On 8/31/25 6:04 AM, Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:

This September, TCM gives you the choice of *two* BEN-HUR
movies--the 1925 and the 1959. Personally, I prefer the 1925; I
think the chariot race is far more exciting in that version.

The 1925 Ben-Hur was very rough on the extras, of whom there were
something like 10,000. Some may have drowned in the sea battle scene.

MONDAY,  September 29
12:30 PM    The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

There will be a screening of the 1925 Phantom of the Opera in Boston's
Symphony Hall on Halloween, with live organ accompaniment. I've bought a ticket.

[An alternate version has "But a biplane put him in his grave".
Which you prefer depends on whether you think "the airplanes got
him" or "'twas Beauty killed the Beast." -ecl]

Definitely the airplanes, or else suicide. It was the ape's fault he got himself into that situation.

TOPIC: First Person Singular in History Books (comments by Evelyn
C. Leeper)

Last week I wrote that Judith Herrin had to make a lot of
assumptions and guesses about women in the Byzantine Empire and
said, "Perhaps this is why one sees the first person singular
pronoun at times; traditionally historians have eschewed it for
a more distant stance."

This week I was reading WRITING HISTORY: A GUIDE FOR STUDENTS by
William Kelleher Storey (Oxford, ISBN 978-0-19-983004-6) and he
writes, "Avoid the First Person Singular. Generally speaking,
historical writers do not write in the first person singular. ...
Usually historians employ the first person singular only when they
have personally experienced a phenomenon they are describing."

I used the first person in some parts of my history of filk, _Tomorrow's
Songs Today_. They fell into the "personal experience" category.

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

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