Felix Cherniavsky - Contemporary Articles about Maud Allan

Added 19th Mar 2022 by Beth Dobson (Archives and Programming Assistant, DCD) / Last update 19th Mar 2022

Maud Allan 1329a 51 2008-2-74.jpg
Maud Allan 1329a 51 2008-2-74.jpg
(No description added)

Felix Cherniavsky - Contemporary Articles about Maud Allan

Discover Placeholder
Description
The description of this Item
Collections
The collections that this item appears in.
Maud Allan Research Collection
Tags
Tag descriptions added by humans
Identified Objects
Description of the objects in this Item
Accession Number
DCD's accession number for this Item. It is the unique identifier.
51.2008-2-74
Original Filename
Extracted text
Behind the Veil སང་ ལྟར་ ཏུ ། ཀར ཀན་ ལྟར་ ན་ རཀ རྒྱུདས་ དེར་ ག་ ཝཱན རྒྱུག་ འགའི་ འགྱུར་ ན་ ལྕགས་ ཡོས ། ཙ་ ཏོ ། A 1918 production of Wilde's ' Salome ' in London triggered suspicions of treason and another sensational libel trial . OSCAR WILDE'S LAST STAND Decadence , Conspiracy , and the Most Outrageous Trial of the Century . By Philip Hoare . Illustrated . 250 pp . New York : Arcade Publishing . $ 25.95 . By Mindy Aloff E ARLY in 1918 , when it looked as if Britain might lose World War I , a small right - wing Lon vations about the book concern the treat ment of Maud Allan . Hoare's presiding image of her , on stage and off , is of a high class sexpot , suited up for sin : a vamp so profoundly calculating as to be downright traitorous . ( More than once Hoare specu lates that Allan might have been a Ger man agent , a notion based entirely on the fact that for several years she had lived and enjoyed theatrical success in Berlin . ) For Hoare , as for the jury in 1918 , Allan is little more than her Salome persona , a type in the manner of Schiele's and Klimt's " stylized depiction of orgasmic women ” as well as “ the avenging , cas trating female and vagina dentata , " which is “ essential Freudian material . ” The record shows her to have been a lot more . Allan's career as a dancer con tinued into the 1930's , and the themes of her repertory were ranging . By all reli able eyewitness accounts , she was more mime than dancer ; however , Anna Pavlova , who had a track record for spot ting gifted performers , remarked on Al lan's talent as a stage artist . Hoare , though , has other fish to fry . Blurring the line between Allan's portrayal of Salome and her personal life , he retails as histor ical fact a fair amount of gossip about her love affairs with individuals of both sexes for most of which , no evidence exists . 2 - provided many moments of surreal levi ty . The nadir , perhaps , occurred during the testimony of a defense witness , Dr. Serell Cooke . After consultation with his colleagues on Harley Street , Cooke was prepared to offer a medical opinion about Allan , her theatrical producer Jacob Thomas Grein and Oscar Wilde , based on Cooke's own close reading of ( and opin ions about ) Krafft - Ebing's “ Psycho pathia Sexualis . ” Billing's interrogation began with the astounding question , " Have you had any experience of pervert ed moral or sexual acts being lighted up by reading immoral literature ? ” Cooke who was then testing out his own theo ries of perversion on his patients pro pounded that a literary text like “ Sa lome ” could be expected to stimulate spe cific thoughts of specific perversions in the mind of a receptive reader . By the time Billing and Cooke were through , Grein had been diagnosed as a homosexu al hiding as a family man and Allan as a prostitute with a penchant for sadism all based entirely on the fact that they in tended to put on a production of “ Sa lome . ” “ Have you any opinion where they ought to be ? ” the judge asked Cooke . The answer was , “ Locked up . ” Most of the original research of the case , as well as the historiography con cerning links between the case and World don journal , The Imperialist , - decided it was time to attack Lloyd George , who seemed to be running the war like an amateur . The Imperialist's weapon of choice was innuendo . It report ed that the enemy held a " black book ” listing 47,000 individuals in British gov ernment , arts and society who had been seduced by German agents into “ de bauchery ” and “ lasciviousness " - code words for male homosexuality and les bianism and were therefore vulnera ble to blackmail . According to The Impe rialist , these individuals were luring un suspecting members of the British mili tary into bed , then , during pillow talk , stripping them of state secrets . Cinh - hool was never discovered . - TERENCE PEPPER / FROM " OSCAR WILDE'S LAST STAND " Maud Allan costumed as Salome . An TUTT NDOC TACT

Auto-generated content

Auto Tags
Tag descriptions added automatically
person text newspaper book human face photo
Auto Objects
Auto-generated identification of objects in this Item
person
Auto Description
An autogenerated description of this Item
Text
Face count
Auto-generated number of faces in the Item
1