Real Men Wear Gingham

Sean Connery as James Bond and Claudine Auger as Domino 

in Thunderball (dir. Terence Young, 1965)

 

Everyone loves gingham, don't they? 

 

The medium-weight, plain-woven cotton fabric which, although originally striped when imported into Europe in the 17th-century, is now famous for its checked pattern (often in blue and white).

 

The beauty of gingham is not only its extreme versatility, but that it seems to mean whatever people want it to mean. For example, it can signify wholesome innocence when worn by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939), or it can signify stylish sophistication when worn by English mods and French sex kittens. 

 

It can even signify that one has a licence to kill - did Sean Connery's Bond ever look better than when wearing an unbuttoned camp-collared pink and white gingham short-sleeved shirt (with matching Jantzen shorts and Wayfarer-style sunglasses) on the beach in Thunderball (1965)? 

 

I don't think so ... Unless it's in the blue version of the shirt that he also wears in Thunderball, or, indeed, the long-sleeved gingham shirt that he sports on screen two years earlier in From Russia with Love (1963). 

      

This shirt, which Bond naturally wears in a casual manner - untucked and with the sleeves turned back - is also in cornflower blue and comes with two large square patch hip pockets. It's fastened with distinctive silver-toned metal buttons.   

 

It all just goes to show that real men are unafraid to wear whatever the hell they want and can make anything look masculine ...

Sean Connery as James Bond and Eunice Gayson as Sylvia Trench 

in From Russia with Love (dir. Terence Young, 1963)

 

If He Only Had a Soul: Notes on Eric the Robot

Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

When a man's an empty kettle / He should be on his mettle ...

Probably because my childhood memories and cultural imagination have been very much shaped by American TV and cinema, I always thought that Robby the Robot was the real deal and the first of his metallic kind.

So imagine my surprise when I recently read of Eric; the first functioning electric-powered robot, made in England by former First World War pilot Capt. William Richards, and aircraft engineer Alan Reffell ...

Following his first public appearance - at London's Royal Horticultural Hall in 1928 (opening the Exhibition of the Society of Model Engineers) - Eric and his two operators set off on a US tour, where he cheerfully introduced himself to audiences as the man without a soul.  

I think my favourite description of him comes from an essay by Tina Ferris:   

"Eric was designed to stand, bow […] and to dazzle the audience by answering simple questions. […] Motorized pulleys moved his arms and head while 35,000 volts of electricity generated glowing eyes and sparks that shot from his mouth when [he] spoke. Eric's six-foot-tall aluminium body resembled a knight in shining armour […] A big breastplate was emblazoned with the letters RUR across [his] chest leaving little doubt about [his] inspiration."

Ferris concludes, however, on a somewhat sour note, that Eric's performance ultimately amounted to no more than "exotic theatrical showboating that at once seemed to trivialize robots and also to magnify their threat" [1].

Mysteriously, however, Eric disappeared soon afterwards: some think he self-destructed; others that he was cannibalised for spare parts. Personally, I like to think that he eloped with Maria the Maschinenmensch and star of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (or at least an identical replica of everybody's favourite fembot).


Afterword

In 2016, the Science Museum raised funds through a Kickstarter campaign to rebuild Eric. Working from archive material including photographs and film clips, the artist-roboticist Giles Walker brought him back to life (so to speak) and Eric was added to the museum's permanent collection, appearing as part of the 2017 Robots exhibition. For more details, click here.

Notes

[1] Tina Ferris, 'D. H. Lawrence and "The Machine Incarnate": Robots Among the "Nettles"', in D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, ed. Indrek Männiste, (Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 51-71. Lines quoted are on p. 55.

[2] Ibid. 

Musical bonus: Jack Haley as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz (dir. Victor Fleming, 1939), performing 'If I Only Had a Heart' by Harold Arlen (music) and Yip Harburg (lyrics): Click here. 

For a follow-up post to this one, featuring the bad boy of robots, Elektro, click here.