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Lamppost banner on Madison Avenue
Photos by New York Scugnizzo |
By Giovanni di Napoli
"It's like lightning from a clear sky!" ~ C.S. Lewis, review of The Fellowship of the Ring
For our first official gathering, members of Il Regno’s nascent Briganti Book and Gaming Club met Saturday afternoon at the Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue) in Manhattan to view the newly installed J.R.R. Tolkien exhibit, “Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth.” Previously on view at the Weston Library in Oxford, England, the show will run from January 25 through May 12, 2019.
Arriving early, our fellowship entered the Engelhard Gallery on the second floor through a replica hobbit hole doorway and leisurely perused it’s many wondrous objects. Displayed on walls and beneath glass cases, the space featured a nice selection of family photographs, memorabilia, illustrations, maps, manuscripts and designs connected to Tolkien’s Middle-earth (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion). Boasting 117 items in all, the exhibit is touted as “the largest collection of Tolkien material ever assembled in the United States.” Sadly, photography is strictly prohibited in the gallery.
In addition to the installations, a series of related programs are being offered for children and adults throughout the duration of the exhibit. During our visit, we were very happy to hear the cartography class geared for children ages 8-14 was sold out. The next event scheduled will be the “Tolkien and Inspiration: A Multidisciplinary Symposium” on Saturday, March 16th at 2:00PM. The full calendar of events is available online.
Having read (and loved) Tolkien’s books at an early age, they were very influential in my development. Along with the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Beowulf, the Brothers Grimm, et al., they were the fountainhead of my passion for fantasy and science fiction (SF) and led me to the works of Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H.P. Lovecraft, not to mention Homer, Virgil, and Snorri Sturluson.
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| The Hobbit DVD |
Admittedly, my first exposure to Tolkien wasn’t from reading, but through the animated television special of The Hobbit (1977), directed by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass (Rankin/Bass Productions). Though a young boy, I still remember it like it was yesterday. Feeling a little under the weather, my mother tucked me into my parents’ bed because their bedroom had a spare television set. She must have known about the premier before hand because the timing was just right.
Doing a little Internet sleuthing, I learned the cartoon aired on Sunday, November 27, 1977.
Unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, I watched in wonder as Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf the Wizard, and a company of dwarves battled giant spiders, trolls, warg riding goblins, and, of course, the dragon Smaug. Up till then, my experience with SF was limited to comic books and the old black and white movies I watched with my grandfather, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, King Kong, and so forth. Much like Andy Serkis’ acclaimed portrayal in the later Peter Jackson trilogy, Gollum was one of the more memorable characters in the film.
A few years later, I would be able to watch the cartoon as often as I pleased when my father brought home an RCA Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) player. The Hobbit, as well as Ralph Bakshi’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings (Warner Brothers, 1978), was among the handful of “video discs” I had before the outmoded system was replaced by the short-lived Betamax format. I believe my long-lost copy of The Return of the King (Rankin/Bass Productions, 1980) was on VHS.
The other CED discs I remember owning were Time Bandits (1981), The Bad News Bears (1976) and the highly inappropriate Barbarella (1968) starring Jane Fonda. The latter, unquestionably, was mistakenly conflated with Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, because there was no way my parents would have knowingly allowed me to watch a naked strumpet floating around in outer space, but I digress.
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| My autographed cel from Ralph Bakshi's animated The Lord of the Rings movie |
Not one to collect pop memorabilia (books and art postcards are my weakness), I do possess two items of note. The first is an autographed cel from Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings film depicting the heroic hobbit Frodo Baggins holding his uncle Bilbo’s elvish blade Sting to Gollum’s exposed and cadaverous throat. The other is a limited edition Frank Frazetta "Women of the Ages" portfolio signed by the artist. Both items were a gift from an old friend.
Frazetta, like Tolkien, was very inspirational to me. His pen and ink illustrations of The Lord of the Rings in my, sadly falling apart, first edition copy of Frank Frazetta: The Living Legend (Sun Litho Print/Frank Frazer, 1981) are among my favorites. Ironically, Frazetta’s dark and sinister drawings are more how I envision Middle-earth to be than Tolkien’s own illustrations, despite how beautiful they are.
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An immodest Éowyn decapitating a Fell Beast
from my copy of Frank Frazetta: The Living Legend
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Having in the past only seen some of the amazing artifacts on display at the Morgan Library & Museum in books or magazines, it was a great thrill to actually view the originals in person—similar to when I got to see Otto Dix’s Der Krieg prints, which I was so fascinated with as an adolescent, at the “Chaos and Classicism” exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in 2010. While we can never underestimate the importance of reproductions in print and online galleries, they almost never do justice to the originals; nor can they take the place of experiencing art in the flesh.
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| Before leaving, I picked up few souvenirs: (L-R) Museum bulletin; Tolkien: Treasures by Catherine McIlwaine; crankshaft music box that plays "Happy Birthday;" and postcards (Hunting the Wild Boar; Running Eros, Holding a Torch; Bellerophon Killing the Chimera; Conversion of St. Humbert; and The Siren) |
Be that as it may, I still bought myself a keepsake copy of Catherine McIlwaine's illustrated exhibition catalogue Tolkien: Treasures (Boldleian Library, 2018) and a few postcards for my collection.
If you are a fan, the “Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth” exhibit is definitely worth the trip. It brought back a lot of great childhood memories and has me itching to read the books again. See it before it leaves for the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris later this year.
