The Love Machine

Online matchmaking services, such as Match.com and eHarmony, today attract millions of users willing to fill out questionnaires—and hand over cash—in the hope of finding love. Can computers really play Cupid? A lot of people seem to think so; eHarmony claims that its service has led to some 10,000 marriages since 2001. But the concept of using computers to smooth the path of romance is far from new. It was hatched by two undergraduates during a bull session at Harvard University in 1965.

“I had the idea that there might be a way to look at the characteristics of males and females to find out what couples might be compatible with each other,” says Vaughan Morrill. He talked to his classmate Jeff Tarr. “We were alone on a Saturday night, and we were drinking, and we came up with the idea of a computer dating system,” Tarr says.

The two were unlikely visionaries—just kids looking for something fun to do, and maybe make a few bucks doing it. “I don’t think either one of us was doing this as a career,” says Morrill, but inspiration took hold. They quickly came up with a questionnaire to use for matching people up. Eventually it ran several pages, asking everything from vital statistics (height, weight, age) to what a person’s reactions would be to hypothetical, and awkward, situations. Here’s one question:

“Your roommate gets you a blind date for the big dance. Good-looking, your roommate says. When you meet your date, you are sure it’s your roommate who is blind—your date is friendly, but embarrassingly unattractive. You:

1. suggest going to a movie instead.
2. monopolize your roommate’s date, leaving your roommate with only one noble alternative …
3. dance with your date, smiling weakly, but end the evening as early as possible.
4. act very friendly the whole time and run the risk of getting trapped into a second date.

Tarr found a computer science student in a Harvard math class and paid him $100 to write the programming code to help match up questionnaires that had complementary answers. The two students formed a company, Compatibility Research Inc., and they named their service Operation Match. The nascent business rented time on a room-size IBM computer on the Harvard campus. This was expensive, but the giant computer also provided Operation Match with an air of credibility and a powerful marketing tool. After all, the very idea of using computers was considered cutting edge in 1965.

David Crump, another Harvard undergraduate, who became vice president of the company, says that the image of computers worked both ways. “There was this notion that a computer was not romantic, and it takes all the romance out,” he says. “I think of that as kind of a silly reason, because it didn’t purport to be anything other than a tool.” And the tool seemed to work. “The science of attraction is boringly simple and not very pleasant to contemplate,” says Crump. “We like people who are familiar, who are physically attractive, who have attitudinal similarity, and who like us back.”

The human element, though, added a chaotic factor that no amount of technology could overcome. “The questionnaires evolved, but we always had questions about ‘How good-looking are you?’” says Crump. “And ugly people would say they were good-looking, and good-looking people would say they were ugly.”

But the innovators knew they had something. “I think we ended up with about 7,800 respondents, and the first time we went out as far as Vassar and Smith and [Mount] Holyoke,” says Tarr. Soon the questionnaires were pouring into the company’s Cambridge post-office box, every one with a three-dollar matchmaking fee enclosed. Operation Match soon extended to several more areas, mostly near college campuses, nationwide. “The trip to the mailbox every morning was an exciting event,” says Crump.

Morrill left the company, but Tarr forged ahead. “Because it was my senior year, I didn’t go to any classes, because I was an honor student at Harvard and you could get away with it.” He appeared on several national television programs, including “The Tonight Show” and “Today.”

In its original incarnation, Operation Match proved no more lasting a phenomenon than Nehru jackets or Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. By the third year its popularity had waned considerably. “I think a lot of people thought it was fun to try once,” says Tarr. So the company was sold. Morrill went on to a 31-year career as a science teacher in St. Louis. Crump is now a law professor at the University of Houston, and Tarr became the chairman of a New York risk-arbitrage firm.

But it wasn’t a mere fad. The core innovation, using technology to match up strangers via questionnaires, was far ahead of its time. With the popularization of the personal computer in the early 1980s, people began to see computers less as inscrutable automatons and more as everyday tools. It’s no surprise that the Internet gave rise to a new wave of computer-dating services mimicking the Operation Match model, which today are far more advanced, if not much more successful, than those of 40 years ago.

—David Rapp

The Buyable Past

A 1940s three-piece buckle set

(BEAL’S COWBOY BUCKLES)

The American cowboy, a bristly breed, had his image carefully groomed by early film studios, and one costumer’s touch, the ornately engraved silver belt buckle, became a staple of Western wardrobes. Though they earned their fame on the movie screen, cowboy buckles are in fact part of a real-world tradition of ornamental metalworking. They began to appear around 1900, when buckles tended to resemble those used by the military. Many Western buckles are essentially metal plates, often ovals or rectangles, and they can be large indeed. Others, probably based on those worn by Texas Rangers, come in sets: the buckle itself, one or two “keepers” (loops to prevent the belt’s tip from hanging down), and a cover for the tip itself.

A buckle presented as a rodeo trophy

(BEAL’S COWBOY BUCKLES)

One eminent Western silversmith was coaxed into the buckle business by a film cowboy. In the early 1920s Tom Mix admired the saddles of Edward H. Bohlin and urged him to fabricate silver and leather items in Hollywood. Bohlin’s shop thrived for decades, and his clients included William S. Hart, Will Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, and even Ronald Reagan. Collectors covet work by Bohlin and such artisans as John McCabe, Bob Schaezlein, and Mike Srour. Richard Beal, a cowboy-buckle specialist, says that pre-1950 examples are the most desirable and that prices for good silver pieces start at about $300 or $400. Midrange items tend to fall in the four-figure bracket, and anything worth five figures is decidedly high-end. Along with age, gold detailing enhances value, as do superior craftsmanship and a connection to a famous person, often a rodeo star who took the piece home as a trophy. Expert engraving is mandatory, so look for gracefully curving cuts with uniformity of width and depth.

—David Lander

A Mexican-made example from the 1940s

(BEAL’S COWBOY BUCKLES)

Richard Beal’s Web site (www.bealscowboybuckles.com) includes pictures of the vintage items in his inventory; prospective customers can contact him at richard@bealscowboybuckles.com. You can see other striking examples, some for sale and some from the vault, at www.buckles.com, a site maintained by Robert Brandes, a leading collector. The Western Buckle, the first book dedicated to the subject, is crammed with sensational photos by its creator and publisher, David R. Stoecklein. If you’d like to win a prize buckle at auction, check out upcoming sales at High Noon, a Los Angeles house specializing in Western Americana (www.highnoon.com, 310-202-9010).

Screenings

Was Zorro the first superhero of American pop culture? He has certainly proved to be one of the most enduring, having lasted now for 86 years and spawned countless progeny and imitations. And 2005 may well be his biggest year yet. May saw the publication of the novel Zorro, the first serious fictional treatment of the character, by the Peruvian-born California writer Isabel Allende, and a new Zorro comic-book series by the writer-artist team of Don McGregor and Sidney Lima. (The first Zorro story, serialized in 1919 as The Curse of Capistrano, is still in print under the title The Mark of Zorro.) But the biggest Zorro news of all was the recent release of The Legend of Zorro, the follow-up to the hugely successful 1998 film The Mask of Zorro.

The Zorro we know wasn’t a product of birth so much as of evolution. America’s first popular fictional Hispanic character—zorro is “fox” in Spanish—originated not in Mexico or Spain but in the mind of a New York hack journalist named Johnston McCulley, who moved to Southern California in 1908 and picked up something of the local color and lore of the region.

McCulley’s first Zorro, in a tale written for a pulp adventure magazine, was simply a Spanish gentleman in a mask fighting for the rights of downtrodden Mexican peasants and Indians. In 1920 Douglas Fairbanks changed all that, turning him into a black-suited daredevil in The Mark of Zorro, and this image has been embellished ever since. Along the way, Zorro inspired dozens of crime fighters, most notably Batman, whose mask, cape, and cave all were derived from the boyhood hero of his creator, Bob Kane.

Films and television shows about Zorro have practically constituted a light industry. Here are the most essential. Aficionados of the Fox should have no trouble locating:

The Mark of Zorro (1920). Loosely based on McCulley’s original story, the first Zorro feature was directed by Fred Niblo, but you won’t be watching it for long before you know that the real auteur is Douglas Fairbanks. The first great action hero of American cinema devised stunts and set pieces that are still a marvel. Available on DVD.

The Mark of Zorro (1940). Rouben Mamoulian directed this remake sluggishly, and Tyrone Power, frustrated at this point in his career by not being given more serious parts, seems to phone in the performance when Zorro’s mask is off. But it definitely has its moments, especially the famous showing-off sequence just before the final duel between Power’s Diego and Basil Rathbone’s Captain Pasquale. The arrogant Pasquale licks his sword and extinguishes a candle with a swish; Diego does the same only to produce no apparent result. Rathbone bursts into derisive laughter; Power, smiling, lifts the severed taper, flame still burning. Available on DVD.

“The Man From Spain” and “Zorro and the Mountain Man.” These are episodes from Zorro, the charming, handsomely mounted late-fifties Walt Disney television series starring a genial Guy Williams, later even more famous as the father in “Lost in Space.” With its lovely Hollywood Mexican-style sets and superb guest actors—the villain in “The Man From Spain” is Everett Sloane (of Citizen Kane)—the series set American kids to slashing chalk Z’s on walls and singing “Out of the night, when the full moon is briiiight… .” Available on VHS.

Zorro, the Gay Blade (1981). Here is one of the funniest comedies of the early eighties, with an ebullient George Hamilton doubling as a ditzy Zorro and his gay twin, who prefers flaming red and gold lamé to the traditional basic black. Hamilton’s Zorro defines his mission thus: “To defend the defenseless, to befriend the friendless, and to defeat … the feetless.” Costarring Brenda Vaccaro, Lauren Hutton, Clive Revill, and a wickedly funny Ron Leibman as a neurotic despot. Directed by Peter Medak. Available on DVD.

Zorro, Mark of the Z (1996). A well-made hourlong documentary from A&E “Biography” on the first 75 years of the Zorro legend, featuring everything from old paintings of Zorro’s ancestor Joaquín Murieta to clips from Zorro films both famous and obscure. Available on VHS.

The Mask of Zorro (1998). The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern correctly described Martin Campbell’s film (produced by Steven Spielberg) as “a gift from the movie Gods.” It has two superb Zorros: Anthony Hopkins as the aging Don Diego and Antonio Banderas as the peasant he must train as his successor. Banderas was, amazingly, the first Hispanic actor ever to play the role. He was also the first to portray Zorro from the ground up; we see him grow into the role of a hero with a passion rare for adventure movies. Banderas plays the part with a sweet reticence and self-mocking humor that make his Zorro the most appealing ever. Overlong and a bit unfocused toward the end, The Mask of Zorro has sensational set pieces, including a torrid dance sequence with Banderas and the awesome Catherine Zeta-Jones, whose career was firmly established by this film, and a rousing opening rescue sequence. It ends with Zorro and his rearing black stallion silhouetted against the sky while James Horner’s music soars and the people cheer.

In addition, this is probably the last great adventure film with duels choreographed in the old-style Hollywood manner without the computer-enhanced stunts that would become standard after The Matrix. Available on DVD, the special edition, with deleted scenes, is highly recommended.

—Allen Barra

Wartime Lessons

Emeritus professors are allowed their eccentricities, but university presses tend to be more orthodox, and An Instinct for War: Scenes from the Battlefields of History (Harvard, 403 pages, $29.95) is a brilliantly unorthodox piece of work. Roger Spiller, now George C. Marshall Professor, emeritus, of Military History at the U.S. Army Command " General Staff College, has written a strange, brave, and absolutely fascinating book. It is also a bit strange and brave for Harvard University Press to have published it. The first sentence of a terse three-paragraph prologue notes that “some of this actually happened and some of it didn’t, but all of it is as true as I can make it,” which sounds like the opening of a novel, which is exactly what An Instinct for War turns out to be: a collection of 13 fictions. But that is not quite right, for Spiller’s fictions are always in the service of ideas. They dramatize aspects of the experience of war and of strategic thought over two and a half millennia, so they are fictions in the sense that Platonic dialogues are fictions.

Some of them are actual dialogues. One, set in a Florentine prison, takes place between Machiavelli and his torturer. Others are short stories, their quality evoking Stephen Vincent Benét, who at his best—in, for example, The Curfew Tolls, which imagines an obscure and bitterly frustrated Napoleon Bonaparte, one born a generation too soon—was fine indeed. But that is not quite right either, because Benét dramatized relatively simple ideas, and Spiller is dramatizing some very complicated ones. What the two have in common is that both can summon the voices of other eras with what seems like perfect pitch.

Spiller is certainly pitch perfect in “Human Rain,” as heartbreaking as it is mesmerizing, which moves among three speakers. The first is a czarist colonel preparing to defend the Russian lines outside Port Arthur in 1904. The second is a Japanese lieutenant who will have to attack the Russian position. The third is a Briton reporting in breezy, jaunty Edwardian tones for the Times of London, a war tourist describing an unprecedented tragedy with a perfect lack of imagination.

Afforded a terrible preview of the First World War—men attacking with bayonets entrenchments protected by barbed wire, machine guns, and modern artillery—the journalist does not know what he is seeing, and neither, quite, do the protagonists. This should not be surprising. European military observers almost entirely misunderstood what they were looking at in the Russo-Japanese War and assumed that courage, panache, and discipline would always carry the day, as they did in Manchuria but did not in the trenches of World War I.

Spiller’s ability to set down persuasive century-old Japanese voices is perhaps his most remarkable achievement, but every chapter is highly effective: Thucydides, at the end of exile and on the verge of his city’s final defeat, explaining to tough, skeptical young Athenian commanders the campaign that had ruined him; a memoir by a Napoleonic surgeon investigating what appear to be soldiers’ self-inflicted wounds incurred in the Leipzig campaign; a Union officer, badly hurt on Cemetery Ridge, writing a series of letters in a futile effort to keep up his family’s spirits. All these stories are powerful, most of them are disturbing, and each contains lessons that can be subtle, multiple, and contradictory, as so many of war’s lessons are.

The book’s final story is science fiction. It recounts the suicidal triumph of tacticians over strategists in a brutal future, and it is hard not to read it as an allegory of our current war on terror. Along the way Spiller displays great learning, always lightly worn; great moral seriousness, never ponderously displayed; and literary flair. This is a remarkable book, initially disconcerting and eventually enthralling.

—Fredric Smoler