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Show Three art exhibits are currently on display at the University of Utah. Among them are (left) the works of former Salt Lake resident John Held Jr., who immortalized jl J the carousing flapper as the symbol of the roaring '20s, and the watercolors of Todd O'Connell, a U. master's of fine arts candidate. overs art at wotercolors'tF oppsirs, By tribute to Held through its exhibition of "John Heid's Kelly Hindley Three art shows are currently showing at the University of Utah. They offer everything from flappers to watercolors: John Heid's America: Flappers, The Jazz Age and America: Flappers, The Jazz Age and Beyond," Held was born in 1889 to an actress mother and a father who was both an engraver and a bandleader. In the early 1900s, Held received his only formal art training with sculptor Mahonri Young, grandson of Brigham Young. By The 1920s. The Age of Jazz, the age of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Lindberg and Clara Bow. Mention the 1920s and we immediately picture a rambunctious, frivolous decade filled with Rudolph Valentino movies, the Charleston and illegal And to populate this raucous world, we picture speak-easie- s. short-skirt-bob haired, flappers and the racoon-coate- d, To populate this raucous world, we picture short-skirtd, flappers and the racoon-coatfraternity sheiks who whirled them from party to bootleg-liquparty in their convertible Stutz Bearcats. Chronicle staff writer , Beyond at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. ed fraternity sheiks who whirled them from party to party in their convertible Stutz Bearcats. But the artist who created and immortalized the image of the carousing flapper as the symbol of the 1920s was not himself an East Coast-bre- d Ivy Leaguer. John Held Jr., whose cartoons chronicled the Jazz Agei grew up in Salt Lake City. This month, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts pays bootleg-liqu- . bob-haire- ed ed or illustrator and cartoonist for the Salt Lake Tribune. In 1912, after marrying the Tribune's society editor, Held moved to New York City, where he began his career designing streetcar posters and department store ads. By 1927, Heid's drawings of flappers and their sheiks were regularly featured in magazines such as Life, Vanity Fair, College Humur and the New Yorker. But the stock market crash of 1929 put an end to the Jazz Age and the demand for flapper drawings. During the rest of his career, Held wrote and illustrated eight books, designed costumes and scenery for Broadway shows and, during World War II, drew pictures of radar apparatus for the Army Signal Corps. In addition to his work as a cartoonist, Held continued to paint and to sculpt. He was residence at both Harvard and the University of Georgia. Held died in 1958. As well as featuring Heid's famous flapper drawings, the museum's exhibit includes examples of his landscapes, seascapes, blockprints, unique "maps," posters and several artist-i- n- or age 10, Held had sold his first cartoon to a newspaper; by age 15 he had sold a cartoon to Life magazine. Held helped publish his high school newspaper with schoolmate Harold Ross, who later founded and published the New Yorker magazine. While still in high school, Held worked as a sports see "art shows" on page nine Dee Wolfe All the In the good hoity-toit- y movie critics may talk themselves hoarse to the negative, but they, in all their vain searching, will never match the brief magical moment I enjoyed when, in the summer of 1959 at the puppy age of 6 years old, I saw Hercules, starring the immortal Steve Reeves and Gigantis, the Fire Monster, the sequel to Godzilla. You can easily imagine it. To receive such a splendid award, I had to have been an especially good boy. In fact, unless my memory is dim, I had just been discharged from the hospital for some ailment or another, and this was simply a way of appeasing the dark gods that lurked in my bloodstream. Already that summer, we'd seen Ben Hur at the Bountiful Motor Vu and a half dozen Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin comedies at every drive-iGood grief, the old man tried out every one. I'm not sure to this day how or why he made the choices he did. I old days, there were and a warm breeze billowing from Parley's Canyon? Where else could you croon along with Tony Bennett, the Anita Kerr Singers and Bert Kaemphert between features? Where else could you see two Warner Brothers' cartoons, the main feature, some great snack bar ads, the second feature, the main feature again, and finally some ultra-cheindependent third feature for less than two bucks a carload? Where else, my sentimental friend, but Motor Vu, at the Woodland, the "Ute," the High-Lan- d, and still very Fox the and almighty Valley Vu, Davis, The forming of a constellation figured prominently somewhere in the proximity of the title. Yes indeed. A hokey little swashbuckler it was by today's standards, even by most of my own, but it was pure magic to a much with us Redwood Hippodrome, the Colosseum, the cathedral all the brash, dash and hoopla of Europe. We are saying goodbye to our greatest cultural legacy cheap entertainment for the lowly masses, proletariat bureaucrats like my father, whose daily ap drive-in- ? movie screen, snack bar, in as much awe as medieval booth and pizza projection man must have beheld Notre Dame or Saint Peter's Basilica. I feel somehow he must have seen them for the monuments they truly were. I think the monolithic grandeur of the old Highland screen backside, its design, must have moved him to tears, or at least stricken silence as we pulled up to pay our fare. Saturday night was our night to go to the movies. The drive-i- n was where we went. Where else could you enjoy the fruits of Hollywood with the windows rolled down think he held the art-de- co Alas, the Motor Vu is no more. Most likely the space once given over to it is now taken up by trashy condominiums and populated by yuppies and other rs who neither 'know nor care that once social-climbe- there abided America's aesthetic answer to the self-sacrifi- ce n. drive-i- n drive-in- s In the summer of 1959, as I said, our family saw Gigantis, the Fire Monster at the Motor Vu. You may say what you like about it, but it was more than I bargained for. Before Hercules began, I rolled down my back-se- at window and stared upon the pale stars while the warmcool midnight breeze rolled across my face and the plaintive call of a muted trumpet rose above the band that, in my imagination still, whiskey-stupormust only play at midnight. ;Maybe it was Jackie Gleason's Orchestra that fit itself so perfectly to the nearness of the stars. You can understand, therefore, why I was immediately struck by the opening credits of Hercules. ed held up the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations. For them there was the drive-iwhere a man could commune with his peers, see films that he and they would talk about at the office and factory for the next solid week. It was also where he could bask in privacy and comfort at the helm of his private car. Pulling up before the almighty screen was no different than putting your car in automatic pilot. But don't bother getting your hopes up. Drive-in- s are gone, dismantled, erased from the memory of the race. All that is left in the Salt Lake Valley is the heroically stubborn Valley Vu and the multi-usaRedwood. Otherwise, there is always television. n, ge |