Edward Gorey Honored with a Google Doodle!

[Kathleen O'Connell]

Edward Gorey, author, illustrator, and noted balletomane has been honored with his very own Google Doodle on what would have been his 88th birthday.

You can view an animated version of the doodle

.

Here's a HuffPo article about the Gorey Doodle, with a link to the animated intro he crafted for PBS' long-running "Mystery!" series.

A reprint of "The Lavender Leotard: or going a lot to the New York City Ballet," written to celebrate NYCB's 50th anniversary, is available for purchase here. The page includes an excerpt from Tobi Tobias' review of the book for Dance Magazine. Here's a quote:

Caricaturist not of personalities, but of events and ambiances, he chronicles the company's distinctive foibles, faults which have somehow become endearing to those of us who've seen the New York City Ballet through its lean years as well as the fat. There is its inability to cope with costumes and scenery, beginning with the poverty-stricken leotard and blue cyclorama days, when the company was rich only in aesthetic--'Don't you feel the whole idea of sets and costumes is vulgar?'

Deadpan, Gorey notes the chronic and incredible misuse of scenery: the Novice, dressed in her intestinal thing, with Nora's wet-locked hairdo, says to the G-stringed male bug she is about, somewhat reluctantly, to devour: 'Just once we could use the Serenade costumes and the backdrop from Lilac Garden.'

You can find the Ballet Alert! thread detailing all the inside baseball here.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Gorey!

[dirac]

Thank you for posting all this information, Kathleen. Very nice of Google.

We also have two other threads dedicated to Gorey in this forum:

'The Strange Case of Edward Gorey' (only one post, but anyone should feel free to add something!)

A thread on Gorey's book 'The Recently Deflowered Girl'

[aurora]

In related news, from facebook:

Facebook friends...visit GoreyStore.com today and use coupon code: DOODLE for 10% off orders of $35 or more

[KarenAG]

Happy Birthday, Herr Blutig! I'm wearing my silver Gorey ballerina pin today in honor of him. The one in Giselle/Serenade tutu and arabesque pose; the other one, which I don't own, is a grand jete pose.

[Mme. Hermine]

[dirac]

Pictures from this year's Fantastagorey Day at the Edward Gorey House.

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The Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port celebrated its biggest day of the year Saturday, Aug. 5 with Fantastagorey Day. Kids, and their families, enjoyed readings of Gorey’s books, face-painting, games, puppet shows, snacks and more.

 

[dirac]

The Edwardian Ball celebrated its twentieth anniversary this year.

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From its earliest days, the Ball was framed around Gorey —he was their Edward— and that would give the Ball a playful context for people to give a recreated or re-imagined turn of the century world. The Edwardian era, Katz feels, is a fun way to frame Gorey's name to a more accessible level.

Related.

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A sumptuous soiree with significant literary underpinnings, the Edwardian Ball and its weekend of auxiliary events has come a long way from its humble beginnings at the Cat Club on Folsom Street. That first foray, coaxed into existence by dark cabaret act Rosin Coven, involved not much more than a slideshow of Gorey’s gleefully morbid abecedarium, The Ghashlycrumb Tinies, and a concert of their own music. A few years in, they recognized the limitations of that format, and invited the then-emerging circus-centric performance troupe Vau de Vire Society to reenact one of Gorey’s peculiar works onstage. A fertile creative collaboration was born.

 

[dirac]

A new AMC series will be based on Gorey's "Neglected Murderesses."

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Gorey’s estate has never allowed any of his works to be adapted, until now. They have pledged all profits from this series will benefit The Elephant Sanctuary and The National Marine Life Center, and other organizations that protect animals.

 

[dirac]

An item on the current exhibit at the Edward Gorey House in Cape Cod, with a photo of the house.

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The 2021 exhibit, on view through December, is Hapless Children: Drawings from Mr. Gorey's Neighborhood. The show features images of children assembled from the 116 books and various illustrations completed by Gorey from 1953 until his dea

th. 

[dirac]

A couple of Gorey-related links.

Biographer Mark Dery celebrates Gorey's birthday.

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Happy Birthday, Edward Gorey, born this day in 1925. "The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself," said Oscar Wilde. Whatever else he was, Gorey was incomparably, unimprovably himself, a model of uncompromising (yet unaffected) originality.

A campaign is launched to get Gorey on a postage stamp.

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That type of artwork by Edward Gorey could potentially be stuck on letters, cards, bills and solicitations all over the country, if supporters are successful in convincing the U.S. Postal Service that the late Yarmouth Port illustrator and writer should get his own stamp.

 

[dirac]

What's up in Gorey World:

A recent visit to the Edward Gorey House.

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Small wonder Gorey loved bats. “It’s the house that Dracula built,” said our tour guide Gregory Hischak, who turned out to also be director of the Edward Gorey House. Among Gorey’s laurels is a Tony award for the costumes for the musical version of Dracula, which opened on Broadway in 1977, starring Frank Langella. Gorey’s royalties for the costumes and set design allowed him to buy this semi-derelict property for $84,000 and install central heat, a new roof, and modern wiring.

An interview with Mark Dery.