Of muralists, minimalists, and magicians, Vol. V

Autumn Road

By David "Chet" Williamson Sneade

Painter Walter Sargent was born in Worcester in 1868. A painter and illustrator of landscapes, he was educated at Harvard University and studied with Léon Lhermitte and Paul-Louis Delance in Paris. His specialty was illustrating educational works and was better known as an educator. Sargent was a professor of arts education at the University of Chicago. On the school’s website, there is a legacy of the Department of Art History. It reads: “With the ambition to bring under one roof the historical study, aesthetic appreciation, and practical instruction of art, they selected Walter Sargent, a professor of arts education at the University’s School of Education, to serve as its first chair.

Walter Sargent

“Rejecting attributes of cultural elitism or pastime that clung to art in the public perception, Sargent understood art democratically as a unique mode of expression and form of experience whose training was essential to everybody’s intellectual development and general education. Though the department remained small under his tenure, with the addition of only two faculty members, Sargent helped make the arts an important element of the University’s curriculum for the first time.”

Sunset in the Forest

According to Barbara Jaffee, Sargent was a progressive educator dedicated to “the proposition that art was an integral part of daily life as the overarching category under which all else was subsumed. She also noted that Sargent said that when focusing on the process by which children learn to draw there are three factors that influence their ability to draw: “First, the child must want to say something, must have some idea or image to express through drawing. Second, the child needs to work from devices such as three-dimensional models or pictures in making his drawings. Finally, children often learn to draw one thing well but not others, so that skill in drawing is specific; a person could be good at drawing houses or boats and not good at drawing horses or cows.”

Sargent is the author of The Enjoyment and Use of Color, How Children Learn to Draw, and Modeling in Public Schools.

He died in 1927 in North Scituate.

Actress Helen Marcy was born in Worcester in 1914. In her career as a performer, she appeared on theater stages and film sets with such recognizable stars as Bela Lugosi, Ginger Rogers, and James Dean.

One of her first reviews appeared in a 1940 edition of the New York Times. Marcy appeared in The Apple Corps Theater, production of Reginald Denham and Edward Percy thriller, Ladies in Retirement. “The play begins deceptively as a domestic drama about two ladies in quiet retirement, but it gradually gathers storm warnings of murderous intent. If staged tautly, it might still be an effective melodrama. However, the production by William MacDuff is lackluster - except for Larry Brodsky's set, which echoes with atmosphere, and for the performance by Helen Marcy.

“In the role created on Broadway by Flora Robson, Miss Marcy plays an impoverished housekeeper-companion who shares the home of a wealthy woman (Mary Orr), and assumes the prerogatives of the hostess. She calmly fills the empty rooms with her two elderly sisters, who, as uninvited permanent guests, turn out to be insufferable ingrates. With justification, Miss Orr threatens them with eviction. In response, Miss Marcy greets her with extinction. This leaves two long acts to uncover the crime.”

Her early theater work of note also includes a year run in the 1944 production of In Bed We Cry. A year later, Marcy landed the role of Georgina Allerton in the comedy, Dream Girl at the Coronet Theater. She also starred in a one-act play called Six O’Clock Theater and in an off-Broadway production of E.P. Conkle’s Afternoon Storm in 1948. She received positive reviews: “Helen Marcy contributing a thoughtful portrait of the somewhat bossy Mary.”

In 1949 she was contracted for a production of Twelfth Night and that same year she played opposite Lugosi in Arsenic and Old Lace at the Famous Artists Country Playhouse in New York. Her last theater appearance of note happened in 1951, in an original comedy called Love and Let Love, a two-act Broadway Musical that featured Ginger Rogers. It opened at the Plymouth Theater in New York City.

Sarah Churchill

According to the Independent Movie Database (IMBd), Marcy is best known for Lux Video Theatre (1950), Forgotten Children (1952) and Juliette Low and the Girl Scouts (1952).” Forgotten Children starred Marcy, Cloris Leachman, and Dean. Written by Agnes Eckhardt, it tells the story of a Martha Berry, an American philanthropist and educator who dedicated her life to the poor in the mountain regions of the Deep South. It was first introduced to audiences by actress Sarah Churchill, the daughter of Winston Churchill.

The last decades of her life remain a mystery. She died in 2000.

Magician Steve Dacri was born in Worcester in 1952. At the height of his 30-year career, he was one of America’s premiere “sleight-of-hand” artist. So deceptive was he, that he was said to have the “fastest hands in the world." He was once quoted as saying that he always knew he wanted to be “able to entertain people.” That he did. His parents gave him magic set when he was a child and that set him on the path.

“I was lucky to be tutored and coached by the greatest magicians who ever lived,” he said, “and I owe my success to them. During the show, I try to acknowledge them all and we even show a short film clip of the legendary Dai Vernon, whom we called the Professor, as a tribute to the remarkable man who had the distinction of being the only man to fool Houdini.”

Dacri’s career is highlighted by performances at Radio City Music Hall, Atlantic City, Monte Carlo, and a host of Las Vegas casinos. He has appeared on numerous televisions shows, including “Candid Camera,” “The Dick Cavett Show,” “Good Morning America,” “The Merv Griffin Show, and “The Tonight Show,” among others.

Milton Berle called him, "Fantastic. The best close-up magician I have ever seen." The Las Vegas Sun called him the “king of close-up magic." In his lifetime Dacri was awarded a Merlin – a magician’s highest honor, joining previous winners Siegfried & Roy, and David Copperfield, among others.

He died of colon cancer in 2011 in Las Vegas.

Narrator, Charles “Knox” Manning was born in Worcester in 1904. According to the Screen Actors Guild, Manning began his career in show business in 1930 – first as a film narrator and on the radio as an announcer, actor, commentator, newscaster, and commercial voice performer. His talents earned him the description “one of radio’s most successful salesmen.” The Guild also noted that in a 1949 advertisement in Broadcasting magazine, Knox had “narrated the U.S. government short film Hitler Lives? which won the Academy Award for the Best Documentary (Short Subject) of 1945.”

Manning was in the military during WWII. He was a captain in the Army Air Forces’ First Motion Picture Unit. It listed among its officers Jack Warner and Ronald Reagan. Soon after the war, he took a radio gig at KNX, a CBS affiliate in Los Angeles. Radio Life interviewed him in 1945. “One must try as best as he can to put across the ideals he holds close,” Knox said. “On my program, I try to do all I can to promote racial and religious tolerance and to help in creating a greater understanding among the different peoples of the world.”

Manning began his film career in 1939 as a narrator. Wiki says that from 1940 to 1954, he was “the narrator of Columbia Pictures' popular adventure serials, reading the sometimes tongue-in-cheek scripts with enthusiasm. … Away from Columbia, he was the commentator for Warner Brothers' historical, musical, and novelty short subjects. He made his services available to independent producers as well, bringing equal vigor to a religious drama and an anti-vice crusade.”

Radio continued to be Manning’s forte. For a short time he even had his own program, "The Knox Manning Show" – also known as "Cinderella Story," which “chronicled the rise to fame of Hollywood celebrities. His Behind the Scenes program featured dramatized re-creations of news events involving famous historical figures.” Later in the ‘50s, he became a newscaster for CBS Radio and in the ‘60s, Manning worked as a newsman.

His appearance on film is limited. He can be seen in Cheers for Miss Bishop, Beyond the Line of Duty, Harmon of Michigan, Mr. Hex, Facing Your Danger, The Prince of Peace, She Shoulda Said No! Destination Moon, and Crashing the Water Barrier, among others, mostly shorts.

He died in Los Angeles in 1980.

Basketball player Jack “The Shot” Foley was born in Worcester in 1939. He is best known locally as a phenomenal high school and college player who went on to play professionally with the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks.

He earned his nickname at Assumption Prep where he scored nearly 1,000 points. In his senior year alone he averaged almost 42 points per game. After high school, he was recruited by numerous colleges, but decided to stay in Worcester and go to Holy Cross.

According to the online magazine Celtics Life, “freshmen weren't eligible to play on varsity back then Jack would have to wait a year, but sure enough, was the real deal once he laced them up. He became the first Crusader to score over 2,000 points; that's right folks Cousy, Heinsohn nor Palazzi accomplished the feat (Tommy cracked 1800!). In his senior year, Foley was the nation's second-leading scorer.”

The Celtics drafted “The Shot” in the second round NBA draft of 1962. He was the 16th overall pick. John Havlicek was their first-round pick. Unfortunately, Foley’s stint with Boston was less than stellar. “He'd only play in 5 games with the Celtics, averaging nine minutes per game and six ppg (points per game). In January of 1963 (about 30 or so days after he arrived), the Celtics would sell Foley to the Knicks,” Celtic Life reported. “For the Knicks, Jack would only appear in 6 games that year. And suddenly, that is it.”

Foley returned to the area and settled in Barre, where he became a part-time police officer and later taught at South High School in Worcester, where he coached the varsity basketball team. Now in his 70s, Foley still lives in town.

Artist Ramon Tonelli was born in Worcester in 2006. He was an accomplished actor and inventor, but probably best known for his magical mural on the wall Toupin’s Bakery in the Worcester Center Galleria that became a morning gathering place for several years. As many close to him know, Tonelli was going blind when he rendered the painting. He did it at night with huge bright lights illuminating his work. As he was losing his sight, Tonelli wondered if there was a way to explain color to the blind. His curiosity and termination resulted in the invention of what he dubbed TouchColor, a color-coded concept device for the visually handicapped.

The patent description reads: “Device having a surface which is divided into a plurality of portions, each portion being provided with a distinct color and a textured surface corresponding to each of the said portions, which texture is capable of being sensed by feel and having a separate, distinctive character corresponding to the color of the portion.”

Tonelli was a graduate of Commerce High School, who was also an Army veteran served in World War I and the Korean War. After the military, he headed west to try his hand as an actor. His stage name was Jeff Ronnelly. He appeared in commercials and television shows, most notably, "Dark Shadows." Tonelli also fancied himself as a singer, who released a couple of 45s with local guitarist Joe D’Angelo.

When he died at the age of 79 in 2006, Ramon R.P. Tonelli was living in an apartment on Wellington Street. He asked that flowers and contributions be made to the Mass. Association for the Blind.

Artist Robert Cumming was born in Worcester in 1943. He is seen as a triple-threat in the world of art. He is an equally talented painter, photographer, and sculptor. Truth be told, Cumming works in several media, additionally printmaking, drawing, and writing. His installations and exhibits have been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Untitled Cup

Cumming showed his talent at an early age, winning a drawing contest sponsored Boston Sunday Herald. For his efforts, the budding artist took home one dollar. Cumming was first educated at Massachusetts College of Art. He then received his MFA from the University of Illinois. According to David Campany, Cumming “began his artistic life as a sculptor, and like many artists, he picked up photography as a way to document his work.”

Apex/Oculus

He moved to California in the 1970s. “[He] spent a lot of time in movie memorabilia shops in Hollywood,” says Sarah Bay Gachot. “These shops—filled with flotsam and jetsam from the classic era of Hollywood cinema—were a curious brand of cultural repository for the young artist from Massachusetts, schooled in the Midwest.

Watermelon and Chair

“Cumming honed in on studio photographs, 8-by-10 black-and-white contact prints commissioned in the name of maintaining continuity between scenes, or for testing particular hairstyles or wallpaper samples. The slightly battered stills—bent, inked with notes, and often hole-punched—were nonetheless beautifully photographed, and they had infinitely more detail than the movie-goer ever saw onscreen, as images traveled by at twenty-four frames per second.”

Theater for Two

Ultimately, Cumming applied this “curious language of film illusion” into his own art. Campany says these many years on, a whole new generation is discovering Cumming’s photographs. “The nature of the work – mixing media but somehow remaining quite true to photography’s core ability to show the world without explaining it. … his practice resonates with the work of many younger photographer-fabricators, from Lucas Blalock and Peter Puklus to Shannon Ebner and Anne Hardy.”

A few years ago, Cumming returned to the area. A recent commission includes three outdoor sculptures for the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission. He now lives in Whately, Massachusetts.

Composer and conductor John Coolidge Adams was born in Worcester in 1947. His father was clarinetist who taught his son how to play as well. By the time he was a teenager, young John was playing alongside his dad in a local community band. He later studied with Felix Viscuglia of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Adams began composing as a teenager. His early work includes an opera called Nixon in China. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003 for his composition, On Transmigration of Souls.

Adams studied with Leon Kirchner and Roger Sessions at Harvard University. According to his entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica, “After graduation, he moved to California, where from 1972 to 1982 he taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 1978 he founded and directed the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra’s series “New and Unusual Music,” and he was composer in residence with the orchestra from 1982 to 1985.”

The composer says he was limited by academic teachings. “I was interested in jazz and rock,” he says, “and then I would go into the music department, which was like a mausoleum where we would sit and count tone-rows in Webern. It was a dreadful time… Right from 1967, I knew I was leading a double-life-and that it was dishonest.”

Adams has been described as a minimalist composer, who was inspired by John Cage. According to the Encyclopedia, his “works encompass a wide range of genres and include Shaker Loops (1978), chamber music for string septet; Harmonium (1980), a cantata for chorus and orchestra using the poetry of John Donne and Emily Dickinson; Grand Pianola Music (1981–82), a reworking of early 20th-century American popular music for instrumental ensemble, three sopranos, and two pianos; Harmonielehre (1984–85), for orchestra, an homage to Arnold Schoenberg, whose music was the antithesis of minimalism; and Wound-Dresser (1988), for baritone and orchestra, a work based on Walt Whitman’s poems about his experience as a nurse in the American Civil War.

“One of Adams’s especially popular orchestral works was the fanfare Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986). The recording of another popular orchestral work, El Dorado (1991), won a 1997 Grammy Award. Later large-scale works include the Violin Concerto (1993) and My Father Knew Charles Ives (2003), for orchestra, which alludes to Ives’s works and compositional methods.”

The Worcester boy held the composer’s chair at Carnegie Hall in New York City and founded the “In Your Ear” festival. He has conducted his work and others with a score of orchestras including the Chicago, Cleveland, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Still based in California and prolific, Adams has a son who is also a composer. His name is Samuel Carl Adams.

Poet Marsha Kunin was born in Worcester in 1949. An award-winning writer who published four volumes of poetry, Kunin and fellow poet Richard Fox were scheduled to read their work in honor of the then recently-departed fellow poet Dan Lewis at Nick’s on Millbury Street. Kunin died that day. She was living with cancer.

The reading was titled, The Anatomy of Life: A Poetry Reading and Tribute. The press release for the event asked the audience to “join featured poets Marsha Kunin and Richard Fox on Sunday, August 6 for an exploration of the anatomy of life through their combined verse. Journey through those rich moments of life that are ‘gnarled winding grape vines’ with Marsha and explore the ‘time bomb’ that is cancer with Richard.

“Both poets will read for a total of thirty minutes, weaving their life experiences through fifteen-minute switch-offs. At the end of the reading, members of the Worcester County Poetry Association will join Marsha and Richard on stage to pay tribute to poet Dan Lewis, who recently passed.”

Kumin’s books, which can be found in major libraries throughout the state, such as the Schlesinger Library at Harvard, include Out of Its Cage (2012), Ho Toy, Good Fortune (2013), This Garden, These Woods (2015), and Peregrines Nesting and Other Poems (2017). Poems from these collections can be found in a variety of publications such as the Worcester Review.

The poet was the recipient of degrees from Mt. Holyoke College, the University of Massachusetts, and Rutgers. In addition to her own writing, she was an editor and copyeditor at numerous publishing houses, namely, Random House, Smithsonian Institution Press, and HarperCollins. One such book is Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law by Annabel S. Brett. Another is Conceiving Spirits: birth rituals and contested identities among Laujé of Indonesia by Jennifer Norse.

Kunin died of cancer on Sunday, August 6, 2017.

Actor Lewis Stone was born in Worcester in 1879. His parents were Bertrand Stone and Philena Heald (Ball). He originally set his sights on being a writer. His quest was sidetracked by the Spanish American War. He served in the Army. Returning stateside, he soon shifted directions into acting.

According to Wiki, Stone found success in a popular play from 1912 called Bird of Paradise. The future Academy Award-nominated actor’s career was again interrupted. This time by World War I where he served again, this time in the cavalry. The Los Angeles Times reported that at the close of WWI, Stone returned to acting in the Broadway production of Sidetracked.

“His portrayal made him a star and a matinee idol within a matter of months. Subsequent plays such as The Girl of the Golden West and The Bird of Paradise, favorites of their day, gave him the opportunity to build a lasting foundation as a craftsman. One of the first actors from the legitimate stage to see the possibilities in movies, he made his first screen appearance in 1915 in Honor's Altar, directed by Thomas Ince.”

The Times also noted that his popularity “soared immediately in the new medium and he speedily won roles in other pictures. Among early credits were such films as Scaramouche, The Girl from Missouri, and The Private Life of Helen of Troy. … It was after the advent of the talkies, however, that he reached his greatest popularity as a household name. In the "Andy Hardy" series, Stone became almost better known as Judge Hardy than as Lewis Stone.”

Stone’s career included hundreds of films reaching from the silent era into the 1950s. He was a contract player for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. For MGM he appeared in such popular movies as Angels in the Outfield and Stars in My Crown. His final role was in 1953 as Captain Holt in All the Brothers Were Valiant. Stone was posthumously recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, (6524 Hollywood Blvd).

The Times also reported that Stone was a health-conscious actor. “[He] was moderate in all activities and believed in the value of physical exercise. In his younger days, he was an excellent rider and an able boxer and fencer. As a result of his fitness and strength, he appeared taller than his 5 feet 10 inches.” As healthy as he was purported to be, Stone suffered a cruel fate in death. As Wiki reported, he suffered a heart attack while chasing "some neighborhood kids who were throwing rocks at his garage. ... He gave chase despite his wife's warning not to exert himself. Upon reaching the sidewalk, Stone suddenly collapsed. ... A photo published in newspapers of the day showed Stone lying on the sidewalk immediately after the incident."

Stone died in Los Angeles in 1953. He was 73.

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