Cycle with the stars in Steven Rea's 'Hollywood Rides a Bike'

It would be hard to imagine the Oscar-winning film "E.T." without Henry Thomas and his hooded extraterrestrial's bike-riding silhouette against the moon or Paul Newman's classic two-wheeled courtship of Katharine Ross missing from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

Hollywood's friendly affair with bicycles can be traced back nearly a century. It could be an integral part of the main story line, such as in "Breaking Away," or used as a pivotal prop in memorable scenes (the "Do-Re-Mi" sequence in "The Sound of Music") or just objects of pleasure and recreation on studio lots.

Film critic and bike fanatic Steven Rea has pulled together a collection of seldom-seen photos of actors and their bikes in "Hollywood Rides a Bike" (Angel City Press, $20), which is a part of the coverage featured in this Sunday's Arts & Books section.

"It's a convergence of two of my biggest passions in life: movies and bikes," said Rea, who rides his early 1970s, Raleigh DL-1, British postman's bike nearly every day to work at the Philadelphia Inquirer and to screenings.

Long before "eco-friendly" became part of our vernacular, studios stocked their lots with fleets of bikes for stars to zip quickly from stage to dressing room. Drawn from Rea's 2010 Tumblr blog "Rides a Bike," the 125 selected images in this book are a mix of candid back-lot shots, actors at their leisure, posed studio portraits and production stills such as B-movie actress Louise Allbritton's cheesecake shot of her tumble in the 1944 comedy "San Diego I Love You." Other notable crashes featured are Doris Day in "The Tunnel of Love" and Jane Fonda in her first film, "Tall Story."

Images span from the onset of talkies (Fred Allen in 1929's "The Installment Collector") to late 1980s (Tom Hanks on a Silver BMX in "Big"), with the majority of images taken during Hollywood's golden age.

More after the jump

100 years of UCLA on your coffee table

Of the many photographs in a new history of UCLA, one is especially arresting. The photo, from April 1929, shows the school’s first four buildings on its soon-to-open Westwood campus with little else around for miles but rolling hills and a few  houses. “The campus is so far out in the country that it’s obvious only farmers will ever be the students’ neighbors,” the caption reads, quoting a not-particularly-far-sighted journalist at the time.

Clearly, the growth of UCLA and surrounding Westside neighborhoods was never a given. The school’s unusual journey to academic prominence -- with political intrigue and student unrest along the way -- is the basic narrative of “UCLA: The First Century,” a lavish 360-page coffee table book by Marina Dundjerski. (Truth in advertising, the actual centennial doesn't really come around until 2019.)

Pushing against the Berkeley-centric education establishment, Southern Californians undertook much politicking for the state to finally authorize in 1919 “the Southern Branch” of UC on the site now occupied by Los Angeles City College in East Hollywood. The move 10 miles west a decade later was followed by the Depression’s austerities, the Red Scare’s challenge to academic freedom, the Baby Boom’s construction frenzy, the Vietnam War protests, affirmative action debates and the current budget crises. 

Dundjerski, a 1994 graduate of UCLA and a former campus correspondent for The Times, researched that history for eight years, conducting more than 200 interviews and searching through archives for documents and historical photographs. She came away impressed, she said, about “how much risk everybody took in building UCLA to become the institution it is today.”

The book was commissioned by alumni leaders in advance of the centennial and the research was funded with grants from two alumni organizations and the Ahmanson Foundation. It is being published by Third Millennium Publishing Limited of Britain in conjunction with UCLA History Project/UCLA Alumni Association, and officially hits shelves in March; the UCLA bookstore already has it in stock, and Amazon is taking pre-orders.

The gift of Gaga

Amid the torrent of images of her alter ego in elaborate makeup and futuristic fashions, the stripped-bare face of Stefani Joanne Angelina seems startling.

The Grammy award -winning singer has teamed up with outré photographer Terry Richardson for a book of photographs, “Lady Gaga X Terry Richardson” “(Grand Central Publishing, $50), a showcase of more than 350 color and black-and-white photos taken on a nearly yearlong global odyssey.

Richardson, known for his risqué, clothing-optional style, captured all sides of the chameleon-like pop star, commencing with the 2010 Lollapalooza festival, continuing to her unforgettable egg-encased arrival at the 2011 Grammys and on through to the final show of her Monster Ball tour.

It’s a not-for-kids picture book with a sententious foreword by Gaga. The rest is pure, unadulterated visual dialogue. Fans won’t be disappointed with extreme behind-the-scenes and concert shots of the expected snarls and outlandish get-ups. Included are images of Gaga’s it's-what's-for-dinner meat  dress and her poses with Cher, the godmother of attention-grabbing, barely-there Vegas showgirl couture. But most revealing are the black-and-white images with no fuss, no props or theatrical makeup in the way. It’s when the singer takes a moment from the madness, pulls back her hair and ditches the costumes, that we see the real girl who is the mastermind behind the monster.

View a gallery of photos from Lady Gaga x Terry Richardson

Images: From the book LADY GAGA x TERRY RICHARDSON. Working. Photo by Terry Richardson/Grand Central Publishing.

- Liesl Bradner

See Moby up close at Book Soup

There will not be approximately 100,000 people between you and Moby. There might be 50 or even 500, but whatever it is, the number will be manageable.

That is, if you head to Book Soup on Monday to get "Moby: Destroyed." Come 7 p.m., Moby will be ready to sign copies of the book and his latest album, "Destroyed," but no other memorabilia. He won't be posing for photos but doesn't mind if you take them. The book "Moby: Destroyed" is full of photos that he's taken on the road -- empty hallways, full stadiums, cities lit up at night.

"I hope somehow in these pictures," Moby writes, "I'm able to convey the mundanity of touring, juxtaposed with those moments of the strange and/or sublime. One minute on tour you're by yourself in a soulless airport, the next minute you're flying over the most beautiful landscapes on the planet. One minute on tour you're by yourself in a soulless backstage area, the next minute you're on stage pouring your heart out to 75,000 people. Touring is all contrasts and strangeness, and that's what I'm trying to convey in these pictures."

Moby was born Richard Melville Hall. The "Melville" is for Herman Melville, who was thought to have been his great-great-great-granduncle. His stagename came, of course, from "Moby-Dick," Melville's great novel. He could have picked something else by Melville, but "Moby" sounds better than "Typee," "Omoo" or "Bartelby."

Recently Moby restored and moved into a grand old Hollywood home, but he spent most of the summer on tour in Europe. He returns to L.A. for the Book Soup book signing -- and he just might be at the opening of the gallery show of his photographs in Culver City on Saturday night.

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Moby in Spain in July. Credit: Albert Olive / EPA

Noir on the water

It had all the makings of  Hollywood film noir, except it was for real. Between 1927 and 1939, gambling ships run by local rumrunner Tony Cornero floated off Santa Monica and San Pedro just past the three-mile limit, then the international demarcation for legal authority. The ships carried names like the Rex, the Monte Carlo, the Lux and the Tango. 

The cargo on many of the ships consisted of all the necessities for  casino-style gambling: slot machines, roulette wheels, card tables. All of this ran very openly. Leading Southern California newspapers would carry advertisements for the ships. Gamblers would be enticed aboard with offers of free dinners, free drinks and free rides on water taxis to the ships. Once aboard the fleecing began.

It didn’t end until state Atty. Gen. Earl Warren, who would later become the governor of California and, after that, chief justice of the United States, brought it to a halt -- using an innovative legal strategy and a high-profile raid -- in 1939.

This fascinating chapter of Southern California history is brought to life in “Noir Afloat: Tony Cornero and the Notorious Gambling Ships of Southern California” by Ernest Marquez. Published by Angel City Press.

Photos: 'Noir Afloat'

-- Jon Thurber

Photo: The offshore gambling ship The Rex, which first anchored off Santa Monica in 1938. Credit: "Noir Afloat: Tony Cornero and the Notorious Gambling Ships of Southern California"

'Linda McCartney: Life in Photographs' reveals intimate family moments

Before Linda McCartney ever laid eyes on her husband-to-be at the launch party for the album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in 1967, she was already a reputable rock 'n' roll photographer capturing candid behind-the-scenes images of late '60s artists such as the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors and Janis Joplin.

Now, 13 years after her death, Paul McCartney and their children, along with editor Alison Castle, have selected more than 300 photos from her archive of 200,000 images to produce "Linda McCartney: Life in Photographs."

Read the full story in Tuesday's Calendar section.

The 288-page tome also takes an intimate peek at life with the McCartneys, playing and relaxing at their homes in Scotland, London and Arizona.

See a photo gallery from 'Linda McCartney: Life in Photographs'

She stopped taking pictures professionally in the 1970s when she had her family. "We became her subjects," said daughter Mary, who is also a photographer. "We took it for granted a camera always being in our face."

Those personal, tender images reflect happy, normal family moments: Paul and son James laughing in a tub immersed in bubbles, for example, or Paul in his bathrobe with the kids on their farm in Scotland.

-- Liesl Bradner

Images: Right: Linda, Paul and Mary, London 1969. Below: The Beatles and Yoko Ono, London 1969. Credit: Linda McCartney

Found photography drives 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children'

   
The best part of the new novel "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children," (besides that deliciously gothic title) is a series of black-and-white photos sprinkled throughout the book--a young woman carrying a black parasol with a net over her face; two little boys in eerie clown make-up, one of them with a streamer coming out of his mouth; a little girl standing over a pond in a cemetery, her image reflected in double in the water below.  And of course, the amazing cover shot:  a little girl in white stockings hovering about 6 inches off the ground.

"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" is the first novel by Ransom Riggs, an L.A. based writer and filmmaker. It's a gothic tale with a teenage protagonist, which is why the publisher is marketing it as a young adult novel, but I read it and liked it, and I'm in my 30s. The book came about when Riggs started collecting found photography at flea markets and swap meets about three years ago.  He kept coming across strange creepy pictures of kids and felt like he wanted to do something with them.  "I was thinking maybe they could be a book, like [Edward Gorey's] 'The Gashlycrumb Tinies,' " he said. "Rhyming couplets about kids who had drowned. That kind of thing."

Riggs had just completed his first book, "The Sherlock Holmes Handbook" for Quirk Books and asked his editor what he could do with the photos. The editor suggested the pictures might inform a novel. "I was like, that sounds like something I kind of always wanted to do," Riggs said. The title came to him immediately and he started constructing a story about a home for children with special powers. He would cast the characters in his novel from the photos that he came across.

Really great found photography is hard to come by, so Riggs started contacting the big guns in the found photography world, including Robert E. Jackson, a collector whose photos were featured in a show at the National Gallery. Jackson and others opened up their archives to Riggs and allowed him to borrow whatever images he needed (a list of images and the collections they are from are in the back of his book).  After looking at close to a 100,000 photos, he eventually amassed a pool of 300 to 400  usable pictures and whittled that down to the 44 images he used in the book.

 "There were a lot that I didn't get to use, but I'm hoping they can be in future books," he said, "a giant league of peculiar children."

If you'd like to know more about "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children," you can read the prologue and the first chapter of the book at Quirkbooks.com.

-- Deborah Netburn

Photos: "The Snacking Ballerinas," top left, the book's cover, top center, "Miss Peregrine," top right, "The Reflecting Pool," bottom. Credits: The collection of Robert E. Jackson; Quirk Books; the collection of Ransom Riggs; the collection of Peter Cohen.

 

A visual history of the Cannes Film Festival

Next week, as hordes of celebrities, directors and entertainment industry types descend upon the town of Cannes for its 64th annual film festival, chances are that a member of the Traverso family will be there to photograph the festivities. It's a safe bet to bestow on this family the title of official photographers of the Cannes Film Festival: They've been there since the beginning.

It was a sunny, warm September afternoon in 1939 when the mayor of Cannes greeted famed director and cinematographer Louis Lumière as the honorary president of the first international film festival. Photographer Auguste Traverso captured his arrival at the Cannes railway station. It was a fleeting moment, however, because the festival was canceled three days later as World War II broke out in Europe. The festival would not resume until 1946.

That photo can be seen in "Cannes Cinema,"  a collection of 550 photographs culled by photographer Gilles Traverso from the family archives dating from 1939 onward. An introduction and captions written by Serge Toubiana, director of the Cinematheque Francaise, provide a comprehensive visual history of the festival.

See a photo gallery of "Cannes Cinema"

Early on, the Traversos established working relationships with the celebrities and the venues and hotels where they stayed, including the Palm Beach, the Carlton and the Majestic, and received nearly exclusive access.

This was the early '50s, when actors wanted to get their picture taken, eagerly posing for the camera. The images in the book reveal celebrities with less-guarded composure and a genuine enjoyment of their surroundings in the French Riviera town.

This is evident in candid shots of a shirtless Tyrone Power in 1949 and a young Elizabeth Taylor in a bikini between two sailors on La Croisette in 1950. In addition to Taylor, Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren were the crowd favorites, Gilles Traverso, said via email.  After a press conference in 1964 for "La Donna Scimmia," Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi donned a chef's hat and set up a makeshift stove on the beach to make pasta while beach-goers looked on.

How things have changed.

"Having cameras in phones is a horrible idea," Traverso said during our email exchange, commenting on how the festival has evolved in terms of photography. "There are entire nights where we can't have access to the red carpet because the actors have become so skittish about having their picture taken. They are terrified it will be up on the Internet immediately with some horrible comment attached to it." 

For the Traversos, it's still all about capturing the spirit of the festival  -- and a love of cinema.

What is Gilles looking forward to at this year's festival?

"Everyone is very excited about Robert De Niro being president of the jury," he said. "And Terrence Malick's 'Tree of Life' and, of course, its star, Brad Pitt."

-- Liesl Bradner

 

 



Slain photojournalist Tim Hetherington, remembered in books

  Photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was killed in an explosion in Libya on Wednesday, may be best remembered for codirecting the Oscar-nominated documentary "Restrepo." The documentary, codirected by author Sebastian Junger, focused on American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Hetherington had published one book, "Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold," in 2009. Publisher Umbrage writes that the book "entwines documentary photography, oral testimony, and memoir to map the dynamics of power, tragedy and triumph in Liberia’s recent history. It depicts a past of rebel camps, rainforest destruction, Charles Taylor’s trial as a war criminal, and other happenings contrasted with the hope for the future."

Hetherington's work as a photojournalist had appeared in many places, including the New Yorker -- here's a gallery of photographs he shot in Guinea to accompany a 2010 story by Jon Lee Anderson -- and Vanity Fair, which has two galleries of Hetherington's Afghanistan photographs online.

With his colleague Junger, author of "The Perfect Storm," Hetherington traveled to Afghanistan to create an intimate document of the lives of American soldiers there. Actually, there were multiple documents: "Restrepo," Hetherington's photographs and Junger's bestselling book "War."

In the acknowledgements to "War," Junger wrote:

Finally there is my friend, partner and comrade through all of this Tim Hetherington. It's hard for me to even begin describing his contribution to this work. The images he captured -- both stills and video -- have become almost iconic of the war in Afghanistan. But more than that his humor, courage and companionship during our trips helped make this project psychologically possible for me. It was difficult out there, and Tim's attitude about those difficulties was crucial. I was once asked about our collaboration, and my answer was something to the effect that working with Tim was like climbing into a little sports car and driving around really, really fast. He saw this story in startling new ways, and I learned a tremendous amount from just talking to him.

"Thanks, Tim," Junger concluded. "I hope we get to do many more like this."

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-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Author Sebastian Junger, left, with photojournalist Tim Hetherington in Afghanistan in 2007. Credit: Tim Hetherington / Outpost Films

Kate Winslet will publish a book, 'The Golden Hat'

Actress Kate Winslet is accustomed to being around golden statues -- she's been to the Oscars six times as a nominee, winning once. But this fall, she's focusing on a golden hat. That's the title of a book she'll be publishing with Simon and Schuster in November.

"The Golden Hat" is designed to raise awareness of autism. The concept book, based on a poem written by the autistic son of a friend, is about a magic golden hat that helps an autistic child communicate. In Winslet's book, there are photographs of many celebrities all wearing the golden hat.

Among those featured in "The Golden Hat" are Jude Law, Naomi Watts, Peter Sarsgaard, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Laura Dern, Ben Stiller, Christina Aguilera, Anna Wintour, Demi Moore, Don Cheadle, Michael Kors and Ricky Gervais. There are a few celebrities who will be pictured in
"The Gold Hat" -- including Meryl Streep and Javier Bardem -- who have golden Oscar stauettes of their own.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Kate Winslet at the 2010 Oscars. Credit: Jay L. Clenendin / Los Angeles Times