molpus ended his campaign with the third highest debt for any 1988 senatorial candidate in the country at $356,700. His outstanding campaign debt and obligations was $439,776 in 1989.

1995 gubernatorial campaign

In 1995, Molpus ran for the office of Governor of Mississippi. Easily winning the August 8 Democratic primary over evangelist Shawn O'Hara with 77.1 percent of the vote, he faced Republican incumbent Kirk Fordice in the general election. Molpus sought to prevail with a coalition of blacks, white progressives, and possibly white blue collar workers. By the 1990s, Mississippi's politics were trending in an increasingly conservative direction and the interest in reform initiated by Winter's administration was fading. Fordice's position was bolstered by the improving economic and fiscal situation of the state in the 1990s, and early polls indicated that he had a large lead. Since both men faced minimal opposition for their party's nominations, they were able to concentrate their rhetoric on each other early in their campaigns. Anticipating that Molpus would campaign on education improvements, Fordice proposed a conservative education plan which entailed allowing local school districts to fund private schools with state funds. Molpus argued that such a scheme would undermine public schools.

During the election, Molpus campaigned for reductions in sales tax on food and government expenditure while proposing the issuing of bonds to finance economic development. Fordice characterized Molpus' tax plans as inconsistent, given his earlier support for a sales tax increase in 1992. The campaign was marked by personal animosity between the candidates. Fordice portrayed statements from Molpus on the governor's policies as veiled attacks on Fordice's troubled marriage and claimed that as the Secretary of State was responsible for overseeing elections, Malpus should resign due to a conflict of interest. Malpus rejected the accusation of making personal attacks and refused to resign, calling the suggestion "ridiculous".

Both men participated in the first-ever political debate held at the Neshoba County Fair in August. A bitter exchange occurred after the moderator questioned Fordice about his troubled marriage, with Fordice answering in defense of himself while pointing his finger at Molpus. Molpus said to the governor, "Your private life doesn't interest me ... Your public life is what appalls me," causing the crowd to go into uproar. In reference to the 1964 Mississippi Burning murders, Fordice said, "I'll tell you this. I don't believe we need to keep running this state by Mississippi Burning and apologizing for what happened 30 years ago. This is the '90s. This is now. We are on a roll. We've got the best race relations in the United States of America." He finished his remarks by saying, "Never apologize! Never look back! Forward together!" Molpus responded by referring to his 1989 speech, "I apologized to the family, the mother and father and sisters of those three young men who lost their life in Mississippi. I make no apologies to you about that... Kirk Fordice leads more by venom than vision." In a subsequent interview, he accused the governor of being "openly antagonistic to blacks."

In October Molpus' campaign ran a television advertisement featuring his wife criticizing Fordice's education policies. Fordice subsequently mocked her voice at a lunch with journalists. Molpus denounced Fordice's mimicry, saying "Frankly, I'd like to take him out behind the woodshed." Several days later, Fordice approached Molpus after a televised appearance and told him, "This 61-year-old man will take you to the woodshed and I'll whip your ass". Molpus hoped to leverage the incident to his advantage by appealing to more women voters, presenting himself as a gentlemen acting in defense of his wife's honor. A poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research in late October showed the margins of support between the two candidates narrowing, with Molpus having picked up additional support from women.

Molpus lost the November 7 election to Fordice, who earned 455,261 votes (55.6 percent). Molpus earned only 364,210 votes (44.4 percent), though he received about 25,000 more votes than Democrat Mabus had in 1991. He garnered less than 20 percent of the white vote while Fordice won fifty-one of the fifty-eight majority white counties, but won twenty-one of the state's twenty-four majority black counties. Some observers suggested that white voters wanted to "punish" him for his 1989 comments on the Mississippi Burning murders. Molpus' supporters accused Fordice of prevailing due to the use of racist dog whistles.

Business career and later life
In 1993 Molpus, having already planned to run for governor in 1995, considered pursuing a career in timberland investment management in the event his political ambitions faltered. Following his loss in the gubernatorial race, in 1996 he took out a loan and established the Molpus Woodlands Group (MWG). At the time, it was one of eight timberland investment management organizations in the country. The corporation was to operate by purchasing and managing timberlands on behalf of investors. The company acquired its first client the following year and purchased several thousand acres of timberland. Between 1998 and 2000, MWG acquired 545,000 acres in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana and Texas. The following year it signed its first contracts with large corporate clients, and by 2004 it was the largest timberland investment management organization in the Southern United States.

In 2004 Molpus helped create the Philadelphia Coalition, an interracial group designed to promote racial justice. That year he also helped organize the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Mississippi Burning murders, and spoke in favor of state and local efforts to reexamine and prosecute the case. The following year, he was inducted into the Mississippi Business Hall of Fame. In 2006 he co-chaired a bond issue campaign for the Jackson Public School District. That year President George W. Bush appointed Molpus chairman of the board of the United States Endowment for Forestry and Communities, a nonprofit created under the terms of the Softwood Lumber Agreement between the United States and Canada designed to promote sustainable forestry and to promote economic development in timber-reliant communities. He was declared one of the Mississippi Center for Justice's "Champions of Justice" in 2008.

During the February 20, 2013 episode of the satirical news television program The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart satirized Mississippi for failing to fully ratify the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially banning slavery until that year. An earlier attempt to ratify the amendment was made in 1995, but the ratification papers—for which the Mississippi Secretary of State was responsible—were never received by the federal government. Molpus maintained that his office had sent copies of the documents to the Congressional Record and U.S. Senate leaders and "somewhere in between there and Archives, it disappeared." Stewart mockingly suggested that Molpus had deliberately forestalled the process by destroying the papers. Molpus was shocked by the insinuation, and received numerous emails and phone calls from associates who felt he had been portrayed unfairly. Some people posted defenses of Molpus on the internet. Stewart apologized for the joke the following week, saying his show had erred in using "Dick Molpus ... as an avatar for racial bigotry, forgetting, perhaps that Dick Molpus is a real person with a real record on civil rights" and praised him for having "a long and distinguished record of speaking out for civil rights in Mississippi." Molpus said, "I accept his apology ... I was so lifted up by the people of Mississippi that kind of rose to my defense."

Molpus supported Doug Jones in Alabama's 2017 U.S. Senate special election, stating that he was a "Southern hero".

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

title: Dick Molpus


text:
Sant Climent, Taüll

Sant Climent de Taüll, also known as the Church of St. Clement of Tahull, is a Roman Catholic church in Catalonia, Spain. It is an example of Romanesque architecture. Other influences include the Lombard and Byzantine styles, which can be seen throughout the exterior and interior of the building. The church is a basilica plan structure with three naves, each of them with a terminal apse, and large columns separating the side naves. Connecting to the church is a slim bell tower that has six floors plus a base. The artwork inside the church include the famous mural paintings by the Master of Taüll (contained in the different apses and the keys of the arches), as well as the wooden altar frontal. These works of art represent different aspects of Christianity that can also be found in many other works of art. The most famous fresco, of Christ in Majesty in the main apse of the church, has been moved to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona.

Historical context
Sant Climent de Taüll is located in Taüll in the municipality of Valley of Boí, in the province of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain. The exact date of construction is unknown; the church was consecrated on December 10, 1123. In 1064, before Sant Climent de Taüll was constructed, it was an object of sale and exchange by several different counts, including the Counts of Pallars Sovereign (I Artau and his wife Lucia), the Counts of Pallars Jussà (Ramon IV and his wife Valença), as well as tle Erill and other possessions. Sant Climent de Taüll was devoted to and consecrated by Guillem Ramon, Bishop of Roda-Barbastro. One day later Guillem Ramon also consecrated Santa Maria de Taüll, another Romanesque church located near Sant Climent de Taüll.

Sant Climent de Taüll is a Romanesque-style church greatly influenced by the Lombard style, which can be seen through its exterior decoration. The bell tower is an example of Byzantine influence, because it stands out for its verticality. The church was intended as a place for Christian worship, unlike other churches of the time, which were intended as a pilgrimage. The artwork in Sant Climent de Taüll was important in bringing the art into the public atmosphere. The main work of art is the mural painting, located on the central apse of the church. The identity of the painter is unknown, but is referred to as Master Taüll. The altar-frontal was created by a native Catalan artist, possibly in a workshop in La Seo de Urgel.

Technical analysis
Sant Climent de Taüll is the largest, most well preserved, and has the most outstanding architecture out of all the churches in the Valley of Boí. The church is a basilica plan structure, that has three naves (each of them with a terminal apse), and large columns separating the side naves. One of the doorways opens on the west side of the building, with the remains of what might have been a porch. The other openings are located on the south side and on the access tower. The facades of the church do not have any decoration, but the apses have simple Lombard decorations and are built with stone and brick. The central apse on the exterior is decorated by groups of four arches, separated by half columns. The apsidioles (apses on either side of the central apse), have groups of three arches instead of four, with each of the apses having one window each. In addition, the central apse has three arched windows located on ground level and two portholes on either side of the central apse.

In the south corner of the church there is a tall, slim bell tower that has a square plan with a prism-shaped roof. The tower has seven floors (base floor plus six), where the base is the foundation of the entire structure. As we ascend through the bell tower, the structure becomes lighter in weight because of the larger windows near the top of the tower. On each level there are the same number of windows on the four sides of the tower, and there are five arcs in the space around the windows.

Inside Sant Climent de Taüll three naves are separated by three cylindrical columns. The columns are made of amalgamated stone, which support the arcades, and the roof of the church has wooden beams. The first column on the north side of the church near the apse was found to have the inscription of the consecration of the church. This document is painted with white letters on red and black background and is now preserved in the National Museum of Catalan Art. The interior of the church (the walls of the naves, apses and columns) were originally covered with polychrome decoration. In the early twentieth century, the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona took the mural paintings inside the church to protect and preserve them. An exact replica of the mural painting on the central apse was made in place of the original. However, the original mural painting on the northern apse can only be seen in the National Art Museum of Catalonia. The removal of the mural paintings was done by applying horsehide glue. The hardened glue was then peeled off, carrying the pigments of the mural with it.

Mural painting is an art that is painted and applied to the wall, ceiling or other permanent surfaces that are sufficient in size. The technique used is called fresco, where the paint is applied on plaster on walls and/or ceilings. The pigment is mixed with water on a small layer of wet lime mortar or plaster, where it is later absorbed. After several hours, the plaster dries while reacting with the air. This creates a chemical reaction making the pigment stick to the plaster. Over a long period of time, the painting will end up with brilliant colors. One of the main mural paintings is four meters in diameter located on the central apse. There are several holes, due to excess moisture, on the original mural painting on the central apse that have not been restored. A polychrome wood carving and other objects are also located inside the church, some of which were successfully restored.

Sant Climent de Taüll had the earliest wooden altar-frontal, which was 1.36 m × 0.98 m in size. When it reached Barcelona it was covered with a coat of paint which was removed. An inscription on the center of the upper frame shows that in 1579 the altar-frontal was repainted. The wooden altar frontal is enclosed by a narrow wooden frame, which is held together at the four corners with wooden dowels. The figures were each carved separately, and then were attached to the back of the panel using wooden dowels. The four side divisions contain a blind arcade of three arches, where there are figures located directly underneath. The arches are formed from tall capitals, which are supported by slim colonnettes with torus molding, as well as a high base. The upper right corner is slightly damaged, though some of the original colour can be seen on the lower left corner of the antependium. The frame was painted green and yellow, and there are indications that the frame originally had some stucco ornament. The wooden altar frontal used to have four symbols of the evangelists that had filled the outside of the mandorla, but these have been lost.

Formal and stylistic analysis
Sant Climent de Taüll is a form of Romanesque architecture and contains Romanesque artwork. Romanesque architecture is classified by its semi-circular arches on the buildings. It is also best recognized by its massive size, thick walls, round arches, sturdy piers, groin vaults, large towers and decorative arcading. During the time of Romanesque architecture, many more churches were built than castles. The architecture is often a symmetrical plan, and the exterior of the building is very simplistic with clear forms. The building material for the exterior varies in different structures, although brick is generally used. The arches, doors, windows, vaults and arcades used during this time are almost always semicircular.

Mural decorations were a form of art used during the Romanesque period. The paintings were placed on large wall surfaces and on plain, curving vaults. Often it is seen in a mosaic, where the focal point is the semi-dome of the apse with Christ the majesty in the centre. This is very characteristic of the mural painting located on the central apse in Sant Climent de Taüll. The mural painting of the figure of Christ wears a greyish, white robe with a blue mantle. The volumes in the folds of the robe reflect some movement and realism in the image. Christ is located within a mandorla that has a blue background with a blue and red frame, decorated with pearls and circles. The figure of Christ goes beyond the frame of the mandorla, and his feet are resting on a hemisphere. His face is in a perfect axial symmetry which is framed by long hair. The mandorla is placed on a background of three horizontal parallel bands in the colours blue, ocher and black.

Located underneath the mandorla is a black band with white writing. On each side of the centre window (below the black band) are three arches resting on columns of capitals in green, red and black. In between the figures of the Virgin Mary and five saints are columns with wavy line patterns going vertically. These figures lie on top of a background of three horizontal bands in the colours red, blue and green. The faces of the figures in the bottom half of the mural painting is similar to Christ in the mandorla, except they wear different coloured robes.

Sant Climent de Taüll has a basilica plan structure, which is similar to early Christian architecture such as the Roman basilica of Leptis Magna and the Basilica of Old St. Peter. Similar to early Christian architecture, Sant Climent de Taüll has a central nave and an apse. The difference is that Sant Climent de Taüll has three naves and three apses, and a bell tower, whereas early Christian architecture has side aisles, transepts, a narthex and an atrium. In addition, the Santa Maria Maggiore, a basilica in Rome, has a clerestory, whereas the Sant Climent de Taüll is the opposite because it has very few windows.

The mural paintings in Sant Climent de Taüll have elements similar to early Christian paintings. In the central apse of the church, there is a figure of a Pantocrator (Christ in Majesty) surrounded by a mandorla. The Pantocrator can also be seen in the Golden Age of Byzantium, specifically in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. It can also be seen in the Court School of Charlemagne during the Carolingian Renaissance. The Alpha, Omega and the halo around Christ's head can be seen in both the Romanesque and Byzantium age and in the Catacomb of Comodilla.

Iconographical analysis
Sant Climent de Taüll has many mural paintings; however, the main and most famous mural painting is located at the central apse and is of Christ in Majesty within a mandorla. This has now been moved to Barcelona and replaced by a replica.

In the lower part of the second triumphal arch appears a figure of the Agnus Dei contained in a circle with a blue background. The Agnus Dei is a mystic lamb that is presented as having seven eyes and holding a book. On the left side of the same arc, there are scenes of Lazarus, who expresses grief while a dog licks his wounds at the door of a rich man. On the front, left side of the triumphal arch, there is an image of an unknown character holding a helmet. The vertical walls directly under the triumphal arches preceding the apse have an image of saints. Only a few saints, Peter, Clement, and Cornelius, can be identified. In the triumphal arch on the right side, there is a scene of a man with an ax hitting the head of another person. On the northern side of the apse there is a mural painting of six angels. In front of the apse, there is an image of what appears to be a dog on top of the remains of a frame. Under the dog there is a possible image of some type of bird, though it is hard to make out the exact image.

The church has a wooden altar frontal, which is similar to the mural painting in the central apse, because it consists of Christ in a mandorla surrounded by the four tetramorphs. The figure of Christ wears a crown and is seated on a throne with a foot rest. The side compartments are divided into upper and lower registers, each with three figures. There are twelve figures in total on the upper and lower register on either side on Christ, which represents the twelve apostles. In the bottom right register there is a figure of Judas who is hanged. The image of the dead figure with a devil eating his vitals is a symbol of remorse.

title: Sant Climent, Taüll


text:
Taüll

Taüll is a town in the province of Lleida, in Catalonia, Spain. It is home to the church of Sant Climent de Taüll, an excellent example of Romanesque architecture, one of the Catalan Romanesque Churches of the Vall de Boí declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Taüll is one of the villages of the municipality of Vall de Boí in the comarca of Alta Ribagorça.

Etymology
According to Catalan linguist Joan Coromines, the name Taüll comes from the Ibero-Basque roots (a) ta-uri > (a) ta-uli: "the village of the (mountain's) door".

Location
It is located at the bottom of Vall de Boí. The town as of 2008 had 270 inhabitants. In order to get to Taüll, from the city of Lleida take the N-230 road, that begins in Lleida and finishes in Vielha. The N-230 goes through the village of Pont de Suert. At the end of the village turn right to take the L-500, the main road of the Valley of Boí. Continue on this road after leave behind Barruera until another fork. Turn to the right at L-501, reaching the settlements of Boí and Taüll and finishing at the ski resort of Boí-Taüll.

History
In 806 the Count of Toulouse freed the region from the Muslim domination and from the tribute they had to pay. Later, the Valley of Boí was given to the county of Pallars, dependent on the Church of Urgell.

In 911, after a serious conflict with the Church of Urgell, a diocese was established which included the counties of Pallars and Ribagorça.

In 949, both counties separated: Ribagorça remained in the new bishopric while Pallars came back again under the Church of Urgell. Further juridic conflicts made both counties join again and until the early 12th century the region didn't have any sort of stability. It was at this time when the region was favored by Alfons I "El Batallador", due to the direct participation of the region's lords in his reconquest campaign, finally reaching a stable and prosperous period. The lords of Erill had the villages of Taüll and Boí under their jurisdiction, whose amassed wealth allowed all the rustic churches in the valley to be renewed, building the churches of Sant Climent, Sant Martí (destroyed by an avalanche in the 1970s) and Santa Maria, featuring a richly decorated Romanesque architecture with outstanding liturgical furniture.

The lords of Erill were a very important barony in the Pyrenees. They are known because of the planning and construction of the churches in the Valley of Boí. The valley was dominated by the Erills, whose castle is in the nowadays abandoned village of Erillcastell. The name of Taüll means ATA-ULI ("the peak of the village").

Economy
Taüll's economy is based on summer and winter tourism, aside from its aforementioned Romanesque heritage, the town also has a variety of hotels, restaurants and guided hikes. Livestock, the traditional economic activity of the village, is still active.

Geography
Located at an altitude of 1,520 meters in the Sant Martí valley, a small valley in the Valley of Boí. The closest river is the Sant Martí river, Noguera de Tor affluent. A ravine splits the village in two districts: La Guinsa and Lo Barri. La Guinsa goes from the entrance of the village to the ravine, and Lo Barri goes from the ravine to the high part of the village.

Main sights

 * Romanesque Church of Sant Climent de Taüll.
 * Romanesque church of Santa Maria de Taüll.

title: Taüll


text:
Ciro's

Ciro's (later known as Ciro's Le Disc) was a nightclub on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California owned by William Wilkerson. Opened in 1940, Ciro's became a popular nightspot for celebrities. The nightclub closed in 1960 and was reopened as a rock club in 1965. After a few name changes, it eventually became The Comedy Store in 1972.

History
Club Seville opened New Year’s Eve 1935. It featured a "crystal dance floor with subsurface fish, fountains and colored lights in its Crystal Marine Room."

The building was remodeled, and, in January 1940, Ciro's was opened by entrepreneur William Wilkerson at 8433 Sunset Boulevard. In 1934, Wilkerson had also opened Cafe Trocadero, and the restaurant La Rue, both on the Strip, and would later originate The Flamingo in Las Vegas, only to have control of the resort wrested from him by mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. In November 1942, Wilkerson leased Ciro’s to his longtime right-hand man Herman Hover, who would make sure Ciro’s was an important Hollywood hotspot until 1959. Hover filed for bankruptcy in 1959, and Ciro's was sold at public auction for $350,000. Ciro's combined a luxe baroque interior and an unadorned exterior and became a famous hangout for movie people of the 1940s and 1950s. It was one of the places to be seen and guaranteed being written about in the gossip columns of Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, and Florabel Muir. On April 8, 1947, Frank Sinatra slugged "one of the most abusive" Hearst gossip columnists, Lee Mortimer, outside Ciro's.

Among the galaxy of celebrities who frequented Ciro's were Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, James Dean, Ava Gardner, Sidney Poitier, Anita Ekberg, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Betty Grable, Marlene Dietrich, Clark Gable, Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Mickey Rooney, Cary Grant, George Raft, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Judy Garland, June Allyson and Dick Powell, Mamie Van Doren, Jimmy Stewart, Jack Benny, Peter Lawford, and Lana Turner (who often said Ciro's was her favorite nightspot) among many others. During his first visit to Hollywood in the late 1940s, future President John F. Kennedy dined at Ciro's.

In 1965, Ciro's reopened as the rock club Ciro's Le Disc. Ike & Tina Turner performed at the newly opened club with Jimi Hendrix as part of their band. The Byrds got their start at Ciro's Le Disc in 1965. Accounts of the period (reproduced in the sleeve notes to The Preflyte Sessions box set) describe a "church-like" atmosphere, with interpretive dancing. The club also served as the host during the recording of the 1965 Dick Dale album Rock Out With Dick Dale & His Del-Tones: Live At Ciro's. Two years later, it was renamed The Kaleidoscope. In 1968, the club was called It's Boss. In 1969, it was known as Patch 2. The site of Ciro's became The Comedy Store in 1972.

Notable performers
• The 5th Dimension

• The Andrews Sisters

• Ray Anthony

• Desi Arnaz

• Pearl Bailey

• Josephine Baker

• Dave Barry

• Len Barry

• Louie Bellson

• Brook Benton

• Milton Berle

• Theresa Brewer

• The Byrds

• Eddie LeBaron

• George Burns

• Cab Calloway

• Canned Heat

• George Carlin

• Carmen Cavallaro

• Checkmates, Ltd.

• Lou Christie

• Petula Clark

• Rosemary Clooney

• Nat King Cole

• Dick Contino

• Xavier Cugat

• Dick Dale and the Del-Tones

• Billy Daniels

• Bobby Darin

• Sammy Davis Jr.

• Carmen de Lavallade

• The DeMarcos

• Marlene Dietrich

• Phyllis Diller

• The Doors

• Katherine Dunham

• Jimmy Durante

• Bob Dylan

• Barbara Eden

• Duke Ellington

• Eddie Fisher

• Ella Fitzgerald

• Connie Francis

• Benny Goodman

• Slim Gaillard

• Judy Garland

• Marvin Gaye

• Mitzi Green

• Merv Griffin

• Phil Harris

• Jimi Hendrix

• Hildegarde

• Billie Holiday

• Geoffrey Holder

• Libby Holman

• Lena Horne

• Burl Ives

• Joni James

• Herb Jeffries

• Al Jolson

• Spike Jones

• Tom Jones

• Danny Kaye

• Stan Kenton

• The Kingsmen

• Lisa Kirk

• Eartha Kitt

• Abbe Lane

• Gypsy Rose Lee

• Peggy Lee

• Tom Lehrer

• Joe E. Lewis

• Liberace

• Little Richard

• Martin and Lewis

• Don Loper

• Love

• The Lovin' Spoonful

• Nellie Lutcher

• Rose Marie

• Freddy Martin

• Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse

• Al Martino

• Jimmy McHugh

• Liza Minnelli

• Carmen Miranda

• Guy Mitchell

• Jaye P. Morgan

• Patti Page

• Janis Paige

• Freda Payne

• The Peanut Butter Conspiracy

• Edith Piaf

• Dorothy Provine

• Richard Pryor

• Tito Puente

• Carlos Ramírez

• Johnnie Ray

• Della Reese

• Harry Richman

• Don Rickles

• Billy Joe Royal

• Jean Sablon

• Mort Sahl

• Lili St. Cyr

• Olga San Juan

• Hazel Scott

• Roberta Sherwood

• Frank Sinatra

• Sonny & Cher

• Danny Thomas

• Kay Thompson and The Williams Brothers

• Sophie Tucker

• Ike & Tina Turner

• Charles Trenet

• Mamie Van Doren

• Sarah Vaughan

• Veloz and Yolanda

• The Ventures

• Dinah Washington

• Senor Wences

• Mae West

• Josh White

Ciro's club and restaurant chain
The name Ciro's comes from Italian-born Egyptian Ciro Capozzi who founded the first Ciro's bar in Monaco around 1892, next to the café Riche in the newly built Galerie Charles III. According to the story of James Gordon Bennett Jr., having a difference about a table on the terrasse, he bought the café Riche and gave it to Ciro who named it the Ciro's. In 1911, Ciro Capozzi sold the name to an English consortium (including William Poulett, 7th Earl Poulett as main investor, and Clément Hobson ) who open the Deauville Ciro's (still existing as a restaurant belonging to the Groupe Lucien Barrière), the Paris Ciro's in 1912,  and the London one in 1915. Ciro's became a European high society restaurant chain with branches in Monte Carlo, Paris, London (where Audrey Hepburn danced before her film career ), and Deauville. Bartender Harry MacElhone, famous for Harry's New York Bar, first worked at Ciro's in London after World War I.

"'Ciro's was a hip London establishment (before another popular one opened up in Los Angeles in 1940), that had as their bartender Harry McElhone (author of ABC of Cocktails), at which Jimmy took over when Harry went off to Paris. ...' (Ross Bolton)"

"'Louis Adlon, grandson of the proprietor of Berlin’s Hotel Adlon opened Hollywood’s first iteration of Ciro’s in 1934 (with Erich Alexander and George Sorel ) Located on Hollywood Boulevard, the club was informally part of a chain with locations in London, Paris and Berlin. The Hollywood Ciro’s was not a success, apparently, because it soon folded.'"

title: Ciro's


text:
Oil paint

Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. For several centuries the oil painting has been perhaps the most prestigous form in Western art, but oil paint has many practical uses, mainly because it is waterproof.

The earliest surviving examples of oil paint have been found in Asia from as early as the 7th century AD, in examples of Buddhist paintings in Afghanistan; the technique was perhaps not invented there. Oil-based paints made their way to Europe by the 12th century and were used for simple decoration, mostly on wood, but oil painting did not begin to be adopted as an artistic medium there until the early 15th century. Common modern applications of oil paint are in finishing and protection of wood in buildings and exposed metal structures such as ships and bridges. Its hard-wearing properties and luminous colors make it desirable for both interior and exterior use on wood and metal. Due to its slow-drying properties, it has recently been used in paint-on-glass animation. The thickness of the coat has considerable bearing on the time required for drying: thin coats of oil paint dry relatively quickly.

The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the dried oil paint film. The addition of oil or alkyd medium can also be used to modify the viscosity and drying time of oil paint.

History
The technical history of the introduction and development of oil paint, and the date of introduction of various additives (driers, thinners) is still—despite intense research since the mid 19th century—not well understood. The literature abounds with incorrect theories and information: in general, anything published before 1952 is suspect. Until 1991 nothing was known about the organic aspect of cave paintings from the Paleolithic era. Many assumptions were made about the chemistry of the binders. Well known Dutch-American artist Willem de Kooning is known for saying "Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented".

First recorded use
The oldest known oil paintings are Buddhist murals created c. 650 AD. The works are located in cave-like rooms carved from the cliffs of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley, "using walnut and poppy seed oils."

Classical and medieval period
Though the ancient Mediterranean civilizations of Greece, Rome, and Egypt used vegetable oils, there is little evidence to indicate their use as media in painting. Indeed, linseed oil was not used as a medium because of its tendency to dry very slowly, darken, and crack, unlike mastic and wax (the latter of which was used in encaustic painting).

Greek writers such as Aetius Amidenus recorded recipes involving the use of oils for drying, such as walnut, poppy, hempseed, pine nut, castor, and linseed. When thickened, the oils became resinous and could be used as varnish to seal and protect paintings from water. Additionally, when yellow pigment was added to oil, it could be spread over tin foil as a less expensive alternative to gold leaf.

Christian monks were aware of these ancient books and used the techniques in their own artworks. Theophilus Presbyter, a 12th-century German monk, recommended linseed oil but advocated against the use of olive oil due to its long drying time. Oil paint was mainly used as it is today in house decoration, as a tough waterproof cover for exposed woodwork, especially outdoors.

In the 13th century, oil was used to detail tempera paintings. In the 14th century, Cennino Cennini described a painting technique utilizing tempera painting covered by light layers of oil. The slow-drying properties of organic oils were commonly known to early painters. However, the difficulty in acquiring and working the materials meant that they were rarely used (and indeed the slow drying was seen as a disadvantage ).

Renaissance onwards
As the public preference for naturalism increased, the quick-drying tempera paints became insufficient to achieve the very detailed and precise effects that oil could achieve. The Early Netherlandish painting of the 15th century saw the rise of panel painting purely in oils, or oil painting, or works combining tempera and oil painting, and by the 16th-century easel painting in pure oils had become the norm. The claim by Vasari that Jan van Eyck "invented" oil painting, while it has cast a long shadow, is not correct, but van Eyck's use of oil paint achieved novel results in terms of precise detail and mixing colors wet-on-wet with a skill hardly equaled since. Van Eyck's mixture may have consisted of piled glass, calcined bones, and mineral pigments boiled in linseed oil until they reached a viscous state—or he may have simply used sun-thickened oils (slightly oxidized by Sun exposure).

The Flemish-trained or influenced Antonello da Messina, whom Vasari wrongly credited with the introduction of oil paint to Italy, does seem to have improved the formula by adding litharge, or lead (II) oxide. The new mixture had a honey-like consistency and better drying properties (drying evenly without cracking). This mixture was known as oglio cotto—"cooked oil." Leonardo da Vinci later improved these techniques by cooking the mixture at a very low temperature and adding 5 to 10% beeswax, which prevented the darkening of the paint. Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto each may have altered this recipe for their own purposes.

Paint tube
The paint tube was invented in 1841 by the portrait painter John Goffe Rand, superseding pig bladders and glass syringes as the primary tool of paint transport. Artists, or their assistants, previously ground each pigment by hand, carefully mixing the binding oil in the proper proportions. Paints could now be produced in bulk and sold in tin tubes with a cap. The cap could be screwed back on and the paints preserved for future use, providing flexibility and efficiency to painting outdoors. The manufactured paints had a balanced consistency that the artist could thin with oil, turpentine, or other mediums.

Paint in tubes also changed the way some artists approached painting. The artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir said, "Without tubes of paint, there would have been no impressionism." For the impressionists, tubed paints offered an easily accessible variety of colors for their plein air palettes, motivating them to make spontaneous color choices.

Characteristics
Traditional oil paints require an oil that always hardens, forming a stable, impermeable film. Such oils are called causative, or drying, oils, and are characterized by high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids. One common measure of the causative property of oils is iodine number, the number of grams of iodine one hundred grams of oil can absorb. Oils with an iodine number greater than 130 are considered drying, those with an iodine number of 115–130 are semi-drying, and those with an iodine number of less than 115 are non-drying. Linseed oil, the most prevalent vehicle for artists' oil paints, is a drying oil.

When exposed to air, oils do not undergo an evaporation process like water does. Instead, they dry semisolid by oxidation causing polymerization. The rate of this process can be very slow, depending on the oil.

The advantage of the slow-drying quality of oil paint is that an artist can develop a painting gradually. Earlier media such as egg tempera dried quickly, which prevented the artist from making changes or corrections. With oil-based paints, revising was comparatively easy. The disadvantage is that a painting might take months or years to finish, which might disappoint an anxious patron. Oil paints blend well with each other, making subtle variations of color possible as well as creating many details of light and shadow. Oil paints can be diluted with turpentine or other thinning agents, which artists take advantage of to paint in layers.

There is also another kind of oil paint that is water-mixable, making the cleaning and using process easier and less toxic.

Extraction methods and processing
Once the oil is extracted, additives are sometimes used to modify its chemical properties. In this way, the paint can be made to dry more quickly (if that is desired), or to have varying levels of gloss, like Liquin. Modern oils paints can, therefore, have complex chemical structures; for example, affecting resistance to UV. By hand, the process involves first mixing the paint pigment with the linseed oil to a crumbly mass on a glass or marble slab. Then, a small amount at a time is ground between the slab and a glass muller (a round, flat-bottomed glass instrument with a handgrip). Pigment and oil are ground together 'with patience' until a smooth, ultra-fine paste is achieved. This paste is then placed into jars or metal paint tubes and labeled. Modern industrial production uses mill rollers to grind pigment and oil together into a paste.

Pigment
The color of oil paint is derived from small particles of colored pigments mixed with the carrier, the oil. Common pigment types include mineral salts such as white oxides: zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, and the red to yellow cadmium pigments. Another class consists of earth types, the main ones being ochre, sienna and umber. Still another group of pigments comes from living organisms, such as madder root. Synthetic organic and inorganic pigments have been introduced since the nineteenth century. Natural pigments have the advantage of being well understood through centuries of use, but synthetics have greatly increased the spectrum of available colors, and many have a high level of lightfastness.

When oil paint was first introduced in the arts, basically the same limited range of available pigments were used that had already been applied in tempera: yellow ochre, umber, lead-tin-yellow, vermilion, kermes, azurite, ultramarine, verdigris, lamp black and lead white. These pigments strongly varied in price, transparency, and lightfastness. They included both inorganic and organic substances, the latter often being far less permanent. The painter bought them from specialized traders, "color men", and let his apprentices grind them with oil in his studio to obtain paint of the desired viscosity.

During the Age of Discovery, new pigments became known in Europe, most of the organic and earthy type, such as Indian yellow. In the eighteenth century, the developing science of chemistry expanded the range of pigments, which led to the discovery of Prussian blue and cobalt blue. In the nineteenth century, synthetic ultramarine was introduced, zinc white, viridian, chrome yellow, cadmium colours, aureolin, synthetic alizarin and cerulean blue. In the twentieth century, mass production started of titanium white and a new range of lightfast synthetic organic pigments, such as arylide yellow, phthalocyanine and quinacridone. Though having mainly an industrial application, these pigments by the twenty-first century had largely replaced traditional types in artistic oil paint also.

Toxicity
Many of the historical pigments were dangerous, and many pigments still in use are highly toxic. Some of the most poisonous pigments, such as Paris green (copper(II) acetoarsenite) and orpiment (arsenic sulfide), have fallen from use.

Many pigments are toxic to some degree. Commonly used reds and yellows are produced using cadmium, and vermilion red uses natural or synthetic mercuric sulfide or cinnabar. Flake white and Cremnitz white are made with basic lead carbonate. Some intense blue colors, including cobalt blue and cerulean blue, are made with cobalt compounds. Some varieties of cobalt violet are made with cobalt arsenate.

title: Oil paint


text:
HMS Llandaff (F61)

HMS Llandaff was a Salisbury-class frigate or Type 61 aircraft direction frigate of the British Royal Navy, named after the district of Llandaff in Cardiff, Wales. She was built by Hawthorn Leslie and Company at Hebburn on the River Tyne, being laid down on 27 August 1953 and launched on 30 November 1955.

Construction
Llandaff was one of three Salisbury-class frigates ordered on 28 June 1951 as a follow-on to the name ship of the class. She was laid down at Hawthorn Leslie's Hebburn shipyard on 27 August 1953, She was launched by Countess Mountbatten, the wife of Earl Louis Mounbatten, on 30 November 1955. Llandaff broke away from her moorings in a storm on 1 March 1956 and was damaged by collisions with the cruiser HMS Bermuda (52), the frigate HMS Russell (F97) and a merchant ship before she could be brought under control. Despite this damage, she completed and was accepted into service on 11 April 1958.

Royal Navy service
On entry to service Llandaff was the first ship to be trained by the newly established Flag Officer Sea Training organisation at Portland.

She re-commissioned for the 5th time at Singapore in 1967 and returned to UK waters in September 1968, completing the commission at Devonport in 1970.

Between June and September 1968, Llandaff was in transit from Singapore to the United Kingdom. Her trip home was a 'showing the flag' voyage via the Solomon Islands, Cairns (Australia), Auckland (New Zealand), Fiji, Rotuma, the Gilbert Islands, Honolulu, Monterey (USA), Long Beach for refuelling, transit through the Panama Canal then Barbados with a short stop in Azores for refuelling, then home to Devonport.

Bangladesh Navy service
Llandaff was sold to the Bangladeshi Navy on 10 December 1976 and was renamed Umar Farooq. Umar Farooq was converted into a training ship where officers under-training and sailors get sea time. During her long refit, a female officers' gunroom and heads were installed so that female officers under-training can also be accommodated. In the Bangladesh Navy she undertook flag-showing and training visits abroad, notable among them the goodwill visit to India, Pakistan and Maldives in 1989, participation in the Korean International Fleet Review in 1998 and the 2014 search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. With three other frigates she formed the 7th Frigate Squadron and was stationed in Chittagong, Bangladesh. In 2016 she was sold for scrapping.

title: HMS Llandaff (F61)


text: Plutography

title: Plutography


text: Template:Plymouth Argyle F.C. seasons

title: Template:Plymouth Argyle F.C. seasons


text:
Talk:Einsatzgroupen

This "word" is half German and half English. Does it even exist anywhere in the real world? RickK 02:56, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Rick, the point is moot, as the page REDIRECTS to Einsatzgruppen, this word does "exist" for those who write it in an English style, so the REDIRECT helps that. IZAK 04:20, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Why should we have redirect pages at misspellings? john k 08:04, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Because not everyone is bound to Nazi spelling-conventions. Simple isn't it? IZAK 09:02, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Your characterization is offensive. RickK 14:52, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Offensive to who, the SS? IZAK 09:24, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Nazi spelling conventions? You've got to be kidding me. There are all of three google hits for "Einsatzgroupen". This is pointless. john k 16:50, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

 * So if there are at least three it means the word exists and deserves a redirect, right? IZAK 09:24, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

No, three hits means it's not even a common misspelling. john k 17:05, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

 * picky, picky, picky! IZAK 06:08, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

There are 6,820 google hits for "Holocost", 852 for "Holocust", 126 for "Holucaust", and so forth. Should these all be redirects as well? john k 06:13, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Most definitely, why not? Are you worried about "wasting paper"? IZAK 04:40, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Also, none of the hits for "Einsatzgroupen" looks at all reputable. It is simply a misspelling, and should not be a redirect. john k 06:16, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

When is the last time you met a "nice" one? They are all terrible, even the ones spelled right. IZAK 04:40, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Einsatzgroupen


text:
User talk:Brockert/User:Lucky 6.9

From User talk:Lucky 6.9:

renaming VfD items
Here you changed the text of a VfD item, why? The end result was that you removed the existing discussion from the VfD page. Now I need to do through the VfD change log and check your other edits.

I'm not trying to be harsh, but with this and the other comments on this talk page, you should seriously consider spending more time making contributions to the encyclopedia and less time trying to get things deleted from it. Look at this and see how many are VfD related and how few are article-space related. --Ben Brockert 01:22, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

 * If I deleted any text, it was unintentional. And, I believe that I have contributed a great deal to the encyclopedia.  I currently have three articles that I've either contributed to or created from scratch listed as features.  I've made countless edits to other pages as well, all in the interest of improving this thing.  It's fun to hang around the VfD page because the idea of heading off garbage before it sneaks in here is appealing.  I've headed off vandalism, nonsense and vanity.  I've also made other positive contributions, as I've already stated.  If I've made a mistake, then please accept my apology.

 * In fact, I'll tell you what...do me a favor and blank my personal pages, OK? I don't mean to sound childish, but I believe that I can find other things to do with my downtime than contribute to a project in which I'm not wanted.

 * Signing off, I remain, - Lucky 6.9 01:38, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm not going to touch your personal pages. I just got done going through the VfD history and putting back the chunks of text you removed through incautious actions, about a dozen in all. Look at the difference between my first timestamp on this page and the one following this comment, and tell me it was time well spent.

 * If you decide to leave because I chided you for deleting items from administrative proceedings, I'm certianly not going to be the one feeling childish. --Ben Brockert 02:54, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

Eventual eulogy:
 * Lucky 6.9 - After being asked to consider spending more time in article space (last 30 days of edits: 257:405::mainspace:non-mainspace); "I don't mean to sound childish, but I believe that I can find other things to do with my downtime than contribute to a project in which I'm not wanted."

Zoolander: ''Oh. I thought you were going to tell me what a bad eugoogolizer I am.'' Matilda: A what? Zoolander: A eugoogolizer—one who speaks at funerals—or did you think I'd be too stupid to know what a eugoogoly is?

title: User talk:Brockert/User:Lucky 6.9


text:
Neon Ballroom

Neon Ballroom is the third studio album by Australian alternative rock band Silverchair, released in March 1999 by record labels Murmur and Epic. The songs "Anthem for the Year 2000", "Ana's Song (Open Fire)" and "Miss You Love" were released as singles and a short film was released for the song "Emotion Sickness". Neon Ballroom debuted at No. 1 on the Australian albums chart and peaked at No. 50 on the US Billboard 200 chart. It was also their most successful album on the UK Albums Chart, where it peaked at No. 29. The album was nominated for 10 ARIA Awards and was certified Triple Platinum by the ARIA for selling over 210,000 copies in Australia. The album has been described as "heavy rock with orchestral flourishes and synthetic touches with powerfully emotional lyrics" that reflects the personal demons of frontman Daniel Johns, due to the band's rapid international success.

Background, writing and recording
From May 1998, Silverchair worked on their third studio album, Neon Ballroom, with Nick Launay (Midnight Oil, Models, The Birthday Party) producing again. The band had originally intended to take a 12-month-break after the release of 1997's Freak Show, but instead chose to devote their time to making new music.

In 1999, Johns announced that he had developed the eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, due to anxiety. Johns noted that the lyrics to "Ana's Song (Open Fire)" dealt with his disorder ("And Ana wrecks your life/like an anorexia life"), where he would "eat what he needed [...] to stay awake." In June 2004, he revealed that his eating problems developed from the time of Freak Show and when Neon Ballroom was written he "hated music, really everything about it", but felt that he "couldn't stop doing it; I felt like a slave to it." Johns sought therapy and medication but felt "It's easier for me to express it through music and lyrics".

Johns said the album was approached differently compared to the band's previous records: "The first two albums were written with the music being second to something else – like school, and everything else that teenagers go through. My mind was on many things, and music was just one of them. On this album, music was the only thing I was doing and the only thing that I had to concentrate on. I approached it differently in that all of the songs were written as poetry. In three months I wrote about 112 poems, and I made a collage out of the poems, and turned the words that meant the most to me into songs. Then I wrote the music around words, rather than writing the words around the music."

In June 1999, drummer Ben Gillies said about the writing process, "In our year off, [Johns] turned into a hermit, we didn't see him that much. Me and Chris were keeping normal hours, and surfing and hanging out with mates. I didn't really think about the writing, I was just thinking about having a good time. I did have a hand in two songs, though "Spawn Again" which was actually for the movie Spawn, and "Trash" which is kind of heavy, a fast, punky one, but it didn't make the album, I am going to try and be more involved with the writing on the next album. This time I was just lapping up the great atmosphere here in Newcastle." Gillies, however, would not end up contributing to the songwriting on the band's follow-up album, Diorama (2002), with Johns writing all of the songs.

Content
Neon Ballroom was an overhaul of the band's musical style found on their first two albums, Frogstomp (1995) and Freak Show (1997). "Anthem for the Year 2000", for example, retained much of the band's youthful rock energy, but featured a new rock song structure and various electronic effects. In March 2007, Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns said: "To me, I honestly feel like our first record was Neon Ballroom. I've never felt any different. I don't feel like our first two albums were Silverchair: that's our teenage high school band. I don't like them at all. I listen to them and go, 'That's cute', especially the first one, because Frogstomp we were 14. But the second one we're like 16, I'm like 'You're getting older. You're running out of chances'".

"Spawn Again" dates back to 1996 and was originally considered for the band's Freak Show album. It was recorded under the original title "Spawn" when demoing tracks for Neon Ballroom and included, in a remixed form by hip-hop group Vitro on the 1997 soundtrack to the film Spawn, adding various electronic elements to the track. A "Pre-Vitro" mix of the same recording was also released on the Neon Ballroom Limited Edition bonus disc, Volume 1 in 2000, and the Rarities 1994–1999 compilation in 2002. The Neon Ballroom album version of the song is a complete re-recording, re-titled "Spawn Again", featuring additional lyrics, specifically an entire verse adding to the animal liberation narrative. The album recording of "Anthem for the Year 2000" is a different mix on the Australian release than the one found on other releases (including singles). "Satin Sheets" was originally called "Punk Song #3" (and was a contender for Freak Show) and "Paint Pastel Princess" was "All the Same to Me".

Johns wrote all the songs on the album except "Spawn Again" which he co-wrote with Gillies.

Release
Neon Ballroom was released on 8 March 1999 on Sony Records imprint Murmur. The album debuted at number 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart, and was certified 4× platinum by ARIA. It was also certified Gold in the United States. Neon Ballroom outsold Freak Show in North America and throughout the world. To date it has sold a total of 2 million albums worldwide. The album charted in Canada, where it peaked at No. 5. It reached the top 40 on the United Kingdom Albums Chart.

The album has also been issued in gatefold cover vinyl, limited edition cassette and 180 gram vinyl in 2010, as well as in a double pack with Freak Show. On initial release in the UK, Neon Ballroom was issued as a limited edition with a bonus enhanced CD (see track listing).

Neon Ballroom provided three Australian top 20 singles: "Anthem for the Year 2000", "Ana's Song (Open Fire)" and "Miss You Love"; a fourth single, "Paint Pastel Princess", did not reach the top 50. "Ana's Song (Open Fire)" peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks. A vinyl version of the album was limited to 5,000 copies worldwide. In Europe and South America it became the group's most successful album to date. Rolling Stone ' s Neva Chonin attributed their chart success to the album's more "mature" sound.

After the release of Neon Ballroom, Silverchair's three-album contract with Sony Music ended. The group eventually signed with Atlantic Records for North and South America, and formed their own label, Eleven: A Music Company (distributed by EMI), with their manager, John Watson for Australia and Asia.

Neon Ballroom was certified gold by the RIAA on 12 October 1999.

Critical reception
Electric Music Online, who gave it a score of 91%, wrote a highly positive review of the album, and picked "Satin Sheets" and "Miss You Love" as the record's best songs.

Sun-Sentinel writer Marc Weinroth heavily praised Silverchair's ballads on Neon Ballroom, as well as the use of an orchestra on many of the album's songs.

Australian rock music historian Ian McFarlane said "as well as being the band's best album to date, it was universally acknowledged as one of the best albums of the year."

German music magazine Rock Hard gave the album a positive score of 8.5 out of 10.

Legacy
In October 2010, Neon Ballroom was listed at number 25 in the book 100 Best Australian Albums.

In July 2011, music website Concrete Playground ranked Neon Ballroom the 27th best Australian album. In September 2018, Australian radio station Double J ranked the album number 7 on its ranking of "The 50 Best Australian Albums of the '90s".

In January 2019, American online magazine Loudwire included Neon Ballroom on their "15 Best Hard Rock Albums of 1999". In April 2019, Loudwire listed two songs from the album, "Anthem for the Year 2000" and "Ana's Song (Open Fire)", on its "50 Rock Songs That Defined 1999".

In May 2019, David James Young of Australian website Junkee wrote that Silverchair "rarely felt more alive than on Neon Ballroom" and that "it's not the sound of a band aping its heroes — it's the sound of a band shedding its skin; an ugly but nonetheless necessary process of evolution". Young also complimented Silverchair's use of an orchestra on the album, as it "feels vital to these moments on the record, adding further dramatic tension to a record that's already thriving off of it." About the mixed reception it received from some critics, Young wrote: "With 20 years of hindsight, however — not to mention eight full years of Silverchair being spoken of in the past tense — there's a chance for those that may not have understood exactly where Neon Ballroom was coming from to reevaluate it under a new light. Consider that, when a lot of the criticisms were made about Neon Ballroom, it was from the viewpoint of being the most recent studio album for a still-active band."

In July 2020, British magazine Kerrang! listed Neon Ballroom at number 32 on their list of "The 50 Best Albums from 1999".

Touring
Silverchair added an auxiliary keyboardist, Sam Holloway (ex-Cordrazine), for the Neon Ballroom Tour. The US leg had the group playing with The Offspring and Red Hot Chili Peppers, while Silverchair's tour of UK and the rest of Europe had The Living End as the support act. The group appeared at festivals in Reading and Edgefest, amongst others.

Following the tour, the band announced that they would be taking a 12-month-break. Their only live performance in 2000 was at the Falls Festival on New Year's Eve. On 21 January 2001, the band played to 250,000 people at Rock in Rio, a show they described as the highlight of their career.

Release history

 * 8 March 1999 – Australia
 * 16 March 1999 – North America

Personnel

 * Silverchair
 * Daniel Johns – vocals, guitar
 * Chris Joannou – bass
 * Ben Gillies – drums

 * Additional personnel
 * David Helfgott – piano (track 1)
 * Larry Muhoberac – piano arrangement (track 1)
 * Robert Woolf – piano (track 5)
 * Chris Abrahams – piano (track 8)
 * Jane Rosenson – harp (track 8)
 * Sweep (Johns' dog) – guest vocal (track 12)
 * Paul Mac – keyboards (tracks 2, 4, 10, 12)
 * Jim Moginie – keyboards (tracks 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11)
 * Jane Scarpantoni – cello, string arrangements
 * John Harding, Fiona Ziegler, Carl Pini, Alexandra d'Elia, Leoni Ziegler, Emma Hayes, Georges Lentz – violin
 * Leah Jennings – cello
 * George Torbay – conductor (track 2)

 * Technical personnel
 * Nick Launay – production
 * Kevin Shirley – mixing (tracks 2, 5)

title: Neon Ballroom