Adolphe Menjou, Billy Wilder, and the Strange Case of the Geomobile Mother

The only thing I knew about Adolphe Menjou was a vague sense of his look - 1930s movie guy with slicked black hair and a moustache - and his name occurs in the musical of Sunset Boulevard ("Who'd you get that fancy coat from?  Adolphe Menjou?")

Here follows an odd trail starting with Billy Wilder, circling to Adolphe Menjou, and back to Sunset Boulevard again

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I was just reading a recently translated book of Billy Wilder's newspaper work from Germany and Vienna in the 1920s as a young whippersnapper journalist.   It was nice light reading for a recent plane trip.   There is an essay by Wilder interviewing Adolphe Menjou's agent, who is visiting Berlin around 1928, and then interviewing Menjou himself, by way of telephone from Paris.  The essay mentions twice that Menjou's mother was from Leipzig.  And that Menjou spoke German pretty well.

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Nope.

I googled Menjou and found his Wikipedia page.  There, we learn his father was French, and his mother from Ireland (Nora Joyce, and stated to be a distant cousin of James Joyce).  Not German.   A couple secondary sources also gave me Menjou's mother as Irish.

I just got an inter library loan of Menjou's 1948 autobiography.   And there it is.  Several pages discuss his mother and her Irishness.

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HYPOTHESIS

Menjou was looking for work in Europe, and he thought it was an asset to give his paternal heritage as French in France - which was true   In his autobiography, he describes the French press going nuts over his French heritage.

So the next week, why not try telling German journalists that "his mother was from Leipzig" which was flat-out fake news but might buy him some extra column-inches and reader interest.   

That's my guess. This gives us the Billy Wilder essay as we have it, and his quotes about the German mother of the actor.

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WILDER's SCRIPT

Wilder rose from being a hand-to-mouth newspaper writer to a top Hollywood director.  Sunset Boulevard was written by Billy Wilder, and the quote about Adolphe Menjou was in the original 1950 film just as it appears in the 1993 musical.   

So, first, interesting that Wilder had been tracking Menjou since Wilder began reviewing his films in the mid 1920s, and wrote him into the Nora Desmond movie as a quip.   And, second, Wikipedia tells us Menjou was famous for his sartorial excellence, and extravagantly large wardrobe, and that's the purpose of the 1950 quotation, to set him up as the fancy dresser nonpariel.

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FAR RIGHT

Menjou was also known for being "slightly to the right of Attila the Hun," to pull a phrase from another Webber musical (Evita).  Menjou was a big proponent, a big fan, of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and a flag waving member of the John Birch Society.

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Wilder briefly joined anti-HUAC groups in Hollywood, but backed down and became less vocal.  Menjou was loudly pro-HUAC.   Why did Wilder take the effort to make a call-out to Adolphe Menjou in the Sunset script?

1.  It's just a pop culture reference about expensive clothes, the simplest and thus perhaps most likely idea.

2.  Wilder saw the storm clouds of HUAC and soon McCarthy, and by prominently naming Menjou, wanting to imply he was a bit pro-HUAC, if needed.

3.  Wilder despised Menjou, and even if Menjou wouldn't be caught in the same room with Wilder, he could name and slightly mock Menjou by way of his script.

I looked through a number of Wilder biographies.  Mentions of Menjou are absent or tiny (including Menjou's name in a list of his 1920s interview subjects, or remarking that Wilder's "Front Page" was a remake of a 1931 film that included Menjou.)

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I'm waiting for an original German copy of Wilder's essays by slow mail which hopefully will include the Menjou interview.   

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FINAL PUZZLE

Since Menjou was raised in an English-French household (bilingual) and was a layabout in college (by his own recounting), it's unclear where his high quality German comes from, as Wilder described it, it's not a language you pick up in a spare week.  But Wilder vouches for his German skills, and in his autobiography he remarks he's made movies in English, French, Spanish, and German.   

(That might have been in Germany itself but equally possible it occurred during the short period early in the Talkies when Hollywood made multi lingual movie versions right in LA.  Menjou does discuss making a two-cast (except for him) English and French movie that way.)  

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I made a 4 minute amateur video documentary about this.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4fYXh7QttY

Supporting visual material including Menjou's memorial (by his wife, by the pond) at Hollywood Forever, and Menjou's star on the walk of fame (across from Hwd & Highland).   Not shown, Menjou's mother he apparently moved here, she is buried at the Catholic Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.    The video includes a snapshot of Wilder's stone, in Westwood, and Wilder's star, on North Vine St in Hollywood.  

 

Mics for Amateur Office Video: (1) Lavalier, (2) On-Camera Size (MOVO), (3) Fancy USB-C Condenser Mic

Since the start of the COVID pandemic, I've been upgrading my home audio and video in stages, and this is a good time to give a recap.   

See the VIDEO version here.

My adventures were initially driven by necessity.  My home office is small, and in front of me I have two monitors, while the laptop sits about four feet over to my side.  So I had to figure out how to have a separate video camera and microphone in front of me, rather than relying on the laptop "way over there."  One thing led to another.

Basically, I've used 3 types of mics, and it's fun that I'm still learning about them. 

These are (1) a lavalier mic, (2) an "on camera" mic (MOVO), and (3) top-end mics (my example, a USB-C NEOM).

There's one cardinal rule:  any of these mics sound best when 6-10" from your mouth, and not further away.   

LAVALIER MIC

This is a good option.  I use a RODE lavalier mic, which is a well-known brand for audio equipment.  It's currently $59 at Amazon. I knew the RODE would be a high-quality mic; but there might be pretty equivalent mics for $20 (here).

Occasionally I get on Zoom calls and the lav mic is just laying on my desk by the keyboard, where I took it off last.   Bad idea.  People can hear you, but the quality is pretty awful. 

A lav mic sounds five times better if the lav mic is where it's supposed to be, clipped on my shirt.   (I prove this in a video here).  

Other than clipping it on, the lav mic is eezy-peezy -  a lav mic has no adjustments, and no software, and for me, Windows just assumes it is replacing my laptop mic.

I've used my RODE lav mic for 2 years for both ZOOM calls and for recording videos for video editing.   it's generally fine, but: one disadvantage is that the lavalier mic is omnidirectional, so it sometimes picks up my laptop fan surprisingly well, or keyboard sounds. 

MOVO "ON CAMERA MIC"

On Amazon or YouTube, you'll quickly find there are a whole family of small, torpedo-shaped mics, of which the MOVO is one of the best-known and best-rated.   The original MOVO is MOVO VXR10, and the newer one is VXR10 Pro.   My VXR10 weighs only 2 ounces.   Around $50 on Amazon.

This type of mic is designed to be very light and fit on the "hot shoe" (or actually, "cold shoe") atop a DSLR camera and provide much better sound than the built-in camera mic.   So most reviews dutifully clamp the mic onto a camera and do a test video out by a waterfall.

But you can use it as a studio microphone, too!   

The MOVO is actually a darn good microphone, and amateurs may be very happy using it as their studio microphone.   Like the RODE lavalier, it plugs into the laptop audio plug and requires no software and has no adjustments.   

This week, after having a MOVO for two years, I discovered I can clamp the MOVO onto a "architect's" or "extension" desk lamp I already have, so it floats about 6" from my forehead.  This gives EXCELLENT sound.    

While you can mount any large mic onto a sturdy microphone arm, the MOVO is so tiny you can mount on anything handy.   However, if you mounted the MOVO to your monitor, the mic-voice distance would be longer than ideal (at 18").  So it was a great moment of "the bell going off" when I noticed I could clip the tiny MOVO on my lamp and the mic would float near my forehead.  For an audio test, here I'm reading into the MOVO VXR on YouTube.  Below, some pictures explain what I'm doing with the little MOVO and my desk lamp:

High-End Microphones (Example: NEOM)

I definitely had some problems recording video with the Lavalier mic alone, due to fan noise being picked up.  (This would be less with the newly-discovered ability to mount my MOVO on my elevated lamp.)   

I did a lot of window shopping and just got a new, highly-rated USB-C mic, a NEOM, from SE Electronics.  Currently $180 at Amazon.  Another high-end USB-C mic, would be the Rode NT-USB, $125 at Amazon.

NEOM comes with a mini-stand, but given my keyboard in front of me, my height above the desk, and my limited space, using its mini-stand puts the microphone further than ideal from my mouth.   To get the benefit of this high-clarity microphone, you really need to have the correct stands or apparatus to float the mic 6-8" from your mouth.   The NEOM weighs a full pound, so you need to invest in a sturdy desktop mic arm.   

The SE NEOM is a true electronic mic, driven off a USB-C, but it should be plug and play in Windows.  It has separate "mic gain" and "mic level" dials on the mic.   You can benefit from the full-length instruction book (here).  The main control is MIC GAIN (which, humorously, goes up to 11).   Set it where you see flashes of red (too high), then back off 20%.   The other two dials are for playback into a headset, so you probably won't need them.

The NEOM will give you fully professional sound (audiophile review here), but takes a little time and attention to set up correctly in terms of on-the-mic GAIN, and in terms of the volume setting in your recording software, if you're recording, and most important of all, its spatial position.

Positioning the NEOM

Microphone stands for the home office will either (1) clamp onto the desk, or (2) sit on the desk with a weighted base.  

I got an Innogear weighted-base microphone stand, Amazon $28, because it has a counterweight on the arm and it also has an eccentric  foot to prevent tipping forward toward the mic.  In my small office, the NEOM floats over the keyboard.

Wrapping It Up:  Sound Tests

RODE Lavalier Mc, Lavalier Position  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9y5dBF-6Ww

MOVO Mic,  Forehead Position https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlRW-gM8mm0

NEOM Mic, on Innosign Mic Stand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeH_Ccmp6XM

They all sound pretty good when used correctly.  I think the NEOM has less background hiss than the other two mics.  That's never going to be noticed on a Zoom call, but can be noticed if you add an intermittent narration track to a video.   

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Crash Course in Mic Terms

Upscale large mics come in dynamic mics and condenser mics.  Dynamic mics have the best background noise avoidance but you have to speak really close to them.   Condenser mics amplify more and you can speak farther back, but might pick up more background noise.  

"Cardioid" mic means it primarily takes sound from one direction and rejects others.  Since you are working close to the mic, a "pop filter" reduces mic noise with letters like "p."    The NEOM is a cardioid condenser mic.  

Some mics have "front address" like the NEOM.  Others, which might look similar, have "top address" meaning you speak into the top of the mic, not the side.  

For home office, as shown on this page, you can get good mics with either audio jack or USB-C connections.  For jack connections, typically use a 2-stripe plug into a camera, and a three-stripe plug into a PC (these are called TRS, TRRS jacks).   (Very new mics now have 3 stripe jacks and can auto-adapt to the TRS or TRRS modes).   Professional mics have big round XLR connections and have to be plugged into a stand-alone amplifier unit.  XLR dates to the 1950s.  Any of the above mic topics have countless educational videos on YouTube.

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A quick list of my other home office video equipment.

• Sony ZV-1 camera (circa $700).  (Cheaper alternate: Logitech cams like C920, $80).
• Fast gaming laptop for fast video processing.  (Cheaper alternate: What you have.)
• ELGATO portable green screen (about 5 feet wide) ($160)  (Cheaper alternate: $10 greenscreen cloth pinned to wall.)
• ELGATO "Key Light Air" video lamp (behind my monitor) ($110).  (Cheaper alternate: Any light; try Amazon keyword Video Light).

• OBS STUDIO software for video control and green screen. (Freeware).
• FILMORA 11 software for video editing ($80).

I have an inexpensive lav mic on a 20' cord, hardly $20, which I've used a few times when I wanted to stand 10 feet from my camera.  The main risk there is forgetting you have the lav mic cord on, and walking away from your tripod & camera.  You can also get tons of types of remote radio mics (often under $50; keyword Wireless Lavalier) at Amazon. 

Art of Beuron Abbey: A Leap Towards Art Deco

From time to time, there is a key development in art that is a leap forward - see, for example, the art of J.M.W. Turner (and I love the movie MR TURNER, with Timothy Spall, 2014).  As amazing as The Fighting Temeraire is, I find its year incredible - 1839.  And as Turner was breaking the box with this and other paintings, he was in his 60s himself.

Here's a leap forward from an unusual quarter.  

The Beuron Style of Art

A few weeks ago, I took a weekend course on "Modern Benedictine Thought" at St. Andrew's Abbey, in the north desert outside Los Angeles.  (Mini video here.)  The course focused on the period 1750-1900.

One great highlight for me was something I'd never heard of before.  Beuron Abbey was founded in 1863 near the south edge of Germany, and soon became known throughout Europe for its style of art - Beuroner Stil.  The art was influenced by art of the 1800s - they understood the culture around them - but deeply worked to bring in features from both Egyptian art and medieval art.  The monks provided commissioned art for many churches throughout Europe.   For me, the resulting style of work strongly heralds the art of Arts & Crafts, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gustav Klimt, and what I take as Art Deco.   But all of these are associated with the 1890s or indeed the 1900-1925 era, not the 1870s.  (Wiki here).

From Beuron Abbey, see pages on art & culture here.   (For me, Google offered to autotranslate in English using the browser Chrome).   I picked up a book on Beuron Art (Beuron Stil) from Amazon: 1998, Krins, Die Kunst der Beuroner Schule (Art of the Beuron School).  (I can read this in German, but a lot slower than English).   

For the illustrations see a few pages from the Krins book in PDF in the cloud, here.   

See a pre printed English translation of an Arts page from the Bueron Abbey in PDF here.   

Look for more on your own with "Beuron" or "Beuron Art" or "Beuroner Stil" as keywords on Google (or YouTube).  (For a Google-selected art display, try this).

click to enlarge

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Beuron and Carmina Burana

A few weeks after writing this, I heard a passage of Carmina Burana in a TV commercial, and I wondered suddenly if "Burana" might be an adjective form of "Beuron."   

Close but no cigar.  But there are some interesting tangents.   Beuron is on the French border, but there is another abbey, Benediktbeurn, in the alps south of Munich.  Benediktbeurn was secularized in 1803, which led to the public rediscovery of the medieval songs that became Carmina Burana.  The composer of this hour-long orchestral and choir concert staple was Carl Orff, who worked on it in 1935/36 based on poems published in 1847 from the Benediktbeurn abbey archives.  (Benediktbeurn was secularized for over a century but is a Silesian abbey today).   In another tangent, Carmina Burana was very popular in Germany in the mid Nazi years 1937-8, tying together the medieval German heritage with the modern concert arts.  

Find Carmina Burana at YouTube here.  Find Carl Orff at Wikipedia here.  Find a book on "8 Nazi Composers" by Kater, 2002, at Amazon here.

See NPR on Carmina Burana 2009 here and at more length in 2006 here as Scott Simon interviews Marin Alsop.  See a 2021 autobiographical article by Carolyn Brown on Carmina-during-COVID, here.  A short but not too short musicologist's view, 2008, here.  Wikipedia for Carmina as poetry, here.  Wikipedia on Carmina as music by Orff, here.