A team of neuroscientists from the Universtiy of Dublin presented a new study with respect to how our forgetting processes affect particular memories in the brain, its results published in leading international journal Cell Reports (August, 17, 2023). The team studied a form of forgetting called retroactive interference, where different experiences occurring closely in time can cause the forgetting of recently formed memories. The neuroscientists genetically labelled a contextual “engram” (a group of brain cells that store a specific memory) in the brain, and followed the activation of these cells. Crucially, using a technique called optogenetics they found that stimulation of the engram cells with light retrieved lost memories. Dr Thomas Ryan, Associate Professor in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology and the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, is lead author of the just-published journal article. Dr Ryan, whose research team is based in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI), said: “Memories are stored in ensembles of neurons called ‘engram cells’ and successful recall of these memories involves the reactivation of these ensembles. By logical extension, forgetting occurs when engram cells cannot be reactivated. However, it is increasingly becoming clear that the memories are still there, but the specific ensembles are not activated and so the memory is not recalled. It’s as if the memories are stored in a safe but you can’t remember the code to unlock it.” This research was supported by the European Research Council, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Irish Research Council, and Science Foundation Ireland. Source: www.cell.com
Moviegoers in the 1930s knew better than modern audiences; they knew intuitively that Dick Powell was just the hero and Ruby Keeler the heroine for the Great Depression America. And it is a point in its favor that Golddiggers of 1933 was not just set in the Depression but that it was about the Depression. Yesterday's audiences identified with the juvenile and the ingenue—especially with Peggy's aspirations. It is a kinship that Richard Lamparski perceives in his profile of Keeler: "She had a quality during those bleak Depression years that people could identify with. Her roles, those of a kid trying to get a break on Broadway, were so close to her own story that it didn't matter how she read the lines, because she felt them, and audiences were rooting for her to make good." In the wings, as the company waits for Peggy's entrance, Marsh offers words of encouragement, telling Peggy that though she's going out a "youngster," she's got to come back a star.
But it's the opening lines of this particular speech that are important, that is if Peggy is to be seen as a heroine of the Depression; he tells her that two hundred jobs are at stake. Not for the director, not for herself, but for her peers she goes out and gives to them. Marsh's point is that the first night audience has "got" to like her and they do, caught up in just the story with which they (and by extension moviegoers) could identify: a success story. And, in 1933, that audience was starved for success stories—the more dog-eared the better. They wanted, needed, to be told that lots of hard work and diligence together with a little luck would be climaxed by tangible success. Ruby was Peggy Sawyer, as Dick was Billy Lawler. They were the juvenile and the ingenue. Young and fresh, they were the hope for many in the darkest hours.
Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, those perennially wholesome, likable youngsters, were always on hand. Theirs was a mediating presence, and to be cognizant of their particular contribution to the film, their story scenes have to be rescued from the shadow of Berkeley's grand scale production numbers as well as from the enveloping grit of the backstage life—unquestionable attention-getters. And while the tale of an old-school aristocrat who attempts to break up his songwriting brother's attraction to a chorus girl may not represent the "solid story line" that Mervyn Leroy, the film's director, was seeking, it did have, as audiences of the day were quick to note, the quality the director called "heart." And, in Dick Powell, the film had a handsome hero for the Depression whose all-engrossing concern comes to focus upon helping others to get, and then to keep, the jobs they have set their hearts on. A reviewer noted the next film 42nd Street had Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler "falling in love again as only those delightfully young kids can." And once Footlight Parade was released before the public, reviewers like Harold Cohen of Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette called it "Dick's best break so far," for "he shows a flair for comedy and he gets the chance to do good acting on the side, too." The New York Times reviewer agreed: "Mr. Powell pleased enormously with his skilled singing and also with his acting."And what acting were the two newsmen talking about? Dick's portrayal of a hero for the Depression audiences, surely.
To appreciate Dick Powell's increasing popularity nationwide, his activities just prior to the shooting of Footlight Parade need to be noted. For it was at this time that he was dispatched on a ten week personal appearance tour, appearing at a number of the larger and more prestigious movie houses across the country. Now he was the headliner in live shows like that advertised for the third week in May at New York City's Capitol Theatre. He sang several songs from 42nd Street, demonstrated his ability to play on several musical instruments, and entered into a dialogue with Joan Blondell, who shared the top of the bill with him at the Capitol. But then wherever he appeared on this tour, Dick was received as "one of the brightest of local vaudeville presentation," even at the Baltimore's Century Theatre, where, at the beginning of June, he sang, with a temperature of 102 degrees, "I'm Young and Healthy" from 42nd Street. The flu brought the tour to a hasty conclusion, and, on his return to Hollywood, Dick was hospitalized, missing the first days of shooting on Footliglit Parade.
His peers certainly recognized his special status: Dick Powell received more mail than any other star at Warner Bros.; 1,768 letters in January 1934; subsequently 3,000 and more a month. And in 1935 and 1936, the Motion Picture Herald acknowledged the whole country was "Powell mad." They ranked him seventh and then sixth among the money-makers in 1936. Louella Parsons, speaking of Broadway Gondolier (1935), was with the majority of viewers: "Personally, I loved every minute of it and if it doesn't put Dick Powell over as a star, there is something wrong with movie audiences." Powell was the young man "who makes you forget your troubles and smile"; he represented "the spirit of youth and generosity." Together Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler were of and for the times with an especial gift of convincing a generation that, indeed, there was happiness ahead. —DICK POWELL AND THE LANDMARK MUSICALS OF 1933 (1986) by John L. Marsh Source: www.jstor.org
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