Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Remembering Barbara Stanwick Blogathon: Escape to Burma (1955)

babs-remembringIt’s the Remembering Barbara Stanwyck Blogathon… first movie blogathon of the year for Karavansara, and a good opportunity to watch (again) a nice piece of old fashioned exotic melodrama.

But first things first – the Babs blogathon is hosted by the In the Good Old Days of Hollywood blog…
And here you’ll find the list of all the other blogs participating in this event. Check them out – Barbara Stanwyck had a long and very diverse career, and you’ll find all sorts of different movies.

As for us, here, we’ll take a good look at Escape to Burma, a 1955 RKO movie directed by veteran Allan Dwan.
Which is just the sort of thing we like hereabouts – pulpy, noirish, adventurous and shot in garish colors.
What else do you need? Continue reading →


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Three on the Silk Road

51DHEESMHZL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_OK, so I decided to complicate my life some more.
And this time I’m complicating my life for you, dear Karavansara readers.
I hope you are moved by  this.

As I mentioned, one of the “minor” (but not minor at all) gifts I got for Christmas is Stuart Stevens‘ Night Train to Turkestan.
That is an attempt at retracing the road followed by Peter Fleming and Ella Maillart in their famous China-to-India (by way of Afghanistan) journey, in 1935.

Now, the interesting bit is – both Fleming and Maillart wrote about their experiences on the road.

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Aloha

Brains, Beauty & Breeches – World Tour Offer For Lucky Young Woman…. Wanted to join an expedition… Asia, Africa…

This ad appeared in a Nice (France) newspaper, in 1922.
Idris Galcia Hall – born in Canada in 1906 – was at the time a not-too-enthusiastic guest in a local convent. Her father, an English reserve officer, had died in Ypres, in 1917, and her mother was surviving on a small pension. Idris saw the advertisement as a good way to escape the convent, and make some money to support her mother.
So she skipped church, and went and met Captain Wanderwell, the guy that had posted the ad.

wanderwell-infront

I end up repeating the usual story – history is usually a lot weirder than fiction, and it’s peopled by characters that would be considered impossible if presented in a novel.
For instance…

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