This letter is ENTIRELY about condensed milk 🥛 and ancillary dietary staples for him.

I will give the OCR for this passage as a comment :)

Since my earlier post on this sub had gained some fun attention, I’ll draw yours to the following:

Amongst his MANY obsessive thoughts, he was quite detailed on his own diet in letters to friends.

This is just the INDEX of dietary quotes, mind you. (!!)

I will be happy to elaborate for curious Redditors, but will try not to overwhelm all at once :)

HPL detailed diet (Nov 7, 1932, to REH)

I’m skipping the first page and a half, past the repulsion for seafood 🦞 and up to the cheese 🧀 of the matter:

“At the other end of the scale, my three favourite dietary articles are cheese, (preferably of the common hard variety, medium strength. I hate Roquefort, dislike cottage cheese, just tolerate Camembert and Brie, and am neutral about Limburger-which latter I've tasted only once, at Whitehead's a year ago last spring)

chocolate, (in nearly any form-cake, frosting, sweet milk chocolate, etc.)

and ice cream (preferably vanilla or coffee-the latter being a popular New England flavour, though largely unknown elsewhere).

Quite a triad!

I like meat courses very highly seasoned—the Latin idea—and desserts very sweet.

Don't care for tea (but take it with lemon if at all but like coffee—taking both very sweet (about 5 lumps to an average cup).

Coffee with little milk—but always some.

Don't like milk to drink.

Of meats, I fancy I rather prefer beef for all-around consumption, but like most others pretty well. Fond of sausage especially the old fashioned baked or fried sort. Like fowl—but white meat only.

Can't bear dark meat. My really favourite meal is the regular old New England turkey dinner, with highly seasoned dressing, cranberry sauce, onions, etc., and mince pie for dessert. Pie is my favourite dessert, and blueberry (for summer) and mince (for winter) are my preferred kinds— with apple as a good all-year-round third.

Like to take vanilla ice cream with apple and blueberry pie. Fond of most fruit, anyway—peaches, pears, strawberries, apricots, bananas. Like Italian cooking very much—especially spaghetti with meat-and-tomato sauce, utterly engulfed in a snowbank of grated Parmesan cheese.

Spanish cooking pretty fair, but not up to Italian.

Like tamales and chili con carne. Am fond of stuffed green peppers with tomato sauce….” 🥫

I’ve highlighted a passage on the first page which weirdly resonates with the usual debate around Lovecraft’s legacy.

I’ll give the full text as OCR in a comment on this post, but it’s literally three pages of detailed discussion of what foods he cannot stand (anything fishy 🎣), his preferences (cheese, chocolate, and ice cream), and ruminations on his favorite types of meals. 🥘

This has nothing to do with our main topic (Lovecraft and movies, and the development of cinema as a medium and a cultural force), but since someone brought it peripherally to mind, here is the evidence.

Evidence of WHAT, you say?

I leave it to y’all, gentle readers.

Are we no longer able to enjoy ice cream 🍦 with the terrible knowledge that HPL gobbled it up like an elder god?

Do we feel suspicious of people who hate fish 🎣 because Lovecraft had a strong animosity to sea food? 🍱

You tell me, cuz there’s not a clear moral to this sidebar so far as I can tell. 🤷‍♂️

That’s right.

The man loved cheese 🧀 to an unusual extent, alongside other staples of his near-starvation diet (at times being very poor and malnourished).

Someone yesterday gave me a Reducio Ad Hitlerim, saying that studying Lovecraft’s movie taste is like admiring Hitler’s taste in cheese.

Not only is that obviously nonsensical, but sure.

I can’t tell you what Hitler’s preferred menu is, but in poring over the Lovecraft Letters it is impossible to miss his obsessive opinions on everything from crossword puzzles (a waste of time and intellectual energy) to Walt Whitman (a dangerous influence on Da Youts of America), and even some things that he does enjoy or admire.

Like cheese. 🧀

The actual quote will be next, but this is a more important pre-ramble than it may seem on its own.

Notably, the 1926 version of DON JUAN used the pioneering technology of ‘vitaphone’, which attempted to pair sound recordings with the film being shown.

This is a bit earlier than reliable sound-films (which began around 1930), so Lovecraft is commenting directly on the developing technology.

Later in the same letter (Sept 15, 1926), he briefly weighs in on the silent film version of “a cinema of the old novel BEN-HUR” (photo 2).

This is followed by a post-postscript simply noting that it was “GREAT!”

That’s all well and good in itself, but when you’ve read his excoriations of films like the 1934 CLEOPATRA or SIGN OF THE CROSS (1929), both deMille epics starring Claudette Colbert.

Despite the extraordinary cast and set design for these films, HPL’s scorn for their inaccuracies outweighs his engagement with the film.

So for him to write in about an ancient-historical-epic and only say “GREAT!” is in fact a meaningful statement beyond just one short adjective. 😊

These quotes are about HPL’s anticipation of THE LOST WORLD, with a snide aside about SACD’s unfortunate endorsement of spiritualism.

The second photo-quote pertains to the silent version of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, and a flashy Times Square advertisement with lightning ⚡️ strikes on the sign.

The third picture endorses both PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and SIEGFRIED (Fritz Lang), the latter of which will have its own post due to the complexity he lavishes upon it.

The first quote here is from Robert. E Howard (best remembered for his character Conan the Barbarian), regarding a filmed boxing 🥊 match which he saw alongside John Ford’s THE INFORMER.

Lovecraft wrote positively about that film, but was fairly indifferent to sporting events—the second quote is from HPL, observing that an ad for a movie-fight was slipped under a friend’s door in what might pass for viral marketing circa the 1930s.

This is another of those funny little nods which wasn’t indexed but is alluded to in other letters.

Howard weighed in on several notable boxers of the day, and although he doesn’t always mention seeing these fights on film, the context usually implies that his information comes from radio 📻 and film 🎞️ broadcasts rather than just reading summaries of the fights.

As a pugilist himself, REH was excited about sports and sportsmen.

HPL was usually more captivated by scenes and costuming than the actors, so weirdly we don’t get many comments from him about the stars of these pictures.

In whatever case, it’s another of these nuggets hiding alongside the specifically named films.

Pay-Per-View goes back to the late 1890s!!

MISC Vol quotes 🎞️ HPL

QUOTE ONE

“I think I read something about the adaptation of Briggs' drawings for the cinema—but it was two or three years ago, & I never beheld any of the pictures on the screen. I saw "Kismet" in cinema form a few weeks ago, & thought it unusually good.

There was much scenic lavishness impossible in a stage production, & to my mind the arrangement was highly artistic—not excepting the opening & closing struggle of the worthy plebeian with the rather Woodrow-Wilsonian donkey.

I could find no fault with any part, & I liked the well-managed drowning of the Vizier—or Wazir, as the more accurate Orientalists say—in the pool. In the stage version one merely sees the gentleman go over the side, but in the cinema we behold the sinister surface, the bubbles, & all that sort of thing. I am certainly fond of artistic murder—it is a delicate accomplishment & a balm to jaded nerves.”

QUOTE TWO

“That the talking maching will play no small part in the educational activities of the next generation of teachers, I have no doubt. An idea of my own hath been the employment of the cinematograph as an aid to the teaching of history.

Films specially prepared to shew the manners of departed ages, to illustrate Greek and Roman antiquities and to aid in interpreting the classicks, would form no feeble addition to the curriculum of and [sic] secondary school.”

QUOTE THREE

“…. black powers of horror! It's a wonder that the accompanying lady doesn't look more frightened than she does.... & one may imagine the hideous bass dissonances which issue forth from that shadowy Chickering' as clammy corpse-fingers draw a danse macabre on its time-stained ivory keys!

This portrait is really very timely, since a great many correspondents have been urging me to see some film—in fact, any film—in which the sinister Mr. Lorre is featured.

"Mad Love" has been especially recommended, & I have been quite alertly on the lookout fot it, but somehow or other it has escaped me so far. After this glimpse I shall double the alertness of my vigil.

Ordinarily I see very few films & most of the allegedly weird ones which I have seen ("Frankenstein", "The Ghoul", &c.) were so naive & conventional in their appeal that they did not encourage persistence in the quest for thrills.

Lately, however, so many have assured me that Lorre is the real thing, that I am determined to make his projected acquaintance at the very first opportunity.

Again let me thank you for the vivid view—which I shall add with appreciation to my files.

With the season's best wishes, & trusting that your New Year may be replete with startling messages from the trans-galactic ether, I am

Yrs most cordially,
H. P. Lovecraft

1. Chickering & Sons was an American piano manufacturer located in Boston.

QUOTE FOUR

“The scenes for the cinema of "Tarzan" were made here. I must send you a folder of the place—one of the most distinctive & fascinating spots I have ever seen.

Yrs for the Eternal Infra-Red Flame
-E'ch-Pi-El.”

This is THE final letter written by HPL, addressed to James F. Morton but not sent because he collapsed mid-writing.

After this it’s somewhat about Dalí and coherent about surrealism, but then he cuts off.

Here’s the relevant film quote, below the emojis:

🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️🎞️

“Speaking of Amercan poetry (& you can let that apply to either Chivers or S. L.!) — I saw the cinema of the recent drama "Winterset", & found it impressively good despite the absurdly slipped-in happy ending.

I had heard great accounts of it, but was prepared to be disappointed because of the presumable conflict betwixt a modern setting, & the poetic, conventionalised, consciously exaggerated & coincidence-ridden nature of the play.

Actually, the effect was truly powerful.

Great care in arrangements & scenic effects removed the whole episode from the realm of the distance-lent glamour which 1936 will have in eyes of 2436 or so.

The slum settings in the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge against a background of ceaseless rain—reminded me of the misty, half-unreal Dublin of "The Informer".

And the acting, too, was very adequate.

The one other cinema I've seen this winter is "A Midsummer Night's Dream"— & it was certainly no disappointment.

The delivery of the lines was in nearly every case excellent; & though there were some cuts in the text which I lamented, these did not amount to more than the excisions common to all acting versions from the Restoration down.

The music blended effectively with setting & dialogue, & the pageantry was excellently managed.

Some of the elusively weird photographic effects connected with the haunted wood were incomparably fine.

As the animating spirit of the grove, that little elf who played Puck certainly scored a triumph. In aspect & voice & demeanour he represented with utter perfection the bland, mischievous indifferentism of the traditional sylvan deity, while that shrill, eery, alienly-motivated mirth of his was the most convincing thing of its kind that I've ever seen.”

I’m partway through JAVA HEAD (1934), which came from Lovecraft’s brief recommendation that it

“…..shew’d Old Salem so well.”

From that phrase you might assume—especially from Lovecraft—that this had to do with black magic or witchcraft….

But in fact it’s in Bristol, England, in 1848-1850.

When he says (essentially) “this depicts Old Salem”, he means SHIPPING and the maritime details in the film. The sideburns and proper costumes, etc.

He doesn’t mention or even allude to the notably sympathetic portrayal of the Chinese woman who comes home with a sailor. The unusual pre-Code romance, and exploration of xenophobic views in a nuanced way.

And the opium subplot, given the impending Production Code. This is one of those rare sound films prior to the crackdown on the industry.

And as per this project: it’s a thing I’ve never heard of, it’s not streaming and there aren’t even clips on YouTube.

I lucked into a DVD 📀 of it on eBay, which appears to 😂 have been transferred from someone’s VHS 📼 taping of the film from TCM at some point.

Anyone curious for additional clips or commentary on this unique feature?