Beyond FLW: Griffins, Fairies, and Decatur's Millikin Place

The name Millikin means the grandson of Maolagan ("little bald one").

The name Griffin is Welsh and the meaning of the name Griffin is "strong in faith" and "lord." Borrowed from the Welsh, Griffin is from griffinus, a Latinate form of Griffith which was used in the Middle Ages. Griffith is a Welsh name of debated origin. Some believe it to be an Anglicized form of Gruffydd, the Welsh form of the Roman Rufus (red, ruddy). Others however, think the name is derived from the Old Welsh Grippiud (prince).

The name Mahoney originally appeared in Gaelic as O Mathghamhna, which is derived from the word mathghamhan, which means "bear."

In a PBS documentary called Walter Burley Griffin: In His Own Right, my grandfather, the late Dustin Griffin, makes it clear that the famous designer and architect Frank Lloyd Wright – who worked with grandfather’s uncle, Walter Burley Griffin – gets credit where credit is not due. ~ writes Andrew W. Griffin (pictured below), on June 20, 2014. 

Peter Proudfoot, a Rome Scholar in architecture and an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of New South Wales, in his provocative 1994 book The Secret Plan of Canberra...suggests that Walter Burley Griffin’s winning Canberra design was used to implement cosmic symbolism, sacred geometry and a geomantic arrangement to integrate surrounding natural elements like the Chinese idea of feng shui.
The “ancient science of geomancy” – the idea of man in harmony with nature and “deified landforms” – was at the root of the Griffin plan, claims Proudfoot in The Secret Plan of Canberra. ~ Andrew W. Griffin

Marion Mahony Griffin was a keen horticulturist, graphic designer and painter. Her artwork includes portrait miniatures, a large mural, Fairies Feeding the Herons in a Rogers Park school (1931).

Marion Mahony, a Frank Lloyd Wright associate and the first licensed female architect in the United States, created my hometown of Decatur, Illinois' tribute to Prairie Style Homes: Millikin Place.

The Adolph Mueller House (part of Millikin Place) is different than any of Mahony's previous homes, which has led some to speculate that she was inspired by the man hired to design the landscape, Walter Griffin. After collaborating on the Millikin Place commission, the two later married and became internationally famous when they won the commission to design Canberra, the new capital of Australia. Source.

RFK Assassination Site: Ambassador Hotel

The Ambassador Hotel stood at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard, between Catalina Street and Mariposa Avenue, Los Angeles, from 1921 until it was demolished in 2005. The famed Cocoanut Grove Nightclub was the place to rub elbows with the biggest names in Hollywood for more than four decades. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and the decline of the neighborhood, the Ambassador's fate was sealed. Even the valiant efforts of the Los Angeles Conservancy and Art Deco Society could not save the once treasured gem.

Now, thanks to InFocusTech, you can have a replica (shown above and below) of this important historical building.

This lost icon of LA is available from InFocusTech here.

The architect was Myron Hunt, shown on the right, above. Hunt is mentioned in the writings of Frank Lloyd Wright and other Chicago architects of the era as an early member of the group which came to be known as the Prairie School, but in 1903 he moved to Los Angeles. He was involved in designing the Rose Bowl and the Mount Wilson Observatory, as well as other southern California projects. Hunt fashioned the Ambassador Hotel in an eclectic Mediterranean Revival style with Art Deco elements and signage.

The date the Ambassador Hotel was completed, 1921; the date it was demolished, 2005. The InFocusTech replica's dimensions are 3-7/8" x 4-3/4" x 1-9/16". Order here.

InFocusTech's replicas are of the highest quality and sought after collectibles.

During the 1920s, the Ambassador Hotel's nightclub Cocoanut (it is not spelled "Coconut") Grove was frequented by celebrities like Louis B. Mayer, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Howard Hughes, Clara Bow, Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Anna May Wong, Norma Talmadge and others. According to Photoplay, Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard were frequent competitors in the Charleston contests held on Friday nights; Lombard was discovered at the Grove.

During the 1930s the Cocoanut Grove was frequented by celebrities of cinema such as Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg, Errol Flynn, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, Lana Turner, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Ginger Rogers, Gary Cooper, Loretta Young, and countless others. On February 29, 1940, the 1939 Academy Awards Ceremony was held in the Cocoanut Grove, with Bob Hope hosting. (Many movie scenes were filmed at the Ambassador Hotel. See here.)

In the pantry area of the Ambassador Hotel's main kitchen, soon after midnight on June 5, 1968, and after a brief victory speech in the Embassy Room ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel, the winner of the California Democratic presidential primary election, Senator Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), was shot along with five other people. The date was significant, for it was the first anniversary of the first day of the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors that began on June 5, 1967. RFK was shot on the first anniversary of this war, and died on June 6, 1968.

Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Bishara Sirhan - who was not a "Palestinian immigrant," but a Jordanian Christian Arab - was arrested at the scene and later convicted of the murder. Kennedy died one day later from his injuries, while the other victims survived their wounds. During the demolition of the Ambassador Hotel, in late 2005 and early 2006, portions of the area where the 1968 shooting occurred were eliminated from the site. The portion of Wilshire Boulevard in front of the hotel has been signed the "Robert F. Kennedy Parkway."

(Disclaimer: This is a review of this replica not linked to any fiscal reimbursement. - Loren)

Follower of Gurdjieff, Frank Lloyd Wright's Daughter Dies

The only child of Frank Lloyd Wright and his third wife Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, Iovanna Lloyd Wright, 89, passed away on September 7, 2015, in a nursing home in San Gabriel, California. Her parents were married in 1928, and were together until Frank Lloyd Wright's death in 1959.

Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin  (Public Domain)

Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona (Public Domain)

Born in Chicago, Illinois, on December 3, 1925, Iovanna was raised and lived most of her life at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin and at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Photos here and above: Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

In 1949 Iovanna Lloyd Wright went to Paris, France, where she studied dance and philosophy with the philosopher and mystic, G. I. Gurdjieff. His dances were called "Movements" and were based on sacred dances discovered during his travels to Central Asia, Tibet and other countries in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.

George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (January 13, 1866 – 1877? - October 29, 1949), also commonly referred to as Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff and G. I. Gurdjieff, was an influential early 20th century choreographer, composer, writer and esotericist who taught that most humans do not possess a unified mind-body consciousness and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to transcend to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff described a method attempting to do so, calling the discipline "The Work" (connoting "work on oneself") or "the Method". According to his principles and instructions, Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness unites the methods of the fakir, monk or yogi, and thus referred to it as the "Fourth Way".
On Iovanna's return to the United States, she taught classes in these "Movements" to the Taliesin Fellowship, students at the school for architecture and related arts, founded in 1932 by Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright.

She went on to create many choreographic works and wrote a number of plays, fusing the two art forms into what she termed dance-dramas.

Major productions of her dance-dramas became known as The Taliesin Festival of Music and Dance and were presented annually to the public at Taliesin West in Arizona. Her mother, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, a former pupil of Gurdjieff, composed the music, which was played by members of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra. Iovanna trained the performers in these productions – the architecture students, painters and sculptors, as well as the architects at Taliesin. The "Movements" were also presented in Chicago, San Francisco and Dallas. A production of her own choreography was presented at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in the early 1970's.

"She began writing poetry and some fiction in her earlier years, which continued through the last several years of her life," wrote Eve Lloyd Wright. "We who love Iovanna will miss her very much and will honor her particular genius by way of our own work and through our own lives."

Iovanna Lloyd Wright is survived by her only child, Eve Lloyd Wright; nephew Eric Lloyd Wright; nephew Brandoch Peters, the son of William Wesley Peters, the first apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright and his son-in-law through his marriage to Svetlana Hinzenburg, Olgivanna's first child and Iovanna's half-sister with whom she spent her childhood and youth.

Wright had six other children with his first wife and adopted Iovanna's half-sister.

A private Memorial Service in honor of Iovanna Lloyd Wright is planned for December 4, 2015 at the Wayfarer's Chapel (5755 Palos Verdes Drive South, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275; 310-377-1650) .

Sources: A and B.

Chapel Hill Shootings, Falling Down, and Los Angeles Plays Itself

It's Oscar season, so perhaps it is time to talk of movies and violence again?

Events do not let us think otherwise. In the end, it is about Falling Down's "I'm going home," and The Wizard of Oz's "There's no place like home," isn't it? And the notion "to protect and serve" what is one's view of "home." It all stems from your homeland, your hometown, your 'hood, your building, your house, your automobile, or even your parking space.

Chapel Hill comes to mind. And L.A. too.

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On February 10, 2015, at 5:15 p.m., Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were killed in their home in Finley Forest Condominiums on Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States.

The victims.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, a former car parts salesman, allegedly shot dead the three Muslim university students at point blank range, in their heads, before turning himself into police. Hicks had moved to Chapel Hill in 2005 from Bethalto, Illinois. His motive, allegedly, was not because he is anti-Muslim, but because he was angry because of an ongoing parking space dispute. However, additional information from his first wife notes that Hicks was obsessed with watching "incessantly" the 1993 film Falling Down starring Michael Douglas, about a divorced lawyer who loses his job and embarks on a shooting rampage across Los Angeles.

We've heard of this before.

Before George Hennard crashed his truck into Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, on October 16, 1991 and sprayed it with gunfire, he had watched a documentary video at home about a similar mass murderer, James Huberty, who killed 21 people at a California McDonald's on July 18, 1984. ~ Loren Coleman, The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2003).

CNN religion editor Daniel Burke interprets Hicks' response to conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama's religion as "It's OK if we have a Muslim president." Source 1, 2, 3.

(In American English, especially as viewed as slang, the word "hick" is a derogatory term for an unsophisticated provincial person, usually said to be Caucasian, Midwestern- or Southern-raised, racist, and anti-semitic.) 

Looking to analyze films like Falling Down, it opens up an entire area of film study.

Doing this, a reviewer once observed that filmmaker and professor Thom Andersen

...pushes the issue of de-humanization, of symbolic genocide, further. A venture such as the Michael Douglas-fronted Falling Down presents the case of a white-collar, WASP-y male who, abiding no more of an interminable traffic jam, deserts his car and, trekking across Los Angeles, essentially loses his mind, though not his sense of entitlement. ~ Peter Moysaenko ~ 12.7.2009

Synchromystics, Forteans, and twilight language translators watch motion pictures on a different level than most moviegoers. They observe everything. Not just the plot. They look beyond the obvious. They experience the settings, the scene, and the sequences with new eyes. So too, it appears, do architectural students, film buffs, and cityscape fans. A deep, powerful, rarely seen documentary looking at film, analyzes movies on this level.

I've made it no secret for years that the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and films have a special meaning to me and others.

The Ennis House and Vincent Price appeared in House on Haunted Hill.

Michael Douglas' 1989 yakuza movie Black Rain also used the Ennis House. Source.

The Snowden House was built by Lloyd Wright, eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright. The house was used as a shooting location to depict the home of Ava Gardner in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator.

For more discussion of these filmed buildings, please see, "Frank Lloyd Wright and Synchromysticism," "Blade Runner: 30 Years of Synchromysticism," "FLW's Ennis House and Hollywood Movies," and "Frank Lloyd Wright's Synchromysticism Continues."

Blade Runner/Ennis House

Blade Runner/Bradbury Building.

Director Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) - at 169 minutes - is a genius synchrocinematic visual essay. If you have not viewed and digested it, you should. Here's a sample and some thoughts:

Los Angeles, Thom Andersen’s hometown, has figured, it seems, for most of its existence, as a misunderstood mutant, a territory without definitive identity, despite now serving as residence to nearly four million people. A McDonald’s restaurant in the City of Industry remains forever closed to the public, but functions exclusively as a set for commercials. The Bradbury Building has been cast as a Mandalay locale or as the headquarters of an East Coast newspaper. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House has provided context for such varying visions as that of Blade Runner, The House on Haunted Hill (a cheesy Vincent Price joint), and a Ricky Martin music video. Hollywood refuses to take Los Angeles for what it is, Andersen insists, if the professionals that make up the movie machine have any clue about its essence to begin with. Hollywood denigrates what should represent the pride of Los Angeles’s eclectic architectural scene, casting its Modernist and International style homes as dens of iniquity, the mansions of gangsters and drug lords, rather than centers for evolved living....

We are bidden to watch not as Hollywood expects us to, but with voluntary attention, getting past the expertly dressed leads and zeroing in on the more elemental concern of setting. After all, there’s no story in a vacuum, and as the trumpeted notion of country, the notion of property over country, reminds daily, a life’s nothing without a home. ~ Peter Moysaenko ~ December 7, 2009.

As Andersen notes in his documentary, and I have too, the films containing FLW-trained architect John Lautner's homes are frequent targets of attention too.

The clean bold lines of John Lautner’s famous houses are hard to resist for moviemakers. The most famous houses are the Elrod House, which was Willard Whyte’s crib in Diamonds are Forever, the Chemosphere used in Body Double, the Goldstein House featured in The Big Lebowski, and the Schaffer House, which offers a luxurious repose for A Single Man. Source.

For more on Lautner's Elron House, see "Gemstones Are Forever: Bond, Elrod House, Onassis, Hughes & JFK."

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Personally, I taught a weekly 3 hour long documentary film course, for 23 semesters, from 1983 to 2003, at the University of Southern Maine. Sorry to know Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) appeared after my course ended. I would have loved to screen it for my students.

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Movies in order of appearance in Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003).

(I wish someone would do I similar list, from his documentary, of the names of all the architects and the buildings mentioned in his film.)

The Crimson Kimono (1959)
Pushover (1954)
He Walked by Night (1948)
Nocturne (1946)
Pushover (1954)
The Strip (1951)
Out of Bounds (1986)
Hickey and Boggs (1972)
The Glimmer Man (1996)
They Live (1988)
Out of Bounds (1986)
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
Blade (1998)
The New Centurions (1972)
Brother (2001)
52 Pick-Up (1986)
Blade (1998)
The Million Dollar Hotel (2001)
Night on Earth (1991)
Safe (1995)
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
The Glimmer Man (1996)
Boyz N the Hood (1991)
The Takeover (1994)
2001 filming Swordfish
East of Eden (1955)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
The Music Box (1932)
Mr. Blanding Builds His Dreamhouse (1942?)
Zabriskie Point (1970)
The French Connection (1971)
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
The French Connection (1971)
L.A. Bounty (1989)
Rising Sun (1993)
Hollywood Calvalcade (1932)
A Muddy Romance (1913)
Putting Pants on Philip (1928)
What Price Hollywood? (1932)
This Gun for Hire (?)
The Blue Dahlia (1946)
Detour (1945)
Safe (1995)
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)
Escape from L.A. (1996)
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
Alien from L.A.
L.A. Confidential
L.A. Wars
L.A. Bounty
L.A. Vice
L.A. Crackdown
Fashionably L.A.
L.A. Crackdown II
L.A. Story
Out of Bounds (1986)
Hollywood Boulevard (1976)
Hollywood Confidential
Volcano

The City as Background
A Star Is Born
Nobody Lives Forever
The Damned Don’t Cry
What! No Beer? (1933)
Three Smart Girls (1936)
Dragon Seed (1944)
Babbitt (1934)
The Public Enemy (1931)
The Street With No Name (1948)
China Girl (1943)
The White Cliffs of Dover (1944)
D.O.A. (1950)
Indestructible Man
Marlowe (1969)
Blade Runner (1982)
Murder in the First (1995)
Wolf (1994)
The Replacement Killers (1998)
The Karate Kid III
Black Rain
Female (1933)
House on Haunted Hill (1958)
Vuelve (1999) music video
Blade Runner (1982)
A Passion to Kill (1994)
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
Timestalkers
Black Rain (1989)
Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf
House on Haunted Hill
The Terminal Man
Blade Runner
Timestalkers
Bugsy (1991)
Nick of Time (1995)
To Live and Die in L.A.(1985)
Bugsy (1991)
Mike’s Murder (1984)
The Way We Were (1973)
Under the Rainbow (1981)
Species (1995)
Blade Runner
Union Station
The Replacements Killers
The Morning After (1986)
The Net (1995)
The Morning After (1986)
The Outside Man (1973)
The Rookie (1990)
Why Do Fools Fall in Love?
Miracle Mile
Panic in the City (1968)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
The Net
Night of the Comet
Dead Connection
The Glimmer Man
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane
Heartbreakers (1984)
To Live and Die in L.A.
Dead Homiez (1997)
To Live and Die in L.A.
City of Industry
The Learning Curve (2001)
Nocturne (1946)
Deep Cover (1992)
The Limey (1999)
Heat (1995)
Marlowe (1969)
Cobra (1986)
Kalifornia
Cobra (1986)
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
To Live and Die in L.A.
Jackie Brown
Heat (1995)
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)
To Live and Die in L.A.
The Damned Don’t Cry
The Night Holds Terror (1955)
The Replacement Killers
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Why Do Fools Fall in Love? (1998)
The Marrying Man (1991)
The First Power (1990)
Why Do Fools Fall in Love?
Twilight (1998)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Body Double (1984)
Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)
Die Hard (1988)
Rising Sun (1993)
Impulse
L.A. Bounty
Valley Girl
The Terminator
Hollywood Boulevard
Repo Man
Predator 2
Nick of Time
Anywhere But Here
City of Industry
Breathless (1983)
Clueless (1995)
Hickey and Boggs
Two Minute Warning (1976)
Invisible Invaders (1959)
Hollywood Confidential (1997)
Demolition Man
Escape from L.A.
The Great Los Angeles Earthquake
Earthquake (1974)
The Great Los Angeles Earthquake (1990)
The War of the Worlds (1953)

Earthquake (1974)
Airport (1970)
Escape from L.A. (1996)
Volcano (1997)
Independence Day (1996)
Armageddon (1998)
The War of the Worlds (1953)
Earthquake

The City as Character

Double Indemnity (1944)
L.A. Confidential
Death Wish II
Mildred Pierce (1945)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Shadow in the Sky
Till the End of Time (1946)
Act of Violence (1949)
The Next Voice You Hear (1950)
Shadow in the Sky (1951)
The Next Voice You Hear
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
The Big Sleep (1946)
The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947)
He Walked By Night (1948)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
The State of Things
Targets
Little Caesar (1930)
Hollywood Canteen (1944)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
The Exiles (1958)
Flareup (1969)
Messiah of Evil (1973)
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950)
Bachelor in Paradise (1961)
The Disorderly Orderly (1964)
Messiah of Evil (1973)
Armored Car Robbery
The Atomic City (1952)
Johnny Eager
Suspense
Xanadu (1980)
Zabriskie Point (1970)
Into the Night (1985)
Farewell, My Lovely (1975)
Bunker Hill
The Glenn Miller Story
Kiss Me Deadly
Criss Cross (1949)
Shockproof (1949)
The Unfaithful (1947)
Indestructible Man
Kiss Me Deadly
The Exiles
Omega Man (1971)
Night of the Comet (1984)
Virtuosity (1995)
The Outside Man (1973)
110/220 (1994)
Out of Bounds (1986)
110/220 (1994)
Out of Bounds (1986)
Sudden Impact (1983)
The Birds (1963)
Vertigo (1958)
Saboteur
Psycho (1960)
Annie Hall (1977)
Venice/Venice (1992)
The Loved One (1965)
Point Blank (1967)
The Trip (1967)
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Tarzan and Jane Regained… Sort of (1963)
L.A. Plays Itself (1972)
The Outside Man (1973)
Zabriskie Point (1970)
Model Shop (1969)
Flareup (1969)
The Exiles (1958)

The City as Subject

Chinatown (1974)
There Goes My Baby (1990)
Chinatown (1974)
Cutter’s Way (1981)
Chinatown (1974)
Freeway (1996)
The Outside Man (1973)
Midnight Madness (1980)
Breathless (1983)
Sunset Blvd.
Falling Down (1993)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
Bachelor in Paradise (1961)
The War of the Worlds (1953)
Sins of the Night
Heartbreakers (1984)
Repo Man (1984)
American Me (1992)
Blade Runner (1982)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Dragnet (1954 movie)
Dragnet (tv series)
Dragnet (1954 movie)
Dragnet (tv series)
Unlawful Entry (1992)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
The Player (1992)
The Choirboys (1977)
The Black Marble (1980)
The Glitter Dome (1984)
The New Centurions
The Black Marble
The Blue Knight (1975)
Predator 2 (1990)
The Terminator (1984)
Cobra
Tango & Cash
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Internal Affairs
Heat (1995)
Strange Days (1995)
Unlawful Entry
Falling Down
Nails
The Glimmer Man (1996)
Short Cuts (1993)
The Long Goodbye (1973)
L.A. Story (1991)
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
Love Streams (1984)
Hanging Up (2001)
Grand Canyon
El Norte (1983)
The Exiles
Bush Mama (1975)
Bless Their Little Hearts (1983)
Bush Mama (1975)
Killer of Sheep (1977)
Bless Their Little Hearts (1983)

Source for the list.

My thanks to Douglas Stone for material and links on Andersen's documentary.

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