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      in Movies

      Gérard Depardieu’s Art Collection Sells for $4.2 Million at Paris Auction

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      Over 230 pieces went under the hammer, including sculptures by Rodin. The French actor — now dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct — once played the artist in a movie.The near-entirety of an art collection belonging to Gérard Depardieu, the prolific French actor whose career was clouded in recent years by accusations of sexual assault and harassment, was sold at a two-day Paris auction this week that brought in 4 million euros, including fees, or about $4.2 million.Over 230 items went under the hammer on Tuesday and Wednesday at a sale organized at the Hôtel Drouot by the Ader auction house, including paintings by Alexander Calder and sculptures by Auguste Rodin, whom Depardieu played in the 1988 movie “Camille Claudel.”About 100 people crammed into the auction room on Tuesday night for the sale of the collection’s most prominent items, including a small oil painting of a flower vase by Odile Redon, which sold for €50,000, and the three small Rodin sculptures, which sold for €15,000 to €65,000.The star of the night seemed to be a 4.5-foot enlargement of “Walking Man,” a bronze sculpture originally made by Germaine Richier in 1945. The enlargement, which used to dominate Depardieu’s living room, was hammered up to €510,000 — but the auction house said in a statement Wednesday that the actor decided at the last minute not to sell the sculpture, and withdrew the lot.“This is a serious collection,” David Nordmann, one of the two auctioneers at Ader in charge of the sale, said in an interview. “This is not the collection of a celebrity who bought artwork just to show off.”“The Walking Man” by Germaine Richier, which once stood in Depardieu’s living room.Adagp, ParisNordmann had previously worked with Depardieu when the actor sold off the contents of a Parisian fine dining restaurant that he owned. The two men stayed in touch and discussed the sale his art collection. Depardieu gave the go-ahead in early 2023, and let the auctioneer pick the pieces and set the prices.“He loved to collect,” Nordmann said, recalling how Depardieu spent hours telling him about Matisse’s superiority to Picasso the first time he entered the actor’s home. But “at some point,” he added, “he reached the end of that process.”He has also faced a growing number of sexual abuse accusations. In interviews in April with Mediapart, an investigative news site, 13 women — actresses, makeup artists and production staff — accused Depardieu of making inappropriate sexual comments or gestures during the shooting of films released between 2004 and 2022. Two other women made similar accusations against him in interviews this summer with France Inter, a radio station. Depardieu declined to be interviewed for this article, but has always denied any criminal behavior.The turmoil in his personal life might have factored into his decision to sell, Nordmann said, “but not in the sense that he is trying to prove a point” or distract from the accusations.“He wants to move on,” he said.Some items sold at prices much higher than expected, including a 1928 portrait by Christian Jacques Bérard that sold for €55,000 euros, 11 times the low estimate, and a monochromatic ink composition by Jean Arp that sold for €20,000. But most pieces sold within the estimated range.The collection, which skews heavily toward postwar abstraction and contemporary art, includes widely recognizable names — a Duchamp collage; several pieces by Miró. Depardieu appears to have favored rugged compositions, bold colors, thick brushstrokes and raw materials, in keeping with his larger-than-life personality, Nordmann said.He refused to lend pieces for shows, Nordmann said, including the Richier sculpture, which was recently requested for a show at the Centre Pompidou.Depardieu in the Netflix TV show “Marseille.” The actor has appeared in over 250 movies.Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe sale did not include any Depardieu memorabilia. But it attracted unusually large crowds, both during the sale and beforehand, as thousands of curious visitors crowded the Hôtel Drouot to get a peek at the actor’s collection before it was snapped up.Depardieu is one of France’s most prominent and prolific lead actors, an internationally recognized figure who has played in the last 50 years in more than 250 movies, including “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “The Man in the Iron Mask,” and in TV shows like “Marseille.”Over the past decade, though, Depardieu’s popularity has waned as personal scandals overtook his acting career. He became a Russian citizen in 2013 to avoid taxes in France, and has expressed a strong friendship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, although last year he denounced the invasion of Ukraine.But the accusations of sexual abuse against Depardieu have been more damaging. He has not been convicted in connection with any of the accusations.But Depardieu has been charged with rape and sexual assault in a case involving Charlotte Arnould, a French actress who has accused him of sexually assaulting her in Paris in 2018, when she was 22, during informal rehearsals for a theater production. Prosecutors had initially dropped that investigation in 2019, citing of a lack of incriminating evidence, but it was reopened in 2020.The French movie industry has grappled with several high-profile accusations of sexual abuse in recent years and taken steps to address them. But mixed reactions to the #MeToo movement in France — which has also given a warm reception to artists accused of abuse — exposed sharp cultural divides between France and the United States.Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle More

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      in Movies

      Pearl Bowser, Expert in Early Black Filmmakers, Dies at 92

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      She aided in the rediscovery of Oscar Micheaux and others who were telling stories for Black audiences early in the last century.Pearl Bowser, a film historian, curator and collector who was instrumental in preserving and bringing to light the works of Black filmmakers from early in the last century, especially those of Oscar Micheaux, whom one writer described as “the Jackie Robinson of American film,” died on Sept. 14 in Brooklyn. She was 92.Her daughter Gillian Bowser confirmed the death.Ms. Bowser developed an interest in the forgotten works of early Black filmmakers in the 1960s when, while working as a researcher on a colleague’s idea for a book about Micheaux, she traveled to California from New York to interview aging actors who had been in movies made by Micheaux decades earlier.She began hunting down and collecting movies by Micheaux and other Black filmmakers from the early decades of the 1900s — works that were, for that period, triumphs of independent filmmaking, since they were generally made on shoestring budgets and sometimes dealt with topics that mainstream movies would not touch. Micheaux’s “The Symbol of the Unconquered” (1920), for instance, was an indictment of the Ku Klux Klan.In addition to being a student of film, Ms. Bowser made a few films herself.Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureThose films also serve as historical documents, depicting Black communities in ways not seen in mainstream movies of the time.“Oscar Micheaux’s early films are full of ordinary settings of community: the church, the house, the apartment,” Ms. Bowser told USA Today in 1998. “You see the way people lived in that period.”By the early 1970s, Ms. Bowser was curating film series, taking the works she had discovered by Micheaux and others into theaters and classrooms. She continued to do that for decades.“They were telling stories that were not being shown on the screen, Black stories,” she told students at Fort Lee High School in New Jersey in 2004 before showing them “The Symbol of the Unconquered” (a film that, like others of Micheaux’s, was shot in Fort Lee). “And by showing the Black experience, we’re telling the American story in its totality.”Donald Bogle, the noted film historian, said Ms. Bowser’s work on Micheaux was pivotal.“Not much was known or acknowledged about Micheaux for too long a time,” he said by email. “But Pearl made it her mission to bring his work and career to light. Over the years, she devotedly dug for information on him, and I can remember those occasions when she excitedly told me about new things she was unearthing.”Among the places her search took her, she said in newspaper interviews, were the national archives of Spain and Belgium, where she found silent classics by Micheaux with the title cards written in the languages of those countries, which she then had to have translated back into English.In 2000, she and Louise Spence published “Writing Himself Into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films and His Audiences.”“Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence’s scholarly examination of Micheaux serves a dual purpose,” Renée Graham wrote in a review in The Boston Globe. “Through six essays, they analyze Micheaux’s work, how it was received by both Blacks and whites, and how his films encouraged fresh discussions about race. But Bowser and Spence’s book also rescues the filmmaker’s accomplishments from decades of obscurity.”Ms. Bowser’s expertise, though, encompassed much more than Micheaux-era films. Her lectures and film series covered a wide range — for instance, she presented “Films of Africa and the Caribbean” at the Brooklyn Museum in 1986. And the collection of hundreds of films, videotapes and audiotapes she donated in 2012 to the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution is rich in material related to Black filmmakers in the 1960s and ’70s.“Pearl didn’t just revive Micheaux’s legacy; she helped preserve and shape the narrative of independent Black film,” Ina Archer, media conservation and digitization specialist at the museum, said by email. “Across her five-decade career she wove a continuous thread through a century of Black film that is only just now beginning to come into focus.”Pearl Johnson was born on June 25, 1931, in Harlem, where she grew up. According to a Smithsonian Institution biography, her mother, also named Pearl, was a domestic worker, and young Pearl would often accompany her to work at apartments in Lower Manhattan, helping to fold handkerchiefs in exchange for an allowance.As a child she came to know Ellsworth (Bumpy) Johnson, a Harlem underworld figure who was also well known in the borough for giving out food baskets and encouraging children to borrow books from his vast library.“I remember one time I mentioned to Bumpy that I wanted to grow up to be a philosopher,” Ms. Bowser told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1997, “and he said, ‘I’ve got a book you might be interested in.’”He gave her something by Friedrich Nietzsche. She was about 15 and didn’t understand a word.“It taught me to think before I spoke to Bumpy,” she said. “because even though I was young, he took me and my dreams quite seriously.”Later, according to the Smithsonian biography, she worked in one of his numbers joints. She also studied for a time at Brooklyn College before dropping out and taking a job at CBS, where she worked on a team that analyzed television ratings.In 1955 she married LeRoy Bowser, who would later become a regional vice president of the National Urban League. He died in 1986. Her daughter Gillian survives her. Another daughter, Joralemon Bowser, died in 1978.Ms. Bowser made a few films herself, including “Midnight Ramble,” a documentary she made with Bestor Cram for the PBS series “The American Experience” about “race movies,” as films made by Micheaux and others for Black audiences were called.In the late 1960s Ms. Bowser also wrote a newspaper cooking column. In 1970, with Joan Eckstein, she published her best recipes in a book, “A Pinch of Soul.”“The authors,” one reviewer said, “provide a complete array of soul food cookery to fit the needs of today’s elegant hostess.” More

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      in Music

      Chris Strachwitz, Who Dug Up the Roots of American Music, Dies at 91

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      Traveling the nation to discover little-known performers for the Arhoolie label, which he founded in 1960, he earned a nickname: El Fanático.Chris Strachwitz, who traveled in search of the roots of American music with the eagerness of a pilgrim, discovered traditional musicians with the skill of a detective, promoted their careers with the zeal of an ideologue and guarded their work with the care of a historian, died on Friday at an assisted living facility in San Rafael, Calif. He was 91.The cause was congestive heart failure, his brother, Hubert, said.Mr. Strachwitz (pronounced STRACK-wits) specialized in music passed down over generations — cotton-field music, orange-orchard music, mountain music, bayou music, barroom music, porch music. The songs came not only from before the era of the music industry but even from before the existence of mass culture itself.Like other leading musical folklorists of the modern recording era — among them Moses Asch, Alan Lomax and Harry Smith — Mr. Strachwitz rescued parts of that history before they vanished.But the extent of his devotion and the idiosyncrasy of his passions defy comparison.Mr. Strachwitz was the founder of Arhoolie Records (the name comes from a term for field hollers). In addition to recruiting his own artists, he did his own field recordings, music editing, production, liner notes, advertising and sales. In the company’s early years, he affixed the labels to the records and mailed them himself.He was a lifelong bachelor who said that having a family would have thwarted his career. On his journeys around the country to record new music, he had for company a manually operated orange juicer and 20-pound bags of oranges. The targets of his search included a highway grass cutter, a gravedigger and a janitor, all of whose musical talents were at the time basically unknown.He emigrated from Germany after growing up as a teenage count under Nazi rule and went on to explore the fullest reaches of American pluralism. He took an interest not just in the standard roots repertory of folk and blues, but also in norteño, Cajun, zydeco, klezmer, Hawaiian steel guitar, Ukrainian fiddle, Czech polka and Irish dance music, among countless other genres.To account for what united his passions, Mr. Strachwitz said he liked music that was “pure,” “hard-core” and “old-timey,” particularly if one of the musicians had a “spark.” His language grew more colorful when he defined his type of music negatively.“It ain’t wimpy, that’s for sure,” he said in a 2014 documentary about him. The movie took its title from Mr. Strachwitz’s ultimate insult, which he used to refer to anything that he considered commercial, artificial and soulless: “This Ain’t No Mouse Music!”The first Arhoolie album, released in 1960, was “Texas Sharecropper and Songster,” by the blues singer Mance Lipscomb. It vaulted Mr. Lipscomb into prominence during the 1960s folk revival.The first Arhoolie record, released in 1960, was “Texas Sharecropper and Songster,” by the blues singer Mance Lipscomb. Mr. Lipscomb’s music had never been recorded, and the new release vaulted him into prominence during the 1960s folk revival. Mr. Strachwitz went on to help revive the careers of other blues singers, including Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Big Mama Thornton.As both a record executive and a record collector, he made a particularly profound historical contribution to norteño, music from the Texas-Mexico border. The Smithsonian Institution last year called his archive of Mexican and Mexican American music “the largest collection of commercially produced vernacular recordings of its kind in existence,” noting that it contained many records that are “irreplaceable.”It was the result of about 60 years of collecting — yet Mr. Strachwitz never learned to speak Spanish. Norteño musicians nicknamed him El Fanático.Mr. Strachwitz might have been considered a preservationist, but he also shaped the worlds that he documented. That was particularly true of his recordings of Cajun musicians In 2000, the rock historian Ed Ward wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Strachwitz “helped prod the culture into what is now a full-blown renaissance.”Perhaps his most notable discovery in Louisiana was Clifton Chenier, who became known as the leading exponent of the mix of rhythm and blues, soul and Cajun music known as zydeco. During a visit to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as an older man, Mr. Chenier discussed his frustrations with the record industry.“They wanted you to do what they wanted you to do, and I didn’t like that,” Mr. Chenier said. “Then I met Chris.”Mr. Strachwitz with Clifton Chenier, who was known as the king of zydeco. Other record companies “wanted you to do what they wanted you to do, and I didn’t like that,” Mr. Chenier said. “Then I met Chris.”via Arhoolie FoundationMainstream musicians also saw something exceptional in Mr. Strachwitz. In a 2010 profile of Mr. Strachwitz in The Times, the guitarist Ry Cooder said that Arhoolie’s second release, “Tough Times,” an LP by the blues musician Big Joe Williams, “started me on a path of living, the path I am still on.”Christian Alexander Maria Strachwitz was born on July 1, 1931, in Berlin. He grew up on a country estate called Gross Reichenau, located in what was then the Lower Silesia region of Germany (it is now a village called Bogaczow in southwest Poland). His father, Alexander Graf Strachwitz, and his mother, Friederike (von Bredow) Strachwitz, ran a vegetable and grain farm of about a couple hundred acres. The men of the family had the royal title of count.The family lived in a manor originally built during the time of Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia. The Nazis appointed Chris’s father a local game warden, and during World War II he joined the military and attained the rank of captain, though Hubert Strachwitz said his service was limited to escorting troop transports bound for Italy. On the family’s bucolic ancestral property, the war seemed far away to young Chris.That changed in February 1945. The family fled as the Russians invaded the estate. Chris and two of his sisters had left shortly beforehand on a train; his father escaped in a horse and buggy; Hubert, Chris’s other two sisters and his mother left on a tractor-trailer. Thanks to a wealthy relative in the United States, the family was able to reunite in Reno, Nev., by 1947.Chris served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956. Soon after being honorably discharged, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He taught high school German in the suburbs of San Jose for several years.In his free time, Mr. Strachwitz collected records, and he developed a particular interest in Lightnin’ Hopkins, whom he struggled to learn more about. There was no public information about whether Mr. Hopkins was even still alive.Mr. Strachwitz going through the Arhoolie archives in El Cerrito, Calif., in 2010.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn 1959, a fellow music enthusiast told Mr. Strachwitz that he had found the bluesman in Houston. When the school year ended, Mr. Strachwitz went on a road trip.He later recalled that he found Mr. Hopkins playing in “a little beer joint” — improvising songs in a conversational style, telling a woman in the crowd to quiet down, wondering in song about the man from California who had traveled all the way to Texas “to hear poor Lightnin’ sing.”Mr. Strachwitz believed that nobody had ever recorded a scene like that live. Following a tip from one of Mr. Hopkins’s songs, he returned to Texas the next year and found Mr. Lipscomb. This time, he brought a recorder.Meeting musicians where they lived and recording them where they liked to play, rather than in a studio, became Mr. Strachwitz’s signature style.He found unexpected commercial success when Country Joe and the Fish performed their “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” at Woodstock in 1969. Joe McDonald, the band’s lead singer and principal songwriter, had used Mr. Strachwitz’s equipment to record the song back in 1965 and given him publishing rights in exchange. With his share of the royalties, Mr. Strachwitz put a down payment on a building in El Cerrito, Calif., near Berkeley, that became the home of Arhoolie and a record outlet he called the Down Home Music Store.Aside from recording music, he drew attention to the artists he loved by collaborating with the filmmaker Les Blank on several music documentaries.As the record industry declined, Mr. Strachwitz focused on a nonprofit arm of Arhoolie that digitizes and exhibits his singular record collection. In 2016, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the nonprofit label of the Smithsonian Institution, acquired the Arhoolie catalog.In addition to his brother, Mr. Strachwitz is survived by three sisters, Rosy Schlueter, Barbara Steward and Frances Strachwitz.There was one word Mr. Strachwitz often used to describe success in his field. When he found an aged master of traditional music playing a song at a resonant time and place, he called it, as if he were hunting butterflies, a “catch.” More

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      in Television

      Judith Miller, ‘Antiques Roadshow’ Mainstay, Is Dead at 71

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      Known for her many guidebooks, she helped determine what was trash and what was treasure on the BBC series that inspired the American show.Judith Miller, the author of popular antiques price guides and a member of the team of appraisers who determined what was trash and what was treasure on “Antiques Roadshow,” the beloved long-running BBC program that inspired the American series of the same name, died on April 8 in North London. She was 71.Her husband, John Wainwright, confirmed the death, in a hospital. He did not specify the cause, saying only that she died after a short illness.Ms. Miller, known to the British news media as the queen of collectibles, was often buttonholed on the street by Britons eager to share their back stories of Great-Aunt So-and-So’s bibelots, and at antiques fairs, where many attendees clutched fresh copies of “Miller’s Antiques Handbook & Price Guide” or “Miller’s Collectibles Handbook,” the twin bibles of the antiques and collecting world. Once, Mr. Wainwright recalled, at the reception for his mother’s funeral, a woman approached Ms. Miller and pulled a plate out from under her coat, wondering what it might be worth. (He did not know the woman, he hastened to add.)Ms. Miller’s books, updated regularly, are encyclopedic in their range and eclectic in their categories. They describe thousands of objects — the current antiques edition lists more than 8,000 — each illustrated by a sumptuous color photograph. There were the usual suspects, like Royal Doulton Art Deco teacups and saucers, Meissen pottery, Murano glass and pages of Scandinavian ceramics. But Ms. Miller also covered the world of material and popular culture, including a signed photograph of Whoopi Goldberg; a letter from Lyndon B. Johnson on White House stationery; a first edition of William S. Burroughs’s novel “Naked Lunch”; ’60s-era Barbies; and British utility clothing from the ’40s. There was also Inuit art, Swinging Sixties fashion, ’50s-era Ferragamo shoes, James Bond books, baseball cards, soccer jerseys and what was described as the world’s smallest pen, 1.5 inches long, made by Waterman in 1914.Riffling through a Miller’s collectibles guide is delicious social history, an intriguing romp through the decades. A reader could learn, for example, that a plastic box purse from the 1940s in bright, jaunty colors took its shape from the telephone cables that were used because of the shortages of other materials in the years after World War II.Ms. Miller’s books are encyclopedic, describing thousands of objects, each illustrated by a sumptuous color photograph. The current edition of her antiques guide lists more than 8,000.Mitchell BeazleyA mild-mannered woman who spoke with a soft Scottish burr, Ms. Miller was the expert in charge of “miscellaneous and ceramics” on “Antiques Roadshow,” which began in 1979 and she joined in 2007. (The American version first aired in 1997.) One of the treasures she was most proud of identifying was a collection of British Art Deco transport posters by the French artist Jean Dupas, which was brought to the show by a man who had paid 50 pence for them at a yard sale when he was a boy in the 1970s. Ms. Miller estimated their value at more than 30,000 pounds (nearly $40,000).“That was a very well-spent 50 p,” she told the man, who responded with British understatement: “Wow. Gosh.”Her other favorite discoveries, The Guardian reported, included a stash of 2,000 18th-century shoe buckles and a toilet seat used by Winston Churchill.Ms. Miller was a history student at the University of Edinburgh when she began buying cheap antique plates from local junk shops to brighten up the walls of her student digs. Intrigued by their history, she began to research and collect in earnest.With her first husband, Martin Miller, she wrote the first “Miller’s Antiques Price Guide.” Published in 1979, it was an instant success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. After the couple divorced in the early 1990s, Ms. Miller continued to produce books on collectibles and antiques; she had completed more than 100 at her death.Her own collecting ranged from 15th-century porcelain to midcentury modern furniture. She was addicted to auctions, she told The Telegraph: “I get sweaty palms, my heart starts beating faster, and I start glaring at anyone bidding against me.”She loved costume jewelry, as well as pieces by the Danish silversmith Georg Jensen and chairs, which she bought in abundance. She was agnostic with regard to period and preferred buying single chairs to buying sets. Her favorites included an 18th-century ladder-back chair, an Arne Jacobsen piece from 1955 and a Queen Anne chair from 1710. When Ms. Miller set out on an antiques expedition, Mr. Wainwright invariably sent her off with these words:“Repeat after me: We do not need one more single chair.”Judith Henderson Cairns was born on Sept. 16, 1951, in Galashiels, Scotland. Her father, Andrew Cairns, was a wool buyer, and her mother, Bertha (Henderson) Cairns, was a homemaker.Judith grew up in an antiques-free household; she always said that her parents were part of the “Formica generation” and had paid to have their parents’ things carted away after their deaths. She had planned to be a history teacher, but in 1974 she took a job as an editorial assistant at Mr. Miller’s publishing company.After they married in 1978, the Millers embarked on a career of publishing and house flipping; they would move 12 times in 16 years. In 1985 they bought Chilston Park, an enormous estate in Kent, England, with no running water or electricity, where they lived for a time with their two young daughters before turning it into a luxury hotel.In addition to Mr. Wainwright, her partner since the early 1990s, Ms. Miller is survived by her daughters, Cara and Kristy Miller; her son, Tom Wainwright; and four grandchildren.Ms. Miller’s own collection ranged from 15th-century porcelain to midcentury modern furniture. She was addicted to auctions, at which she once said her heart “starts beating faster.”Andrew CrowleyCara Miller has been working on “The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder,” the first in a series of mystery novels to be published next year for which Judith Miller was both consultant and inspiration. At one point Cara asked her mother the crucial question: “What antique would you kill for?” Her answer, as Cara recalled by email, was “Of course for an antique for someone to kill over I suppose it would have to be worth a vast amount — a Ming vase, a Fabergé egg — but that’s not nearly as interesting as what item we love and why we love it. So often the value is in the story behind it and what that story means to us.”In 2020, Ms. Miller told Fiona Bruce, the host of “Antiques Roadshow,” her own story of an object she particularly valued.It was a late-19th-century cranberry glass claret jug. It had belonged, Ms. Miller said, to her great-aunt Lizzie, who had been a downstairs maid at a grand house in Scotland and had married the footman. The jug was a wedding present from the lady of the house. The footman died in the trenches during World War I, and Lizzie never remarried.“To her, this was her most precious object,” Ms. Miller said. “We used to go see her twice a week, and if I was a very, very good girl I was allowed to pick it up.”When Great-Aunt Lizzie died, she left the piece to Ms. Miller.“I think on a good day it’s worth about 40 quid” ($50), she told Ms. Bruce. “But you can’t put a value on the memories.” More

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      in Theater

      ‘Phantom of the Opera’ Fans Mourn the Record-Breaking Show’s End

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      “The Phantom of the Opera,” the longest running show in Broadway history, will give its final performance on Sunday, bringing its glittering chandelier crashing down on the stage of the Majestic Theater for the 13,981st and final time.Its success was powered by all kinds of engines, perhaps none more striking than the group of die-hard patrons who call themselves Phans. They come from all over the world, drawn by its soaring Andrew Lloyd Webber score and Gothic love story, and have devoted themselves to the show, seeing it as often as possible, of course, but also collecting memorabilia, dressing up as characters, and conversing about it online.Frank Radice, a Long Island call center operator, proposed to his wife at a “Phantom” installation inside a Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, and Tracy O’Neill of Connecticut used the show’s “All I Ask of You” as her wedding song. Elizabeth Dellario, a New York City tech worker, named her cats Christine and Erik after characters in the show. Erin Castro, a Los Angeles office assistant, makes Lego figurines of the cast. Katie Yelinek, a Pennsylvania librarian who has seen it 69 times, said, “I can honestly say I’ve shaped my adult life around going to see Phantom.”So many Phans. Meet six:Body ArtAlice DychesAlice Dyches, a singer-songwriter who fell for “Phantom” while growing up in South Carolina, expresses her love for the show with tattoos. Lucia Buricelli for The New York TimesPlenty of Phans have “Phantom” tattoos, but Alice Dyches has gotten specific with hers. Inked on her wrist are the first three notes of “Think of Me,” a beloved song in the show, and her midriff shows an address for the Majestic Theater: “245 W 44th.”Growing up in South Carolina, she fell in love with the music by watching the film; when she was six, she saw it for the first time on Broadway, on a trip with her grandparents.“The Phantom was Hugh Panaro, and he terrified me, and I kept wanting to go back,” she said.Now Dyches, 22, is a singer-songwriter, living in New York and working at a cat sanctuary on the Lower East Side. Throughout the pandemic, she worried about whether “Phantom” would survive, but once it reopened, she felt reassured.“I’m real sad — I thought I had more time to see it,” she said. “I’ve not lived a life without ‘Phantom’ being on Broadway, and there’s always been the notion that if I’m having a really crap day, I can go.”And, with that address inscribed on her abdomen, she is wryly watching what happens next.“I hope something good goes into the Majestic,” she said, “because otherwise I’m going to be screwed.”Phan ArtWallace PhillipsWallace Phillips, who said he had seen “Phantom” 140 times, creates artworks inspired by the show, and dreams of making an animated film of the musical.Lucia Buricelli for The New York TimesWallace Phillips didn’t even know what “The Phantom of the Opera” was when he dressed as the Phantom one Halloween. He was 10 years old, growing up in Silver Spring, Md.; he just thought the costume was cool.His mother gave him a cast recording and then, in 2010, brought him and his sister to see the show on Broadway.“It was eye-opening, and awe-inspiring,” he said. “I was enthralled.”Phillips is now 27, living in New York City, where he moved to study animation at the School of Visual Arts. He’s making his way as a freelance filmmaker, while working as an usher at “Hamilton.”How much does he love “Phantom”? At last count, he had seen it 140 times.Phillips expresses his Phandom through his artistry — he hopes one day to make an animated film of the musical, and meanwhile, he does concept art and drawings, some of which he signs and gives to cast members.“Despite all the times I’ve seen it, I’m always surprised, every time I’m there,” he said. “That overture! That chandelier rising! The theater transforming! It keeps me awed every time.”The NamesakeChristine SmithChristine Smith, of Bountiful, Utah, was named after Christine Daaé, a character in “Phantom.”Taylor SmithShe became a Phan.Chrisitne SmithIn elementary school in Kaysville, Utah, Christine Smith had to write a paper about where her name came from. When she asked her mom, she learned that she had been named for Christine Daaé, the young soprano at the heart of “The Phantom of the Opera.”“I wrote that I was named after some dumb opera singer,” Smith recalled.Her father, who worked graveyard shifts stocking shelves in grocery stores, listened to “Phantom” to pass the time. She didn’t understand the appeal until she saw the movie.“I know it sounds silly, but I just could tell, that was going to be my life,” she said. “I really learned to love my name.”She picked up a cast album at Walmart, started performing in school shows, and dreamed of playing Christine. Her family couldn’t afford to travel to New York, but they made it to a production in Las Vegas, which she eventually saw six times.Smith, 31, who now lives in Bountiful, Utah, finally got to see it on Broadway — twice — after the show’s closing was announced. In October, she and her husband arranged a flight layover in New York so they could see “Phantom,” and then, in January, she won a contest to see its 35th anniversary performance.“It made my ‘Phantom’ heart so happy,” she said.The GlobetrotterAlessandro BertolottiAlessandro Bertolotti, who lives south of Milan, has seen “Phantom” all over the world.Alessandro BertolottiHe has programs in many languages.Alessandro BertolottiAlessandro Bertolotti, who lives in Codogno, a small town south of Milan, has seen “Phantom” roughly 100 times: not just on Broadway and in London’s West End, but also in Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Spain and Sweden.“The most memorable evenings are those where you feel an energy in the public — something created by a fusion between the audience and the cast,” he said. “And then there are shows, like the one in Sweden, where I really enjoyed seeing a completely new staging of ‘Phantom.’”Musical theater did not initially interest Bertolotti, 67. Opera was his thing — both as a fan and a director. But two decades ago, while in the United States to work on a production of “Otello,” Bertolotti saw “Phantom” on the recommendation of a colleague.“It was a revelation,” he said. “I was fascinated by the music, by the sets, and this vortex of costumes and fast scene changes.”He is planning this summer to see a version in Trieste — the first in his native Italy — that will star the Iranian-Canadian “Phantom” veteran Ramin Karimloo.“Among all the musicals I’ve seen, ‘Phantom’ will always be the most fascinating and the most engaging,” he said. “It’s part of me now.”Phandom FROM AFARYixuan WuYixuan Wu, who grew up in Changsha, China, watching a DVD of “Phantom,” has seen it on Broadway 61 times since she moved to New York in 2021. Lucia Buricelli for The New York TimesYixuan Wu was just 11 when she stumbled across a “Phantom” DVD in a video store. She was about as far from Broadway as can be — in her hometown, Changsha, China — but the packaging caught her eye, so she rented it.She watched it over and over, and nurtured her Phandom online, streaming bootleg recordings from around the world.“I just feel like this story was calling to me,” she said.Flash forward to 2021. Wu had finished art school in China, and moved to New York to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She bought a ticket at the TKTS booth in Times Square, and finally saw “Phantom” from the right rear orchestra.“I was amazed and surprised by all the colors onstage,” she said. “You have to see it with your own eyes.”Wu, 25, has now seen the show 61 times, sometimes with a $29 standing room ticket, sometimes by winning a lottery, and once in a while by springing for a full-price seat. She collects merch (including teddy bears from the Japanese production), writes fan fiction and makes fan art (illustrations of cast members, many of which she gives to them).“Every time I go into the Majestic,” she said, “I feel like I’m home.”CosplayingPatrick ComptonPatrick Compton had not heard the term “cosplay” when he first showed up at “Phantom” in a costume.Greg MillsHe performed a scene from “Phantom” for a fundraiser at his church in Frankfort, Ky.Charlie BaglanThe first time Patrick Compton dressed as the Phantom was at a church event. His congregation in his hometown, Frankfort, Ky., was raising money with an evening of scenes from Broadway shows, and he decided to sing something from the musical.Compton, a duty officer at Kentucky’s Division of Emergency Management, had loved “Phantom” since his parents took him to see it in Louisville, and this was his moment.In the years since, Compton, 47, has taken voice lessons, recorded his own versions of “Phantom” songs, taken a weeklong workshop with “Phantom” alums and auditioned for a number of shows. He has seen “Phantom” 20 times in New York, and five times on tour.He had never heard the word “cosplay” when he started showing up to the show wearing a mask, cape, vest and fedora — he just thought it was fun. Now he’s done it several times.“To this day I have yet to figure out how a show like that can just emotionally affect you — from the very first note of the overture, you get goose bumps, and your hair stands on end,” he said. “You can’t help it. It’s addictive.”Elisabetta Povoledo More

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      Meet Radio Man, a ‘Bum’ Who Befriends Movie Stars and Sells Their Autographs

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      On a blustery February evening in Midtown Manhattan, opposite an unmarked side entrance to the Ed Sullivan Theater, a crowd of more than 60 people stood crushed against a row of steel barricades. They all knew that at any moment, Harrison Ford would arrive for an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” They elbowed and cursed one another, jockeying for position, each clutching a sheaf of photographs for Mr. Ford to sign.They weren’t fans — not most of them, anyway. They were “graphers,” who make a living by hounding celebrities for autographs and selling them to the highest bidder. For many of them, graphing is a full-time job. Some have been at it for decades. They can flip a single signature for anywhere from $25 to more than $1,000, depending on a star’s cachet and how frequently they sign. A Harrison Ford autograph, for example, retails for about $750.At 5:30 on the dot, a black Escalade pulled to a stop in front of the theater. The rear door swung open, and the pack of graphers across the street broke into a frenzy. “Harrison!” they hollered. “Harrison, please!”Slumped near a dumpster by the stage door, a disheveled man with a mane of gray hair and a wild beard let out a grunt. He clambered to his feet, reached into a grocery bag and pulled out an overstuffed FedEx mailer, inscribed in large, looping cursive with a note. “Thank you, Harrison,” it read. “Love, Radio Man.” He staggered past the theater’s security team and approached the Escalade.“Harrison!” the man called as Mr. Ford climbed out of the back seat. “How are ya?”Mr. Ford grinned. “Radio,” he said warmly. They shook hands. Fifty feet away, the graphers behind the barricades bellowed in a desperate chorus.Giovanni Arnold, who has been graphing in New York City since 1999, unrolling movie posters outside the Edison Ballroom. He waited outside for over three hours hoping to get Mr. Spielberg’s autograph as he entered the venue for the Writers Guild Awards.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York Times“Listen, I’ve got some photos for you,” the man said, handing Mr. Ford the package.“Sure, sure,” Mr. Ford said, accepting it. They made small talk. Mr. Ford asked after the man’s health, and the man asked after Helen Mirren, Mr. Ford’s co-star on the “Yellowstone” spinoff “1923.”“Good to see you, Radio,” Mr. Ford said. He slipped into the theater without acknowledging the graphers screaming his name. They would have to wait until he had finished his interview.There are at least 150 professional graphers in New York City, according to Justin Steffman, the founder of the autograph authentication company AutographCOA. And right now, they are working at full tilt. All winter long, celebrities have been flocking to New York to campaign for projects up for various film and television awards, culminating in the Oscars. For graphers, collecting signatures during awards season is like fishing at a trout farm.The rest of the year is by no means slow. Stars are always cycling in and out of Broadway theaters, concert venues, luxe hotels, film shoots and, most reliably, morning shows like “The View” and late-night shows like Mr. Colbert’s. Their constant presence has made New York the graphing capital of the United States, topping even Los Angeles, whose sprawl, closed sets and tight security make life more challenging for graphers. “It’s got to be a billion-dollar industry,” Mr. Steffman said. “It’s gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.”There are at least 500 full-time graphers around the world, Mr. Steffman said, and thousands more who graph on a regular basis.But none of them do it quite like Radio Man.Radio Man — legally known as Craig Castaldo, though no one ever calls him that — has been graphing in New York since the early 1990s. Over the years, he has managed to charm a small army of celebrities into accepting his hefty packages of photographs, which they sign and return to him. Where most graphers would be lucky to get more than one signature from a star at a time, Radio Man regularly nabs dozens, sometimes hundreds. He considers the A-listers who sign for him his personal friends.Craig Castaldo, known to all as Radio Man, outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York during a taping of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesAfter his exchange with Mr. Ford, Radio Man made his way to the Park Hyatt to pick up a package that Sarah Michelle Gellar had left for him at reception. It was adorned with a heart in black Sharpie, along with a handwritten note: “Only for you, Radio.” Inside were 43 signed photographs of Ms. Gellar.“It’s amazing how they take to me, these actors,” Radio Man said. “A bum! I don’t understand it.”Radio Man, 72, lives just above the poverty line, in a basement apartment in Yonkers he rents for $900 a month. He commutes into the city each morning on his bicycle, a 13-mile journey that takes him about two hours. He said he survives exclusively on food he gathers from free pantries and movie sets.Though he could make a small fortune selling his autographs directly to collectors, his grasp of the necessary tools — photo databases, printers, the internet — is tenuous at best. Instead, like most graphers, he peddles his merchandise to a dealer, who in turn hawks it at a significant markup on eBay and other, more obscure autograph marketplaces.Leaning against a wall outside the Park Hyatt, Radio Man pulled out his phone and made a call. A few minutes later, a silver sedan pulled up to the hotel. A tall, middle-aged man with close-cropped hair and a manicured beard stepped out of the car and into the frigid night. Radio Man handed him the package of signed photographs from Ms. Gellar, and the man accepted them without a word. He hurried back to the warmth of his car, leaving Radio Man alone next to his bicycle.“Hey,” Radio Man called out to him. “You got six bucks so I could get a tea or something?”“I don’t have any cash on me,” the man said. He ducked into the car and drove away.The man, Radio Man’s de facto handler, supplies him with his FedEx mailers of photographs. Once Radio Man gets them signed, the handler sends them to a dealer based in Florida, who is rumored among graphers to be a millionaire. All told, the autographs Radio Man received from Ms. Gellar are worth approximately $6,000. He was paid about $300 for them.“Let them make all the money they want,” Radio Man said. “I don’t care. As long as I get to see my friends.”By “friends,” he meant the celebrities who have taken an unlikely shine to him since he stumbled into their world more than 30 years ago.As Radio Man tells it, he made his first famous friend when he was homeless. One winter day in 1990, he was walking through Central Park when he encountered a man dressed in rags, whom he took for “a bum like me,” he said. He offered the man a beer. “Do you know who I am?” the man asked.It was Robin Williams. He was shooting “The Fisher King,” Terry Gilliam’s 1991 film in which Mr. Williams plays a vagabond searching for the Holy Grail.The actress Riley Keough signed autographs from her S.U.V. after a taping of “The Late Show.” Graphers chased her car down the street, catching up to her at a red light.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York Times“You’re doing this all wrong,” Radio Man told him. “You’re not acting the way a bum should be.”He introduced the actor to life on the street, showing him “where to go and what to do.” Mr. Williams patterned his performance in “The Fisher King,” which earned him an Oscar nomination, after Radio Man. Or so Radio Man claims.In exchange for his guidance, the movie’s producers gave Radio Man $200 and a case of beer. They also cast him as an extra. From then on, he made a habit of hanging around film sets in New York, where he helped himself to food from craft-services stations and scored low-paying parts as a background actor. Graphing was an easy way to make money.“I’ve been getting movies ever since,” Radio Man said. “Here and there, playing my role: bum, homeless guy, guy on a bicycle with a radio.”But that’s just one version of the story Radio Man tells about his origins.Another version involves running a newspaper stand in the 1970s and being cast as an extra in “The In-Laws,” starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. Another involves sharing a beer with Bruce Willis on the set of “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Yet another involves showing up to shoots with a boombox around his neck and playing it at full volume until someone paid him to leave, a racket that supposedly earned him his nickname. (“A cop was there and he said to me: ‘Hey, radio guy! Hey, radio person! Hey, radio man! Can you turn that down, please?’ And that’s how I became Radio Man.”)Whatever he may claim about his past, this much is true: Radio Man is a fixture on film sets in New York. He has appeared as an extra in dozens of movies, including “Ransom,” “Zoolander,” “The Departed” and “The Irishman.” He has a preternatural knowledge of actors’ whereabouts and shooting schedules. And he has forged something like a friendship with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.Radio Man biking through Midtown Manhattan after staking out the stage door to “The Late Show.” He was hoping to see Sarah Jessica Parker at a nearby filming location.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesOn a January night in Chinatown, Radio Man sauntered around the set of “Wolves,” a forthcoming movie starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, as if he were its executive producer. He weaved through packs of stagehands, chatting amiably with anyone who crossed his path. During a break in shooting, he shuffled over to Mr. Clooney, who was sitting in a director’s chair. “Clooney!” he shouted, followed by an expletive-laden insult.“There it is,” Mr. Clooney said.“You know where you’re going tomorrow?”“I don’t know where I’m going tomorrow,” Mr. Clooney said.“Under the Manhattan Bridge.”“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Mr. Clooney said, as the production crew standing around him laughed. “You don’t need a call sheet. Radio Man is the call sheet.”Mr. Clooney first met Radio Man in 1996, on the set of “One Fine Day” in Manhattan. The actor has “never not seen him” during a trip to New York since, he said.“Radio’s everywhere,” Mr. Clooney said. “Every hotel you show up at, Radio will be standing out in front of it going, ‘De Niro’s over at this, and Cate Blanchett’s over here staying at the Carlyle.’ He’s got all the intel.”Radio Man endeared himself to Mr. Clooney, the actor said, after rescuing his wife, Amal Clooney, from a throng of paparazzi that had swarmed her on Fifth Avenue. Radio Man blocked them with his bicycle, hailed a cab and steered Ms. Clooney inside, securing her escape.“He’s a great guy,” Mr. Clooney said. “He’s a lovable mess, which we all are.”About six years ago, Mr. Clooney got together with a few other actors and flew Radio Man out to L.A. They sent him to the Oscars. He wore a tuxedo. He walked the red carpet. He sat in the audience. He brought a date.A grapher outside the Ed Sullivan Theater with the tools of the trade. She was among a small crowd hoping to get signatures from Michelle Yeoh and Riley Keough.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesA few nights after bumping into Radio Man in Chinatown, Mr. Clooney poked his head out of a white trailer parked on East Broadway and peered down the street. “Radio!” he yelled.Radio Man ambled over. Mr. Clooney strode toward him holding a large bag, trailed by a pack of photographers.“Here you go, Radio,” he said, dropping the bag on the sidewalk with a thunk. “This thing weighs a ton, by the way.”Radio Man reached inside and pulled out two bulging FedEx mailers. They contained 185 signed photographs of Mr. Clooney, worth approximately $18,000.Mr. Clooney said that Radio Man is the only grapher he will take a package from. But he signs for all of them.“Every one of these guys who come over for autographs, it’s a business for them,” he said. “You try to help them out when you can.”“My job baffles me,” said Mr. Arnold. “Personally, I wouldn’t buy an autograph. It would be of more sentimental value if I got the autograph myself, but if someone else got it, it’s just weird.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesThere is at least one other grapher in New York capable of exchanging packages with celebrities: Giovanni Arnold, 38, who has been graphing in the city since 1999. He calls himself “Black Radio Man.”“There isn’t really an elite group of graphers who are getting packages,” Mr. Steffman said. “There’s Gio, and there’s Radio Man.”On a Saturday afternoon in January, Mr. Arnold sat in a dark bar in the East Village indexing several large bags of autographed memorabilia he had just received from Daniel Radcliffe, who was starring in a production of “Merrily We Roll Along” at the New York Theater Workshop a few blocks away.He laid out his haul on a grimy, beer-stained table, examining each item — cheaply printed photos, plastic Harry Potter eyeglasses, Gryffindor neckties — for Mr. Radcliffe’s signature. He counted 95 autographs in all, whose total value he pegged at $10,000. “I’m hype right now,” he said. “He really blessed me.”Mr. Arnold celebrated with a Guinness. He took a sip from his pint glass and shook his head, pondering a question that has long puzzled him: Why would anyone pay for an autograph?“My job baffles me,” he said. “Personally, I wouldn’t buy an autograph. It would be of more sentimental value if I got the autograph myself, but if someone else got it, it’s just weird.”Mr. Arnold has taken a different approach to the business of graphing than most of his peers. He sells his own merchandise on eBay, as well as directly to private collectors, which has allowed him to accrue a level of wealth few graphers seem to enjoy.He documents his day-to-day life hunting for autographs on Instagram under the handle @gtvreality, where you might find him giving Lady Gaga a ride on his bicycle, holding hands with Ben Affleck or shouting his catchphrase — “Stay Black!” — at Bob Dylan. He hopes to turn GTV Reality into a full-fledged brand and to monetize his content, though at 5,000 followers, he hasn’t quite figured out how to do so.“I’m trying to move in a different direction,” he said. “Everyone and their mama’s an autograph-getter now.”Ultimately, Mr. Arnold wants to find a way out of the memorabilia industry. He doesn’t derive the same kind of joy that Radio Man does from chasing down celebrities, and he isn’t willing to dedicate his life to it.“I’m good at what I do,” Mr. Arnold said. “But he’s another level.”“Let them make all the money they want,” Radio Man said of the autograph middlemen. “I don’t care. As long as I get to see my friends.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesBack on the set of “Wolves,” Radio Man cruised the streets of Chinatown looking for the director, Jon Watts. He was hoping there might be a scene he could sneak into. But the cameras were already rolling, and Mr. Watts was occupied.Radio Man returned to his usual post outside Mr. Clooney’s trailer. It was closing in on midnight. He was standing near his bicycle and sipping a hot tea, killing time until the next break in filming, when he was approached by someone he didn’t recognize.“Radio,” the man said. He held up an 8-by-10-inch photograph, taped to a sheet of hardboard, of Radio Man. “Do you mind signing real quick?”“What do you want me to say?” Radio Man asked. “Just, Radio Man?”“Yeah,” the man said. “Radio Man.”Radio Man signed the photograph in big, sloppy cursive. The man thanked him and walked away. It was hard to say if he was a grapher or just a fan. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Casablanca’ and the Romance of the Refugee

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      A showcase of memorabilia at the Neue Galerie spotlights the Central European exiles who crafted Hollywood’s great wartime love story.Round up the unusual suspects. “Casablanca” has turned 80, and the most esteemed of all Hollywood classics enters its octogenarian years with a new ultra-high-definition DVD release. There’s also, right now in New York, an engaging new display of “Casablanca” artifacts, though you won’t find it at MoMA or the Museum of the Moving Image. Of all the joints in all the towns in all the world, the relics of this paragon of the Hollywood studio system have ended up in … a museum of German and Austrian modern art.That would be the Neue Galerie, conceived by the cosmetics baron Ronald S. Lauder and the art dealer Serge Sabarsky (1912-1996), which opened in 2001 in a former Vanderbilt mansion on a prime corner of Fifth Avenue. It’s celebrating its first 20 years with a showcase of its surviving founder’s own collection: not only jewels of modern Mitteleuropa, but ancient sculpture, medieval broadswords and reliquaries, and gleaming oddities from Renaissance cabinets of curiosities. Least expected are more than five dozen posters, lobby cards, props and press materials from the collector’s favorite movie, which he reports seeing “at least 25 to 30 times” — and whose memorabilia he has been buying up with foxhound-grade avidity.Medieval armor from Lauder’s personal collection is also on view.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“The Ronald S. Lauder Collection” had its grand opening on the evening of November’s midterm elections — whose result, by the way, Lauder may have decisively influenced, having spent millions on lawsuits and campaign advertising for Republicans in New York, where the G.O.P. flipped four congressional seats. (Among his animating causes are crime, taxes, and a proposed wind farm off the Hamptons shoreline.) “I’m no ogre,” Lauder assured The Times this month in an interview at Café Sabarsky, the charmingly ersatz Viennese cafe on the Neue Galerie’s ground floor, and, certainly, the 500-odd objects here do not have an outward suggestion of barbarism. If anything, its rooms of princely baubles are rather oversaturated, as if Lauder didn’t know where to stop; drawings by Egon Schiele are hung sky-high, essentially invisible, and stuffed vitrines induced in me the novel feeling of ivory fatigue.The unexpected highlight is the “Casablanca” gallery, the show’s smallest and densest, which in its way fits right into an institution devoted to Central European genius and American inheritances. Its walls are covered with soft-focus images of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and posters both printed and painted. (“They Have a Date With Fate in … CASABLANCA,” reads one hand-lettered display from 1942, the title sparkling gold.) Lobby cards — those black-and-white stills you’d once see by the popcorn stand — take us back to the louche purgatory of Rick’s Café Américain, where the dashing Resistance hero Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) is gathering intelligence, and the charmingly corrupt Captain Renault (Claude Rains) is sizing up the loveliest exiles.Posters and lobby cards cover the walls with images of the film’s stars, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesDetail of a brass lamp, fringed with imitation jewels, used in the movie.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesA hand-lettered display from 1942 announces the film’s title in sparkling gold.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesYou’ll also find memorabilia from the film’s postwar releases in France, Italy, Czechoslovakia and, by 1952, Germany. Bergman appears in solo splendor on the German poster, beaming above a set piece of fez-topped musicians. There’s a brass lamp from Rick’s, fringed with imitation gemstones, and two rattan chairs where Europe’s desperate and displaced drank their cognacs and plotted their escapes. Looping in the background is “As Time Goes By,” performed by Dooley Wilson, a veteran of the Negro Theater Unit of the Federal Theater Project, in the role of the nightclub crooner Sam. Lauder apparently also owns the 1940 Buick Phaeton in which Rains drives our heroes to the Casablanca airport in the film’s final act. Lauder wanted to station the car outside the Neue Galerie for the run of the show, but no dice. Even with a net worth of $4.5 billion, nobody beats alternate-side parking regulations.“Casablanca” premiered in New York on Nov. 26, 1942; Warner Bros. pushed up its release date to capitalize on the excitement around that month’s Allied invasion of North Africa. It opened nationally in January 1943, and its tale of refugees and people smugglers was not only topical; it was nearly autofiction. A stunning number of its performers were Jewish refugees or anti-Nazi exiles — among them Conrad Veidt, previously a star of the Berlin studio system, who played Major Strasser; S.Z. Sakall, a Hungarian Jewish actor, as the club’s affable headwaiter; and Peter Lorre in the small but crucial role of Ugarte, who sells exit visas to the rich and desperate. The French actress Madeleine Lebeau, in the small role of Rick’s jilted mistress, cries real tears during the film’s stirring performance of “La Marseillaise”; she too was a refugee, fleeing via Lisbon to Mexico, and then to Hollywood. She escaped with her husband, Marcel Dalio (born Israel Mosche Blauschild), who plays the croupier at Rick’s, and who left France after antisemitic critics denounced his appearance in “The Rules of the Game.”The production’s transit papers for Victor Laszlo, “signed” by Charles de Gaulle, which Rick finally hands over in “Casablanca.”Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesWhen it plays in the revival houses on Valentine’s Day, when it surfaces as the late movie after “Nightline,” “Casablanca” still endures as a wartime love affair, with Bogie and Bergman letting each other go in the airport fog. But for me “Casablanca” has always been a movie of visas and exit stamps, embassies and expediters, bribed officials and underground operators. It paints the modern world as the province of emigrants and evacuees, and subordinates the most enthralling of all Hollywood romances to the welfare of the persecuted. Which is why I was so astonished to discover, in Lauder’s collection, an extraordinary relic: the original (prop) letter of transit that sets the plot in motion, made out to Victor Laszlo and “signed” by General de Gaulle. The prop passports are here too, with Bergman’s and Henreid’s photographs stamped with the seal of the Casablanca colonial administration.I couldn’t believe I was seeing them, and seeing them here, in a museum of German and Austrian art. It was as if these fictional travel documents concentrated all the exiles and displacements that built midcentury American culture, of Mies van der Rohe and Marlene Dietrich, of “Doctor Faustus” and “Broadway Boogie-Woogie.” They burn, especially, with the shame of knowing that a contemporary “Casablanca” cast member could probably not procure one. Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has forced an estimated five million to flee, the world has been shaken by the largest refugee crisis since everybody came to Rick’s. The United Nations now puts the number of displaced at 100 million — one in every 78 people on Earth — from Afghanistan and Venezuela, from Central America and Myanmar, and above all from Syria, whose civil war will soon enter its 12th year.The prop passport for Ilsa Lund, Ingrid Bergman’s character.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesNevertheless, under President Donald J. Trump, the United States cut its quotas for refugee admissions to the lowest level ever. The numbers have barely budged under his successor. Though President Biden increased the cap of the refugee admissions program, his government has come nowhere close to fulfilling it; just 25,400 refugees were admitted in the last fiscal year, leaving 80 percent of the places unfilled.The fundamental things apply. In “Casablanca” the Hollywood system reached the acme of its artistic and civic potential, and on that Orientalist soundstage, as the displaced of Europe oscillated in and out of character, these foreigners offered America a new self-portrait. It taught us that love and displacement went hand in hand, that ideals were thicker than blood. “I bet they’re asleep in New York,” Bogie mopes into his tumbler of whisky at the end of the first reel. “I bet they’re asleep all over America.” But the passionate clarity of “Casablanca” was not something we only dreamed.The Ronald S. Lauder CollectionThrough Feb. 13, Neue Galerie New York, 1048 Fifth Avenue, 212-628-6200; neuegalerie.org. More

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      in Music

      Joe Bussard, Obsessive Collector of Rare Records, Dies at 86

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      His life revolved around his massive hoard of fragile 78 r.p.m. disks of jazz, blues, country and gospel music recorded between the 1920s and ’50s.Joe Bussard, who made it his life’s obsession to collect rare 78 r.p.m. records — some 15,000 of them, encompassing jazz, blues, country, jug band and gospel — and who spread his love for the music on radio and among visitors who joined him to listen to the fragile disks in his basement, died on Monday at his home in Frederick, Md., one floor above his hoard. He was 86.His death, in hospice care, was confirmed by his daughter, Susannah Anderson. She said the cause was pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed in 2019.“He basically lived the songs, breathed the songs and passed them on to as many people as he could,” John Tefteller, a rare-records dealer and auctioneer, said in a phone interview. “It was his life from morning to night. I consider him a national treasure.”And any fan of his treasures could come to his house and listen to his 78s.“Anybody who got ahold of him, he’d say, ‘Come on over,’” Ms. Anderson said.From his home near the Blue Ridge Mountains, Mr. Bussard (pronounced boo-SARD) drove the country roads of the South seeking 78s that had been languishing in people’s homes. He was selective about what he brought back to his basement. He loved jazz but detested any jazz recorded after the early 1930s. He loved country music but decreed that nothing good came after 1955. Nashville? He called it “Trashville.” Rock ’n’ roll? A cancer.“How can you listen to Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw when you’ve listened to Jelly Roll Morton?” he said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2001. “It’s like coming out of a mansion and living in a chicken coop.”One day, in the 1960s, Mr. Bussard was driving the streets of Tazwell, a small town in Virginia — the kind of place he often canvassed door to door, asking people if they had 78s — when he met an old man who said he had some 78s at the shotgun shack where he lived.From a dusty box under the man’s bed, Mr. Bussard found some good country records (Uncle Dave Macon, the Carter family) and then the sort of mind-blowing discoveries he craved: a 78 on the Black Patti label, which recorded jazz, blues and spirituals in the late 1920s.“‘Oh my Gahhd!’” he recalled thinking in the liner notes to his CD “Down in the Basement: Joe Bussard’s Treasure Trove of Vintage 78s” (2002). “It was all I could do to keep my hands from trembling.”“So I laid it down, you know, and said, ‘Oh, that’s nice,” he continued. “The old man says, ‘Oh, them, there’s a lot of them in there.’”There were 15 Black Patti records, and the old man, who didn’t care for them, asked for $10 for the bunch. Years later, Mr. Bussard said, he was offered $30,000 for one of them, “Original Stack O’Lee Blues” by Long Cleve Reed and Little Harvey Hull. He didn’t sell it.“When I leave this world,” he added, “I think I’m gonna have that record laying on top of me in my coffin.”Mr. Bussard with an early record by the country music star Jimmie Rodgers, a particular favorite.Ted Anthony/Associated PressMr. Bussard built his life around his records. After working in a supermarket and in his family’s farm supply business, he held no regular job after the late 1950s. He was supported by his wife, Esther (Keith) Bussard, a hairdresser, and his parents.“It’s like my mom and I were in one world, he was in another,” Susannah Anderson said in a phone interview. “It was hard. He was like an absent father, even though he was in the house.”In a profile of Mr. Bussard in Washington City Paper in 1999, his wife was quoted as saying that if she had not been a “born-again, spirit-filled Christian, who the day I married him made a commitment to God,” she “would have left long ago.”But, she added, she loved music as well (she blared bluegrass records in another part of the house while her husband blared his music from the basement), respected his collection and appreciated that he was “saving it for history.”Mr. Bussard found kinship in people like Ivy Sheppard, a disc jockey and 78 collector with whom he recorded radio programs for several stations including WAMU in Washington and WBCM in Bristol, Va., all built mostly around his rare records but also including some of hers. He recorded shows for a variety of stations over more than 40 years.Ms. Sheppard recalled that she and Mr. Bussard often talked for hours on the phone while listening to records. She described visiting his basement as “the greatest experience in the world.”She added, “I’m lost in this world without that crazy old man. He was my best friend.”Joseph Edward Bussard Jr. was born in Frederick on July 11, 1936. His father ran a farm supply business, and his mother, Viola (Culler) Bussard, was a homemaker.When he was 7 or 8, Joe began stocking up on records by Gene Autry, the star of western movies who was known as “the Singing Cowboy”; within a few years he heard the country singer Jimmie Rodgers and was smitten. When he couldn’t find any of Rodgers’s records at a local store, he began hunting for them, knocking on local doors until a woman gave him a box that contained two of Rodgers’s 78s.As a teenager, he began hosting a local radio show from his parents’ basement. When he got his driver’s license, he expanded his search for the records he loved — the 78s made of hard, brittle shellac resin, the format that preceded vinyl — while canvassing in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.It became an obsession, one that delighted him and made him dance and play air sax, air guitar and air banjo in his basement. (He also played the guitar and mandolin.)He made one last trip a month ago, to a flea market in Emmittsburg, Md., in search of 78s, but didn’t find any.“He had a lot of record hunting left in him,” Ms. Anderson said, adding that there were no plans, for now, to move the collection.Mr. Bussard in his basement in 1965. He not only collected 78s; he also built a studio there to make his own.Collection of Marshall WyattMr. Bussard not only collected 78s; he also built a basement studio in his parents’ house in the 1950s to make his own. Under his Fonotone label, he recorded artists like the Possum Holler Boys, a country and rockabilly band, and the Tennessee Mess Arounders, a blues group (he was a member of both), as well as the influential fingerstyle guitarist John Fahey. (He later moved his collection and his studio to the house he shared with his wife and daughter.)A five-CD collection containing 131 of Mr. Bussard’s 78s, “Fonotone Records: Frederick Maryland (1956-1969),” was released in 2005 by Dust-to-Digital and nominated for a Grammy Award for best boxed or special limited-edition package.In 2003, Mr. Bussard was the subject of a documentary, “Desperate Man Blues: Discovering the Roots of American Music,” directed by Edward Gillan.In addition to Ms. Anderson, he is survived by three granddaughters. His wife died in 1999.Once, in a little coal town in southwest Virginia, Mr. Bussard asked a gas station attendant where he could find records and was told to go to a nearby hardware store. When he got there, the owner guided him to a cache of 5,000 records, which had never been played.“The first one I pulled out was ‘Sobbin’ Blues,’ by King Oliver on Okeh, absolutely new, at least a $400 record,” he excitedly recalled in the Washington City Paper interview, referring to a record label founded in 1918. “The next one I pulled out was ‘Jackass Blues’ on Vocalion by the Dixie Syncopators.” He picked out four stacks of 78s and paid $100.“I was so high when I went out of that store,” he said, “I could have floated.” More