Delectable dishes from Termite Hall: Rare and unusual recipes
(Termite Hall was once called Halfway House when people st...)
Termite Hall was once called Halfway House when people stopped there to water their horses and bend their elbows. Remarkable people stayed or visited there, just as equally remarkable people have continued to stay or visit there since it has been a private residence.
The Happy Table of Eugene Walter: Southern Spirits in Food and Drink
(The Happy Table of Eugene Walter, which introduces a new ...)
The Happy Table of Eugene Walter, which introduces a new generation of readers to Walter's culinary legacy, is a revelation to anyone interested in today's booming scene in vintage and artisanal drinks - from bourbon and juleps to champagne and punch - and a southern twist on America's culinary heritage. Assembled and edited by Walter's literary executor, Donald Goodman, and food writer Thomas Head, this charming cookbook includes more than 300 recipes featuring the use of spirits in the food and drink of the South, as well as numerous asides, lovely short essays, and countless witticisms that make for great reading as well as good cooking. A wellspring of southern eating and drinking traditions lovingly collected by Walter over the years, the volume is also a celebration of Walter himself and his incomparable appetite and talent for life and its surprising pleasures. The Happy Table showcases Walter's remarkably contemporary gustatory sensibilities and the humorous and quirky yet incisive voice for which he has long been embraced.
(Screen idol Jack Andrus just out of a sanitarium grabs at...)
Screen idol Jack Andrus just out of a sanitarium grabs at a role in a movie shot in Rome by a director whose career is also on the skids. When the director falls ill, Jack takes over.
(Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whos...)
Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini's 8½ turns one man's artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. An early working title was The Beautiful Confusion, and Fellini's masterpiece is exactly that: a shimmering dream, a circus, and a magic act.
(Cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo's masterful use of Tech...)
Cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo's masterful use of Technicolor transforms Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini's first color feature, into a kaleidoscope of dreams, spirits, and memories. Giulietta Masina plays a betrayed wife whose inability to come to terms with reality leads her along a hallucinatory journey of self-discovery.
(A mysterious gunfighter named Django is employed by a loc...)
A mysterious gunfighter named Django is employed by a local crooked political boss as a hangman to execute innocent locals framed by the boss, who wants their land. What the boss doesn't know is that Django isn't hanging the men at all, just making it look like he is, and fusing the men he saves from the gallows to build up his own 'gang' in order to take revenge on the boss.
(Ken wants justice for his brother Bill, who was killed by...)
Ken wants justice for his brother Bill, who was killed by a notorious gunman named Stevens for a goldmine map. A deadly cat and mouse game between the three men ensues.
(A deranged killer is injecting beautiful women with the p...)
A deranged killer is injecting beautiful women with the poison of a rare wasp, paralyzing them and forcing them to witness their own brutal murders. From the tantalizingly erotic opening to its vicious stunner of an ending, experience what is considered to be one of the most riveting and acclaimed films in the entire giallo genre.
Eugene Walter was an American editor, musician, writer, poet, short-story author, actor, gourmet chef, cryptographer, translator, and costume designer During his years in Paris, he was nicknamed Tum-te-tum. He was labeled "Mobile's Renaissance Man" because of his diverse activities in many areas of the arts.
Background
Eugene Walter was born on November 30, 1921, in Mobile, Alabama, United States to the family of Eugene Ferdinand Walter Sr. and Muriel Selina Olson. According to his memoirs, Walter ran away from home at the age of three and was raised by his paternal grandparents, who inspired his love of food and language. His Austrian grandmother, who spoke French when she wanted to share gossip, inspired his desire to live abroad. He became acquainted with Truman Capote, who was known as Bulldog Persons, when both were children.
At the deaths of his grandparents, he was informally adopted by Hammond Gayfer, who was the heir to Gayfer's Department Stores. Gayfer died in 1938, again leaving Walter to fend for himself. He later told friends and acquaintances that he had lived in the back of a bookstore at the age of 10. His hometown, which he described as unique in American society for its multicultural flavor, always loomed large in his storytelling. In adolescence, he became affiliated with the Children's Theatre Guild and wrote and performed marionette shows.
Education
Walter attended Spring Hill College in Mobile. He studied at the University of Alabama's Mobile extension later turned in the University of South Alabama. He also took painting classes at the Museum of Modern Art after the World War II, where he was credited with an early form of performance art, which he and his friends termed a "happening," that involved a spontaneous group performance in the sculpture garden. In 1951, he moved to Paris to study at the Alliance Française and the Sorbonne.
Eugene Walter joined the Civilian Conservation Corps after high school, working as a coffin painter in rural Mississippi. He then spent three years stationed in the Aleutian Islands as a cryptographer for the United States Army Airways Communications Systems during World War II. After the war, he moved to New York, settling in Greenwich Village.
In 1951, Eugene Walter moved to Paris to study at the Alliance Française and the Sorbonne. Nicknamed Tum-de-Tum during those years, he and his friends formed a creative and bohemian group. His work - including articles, stories, and poems - was published in the early editions of the Paris Review. A founding editor, he remained an associate editor of the magazine from 1951 to 1960. He interviewed such noted authors as Isak Dineson (pseudonym of Karen Blixen) and Robert Penn Warren. While living in Paris, he met and became a close friend and confidante of American-born Princess Marguerite (nee Chapin) Caetina di Bassiano, who was a well-known patron of the arts. Walter eventually moved to Rome to work with her on Botteghe Oscure, a literary journal that published poetry and prose in several languages between 1948 and 1960. During the 1950s, he also served as an associate editor at Folder, Whetstone, Intro Bulletin, Wormwood Review, and Transatlantic Review, which he remained with until his death in 1998.
Eugene Walter also completed his first novel, The Untidy Pilgrim, which he had started in New York. The manuscript won the Lippincott Fiction Prize for Young Novelists in 1952, with a cash prize of $2,500; the novel was published two years later. His first collection of poetry, Monkey Poems, was privately printed in 1953. In 1956, Walter received a Rockefeller Fellowship.
That same year, Walter returned to Rome and immersed himself in the Italian cinema. Walter served as a translator for renowned directors Federico Fellini and Lina Wertmuller, and appeared in more than 100 feature films, mostly in minor roles, including Fellini's 8½ (1963) and Juliet of the Spirits (1965). He continued to write during this time as well and in 1959 received the O. Henry Award and the Prix Guilloux for his short story "I Love You Batty Sisters." His second novel, Love You Good, See You Later, was published in 1964. He also produced the English translation of Fellini's Satyricon, which included the shooting script and other materials relating to the director's film version of the ancient Roman text by Petronius. Walter also composed music for several films.
Walter was also well known for his cooking - during his years in Paris, he entertained such luminaries as Anais Nin, Judy Garland, William Faulkner, Dylan Thomas, Franco Zefferelli, Truman Capote, and fellow Alabamian Tallulah Bankhead. In the early 1970s, he turned his writing attention to food and in 1971 published American Cooking: Southern Style in the Time-Life Foods of the World Series; the book became a best-seller. Other cookbooks included Delectable Dishes from Termite Hall (1982) and Hints & Pinches (1991). His cooking was praised for its simplicity. He encouraged the use of organic foods and raised herbs and vegetables everywhere he lived. He also contributed articles to various magazines, including Gourmet, Old Mobile, Ladies Home Journal, and Harper's Bazaar. His articles featured odd characters, and he often used the Alabama of his childhood as a setting, describing the connection between culture and food in the South. He also created whimsical drawings to accompany his poetry, essays, and article, often featuring cats - a lifelong love - in his illustrations.
Walter returned to Mobile in 1979 and became active in local, state, and regional arts, writing about gardening, food, and theater in the region. He traveled around the state for readings, book signings, and other author events. He also contributed a 10-minute segment, called "Eugene-at-Large," to local public radio station WHIL-FM. Walter died of liver cancer on March 29, 1998, and the city of Mobile gave special permission for his remains to be buried in historic Church Street Graveyard. During his last years, journalist and friend Katherine Clark recorded hours of interviews with Walter about his life and published the edited material as Milking the Moon in 2001.
Eugene Walter would become fluent in French, Italian, and Spanish but always regretted that he had never mastered Portuguese, which he found especially beautiful and romantic. Walter liked to say, “when all else fails, throw a party!”. These words are written on his gravestone. He claimed to have carried two items wherever he traveled: a box of Alabama red clay and a stuffed monkey named Coco.
Connections
No sources mention Eugene Walter to ever be married or having any children.
Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166
This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
1998
Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet
This sumptuous oral biography of Eugene Walter, the best-known man you’ve never heard of, is an eyewitness history of the heart of the last century and a pitch-perfect addition to the Southern literary tradition that has critics cheering.