John C. Tibbetts

John C. Tibbetts (born Paola, Kansas, October 6, 1946 and grew up in Leavenworth, Kansas) is an American film critic, historian, author, painter and pianist.

Career

After receiving a Ph.D. in 1982 from the University of Kansas in Multi-Disciplinary Studies—Art History, Theater, Photography and Film (the first person to complete what was then regarded as an experimental curriculum in multi-disciplinary studies)—Tibbetts was tenured as an Associate Professor. Under the general rubric of “visual literacy,” his course work includes film history, media studies, and theory and aesthetics.

Before entering the academy, John worked from 1980 to 1996 as a full-time broadcaster. He was an Arts and Entertainment Editor and Producer for a variety of radio and television outlets, including KCTV (Kansas City’s CBS affiliate), KMBC Radio, and KXTR-FM radio. During that time he also contributed many broadcast stories about musicians, painters, playwrights, and filmmakers to CBS Television, the Monitor Radio Network, Voice of America, and National Public Radio. More recently, he has produced two radio series about music—the 15-part The World of Robert Schumann and the 17-part Piano Portraits—that have been broadcast worldwide and are now a part of the permanent collection of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives in Lincoln Center, New York. Both derive from his knowledge of music and feature numerous interviews with musicians and scholars in the musical field.

As a writer, he has published short stories, as well as scholarly and popular articles and books about the arts. Among his published short stories, one was featured in Twilight Zone magazine and one was selected by Ballantine Books for inclusion in the Year’s Best Horror Stories, Series Eight. Music, theater, and film play a substantial part in his twenty-two books and more than 300 articles. For example, Dvorak in America (Amadeus Press, 1993) was a multicultural study of the famous Czech composer’s sojourn in America, 1892–1895. The eminent cultural historian, Robert Winter, greeted the book enthusiastically: “Of all the books on American music at the turn of the century, none brings together so many interesting and richly interrelated dimensions as Dvorak in America.” An historical overview of the interactions of theater and film is explored in The American Theatrical Film (Popular Press, 1985), which is currently being used by Professor Charles Musser as a text in his courses at Yale University. And film adaptations of theater and literature are the subjects of his various edited reference works, including The Encyclopedia of Novels into Film (Facts on File, 1998; rev., 2002), The Cinema of Tony Richardson (SUNY Press, 1999), The Encyclopedia of Stage Plays into Film (2001), Shakespeare into Film (2002), And the dramatization on film of the lives of classical and popular composers, Composers in the Movies: Studies in Musical Biography (Yale University Press, 2005), is the first scholarly study of the subject. It was praised by the dean of cultural studies, Professor Jacques Barzun, as “a welcome and worthwhile endeavor.” It received a Second Prize from the prestigious International Association of Media Historians for “Best Book on Media Studies” in 2007.

John continues to pursue his work as a painter and illustrator. He has executed many covers and interior illustrations for the published articles and books enumerated above. His work has been featured in gallery exhibitions in Kansas City and at the University of Kansas, where the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has reserved a wall for his paintings. In particular, he confesses to a lifelong passion for portraits. He claims to have painted thousands of portraits, on commission and on his own, and has exploited his opportunities as a broadcast interviewer to draw hundreds of images of popular actors, filmmakers, musicians, many of which have been personally inscribed and autographed.

His ability as a pianist of twelve years’ training has resulted in something of a secondary career: accompanying silent movies at venues as various as the American Film Institute Theatre in Washington, D.C., the Silent Film Festivals in Topeka, Kansas, and the annual Buster Keaton Celebrations in Iola, Kansas.

In addition to his teaching responsibilities and mentoring activities at the University of Kansas (where he has served as Associate Chair for the Department of Theater and Film), John brings his knowledge and experience in the arts to a wider community service. For the Kansas Humanities Council he has lectured and presented topics on the arts and local history to many communities around the state, such as Garden Grove, Ottawa, and Council Grove. For more than twenty years he has appeared as an arts commentator and critic on the “Walt Bodine Show” on KCUR-FM radio, Kansas City; and, more recently, as a reporter and film critic on Kansas Public Radio. He organized the “Buster Keaton Celebrations,” held annually in Iola, Kansas since 1992 and sponsored by the Kansas Humanities Council. In the 1980s he provided program notes for the concerts of the Kansas City Camerata Chamber Orchestra.

Broadcast series

• The World of Robert Schummann - 13-part radio series, 2006–2007 on the WFMT Radio Network.
• Piano Portraits - radio interviews with famous pianists, 2005–2006 on Kansas Public Radio

Selected Publications

Books and articles on film and filmmakers

• “Deadwood”, Kansas History, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Summer 2005), pp. 113–115.
• “An Interview with Michael Moore”, Film & History, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2004), pp. 86–88.
• “Faces and Masks: Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus from Stage to Screen”, Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 3 (2004), pp. 166–174.
• “Winstanley: or Kevin Brownlow Camps Out on St. George’s Hill”, Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 4 (2003), pp. 312–318.
• “Shostakovich’s Fool to Stalin’s Czar: Tony Palmer’s Testimony (1987)”, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2002), pp. 173–196.
• “Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures”, Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2001), pp. 250–251.
• “Robots Redux: A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Literature/ Film Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2001), pp. 256–261.
• “Mary Pickford and the American ‘Growing Girl,’” The Journal of Popular Film & Television, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer 2001), pp. 50–62.
• “Hollywood and the Multicultural Republic”, The World and I, November 2000, pp. 259–265.
• “Kevin Brownlow’s Historical Films: It Happened Here (1965) and Winstanley (1975)”, Historical Journal of Radio and Television, Vol. 20, No. 2 (June 2000), pp. 227–251.
• “Life to Those Shadows: Kevin Brownlow Talks about a Career in Films”, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Vol. XIV, No. 1 (Fall 1999), pp. 79–94. (co-written with James M. Welsh)
• “The Incredible Stillness of Being: Motionless Pictures in the Films of Ken Burns”, American Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 117–133.
• “The Hole in the Doughnut: The Last Days of Buster Keaton”, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Vol. X, No. 1 (Fall 1995), pp. 79–99.
• “Re-Examining the Silent Film: Interviews with Historians Charles Musser, Eileen Bowser, and Richard Koszarski”, Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 2 (1995), pp. 88–90.
• “Clint Eastwood and the Machinery of Violence”, Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 21,No. 1 (1993), pp. 10–17.
• “The Wisdom of the Serpent: Frauds and Miracles in Frank Capa’s [sic] The Miracle Woman”, The Journal of Popular Film and Television, Vol. VII, No. 3 (1979), pp. 293–309. Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 16. Detroit MI: Gale Research Company, 1981, pp. 165–166.
• “A Matter of Definition: Out of Bounds in The Girl Friends”, Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1979), pp. 270–276.
• “Sternberg and The Last Command”, Cinema Journal, Vol. XV, No. 2 (Spring 1976), pp. 68–73. Reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 20. Detroit MI: Gale Research Company, 198l, pp. 377–378.
• “Breaking the Classical Barrier” (Interview with filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli), in Behrens, Laurence and Leonard J. Rosen, eds., Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum (New York: Longmans, 2003), pp. 761–765.
• “Troell, Jan”, in International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers—Volume Two—Directors (Chicago: St. James Press, 1997), pp. 1001–1003.
• “The Wind”, in MacCann, Richard Dyer, ed., Films of the 1920s (Metuchen NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1997), pp. 115–118.
• “Rowland Brown”, in Thompson, Frank, ed., Between Action and Cut (Metuchen, NJ:<Scarecrow Press, 1985), pp. 163–182.
• Josef von Sternberg and The Last Command, in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol.20 (Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1982), pp. 377–378.
• Frank Capra’s The Miracle Woman, in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 20 (Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1981), p. 165.
• “Vital Geography: Victor Seastrom’s The Wind”, in Whittemore, Don and Phillip Alan Cecchettini, eds., Passport to Hollywood: The Film Immigrants Anthology (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 255–261.
• “C.S.A.”, Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer 2003), pp. 118–120.
• “Hollywood and the Multicultural Republic”, The World and I, November 2000, pp. 259–265.
• “Riding with the Devil: The Movie Adventures of William Clarke Quantrill”, Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Autumn 1999), pp. 182–199.
• “Peter Weir: The Poetry of Apocalypse”, Seasons, Summer 1998, pp. 30–33.
• “The Kiss That’s Also a Bite: A Conversation with Suzy McKee Charnas”, Horror Magazine, No. 9 (Winter 1998), pp. 62–65.
• “Disorder in the Court!: Hollywood’s take on the law and lawyers”, The John Marshall Law School Magazine, Spring 1997, pp. 22–35.
• “Coquette: Mary Pickford Finds a Voice”, Films in Review, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1-2 (January–February 1997), pp. 61–66.
• “‘Rosewood’ Remembers Race War”, Christian Science Monitor, 25 February 1997,p. 14.
• “Mary Pickford Returns”, The World and I (December 1996), pp. 112–117.
• “Mel Gibson: Citizen of the Planet”, Los Angeles Magazine, 1996–1997, pp. 27–28, 30.
• “Robin Williams: The Bay Area’s Wild Child”, San Francisco Magazine, 1996–1997, p. 1014.
• “Barry Levinson: Redefining Baltimore”, Baltimore Magazine, 1996, pp. 6–8, 81.
• “Splendidly Self-Propelled: Douglas Fairbanks’ The Gaucho”, Films in Review, Vol. XLVII, No. 718 (July–August 1996), pp. 96–101.
• “Man in Motion: An Interview with Buster Crabbe”, Films in Review, Vol. XLVII, No. 7/8 (July–August 1996), pp. 34–42.
• “The Choreography of Hope: The Films of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.”, Film Comment,Vol. 32, No. 3 (May–June 1996), pp. 50–55.
• “The Making of Kansas City”, Kansas City Magazine, April 1996, pp. 43–45, 62.
• “Shepard to the Rescue”, The World and I, Vol. 11, No. 4 (April 1996), pp. 140–145.
• “‘Jumanji,’ A Whale of a Tale”, The Christian Science Monitor, 15 December 1995, p. 12.
• “Many Bridges to Cross: A Fable about Whoopi”, Films in Review, Vol. XLVI, No.9/10 (November–December 1995), pp. 46–53.
• “All That Glitters”, Film Comment, Vol. 31, No. 2 (March–April 1995), pp. 52–55.
• “Railroad Man: The last ride of Buster Keaton”, Films in Review, Vol. XLVI, No. 5/6 (July/August 1995), pp. 2–11.
• “Keaton the Prairie Pragmatist”, The World and I, Vol. 10, No. 10 (October 1995), pp. 118–123.
• “Beyond the Camera: The Untold Story Behind the Making of Hoop Dreams”, The World and I, Vol.10, No. 10 (October 1995), pp. l32–l39 [written under the pseudonym “Jack Ketch”].
• “Touching All the Bases: The Documentaries of Ken Burns”, The World and I, Vol. 20, No. 1 (January 1995), pp. 150–161 [written under the pseudonym “Jack Ketch”].
• “Mel Gibson: Infinite Space”, The World and I, Vol.9, No. 9 (September 1994), p. 151

Awards

• Second Prize, International Association of Media Historians for “Best Book on Media Studies” in 2007
• Kansas Governors Arts Award 2008

External links

• http://www.johnctibbetts.com