title: Tom Horn

text: During the Johnson County War, Horn worked for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and for the Pinkertons, who had assigned him to work undercover in the county using the alias Tom Hale. He is alleged to have been involved in the killing of Nate Champion and Nick Ray on April 9, 1892, and was a prime suspect in the killings of ranchers John A. Tisdale and Orley "Ranger" Jones. The Pinkerton Agency forced Horn to resign in 1894. In his memoir, "Two Evil Isms: Pinkertonism and Anarchism", Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo wrote, "William A. Pinkerton told me that Tom Horn was guilty of the crime, but that his people could not allow him to go to prison while in their employ". Siringo later indicated that he respected Horn's abilities at tracking, and that he was a very talented agent but had a wicked element.


title: Tom Horn

text: In 1895, Horn reportedly killed a known cattle thief named William Lewis near Iron Mountain, Wyoming. Horn was exonerated for that crime and for the 1895 murder of Fred Powell six weeks later. In 1896, a ranchman named Campbell, known to have a large stash of cash, was last seen with Horn. In 1896, Horn offered his service in a letter to the marshal of Tucson, Arizona, in getting rid of William Christian's rustler gang. William was killed by an unknown assailant in 1897, and his associate Robert Christian disappeared the same year.


title: Tom Horn

text: Although his official title was "range detective", Horn essentially served as a killer for hire. By the mid 1890s, the cattle business in Wyoming and Colorado was changing due to the arrival of homesteaders and new ranchers. The homesteaders, referred to as "nesters" or "grangers" by the big operators, had moved into the territory in large numbers. By doing so, they decreased the availability of water and graze for the herds of the larger cattle barons. Soon, efforts were made to get rid of these homesteaders, including the hiring of gunmen like Tom Horn. Violent gunfights such as the bloody shootout that resulted in the death of nine trappers in Big Dry Creek, as well as the lynching and burning of homesteaders Luther M. Mitchell and Ami W. Ketchum, precipitated the Colorado Range War.


title: Tom Horn

text: In 1900, Horn began working for the Swan Land and Cattle Company in northwest Colorado. His first job was to investigate the Browns Park Cattle Association's leader, a cowboy named Matt Rash, who was suspected of cattle rustling. Horn went undercover as "Tom Hicks" and worked for Rash as a ranch hand while also collecting evidence Rash was branding cattle that did not belong to him. When Horn finally pieced together enough evidence to determine that Rash was indeed a rustler, he put a threatening letter on Rash's door saying that he must leave in 60 days. Rash, however, defiantly stayed and continued working on his ranch. As Rash continued to be uncooperative, Horn's employers were said to have given him the "go-ahead signal" to execute Rash. On the day of the murder, an armed Horn allegedly arrived at Rash's cabin just as he finished eating and shot him at point-blank range. The dying Rash unsuccessfully tried to write the name of his killer, but no trace was left of the murder. Only the accounts and rumors from various people point to Horn as the one responsible. Rash was supposed to be married to a nearby rancher, Ann Bassett, and the woman accused "Hicks" of being the murderer.


title: Tom Horn

text: Around the same time, Horn also suspected another cowboy named Isom Dart of rustling. Dart was one of Rash's fellow cowboys but was believed to have previously worked as a rustler named Ned Huddleston and to have been a former member of the late "Tip Gault" gang. The gang, which had rustled cattle in the Saratoga, Wyoming, area, had been wiped out in a gun battle. Dart also had three indictments returned against him in Sweetwater County. When Dart was accused of murdering Rash, he took refuge inside his friend's cabin and waited for the rumors to cool down. Horn, however, managed to track Dart to his cabin and saw him hiding together with two other armed associates.


title: Tom Horn

text: The assassin was said to have set up a sniping position overlooking the cabin from a hill, under cover of a pine tree . As Dart and his friends came out of the cabin, Horn shot him in the chest from a distance. Prior to the assassination, Horn had instructed a rancher named Robert Hudler to ready a horse miles from the murder scene for his getaway. The next day, two spent .30-30 Winchester casings were found at the base of a tree where the murderer is believed to have lain in wait. "Hicks" was said to have been the only one in the area to use a .30-30. The news of Rash and Dart's deaths spread throughout the territory, causing the other rustlers to scatter in fear. Horn tracked them all down and killed three other members of Rash's association. The story goes that he pinned one of the dead cowboys' ears for the homesteaders to see as a warning.


title: Tom Horn

text: During the Wilcox train robbery investigation, Horn obtained information from Bill Speck that revealed which of the outlaws, George Curry or Harvey Logan, had killed Sheriff Josiah Hazen during their escape. Both were members of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, then known as the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, so named after their hideaway in the mountains. Horn passed this information on to Charlie Siringo, who was working the case for the Pinkertons.


title: Tom Horn

text: Horn briefly entered the United States Army to serve during the Spanish–American War as the chief packer of the Fifth Corps. He left Tampa for Cuba, where he led some of the pack trains to the front. Horn personally witnessed the bravery of the famous Rough Riders and colored regiments, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalries, during their assault on San Juan Hill, as well as the humiliating rout of American soldiers under Brigadier General Hamilton S. Hawkins. Although the packers were noncombatants, they were still prone to attack by Cuban rebels. Horn considered himself lucky to have lost no packer during the war, although Horn recalled that his men and he were under constant fire as they delivered rations and ammunition to the soldiers.


title: Tom Horn

text: Horn continued working as a packer during the war, though he and many of his men contracted yellow fever. At one point, he was bedridden and was deemed unfit for combat. Upon recovering, he returned to Wyoming. Shortly after his return, Horn began working in 1901 for wealthy cattle baron John C. Coble, who belonged to the Wyoming Stock Men's Association.


title: Tom Horn

text: While working again near Iron Mountain, Wyoming, on July 15, 1901, Horn visited the Jim and Dora Miller family, who were cattle ranchers. Jim Miller was no relation to Texas outlaw Jim Miller. Jim Miller and his neighbor Kels Nickell had already had several disputes following Nickell's introduction of sheep into the Iron Mountain area. Miller frequently accused Nickell of letting his sheep graze on Miller's land. At the Millers, Horn met Glendolene M. Kimmell, the young teacher at the Iron Mountain School. Ms. Kimmell was supported by both the large Miller and Kels Nickell families, and she boarded with the Millers. Horn entertained her with accounts of his adventures. That day some males of the Miller family and he went fishing; Victor Miller, a son about his age, and he also practiced shooting, both of them with .30-30s.


title: Tom Horn

text: The Miller and Nickell families were the only ones to have children at the school. Before she arrived, Kimmell had been advised of the families' ongoing feud and found that it was often played out by conflict among the children. A few days later, on July 18, Willie Nickell, the 14-year-old son of sheep ranchers Kels and Mary Nickell, was found murdered near their homestead gate. A coroner's inquest began to investigate the murder. More violent incidents occurred during the period of the coroner's inquest, which was expanded to investigate these incidents and lasted from July through September 1901.


title: Tom Horn

text: On August 4, Kels Nickell was shot and wounded. Some 60–80 of his sheep were found "shot or clubbed to death". Two of the younger Nickell children later reported seeing two men leaving on horses, one a bay and one gray, as were horses owned by Jim Miller. On August 6, Deputy Sheriff Peter Warlaumont and Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe LeFors came to Iron Mountain and arrested Jim Miller and his sons Victor and Gus on suspicion of shooting Kels Nickell. They were jailed on August 7 and released the following day on bond. The investigation of the shooting of Kels Nickell was added to the investigation of Willie Nickell's murder in the coroner's inquest.


title: Tom Horn

text: Deputy Marshal Joe Lefors later questioned Horn in January 1902 about the murder while supposedly talking to him about employment. Horn was still inebriated from the night before, but Lefors gained what he called a confession to the murder of Willie Nickell. Horn allegedly confessed to killing the young Willie with his rifle from , which he boasted of as the "best shot that [he] ever made and the dirtiest trick that [he] had ever done." Horn was arrested the next day by the county sheriff. Walter Stoll was the Laramie County prosecutor in the case. Judge Richard H. Scott, who presided over the case, was running for re-election.


title: Tom Horn

text: Horn was supported by his longtime friend and employer, cattle rancher John C. Coble. He gathered a team for the defense headed by former Judge John W. Lacey, and which included attorneys T. F. Burke, Roderick N. Matson, Edward T. Clark, and T. Blake Kennedy. Reportedly, Coble paid for most of the costs of this large team. According to Johan P. Bakker, who wrote "Tracking Tom Horn", the large cattle interests by this time found Horn "expendable", and the case provided a way to silence him in regard to their activities. He wrote that 100 members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association paid $1000 each toward the defense, but wanted a minimal effort.


title: Tom Horn

text: Horn's trial started October 10, 1902, in Cheyenne, which filled with crowds attracted by the notoriety of Horn. The "Rocky Mountain News" noted the carnival atmosphere and great interest from the public for a conviction. The prosecution introduced Horn's confession to Lefors. Only certain parts of Horn's statement were introduced, distorting his statement. The prosecution introduced testimony by at least two witnesses, including Lefors, as well as circumstantial evidence; these elements only placed Horn in the general vicinity of the crime scene. During the trial, Victor Miller testified that Horn and he both had .30-30 guns and bought their ammunition at the same store. Another, Otto Plaga, testified that Horn was from the scene of the murder an hour after it was committed.


title: Tom Horn

text: Glendolene Kimmell had testified during the coroner's inquest, saying she thought both the Miller and Nickell families responsible for maintaining the feud, but she was never called as a defense witness. She had resigned from the school in October 1901, and left the area, but was in communication with people in the case. Horn's trial went to the jury on October 23, and they returned a guilty verdict the next day. A hearing several days later sentenced Horn to death by hanging. Horn's attorneys filed a petition with the Wyoming Supreme Court for a new trial. While in jail, Horn wrote his autobiography, "Life of Tom Horn, Government Scout and Interpreter, Written by Himself", mostly giving an account of his early life. It contained little about the case.


title: Tom Horn

text: The Wyoming Supreme Court upheld the decision of the District Court and denied a new trial. Convinced of Horn's innocence, Glendolene Kimmell sent an affidavit to Governor Fenimore Chatterton with testimony reportedly saying that Victor Miller was guilty of Nickell's murder. Accounts of its contents appeared in the press, but the original document has since disappeared. The governor chose not to intervene in the case. Horn was initially given an execution date of November 20, 1903.


title: Tom Horn

text: Tom Horn was one of the few people in the "Wild West" to have been hanged by a water-powered gallows, known as the "Julian" gallows. James P. Julian, a Cheyenne, Wyoming, architect, designed the contraption in 1892. The trap door was connected to a lever that pulled the plug out of a barrel of water. This would cause a lever with a counterweight to rise, withdrawing a support and opening the trap.


title: Tom Horn

text: Horn was hanged in Cheyenne. At that time, Horn never gave up the names of those who had hired him during the feud. He was buried in the Columbia Cemetery in Boulder, Colorado, on December 3, 1903. Rancher Jim Coble paid for his coffin and a stone to mark his grave. After his death, many considered Horn to have been wrongly executed for a murder solely based on a purported confession given when drunk, thus of dubious admissibility in court. Even the old Apache warrior, Geronimo, expressed his doubts about Horn's charges during an interview with Charles Ackenhausen, saying that he "did not believe [Horn] guilty".


title: Tom Horn

text: The debate over Horn's guilt remains as divided as ever. The consensus is that regardless of whether Horn committed that particular murder, he had certainly committed many others -- a concession to probability, but not an affirmation of guilt.


title: Tom Horn

text: Author Chip Carlson of Cheyenne, Wyoming, who extensively researched the "Wyoming v. Tom Horn" trial, concluded that although Horn "could have" committed the murder of Willie Nickell, he probably did not. According to his book, "Tom Horn: Blood on the Moon" (2001), no physical evidence showed that Horn had committed the murder. In addition, he was last seen in the area the day before it occurred, and the conditions of his alleged confession rendered valueless as evidence. Carlson believed the prosecution made no efforts to investigate other possible suspects, including Victor Miller. In essence, Horn's reputation and history made him an easy target for the prosecution.


title: Tom Horn

text: Writer Dean Fenton Krakel believed that Horn was guilty, but that he had not realized he was shooting a boy.


title: Tom Horn

text: In 2014, former professor of history at Arkansas State University Larry Ball published "Tom Horn in Life and Legend", asserting the opinion that Horn was responsible for the murder. Ball maintains that he found no evidence of a legal conspiracy against Horn, arguing that Horn's penchant for brutality contributed to his being convicted of the crime.


title: Hays Code

text: The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945. Under Hays's leadership, the MPPDA, later the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), adopted the Production Code in 1930 and began rigidly enforcing it in 1934. The Production Code spelled out acceptable and unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States.


title: Hays Code

text: From 1934 to 1954, the code was closely identified with Joseph Breen, the administrator appointed by Hays to enforce the code in Hollywood. The film industry followed the guidelines set by the code well into the late 1950s, but it began to weaken, owing to the combined impact of television, influence from foreign films, controversial directors (such as Otto Preminger) pushing boundaries, and intervention from the courts, including the US Supreme Court. In 1968, after several years of minimal enforcement, the Production Code was replaced by the MPAA film rating system.


title: Hays Code

text: In the 1920s, Hollywood was rocked by a number of notorious scandals, such as the murder of William Desmond Taylor and the alleged rape of Virginia Rappe by popular movie star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, which brought widespread condemnation from religious, civic and political organizations. Many felt that the film industry had always been morally questionable, and political pressure was increasing, with legislators in 37 states introducing almost one hundred film censorship bills in 1921. In 1922, as they were faced with the prospect of having to comply with hundreds and potentially thousands of inconsistent, easily changed decency laws in order to show their films, the studios chose self-regulation as the preferable option, enlisting Presbyterian elder Will H. Hays, Postmaster General under former President Warren G. Harding and former head of the Republican National Committee, to rehabilitate Hollywood's image. The move mimicked the decision that Major League Baseball had made in hiring judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as League Commissioner the previous year to quell questions about the integrity of baseball in the wake of the 1919 World Series gambling scandal; "The New York Times" even called Hays the "screen Landis". Hays was paid the lavish sum of $100,000 a year (equal to $ today), and served for 25 years as president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), where he "defended the industry from attacks, recited soothing nostrums, and negotiated treaties to cease hostilities".


title: Hays Code

text: In 1924, Hays introduced a set of recommendations dubbed "the Formula", which the studios were advised to heed, and asked filmmakers to describe to his office the plots of films they were planning on producing. In 1915, the Supreme Court had decided unanimously in "Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio" that free speech did not extend to motion pictures. While there had been token attempts to clean up the films before (such as when the studios formed the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI) in 1916), little had come of the efforts. New York became the first state to take advantage of the Supreme Court's decision by instituting a censorship board in 1921. Virginia followed suit the following year, with eight individual states having a board by the advent of sound film, but many of these were ineffectual. By the 1920s, the New York stage, a frequent source of subsequent screen material, had topless shows, performances filled with curse words, adult subject matter, and sexually suggestive dialog. Early in the sound system conversion process, it became apparent that what was acceptable in New York might not be so in Kansas. Filmmakers were facing the possibility that many states and cities would adopt their own codes of censorship, necessitating a multiplicity of versions of films made for national distribution. Self-censorship was deemed a preferable outcome.


title: Hays Code

text: In 1927, Hays suggested to studio executives that they form a committee to discuss film censorship. Irving G. Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Sol Wurtzel of Fox Film Corporation, and E. H. Allen of Paramount Pictures responded by collaborating on a list they called the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls", based on items that were challenged by local censor boards. This list consisted of eleven subjects best avoided and twenty-six to be handled very carefully. The list was approved by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Hays created the Studio Relations Committee (SRC) to oversee its implementation; however, there was still no way to enforce tenets. The controversy surrounding film standards came to a head in 1929.


title: Hays Code

text: In a resolution passed on June 29, 1927, the MPPDA codified lists of "don'ts" and "be carefuls" into what they colloquially called their "Magna Charta". Many of these would later become key points in the Code. Specifically, the MPPDA resolved "that those things which are included in the following list shall not appear in pictures produced by the members of this Association, irrespective of the manner in which they are treated":


title: Hays Code

text: In 1929, Catholic layman Martin Quigley (editor of the prominent trade paper "Motion Picture Herald") and Jesuit priest Father Daniel A. Lord created a code of standards and submitted it to the studios. Lord was particularly concerned with the effects of sound film on children, whom he considered especially susceptible to their allure. In February 1930, several studio heads, including Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, met with Lord and Quigley. After some revisions, they agreed to the stipulations of the Code. One of the main motivating factors in adopting the Code was to avoid direct government intervention. It was the responsibility of the SRC (headed by Colonel Jason S. Joy, a former American Red Cross Executive Secretary) to supervise film production and advise the studios when changes or cuts were required. On March 31, the MPPDA agreed it would abide by the Code. The production code was intended to put a limitation on films which were distributed to a large audience, making it more difficult to appeal to all individuals in the audiences.


title: Hays Code

text: The code was divided into two parts. The first was a set of "general principles" which prohibited a picture from "lowering the moral standards of those who see it", so as not to wrongly influence a specific audience of views including, women, children, lower-class, and those of "susceptible" minds, called for depictions of the "correct standards of life", and lastly forbade a picture to show any sort of ridicule towards a law or "creating sympathy for its violation". The second part was a set of "particular applications", which was an exacting list of items that could not be depicted. Some restrictions, such as the ban on homosexuality or on the use of specific curse words, were never directly mentioned, but were assumed to be understood without clear demarcation.


title: Hays Code

text: Homosexuals were de facto included under the proscription of sex perversion, and the depiction of miscegenation (by 1934, defined only as sexual relationships between black and white races) was forbidden. It also stated that the notion of an "adults-only policy" would be a dubious, ineffective strategy that would be difficult to enforce; however, it did allow that "maturer minds may easily understand and accept without harm subject matter in plots which does younger people positive harm". If children were supervised and the events implied elliptically, the code allowed "the possibility of a cinematically inspired thought crime".


title: Hays Code

text: The code sought not only to determine what could be portrayed on screen, but also to promote traditional values. Sexual relations outside marriage, which were forbidden to be portrayed as attractive or beautiful, were to be presented in a way that would not arouse passion or make them seem permissible. Any sexual act considered perverted, including any suggestion of same-sex relationships, sex or romance, was ruled out.


title: Hays Code

text: All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience, or the audience must at least be aware that such behavior is wrong, usually through "compensating moral value". Authority figures had to be treated with respect, and the clergy could not be portrayed as comic characters or villains. Under some circumstances, politicians, police officers, and judges could be villains, as long as it was clear that those individuals portrayed as villains were the exceptions to the rule.


title: Hays Code

text: The entire document was written with Catholic undertones, and stated that art must be handled carefully because it could be "morally evil in its effects", and its "deep moral significance" was unquestionable. It was initially decided to keep the Catholic influence on the Code secret. A recurring theme was "that throughout, the audience feels sure that evil is wrong, and good is right". The Code also contained an addendum commonly referred to as the Advertising Code, which regulated advertising copy and imagery.


title: Hays Code

text: On February 19, 1930, "Variety" published the entire content of the Code, and predicted that state film censorship boards would soon become obsolete; however, the men obliged to enforce the code—Jason Joy (head of the committee until 1932) and his successor, Dr. James Wingate—were generally unenthusiastic and/or ineffective. "The Blue Angel", the first film the office reviewed, which was passed by Joy with no revisions, was considered indecent by a California censor. Although there were several instances where Joy negotiated cuts from films and there were definite—albeit loose—constraints, a significant amount of lurid material made it to the screen. Joy had to review 500 films a year with a small staff and little power. He was more willing to work with the studios, and his creative writing skills led to his hiring at Fox. On the other hand, Wingate struggled to keep up with the flood of scripts coming in, to the point where Warner Bros.' head of production Darryl Zanuck wrote him a letter imploring him to pick up the pace. In 1930, the Hays office did not have the authority to order studios to remove material from a film, and instead worked by reasoning and sometimes pleading with them. Complicating matters, the appeals process ultimately put the responsibility for making the final decision in the hands of the studios.


title: Hays Code

text: One factor in ignoring the code was the fact that some found such censorship prudish, owing to the libertine social attitudes of the 1920s and early 1930s. This was a period in which the Victorian era was sometimes ridiculed as being naïve and backward. When the Code was announced, the liberal periodical "The Nation" attacked it, stating that if crime were never to be presented in a sympathetic light, then taken literally that would mean that "law" and "justice" would become one and the same; therefore, events such as the Boston Tea Party could not be portrayed. If clergy must always be presented in a positive way, then hypocrisy could not be dealt with either." The Outlook" agreed and, unlike "Variety", predicted from the beginning that the Code would be difficult to enforce. The Great Depression of the 1930s led many studios to seek income by any way possible. Since films containing racy and violent content resulted in high ticket sales, it seemed reasonable to continue producing such films. Soon, the flouting of the code became an open secret. In 1931, "The Hollywood Reporter" mocked the code and quoted an anonymous screenwriter saying that "the Hays moral code is not even a joke any more; it's just a memory"; two years later "Variety" followed suit.


title: Hays Code

text: On June 13, 1934, an amendment to the Code was adopted, which established the Production Code Administration (PCA) and required all films released on or after July 1, 1934, to obtain a certificate of approval before being released. The PCA had two offices: one in Hollywood and the other in New York City. The first film to receive an MPPDA seal of approval was "The World Moves On" (1934). For over 30 years, virtually all motion pictures produced in the United States adhered to the code. The Production Code was not created or enforced by federal, state, or city government; the Hollywood studios adopted the code in large part in the hopes of avoiding government censorship, preferring self-regulation to government regulation.


title: Hays Code

text: Father Daniel A. Lord, a Jesuit, wrote: "Silent smut had been bad. Vocal smut cried to the censors for vengeance." Thomas Doherty, Professor of American studies at Brandeis University, has defined the code as "no mere list of Thou-Shalt-Nots, but a homily that sought to yoke Catholic doctrine to Hollywood formula. The guilty are punished, the virtuous rewarded, the authority of church and state is legitimate, and the bonds of matrimony are sacred." What resulted has been described as "a Jewish owned business selling Catholic theology to Protestant America".


title: Hays Code

text: In 1934, Joseph I. Breen, a prominent Catholic layman who had worked in public relations, was appointed head of the new Production Code Administration (PCA). Under Breen's leadership, which lasted until his retirement in 1954, enforcement of the Production Code became notoriously rigid. Even cartoon sex symbol Betty Boop had to change from being a flapper and began to wear an old-fashioned housewife's skirt. However, by 1934, the prohibition against miscegenation was defined only as sexual relationships between black and white races.


title: Hays Code

text: Breen's power to change scripts and scenes angered many writers, directors and Hollywood moguls. Breen influenced the production of "Casablanca" (1942), objecting to any explicit reference to Rick and Ilsa having slept together in Paris, and to the film mentioning that Captain Renault extorted sexual favors from his supplicants; ultimately, both remained strongly implied in the finished version. Adherence to the Code also ruled out any possibility of the film ending with Rick and Ilsa consummating their adulterous love, making inevitable the ending with Rick's noble renunciation, one of "Casablanca"s most famous scenes.


title: Hays Code

text: The first major instance of censorship under the Production Code involved the 1934 film "Tarzan and His Mate", in which brief nude scenes involving a body double for actress Maureen O'Sullivan were edited out of the master negative of the film. Another famous case of enforcement involved "The Outlaw", a 1943 western produced by Howard Hughes, which was denied a certificate of approval and kept out of theaters for years since the film's advertising focused particular attention on Jane Russell's breasts. Hughes eventually persuaded Breen that this did not violate the code and the film could be shown.


title: Hays Code

text: The Hays Code required a change in a major element of the plot of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel "Rebecca". In the novel, the narrator discovers that her husband, the aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter, killed his first wife Rebecca, and she makes light of it, since it followed Rebecca having strongly provoked and taunted him. This could not be retained in Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 adaptation, as it would have meant having a major character get away with murder and living happily ever after, which would have been a flagrant violation of the Code. In Hitchcock's version, Rebecca died in an accident and Maxim de Winter was guilty of no more than hiding the facts of her death. The 2020 remake, not bound by the Code, restored du Maurier's original plot element.


title: Hays Code

text: The PCA also engaged in political censorship. When Warner Bros. wanted to make a film about Nazi concentration camps, the production office forbade it, citing the above-mentioned prohibition on depicting "in an unfavorable light" another country's "institutions [and] prominent people", with threats to take the matter to the federal government if the studio went ahead. This policy prevented a number of anti-Nazi films being produced. In 1938, the FBI unearthed and prosecuted a Nazi spy ring, subsequently allowing Warner to produce "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" (1939), with the Three Stooges' short subject "You Nazty Spy!" (1940) being the first Hollywood film of any sort to openly spoof the Third Reich's leadership.


title: Hays Code

text: Some films produced outside the mainstream studio system flouted the code. One example is "Child Bride" (1938), which featured a nude scene involving a twelve-year-old child actress (Shirley Mills). The Code began to weaken in the late 1940s, when the formerly taboo subjects of rape and miscegenation were allowed in "Johnny Belinda" (1948) and "Pinky" (1949), respectively. In 1951, the MPAA revised the code to make it more rigid, spelling out more words and subjects that were prohibited. In 1954, Breen retired, largely because of ill health, and Geoffrey Shurlock was appointed as his successor.


title: Hays Code

text: Some of Hollywood's creative class managed to find positives in the Code's limitations. Director Edward Dmytryk later said that the Code "had a very good effect because it made us think. If we wanted to get something across that was censorable... we had to do it deviously. We had to be clever. And it usually turned out to be much better than if we had done it straight."


title: Hays Code

text: Hollywood continued to work within the confines of the Production Code throughout the 1950s, but during this time, the film industry was faced with very serious competitive threats. The first threat came from television, a new technology that did not require Americans to leave their houses to see motion pictures. Hollywood needed to offer the public something it could not get on television, which itself was under an even more restrictive censorship code. In addition to the threat of television, there was also increasing competition from foreign films, such as Vittorio De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves" (1948), the Swedish film "One Summer of Happiness" (1951), and Ingmar Bergman's "Summer with Monika" (1953). Vertical integration in the film industry had been found to violate anti-trust laws, and studios had been forced to give up ownership of theaters by the Supreme Court in "United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc." (1948). The studios had no way to keep out foreign films, which were not bound by the Production Code. Some British films, such as "Victim" (1961), "A Taste of Honey" (1961), and "The Leather Boys" (1963), challenged traditional gender roles, and openly confronted the prejudices against homosexuals, all in clear violation of the Hollywood Production Code.


title: Hays Code

text: In 1952, in the case of "Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson", the Supreme Court unanimously overruled its 1915 decision ("Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio"), and held that motion pictures were entitled to First Amendment protection, so the New York State Board of Regents could not ban "The Miracle", a short film that was one half of "L'Amore" (1948), an anthology film directed by Roberto Rossellini. Film distributor Joseph Burstyn released the film in the United States in 1950, and the case became known as the "Miracle Decision" because of its connection to Rossellini's film. This reduced the threat of government regulation, which had formerly been cited as justification for the Production Code, and the PCA's powers over the Hollywood industry were greatly reduced.


title: Hays Code

text: By the 1950s, American culture also began to change. A boycott by the National Legion of Decency no longer guaranteed a film's commercial failure, and several aspects of the Code had slowly lost their taboo. In 1956, areas of the Code were rewritten to accept subjects such as miscegenation, adultery, and prostitution. For example, the remake of "Anna Christie", a pre-Code film dealing with prostitution, was cancelled by MGM twice, in 1940 and in 1946, as the character Anna was not allowed to be portrayed as a prostitute. By 1962, such subject matter was acceptable, and the original film was given a seal of approval.


title: Hays Code

text: By the late 1950s, increasingly explicit films began to appear, such as "Suddenly, Last Summer" (1959), "Psycho" (1960), and "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1960). The MPAA reluctantly granted the seal of approval for these films, although not until certain cuts were made. Owing to its themes, Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot" (1959) was not granted a certificate of approval, but still became a box office smash, and as a result, it further weakened the authority of the Code.


title: Hays Code

text: At the forefront of contesting the Code was director Otto Preminger, whose films violated the Code repeatedly in the 1950s. His 1953 film "The Moon Is Blue", about a young woman who tries to play two suitors off against each other by claiming that she plans to keep her virginity until marriage, was released without a certificate of approval. He later made "The Man with the Golden Arm" (1955), which portrayed the prohibited subject of drug abuse, and "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959), which dealt with murder and rape. Like "Some Like It Hot", Preminger's films were direct assaults on the authority of the Production Code, and their success hastened its abandonment. In the early 1960s, films began to deal with adult subjects and sexual matters that had not been seen in Hollywood films since the early 1930s. The MPAA reluctantly granted the seal of approval for these films, although again not until certain cuts were made.


title: Hays Code

text: In 1964, the Holocaust film "The Pawnbroker", directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Rod Steiger, was initially rejected because of two scenes in which actresses Linda Geiser and Thelma Oliver fully expose their breasts, and also because of a sex scene between Oliver and Jaime Sánchez that was described as "unacceptably sex suggestive and lustful". Despite the rejection, the film's producers arranged for Allied Artists to release the film without the Production Code seal, with the New York censors licensing the film without the cuts demanded by Code administrators. The producers appealed the rejection to the MPAA. On a 6–3 vote, the MPAA granted the film an exception, conditional on "reduction in the length of the scenes which the Production Code Administration found unapprovable". The requested reductions of nudity were minimal, and the outcome was viewed in the media as a victory for the film's producers.


title: Hays Code

text: "The Pawnbroker" was the first film featuring bare breasts to receive Production Code approval. The exception to the code was granted as a "special and unique case" and was described by "The New York Times" at the time as "an unprecedented move that will not, however, set a precedent". In "Pictures at a Revolution", a 2008 study of films during that era, Mark Harris wrote that the MPAA approval was "the first of a series of injuries to the Production Code that would prove fatal within three years".


title: Hays Code

text: In 1966, Warner Bros. released "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", the first film to feature the "Suggested for Mature Audiences" (SMA) label. When Jack Valenti became President of the MPAA in 1966, he was faced with censoring the film's explicit language. Valenti negotiated a compromise: the word "screw" was removed, but other language remained, including the phrase "hump the hostess". The film received Production Code approval despite the previously prohibited language.


title: Hays Code

text: That same year, the British-produced, American-financed film "Blowup" was denied Production Code approval. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released it anyway in the first instance of an MPAA member company distributing a film without an approval certificate. Also, the original, lengthy code was replaced by a list of eleven points outlining that the boundaries of the new code would be current community standards and good taste. Any film containing content deemed suitable for older audiences would feature the SMA label in its advertising. With the creation of this new label, the MPAA unofficially began classifying films.


title: Hays Code

text: By the late 1960s, enforcement had become impossible and the Production Code was abandoned entirely. The MPAA began working on a rating system under which film restrictions would lessen. The MPAA film rating system went into effect on November 1, 1968, with the four rating symbols: "G" means suggested for general exhibition (persons of all ages admitted), "M" means suggested for mature audiences, "R" means suggested as restricted (persons under 16 not admitted unless accompanied by a parent or adult guardian), and "X" means persons under 16 will not be admitted. By the end of 1968, Geoffrey Shurlock stepped down from his post.


title: Hays Code

text: In 1969, the Swedish film "I Am Curious (Yellow)", directed by Vilgot Sjöman, was initially banned in the U.S. for its frank depiction of sexuality; however, this was overturned by the Supreme Court. In 1970, because of confusion over the meaning of "mature audiences", the M rating was changed to "GP" meaning "for general exhibition, but parental guidance is suggested", then in 1972 to the current "PG", for "parental guidance suggested". In 1984, in response to public complaints regarding the severity of horror elements in PG-rated titles such as "Gremlins" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", the "PG-13" rating was created as a middle tier between PG and R. In 1990, the X rating was replaced by "NC-17" (under 17 not admitted), partly because of the stigma associated with the X rating, and partly because the X rating was not trademarked by the MPAA; pornographic bookstores and theaters were using their own X, XX and XXX symbols to market products.


title: Hays Code

text: As the American Humane Association depended on the Hays Office for the right to monitor sets, the closure of the Hays Office in 1966 also corresponded with an increase in animal cruelty on movie sets. The association did not regain its access until 1980.


title: Constellation Brands

text: Constellation Brands, Inc., a Fortune 500 company, is an American producer and marketer of beer, wine, and spirits. Constellation is the largest beer import company in the US, measured by sales, and has the third-largest market share (7.4 percent) of all major beer suppliers. It also has investments in medical and recreational cannabis. Based in Victor, New York, Constellation has about 40 facilities and approximately 9,000 employees.


title: Constellation Brands

text: The company has more than 100 brands in its portfolio. Wine brands include Robert Mondavi, Kim Crawford, Meiomi, Simi Winery, Ruffino, and The Prisoner Wine Company. Constellation's beer portfolio includes imported brands such as Corona, Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo, and Pacífico, as well as American craft beer producer Funky Buddha. Spirits brands include Svedka Vodka, Casa Noble Tequila and High West Whiskey, Nelson's Green Brier Tennessee Whiskey.


title: Constellation Brands

text: The company was established in 1945 by Marvin Sands in the Finger Lakes region of New York as Canandaigua Industries, selling bulk wine to bottlers in the eastern United States. In its first year, the company sold approximately 200,000 gallons of wine and had gross sales of $150,000. The company was incorporated as Canandaigua Wine Company, Inc. in 1972 and went public in 1973. Marvin's son Richard Sands became president in 1993 and CEO in 1996. In 1999, Marvin Sands died following a brief illness.


title: Constellation Brands

text: In 1987, the company purchased the Manischewitz winery in Canandaigua, New York, and continues to license the Manischewitz name from R.A.B. Foods. In 1998 it acquired Matthew Clark in the United Kingdom, and after selling off its cider business, the Gaymer Cider Company, sold half of the business to Punch Taverns.


title: Constellation Brands

text: In 2000, the company changed its name to Constellation Brands, Inc. to reflect the scope of the company and its range of brands. In 2007, Rob Sands was named president and CEO. During the 2000s, there were multiple acquisitions, with some divestments later in the decade. Acquisitions included BRL Hardy (Australia) and Nobilo (New Zealand) in 2003; Robert Mondavi Corp. for $1 billion in 2004; Vincor International, Canada's largest wine company, for $1.44 billion in 2006; Spirits Marque One (owner of Svedka Vodka) in 2007; and Beam Wines Estates, the wine operations of Fortune Brands (which included several major brands such as Clos du Bois) for $885 million in 2008. The company later moved to a more premium wine portfolio, divesting Almaden Vineyards, Inglenook Winery, and the Paul Masson winery in Madera, California, in 2008, and its value spirits portfolio to the Sazerac Company in 2009. They sold 30 low-cost wine labels in January 2021 to E. & J. Gallo for $810 million including Clos du Bois.


title: Constellation Brands

text: In 2013, Constellation acquired Grupo Modelo's US beer business from Anheuser-Busch InBev. The transaction included full ownership of Crown Imports LLC which provided Constellation with complete, independent control of all aspects of the US commercial business; a brewery in Mexico; exclusive perpetual brand license in the US to import, market and sell Corona and the Modelo brands and the freedom to develop brand extensions and innovations for the US market. Constellation had formerly imported Corona and other Modelo brands to the United States and acquired the US rights to those brands as a part of an anti-trust settlement permitting Modelo's acquisition by Anheuser-Busch InBev. It now produces its own versions of those products for the US, with Modelo serving all other countries. In 2014, Constellation finalized a joint venture with Owens-Illinois and completed the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch InBev's glass production plant, located adjacent to the company's brewery in Nava, Mexico.


title: Constellation Brands

text: In December 2015, Constellation announced the $1 billion acquisition of Ballast Point Brewing of San Diego. In October 2016, Constellation announced the $160 million acquisition of High West Distillery of Park City, Utah. In August 2017, Constellation announced the acquisition of Funky Buddha Brewery of Oakland Park, Florida.


title: Constellation Brands

text: In April 2018, Accolade Wines (acquired under the name BRL Hardy) was sold to private equity firm The Carlyle Group. Constellation had already in 2011 reduced its holdings in Accolade to 20%. In February 2019, Constellation announced it had acquired a minority stake in Black Button Distilling, a craft spirits distillery in Rochester, NY. In April 2019, Constellation announced a deal to sell wine brands, including Clos du Bois and Mark West, to E. & J. Gallo Winery for $1.7 billion. In July 2019, Constellation announced it had acquired a minority stake in Montanya Distillers, a craft-rum distillery in Crested Butte, Colorado and a majority stake in Nelson's Green Brier Distillery, a revival of the original Green Brier Tennessee Whiskey and Belle Meade Bourbon labels in Nashville, TN. In December 2019, the sale of Ballast Point Brewing to Kings & Convicts Brewery of Illinois was announced. Terms were not disclosed. In July 2020, Constellation Brands acquired Empathy Wines, co-founded by entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. On September 15, 2020, it was announced Constellation Brands acquires craft spirits producer Copper & Kings American Brandy. In February 2022, Constellation was reported to have approached Monster Beverage to enter into a merger with a combined valuation above $90 billion.


title: Constellation Brands

text: In 2017, the company began investing in medical marijuana. In March 2019, Bill Newlands became CEO. In October 2017, Constellation agreed to pay about C$245 million ($191 million) for a 9.9% stake in Canopy Growth Corporation, a Canadian seller of medicinal-marijuana products. At the time of the agreement, Constellation became the first Fortune 500 company and the first major alcoholic beverage maker to take a minority stake in a marijuana business. In August 2018, the company announced that it would invest an additional US$4 billion in Canopy Growth Corporation in advance of the legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada in October that year. The investment will increase its share in the Canadian Company to 38%. Canopy Growth president Bruce Linton said the additional funds would be used for international expansion and that future marketing plans included products such as cannabis-infused beverages and sleep aids.


title: Constellation Brands

text: In 2010, a French court in Carcassonne, France, convicted 12 wine traders and producers for selling fake pinot noir wine to buyers in the US, amongst them Constellation, in a scheme that lasted from January 2006 to March 2008. Constellation later faced and settled a class action lawsuit because it "should have known" that the wine was fake.


title: Constellation Brands

text: In 2018 Constellation Brands was involved in a water rights dispute over a proposed manufacturing facility in the desert city of Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico. This water comes from the Colorado River, which not only provides Mexicali and the agricultural valley but is also piped to the mountain and coastal cities of Tijuana, Tecate, Rosarito and to some areas of Ensenada.


title: Constellation Brands

text: In 2021, AB InBev sued Constellation Brands after the company launched two new Modelo-branded beers on the US market, arguing that the first beer illegally used the term tequila to describe the barrels where the beer was aged, and that the second beer was inappropriately using the term Bourbon to describe the barrels where the beer was aged because Bourbon has nothing to do with Mexico.


title: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

text: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain (known as Exciting Pro Wrestling 5 in Japan) is a professional wrestling video game developed by Yuke's and published by THQ for PlayStation 2 in North America on October 27, 2003. It is the sequel to "WWE SmackDown! Shut Your Mouth", the fifth and last game in the "WWE SmackDown!" series based on World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), and the final game to be named after the weekly television show of the same name.


title: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

text: "Here Comes the Pain" received "generally favorable" reviews from critics and "universal acclaim" from users. The game would be succeeded by "WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw" in 2004.


title: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

text: Alongside a new grappling system, body damage displays and submission meters (for both the person applying the move and the person breaking out of the move), as well as the ability to break the submission hold when touching the ropes, and individual character scales that consisted of statistics (such as strength, endurance, and speed) were all introduced for the first time. "Here Comes the Pain" also marks the first time the Elimination Chamber and the Bra and Panties Match would be featured in a wrestling game.


title: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

text: Alongside a playable roster of over 50 Superstars who were active members of the WWE roster at the time of the game's release, legends were introduced for the first time, which included retired wrestlers like Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, as well as former iterations of current wrestlers, such as The Undertaker with his 1990s gimmick. It also marks the final time that The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin would appear in a WWE game as non-legends, and is the first WWE game to feature future mainstays John Cena, Batista, and Rey Mysterio as playable characters. It is also the first game to depict Kane without his mask.


title: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

text: Additional updates came in Season Mode, with decisions (such as where you wanted to go and what you wanted to do next) being made on a new menu screen in your locker room, while players could enter the General Manager's room to ask for title shots and brand switches. There are multiple titles to go after depending on if you go to "SmackDown!" or "RAW".


title: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

text: Early versions of the game featured Jeff Hardy, Hulk Hogan (along with his alter-ego Mr. America and his 1980s appearance) and The Ultimate Warrior. Hogan and Hardy were removed from the game when they left WWE and Warrior was omitted due to legal issues. Data for other omitted wrestlers, including Al Snow, Spike Dudley, Billy Kidman, Billy Gunn, William Regal, Bradshaw, Molly Holly and 3-Minute Warning remains on the final discs, with none of them having any finished character models. The concept of having multiple versions of Hogan in one game was finally included with the release of "WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw 2006".


title: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

text: "WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain" received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom.


title: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

text: The game received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic.


title: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

text: IGN called the game "one of the best wrestling games we've ever played...With its ultra-improved gameplay mechanics, enhanced visual engine, smarter career mode, and established create-a-character feature, Yuke's and THQ are definitely the track to success." GameSpot said, "What the game lacks in innovation, however, is more than made up for in sheer playability." Eurogamer called it "a superb blend of traditional and wrestling-specific fight mechanics, and there's so much variety here that it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say you could play this one from now until the next SmackDown without getting bored or running out of things to do." "GMR" said, "Submission moves finally makes [sic] sense, thanks to a logical location-based damage system, and wrestlers' weights are accurately presented."


title: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

text: Other reviews were more mixed. "Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine" called it "the first game in the series that tries to accommodate both sides by combining quick action with the technical elements of wrestling, and it works -- almost." In Japan, "Famitsu" gave it a score of 29 out of 40.


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: Resistance to Civil Government, also called On the Duty of Civil Disobedience or Civil Disobedience for short, is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War (1846–1848).


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: In 1848, Thoreau gave lectures at the Concord Lyceum entitled "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government". This formed the basis for his essay, which was first published under the title "Resistance to Civil Government" in an 1849 anthology by Elizabeth Peabody called "Æsthetic Papers". The latter title distinguished Thoreau's program from that of "non-resistants" or Christian anarchists like Adin Ballou and William Lloyd Garrison, as Thoreau argued that their insistence on nonresistance as praxis against the state was grossly ineffectual. Nonetheless, Thoreau was initially inspired by the Christian anarchist ideals espoused by Ballou and Garrison. "Resistance" also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor comparing the government to a machine: when the machine was producing injustice, it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be "a counter friction" (i.e., a resistance) "to stop the machine".


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: In 1866, four years after Thoreau's death, the essay was reprinted in a collection of Thoreau's work ("A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers") under the title "Civil Disobedience". Today, the essay also appears under the title "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience", perhaps to contrast it with William Paley's "Of the Duty of Civil Obedience" to which Thoreau was in part responding. For instance, the 1960 New American Library Signet Classics edition of "Walden" included a version with this title. "On Civil Disobedience" is another common title.


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: The word has several definitions. The one that is intended in this case is "relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state", and so "civil disobedience" means "disobedience to the state". Sometimes people assume that "civil" in this case means "observing accepted social forms; polite" which would make "civil disobedience" something like "polite, orderly disobedience". Although this is an acceptable dictionary definition of the word "civil", it is not what is intended here. This misinterpretation is one reason the essay is sometimes considered to be an argument for pacifism or for exclusively nonviolent resistance. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi used this interpretation to suggest an equivalence between Thoreau's civil disobedience and his own satyagraha.


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: The slavery crisis inflamed New England in the 1840s and 1850s. The environment became especially tense after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. A lifelong abolitionist, Thoreau delivered an impassioned speech which would later become "Civil Disobedience" in 1848, just months after leaving Walden Pond. The speech dealt with slavery and at the same time excoriated American imperialism, particularly the Mexican–American War.


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: Thoreau asserts that because governments are typically more harmful than helpful, they therefore cannot be justified. Democracy is no cure for this, as majorities simply by virtue of being majorities do not also gain the virtues of wisdom and justice. The judgment of an individual's conscience is not necessarily inferior to the decisions of a political body or majority, and so "[i]t is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice." He adds, "I cannot for an instant recognize as my government [that] which is the slave's government also."


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: The government, according to Thoreau, is not just a little corrupt or unjust in the course of doing its otherwise-important work, but in fact the government is primarily an agent of corruption and injustice. Because of this, it is "not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize".


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: Political philosophers have counseled caution about revolution because the upheaval of revolution typically causes a lot of expense and suffering. Thoreau contends that such a cost/benefit analysis is inappropriate when the government is actively facilitating an injustice as extreme as slavery. Such a fundamental immorality justifies any difficulty or expense to bring it to an end. "This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people."


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: Thoreau tells his audience that they cannot blame this problem solely on pro-slavery Southern politicians, but must put the blame on those in, for instance, Massachusetts, "who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, "cost what it may"... There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them." (See also: Thoreau's "Slavery in Massachusetts" which also advances this argument.)


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: He exhorts people not to just wait passively for an opportunity to "vote" for justice, because voting for justice is as ineffective as "wishing" for justice; what you need to do is to actually "be just". This is not to say that you have an obligation to devote your life to fighting for justice, but you "do" have an obligation not to commit injustice and not to give injustice your practical support.


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: Paying taxes is one way in which otherwise well-meaning people collaborate in injustice. People who proclaim that the war in Mexico is wrong and that it is wrong to enforce slavery contradict themselves if they fund both things by paying taxes. Thoreau points out that the same people who applaud soldiers for refusing to fight an unjust war are not themselves willing to refuse to fund the government that started the war.


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: In a constitutional republic like the United States, people often think that the proper response to an unjust law is to try to use the political process to change the law, but to obey and respect the law until it is changed. But if the law is itself clearly unjust, and the lawmaking process is not designed to quickly obliterate such unjust laws, then Thoreau says the law deserves no respect and it should be broken. In the case of the United States, the Constitution itself enshrines the institution of slavery, and therefore falls under this condemnation. Abolitionists, in Thoreau's opinion, should completely withdraw their support of the government and stop paying taxes, even if this means courting imprisonment, or even violence.


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: Because the government will retaliate, Thoreau says he prefers living simply because he therefore has less to lose. "I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts... It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case."


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: He was briefly imprisoned for refusing to pay the poll tax, but even in jail felt freer than the people outside. He considered it an interesting experience and came out of it with a new perspective on his relationship to the government and its citizens. (He was released the next day when "someone interfered, and paid that tax".)


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: Thoreau said he was willing to pay the highway tax, which went to pay for something of benefit to his neighbors, but that he was opposed to taxes that went to support the government itself—even if he could not tell if his particular contribution would eventually be spent on an unjust project or a beneficial one. "I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually."


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: Because government is man-made, not an element of nature or an act of God, Thoreau hoped that its makers could be reasoned with. As governments go, he felt, the U.S. government, with all its faults, was not the worst and even had some admirable qualities. But he felt we could and should insist on better. "The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual... Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: An aphorism often erroneously attributed to Thomas Jefferson, "That government is best which governs least...", was actually found in Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience." Thoreau was apparently paraphrasing the motto of "The United States Magazine and Democratic Review": "The best government is that which governs least" which might also be inspired from the 17th verse of the Tao Te Ching by Laozi: ""The best rulers are scarcely known by their subjects."" Thoreau expanded it significantly:


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi was impressed by Thoreau's arguments. In 1907, about one year into his first "satyagraha" campaign in South Africa, he wrote a translated synopsis of Thoreau's argument for "Indian Opinion", credited Thoreau's essay with being "the chief cause of the abolition of slavery in America", and wrote that "Both his example and writings are at present exactly applicable to the Indians in the Transvaal." He later concluded:


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was also influenced by this essay. In his autobiography, he wrote:


title: Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)

text: Author Leo Tolstoy cited "Civil Disobedience" as having a strong impact on his nonviolence methodology. Others who are said to have been influenced by "Civil Disobedience" include: Suffragist Alice Paul, President John F. Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and various writers such as, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and William Butler Yeats.


title: Ron Moody

text: Ron Moody (born Ronald Moodnick; 8 January 1924 – 11 June 2015) was an English actor, composer, singer and writer. He was best known for his portrayal of Fagin in "Oliver!" (1968) and its 1983 Broadway revival. Moody earned a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for the film, as well as a Tony Award nomination for the stage production. Other notable projects include "The Mouse on the Moon" (1963), Mel Brooks' "The Twelve Chairs" (1970) and "Flight of the Doves" (1971), in which Moody shared the screen with "Oliver!" co-star Jack Wild.


title: Ron Moody

text: Moody was born on 8 January 1924 in Tottenham, Middlesex, the son of Kate (née Ogus; 1898–1980) and Bernard/Barnett Moodnick (1896–1964), a studio executive. His father was a Russian Jew and his mother was a Lithuanian Jew; said Moody, "I'm 100% Jewish—totally kosher!" He was a cousin of director Laurence Moody and actress Clare Lawrence. His surname was legally changed to the more anglicised Moody in 1930.


title: Ron Moody

text: Moody was educated at Southgate County School, which at the time was a state grammar school, and based in Palmers Green, Middlesex, followed by the London School of Economics in Central London, where he trained to become an economist. During World War II he enlisted in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and became a radar technician.


title: Ron Moody

text: Despite training to be an economist, Moody began appearing in theatrical shows and later decided to become a professional actor.


title: Ron Moody

text: Moody worked in a variety of genres, but is perhaps best known for his starring role as Fagin in Lionel Bart's stage and film musical "Oliver!" based on "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens. He created the role in the original West End production in 1960, and reprised it in the 1984 Broadway revival, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. For his performance in the 1968 film "Oliver!", he received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor (Musical/Comedy), the Best Actor award at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination in the same category. Reflecting on the role, Moody states: "Fate destined me to play Fagin. It was the part of a lifetime. That summer of 1967 [during filming] was one of the happiest times of my life". He reprised his role as Fagin in the 1983 Channel 4 television programme "The Other Side of London", and again at the 1985 Royal Variety Performance in Theatre Royal, Drury Lane before Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh.


title: Ron Moody

text: Moody appeared in several children's television series, including the voice of Badger and Toad in the TV Adaptation of Colin Dann's "The Animals of Farthing Wood", "Noah's Island", "Telebugs", and "Into the Labyrinth". Among his better known roles was that of Prime Minister Rupert Mountjoy in the comedy "The Mouse on the Moon" (1963), alongside Margaret Rutherford, with whom he appeared again the following year in "Murder Most Foul" (1964), one of Rutherford's Miss Marple films. He played French entertainer and mime artist The Great Orlando in the 1963 Cliff Richard film "Summer Holiday". He acted again with former "Oliver!" co-star Jack Wild in "Flight of the Doves" (1971).


title: Ron Moody

text: In 1969, Moody was offered, but declined, the lead role in "Doctor Who", following the departure of Patrick Troughton from the part. He later told many people (including "Doctor Who" companion Elisabeth Sladen) that declining the role was a decision he subsequently regretted. He played Ippolit Vorobyaninov alongside Frank Langella (as Ostap Bender) in Mel Brooks' version of "The Twelve Chairs" (1970). In 2003, he starred in the black comedy "Paradise Grove" alongside Rula Lenska, and played Edwin Caldecott, an old nemesis of Jim Branning on the BBC soap "EastEnders". In 2005, he acted in the Big Finish Productions "Doctor Who" audio play "Other Lives", playing the Duke of Wellington. He made several appearances in BBC TVs long running variety show, The Good Old Days, enacting pastiche/comic Victorian melodramas.


title: Ron Moody

text: In 2004, the British ITV1 nostalgia series "After They Were Famous" hosted a documentary of the surviving cast of the film "Oliver!" Several of the film's musical numbers were reenacted. Moody, then 80 but still spry, and Jack Wild (seriously ill with oral cancer at the time) recreated their dance from the closing credits of the film.


title: Ron Moody

text: Moody appeared in an episode of BBC1's "Casualty" (aired on 30 January 2010) as a Scottish patient who had served with the Black Watch during the Second World War. On 30 June 2010, Moody appeared on stage at the end of a performance of Cameron Mackintosh's revival of "Oliver!" and made a humorous speech about the show's 50th anniversary. He then reprised the "Pick a Pocket or Two" number with the cast.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon (3 May 1896 – 6 October 1974) was an Indian academic, politician, and non-career diplomat. He was described by some as the second most powerful man in India, after the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. He wrote the first draft of the Preamble to the Constitution of India, initiated the idea of the Constituent Assembly of India and was the architect, and the person who coined the name, of the Non-Aligned Movement.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: He was chairman of the Indian delegation at the United Nations General Assembly from 1953 to 1962, at sessions of the United Nations Trusteeship Council from 1953 to 1956, and to the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament. He was a member of the Indian National Congress and also at one time a member of the British Labour Party.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Noted for his eloquence, brilliance and forceful and highly abrasive personality, Menon inspired widespread adulation as well as angry detraction in both India and the West. To his supporters, he was an unapologetic champion of India in the face of Western imperialism, who famously "taught the white man his place". To his Western detractors, he was "Nehru's evil genius". US president Dwight Eisenhower characterised him as a "menace ... governed by an ambition to prove himself the master international manipulator and politician of the age", but Indian President K.R. Narayanan eulogised him as a truly great man. Decades after his death, Menon remains an enigmatic and controversial figure.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: As a young man, Menon served as founding editor of the Pelican imprint of Penguin Books. He led the overseas wing of the Indian independence movement, launching the India League in London, aggressively campaigning within the United Kingdom to win public support for Indian independence, and rallying the support of world powers such as the Soviet Union. In the immediate wake of independence, Menon emerged as engineer of and spokesman for India's foreign policy, and, more generally, architect of the non-aligned movement. He headed India's diplomatic missions to the United Kingdom and the United Nations, and distinguished himself in diplomatic matters including the Suez crisis. In 1957, Menon had set the record for the longest speech (8 hours) before the U.N. Security Council while defending India's rights to the disputed territory of Kashmir, in the process earning widespread popularity and the sobriquet "Hero of Kashmir".


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Returning to India, he was repeatedly elected to both houses of the Indian parliament from constituencies as varied as Mumbai, Bengal, and Trivandrum in his native state of Kerala. He served as a minister without portfolio and later as Minister of Defence, overseeing the modernization of the Indian military and development of the Indian military-industrial infrastructure, and spearheading the Indian annexation of Goa. He resigned in the wake of the Sino-Indian War, following allegations of India's military unpreparedness, but remained counselor to Nehru, member of parliament and elder statesman until his death.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon was born in an aristocratic Nair family at Thiruvangad Thalassery and later moved to Panniyankara in Kozhikode, Kerala, in the Vengalil family of Malabar. His father Adv. Komath Krishna Kurup, Kottappally, Vatakara, the son of Orlathiri Udayavarma, Raja of Kadathanadu and Komath Sreedevi Kettilamma, was a wealthy and influential lawyer. His mother was the granddaughter of Raman Menon who had been the Dewan of Travancore between 1815 and 1817, serving Gowri Parvati Bayi. Menon had his early education at the Zamorin's College, Kozhikode. In 1918 he graduated from Presidency College, Chennai, with a B.A. in History and Economics. While studying in the Madras Law College, he became involved in Theosophy and was actively associated with Annie Besant and the Home Rule Movement. He was a leading member of the "Brothers of Service", founded by Annie Besant who spotted his gifts and helped him travel to England in 1924.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon studied at London School of Economics and was awarded Bachelor of Science in economics and Master of Science in economics from University of London. At London School of Economics, Harold Laski described him as the best student he had ever had. Later he studied at University College London and in 1930, he was awarded an M.A. in Industrial Psychology with First Class Honours from University of London, for a thesis entitled "An Experimental Study of the Mental Processes Involved in Reasoning", and in 1934 he was awarded an MSc in Political Science with First Class Honours from the London School of Economics, for a thesis entitled "English Political Thought in the Seventeenth Century". He had continued to study law and was admitted to the Middle Temple, also, in 1934, thus marking the end of his formal education at the age of 37.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: During the 1930s, Menon worked as an editor for Bodley Head and "Twentieth Century Library", and then with Penguin Books with founder Sir Allen Lane. According to S Muthiah, the idea for Penguin Books was Menon's. In his celebrated history of the old British port, Madras Miscellany, he writes:


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon edited the titles published by Pelican Books which grew into respected British institution with great political and cultural influence.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: After joining the Labour Party he was elected borough councillor of St Pancras, London. St. Pancras later conferred on him the Freedom of the Borough, the only other person so honoured being George Bernard Shaw. The Labour Party began preparations to nominate him as its candidate for the Dundee Parliamentary constituency in 1939 but that fell through because of his perceived connections with the Communist Party. He resigned (or was expelled, according to other sources) from the Labour Party in protest but rejoined in 1944.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon became a passionate proponent of India's independence, working as a journalist and as President of the India League from 1928 to 1947, and a close friend of fellow Indian nationalist leader and future Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, as well as such political and intellectual figures as Bertrand Russell, J.B.S. Haldane, Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan, and E.M. Forster, whose "A Passage to India" he secured the publication of, according to Shashi Tharoor. Menon's legendary relationship with Nehru would later be analogised by Sir Isaiah Berlin as like that of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: In 1932 he inspired a fact-finding delegation headed by Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson to visit India, and edited its report entitled "Conditions in India", obtaining a preface from his friend Bertrand Russell. Menon also worked assiduously to ensure that Nehru would succeed Mahatma Gandhi as the moral leader and executive of the Indian independence movement, and to clear the way for Nehru's eventual accession as the first Prime Minister of an independent India. As Secretary, he built the India League into the most influential Indian lobby in the British Parliament, and actively turned British popular sentiment towards the cause of Indian independence. India League meetings would take place in Indian restaurants and cafes, which were seen as hubs attracting British Indians. Notable meeting places include Ayub Ali's "Shah Jalal Coffee House" and Shah Abdul Majid Qureshi's "India Centre".


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: The origins of what would become the policy of non-alignment were evident in Menon's personal sympathies even in England, where he simultaneously condemned both Britain and Germany, although he did march several times in anti-Nazi demonstrations. When asked whether India would prefer to be ruled by the British or the Germans, Menon replied that "[one] might as well ask a fish if it prefers to be fried in butter or margarine".


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: After India gained independence in 1947, Menon was appointed High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom, a post in which he remained until 1952. Menon's intense distrust of the West extended to the United Kingdom itself, and his frequent opposition to British political manoeuvres eventually led MI5 to deem him a "serious menace to security". From 1929 onwards Menon had been kept under surveillance, with a warrant to intercept his correspondence being issued in December 1933, identifying him as an "important worker in the Indian revolutionary movement". Clandestine surveillance intensified following Menon's 1946 meeting in Paris with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, and Indian independence. In 2007, hundreds of pages of MI5 files documenting their coverage of Menon were released, including transcripts of phone conversations and intercepted correspondences with other statesmen and Nehru himself.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: During his tenure as the high commissioner, Menon was accused of being involved in the Jeep scandal case of 1948, but the Government closed the case in 1955, ignoring suggestion by the Inquiry Committee.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: In 1949, Menon accepted the command of the Indian delegation to the United Nations, a position he would hold until 1962. He earned a reputation for brilliance in the UN, frequently engineering elegant solutions to complex international political issues, including a peace plan for Korea, a ceasefire in Indo-China, the deadlocked disarmament talks, and the French withdrawal from the UN over Algeria.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: During this period, Menon was a spokesman for Nehru's foreign policy, dubbed non-alignment in 1952, charting a third course between the US and the Soviet Union. Menon was particularly critical of the United States, and frequently expressed sympathies with Soviet policies, earning the ire of many Indians by voting against a UN resolution calling for the USSR to withdraw troops from Hungary, although he reversed his stance three weeks later under pressure from New Delhi.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon also supported the admission of China to the United Nations, which earned him the enmity of many American statesmen, including Senator William F. Knowland. In 1955, Menon intervened in the case of several American airmen who had been held by China, meeting with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai before flying to Washington to confer with and counsel American President Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, at the request of British Prime Minister Anthony Eden.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon was a passionate opponent of nuclear weapons, and partnered with many in his quest against their proliferation. Throughout the 1950s, Menon liaised with Bertrand Russell, with whom he had previously collaborated in the India League.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: During the Suez Crisis, Menon attempted to persuade a recalcitrant Gamal Nasser to compromise with the West, and was instrumental in moving Western powers towards an awareness that Nasser might prove willing to compromise. During the emergency conference on Suez convened in London, Menon offered a counterproposal to John Foster Dulles' plan for resolution, in which Egypt would be allowed to retain control of the Suez Canal. Menon's proposal was initially estimated by US diplomats to have more support than the Dulles plan, and was widely viewed as an attempt to hybridise the Dulles plan with Egypt's claims. Ultimately, the Dulles plan passed, with Menon voting against, alongside Russia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Menon, however, markedly softened his opposition in the final hours, leaving only Soviet Foreign Minister Dmitri Shepilov in absolute contraposition.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: On 23 January 1957 Menon delivered an unprecedented eight-hour speech defending India's stand on Kashmir. To date, the speech is the longest ever delivered in the United Nations, covering five hours of the 762nd meeting on 23 January, and two hours and forty-eight minutes on the 24th, reportedly concluding with Menon's collapse on the Security Council floor. Between the two parts, Menon collapsed from exhaustion and had to be hospitalized. During the filibuster, Nehru moved swiftly and successfully to consolidate Indian power in Kashmir. Menon's passionate defence of Indian sovereignty in Kashmir enlarged his base of support in India, and led to the Indian press temporarily dubbing him the "Hero of Kashmir".


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Krishna Menon became a member of the Rajya Sabha in 1953 from Madras. In 1956, he joined the Union Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio and was made Minister of Defence in April 1957, after winning the North Mumbai seat to the Lok Sabha. Menon was a substantially more powerful and high-profile figure than his predecessors, and brought with him a degree of governmental, public, and international attention that India's military had not previously known. He suspended the seniority system within the army, replacing it with a merit-based method of promotion, and extensively restructured much of India's military command system, eventually leading to the resignation of the Chief of the Army Staff, General K.S. Thimayya. Critics accused Menon of disregarding tradition in favour of personal caprice; Menon countered that he was seeking to improve the efficiency of the military.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon, in the face of intense opposition, also began the creation of a domestic military industrial complex to supply the Indian armed forces with weaponry and provisions.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: The annexation of Goa was closely linked with the 1961 elections to the Lok Sabha. With the race looming, Menon aggressively addressed the issue of Indian sovereignty over the Portuguese colony of Goa, in a partial reprise of his earlier defence of Indian Kashmir. In New York, Menon met US Ambassador and two-time presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson behind closed doors, before meeting with President John F. Kennedy, who had expressed his reservations about Menon's anti-imperialism during the state visit of Jawaharlal Nehru. Menon lectured Kennedy on the importance of US-Soviet compromise, before returning to India. On 17 December 1961, Menon and the Indian Army overran Goa, leading to widespread Western condemnation. In his typical style, Menon dismissed the admonishments of Kennedy and Stevenson as "vestige(s) of Western imperialism". Menon's spearheading of the Indian annexation of Goa had subtle ramifications throughout Asia, as in the case of Indonesian president Sukarno, who refrained from invading the Portuguese colony of East Timor partially from fear of being compared to Menon. The invasion also spawned a complex mass of legal issues relating to differences between eastern and western interpretations of United Nations law and jurisdiction.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: In 1962 China attacked India, leading to the brief Sino-Indian War, and a temporary reversal in India's non-aligned foreign policy. Menon was heavily criticised both inside and outside parliament for ineffectiveness and poorly handling of defence matters. The Indian government's analysis, the Henderson Brooks–Bhagat Report remains classified. Some suggest that aspiring to become a world leader, Menon undermined the intelligence reports dating back to 1955 about Chinese preparations to defend its land claim on disputed areas. A chagrined Menon was responsible for India's lack of military readiness and was forced to tender his resignation on Oct-31-1962 as Minister of Defence in spite of Nehru protecting him by first making him Minister of Defence Production and then minister without portfolio.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Although Menon's role in the development of India's military infrastructure was initially overshadowed by India's unpreparedness in the Sino-Indian War, later analysis and scholarship has increasingly focused on the importance of Menon's vision and foresight in military development, with political figures as varied as President and Minister of Defence R. Venkataraman and Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer of the Supreme Court of India analysing and defending Menon's role in India's rise as a military power.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1953 from Madras which subsequently became a seat from Kerala following the States Reorganisation Act of 1956.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: In 1957, Menon sought a seat in the Lok Sabha, contesting a constituency from North Mumbai. Widely viewed as a hero for his defence of India's sovereignty in Kashmir on the world stage, Menon was met with rapturous receptions on the campaign trail, and ultimately won in a straight contest against PSP candidate Alvares Peter Augustus by 47,741 votes (171,708 to 123,967).


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: In October 1961, Menon, the sitting Defence Minister, was challenged by the 74-year-old Acharya Kripalani, a previous president of the Indian National Congress and close associate of the deceased Mohandas Gandhi. The race soon became the highest-profile in India, with the Sunday Standard remarking that "no political campaign in India has ever been so bitter or so remarkable for the nuances it produced". The race, which witnessed the direct intervention of Jawaharlal Nehru, was widely viewed as of tremendous importance due to the personas and influence of the two candidates, who were seen as avatars for two distinct ideologies. Having previously endorsed Menon's foreign policies, Kripalani relentlessly attacked Menon's persona, seeking to avoid direct confrontation with the prestige of Nehru and the Congress Party. Ultimately, Menon won in a landslide, nearly doubling the vote total of Kripalani, and winning outright majorities in all six of North Mumbai's districts. The electoral results established Menon as second only to Nehru in Indian politics.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: By 1967, Menon had completely lost his public image after India's debacle in the 1962 war with China. However, he still wanted to contest elections and be a member of parliament. He was denied a seat from Mumbai by the Congress on the grounds that he was a non-Maharashtrian. This followed the surge in popularity for the Shiv Sena, with its sons-of-the-soil agenda. He was not offered a seat anywhere else in the country either. Menon resigned from the Congress and stood for elections as an independent candidate from the North East Mumbai constituency, of which he was the sitting member of parliament. He lost to the Congress candidate, Mr. S.G. Barve, a retired ICS officer, by a margin of 13,169 votes. Mr. Barve died later that year, and his sister, Mrs. Tara Sapre, contested the by-election which ensued as the Congress candidate. Menon again stood as an independent, and lost to Mrs. Tara Sapre by a wider margin than had been the case with her brother.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: In 1969, Menon contested a seat in the Lok Sabha from the Bengal constituency of Midnapore, running as an independent in a by-election, and defeating his Congress rival by a margin of 106,767 votes in May of that year.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: In 1971, Menon contested as an independent candidate and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Trivandrum, in his home state of Kerala.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon was an intensely controversial figure during his life, and has remained so even well after his death. Widely described as brilliant and arrogant, he was known for the sheer force of his personality, and for his eloquence and wit as an orator. In response to US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' assertion that US weapons supplied to Pakistan were intended solely for defence against a Soviet invasion, Menon snapped that "the world has yet to see an American gun that can only shoot in one direction", and that "I am yet to come across a vegetarian tiger". In London, Menon responded to novelist Brigid Brophy's surprise at the quality of his English with the retort: "my English is better than yours. You merely picked it up: I learnt it." When criticised for the Rolls-Royces he kept as official vehicles, he replied, "I can scarcely hire a bullock-cart to call on 10 Downing Street". Personally, Menon preferred to use London's double-decker buses whenever possible, underscoring the contrast between his public appearance as a statesman and his personal asceticism. Indian President R. Venkataraman would later describe him as "the very epitome of a representative of the (...) Indian State, personally abstemious but at the same time uncompromising in maintaining the prestige of his high office."


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Privately, his Indian colleagues had a mixed view. Foreign Secretary Subimal Dutt commented that Menon, "did not always measure his words" . Another Indian diplomat, C. S. Jha, said that Menon was "an outstanding world statesman but the world's worst diplomat", adding that "his lack of diplomatic finesse and the abrasive manner in which he projected and expounded India's views needlessly caused offense and did India's and Nehru's image much harm", adding that Menon had an "acid tongue" and was often "overbearing, churlish and vindictive". Ambassador to Moscow, K. P. S. Menon said he was "insufferable".


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon was widely reviled by Western statesmen who loathed his arrogance, outspokenness, and fiercely anti-Western stances. American President Dwight D. Eisenhower considered the outwardly courteous Menon a "menace ... governed by ambition to prove himself the master international manipulator and politician of the age". Western publications routinely referred to him as "India's Rasputin" or "Nehru's Evil Genius".


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: The jeep scandal case in 1948 was the first major corruption case in independent India. Menon, then Indian high commissioner to Britain, ignored protocols and signed a Rs 8 million contract for the purchase of army jeeps with a foreign firm. While most of the money was paid upfront and 155 jeeps landed.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: In private, Menon abstained from tobacco, alcohol and meat, often fasting for days, and forwent his luxury townhouse in Kensington Palace Gardens in favour of a single room in the Indian High Commission during his official tenure in London. As high commissioner, Menon drew only the token salary of one rupee per month, later refusing a salary outright. Menon nonetheless dressed publicly in bespoke suits, earning him the epithet "Mephistopheles in a Savile Row suit".


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: Menon died at the age of 78 on 6 October 1974, whereupon Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi remarked that "a volcano is extinct". At a 1984 memorial lecture for Menon, K. R. Narayanan extolled that "India has been fortunate to have had not only a glorious heritage of culture and civilisation but a succession of great men from the Buddha to Gandhi, from Ashoka to Nehru, from Kautilya to Menon."


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: The V. K. Krishna Menon Institute was established in 2006 to commemorate and facilitate the life, times and achievements of Menon. One of the Institute's objectives include awarding people from India and diaspora from Asia for their significant accomplishments in the fields of science, literature, economics, politics, diplomacy and human rights.


title: V. K. Krishna Menon

text: A blue plaque commemorating Menon was placed at 30 Langdon Park Road, in Highgate, London by English Heritage in 2013.


title: Suprematism

text: Suprematism () is an early twentieth-century art movement focused on the fundamentals of geometry (circles, squares, rectangles), painted in a limited range of colors. The term "suprematism" refers to an abstract art based upon "the supremacy of pure artistic feeling" rather than on visual depiction of objects.


title: Suprematism

text: Founded by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich in 1913, Supremus (Russian: Супремус) conceived of the artist as liberated from everything that pre-determined the ideal structure of life and art. Projecting that vision onto Cubism, which Malevich admired for its ability to deconstruct art, and in the process change its reference points of art, he led a group of Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde artists — including Aleksandra Ekster, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Ivan Kliun, Ivan Puni, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Nina Genke-Meller, Ksenia Boguslavskaya and others — in what's been described as the first attempt to independently found a Ukrainian avant-garde movement, seceding from the trajectory of prior Russian art history.


title: Suprematism

text: To support the movement, Malevich established the journal "Supremus" (initially titled "Nul" or "Nothing"), which received contributions from artists and philosophers. The publication, however, never took off and its first issue was never distributed due to the Russian Revolution. The movement itself, however, was announced in Malevich's 1915 Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10, in St. Petersburg, where he, and several others in his group, exhibited 36 works in a similar style.


title: Suprematism

text: Kazimir Malevich developed the concept of Suprematism when he was already an established painter, having exhibited in the "Donkey's Tail" and the "Der Blaue Reiter" (The Blue Rider) exhibitions of 1912 with cubo-futurist works. The proliferation of new artistic forms in painting, poetry and theatre as well as a revival of interest in the traditional folk art of Russia provided a rich environment in which a Modernist culture was born.


title: Suprematism

text: In "Suprematism" (Part II of his book "The Non-Objective World", which was published 1927 in Munich as Bauhaus Book No. 11), Malevich clearly stated the core concept of Suprematism:


title: Suprematism

text: He created a suprematist "grammar" based on fundamental geometric forms; in particular, the square and the circle. In the "0.10 Exhibition" in 1915, Malevich exhibited his early experiments in suprematist painting. The centerpiece of his show was the "Black Square", placed in what is called the "red/beautiful corner" in Russian Orthodox tradition; the place of the main icon in a house. "Black Square" was painted in 1915 and was presented as a breakthrough in his career and in art in general. Malevich also painted "White on White" which was also heralded as a milestone. "White on White" marked a shift from polychrome to monochrome Suprematism.


title: Suprematism

text: Malevich's Suprematism is fundamentally opposed to the postrevolutionary positions of Constructivism and materialism. Constructivism, with its cult of the object, is concerned with utilitarian strategies of adapting art to the principles of functional organization. Under Constructivism, the traditional easel painter is transformed into the artist-as-engineer in charge of organizing life in all of its aspects.


title: Suprematism

text: Suprematism, in sharp contrast to Constructivism, embodies a profoundly anti-materialist, anti-utilitarian philosophy. In "Suprematism" (Part II of "The Non-Objective World"), Malevich writes:


title: Suprematism

text: Jean-Claude Marcadé has observed that "Despite superficial similarities between Constructivism and Suprematism, the two movements are nevertheless antagonists and it is very important to distinguish between them." According to Marcadé, confusion has arisen because several artists—either directly associated with Suprematism such as El Lissitzky or working under the suprematist influence as did Rodchenko and Lyubov Popova—later abandoned Suprematism for the culture of materials.


title: Suprematism

text: Suprematism does not embrace a humanist philosophy which places man at the center of the universe. Rather, Suprematism envisions man—the artist—as both originator and transmitter of what for Malevich is the world's only true reality—that of absolute non-objectivity.


title: Suprematism

text: For Malevich, it is upon the foundations of absolute non-objectivity that the future of the universe will be built - a future in which appearances, objects, comfort, and convenience no longer dominate.


title: Suprematism

text: Malevich also credited the birth of Suprematism to "Victory Over the Sun", Kruchenykh's Futurist opera production for which he designed the sets and costumes in 1913. The aim of the artists involved was to break with the usual theater of the past and to use a "clear, pure, logical Russian language". Malevich put this to practice by creating costumes from simple materials and thereby took advantage of geometric shapes. Flashing headlights illuminated the figures in such a way that alternating hands, legs or heads disappeared into the darkness. The stage curtain was a black square. One of the drawings for the backcloth shows a black square divided diagonally into a black and a white triangle. Because of the simplicity of these basic forms they were able to signify a new beginning.