"A Christmas Carol" - Four Movies

Charles Dickens published his story "A Christmas Carol" on today's date - Dec. 19 in 1843. Although owing to the machinations of his publishers, it's financial reward to Dickens was quite modest, its sales made it wildly successful, and the timeless story it told brought almost universal critical praise.  In our own modern era, there have been countless cartoon, musical and film versions. I will center our attention here on the four major dramatic film versions which have been produced.  Two were for the cinema, and two were produced especially for Television.  My purpose here will not be to say which is the best of the four (although I DO have a favorite version -- as I shall make clear soon enough), as I think that they all are very good within there own frames of reference.  Rather, my purpose will be to compare and contrast what each version does, and how closely (or not) each version follows Dicken's book.

"A Christmas Carol" - 1938


The first of our cinematic version was produced in 1938.  It was originally to have the great actor Lionel Barrymore in the role of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge.  Barrymore had played the role many times before in a radio adaptation. Unfortunately, Barrymore was injured shortly before filming was to start, and was obliged to bow out.  He recommended his friend Reginald Owen for the role, and Owen wound up doing a fine job. His Scrooge is the least nuanced of the four which we shall examine.  He barks out his disdain for his nephew Fred, for Bob Crachitt played in this version by Gene Lockhart, and for the whole Christmas holiday with little apparent reflection on Scrooges part, and makes the transition into the better man equally quickly.  Of course this version, being just slightly over an hour long at 69 minutes, takes little time to linger very long on anything.  But it does have it's own charm.  The ghost of Christmas past is played in this version by the beautiful Ann Rutherford.  In the book, the gender of this spirit is not made clear:  

"It was a strange figure -- like a child; yet not so like a child as an old man....(it) had the appearance of having receded from view and being diminished to a child's proportions." 

Dickens goes on to refer to a fair skinned face without a wrinkle, long white hair, and long muscular arms and hands. Nowhere does he describe this spirit as being feminine. Nevertheless, in 1938, MGM gave us a beautiful young woman to accompany Scrooge on his first trip into his soul.  It is also interesting to note that this version deals with the character of Fezziwig quickly - he just gives Scrooge and Dick Wilkins some money and invites them to his party later.  There is no party scene, and no mention whatever of "Belle", Scrooge's old flame when young.  
               
"A Christmas Carol" - 1951

The 1951 cinematic version with Allister Sim as Scrooge (indeed, the movie was actually entitled "Scrooge" in its British release), is viewed by many fans and critics as being the best of the lot. And Sim does do a superb job.His Scrooge is obviously annoyed by his nephew's greetings, in fact he seems genuinely impatient It is very interesting to note that this version spends more time fleshing out Scrooge's early development than any of the others.  At 28 minutes it spends more time with the ghost of Christmas Past (this time portrayed as a long-haired old man)than it does on the other two ghosts combined.  In fact this is the most time spent on any one of the spirits in any of the films. Once it goes past Scrooge's break with Belle, it has a host of material on the death of Scrooge's sister Fan (called "Fran" here), the end of Fezziwig's business, and the taking over of it by Scrooge and Marley (played by Michael Hordern)that is not in Dicken's book. But this addition of non-Dickensian material is something that all of the films do to one extent or another.  

"A Christmas Carol" - 1984

In 1984, we have the first of two made for Television versions, this one starring George C. Scott as the hard-hearted miser of old London.  And I should probably say right from the start, that this version is my favorite.  Not necessarily the best, just my favorite. I love the characterization by George Scott - I love his cynical laugh, his gravelly sounding voice - which comes closest of all the versions to Dicken's description of Scrooge's voice as being "grating." Further, I love the full and imposing stature that Edward Woodward brings to his portrayal of the ghost of Chritmas Present, the screeching muted trumpet that is the only sound associated with the ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come, and the kindly, indulgent nature that David Warner brings to Bob Crachitt, and the theme song "God Bless Us  Everyone"  composed for this version by Nick Bicat.  Most of all, I deeply moved by the frustration and angst which Nigel Davenport brings to the ghost of Jacob Marley.  At the point where Dickens has Marley lamenting "Woe is me.." Davenport sheds tears and rattles his fetters in anguish rather than saying anything.       

"A Christmas Carol" - 1999

The most recent of the dramatic (as opposed to the musical, animated, or computer-animated)versions is that produced in 1999 by the cable TV network TNT, and starring Patrick Stewart as Scrooge.  And Stewart's Scrooge is without a doubt the angriest and most malevolent of the four we have examined.  In contrast to Owen who is stingy, but changes quickly, Sim who is irritable but fairly soft-spoken, and in direct contrast to Scott who frequently smiles and laughs, albeit cynically, Patrick Stewart's Scrooge is thoroughly angry.  He hates everything and everybody with a passion.  His change to the better man comes neither quickly nor easily, he is not at all soft-spoken, and he neither smiles nor laughs -- until the very end when his Scrooge practically vomits out a laugh, something which is clearly every bit that alien to his nature.  It is yet another excellent performance by this actor who approaches the story from the viewpoint of a man who had been doing "A Christmas Carol" as a one man show for fully a decade before this TV version. 

This version is all around a grittier, more realistic portrayal than any of the others. Richard E. Grant's Crachitt is thinner and more sallow looking than any other, and he and his whole family have bad teeth in this version as the real Crachitt's likely would have, had they been real. Also, a truly delightful version of "Fezziwig" is turned in by the actor

Ian McNease (right) singing at his Christmas party.  The instru- ments accom- panying, the violin, clarinet, and the serpent horn are very much what would have been used, although the book speaks only of a violinist.  And the song that is being sung at the party of Scrooge's nephew "I'm Shy" is very much the type of song which would have been sung around the piano in Victorian days. 

All told, Hollywood has given us four very distinct and very well-done versions of Charles Dicken's story.  Each one stays close to Dicken's tale in spirit, though to varying degrees in detail. Each one focuses on it's own facet of the tale, and each one in its own way does a superb job. I would like to take the Crachitt's from 1938, and put them into the 1951 version. I would like to take the ghost of Jacob Marley from 1984 and put him into the 1999 version. But take your pick. They all tell Dicken's story well and bring home the lessons that Dicken's sought to express. God bless them, everyone! 

Sources: 

"The Man Who Invented Christmas" by Les Standiford, Crown Publishers, New York, 2008

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

"A Christmas Carol" dir. by Hugh Harman, 1938

"A Christmas Carol"    dir. by Brian Desmond Hurst, 1951

"A Christmas Carol"    dir. by Clive Donner, 1984

"A Christmas Carol"    dir. by David Jones, 1999

HALLOWEEN, 2012 = "Dracula" in the Movies!!

"'Dracula' is and always has been material for a great picture. great in opportunity for actors, writers and directors.  Great in opportunity for photography of a wonderful sort and nature. But while it is picture material from the angle of the pictorial and the dramatic, it is not picture material from the standpoint of the box office nor of the ethics of the industry. It would be a thing which no child and for that matter no adult of delicate and nervous temperament should see, a thing beside which 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' would seem like a pleasant fireside reverie."

- A memo from Universal Pictures, Oct. 6, 1927

  Such was the reaction of Hollywood to the gothic horror novel, "Dracula" by Bram Stoker in it's dramatic form on the stage in New York.  But Hollywood's reaction to the novel would not remain so timid for so long.  For once Bela Lugosi got his hands on it, it took off like wildfire and has been a staple of films ever since.  But what exactly has Hollywood done with the mysterious and evil Count over the years?  We shall look at three film verisons of the story. 1931, 1979, and 1992.  How do those film versions compare to what Bram Stoker wrote into his novel, and how do they compare to each other?

"Dracula", 1931 - Sinister

  As is so often the case, the first version of story set the standard by which all future versions would be judged.  Originally envisioned as a project for Lon Chaney at MGM, it was shelved after Chaney's death in August of 1930.  Eventually it made it's way to the Universal Studio wherein it became a project for Producer Carl Laemmle Jr. and Director Todd Browning.  The role of the evil Count Dracula was, after much searching for a bigger name actor given to the man who had played him on the NewYork stage for so long, the Hungarian born Bela Lugosi.  Lugosi didn't speak much English when he arrived in the U.S. in 1920, so he learned most of his early theatrical lines phonetically.  By the time he played Dracula, his accent was very thick, and gave the Count the heavy Eastern European sound and the sinister, menacing demeanor so associated with the role ever since.  In the novel, the Count speaks English well, having an almost British accent The biggest change from Bram Stoker to Hollywood was the portrayal of the Count as a handsome, well dressed man about town.  This was done in it's transfer to the stage, but kept up by Hollywood.  In the novel the Count is quite strange in his appearance:

"His face was a strong -- a very strong -- aquiline with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere... The mouth so far as I could see it under the (long thin and white) moustache was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips.." Stoker goes on to describe ears that were pale and pointed bushy eyebrows and a general pale color.  "The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor." 

Generally speaking, the 1931 version of Dracula, classic that it has deservedly become, has little to do with Bram Stoker's novel other than the plot outlines and the names of the characters.  This version is set in the early thirties complete with automobiles, unlike the novel which takes place in the 1890's The characters relationships are all different: In this version Dr. Seward is an older man and Mina is his daughter.  The character of Renfield is the one who travels to Transylvania and meets Count Dracula, and subsequently goes mad, assisting Dracula to get at Mina.  There is one line however that makes it straight from the novel and winds up in all three film versions that we shall look at.  At one point in Chapter Two of the novel, the Count noticing the howling of the wolves says: "Listen to them --the children of the night.  What music they make!" This line passes the lips of Bela Lugosi, Frank Langella, and Gary Oldman.  The characters of Dracula's three "wives" (although they are never identified as such in the novel) appear briefly at the film's beginning and provide a touch of the sexual aspect of the story along with the obvious spell which Dracula casts over his young female victims.

"Dracula", 1979 - Sensual

"He is in fact in the book very sympathetic, very romantic, and very tortured and tormented and very singular."
- Frank Langella on the character of "Dracula".

It is difficult after having read the book to see where Mr. Langella gets this view that the title character is either romantic or sympathetic.  Tortured and tormented certainly do fit, but very little about him comes off as sympathetic or romantic.  Nevertheless, Mr. Langella's view does provide the key to this highly sensual take on Dracula from Producer Walter Mirisch and Director John Badham.  This version of the bite 'em guy from Transylvania is rated "R", which it earns mainly from the fairly graphic blood and gore, and the highly sensual and suggestive nature of it's depictions. But no more of the glowering, heavily accented  menace of Lugosi in this fellow.  This Count speaks calmly, clearly, and positively radiates suave attraction from the moment he sweeps into Dr. Seward's drawing room.
He is obviously looking not just to bite his victims to take their blood, but by the smooth inflection of his voice, and the soft touch of his hand, he is looking to seduce them as well.

As was he case with the 1931 version, this edition makes it's own departures from Bram Stokers plot details.  Although it is set in the 1890's as Stoker put it, it begins with Dracula's transport to England by the ship which ends up mysteriously wrecked on the coast near Whitby, the small English coastal town which is
the setting for most of the story.  The visit to Castle Dracula, and the three wives are dispensed with entirely.
This time Lucy is Dr. Seward's daughter, and helps him with his work at the Sanitarium which he runs.  Mina is now the friend who is sickly and whom Dracula takes as his first, easier victim while Lucy becomes his main focus.  Jonathan Harker is engaged to  Lucy, and comes off as a bit of a middle class twit with jealous aspirations to be rich, who hot-rods around in an early period sports car.  Renfield is now a resentful working class hauler who falls under Dracula's sway while delivering boxes of earth to Dracula's London home/hide-out at Carfax Abbey. And Mina is the daughter of Professor van Helsing, who is played with great old-world dignity and gravity by Sir Lawrence Olivier (above).   In this, as in all three versions, Dracula's transformation  into a bat or simple mist is put with his ability from the novel to climb stone walls like a lizard, absent from the 1931 version.  Also unlike 1931, the then comparatively new technique of blood transfusion is shown.  And in 1979, Dracula is dispatched on-board his would be escape ship, via an unceremonious ride to the top mast and into the vampire-deadly sunlight.  This version benefits from an expansive dramatic orchestral score by John Williams as opposed to 1931 which had no score at all.

"Bram Stoker's Dracula", 1992 - Sexual

If you're looking for fidelity to Bram Stoker's novel, this sweeping epic 1992 version is the one you've been waiting for.  This conceptualization, Produced and Directed by the Oscar-Winning Francis Ford Coppola follows the novel faithfully for the greater part in terms of it's plot and it's depiction of the character's relationships to one another.  Gary Oldman plays the title role, and portrays the suffering of Dracula's soul which is only hinted at directly in the novel.   And this time the rating is a hard "R". The sensual angle of the story which was suggested, though indirectly throughout the novel, which was hinted at in 1931, and brought to the surface in 1979 becomes full-blown sexuality in 1992.  Bare-breasts abound in this film, to a degree which would have been impossible in 1931, and possible, but still unlikely in a general-release film in 1979 - even an "R"-rated film.  And in this one the time period of 1897 is both clearly stated and adhered to.  "I long to walk the streets of your great London..." Dracula says to Harker early in the film and London is indeed depicted as just that: a teeming metropolis on the cusp of the twentieth century complete with early motion picture attractions, a wax cylinder phonograph, and typewriters.  

The setting and the pacing of the plot are for the first time just as Bram Stoker wrote them, starting out on Jonathan Harker's train journey to the castle Dracula in Transylvania, going from the eerie surroundings there to Dracula's effective imprisonment of Harker there while he goes to London via a mysteriously wrecked ship. And the story like Stoker's novel is presented as a series of journal and diary entries, letters and newspaper clippings kept by the principal players.  The relationships of the various characters are like they were written by Stoker in this version. Dr. Seward is about Harker's age.  Mina (who is engaged to Harker) is a friend of Lucy's, and Dr. Seward carries a torch for Lucy who is flirtatious with him, her fiancee, the rich young Lord Holming (Lord Godalming in the novel), and a brash young Texan named Quincy Morris, who carries with him a huge Bowie knife at all times. Dracula. who is correctly shown as being very old and pale at the beginning, fixes his attention on Mina after taking the easier target, Lucy.  There is an underlying story in 1992 that Dracula was once a great war lord, who fixes on Mina because she happens to resemble the lost love of his youth. His past is discussed in the book, but never specifically spelled out in this way.  And nowhere in the novel is any past-connection to Mina either depicted or suggested.  Further, in the novel, Dracula only meets Mina when he attacks her; there is no sweet courtship in London prior to that.  Still the rest of the 1992 version stays fairly well faithful to Bram Stoker.  The three wives (or witches, or whatever they are) of Dracula figure prominently (and also toplessly) in this filming, and the character of Professor Van Helsing is played with full  and earthy relish by Anthony Hopkins (above, with Winona Ryder as Mina) who almost comes off as comic relief, but who adds the combination of science and faith which forms such a vital conflict in this bizarre tale. A powerful musical score by Wozzek Kilar is a primary driving force in this film.

Ultimately, in the 1992 version, as with the 1931 and the 1979, the key to the success of the film depends  upon the strength of the title character and his portrayal.  In 1931 you had the sinister Bela Lugosi setting the standard for Dracula's air of menace.  In 1979, we had Frank Langella making him positively seductive. But only in 1992, do we have in Gary Oldman's portrayal a monster who (at the film's beginning anyway) looks like one and who by the end has become more appealing (although in the novel he remains physically repulsive throughout) by proving to be so sad.  One of only two points in the novel to say anything clearly sympathetic to the title character puts it thus, when Mina observes the Count just after the fatal blow has been struck:

"I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace , such as I never could have imagined might have rested there."

Sources:

"Dracula" by Bram Stoker, 1897, Barnes & Noble Classics Edition, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, 2003.

by Denis Gifford, Hamlyn Publ. Group Ltd., London, 1973

Directed by Todd Browning, Universal Studios, 1931

Directed by John Badham, Universal Studios, 1979

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Coumbia Pictures, 1992

by Jon J. Muth, Marvel Co.,New York, 1983

The Storms of November...

The Storms of November

The Ganges, the Pacific, and Atlanta in the Tempests of the autumn.

Three storms - all destructive, and all in November, lay waste to their hosts. The Ganges floods, Hermann Mellville stirs the Pacific, and Sherman burns Atlanta!

"The gales of November" were the winds which singer Gordon Lightfoot wrote of as having doomed the coal freighter, S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald. But let us now take a look at three other storms which occurred on dates within a week of each other during the month of November:

The Ganges Floods

"Then we heard a roar like it was the end of the world and the tidal wave was on us. The roof of the house was ripped loose. I grabbed my youngest son. The roof was floating and I grabbed a tree and held on for hours. I was freezing from the rain. Children would be swept by, screaming for help. I tried to grab on to them, and tie them to me, but the current was too strong. They were swept away. I felt helpless."

This was the memory of Nomhan Das a costal villager who lived on the coast of Ganges River Delta of the harrowing night of November 12, 1970. On that evening, a major cyclone crashed down upon the Delta of the Ganges River in what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The storm winds reached up to 150 mph, and produced a tidal wave estimated to be fifty feet high. By dawn, the waters had receded sufficiently to allow Nohoman Das and his family to reach dry land safely. But vast numbers of others were not so lucky. The death toll estimates ranged between 300 and 500,000, most of them struck down, or washed out to sea by the initial wave. But many more of those deaths occurred during subsequent weeks as a result of outbreaks of typhoid and cholera.

Melville and Moby Dick

Elsewhere in time, in New York, the mind of an American writer conjured up a storm on the Sea of Japan:

"It is in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepytown. Towards the evening of that day, the "Pequod" was torn of her canvas, and bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her directly ahead. When darkness came on, sky and sea roared and split with the thunder, and blazed with the lightening, that showed the disabled mast fluttering here and there with the rags which the first fury of the tempest had left for it's after sport."

This was how the American writer Herman Melville described a typhoon on the high seas in his classic novel, "Moby Dick", published on November 14, 1851 by Harper and Brothers in New York City. Melville's tale of the young Ishmael's adventure on the whaling ship, "the Pequod", and of Captain Ahab's obsessive pursuit of the great white whale of the novel's name has long since come to be recognized as one of the great classics of American literature, capturing as it did the adventure as well as the perils of life on the great oceans of the world. But at the time of it's debut, it was very cooly received, and Melville receieved little acclaim for it in his lifetime.

Thirteen years later in the state of Georgia, a very different, but no less damaging kind of storm was beginning it's fabled path of destruction:

 

Sherman Burns Atlanta

"A grand and awful spectacle is presented to the beholder in this beautiful city now in flames.....The heaven is one expanse of lurid fire; the air is filled with flying, burning cinders; buildings covering two hundred acres are in ruins or in flames; every instant there is the sharp detonation or the smotheredbooming sound of exploding shells and powder concealed in the buildings, and then the sparks and flames shoot away up..... scattering cinders far and wide."

So wrote Union Army soldier George Ward Nichols in his book "The Story of the Great March" in remembering the burning of the city of Atlanta which took place between November 14 and 16 in 1864. Having captured the city two months earlier, General William T. Sherman elected to march the bulk of his army three hundred miles east to the city of Savannah. Before departing, he ordered the burning of the industrial section of the city in order to keep it from being used by the Confederacy again. In his wake of his army and it's trek all the way to the Atlantic coast, he would leave a wide path of destruction as his army lived off the land, commandeering everything it needed and destroying everything else, as an example to break the back of southern resistance once and for all. As he wrote to his commander, General U.S. Grant, his march through the very heart of Georgia would be "proof positive that the North can prevail." A popular Union song put the matter a good deal more colorfully:

"Marching Through Georgia.....

""Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never reach the coast!..... So the saucy rebels said, -- and 'twas a handsome boast...... Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon on a host,... While we were marching through Georgia!!
Hurrah, hurrah! we bring the jubilee! ....... Hurrah, hurrah! the flag that makes you free!.... So we sung the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,....... While we were marching through Georgia."

Hence "the gales of November" that Gordon Lightfoot would describe in his song about the Edmund Fitzgerald came together in different ways to exact a terrible price on mankind.

Sources:

"Darkest Hours - A Narrative Encyclopedia of Disasters from Ancient Times to the Present." - Jay Robert Nash, Pocket Books, 1977.

"Moby Dick" by Hermann Melville

"The Story of the Great March" - George Ward Nichols, Corner House Publishers, 1972.

Picasso and The Death of Guernica

Art And History - The Death of Guernica

How a Painting Kept the Destruction in Guernica in the Popular Mind

A searing portrait of the destruction of a small Spanish town is kept alive by a painting by Picasso.

In April of 1936, a small undefended town in Spain was bombed back into the stone age. In November of 1975 a merchant freighter was lost in a terrible storm on Lake Superior. And in April of 1789, the crew of a British naval/merchant vessel mutinied. These three events would all be nearly forgotten but for one thing: all were the subject of an artistic portrayal. For if you put the names of Pablo Picasso and Guernica with the bombing, Edmund Fitzgerald with the freighter, and if you put the name HMS Bounty with the mutiny, most people would light up with recognition. A searing portrait, a mournful song and a book along with a trio of Hollywood movies have brought what would otherwise be footnotes into the sunlight of popular memory.

The True Story of the Destruction of Guernica

The Civil War which engulfed Spain in the summer of 1936 was a fight between the Loyalists, supporting the elected Spanish government, and those backing an insurgent Army officer, one Francisco Franco. As Franco was a fascist, he was able to draw support from Adolf Hitler in Germany, and Benito Mussolini of Italy, both dictators looking to use the strife in the Iberian peninsula, as a theater in which to test their weapons of war.
The small town of Guernica was chosen as a target because it was in the Basque region of the country which was, and remains to this day, a hot-bed of separatist sentiment. Thus, as a potential challenge to Franco's rule, it's destruction would set an example. The bombing on April 26 began at the busiest hour of the day, when the streets could be expected to be filled with citizens going to the market. For three hours, German and Italian warplanes pounded and strafed the helpless village with over 100,000 lbs. of conventional as well as incendiary bombs. The town was ravaged with flames which lit up the sky for fifteen mile around and was left a smoldering ruin, with over 1600 civilians were killed.

George L. Steer Reports on the Spanish Civil War

The New York Times correspondent George L. Steer reported to a horrified world what amounted to the first instance of modern war directed specifically at a civilian population. No military target was even considered he wrote. "A factory producing armaments lay outside the town and was untouched." he wrote. "So were two barracks some distance from the town....the object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralisation of the civil population, and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race."

Pablo Picasso Paints Guernica

The 1937 World's Fair was being held in Paris at that time, and the Spanish cubist artist, Pablo Picasso was working on a mural which was to be a main feature of the Spanish exhibition. Picasso had been uneasy with the commission, as he had been unable to settle his mind on an appropriate source of inspiration. But on May 1, the newspapers were filled with lurid and detailed reports of what had happened to Guernica. May Day protesters filled the streets, and Picasso who was horrified by the photos he saw in the papers immediately decided on what he wished to show the world about his homeland. While the reaction of the time was cool to say the least, Picasso's painting has endured as one of the most powerful indictments of the atrocities of war ever produced. Long after the specific events of the Spanish Civil War, long after even the name of Franco himself has faded from the public consciousness, Picasso's painting remains to remind us.

Sources:

"Guernica And Total War" by Ian Patterson, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 2007.

"The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939." by Anthony Beevor, Weidenfield & Nicolson, London, 2006.

"World War II" by C.L. Sulzberger, American Heritage Publ. Co. Inc., 1966, pp. 20 - 41.

Mt. St. Helens: Ruin and Recovery

Mount St. Helens - Ruin and Recovery

Thirty-one years ago, the Washington Volcano blew up and ruined nearly the entire region. But gradually, Mother Nature is picking up the pieces.

"Someone said this area looked like a moonscape. But the moon looks more like a golf course compared to what's up there."

This was the comment made by President Jimmy Carter on the scorched landscape left after the eruption of Mount Saint Helens thirty years ago on May 18, of 1980.

Mount St. Helens Begins to Rumble

Seismic activity at Mount St. Helens, which lies 96 miles south of Seattle, Washington started on March 16, when a 4.2-magnitude tremor was recorded. On March 27, the first eruption happened when a 250-foot wide vent opened up on top of the mountain. Ash shot 10,000 feet in the air, and this peculiar rain of ash caused static electricity and lightning bolts. The National Guard erected road blocks to keep people from getting into the area, but these were easily avoided by using the many unguarded logging roads in that area.

And Washington’s Governor Dixie Lee Ray found herself faced with angry property owners when she declared a “Red Zone” around the area. Eventually, Ray relented and allowed the people to get their items, after they signed a waiver absolving the state of any responsibility for their safety. On May 17, a caravan of 20 such property owners, many of them sporting t-shirts which proudly proclaimed “I own a piece of the rock!” went to their homes. Another such caravan planned to depart at 10:00 a.m. the next morning. But by that time, all that they would own was a fistful of ash and pumice.

May 18, 1980 - Mt St. Helens Explodes!

This was because on May 18 at 8:32 a.m. with a sudden 5.1-magnitude earthquake and eruption that shook the mountain, the entire north side of the peak began rippling and blasting out ash at 650 miles per hour. The mountain literally collapsed in on itself. A cloud of ash, rocks, gas and glacial ice raced down the side of the mountain at 100 mph, and fourteen miles of the Toutle River were buried up to 150 feet deep in the debris. And that “piece of the rock” of which the property owners so proudly proclaimed ownership became a river of molten lava which at a temperature of 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit, flowed for miles around the blast zone.

Keith and Dorothy Stoffel Escape

“Within a matter of seconds, perhaps 15 seconds, the whole north side of the summit crater began to move simultaneously. The nature of movement was eerie. We were amazed and excited with the realization that we were watching this landslide of unbelievable proportions. We took pictures of this slide sequence occurring, but before we could snap off more than a few pictures, a huge explosion blasted out…” recalled geologists Keith and Dorothy Stoffel who were flying over the summit of Mt. St. Helens in a four-seat Cessna airplane when the blast occurred.
“ (The clouds) were billowing up, almost in big pillow sort of structures, and at that point of course, we were terrified… and we weren’t sure that we were going to make it out of that situation at all.” Their pilot had an idea that it would not be good to stick around for too long, and putting the plane into a steep dive, gave it full throttle and just managed to outrun the ash cloud. They landed safely at Portland International Airport.

Thousands of Acres Are Torched

The plume of ash belched out for nine hours; easterly winds carried it across the state and as far away as Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 17 days, it arrived again on the west coast, having circumnavigated the globe. Beyond that inner blast zone, trees were flash-burned and knocked down, forming what came to be known as a “blow-down zone”, in which every last tree, several million board feet of Douglas Fir, Cedar, and Hemlock covering over 86,000 acres were mowed down like so much tall grass.
Outside this “blow zone”, the blast had been strong enough to kill the trees but not to uproot them. In this, the “scorch zone”, they remained standing where they had been, with their leaves all burnt, and their branches shriveled up, and curled into a kind of macabre fleur-des-lis. The human toll had been steep. Fifty-seven people died overall from suffocation, burns and other assorted injuries.

Nature Leads the Recovery From Mt. St. Helens

Happily, the once barren and devastated blast zone has since that period of destruction become a natural laboratory for the study of how an ecosystem recovers from catastrophe. Scientists had expected that the renewal of the once densely packed evergreen forests would begin very gradually with the drifting of seeds and the migration into the area by animals from nearby.
But what paced this recovery was in fact the species that managed to survive the volcanic blast because they were protected by snowfall, topography, or in some cases, just plain luck. For example, little pockets gophers survived in some burrows, and tunneling as they ate roots and bulbs, they pushed fertile soil to the surface, which became beds for wind-borne seeds.

Elk Seed "the Pumice Plain"

On this re-born “Pumice Plain”, the elk population has soared. The elk hooves have broken up the crust on the soil, aiding in its erosion, and helping mix ash with the soil. The hoof prints gather detritus in which plants can grow. And the Elk dung spreads seeds which spurs even more growth.

But nature herself pointed the way to this from the first: on that Pumice Plain, a barren 3.750 acre open range, as early as 1981 delicate purple prairie lupines were poking their way to the surface, becoming the first precious bits of color in what had once been a devastated and sterile gray landscape. The recovery would take long, but it was definitely coming.

Sources:

"Mount St. Helens - The Eruption and Recovery of a Volcano" by Rob Carson, Sasquatch Books, Seattle, WA., 1990

"The National Geographic Magazine", May 2010, "Mount St. Helens - New Life in the Blast Zone." by McKenzie Funk, National Geographic Society, Washington, DC.