Dakota

The Dakota is located at 72nd Street and Central Park West in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and was completed in 1882. This building was designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh and stands 110 feet tall with 10 floors.

The Dakota is infamous for two major events in its history, the filming of the movie Rosemary's Baby, and the assassination of John Lennon.

Rosemary's Baby is a 1968 American horror film written and directed by Roman Polanski, produced by William Castle, and based on the bestselling 1967 novel by Ira Levin. The cast includes Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Maurice Evans, Sidney Blackmer, and Charles Grodin.

(See more about Castle's twilight language links to Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis-Brown House, here.)

Farrow plays a pregnant woman who fears that her husband may have made a pact with their eccentric neighbours, believing he may have promised them the child to be used as a human sacrifice in their occultic rituals in exchange for success in his acting career.

"As the credits roll, the film [Rosemary's Baby] begins with a panoramic aerial view of north-east New York, taken from the roof of The Majestic apartment building across the street from the Dakota.... We finally come to settle on a very low angle view of the beautiful Dakota at 72nd St & Central Park West (called The Bramford in the film)," writes Scout in Scouting New York.

The film's fictional Bramford is portrayed as a Gothic, 19th century New York City apartment building with a history of unsavory tenants and mysterious events.

The actual Dakota houses and has housed many famous entertainers throughout the years. One entertainer, famous musician and peace activist, John Lennon was shot four times in the entrance hallway to the Dakota and died on that very spot on December 8, 1980.

This pewter replica stands 3 inches tall and is finished with a brown stain. This replica building is available from InFocus Tech, here.

The replica of the Dakota. As with the Ennis House replica, if you end up ordering the Dakota, do mention "Loren Coleman" in the comments section. Thank you.

Rosemary's Brother

You could say "Rosemary's" brother has killed himself in Castleton.

Rosemary's Baby (1968) starring Mia Farrow, as the pregnant woman who is having Satan's baby, aired on Cinemax on Friday June 19, 2009. The timing seemed, well, sadly appropriate.


Roman Polanski directs Mia Farrow.

Mia Farrow's brother Patrick Farrow, 66, was discovered dead in his Castleton, Vermont art gallery on Monday, June 15, 2009. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.



Mia and Patrick Farrow (above) are the children of Maureen O'Sullivan (who played Jane to Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan, 1932) ~ shown below ~ and director John Farrow.



John Farrow (Patrick's dad) directed John Carradine (David's dad) in Five Came Back (1939). John Carradine and Maureen O'Sullivan starred together in two films, Cardinal Richelieu (1935) and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).

Maureen O'Sullivan was born May 17, 1911, and died June 23, 1998 (aged 87).

John Carradine was born February 5, 1906, and died November 27, 1988 (aged 82), two years after he and O'Sullivan appeared together in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).

John Carradine was involved with the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), in the long tradition of trying to reestablish the Knights Templar. For example, another version was reborn in Ordo Novi Templi (Order of the New Temple) around 1907, in the medieval castle of Burg Werfenstein, which perched dramatically above the Danube with a swastika and fleur-de-lis flag over its tower.

Castles abound in the back stories here.

Needless to say, Castleton's Patrick Farrow suicide comes in the wake of the David Carradine mysterious death, which some have seen as a suicide or, at least, parasuicidal. Then there is too, the so-called "Paradise Syndrome."

Reuters reporter Rachel Noeman explained the term in a 1996 news story: "They inherit celebrity names, appear to have it all and live apparently gilded lives, but what may at first seem like paradise can end in pain or even tragedy." Noeman was reporting on the suicide death of Amschel Rothschild, 41-year-old chairman of Rothschild Asset Management and great-great-great-grandson of Nathan Meyer Rothschild -- who established in 1804 the merchant bank in the City of London that still bears his name. He hanged himself in a Paris hotel room ten days after Margaux Hemingway, who also was 41, killed herself. Noeman was making the link between the two, in terms of the "Paradise Syndrome."

As I noted in detailing this syndrome in my book, The Copycat Effect, the reaction is rather predictable. Amschel Rothschild’s widow Anita Rothschild repeated what is often said in the wake of such deaths, that it was “totally unexpected,” and the family was "shocked and devastated."


David and John Carradine.

Intriguingly, John Farrow was a writer of titles for the 1929 film Four Feathers, which was a remake of the famed book of the same name, just as was 2002's Four Feathers. I previously mentioned Four Feathers here in connection with Heath Ledger (Dark Knight) and Lucy Gordon (who also recently died by suicide).

Patrick Farrow died by suicide in Castleton, Vermont. One of the major characters in Four Feathers, one of the soldiers to leave a feather symbolizing cowardice was named Lt. Castleton.

The name Castle keeps appearing in all of this.

Lucy Gordon
Batman - Commisioner Gordon in The Dark Knight;
Gordon Lui - actor with two roles in Kill Bill ;
Ruth Gordon - actress in Rosemary's Baby.

The name "Gordon" means "large fort" and "hill." A "large fort" is, well, a "castle."

"Castle" and "Hill" play a role in Rosemary's Baby.

William Castle produced it. William Castle himself is really William Schloss, and it does turn out that "Schloss" is German for "Castle."

Cassavettes is in the film. The character names of the couple who help impregnate Mia Farrow is Castavet. A character is named Dr Hill.

Associated with John Cassavettes is Castle Hill Productions which was formed by his widow Gina Rowland and Julian Schlossberg.

Schlossberg = Castle Hill.

Farrow's suicide took place in Castleton, Vermont.

Rosemary's Baby was released June 12, 1968, in the wake of the RFK assassination highlighted here recently.



Rosemary's Baby was filmed at the Dakota Building (above), the site of John Lennon's assassination.

Roman Polanski was the screenwriter and director of Rosemary's Baby and it was Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, who was murdered by Charles Manson and his Family.


Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate.

The killings were allegedly based on Manson's notion of "Helter Skelter," (an event), created in terms of Manson's scenario based on John Lennon's Helter Skelter (the song).

All of these things are obviously just coincidences.


John Cassavettes and Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby.

P.S. On May 25, 2008, a 37-year-old nephew of Patrick Farrow's died mysteriously.

Sgt. Jason F. Dene, married with children, died in Iraq and his uncle Patrick blamed the "war criminal" George W. Bush for the loss. Patrick V. Farrow took his anger to the Letters section of the Rutland (Vt.) Herald.

Patrick Farrow, of Castleton, Vermont, wrote:

To date all the family has heard from the Army is that Jason variously died 'in his sleep' and 'in his bunk' and 'in his quarters' and my favorite 'sleep apnea complicated by smoking cigarettes,' in other words, natural causes.

Because of the arrogant, corrupt lies of George W. Bush and his neo-con handlers my nephew is dead, and I am mad as hell...Jason Dene was not killed by enemy fire nor friendly fire but by Bush's brutal and cynical stop-loss program.

Because of Bush's abusive stop-loss policy, Jason had been sent into an unwanted third tour of duty. He was a father of three and could not afford to lose his pension. Some "volunteer Army."

During his three 15-month tours in Iraq, exposure to roadside bombs and other job-related injuries caused Jason to be hospitalized several times for concussion and internal bleeding and other injuries. Recently, Jason's condition was such that the Department of Defense flew him from Iraq to Dover Air Force Base for surgery. He was released from the hospital into the loving arms of the government who sent him directly back into Iraq. He was put on active duty while he was still on a liquid diet, unable to eat solid food because of a throat hemorrhage due to a botched surgery at a military hospital.

After his second tour Jason returned home with severe mental and physical issues. He was certainly in no condition to be pressed into a third tour. He wanted out of the army. But Jason was a victim of the liar's back-door draft...

Because of George Bush, the arrogant, the corrupt, the liar, the war criminal, my nephew is dead and my sister and the rest of my family are devastated.

Mia Farrow wrote:

I don't know what Jason died for....This war is as incomprehensible as it is unacceptable. In a cloud of confusion, politicians, generals and ordinary people have come to see that it is a disaster. Exit plans are being discussed while Iraqi citizens and young Americans like our Jason are being killed.

My sister is a nurse. For long years has lived in fear of the day when the two uniformed men came to her door to deliver the most terrible news a mother could hear. I hope I never see George W Bush.

I could not shake his hand. He and his cabal have killed my beautiful nephew. . May God, if there is one, forgive them. I cannot....How many more must die before this atrocity is ended?

Coincidence 27

Late in November 2008, Showtime TV began screening the recent movie, Chapter 27. I suppose it is being shown now because its broadcast is tied to the anniversary of the assassination of John Lennon on December 8th. Timing is everything.

The movie has many intriguing moments.

First some background. Chapter 27 is an independent film depicting the murder of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman, starring Jared Leto and Lindsay Lohan. It was written and directed by J. P. Schaefer. Although it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007, it did not make it to a release in theaters in the USA until March 2008. It came and went quickly, as they say, because it was a box office failure. It retains its "made for television" docudrama feel, and so, perhaps, it is more fitting I saw it on cable.

The film's title refers to Mark David Chapman's alleged obsession with J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye. The title implies that Chapman's killing of Lennon was a continuation of the book, which only has 26 chapters, and which Chapman was carrying (as his "statement") when he shot Lennon. Chapman appears to have attempted to model (copycat) his life after the novel's anti-hero Holden Caulfield.

According to the December 2007 issue of the British music magazine Mojo and the Spanish language newsweekly Proceso, the film's title was further inspired by Chapter 27 of Robert Rosen's book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon. Rosen's book examines the numerological meaning of 27, “the triple 9,” a number of profound importance to John Lennon. Lennon was deeply interested in numerology, particularly via Cheiro’s Book of Numbers, and by the number nine and all its multiples.

Since the movie focussed just on the three days that Mark David Chapman spent in New York City, leading up to Lennon's murder, many significant items in Chapman's life were left out of the film. These included

1) that when young, Chapman fantasized about having God-like power over a group of imaginary "Little People";

2) he worked for the YMCA;

3) he visited Lebanon;

4) he once met and shook hands with President Gerald Ford;

5) he worked in Georgia as a security guard;

6) he traveled extensively, visiting such places as Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Delhi, Israel, Geneva, London, Paris, and Dublin;

7) Chapman got a job as a security guard in Hawaii; and finally,

8) while in Hawaii, he told his "Little People" he intended to go to New York and kill John Lennon and they begged him not to, saying "Please, think of your wife. Please, Mr. President. Think of your mother. Think of yourself." Chapman says he told them his mind was made up, and that their reaction was silence. (Was Chapman's "Little People" the menehune?)



Also, we are shown throughout the movie that Chapman was obsessed by The Wizard of Oz, but not that he thought of himself as "Dorothy Gale."

In Chapter 27, I find the key focal point of the film is an involved sequence about coincidences, shortly after Chapman is made aware that Lennon's new album is called Double Fantasy. (See Todd Campbell's new blog posting on "Double Deception.")



In this scene, Chapman is seen making the links that included,

1) the Dakota Building, where Lennon resided, was the site where the movie Rosemary's Baby was filmed;

2) that Roman Polanski was the screenwriter and director of Rosemary's Baby;

3) that it was Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, who was murdered by Charles Manson and his Family;



4) that the killings were based on Manson's notion of "Helter Skelter," and

5) that Manson based his scenario on John Lennon's song, Helter Skelter.

Did any of this happen? Or is it movie fiction?

Or, perhaps, is this film placing into popular culture the overt dots that can be connected in what happened at the Dakota on December 8, 1980?

Forthcoming showings of Chapter 27 will occur on

Showtime Next, November 28, 2008, at 9:40 AM ET/PT
Showtime Next, November 28, 2008, at 6:30 PM ET/PT
The Movie Channel, December 7, 2008, at 8:00 PM ET/PT
TMC Xtra, December 14, 2008, at 11:15 AM ET/PT