title: Kenneth Anger

text: Born to a middle-class Christian Presbyterian family in Santa Monica, California, Anger later claimed to have been a child actor who appeared in the film "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1935); the accuracy of this claim is disputed. He began making short films when he was ten years old, although his first film to gain any recognition, the homoerotic "Fireworks" (1947), was only produced a decade later. The work's controversial nature led to his trial on obscenity charges, but he was acquitted. A friendship and working relationship subsequently began with pioneering sexologist Alfred Kinsey. Moving to Europe, Anger produced a number of other shorts inspired by the artistic avant-garde scene there, such as "Rabbit's Moon" (released 1971) and "Eaux d'Artifice" (1953).


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Returning to the U.S. in 1953, Anger began work on several new projects, including the films "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome" (1954), "Scorpio Rising" (1964), "Kustom Kar Kommandos" (1965), and the gossip book "Hollywood Babylon" (French edition, 1959; U.S. edition, 1965). The latter became infamous for various dubious and sensationalist claims, many of which were later disproved, though some remain urban legends. Getting to know several notable countercultural figures of the time, including Tennessee Williams, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Marianne Faithfull and Anton LaVey, Anger involved them in his subsequent Thelemite-themed works, "Invocation of My Demon Brother" (1969) and "Lucifer Rising" (1972). After failing to produce a sequel to "Lucifer Rising", which he attempted through the mid-1980s, Anger retired from filmmaking, instead focusing on "Hollywood Babylon II" (1984). At the dawn of the 21st century he returned to filmmaking, producing shorts for various film festivals and events.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Anger has described filmmakers such as Auguste and Louis Lumière, Georges Méliès, and Maya Deren as influences, and has been cited as an important influence on directors like Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and John Waters. "Kinsey Today" argued that he had "a profound impact on the work of many other filmmakers and artists, as well as on music video as an emergent art form using dream sequence, dance, fantasy, and narrative".


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Anger was born in Santa Monica, California, as Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer on February 3, 1927. His family was Presbyterian, but he became more interested in the occult. His father, Wilbur Anglemyer, was of German ancestry, and had been born in Troy, Ohio, while his disabled mother, Lillian Coler (the older of the pair), claimed English ancestry. Anger's parents met at the Ohio State University and after marrying had their first child, Jean Anglemyer, in 1918, followed by a second, Robert "Bob" Anglemyer, in 1921. That year they moved to Santa Monica to be near Lillian's mother, Bertha Coler, who herself had recently moved there. There Wilbur got a job as an electrical engineer at Douglas Aircraft, earning enough money that they could live comfortably as a middle-class family.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Kenneth, their third and final child, was born in 1927, but growing up he did not get along with his parents or siblings. His brother Bob later claimed that as the youngest child, Kenneth had been spoiled by his mother and grandmother, and became somewhat "bratty." His grandmother Bertha was a big influence on the young Kenneth, and supported the family financially during the Great Depression. It was she who first took Kenneth to the cinema, to see a double bill of "The Singing Fool" and "Thunder Over Mexico." She encouraged his artistic interests and later moved into a house in Hollywood with another woman, Miss Diggy, who also encouraged Kenneth. He developed an early interest in film, and enjoyed reading the movie tie-in Big Little books. He later said, "I was a child prodigy who never got smarter." He retrospected his attendance at the Santa Monica Cotillon, where child stars were encouraged to mix with non-famous children and where he met Shirley Temple, with whom he once danced.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In 1935, he later claimed, Anger had the chance to appear in a Hollywood film, taking the role of the Changeling Prince in the 1935 Warner Brothers film "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Set photographs and studio production reports (on file in the Warner Brothers collection at University of Southern California, and the Warner Bros. collection of studio key books at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York) contradict Anger's claims, showing that the character was played by a girl named Sheila Brown. Anger's unofficial biographer, Bill Landis, remarked in 1995 that the Changeling Prince was definitely "Anger as a child; visually, he's immediately recognizable".


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Anger's first film was created in 1937, when he was ten years old. The short, "Ferdinand the Bull", was shot on the remains of 16 mm film that had been left unused after the Anglemyers had made home movies with it on a family vacation to Yosemite National Park. In "Ferdinand the Bull", which has never been made publicly available, Kenneth dressed as a matador, wearing a cape, while two of his friends from the Boy Scouts played the bull. His second work, "Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat", which Anger has often called his first proper film, was made from footage of children playing during the summer, accompanied with popular songs by bands, including the Ink Spots. Anger had created "Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat" in 1941, when he was 14, shortly before the Attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent entry of the U.S. into World War II. The next year, he produced another amateur film, "Prisoner of Mars", which was heavily influenced by "Flash Gordon". In this science fiction-inspired feature, in which he played the protagonist, he added elements taken from the Greek mythological myth of the Minotaur and constructed a small volcano in his back yard as a homemade special effect. Many of these early films are considered lost, with Anger burning much of his previous work in 1967.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In 1944, the Anglemyers moved to Hollywood to move in with family, and Kenneth began attending Beverly Hills High School. It was here, he met Maxine Peterson, who had once been the stand-in for Shirley Temple, and he asked her – alongside another classmate and an older woman – to appear in his next film project, which he initially called "Demigods", later retitled as "Escape Episode". Revolving partially around the occult, it was filmed in a "spooky old castle" in Hollywood, and was subsequently screened at the Coronet Theatre on North La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. Around this time, Anger also began attending the screenings of silent films held at Clara Grossman's art gallery, through which he met a fellow filmmaker, Curtis Harrington, with whom he formed Creative Film Associates (CFA). Harrington is said to have introduced Anger to the work of Aleister Crowley. Crowley's philosophy of Thelema would exert a profound influence on the remainder of Anger's career. CFA was founded to distribute experimental films or "underground films" such as those of Maya Deren, John and James Whitney, as well as Anger's and Harrington's.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In high school, Anger started to become interested in the occult, which he had first indirectly encountered through reading L. Frank Baum's "Oz" books as a child, with their accompanying Rosicrucian philosophies. Kenneth was very interested in the works of the French ceremonial magician Eliphas Levi, as well as Sir James Frazer's "The Golden Bough", although his favorite writings were those of the English occultist Aleister Crowley. Crowley had founded a religion known as Thelema based upon a spiritual experience that he had in Egypt in 1904, in which he claimed a being known as Aiwass had contacted him and recited to him "The Book of the Law". Subsequent to his exposure to Crowley, Anger converted to Thelema.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: As Anger discovered his homosexuality, at a time when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United States, he began associating with the underground gay scene. At some point in the mid-1940s, he was arrested by the police in a "homosexual entrapment", after which he decided to move out of his parents' home, gaining his own sparse apartment largely financed by his grandmother, and abandoning the name Anglemyer in favor of Anger. He started attending the University of Southern California, where he studied cinema, and also began experimenting with the use of mind-altering drugs like cannabis and peyote. It was then that he decided to produce a film that would deal with his sexuality, just as other gay avant-garde film makers like Willard Maas were doing in that decade. The result was the short film "Fireworks", which was created in 1947 but only exhibited publicly in 1948.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Upon release of the work, Anger was arrested on obscenity charges. He was acquitted, after the case went to the Supreme Court of California, which deemed it to be art rather than pornography. Anger made the claim to have been seventeen years old when he made it, despite the fact that he was actually twenty, presumably to present himself as more of an "enfant terrible". A homoerotic work lasting only 14 minutes, "Fireworks" revolves around a young man (played by Anger himself) associating with various navy sailors, who eventually turn on him, stripping him naked and beating him to death, ripping open his chest to find a compass inside. Several fireworks then explode, accompanied by a burning Christmas tree and the final shot shows the young man lying in bed next to another shirtless man. Of this film, Anger would later state in 1966 that "This flick is all I have to say about being 17, the United States Navy, American Christmas and the fourth of July." He would continuously alter and adapt the film up until 1980, with it finally being distributed on VHS in 1986.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: One of the first people to buy a copy of "Fireworks" was the sexologist Dr. Alfred Kinsey of the Institute for Sex Research. He and Anger struck up a friendship that would last until the doctor's death, during which time Anger aided Kinsey in his research. According to Anger's unofficial biographer Bill Landis, Kinsey became a "father figure" whom Anger "could both interact with and emulate." Meanwhile, in 1949 Anger began work on a film called "Puce Women", which unlike "Fireworks" was filmed in color. It starred Yvonne Marquis as a glamorous woman going about her daily life; Anger would later state that ""Puce Women" was my love affair with Hollywood ... with all the great goddesses of the silent screen. They were to be filmed in their homes; I was, in effect, filming ghosts." A lack of funding meant that only one scene was ever produced, which was eventually released under the title "Puce Moment". That same year, Anger directed "The Love That Whirls", a film based upon Aztec human sacrifice but, because of the nudity that it contained, it was destroyed by technicians at the film lab, who deemed it to be obscene.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In 1950, Anger moved to Paris, France, where he initially stayed with friends of his (who themselves had been forced to leave Hollywood after being blacklisted for formerly having belonged to trade union organisations). He would later remark that he travelled to the country after receiving a letter from the French director Jean Cocteau in which he told Anger of his admiration for "Fireworks" (shown in 1949 at Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz, France). Upon arrival, Anger and Cocteau became friends, with the Frenchman giving the young protege his permission to make a movie of his ballet "The Young Man and Death", although at the time there were no financial backers for the project. While in Paris he continued producing short films; in 1950 he started filming on "Rabbit's Moon", which was also known as "La Lune des Lapins" and revolved around a clown who was staring up at the moon, in which a rabbit lived, something found within Japanese mythology. Anger produced 20 minutes of footage at the Films du Pantheon Studio in the city before he was rushed out of the studio, leaving the film uncompleted. He stored the footage in the disorganized archives of the Cinémathèque Française, and only collected it again in 1970, when he finally finished and released "Rabbit's Moon". It was at the Cinémathèque Française that he was given by the head, Henri Langlois, prints of Sergei Eisenstein's "Que Viva Mexico!", which he attempted to put into Eisenstein's original order.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In 1953, he travelled to Rome, Italy where he planned to make a film about the sixteenth century occultist Cardinal d'Este. To do so, he began filming at the garden of the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, in which a lady in eighteenth century dress walked through the gardens, which featured many waterfalls (an allusion to the fact that d'Este allegedly sexually enjoyed urination), accompanied by the music of Vivaldi. This was supposedly going to be only the first of four scenes, but the others were not made; the resulting one-scene film was titled "Eaux d'Artifice". As Anger's biographer Bill Landis remarked, "It's one of Anger's most tranquil works; his editing makes it soft, lush, and inviting. "Eaux d'Artifice" remains a secretive romp through a private garden, all for the masked figure's and the viewer-voyeur's pleasure."


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In 1953, soon after the production of "Eaux d'Artifice", Anger's mother died and he temporarily returned to the United States in order to assist with the distribution of her estate. It was during this return that he began to once more immerse himself in the artistic scene of California, befriending the film maker Stan Brakhage, who had been inspired by "Fireworks", and the two collaborated on producing a film, but it was confiscated at the film lab for obscenity and presumably destroyed. Around this time, two of Anger's friends, the couple Renate Druks and Paul Mathison held a party based upon the theme of "Come As Your Madness"; Anger himself attended dressed in drag as the ancient Greek goddess Hekate. The party and its many costumes inspired Anger, who produced a painting of it, and asked several of those who attended to appear in a new film that he was creating – "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome". "Inauguration", which was created in 1954, was a 38-minute surrealist work featuring many Crowleyan and Thelemite themes, with many of the various characters personifying various pagan gods such as Isis, Osiris and Pan. One of the actresses in the film was Marjorie Cameron, the widow of Jack Parsons, the influential American Thelemite who had died a few years previously, while Anger himself played Hecate. He would subsequently exhibit the film at various European film festivals, winning the Prix du Ciné-Club Belge and the Prix de l'Age d'Or, as well as screening it in the form of a projected triptych at Expo 58, the World Fair held in Brussels in 1958.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In 1955, Anger and his friend Alfred Kinsey traveled to the derelict Abbey of Thelema in Cefalù, Sicily, to film a short documentary titled "Thelema Abbey". The abbey itself had been used by Aleister Crowley for his commune during the 1920s, and Anger restored many of the erotic wall-paintings that were found there, as well as performing certain Crowleyan rituals at the site. The documentary was made for the British television series "Omnibus", but was later lost. The following year Kinsey died and Anger decided to return to Paris, where he was described at the time as being "extremely remote and lonely".


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In desperate need of money, Anger and ghostwriter Elliott Stein wrote a book titled "Hollywood Babylon" in which he collected together gossip regarding celebrities, some of which he claims he had been told. This included claiming (with no corroboration or citing of sources) that Rudolph Valentino liked to play a sexually submissive role to dominant women, that Walt Disney was a drug user, addicted to opiates (reflected in the character of Goofy, who's perpetually stoned on cannabis), as well as describing the nature of the deaths of Peg Entwistle and Lupe Vélez. The work was not published in the United States initially, and it was first released by the French publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert. A pirated (and incomplete) version was first published in the U.S. in 1965, with the official American version not being published until 1974. In response to a libel suit Gloria Swanson filed against Anger and the Hollywood Babylon publishers, he sent her a foot-long, sugar-filled coffin with "Here lies Gloria" painted on the lid and lined with a paper printed with Hebrew letters spelling "shalom." The coffin is preserved at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Center collection. After obtaining some financial backing from the publication of "Hollywood Babylon", his next film project was "The Story of O"; it was essentially a piece of erotica featuring a heterosexual couple engaged in sadomasochistic sexual activities, although it refrained from showing any explicit sexual images.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In 1961, Anger once more returned to America, where he lived for a time with Marjorie Cameron. Meanwhile, he began work on a new feature, a film about the biker subculture, which he titled "Scorpio Rising". For this, he employed a biker named Richard McAuley, and filmed him and some of his friends messing around, adding to it scenes of McAuley, or "Scorpio" as he became known, desecrating a derelict church. Anger incorporated more controversial visuals into the piece, including Nazi iconography, nudity, and clips of the life of Jesus Christ taken from Family Films' "The Living Bible: Last Journey to Jerusalem". In "Scorpio Rising", Anger intercuts images of Christ from the cheap religious film with those of Scorpio. The whole film has a soundtrack made up of popular 1960s songs, including "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, "Torture" by Kris Jensen and "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March. Anger himself described the film as "a death mirror held up to American culture ... Thanatos in chrome, black leather, and bursting jeans." It immediately became popular on the underground cinema scene although was soon brought to court with complaints claiming that it was obscene. The jury ruled in favor of the prosecutors, and "Scorpio Rising" was banned, although this ban was subsequently overturned on appeal to the California State Supreme Court.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: With "Scorpio Rising" finished and Anger now living in San Francisco, he went to the Ford Foundation, which had just started a program of giving out grants to filmmakers. He showed them his ideas for a new artistic short, titled "Kustom Kar Kommandos", which they approved of, and gave him a grant of $10,000. Anger spent much of the money on living expenses and making alterations to some of his earlier films, so that by the time he actually created "Kustom Kar Kommandos", it was only one scene long. The homoerotic film involved various shots of a young man polishing a drag strip racing car, accompanied by a pink background and The Paris Sisters' song "Dream Lover". Soon after, Anger struck a deal that allowed "Hollywood Babylon" to be officially published for the first time in the U.S., where it proved a success, selling two million copies during the 1960s. Around the same time Anger also translated Lo Duca's "History of Eroticism" into English for American publication.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: The mid-1960s saw the emergence of the hippie scene and increasing use of the mind-altering drugs Anger had been using for many years. In particular, the hallucinogen LSD, which at the time was still legal in the U.S., was very popular, and in 1966 Anger released a version of his film "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome" titled the "Sacred Mushroom Edition", which was screened to people while taking LSD, thereby heightening their sensory experience. By this time, Anger had become well known throughout the underground scene in the U.S., and several U.S. cinemas screened his better-known films all in one event. With this growing fame, Anger began to react to publicity in much the same way as his idol Aleister Crowley had done, for instance calling himself "the most monstrous moviemaker in the underground", a pun on the fact that Crowley had been labeled "the wickedest man in the world" by the British tabloids in the 1920s. Anger's underground fame allowed him to increasingly associate with other celebrities, including Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, who named Anger godfather to his daughter Zeena Schreck. Despite their differing philosophies, Anger and LaVey became good friends and remained so for many years. But Anger also resented certain celebrities, such as Andy Warhol, who at the time was achieving success not only in the art world but also in the underground film scene. In 1980, Anger threw paint on the front door of a house Warhol had recently moved out of.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In 1966, Anger moved into the ground floor of a large 19th-century Victorian house in San Francisco known as the Russian Embassy. Around this time he began planning a new film, "Lucifer Rising", echoing his Thelemite beliefs about the emerging Aeon of Horus. He tattooed the name of Lucifer on his chest and began searching for a young man who could symbolically become Lucifer, "the Crowned and Conquering Child" of the new Aeon, for the film. While living at the Russian Embassy, he met and lived with various young men who could fill the role, eventually settling on Bobby Beausoleil. Beausoleil founded a band, the Magic Powerhouse of Oz, to record the music for the film. In 1967, Anger said that the footage he had been filming for "Lucifer Rising" had been stolen, blaming Beausoleil, who denied the claims. Anger's unofficial biographer Bill Landis quotes Beausoleil as saying, "what had happened was that Kenneth had spent all the money that was invested in "Lucifer Rising"" and that he therefore invented the story to satisfy the film's creditors. Beausoleil and Anger fell out, with the former getting involved with Charles Manson and the Manson Family. Beausoleil tortured and murdered Gary Hinman in a drug robbery gone wrong, due to a deal involving the Straight Satans Motorcycle Club.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In the October 26, 1967 issue of "Village Voice", Anger publicly reinvented himself by placing a full-page ad declaring "In Memoriam. Kenneth Anger. Filmmaker 1947–1967". He soon publicly reappeared, this time to claim that he had burned all of his early work. The next year, he traveled to London, where he first met John Paul Getty, Jr., who became Anger's patron, and also met and befriended Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, members of The Rolling Stones, as well as actress/model Anita Pallenberg. Anger decided to use much of the footage created for "Lucifer Rising" in a new film, "Invocation of My Demon Brother", which starred Beausoleil, LaVey, Jagger and Richards, as well as Anger himself, the music for which had been composed by Jagger. It was released in 1969, and explored many of the Thelemic themes that Anger had originally intended for "Lucifer Rising". Author Gary Lachman believes the film "inaugurat[ed] the midnight movie cult at the Elgin Theatre." The story of the film, its making, and the people involved inspired Zachary Lazar's novel "Sway".


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Having used up much of the footage originally intended for "Lucifer Rising" for "Invocation of My Demon Brother", Anger again set about to create "Lucifer Rising", a symbolic analogy of the coming Aeon of Horus as prophesied in the Thelemic sacred text, "The Book of the Law". Anger persuaded the singer and actress Marianne Faithfull to appear in it. He also tried to convince his friend Mick Jagger to play the part of Lucifer in the film but Jagger refused. Instead he offered his brother Chris for the part. Anger accepted, but was not happy about it. Anger subsequently filmed eight minutes of film and showed it to the British National Film Finance Corporation who agreed to provide £15,000 in order for Anger to complete it – something that caused a level of outrage in the British press. With this money, he could afford to fly the cast and crew to both Germany and Egypt for filming. Anger befriended Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page around this time, the two sharing a great interest in Crowley. At Page's invitation, Anger travelled to Page's new home, Crowley's former residence Boleskine House located on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland, to help the musician exorcise the building of what Page believed to be a headless man's ghost. Page subsequently agreed to produce the soundtrack for "Lucifer Rising", and used the editing suite which was in the basement of his London home to shape the music which he produced. Anger later fell out with Page's partner Charlotte, who kicked him out of the house. In retaliation, Anger called a press conference in which he ridiculed Page and threatened to "throw a Kenneth Anger curse" on him. Page's music was dumped from the film and replaced in 1979 by music written and recorded by the imprisoned Bobby Beausoleil, with whom Anger had reconciled.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Meanwhile, Anger, who moved to a small apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan, took the footage that he had filmed for "Rabbit's Moon" in the 1950s, finally releasing the film in 1972, and again in a shorter version in 1979. Around the same time he also added a new soundtrack to "Puce Moment" and re-released it. It was also around this time that the publisher Marvin Miller produced a low budget documentary film based on "Hollywood Babylon" without Anger's permission, which upset Anger and led to a lawsuit. He also created a short film titled "Senators in Bondage" which was only available to private collectors and which has never been made publicly available, and had plans to make a film about Aleister Crowley titled "The Wickedest Man in the World", but this project never got off the ground. In 1980, he holidayed with his friend, the playwright Tennessee Williams.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: It was in 1981, a decade after starting the project, that he finally finished and released the 30-minute-long "Lucifer Rising". Based upon the Thelemite concept that mankind had entered a new period known as the Aeon of Horus, "Lucifer Rising" was full of occult symbolism, starring Miriam Gibril as the Ancient Egyptian goddess Isis and Donald Cammell as her consort Osiris, as well as Marianne Faithfull as Jewish mythological figure Lilith and Leslie Huggins as Lucifer himself. Anger once again appeared in the film, starring as the Magus, the same role that he played in "Invocation to My Demon Brother". He had surrealistically combined the roles that these characters played with footage of volcanoes, various ancient Egyptian temples and a Crowleyan adept reading from the man's texts.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Soon after the release of "Lucifer Rising", a PBS documentary of Anger and his films was made, titled "Kenneth Anger's Magick", which was directed by Kit Fitzgerald, who later recalled interviewing him in his New York flat on a very hot July evening, during which Anger revealed that he was so broke that he had been forced to sell his air conditioner. Anger himself considered producing other films that would continue on from "Lucifer Rising" in a series, and he began referring to his finished film as "Part I: Sign Language", to be followed by two further parts. Nonetheless, these projects would never be finished, and Anger himself would not produce any further films for nearly two decades. In need of money, Anger subsequently released "Hollywood Babylon II" in 1984, as well as continuing to screen his films at various festivals and at universities, and continuing to attempt to produce Lucifer Rising II; around this time he began wearing an eyepatch to these public events, something likely due to him having been beaten up and getting a bruised eye, a story that he would bring up in various interviews, although partly changing who it was who had beaten him up in various versions of the story. In 1984, a notorious incident occurred when Anger was invited to appear on "The Coca Crystal Show" but upon arriving at the studio demanded that somebody pay for his taxi ride there, and when they refused, attacked the talent coordinator Maureen Ivice and tried to drag her into his taxi before she was rescued by other members of staff. Anger reportedly escaped the scene by flinging a $100 bill at the cab driver and screaming "GET ME OUT OF HERE!"


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In 1986, he sold the video rights to his films, which finally appeared on VHS, allowing them to have greater publicity. The following year he attended the Avignon Film Festival in France where his work was being celebrated in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of "Fireworks". Soon after this, he appeared in "Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon", a BBC documentary for the "Arena" series directed by Nigel Finch. In 1991, Anger moved to West Arenas Boulevard in Palm Springs, California, living in what was formerly the estate of his good friend Ruby Keeler where the British Film Institute sent Rebecca Wood to assist him in writing an autobiography, which was never actually produced. Instead, in 1995, Bill Landis, who had been an associate of Anger's in the early 1980s, wrote an unofficial biography of him, which Anger condemned, calling Landis "an avowed enemy".


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In 1993, Anger visited Sydney and lectured at a season of his films at the Australian Film Institute Cinema in Paddington. In an interview given at the time with "Black and White" magazine, Anger said he was staying in King's Cross and was putting the finishing touches to the final treatment on a feature film about Australian artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton. This project was unrealised.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: For twenty years from the early 1980s, Anger released no new material. In 2000, at the dawn of the new millennium, Anger began screening a new short film, the anti-smoking "Don't Smoke That Cigarette", followed a year later by "The Man We Want to Hang", which comprised images of Aleister Crowley's paintings that had been exhibited at a temporary exhibition in Bloomsbury, London. In 2004, he began showing "Anger Sees Red", a short surrealistic film starring himself, and the same year also began showing another work, "Patriotic Penis". He soon followed this with a flurry of other shorts, including "Mouse Heaven", which consisted of images of Mickey Mouse memorabilia, "Ich Will!" and "Uniform Attraction", all of which he showed at various public appearances. Anger's most recent project has been the "Technicolor Skull" with musician Brian Butler, described as a "magick ritual of light and sound in the context of a live performance", in which Anger plays the theremin, and Butler plays the guitar and other electronic instruments, behind a psychedelic backdrop of colors and skulls.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Anger makes an appearance in the 2008 feature documentary by Nik Sheehan about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine titled "FLicKeR". Anger also appears alongside Vincent Gallo in the 2009 short film "Night of Pan" written and directed by Brian Butler. In 2009 his work was featured in a retrospective exhibition at the MoMA PS1 in New York City, and the following year a similar exhibition took place in London.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Anger has finished writing "Hollywood Babylon III", but has not yet published it, fearing severe legal repercussions if he did so. Of this he has stated that "The main reason I didn't bring it out was that I had a whole section on Tom Cruise and the Scientologists. I'm not a friend of the Scientologists." Despite withholding legal action against the highly critical 2015 film "Going Clear", the Church of Scientology was known on earlier occasions to sue those making accusations against them.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Several recurring themes can be seen within Anger's cinematic work. One of the most notable of these is homoeroticism; this was first seen in "Fireworks" (1947), which was based around Anger's own homosexual awakening, and featured various navy officers flexing their muscles, and a white liquid (often thought of as symbolising semen), pouring over the protagonist's body. Similar homoerotic imagery is found in "Scorpio Rising" (1963), which stars a muscled, topless, leather-clad biker, and "Kustom Kar Kommandos" (1965), where a young man sensually polishes a car, with close up shots of his tight-fitting jeans and crotch. Images of naked men also appear in "Invocation of My Demon Brother" (1969), where they are eventually filmed wrestling, and in "Anger Sees Red" (2004), in which a muscled, topless man performs press-ups.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Another recurring theme in Anger's films is that of the occult, particularly the symbolism of his own esoteric religion, Thelema. This is visible in "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome", "Invocation of My Demon Brother" and "Lucifer Rising", all of which are based around the Thelemite concept of the Aeon of Horus and feature actors portraying various pagan gods. Anger himself linked the creation of film to the occult, particularly the practice of ceremonial magic, something that Aleister Crowley had been a noted practitioner of, and Anger once stated that "making a movie is casting a spell."


title: Kenneth Anger

text: One of the central recurring images found in Anger's work is the concept of flames and light; in "Fireworks" there are various examples of this, including a burning Christmas tree, and it subsequently appears in many of his other works as well. This relates to the concept of Lucifer, a deity whom Anger devoted one of his films to, and whose name is Latin for "light bearer".


title: Kenneth Anger

text: In many of his films, heavy use is made of music, both classical and pop, to accompany the visual imagery. For instance, in "Scorpio Rising" he makes use of the 1950s/1960s pop songs "Torture" by Kris Jensen, "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March and "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton. He first used music to accompany visuals in the 1941 work "Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat?", where he used tracks by the Mills Brothers. His use of popular music to accompany his films has been cited as a key influence on the development of music videos and of MTV, although he has stated his dislike for the whole music video industry. On one occasion the band Combustible Edison asked him if he would direct a video to accompany their song "Bluebeard" but he declined the offer, believing that while music could be used to accompany film, it was pointless to do it the other way around.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Anger has always been an "extremely private individual," although he has given various interviews over the years, with one interviewer, David Wingrove, describing him in 2008 as "a joy. Gentle, soft-spoken, immaculately tanned, he looks a good two decades younger than his 78 years". In such interviews, he refuses to disclose information on his name change from Anglemeyer to Anger, telling an interviewer who brought the topic up in 2004 that "You're being impertinent. It says Anger on my passport, that's all you need to know. I would stay away from that subject if I were you." In a 2010 interview, however, he said, "I just condensed my name. I knew it would be like a label, a logo. It's easy to remember." Anger is openly gay. He once joked that he was "somewhat to the right of the KKK" in his views about black people, opening him up to criticism for racism, though this was likely a "Crowley-esque joke". He supports the Tibetan independence movement.


title: Kenneth Anger

text: Anger is an acknowledged Thelemite and belongs to the main Thelemic organization, the Ordo Templi Orientis. He viewed many of the men he associated with as living embodiments of Lucifer, a symbol of the Aeon of Horus in Thelemic philosophy, and had his own name inked onto his chest with the Lucifer tattoo. Anger has shown an interest in various other religious movements, particularly those that relate in some way to occultism. For instance, Kenneth was a lifelong friend of Anton LaVey from before the founding of the Church of Satan in the 1960s and even lived with him and his family during the 1990s. LaVey also made an appearance in one of Anger's films, "Invocation of My Demon Brother" (1969) as a devilish priest. Anger describes himself as a "pagan" and refuses to consider himself to be a Satanist. He also characterized Wicca as being a "lunar", feminine religion in contrast with the "solar" masculinity of Thelema.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Nazi concentration camp badges, primarily triangles, were part of the system of identification in German camps. They were used in the concentration camps in the German-occupied countries to identify the reason the prisoners had been placed there. The triangles were made of fabric and were sewn on jackets and trousers of the prisoners. These mandatory badges of shame had specific meanings indicated by their colour and shape. Such emblems helped guards assign tasks to the detainees. For example, a guard at a glance could see if someone was a convicted criminal (green patch) and thus likely of a tough temperament suitable for "kapo" duty.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Someone with an escape suspect mark usually would not be assigned to work squads operating outside the camp fence. Someone wearing an F could be called upon to help translate guards' spoken instructions to a trainload of new arrivals from France. Some historical monuments quote the badge-imagery, with the use of a triangle being a sort of visual shorthand to symbolize all camp victims.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: The modern-day use of a pink triangle emblem to symbolize gay rights is a response to the camp identification patches.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: The system of badges varied between the camps and in the later stages of World War II the use of badges dwindled in some camps and became increasingly accidental in others. The following description is based on the badge coding system used before and during the early stages of the war in the Dachau concentration camp, which had one of the more elaborate coding systems.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Shape was chosen by analogy with the common triangular road hazard signs in Germany that denote warnings to motorists. Here, a triangle is called inverted because its base is up while one of its angles points down.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Double-triangle badges resembled two superimposed triangles forming a Star of David, a Jewish symbol.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Like those who wore pink and green triangles, people in the bottom two categories would have been convicted in criminal courts.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: In addition to color-coding, non-German prisoners were marked by the first letter of the German name for their home country or ethnic group. Red triangle with a letter, for example:


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Polish emigrant laborers originally wore a purple diamond with a yellow backing. A letter P (for ) was cut out of the purple cloth to show the yellow backing beneath.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Furthermore, repeat offenders (, meaning recidivists) would receive bars over their stars or triangles, a different colour for a different crime.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Later in the war (late 1944), to save cloth Jewish prisoners wore a yellow bar over a regular point-down triangle to indicate their status. For instance, regular Jews would wear a yellow bar over a red triangle while Jewish criminals would wear a yellow bar over a green triangle.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Many various markings and combinations existed. A prisoner would usually have at least two and possibly more than six.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Limited preventative custody detainee (, or BV) was the term for general criminals (who wore green triangles with no special marks). They originally were only supposed to be incarcerated at the camp until their term expired and then they would be released. However, when the war began they were confined indefinitely for its duration.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Soviet prisoners of war () assigned to work camps () wore two large letters SU (for , meaning Soviet sub-human) in yellow and had vertical stripes painted on their uniforms. They were the few who had not been shot out of hand or died of neglect from untreated wounds, exposure to the elements, or starvation before they could reach a camp. They performed hard labor. Some joined Andrey Vlasov's Liberation Army to fight for the Germans.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Labor education detainees () wore a white letter A on their black triangle. This stood for ("work-shy person"), designating stereotypically "lazy" social undesirables like Gypsies, petty criminals (e.g. prostitutes and pickpockets), alcoholics/drug addicts and vagrants. They were usually assigned to work at labor camps.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: The (punishment battalion) and SS (probation company) were military punishment units. They consisted of and SS military criminals, SS personnel convicted by an Honor Court of bad conduct and civilian criminals for which military service was either the assigned punishment or a voluntary replacement of imprisonment. They wore regular uniforms, but were forbidden rank or unit insignia until they had proven themselves in combat. They wore an uninverted (point-upwards) red triangle on their upper sleeves to indicate their status. Most were used for hard labor, "special tasks" (unwanted dangerous jobs like defusing landmines or running phone cables) or were used as forlorn hopes or cannon fodder. The infamous Dirlewanger Brigade was an example of a regular unit created from such personnel.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: A (punishment company) was a hard labor unit in the camps. Inmates assigned to it wore a black roundel bordered white under their triangle patch.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Prisoners "suspected of [attempting to] escape" () wore a red roundel bordered white under their triangle patch. If also assigned to hard labor, they wore the red roundel under their black roundel.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: A prisoner-functionary (), or "kapo" (boss), wore a cloth brassard (their , or identifying mark) to indicate their status. They served as camp guards (), barracks clerks () and the senior prisoners (, meaning elders) at the camp (), barracks () and room () levels of camp organization. They received privileges like bigger and sometimes better food rations, better quarters (or even a private room), luxuries (like tobacco or alcohol) and access to the camp's facilities (like the showers or the pool). Failure to please their captors meant demotion and loss of privileges and an almost certain death at the hands of their fellow inmates.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Detainees wearing civilian clothing (more common later in the war) instead of the striped uniforms were often marked with a prominent X on the back. This made for an "ersatz" prisoner uniform. For permanence, such Xs were made with white oil paint, with sewn-on cloth strips, or were cut (with underlying jacket-liner fabric providing the contrasting color). Detainees would be compelled to sew their number and (if applicable) a triangle emblem onto the fronts of such X-ed clothing.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Triangle-motifs appear on many postwar memorials to the victims of the Nazis. Most triangles are plain while some others bear nationality-letters. The otherwise potentially puzzling designs are a direct reference to the identification patches used in the camps. On such monuments, typically an inverted (point down, base up) triangle (especially if red) evokes all victims, including also the non-Jewish victims like Slavs, Poles, communists, homosexuals, Roma and Sinti (see Porajmos), people with disability (see Action T4), Soviet POWs and Jehovah's Witnesses. An inverted triangle colored pink would symbolize gay male victims. A non-inverted (base down, point up) triangle and/or a yellow triangle is generally more evocative of the Jewish victims.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: In June 2020, the re-election campaign of Donald Trump posted an advertisement on Facebook stating that "Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem" and identifying them as "ANTIFA", accompanied by a graphic of a downward-pointing red triangle. The ads appeared on the Facebook pages of Donald Trump, the Trump campaign, and Vice President Mike Pence. Many observers compared the graphic to the symbol used by the Nazis for identifying political prisoners such as communists, social democrats and socialists. Many noted the number of ads – 88 – which is associated with neo-Nazis and white supremacists.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: As an example of the public outcry against the use of the downward-pointing red triangle, as reported by MotherJones, the Twitter account (@jewishaction), the account of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, a Progressive Jewish site stated:"The President of the United States is campaigning for reelection using a Nazi concentration camp symbol.


title: Nazi concentration camp badge

text: Their masks are off. pic.twitter.com/UzmzDaRBup"Facebook removed the campaign ads with the graphic, saying that its use in this context violated their policy against "organized hate". The Trump campaign's communications director wrote that "The red triangle is a common Antifa symbol used in an ad about Antifa." Historian Mark Bray, author of "", disputed this, saying that the symbol is not associated with Antifa in the United States.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: The Greatest Show on Earth is a 1952 American drama film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille, shot in Technicolor and released by Paramount Pictures. Set in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the film stars Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde as trapeze artists competing for the center ring and Charlton Heston as the circus manager. James Stewart also stars as a mysterious clown who never removes his makeup, and Dorothy Lamour and Gloria Grahame also play supporting roles.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: In addition to the actors, the real Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's Circus' 1951 troupe appears in the film with its complement of 1,400 people, hundreds of animals and 60 railroad cars of equipment and tents. The actors learned their circus roles and participated in the acts. The film's storyline is supported by lavish production values, actual circus acts and documentary-style views into the complex logistics behind big-top circuses.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: The film won two Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Story and was nominated for Best Costume Design, Best Director and Best Film Editing. It also won Golden Globe Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Director and Best Motion Picture – Drama.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Brad Braden is the no-nonsense general manager of the world's largest railroad circus. The show's board of directors plans to run a short 10-week season rather than risk losing $25,000 a day in a shaky postwar economy. Brad bargains to keep the circus on the road as long as it makes a profit, thus keeping the 1,400 performers and roustabouts employed.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Brad reluctantly tells Holly, his aerialist girlfriend, that she will no longer be the star. He has been forced to hire world-famous aerialist (and notorious ladies man) "The Great Sebastian" for the center ring display. Holly is heartbroken, and claims that Brad has no feelings. Trouble is also brewing for beloved Buttons the Clown, who never appears without his makeup and seems to possess medical knowledge. Holly finds a newspaper article about a mercy killer, but does not connect the doctor who killed his wife to Buttons.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Sebastian arrives, and is coldly greeted by two former lovers: Angel, who performs in the elephant act with the pathologically jealous Klaus, and Phyllis, who has a dual role as an iron jaw artist and a singer in one of the musical numbers. Sebastian is attracted to Holly, and offers her the center ring. When Brad refuses, Holly vows to make her ring the focus of attention.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Buttons' mother arrives, to warn him the police are on his trail. Meanwhile, the competition between the two aerialists becomes increasingly dangerous; the duel ends when Sebastian removes his safety net, then suffers a serious fall when a stunt goes wrong. Buttons tends to him before the ambulance comes, impressing the circus' doctor. Holly finally has the center ring and star billing, but is unhappy that things turned out this way, and refuses to allow Brad to comfort her.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Brad, who runs a clean show, catches crooked midway concessionaire Harry cheating the customers. Harry is fired, vows revenge, and hangs about the periphery of the show sowing disaffection, particularly with Klaus. Several months later, Sebastian rejoins the show, but his right arm is paralyzed. A guilt-ridden Holly professes her love for Sebastian over Brad. Angel, who respects Brad, rebukes Holly for her actions and starts a relationship with Brad herself. During one of the performances, a furious Klaus threatens to have an elephant step on Angel rather than let her go to another man. Brad intervenes to save her, and fires Klaus.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: FBI Special Agent Gregory joins the second of the two circus trains, hunting for the mercy killer; however, Brad does not recognize the photo of Buttons without makeup. When Buttons tells Brad that Sebastian has feeling in his injured hand - a sign that his disability is not permanent - Brad makes the connection. He casually observes that Gregory will be taking fingerprints at the next stop, so Buttons can escape and lay low if he wishes.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Harry and Klaus stop the first train to rob it. Klaus sees the second train coming, and realizes that Angel is aboard. He drives the automobile head-on toward the second train in an attempt to prevent the two trains from colliding. Unable to brake in time, the second train obliterates the car, killing Klaus and Harry. It also collides with the first train, derailing carriages, breaking animal cages open, shredding equipment and injuring many people.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Brad is pinned in the wreckage, bleeding from a cut artery. Buttons tries to slip away from the wreck site, but Holly, realizing whom she truly loves, begs Buttons for help. Buttons gives Brad a direct transfusion from Sebastian, who has the same rare blood type; Gregory assists him, and afterwards reluctantly arrests him, telling him "you're all right". Buttons gives his dog to a child, and leaves with Gregory to face an unknown fate.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Holly takes command of the show, mounting a parade that leads the whole nearby town to an open-air performance. Brad now realizes how much he loves Holly, but she now has no time for him because the show must continue. Sebastian proposes marriage to Angel and she accepts. Holly leads the performers in an improvised "spec" around the three rings – a magnificent recovery from the disaster that ensures the circus will survive.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: The film features about 85 Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus acts, including clowns Emmett Kelly and Lou Jacobs, midget Cucciola, bandmaster Merle Evans, foot juggler Miss Loni and aerialist Antoinette Concello. John Ringling North plays himself as the owner of the circus.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: The film includes several unbilled cameo appearances (mostly in the circus audiences) including Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, Lamour's costars in the "Road to ..." films. William Boyd appears in his usual guise of Hopalong Cassidy. Danny Thomas, Van Heflin, character actor Oliver Blake and Noel Neill are seen as circus patrons. Leon Ames is seen and heard in the train wreck sequence. A barker, kept anonymous until the film's end, is seen in the closing moments of the film. The voice is finally revealed to be that of Edmond O'Brien.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: One story concerning the movie says that Lucille Ball was offered Gloria Grahame's role but withdrew when she discovered that she was pregnant with her first child, Lucie Arnaz. However, this account has been disputed because when DeMille was filming with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Ball was preparing "I Love Lucy" for its launch on CBS.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Aerialist Art Concello, who was the general manager of Ringling Bros. at the time when DeMille was traveling with the show, doubled for Cornel Wilde in the Great Sebastian's fall scene.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Betty Hutton and Wilde had to learn how to fly on the trapeze for their scenes. Wilde may have faced difficulty because of his acrophobia. Hutton became quite proficient with the single bar. Film footage exists showing Hutton rehearsing on a camera crane 40 feet into the air.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: The music for the song "Lovely Luawana Lady" was written by John Ringling North, who appears briefly as himself during the discussion about whether the show would play the road rather than have a short ten-week season. North was a nephew of the five Ringling brothers who founded Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and was its owner at the time.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: The film earned $12.8 million at the box office in the United States and Canada, making it the highest-grossing film of 1952, as well as Paramount's most successful film to that time. It was also the most popular film in Britain in 1952 and the most popular film of the year in France in 1953.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: The film played for 11 weeks at New York's Radio City Music Hall, a record duration that it shared with "Random Harvest" in 1942 and that would last until at least the 1960s.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: On the film's release, Bosley Crowther in "The New York Times" called "The Greatest Show on Earth" a "lusty triumph of circus showmanship and movie skill" and a "piece of entertainment that will delight movie audiences for years":


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: "Time" magazine called the film a "mammoth merger of two masters of malarkey for the masses: P. T. Barnum and Cecil B. de Mille" that "fills the screen with pageants and parades [and] finds a spot for 60-odd circus acts," but its plot "does not quite hold all this pageantry together." "Variety" wrote that the film "effectively serve[s] the purpose of a framework for all the atmosphere and excitement of the circus on both sides of the big canvas."


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: In 1977, Joe Walders wrote in "TV Guide" that a film's box-office success does not necessarily translate to continued popularity on television, and cited "The Greatest Show on Earth" as a primary example: "[It] was not only the top moneymaker of the year, but it also won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Yet it has rarely done well on television."


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Critic Leonard Maltin opined that "like most of DeMille's movies, this may not be art, but it's hugely enjoyable."


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 49% from 43 reviews with the consensus: ""The Greatest Show on Earth" is melodramatic, short on plot, excessively lengthy and bogged down with cliches, but not without a certain innocent charm."


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: At the 25th Academy Awards, the movie won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Story and received nominations for Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Costume Design, Color. It was the last Best Picture winner to win fewer than three Academy Awards until "Spotlight" (2015).


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Some reviewers consider "The Greatest Show on Earth" among the weakest selections for the Academy Award for Best Picture, as it defeated highly rated films such as "High Noon", "The Quiet Man", "Ivanhoe" and the unnominated "Singin' in the Rain". In 2005, "Empire" listed it as the third-worst Best Picture winner. MSNBC's Erik Lundegaard called "Crash" the "worst Best Picture winner since the 'dull, bloated' film "The Greatest Show on Earth."" In 2013, the selection of "The Greatest Show on Earth" rather than "High Noon" was listed by "Time" among the 10 most controversial Best Picture races. "Premiere" placed the film on its list of the 10 worst Oscar winners It holds the second-lowest spot on Rotten Tomatoes' 2011 list of the 90 films to win Best Picture (ahead of only 1929's "The Broadway Melody").


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: Stanley Kramer alleged that the film's Best Picture Oscar was the result of the political climate in Hollywood in 1952. Senator Joseph McCarthy was pursuing communists at the time, and DeMille was a conservative Republican involved with the National Committee for a Free Europe. Another Best Picture nominee, "High Noon", was produced by Carl Foreman, who would soon appear on the Hollywood blacklist, and one of the scriptwriters of "Ivanhoe", Marguerite Roberts, was also blacklisted.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: However, it is also possible that "The Greatest Show On Earth" won Best Picture because it was seen as a last chance for DeMille to win a competitive Oscar. A Hollywood legend, DeMille's best work had been done during the silent film era, before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was established. It is possible that the members of the Academy who were veterans of the silent era felt that he, as an elder statesman of Hollywood and one of the founders of the Academy, deserved the honor even if the other nominees for Best Picture were in some ways better than "The Greatest Show On Earth".


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: A television series with the same title was inspired by the film, with Jack Palance in the role of Charlton Heston's character. The program ran on Tuesday evenings for 30 episodes on ABC during the 1963–1964 season.


title: The Greatest Show on Earth (film)

text: "The Greatest Show on Earth" was the first film that director Steven Spielberg saw, and he credits it as one of the major inspirations that led him into a film career. He identifies the film's train crash scene as a major influence, reflected in the science-fiction film "Super 8" (2011), which he produced. In an early scene in Spielberg's 2005 remake of "War of the Worlds", the train-wreck sequence from "The Greatest Show on Earth" is briefly shown on a television. The opening scene of Spielberg's 2022 semi-autobiographical film "The Fabelmans" dramatizes his seeing the film on the big screen, in which Sammy Fabelman (the fictional version of young Spielberg) watches it with his parents in a cinema and is mesmerized by the train-wreck sequence.


title: Kia Forum

text: Kia Forum (formerly The Forum) is a multi-purpose indoor arena in Inglewood, California, United States, adjacent to Los Angeles. Located between West Manchester Boulevard, across Pincay Drive and Kareem Court, it is north of SoFi Stadium and the Hollywood Park Casino, and about east of the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). From 1967 to 1999, the Forum was home to the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League (NHL) before both teams joined the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers (who had played at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena) at the new Staples Center (now Crypto.com Arena). From 1997 to 2001, the Forum was also the home of the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks until they moved to Crypto.com Arena as well.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Forum opened on December 30, 1967. Architect Charles Luckman's vision was realized by engineers Carl Johnson and Svend Nielsen. It was a groundbreaking structure without extensive internal support pillars that was unique in an indoor arena the size of the Forum.


title: Kia Forum

text: Alongside Madison Square Garden in New York City, the Forum was once one of the best-known indoor sports venues in the U.S., largely due to the Lakers' success and the Hollywood celebrities often seen there. It was the site of the 1972 and 1983 NBA All-Star Games, the 1981 NHL All-Star Game, 1984 Olympic basketball, and the Big West Conference (from 1983 to 1988) and 1989 Pacific-10 Conference men's basketball tournaments. The venue also hosted tennis and boxing matches, as well as major music concerts and political events.


title: Kia Forum

text: In 2000, the Forum was acquired by the Faithful Central Bible Church, which used it for occasional church services and leased it for sporting events, concerts, and other events. In 2012, the Forum was purchased by the Madison Square Garden Company (MSG), owners of Madison Square Garden, for $23.5 million; MSG announced plans to renovate the arena as a world-class concert venue. On September 24, 2014, the Forum was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. On March 24, 2020, Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer purchased The Forum from MSG for $400 million.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Forum has previously been known as the Great Western Forum, and was nicknamed "the Fabulous Forum" by long-time Lakers play-by-play announcer Chick Hearn. It is also known informally as the L.A. Forum to distinguish it from other places with the name "Forum".


title: Kia Forum

text: On the site of a former golf course, the "fabulous" Forum (as it was colloquially known to locals) was built in 1967 by Jack Kent Cooke (owner of the Lakers and founding owner of the Kings). The Canadian Cooke, who enjoyed ice hockey, was determined to bring the National Hockey League (NHL) to Los Angeles.


title: Kia Forum

text: In 1966, the NHL announced that it was adding six new franchises for 1967, and Cooke prepared a bid. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, which operated the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, supported a competing bid headed by Los Angeles Rams owner Dan Reeves—who already had a hockey team at the Arena, the Western Hockey League's Los Angeles Blades. The Commission told Cooke that if he won the franchise, he would not be allowed to use the facility. In response, Cooke planned to build a new arena in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood. Nearly 30 years later, Cooke told "Los Angeles Times" sportswriter Steve Springer that he remembered "one official representing the commission laughing at him" when Cooke said he would build in Inglewood. Cooke won the franchise, paying $2 million for the Los Angeles club, which he called the Kings. According to Springer, "Cooke went to Inglewood and built the Forum. Goodbye, Lakers. Goodbye, Kings."


title: Kia Forum

text: The round, $16 million building was designed by Los Angeles architect Charles Luckman to be “reminiscent of Roman coliseums.” The arena seats 17,505 for basketball, 16,005 for hockey and up to 18,000 for musical concerts; although it has no luxury suites, it had 2,400 club seats for events. More than 70% of the seats are between the goals, and no seat is more than from the playing surface.


title: Kia Forum

text: During the Cooke era, the Forum hosted five NBA Finals in its first six years (1967–73). The Boston Celtics celebrated both the and championships in the arena, the latter of which marked the final games Bill Russell ever played. The Lakers won the 1972 NBA Finals at the Forum in Game 5, while the New York Knicks' second and most recent championship was also clinched in a Game 5 at the same venue the following season.


title: Kia Forum

text: Cream played two shows during the band's farewell tour, on October 18–19, 1968, with Deep Purple the opening act. The band's show of October 19 produced the live tracks on their farewell LP, "Goodbye". Deep Purple also recorded their part of the show, which was later released as a live album entitled "Inglewood – Live in California".


title: Kia Forum

text: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded shows in June and July 1970, including at the Forum. Some of them ended up on their 1971 live album, "4 Way Street".


title: Kia Forum

text: The Rolling Stones performed at the Forum during their 1969, 1972 and 1975 North American tours. Steppenwolf played there during their "At Your Birthday Party" tour on July 14, 1969, with Three Dog Night the opening act. Three Dog Night recorded their set, which was later released as a live album entitled "Captured Live at the Forum".


title: Kia Forum

text: Queen played a total of 12 concerts from the A Day at the Races Tour on March 2, 1977, through the Hot Space Tour on September 15, 1982.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Jimi Hendrix Experience performed at the forum for the first time on April 26, 1969. A soundboard recording of this concert has been released on Experience Hendrix's Dagger Records, an official bootleg record label. The Experience later performed there again the following year on April 25, 1970, as part of their final U.S. tour. The concert has been widely circulated thanks to 3 available bootleg audience recordings.


title: Kia Forum

text: Between 1970 and 1977 Led Zeppelin performed 16 times at the Forum, including a run of six sold-out dates in 1977. Part of their live album, "How the West Was Won", was recorded at the arena. The band's first 1977 show is the source of the bootleg "Listen to This Eddie". Another bootleg from the Forum shows, "For Badgeholders Only", contains one of the last live performances by Keith Moon on drums, with his surprise performance there.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Jackson 5 performed twice at the Forum: on June 20, 1970, during their first national tour and on August 26, 1972, during their third national tour. The 1970 show broke attendance records, with 18,675 paid admissions and a gross income of $105,000 (when the Jackson 5 had released two albums and three singles). By 1972, they had released seven albums on Motown, in addition to Michael and Jermaine Jackson's solo albums. Both shows were recorded and released as "Live at the Forum".


title: Kia Forum

text: On November 14, 1970, Elvis Presley played afternoon and evening shows, with 18,700 and 18,698 paid admissions. He returned for two more sold-out shows on May 11, 1974, with 18,500 paid admissions each. The Osmonds performed two shows on December 4, 1971, which were recorded and released as "The Osmonds Live".


title: Kia Forum

text: Barbra Streisand performed on April 15, 1972, during Four for McGovern, a fundraiser for George McGovern's presidential campaign. Although ticket prices ranged from $5.50 to $100 and the event grossed $300,000, after expenses were deducted McGovern's campaign received only $18,000. During her set, Streisand asked the audience to choose between "Second Hand Rose" and "Stoney End" for her next song; the latter was the overwhelming choice. Her performance was recorded and released as "Live Concert at the Forum".


title: Kia Forum

text: Bob Dylan's live album "Before the Flood" with The Band was compiled from songs performed at the Forum over the course of three shows on February 13 and 14, 1974. The only song on the album not recorded at the Forum was "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", which was recorded in New York City.


title: Kia Forum

text: Jethro Tull played five sold-out shows in a seven-day stretch in 1975, here at The Forum. The dates were February 3+4, 8–10.


title: Kia Forum

text: Kiss had their debut there in 1976 on February 23 for two consecutive nights, three days after getting their footprints outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and played three more consecutive nights shows the following year, 1977, on August 26–28 (the first of these shows sold out), with live tracks from these 1977 shows included on their second live album, "Alive II", released in October of that same year.


title: Kia Forum

text: On June 21, 1976, Paul McCartney and Wings began a three-night stand at the Forum during their Wings Over the World tour. The shows were McCartney's first live performances in Los Angeles since he played at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964 and 1965 with the Beatles. Some songs played at the Forum appeared on the "Wings Over America" live LP released later that year and re-released in 2013.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Eagles performed three shows during their "Hotel California" tour on October 20–22, 1976. The shows were recorded, with some songs appearing on "Eagles Live".


title: Kia Forum

text: The Bee Gees appeared at the Forum during their "Children of the World" tour on December 20, 1976; the show was recorded and released as "Here at Last... Bee Gees... Live".


title: Kia Forum

text: Alice Cooper brought his big productions of "Billion Dollar Babies", "Welcome To My Nightmare" and "Mad House Rock" to the Forum.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Los Angeles Strings of the World Team Tennis league played home matches at the Forum from 1975 to 1978, led on the court by Chris Evert. The team was owned by Los Angeles businessman Jerry Buss.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Forum hosted several boxing fights, most notably the second Muhammad Ali vs. Ken Norton on September 10, 1973. Several events featured Latin American fighters like José Nápoles, Chucho Castillo, Rubén Olivares, Carlos Zárate Serna and Alfonso Zamora.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Lakers were successful during the 1980s, winning five NBA championships and making the NBA Finals every year except 1981 and 1986. They won the , and championships at the Forum. The Philadelphia 76ers and Detroit Pistons were the only visiting teams to win a championship at the Forum during this period; both teams clinched the title in a Game 4 sweep in and respectively.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Lakers' owner, Jerry Buss, also purchased the Los Angeles Strings expansion franchise of the second incarnation of TeamTennis (the original team and league having folded in 1978) and appointed his 19-year-old daughter Jeanie Buss as the tennis team's general manager, with all home matches played at the Forum.


title: Kia Forum

text: In 1981, Diana Ross filmed the concert portion of her "Diana" television special at the Forum, entering the arena through the audience and singing her 1980 Billboard top-five hit "I'm Coming Out". Guests included Quincy Jones (who conducted a performance of "Home" from "The Wiz") and Michael Jackson, who joined Ross onstage for a performance of her 1980 number-one song "Upside Down". The special began with Ross in a photo session atop the Forum in a silver lamé bodysuit with large, silver-lamé wings.


title: Kia Forum

text: In April 1982, the Forum was the site of the "Miracle on Manchester", in which the Kings overcame a 5–0 deficit in a first-round Stanley Cup playoff game against the Edmonton Oilers to win 6–5 in overtime. With additional upset wins in Games 1 and 5 of the five-game series, the Kings eliminated the heavily favored Oilers to reach the second round.


title: Kia Forum

text: Fleetwood Mac played two shows during its "Mirage" tour on October 21–22, 1982, with Dave Mason opening. The shows, originally scheduled for October 4–5, were postponed when Stevie Nicks developed walking pneumonia. They were recorded for the band's tour video, which was televised in 1983.


title: Kia Forum

text: Genesis played five consecutive sold out concerts at the Forum from October 13–17, 1986, during the first leg of their Invisible Touch Tour.


title: Kia Forum

text: Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez fought at the venue against Ruben Castillo in 1995, Vernon Buchanan in 1988 and Roger Mayweather in 1989.


title: Kia Forum

text: In 1984, the Forum hosted the basketball tournaments and the men's handball finals of the 1984 Summer Olympics. The arena hosted Amnesty International's June 6, 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope benefit concert, headlined by U2 and Sting and featuring Bryan Adams, Jackson Browne, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed, Joan Baez and the Neville Brothers.


title: Kia Forum

text: In 1989, Neil Diamond set the all-time attendance record at the Forum by surpassing his already leading record of seven sold-out shows (in 1983) with 10 sold-out shows. For doing so, Diamond was presented with a gold plaque, stating his accomplishment(s).


title: Kia Forum

text: On December 5, 1988, it was announced that Jerry Buss sold the arena's naming rights to Great Western Savings & Loan, coinciding with the arrival in Los Angeles of hockey star Wayne Gretzky. The building exterior was repainted blue, replacing its original "California sunset red." It was renamed the Great Western Forum; the name was retained for several years, even after Great Western was acquired by Washington Mutual (now Chase) and ceased to exist. Although naming-rights agreements are now commonplace in major American sports, they were rare at the time of Buss's deal with Great Western. There was some initial criticism of the name change, and local residents continued to call the arena "the Forum." Adverse reaction was eventually muted; Great Western Forum sounded like a natural name because of the arena's location in the western United States.


title: Kia Forum

text: Before the 1991–92 NBA and NHL seasons, a new scoreboard was installed, replacing the one in use since the building opened in 1967. The original scoreboard, designed by All American Scoreboards in Pardeeville, Wisconsin, had a two-line message board on each side (the third electronic message board in the NHL, and the second in the NBA). The new scoreboard, designed by Daktronics, kept the two-line message boards and added a Sony Jumbotron scoreboard on each side.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Forum hosted the 1991 NBA Finals and was the site of the Chicago Bulls' first NBA championship victory. It also hosted Games 3 and 4 of the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals between the Kings and Montreal Canadiens, the only time the Stanley Cup Finals was held at the arena. Coincidentally, Montreal's home rink at the time was also called the Forum.


title: Kia Forum

text: By the middle of the decade the Great Western Forum was considered too small; it lacked luxury boxes and had insufficient retail and commercial space. Los Angeles officials, seeking to redevelop the city center, began planning a new downtown sports arena and entertainment complex and hoped to attract the Lakers and Kings from Inglewood.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Kings' owners, who were real-estate developers, agreed to develop the complex; Buss agreed to move the Lakers into the new arena as co-tenants with the Kings and a third tenant, the NBA's Clippers, who would move there from the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. The new Staples Center (now Crypto.com Arena) opened on October 17, 1999; as part of the deal, Buss sold the Great Western Forum to the L. A. Arena Company (which was controlled by the Kings' owners).


title: Kia Forum

text: On April 18, 1999, the Kings played their final regular-season NHL game at the Forum, a 3–2 loss to the St. Louis Blues, on the day that former King and Blue Wayne Gretzky played his final NHL game as a member of the New York Rangers; their last game altogether at the Fabulous Forum was an 8–1 preseason win over the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim on September 20 of that year. Staples Center was still under construction, so the Kings played their remaining preseason home games at the San Diego Sports Arena and the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The Lakers' 118–107 playoff loss to the eventual NBA champion San Antonio Spurs on May 23, 1999, was their last regular or postseason game played at the Forum; they played two preseason games there the following year before they moved to Staples Center.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Los Angeles Sparks played their 2000 season at the arena before following the Lakers and Clippers to Staples Center. The Great Western Forum hosted live events, offices and training facilities for the 2000–2001 Women of Wrestling season.


title: Kia Forum

text: Faithful Central Bible Church, with a congregation of over 12,000, purchased the Great Western Forum at the end of 2000 and began holding church services there on Sunday mornings. Unlike Houston's Lakewood Church, which converted the former Summit into their church, Faithful Central representatives said that they never intended to convert the arena for religious purposes; in 2009, the church discontinued tihe regular use of the Forum for services.


title: Kia Forum

text: During the Faithful Central ownership, the arena was available for concerts, sporting events and other activities requiring a large venue. It was owned by the church's for-profit entity, Forum Enterprises, which accommodated secular and pop-music artists. The church influenced the approval of performers, however; in 2005 and 2009 the Forum refused to allow performances by heavy metal band Lamb of God, whose former name was Burn the Priest.


title: Kia Forum

text: On February 14, 2003, Phish began their first post-hiatus tour at the Forum. A fan jumped onstage during "AC/DC Bag", and they performed a cover of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show's "The Cover of Rolling Stone" after appearing on the magazine's cover.


title: Kia Forum

text: In 2003, Great Western's naming-rights contract on the building expired (despite being bought by Washington Mutual in 1997, their name had been retained in the interim), and Forum Enterprises changed the venue's name back to "the Forum". The Great Western corporate logo and the words "Great Western" remained on portions of the exterior, including the roof (with a logo visible to planes landing at LAX), and were slowly removed over time. The roof, which was the last part of the building to contain the "GW" logo and "Great Western Forum" name, would not be repainted until the MSG remodeling, when it was overlaid with the new "Forum Presented by Chase" logo.


title: Kia Forum

text: In 2004 Madonna premiered the Re-Invention World Tour at the Forum, which was filmed for the documentary "I'm Going To Tell You A Secret".


title: Kia Forum

text: The Forum was made available for film use, including interior shots for the 2002 film "Like Mike". The Foo Fighters used the building as a setting for the music video for "All My Life" in 2003, featuring the building's exterior in its opening and closing shots. In 2008, a scene for the 2009 film "" and the video for Weezer's "Troublemaker" (from their 2008 "Red Album") were filmed outside the Forum.


title: Kia Forum

text: Iron Maiden appeared during their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour on February 19, 2008, with Lauren Harris their opening act. Their live version of "The Number of the Beast" was included on the documentary "".


title: Kia Forum

text: In May and June 2009, Michael Jackson rehearsed at the Forum for his This Is It concert series in London. After Jackson died on June 25, 2009, footage of these rehearsals and those at Staples Center became part of "Michael Jackson's This Is It".


title: Kia Forum

text: On October 9, 2009, the Lakers returned to the Forum for a preseason game against the Golden State Warriors to celebrate the team's 50th season in Los Angeles; the Lakers lost, 110–91.


title: Kia Forum

text: In 2011, Prince began a 21-show run at the Forum. After acquiring the arena in June 2012, the Madison Square Garden Company announced plans for a $50 million renovation. The City of Inglewood made an $18 million commercial-rehabilitation loan, contingent on MSG's $50 million investment. The arena was renamed "The Forum, presented by Chase" to reflect its sponsor, Chase Bank (which had incidentally purchased Great Western's legal successor, Washington Mutual, a few years earlier), and its exterior returned to the original red. New features also included new lighting, new seating, LED video systems and HD screen and new retail.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Forum reopened with six concerts by the Eagles during their History of the Eagles – Live in Concert tour on January 15, 17, 18, 22, 24 and 25, 2014. On March 15–16, the Forum hosted the men's freestyle wrestling World Cup.


title: Kia Forum

text: On May 17, 2014, the Forum hosted its first boxing card since 2001. Mexican Juan Manuel Márquez defeated Mike Alvarado for the WBO international welterweight championship, for the right to challenge world champion Manny Pacquiao. The event was broadcast by HBO's "Boxing After Dark", the first time since its 1996 premiere that the series presented a card from the Forum. On May 16, 2015, Gennady Golovkin defeated Willie Monroe Jr. during a live broadcast on HBO Boxing. Golovkin returned the following year on April 23, 2016, to battle Dominic Wade, which resulted in a second-round KO.


title: Kia Forum

text: On August 24, 2014, the arena hosted the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards, the first major awards show at the Forum. The arena was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 24, 2014.


title: Kia Forum

text: The Foo Fighters performed on January 10, 2015, to celebrate singer Dave Grohl's 46th birthday. Paul Stanley from Kiss, Tenacious D, Slash, Alice Cooper, Zakk Wylde, Perry Farrell, Trombone Shorty, David Lee Roth, and Motörhead's Lemmy all got up and performed with the band.


title: Kia Forum

text: On August 1, 2015, to complete their R40 Live Tour, Canadian rock band Rush performed their final concert at the Forum.


title: Kia Forum

text: On March 27, 2016, former Pink Floyd member David Gilmour played his first ever concert at the Forum as the third show on the US leg of his Rattle That Lock Tour marking the first time a member of Pink Floyd ever played the Forum (Pink Floyd never played the Forum so Gilmour's appearance was the first and to date only time a Pink Floyd member played the venue).


title: Kia Forum

text: The Forum was also the venue of the 2015, 2016 and 2018 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards. In addition, the Forum hosted the 2016, 2017, and 2018 iHeartRadio Music Awards, 2016 American Country Countdown Awards and the 2016 and 2018 Teen Choice Awards.


title: Kia Forum

text: On February 24, 2018, the Forum hosted the world championship Super Flyweight boxing match between Juan Francisco Estrada and Srisaket Sor Rungvisai.


title: Kia Forum

text: On December 29, 2018, the UFC 232 mixed martial arts event was held at the Forum as part of a short notice decision.


title: Kia Forum

text: On April 4, 2019, the Mexican promotion Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide announced that its second event named AAA Invading LA in the United States with the event being its professional wrestling event in the venue.


title: Kia Forum

text: On April 6, 2019, Iranian singer Hamed Homayoun held a concert for 14,000 people at the venue, a record for all Iranian singers who have performed here, including Mohammad-Reza Shajarian and Ebi. Forum management mentioned this performance as one of the venue's most memorable, and prepared a cake with Homayoun's image to commemorate the event.


title: Kia Forum

text: On October 11, 2019, Japanese kawaii metal band Babymetal performed at The Forum, making them the first Japanese band to headline the arena. The show is part of the Metal Galaxy World Tour 2019, a promotional tour for the group's third album "Metal Galaxy", which released on October 11, 2019; simultaneously with the show.


title: Kia Forum

text: On November 29 and 30, 2019, American thrash metal band Slayer performed at the Forum, this event being their final show as the band headlined the area on the Slayer Farewell Tour which was the final tour for Slayer.


title: Kia Forum

text: On March 24, 2020, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer announced that he had agreed to acquire the Forum from MSG for $400 million. The acquisition was needed in order to enable the construction of the Clippers' new Intuit Dome in Inglewood; the Clippers accused MSG of using litigation to block construction of the new arena, which they feared would cannibalize the Forum's live events business.


title: Kia Forum

text: The venue was closed from March 2020 to July 31, 2021 due to COVID-19. The Forum reopened on July 31, 2021, hosting Bellator 263. A concert by the Foo Fighters on July 17, 2021, was originally scheduled to be its first event, but it was postponed due to COVID-19 cases within the band's staff.


title: Kia Forum

text: In February 2022, it was announced that All Elite Wrestling (AEW) would host a live broadcast of "Dynamite" from the Forum on June 1, 2022, marking its first professional wrestling event since 2015.


title: Kia Forum

text: Harry Styles performed a 15-night residency at The Forum in October and November of 2022 as a part of his "Love on Tour" tour.


title: Crown

text: A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, particularly in Commonwealth countries, as an abstract name for the monarchy itself, as distinct from the individual who inhabits it (that is, "The Crown"). A specific type of crown (or coronet for lower ranks of peerage) is employed in heraldry under strict rules. Indeed, some monarchies never had a physical crown, just a heraldic representation, as in the constitutional kingdom of Belgium, where no coronation ever took place; the royal installation is done by a solemn oath in parliament, wearing a military uniform: the King is not acknowledged as by divine right, but assumes the only hereditary public office in the service of the law; so he in turn will swear in all members of "his" federal government".


title: Crown

text: Crowns or similar headgear, as worn by nobility and other high-ranking people below the ruler, is in English often called a coronet; however, in many languages, this distinction is not made and the same word is used for both types of headgear (e.g., French "couronne", German "Krone", Dutch "kroon"). In some of these languages the term "rank crown" ("rangkroon", etc.) refers to the way these crowns may be ranked according to hierarchical status.


title: Crown

text: In classical antiquity, the crown ("corona") that was sometimes awarded to people other than rulers, such as triumphal military generals or athletes, was actually a wreath or chaplet, or ribbon-like diadem.


title: Crown

text: Crowns have been discovered in pre-historic times from Haryana, India. The precursor to the crown was the browband called the diadem, which had been worn by the Achaemenid Persian emperors. It was adopted by Constantine I and was worn by all subsequent rulers of the later Roman Empire.


title: Crown

text: Almost all Sassanid kings wore crowns. One of the most famous kings who left numerous statues, reliefs and coins of crowns is the king Shapur I.


title: Crown

text: Numerous crowns of various forms were used in antiquity, such as the Hedjet, Deshret, Pschent (double crown) and Khepresh of Pharaonic Egypt. The Pharaohs of Egypt also wore the diadem, which was associated with solar cults, an association which was not completely lost, as it was later revived under the Roman Emperor Augustus. By the time of the Pharaoh Amenophis III (r.1390–1352c) wearing a diadem clearly became a symbol of royalty.


title: Crown

text: The "corona radiata", the "radiant crown" known best on the Statue of Liberty, and perhaps worn by the Helios that was the Colossus of Rhodes, was worn by Roman emperors as part of the cult of Sol Invictus prior to the Roman Empire's conversion to Christianity. It was referred to as "the chaplet studded with sunbeams” by Lucian, about 180 AD.


title: Crown

text: Perhaps the oldest extant Christian crown in Europe is the Iron Crown of Lombardy, of Roman and Longobard antiquity, used by the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Italy. Later again used to crown modern Kings of Napoleonic and Austrian Italy, and to represent united Italy after 1860. Today, the crown is kept in the Cathedral of Monza.


title: Crown

text: In the Christian tradition of European cultures, where ecclesiastical sanction authenticates monarchic power when a new monarch ascends the throne, the crown is placed on the new monarch's head by a religious official in a coronation ceremony. Some, though not all, early Holy Roman Emperors travelled to Rome at some point in their careers to be crowned by the pope. Napoleon, according to legend, surprised Pius VII when he reached out and crowned himself, although in reality this order of ceremony had been pre-arranged.


title: Crown

text: Today, only the British Monarchy and Tongan Monarchy, with their anointed and crowned monarchs, continue this tradition, although many monarchies retain a crown as a national symbol. The French Crown Jewels were sold in 1885 on the orders of the Third French Republic, with only a token number, their precious stones replaced by glass, retained for historic reasons and displayed in the Louvre. The Spanish Crown Jewels were destroyed in a major fire in the 18th century while the so-called "Irish Crown Jewels" (actually merely the British Sovereign's insignia of the Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick) were stolen from Dublin Castle in 1907, just before the investiture of Bernard Edward Barnaby FitzPatrick, 2nd Baron Castletown.


title: Crown

text: The Crown of King George XII of Georgia made of gold and decorated with 145 diamonds, 58 rubies, 24 emeralds, and 16 amethysts. It took the form of a circlet surmounted by ornaments and eight arches. A globe surmounted by a cross rested on the top of the crown.


title: Crown

text: Special headgear to designate rulers dates back to pre-history, and is found in many separate civilizations around the globe. Commonly, rare and precious materials are incorporated into the crown, but that is only essential for the notion of crown jewels. Gold and precious jewels are common in western and oriental crowns. In the Native American civilizations of the Pre-Columbian New World, rare feathers, such as that of the quetzal, often decorated crowns; so too in Polynesia (e.g., Hawaii).


title: Crown

text: Coronation ceremonies are often combined with other rituals, such as enthronement (the throne is as much a symbol of monarchy as the crown) and anointing (again, a religious sanction, the only defining act in the Biblical tradition of Israel).


title: Crown

text: In other cultures, no crown is used in the equivalent of coronation, but the head may still be otherwise symbolically adorned; for example, with a royal "tikka" in the Hindu tradition of India.


title: Crown

text: Because one or more crowns, alone or as part of a more elaborate design, often appear on coins, several monetary denominations came to be known as 'a crown' or the equivalent word in the local language, such as "krone". This persists in the case of the national currencies of the Scandinavian countries and the Czech Republic. The generic term "crown sized" is frequently used for any coin roughly the size of an American silver dollar.


title: California State Prison, Corcoran

text: California State Prison, Corcoran (COR) is a male-only state prison located in the city of Corcoran, in Kings County, California. It is also known as Corcoran State Prison, CSP-C, CSP-COR, CSP-Corcoran, and Corcoran I. The facility is just north of the newer California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran (Corcoran II).


title: California State Prison, Corcoran

text: As of Fiscal Year 2002/2003, COR had a total of 1,703 staff and an annual institutional budget of US$115 million. As of April 30, 2020, COR was incarcerating people at 119.4% of its design capacity, with 3,719 occupants.


title: California State Prison, Corcoran

text: Built on what was once Tulare Lake, home to the Yokuts Native American people, the facility opened in 1988. The prison hospital was dedicated in October 1993.


title: California State Prison, Corcoran

text: In March 1993, at Corcoran, prisoner Wayne Jerome Robertson raped Eddie Dillard, a prisoner about half his size, after the latter was reassigned to his cell. Robertson, who had the nickname "Booty Bandit", testified in 1999 that prison guards set up the attack. Dillard testified in the same trial. After Robertson was assigned to general population at Pelican Bay State Prison, California state senator Tom Hayden stated "It is almost certain that he would be targeted for death."


title: California State Prison, Corcoran

text: A front-page article by Mark Arax in the August 1996 "Los Angeles Times" claimed that COR was "the most troubled of the 32 state prisons". At the time, COR officers had shot and killed more inmates "than any prison in the country" in COR's eight years of existence. Seven inmates had been killed, and 50 others seriously wounded. Based on interviews and documents, Arax concluded that many shootings of prisoners were "not justified" and that in some cases "the wrong inmate was killed by mistake". Furthermore, the article alleged that "officers ... and their supervisors staged fights between inmates" during "gladiator days". In November 1996, CBS Evening News broadcast "video footage of an inmate fatally shot by guards" at COR in 1994; this death "spawned a probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of alleged inmate abuses by guards".


title: California State Prison, Corcoran

text: A March 1997 episode of the "CBS News 60 Minutes" discussed the 1994 death, "the alleged cover-up and the alarming number of shootings at the prison". The California Department of Corrections issued the results of its own investigation in November 1997, which found "isolated incidents of staff misconduct" but no "widespread staff conspiracy' to abuse prisoners".


title: California State Prison, Corcoran

text: A film titled "Maximum Security University", which used prison surveillance tapes showing four 1989–1993 fights "end[ing] when a guard fatally shoots a combatant", was released in February 1998. That month, eight California correctional officers and supervisors were indicted "on federal criminal civil rights charges in connection with inmate fights that occurred at Corcoran State Prison in 1994". After a trial, the eight men were "acquitted of all charges" in June 2000.


title: California State Prison, Corcoran

text: As of 1999 California had paid out several large prison brutality settlements for incidents at Corcoran, including $2.2 million to inmate Vincent Tulumis paralyzed for life in a May 1993 shooting, and $825,000 for the killing of Preston Tate in April 1994.


title: California State Prison, Corcoran

text: Subsequently, COR has been featured in at least two episodes of MSNBC's "Lockup" series: "Inside Corcoran" (first aired as early as 2003) and "Return to Corcoran" (first aired in 2005).


title: California State Prison, Corcoran

text: In July 2013, many inmates at COR participated in a state-wide hunger strike protesting the use of solitary confinement. Billy Michael Sell, an inmate in COR who had been participating in the hunger strike, committed suicide by hanging himself while in a Security Housing Unit (SHU). He had been protesting from July 8 to July 21. Sell's death caused significant controversy, as inmate advocates reported that fellow prisoners had heard Sell asking for medical attention for several days before his eventual suicide. His suicide triggered reviews of the circumstances behind his death at the local, state, and federal level; with Amnesty International calling for an independent inquiry into his death, one without ties to the government.


title: Oral cancer

text: Oral cancer, also known as mouth cancer, is cancer of the lining of the lips, mouth, or upper throat. In the mouth, it most commonly starts as a painless white patch, that thickens, develops red patches, an ulcer, and continues to grow. When on the lips, it commonly looks like a persistent crusting ulcer that does not heal, and slowly grows. Other symptoms may include difficult or painful swallowing, new lumps or bumps in the neck, a swelling in the mouth, or a feeling of numbness in the mouth or lips.


title: Oral cancer

text: Risk factors include tobacco and alcohol use. Those who use both alcohol and tobacco have a 15 times greater risk of oral cancer than those who use neither. Other risk factors include HPV infection, chewing paan, and sun exposure on the lower lip. Oral cancer is a subgroup of head and neck cancers. Diagnosis is made by biopsy of the concerning area, followed by investigation with CT scan, MRI, PET scan, and examination to determine if it has spread to distant parts of the body.


title: Oral cancer

text: Oral cancer can be prevented by avoiding tobacco products, limiting alcohol use, sun protection on the lower lip, HPV vaccination, and avoidance of paan. Treatments used for oral cancer can include a combination of surgery (to remove the tumor and regional lymph nodes), radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or targeted therapy. The types of treatments will depend on the size, locations, and spread of the cancer taken into consideration with the general health of the person.


title: Oral cancer

text: In 2018, oral cancer occurred globally in about 355,000 people, and resulted in 177,000 deaths. Between 1999 and 2015 in the United States, the rate of oral cancer increased 6% (from 10.9 to 11.6 per 100,000). Deaths from oral cancer during this time decreased 7% (from 2.7 to 2.5 per 100,000). Oral cancer has an overall 5 year survival rate of 65% in the United States as of 2015. This varies from 84% if diagnosed when localized, compared to 66% if it has spread to the lymph nodes in the neck, and 39% if it has spread to distant parts of the body. Survival rates also are dependent on the location of the disease in the mouth.