March 6, 1941: The Bigger They Are

If asked to name an important sculptor, the name John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum, would not come tripping off most people’s lips, although his most important work certainly would. Borglum died on March 6, 1941, leaving the monument he had worked on since 1927 uncompleted.

Borglum sculpted big: a portrait of Abraham Lincoln carved from a six-ton block of marble, a 76 by 158 foot bas-relief of Confederate heroes, and what would have been his biggest ever, the 60-foot heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

From the very moment the monument was completed, folks have wanted to edit it by sticking another head up there.  And they become quite passionate about whose head it should be.

 In 1937, while work was still in progress, a bill was introduced in Congress to add women’s right activist Susan B. Anthony. It failed to advance.  A 2010 poll suggested JFK.  Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all had their hats tossed into the ring. Obama responded “I don’t think my ears would make it. There’s only so much rock up there.”

Donald Trump’s head would not satisfy the MAGA tribe.  They want it to be renamed Mount Trumpmore.

The support for a fifth head gets no government support: “The National Park Service takes the position that death stayed the hand of the artist and the work is complete in its present form. Thus, to maintain both the integrity of the structure and the artist’s concept, there is no procedure for adding another likeness, the sculpture is complete.”

The Nose Knows

Mount Rushmore is home to 2 million visitors and has been extensively depicted throughout popular culture, probably most famously in the climactic chase scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest with Cary Grant swatting at secret agents from Lincoln ‘s forehead. Hitchcock later admitted: “I wanted Cary Grant to hide in Lincoln’s nostril and then have a fit of sneezing . . . the Department of Interior was rather upset at this thought. I argued until one of their number asked me how I would like it if they had Lincoln play the scene in Cary Grant’s nose. I saw their point at once.”

The Nose Knows II

Cyrano de Bergerac, born in 1619, is of course best known in modern times for his nose. According to legend, it was quite large. Depending on which account you accept, Cyrano was either a French aristocrat, author and military hero with a big nose or the descendant of a Sardinian fishmonger who suffered from syphilis with a big nose. He was an early writer of science fiction, and in his most famous work, The Other World, Cyrano travels to the moon using rockets powered by firecrackers where he meets the inhabitants who have four legs, musical voices, and firearms that shoot game and cook it — the TV rights are still available, if you’re interested.  A  lesser known work, Noses from Mars, is self-explanatory.

Then we come to the story of Cyrano himself and how he courted the fair Roxanne on behalf of his friend Christian.  Although these people are real, the story is alas! pure fiction, which is probably just as well, for Roxanne was Cyrano’s cousin and had they ever consummated their relationship, their children would have been half-wits with big noses.