Acting Tall

Many years ago, I took a tour around Universal Studios, Hollywood. Having survived being eaten by a cousin of the shark who starred in ‘Jaws’, and felt the immense and anarchic power of a (simulated) earthquake, I particularly enjoyed the more low key glimpse of the back-lot sets that had featured in past films, particularly Westerns.

Our guide pointed out a specific doorway. It was lower than the average door frame. Why was that? Because it had been built for Marion Morrison, better known as John Wayne. Given the kind of roles he played, it was easy to assume he was a big man. This is not necessarily so, even though sources online state his height at an impressive 6ft 4” (1.93m), it has been claimed he was only 5ft 6 (1.67m) – pretty short for a Western hero. But when he stood in those tailored doorways, he loomed large.

A memory of this led me to wonder about the heights of actors, and according to the estimable Guinness World Records 2013, the late Matthew McGrory, who featured in Time Burton’s elegiac ‘Big Fish’ (2003), towered at 7 6” (2.29m), making him the tallest actor to have appeared in the movies.

As for actresses, there have been quite a few in modern times who cut an impressive figure at 6 feet, and these include Sigourney Weaver (‘Aliens’,’ Avatar’) and Geena Davis (‘Thelma and Louise’).

Perhaps the last word on size in the movies for this blog should go to Gloria Swanson, whose immortal character of Norma Desmond had a memorable riposte in Billy Wilder’s ‘Sunset Boulevard’ (1950). When her onetime lover and soon to be victim Joe Gillies remarks, “You’re Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big”, Norma tartly comments: I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

Britain’s Tallest Giant

Although he did not hail from the North West, the burial place of Frederick Kempster (1989-1918) is at Blackburn in Lancashire.  He died there, according to the Lancashire Telegraph, whilst taking part in a travelling show.

The records suggest that the tallest known Britain – meaning that his measurements have been confirmed – was a man from Yorkshire called William Bradley, who was born in 1797.  Apparently, the Guinness Book of Records gives Bradley the title of the tallest British man in history at 7ft, 9 inches.

Documentation suggests, however, that Frederick Kempster beat that by .3 of an inch.  What’s interesting for me is how, even within the boundaries of modern times, proving accuracy in measurements is not as straight-forward as one might anticipate.  What I mean is that Kempster’s verified dimensions are still a little in doubt, even though he died less than 100 years ago, and his life and size were not infrequently detailed in newspapers and in photographs.

Just four years before his untimely death, The Daily Mail wrote about a visit Kempster made to its premises: “The hood of a taxicab had to be raised before he could enter, and when he reached The Daily Mail office he had to remove his hat and stoop in the lift.  He is 21 years of age.  His height is 8 feet 2 1/2 inches, and he is known as ‘the Bayswater Giant’.

(Source: http://www.thetallestman.com/frederickkempster.htm)

This article is cited on Tallest Man website by the grandson of Frederick’s younger brother George.  Despite the Mail’s view that Kempster reached over 8 feet tall, James Kempster concludes that his great uncle was, in fact, 7ft, 9.3 inches (237cm) tall. 

Whether or not he beat William Bradley by a third of an inch, it is certain Frederick Kempster would have been a stupendous site.  He died of pneumonia, with ill effects to his health attributed to being confined to prison in Germany just before the hostilities of World War 1 erupted.

Here’s a lovely detail to conclude: one newspaper article suggested that his hand could “span 16 notes with one hand on a piano keyboard”.  I do not know whether he played the piano, but if he did, I wonder how well he might have tackled Rachmaninoff’s challenging piano concertos deploying his prodigiously large hands and fingers.

Giants in Patagonia

It is the 1520s, and Ferdinand Magellan, the celebrated Portuguese explorer, is aboard ship, off the coast of South America.

Venetian Antonia Pigafetta was one of the few to survive Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world, and his published account details an encounter with giants in Patagonia – a huge swathe of territory now shared by Argentina and Chile.

Pigafetta wrote: "One day we suddenly saw a naked man of giant stature on the shore of the port, dancing, singing, and throwing dust on his head. The captain-general [i.e., Magellan] sent one of our men to the giant so that he might perform the same actions as a sign of peace. Having done that, the man led the giant to an islet where the captain-general was waiting. When the giant was in the captain-general's and our presence he marveled greatly, and made signs with one finger raised upward, believing that we had come from the sky. He was so tall that we reached only to his waist, and he was well proportioned...”

The giant, however, was not immune to fear.  Pigafetta reports that the great figure took fright from his own reflection in the Magellan’s mirror.

In due course, Pigafetta’s companions meet other giants, including one who was more ‘amiable’.  This giant even allows himself to become baptised, and learns to say the name of Jesus.  He is given gifts and goes back to his people.  He returns to the explorers with his own gifts, but our chronicler never sees him again.  Pigafetta ruefully concludes that the new Christian has been killed by his own people for fraternising with the Europeans.

Tales of great wonders from all ‘corners’ of the globe were common currency for centuries.  It was a time for great exploration, and the naming of regions hitherto unknown to Western powers.  The name given to this Southern landmass, Patagonia, alluded to feet (in Spanish, ‘pata’), and after Pigafetta’s narrative became more read, there was an ongoing association with giants, leading to the great British explorer Sir Francis Drake reporting his own sighting of giants in South America.

Even as late as the mid 18^th century, stories emanated of Patagonian giants, including a supposed rendezvous with a British ship commanded by the Romantic poet Byron’s grandfather.  The Museum of Hoaxes tells us: “The rumors of Patagonian giants were only definitively proven to be fictitious when the official account of Byron’s voyage appeared in 1773. This account revealed that Byron had indeed encountered a tribe of Patagonians, but that the tallest among them measured only 6 feet 6 inches. In other words, they were tall, but not 12-foot giants. The tribe that Byron met was probably the Tehuelches, who were wiped out by the Rocca expedition in 1880.”

A prosaic, bloody end, then, to this strand of fantastic fictions and intrigues generated by world travellers centuries ago.  And, once again, testimony to the fascination that giants have had to the human imagination.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patagon

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/patagonia.html

http://www.lawrence.edu/news/pubs/lt/fall04/giants.shtml

The Greek Giants

Greek mythology is rich with tales of giants, not least because the 'gigantes' once waged war against the gods.  The gods ultimately triumphed (with the help of the superhuman Herakles), but tales of the giants and their exploits left an imprint in Greek legend, which, in turn, influenced Roman culture.  That is why the great Roman poet Ovid writes about the giants in his ‘Metamorphoses’; Ovid has a new race of men being born from the death throes of the giants.

Although the Greek giants are represented as essentially human in shape, their legs were sometimes depicted as the tails of serpents, and their hair was rendered as writhing snakes!

The ancient storyteller known as Homer regarded the giants as a separate race of men, whereas another source from antique times, Hesiod, wrote of them being of divine origin, arising from the spilled blood of Uranus.

I find the crimes that the giants committed of particular interest.  These transgressions range from the troubling but hardly nefarious hurling of trees and attempting to steal the cattle of Helios (the sun), to deeds that are clearly malevolent, such as the attempted rape of Aphrodite and the enslavement of humanity.

Another distinct race of giants in Greek folklore was known as the Titans; the word 'Titanic' comes to us as a signifier of immense size.  What we know about the historical ship Titanic was that it was an enormous vessel. (On a related note, I've just been reading Ian Jack's superb commentary on the upcoming 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.  You can read it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/13/100-anniversary-titanic-disaster-again?INTCMP=SRCH)

The twelve Titans of Greek mythology were the offspring of Gaia and Uranus, and perhaps the most well-known of their number is Prometheus.  A generous being, Prometheus gave to humans a number of gifts, including fire, but in so doing, he angered Zeus, king of the gods.  As punishment, Prometheus was chained to a rock to have an eagle attacking his liver for eternity.  It was Herakles, once more, who saved the day by freeing the tormented Prometheus from an unimaginably grim perpetual fate – but this time, Herakles acted on the side of the giants against the gods.

An invaluable source for this piece has been: http://www.theoi.com/Gigante/Gigantes.html

Giants Amongst Us

My focus, so far, has been largely on giants in mythology and world folklore, but today I will turn to the topic of human giants.
Larger – and far larger than normal – human beings have been noted as a remarkable feature stretching back at least several thousand years.  There are some fascinating examples of gargantuan humans.  Today, I’d like to take you to the eighteenth century, and to consider the case of Irishman Charles Byrne (1761-1783). 

Byrne’s dates make it clear that he only lived into his twenties.  By adulthood, he had reached the astounding height of 7 ft 7 in (2.31 m).  In his final years, he lived in London and was obviously of great interest.  He made money as an attraction in his own right.  Yet his time in London was blighted by drink and, when his life savings were stolen, he drank to excess and died in June 1783.

He wanted to be buried at sea but his corpse was purchased instead; his huge skeleton can be seen today at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

Recently, the New York Times reported that a genetic mutation accounted for Byrne’s tremendous height.  Researchers believe that up to 300 people may share the mutation that caused his ‘gigantism’.

Charles Byrne’s tragic and evocative story has been covered by Irish and British television, and in a novel by Hilary Mantel (Man Booker Prize winner for ‘Wolf Hall’).

Byrne is not the tallest human on record, and I will look at more instances in history of giants amongst us in the future.

Finally, on a different note, I want to recommend the superb ‘Guide to Literary Agents’, which can be found at: http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/.  I use it daily as I continue to search for agency representation.

A Giant in Cornwall

I recently wrote about the Cerne Abbas giant in southern England, and for my next post, I’m going to remain in Britain.  This time, we head southwest from the Cerne Abbas figure and continue until we get to the most westerly area of the British Isles: Cornwall.

Cornwall is a land saturated with mythology, and so, not surprisingly, it boasts at least one legend about a giant.  The tale’s first written source is from the pen (or should that be quill?) of medieval chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth, who, in about 1136, wrote of the founding of Britain.   Following the city-state of Troy’s sacking by the Greeks and their giant wooden horse, a group of Trojan exiles make their way to the British Isles. 

Among the putative new Britons was a companion of Brutus known as Corineus.  He was strong and loved to wrestle.  One day, Corineus and his comrades were attacked by a twelve foot giant known as Gogmagog (or Geomagog/Geomagot), along with twenty other giants.  Many of the Trojans were killed; the survivors fought back and, in turn, slew all the giants – except Gogmagog.

A wrestling match was set up between Corineus and Gogmagog.  When the fearless warrior Corineus sustained three broken ribs at the hands of his mammoth adversary, he was understandably enraged, and he grabbed Gogmagog.  With remarkable strength, Corineus threw the remaining giant from the cliff and into the sea.

To this day, the area is known as the Giant’s Leap, although leap is rather an inaccurate designation for what happened to Gogmagog.

No less a luminary than John Milton wrote about the legend in his own ‘History of Britain’.  It is well to remind ourselves that up to the seventeenth century, myth and legend were woven into the fabric of historical narrative and accepted as ‘true’.

On a related note, the Lord Mayor’s parade in the City of London features two figures known as Gog and Magog: they are seen as protectors of the metropolis.  And the names Gog and Magog feature in ancient Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts.

Back in English West Country, the great hero Corineus had vanquished a giant foe, and gave his name to Cornwall.

The Fertility Giant

If you happen to travel in the beautiful county of Dorset in Southern England, you are likely to hear of the Cerne Abbas giant.

No less than 180 feet (55 metres) high, and thought to date from the seventeenth century, this giant is carved into the hillside from the chalk underneath, and is a compelling figure, not least because he wields two things: a huge club, and an astounding representation of his manhood!

Because of his remarkable endowment, young women who wished to conceive slept on his outline overnight, and couples wishing to have children made love on his contours.  Understandably, one of his nicknames was ‘the Rude Giant’.  Furthermore, in July 2010, the Daily Telegraph reported that the area around the giant was reporting around double the national birthrate!

There is speculation that the giant’s left arm once held some kind of cloak that has been eroded over time.  If so, then the figure’s identification with the Greek hero Heracles, who used a club to great effect, and who also sported a cloak, is given validation.  Alternatively, the Independent newspaper in 1994 cited a study that suggested that the giant’s free arm had in fact held a severed head; his cloak flew from his shoulders.

In contrast to the identification with Heracles, there is a legend that the outline was created by drawing around the dead body of an invading Danish giant.

The prudish Victorians did not like such a colossal and public display of genitalia, and so allowed shrubs to grow over the giant’s nether regions.  That foliage has certainly not endured.  Nevertheless, so distinct is the Cerne Abbas hillside giant that during World War 2, he was disguised from aerial view in order to hinder any German Luftwaffe planes from using him as a reference point in their navigation over England.

The story I find most intriguing in the explanations of the giant’s origins is that he was a living creator – the invader from Denmark – who met his fate on an English countryside, but was then re-created in chalk.  Giants can be fearsome and deadly, but as in the case of the Cerne Abbas figure, they can also be vital symbols of life.