History of California 300 word MIN. blog post
California Dreamin’
An Imagined Place
The Land of Possibilities
The Phaeacians in the Odyssey
The people living far to the west
The people closest to the gods.
Characterized by playfulness and warmth
So California:
The Golden Age and the promise of a new beginning
Like a second coming of the Pilgrims
Golden Gate
Golden fruit (citrus)
Home of the Happiest Place on Earth
California
A land set apart
Climate
A place of creativity
A place of rebirth and new beginnings
Recall that it is a place for medical renewal of the individual
Ellen G. White and founding of Loma Linda hospital and college
A place of a second life
Motion picture industry
Where dreams are made manifest
Movies made possible with Edison and Eastman collaborating on celluloid film use
Edison’s kinetoscope begins to appear early 1890s
Motion pictures come to California
Made desirable by the weather
First studio: the Selig Company’s (1909)
D. W. Griffith and the art of filmmaking
He films first movie in Hollywood in 1910
Star system emerges as well in 1910
By 1915, southern Cal was the place to make movies
Griffith founded United Artists with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin.
Became an enormous industry that allowed opportunities for all kinds of vocations
Lured top writers and composers escaping fascist Europe
European intelligentsia comes to California
Arnold Schoenberg (Jewish)
Composer who taught at both UCLA and USC
John Cage studied with him
George Gershwin became a good friend
Thomas Mann
Wrote Doctor Faustus in California
Theodor W. Adorno: German thinker
Herbert Marcuse: philosopher
Eventually at UC San Diego (1965)
One-dimensional Man (1964) and the New Left
Max Horkheimer: philosopher
Bertolt Brecht: playwright
Otto Klemperer: conductor of the LA Philharmonic
Anna Mahler Gropius Werfel
Post-World War II Arts and Culture
Including The Great Refusal
Film Noir
Mostly a film theme influenced by World War II-induced anxiety
Some have noted some root in German Expressionism
Usually involves a male protagonist (oftentimes a WW II veteran), and, at times, a femme fatale. The lead character becomes involved in a morally ambiguous situation, with ambiguity extended to the visual experience as well.
Examples:
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Double Indemnity (1944)
To some degree, Citizen Kane (1941)
Billy Wilder:
Co-writer and director of two of the most famous film noir pictures, namely, Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Wilder, a Jewish immigrant from Austria, lost his parents to the Holocaust
In Sunset Boulevard, the unseemly side of Hollywood was exposed. Cecil B. DeMille was infuriated.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/billy-wilder-about-billy-wilder/733/
The Beat Movement in California
Post-World War II movement
Originates around Columbia University in NYC
Influenced by bebop jazz
In San Francisco, the center is City Lights bookstore operated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)
On the Road (1957): Hitchhiking across America, with Neal Cassady (“Dean Moriarty”) as hero of the West.
The Dharma Bums (1958): Gary Snyder and the “rucksack revolution”
The college-educated person hiking in the Sierra Nevada; nature and Zen
Big Sur (1962): personal renewal and the emerging middle class America
Greatly influences the later “hippies”
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
“Howl” (published 1956); obscenity vs. freedom of expression; later advises the Free Speech Movement
Move toward Eastern mysticism; influential in California
San Francisco Renaissance
Began with the Six Gallery poetry reading event (organized by Kenneth Rexroth) on October 13, 1955, where Ginsberg publically read his “Howl” and Gary Snyder also read, with Kerouac and Neal Cassady in attendance.
Hells Angels
Post-World War II phenomenon
Originated in Fontana, CA
Surplus of WWII motorcycles
Drew on military background
“Hell’s Angels” were a group of US air fighters during WWII, and included the winged skull as emblem
Goggles and leather jacket
Part of the post-war Great Refusal
West Coast jazz
Influenced by the Birth of the Cool by Miles Davis, as well as some others.
Post-World War II jazz rooted ultimately in bebop, but more melodic and laid-back
Dave Brubeck
Based himself in the Bay Area
Studied under Milhaud at Mills College
Milhaud is a European transplant; back in France he was one of Les Six, a group of composers who formed around Erik Satie for a time.
Vince Guaraldi
San Francisco native
“Cast Your Fate to the Wind”: One of the most covered jazz songs in history; Grammy winner
“Linus and Lucy”: Guaraldi famously composed the music for the Peanuts specials
George Winston
Montanan who came to the Bay Area.
Greatly influenced by Guaraldi
The most famous of the Windham Hill “New Age” artists
Nature and pastoral themes
Monterey Jazz Festival 1958
The longest running jazz festival in the United States
The first gathering included Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Holiday, Vince Guaraldi, the Dave Brubeck Quartet and the Modern Jazz Quartet
Gradually the emergence of smooth jazz
Much produced in California; major names include Quincy Jones, Los Angeles born Herb Alpert, Bakersfield born David Benoit, as well as George Benson and Al Jarreau
California’s musical harmonies
Four Preps
“26 Miles (Santa Catalina)”
The Beach Boys
“Surfin’ USA”: Surfing and its ensuing subculture were an aspect of the post-war Great Refusal
“Fun, Fun, Fun”
“Good Vibrations”
Crosby, Stills and Nash (and sometimes Young)
The Eagles
Maranatha! Music
Dodgers and Giants to California in 1958
Vin Scully
In his Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe writes of the soft California manner of speech.
The disappointed ones
Mark Twain: When he left California,
he did not return
Nathanael West: Day of the Locust (1939)
Billy Wilder: Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Joan Didion: Slouching Towards Babylon (1968),
The White Album (1979), Where I Was From (2003)
Eagles: Hotel California (late 1976): Title song,
“Life in the Fast Lane,” and “The Last Resort”
West Coast rap (late 1980s into the 1990s): Critical
commentary on life in the vicinity of South Central
Los Angeles by, e.g., Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Ice-T
Red Hot Chili Peppers: “Californication” (1999)
California Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is somewhat a media phenomenon, deriving strength via a network of loose yet meaningful ties in publishing, radio and television
R. A. Torrey, Yale grad and an associate of D. L. Moody, founded the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles in 1915
The church is later pastored by Dr. J. Vernon McGee
R. A. Torrey helps found the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) in 1913
Biola, and its graduate school Talbot Theological Seminary, are Dispensationalist in theology, and thus share an association with Dallas Theological Seminary
Dispensationalism is a theological perspective that developed among the Plymouth Brethren in the UK in the 1800s, but had a tremendous impact on American Evangelicalism, especially through The Fundamentals, a theological work that Torrey helped edit and was financed by southern California businessmen, esp. Lyman Stewart of Union Oil. It is the origin of the term “Fundamentalist.”
Billy Graham became a national figure with his Los Angeles Crusade (1949)
Newspaper giant William Randolph Hearst made sure it was covered
He was influenced by Hollywood Presbyterian’s leading teacher, Henrietta Mears
Became involved in encouraging the establishment of a Neo-Evangelical institute in Pasadena known as Fuller Theological Seminary (f. 1947), founded by Christian broadcaster Charles Fuller and Harold Ockenga, bringing together leading Evangelical thinkers Carl F. H. Henry (the first editor of Christianity Today), Harold Lindsell, and E. J. Carnell.
Campus Crusade for Christ established in California
Founded by Bill and Vonette Bright; Bill Bright had been a student at Fuller Seminary and was mentored by Henrietta Mears of Hollywood Presbyterian Church.
Hal Lindsey, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary and staff worker for Campus Crusade for Christ, began a ministry to college students at UCLA called the Jesus Christ Light and Power Company. Many are influenced, and at the same time he authored one of the most popular books of the 20th century, The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), which popularized Dispensationalist Bible prophecy.
California Evangelicalism continued
In California, Evangelicalism became mixed with Pentecostalism
Pentecostalism famously emerged out of the Holiness movement and onto the national scene with the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles (1906)
Aimee Semple McPherson founded the Angelus Temple (1923) in Los Angeles and the Foursquare denomination.
Life Bible College (1923); now Life Pacific College
Chuck Smith, a Life Bible College grad, takes over a small church in OC named Calvary Chapel; a new acquaintance, the enigmatic Lonnie Frisbee, becomes the driving force behind reaching out to the counterculture of the late 60s and early 70s
Calvary Chapels are a form of laid-back California Evangelicalism
Lonnie Frisbee will later leave CC and become a driving force behind the Vineyard Movement
Jesus People Movement
Sparrow Records
Second Chapter of Acts
Phil Keaggy
Keith Green
Rev. E.V. Hill: Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles
Trinity Broadcasting Network in Orange County
Robert Schuller and the Crystal Cathedral: another manifestation of the positive impulse of California Evangelicalism