Frank O'Hara "To the Film Industry in Crisis"

Frank O’Hara’s poem To the Film Industry in Crisis appeared in his Meditations in an Emergency (1957) and alludes to a list of film stars from the first half of the century. These are mostly actors who have died in my lifetime, some are still famous but many are no longer so well known. As a tribute, here are photographs of the stars mentioned.

I don’t always have the right photograph, one close to the scene described in the poem, so I would be happy to have suggestions for better choices and also to have corrections, if I have got any wrong. 

@conorjh

Not you, lean quarterlies and swarthy periodicals

with your studious incursions toward the pomposity of ants,

nor you, experimental theatre in which Emotive Fruition

is wedding Poetic Insight perpetually, nor you,

promenading Grand Opera, obvious as an ear (though you

are close to my heart), but you, Motion Picture Industry,

it’s you I love!

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.

And give credit where it’s due: not to my starched nurse, who taught me

how to be bad and not bad rather than good (and has lately availed

herself of this information), not to the Catholic Church

which is at best an oversolemn introduction to cosmic entertainment,

not to the American Legion, which hates everybody, but to you,

glorious Silver Screen, tragic Technicolor, amorous Cinemascope,

stretching Vistavision and startling Stereophonic Sound, with all

your heavenly dimensions and reverberations and iconoclasms!