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In ancient Athens, what tree was considered sacred -- with all its fruit belonging to the state, and death the penalty for anyone caught cutting one down? | Untitled Document
Herodotus' Description of Egypt and the Egyptians
[The History of Herodotus, George Rawlinson, ed. and tr., vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1885), Book 2, Chapters 5-99]
5. For any one who sees Egypt, without having heard a word about it before, must perceive, if he has only common powers of observation, that the Egypt to which the Greeks go in their ships is an acquired country, the gift of the river. The same is true of the land above the lake, to the distance of three days' voyage, concerning which the Egyptians say nothing, but which exactly the same kind of country.
The following is the general character of the region. In the first place, on approaching it by sea, when you are still a day's sail from the land, if you let down a sounding-line you will bring up mud, and find yourself in eleven fathoms' water, which shows that the soil washed down by the stream extends to that distance.
6. The length of the country along shore, according to the bounds that we assign to Egypt, namely from the Plinthinetic gulf to Lake Serbonis, which extends along the base of Mount Casius, is sixty schoenes. The nations whose territories are scanty measure them by the fathom; those whose bounds are less confined, by the furlong; those who have an ample territory, by the parasang; but if men have a country which is very vast, they measure it by the schoene. Now the length of the parasang is thirty furlongs, but the schoene, which is an Egyptian measure, is sixty furlongs. Thus the coastline of Egypt would extend a length of three thousand six hundred furlongs.
7. From the coast inland as far as Heliopolis the breadth of Egypt is considerable, the country is flat, without springs, and full of swamps. The length of the route from the sea up to Heliopolis is almost exactly the same as that of the road which runs from the altar of the twelve gods at Athens to the temple of Olympian Jove at Pisa. If a person made a calculation he would find but a very little difference between the two routes, not more than about fifteen furlongs; for the road from Athens to Pisa falls short of fifteen hundred furlongs by exactly fifteen, whereas the distance of Heliopolis from the sea is just the round number.
8. As one proceeds beyond Heliopolis up the country, Egypt becomes narrow, the Arabian range of hills, which has a direction from north to south, shutting it in upon the one side, and the Libyan range upon the other. The former ridge runs on without a break, and stretches away to the sea called the Erythraean; it contains the quarries whence the stone was cut for the pyramids of Memphis: and this is the point where it ceases its first direction, and bends away in the manner above indicated. In its greatest length from east to west it is, as I have been informed, a distance of two months' journey towards the extreme east its skirts produce frankincense. Such are the chief features of this range. On the Libyan side, the other ridge whereon the pyramids stand is rocky and covered with sand; its direction is the same as that of the Arabian ridge in the first part of its course. Above Heliopolis, then, there is no great breadth of territory for such a country as Egypt, but during four days' sail Egypt is narrow; the valley between the two ranges is a level plain, and seemed to me to be, at the narrowest point, not more than two hundred furlongs across from the Arabian to the Libyan hills. Above this point Egypt again widens.
8. From Heliopolis to Thebes is nine days' sail up the river; the distance is eighty-one schoenes, or 4860 furlongs. If we now put together the several measurements of the country we shall find that the distance along shore is, as I stated above, 3600 furlongs, and the distance from the sea inland to Thebes 6120 furlongs. Further, it is a distance of eighteen hundred furlongs from Thebes to the place called Elephantine.
9. The greater portion of the country above described seemed to me to be, as the priests declared, a tract gained by the inhabitants. For the whole region above Memphis, lying between the two ranges of hills that have been spoken of, appeared evidently to have formed at one time a gulf of the sea. It resembles (to compare small things with great) the parts about Ilium and Teuthrania, Ephesus, and the plain of the Maeander. In all these regions the land has been formed by rivers, whereof the greatest is not to compare for size with any one of the five mouths of the Nile. I could mention other rivers also, far inferior to the Nile in magnitude, that have effected very great changes. Among these not the least is the Achelous, which, after passing through Acarnania, empties itself into the sea opposite the islands called Echinades, and has already joined one-half of them to the continent.
11. In Arabia, not far from Egypt, there is a long and narrow gulf running inland from the sea called the Erythraean, of which I will here set down the dimensions. Starting from its innermost recess, and using a row-boat, you take forty days to reach the open main, while you may cross the gulf at its widest part in the space of half a day. In this sea there is an ebb and flow of the tide every day. My opinion is that Egypt was formerly very much such a gulf as this- one gulf penetrated from the sea that washes Egypt on the north, and extended itself towards Ethiopia; another entered from the southern ocean, and stretched towards Syria; the two gulfs ran into the land so as almost to meet each other, and left between them only a very narrow tract of country. Now if the Nile should choose to divert his waters from their present bed into this Arabian gulf, what is there to hinder it from being filled up by the stream within, at the utmost, twenty thousand years? For my part, I think it would be filled in half the time. How then should not a gulf, even of much greater size, have been filled up in the ages that passed before I was born, by a river that is at once so large and so given to working changes?
12. Thus I give credit to those from whom I received this account of Egypt, and am myself, moreover, strongly of the same opinion, since I remarked that the country projects into the sea further than the neighbouring shores, and I observed that there were shells upon the hills, and that salt exuded from the soil to such an extent as even to injure the pyramids; and I noticed also that there is but a single hill in all Egypt where sand is found, namely, the hill above Memphis; and further, I found the country to bear no resemblance either to its borderland Arabia, or to Libya - nay, nor even to Syria, which forms the seaboard of Arabia; but whereas the soil of Libya is, we know, sandy and of a reddish hue, and that of Arabia and Syria inclines to stone and clay, Egypt has a soil that is black and crumbly, as being alluvial and formed of the deposits brought down by the river from Ethiopia.
13. One fact which I learnt of the priests is to me a strong evidence of the origin of the country. They said that when Moeris was king, the Nile overflowed all Egypt below Memphis, as soon as it rose so little as eight cubits. Now Moeris had not been dead 900 years at the time when I heard this of the priests; yet at the present day, unless the river rise sixteen, or, at the very least, fifteen cubits, it does not overflow the lands. It seems to me, therefore, that if the land goes on rising and growing at this rate, the Egyptians who dwell below Lake Moeris, in the Delta (as it is called) and elsewhere, will one day, by the stoppage of the inundations, suffer permanently the fate which they told me they expected would some time or other befall the Greeks. On hearing that the whole land of Greece is watered by rain from heaven, and not, like their own, inundated by rivers, they observed- "Some day the Greeks will be disappointed of their grand hope, and then they will be wretchedly hungry"; which was as much as to say, "If God shall some day see fit not to grant the Greeks rain, but shall afflict them with a long drought, the Greeks will be swept away by a famine, since they have nothing to rely on but rain from Jove, and have no other resource for water."
14. And Certes, in thus speaking of the Greeks the Egyptians say nothing but what is true. But now let me tell the Egyptians how the case stands with themselves. If, as I said before, the country below Memphis, which is the land that is always rising, continues to increase in height at the rate at which it has risen in times gone by, how will it be possible for the inhabitants of that region to avoid hunger, when they will certainly have no rain, and the river will not be able to overflow their cornlands? At present, it must be confessed, they obtain the fruits of the field with less trouble than any other people in the world, the rest of the Egyptians included, since they have no need to break up the ground with the plough, nor to use the hoe, nor to do any of the work which the rest of mankind find necessary if they are to get a crop; but the husbandman waits till the river has of its own accord spread itself over the fields and withdrawn again to its bed, and then sows his plot of ground, and after sowing turns his swine into it- the swine tread in the corn - after which he has only to await the harvest. The swine serve him also to thrash the grain, which is then carried to the garner.
15. If then we choose to adopt the views of the Ionians concerning Egypt, we must come to the conclusion that the Egyptians had formerly no country at all. For the Ionians say that nothing is really Egypt but the Delta, which extends along shore from the Watch-tower of Perseus, as it is called, to the Pelusiac Salt-Pans, a distance of forty schoenes, and stretches inland as far as the city of Cercasorus, where the Nile divides into the two streams which reach the sea at Pelusium and Canobus respectively. The rest of what is accounted Egypt belongs, they say, either to Arabia or Libya. But the Delta, as the Egyptians affirm, and as I myself am persuaded, is formed of the deposits of the river, and has only recently, if I may use the expression, come to light. If, then, they had formerly no territory at all, how came they to be so extravagant as to fancy themselves the most ancient race in the world? Surely there was no need of their making the experiment with the children to see what language they would first speak. But in truth I do not believe that the Egyptians came into being at the same time with the Delta, as the Ionians call it; I think they have always existed ever since the human race began; as the land went on increasing, part of the population came down into the new country, part remained in their old settlements. In ancient times the Thebais bore the name of Egypt, a district of which the entire circumference is but 6120 furlongs.
16. If, then, my judgment on these matters be right, the Ionians are mistaken in what they say of Egypt. If, on the contrary, it is they who are right, then I undertake to show that neither the Ionians nor any of the other Greeks know how to count. For they all say that the earth is divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Libya, whereas they ought to add a fourth part, the Delta of Egypt, since they do not include it either in Asia or Libya. For is it not their theory that the Nile separates Asia from Libya? As the Nile, therefore, splits in two at the apex of the Delta, the Delta itself must be a separate country, not contained in either Asia or Libya.
17. Here I take my leave of the opinions of the Ionians, and proceed to deliver my own sentiments on these subjects. I consider Egypt to be the whole country inhabited by the Egyptians, just as Cilicia is the tract occupied by the Cilicians, and Assyria that possessed by the Assyrians. And I regard the only proper boundary-line between Libya and Asia to be that which is marked out by the Egyptian frontier. For if we take the boundary-line commonly received by the Greeks, we must regard Egypt as divided, along its whole length from Elephantine and the Cataracts to Cercasorus, into two parts, each belonging to a different portion of the world, one to Asia, the other to Libya; since the Nile divides Egypt in two from the Cataracts to the sea, running as far as the city of Cercasorus in a single stream, but at that point separating into three branches, whereof the one which bends eastward is called the Pelusiac mouth, and that which slants to the west, the Canobic. Meanwhile the straight course of the stream, which comes down from the upper country and meets the apex of the Delta, continues on, dividing the Delta down the middle, and empties itself into the sea by a mouth, which is as celebrated, and carries as large a body of water, as most of the others, the mouth called the Sebennytic. Besides these there are two other mouths which run out of the Sebennytic called respectively the Saitic and the Mendesian. The Bolbitine mouth, and the Bucolic, are not natural branches, but channels made by excavation.
18. My judgment as to the extent of Egypt is confirmed by an oracle delivered at the shrine of Ammon, of which I had no knowledge at all until after I had formed my opinion. It happened that the people of the cities Marea and Apis, who live in the part of Egypt that borders on Libya, took a dislike to the religious usages of the country concerning sacrificial animals, and wished no longer to be restricted from eating the flesh of cows. So, as they believed themselves to be Libyans and not Egyptians, they sent to the shrine to say that, having nothing in common with the Egyptians, neither inhabiting the Delta nor using the Egyptian tongue, they claimed to be allowed to eat whatever they pleased. Their request, however, was refused by the god, who declared in reply that Egypt was the entire tract of country which the Nile overspreads and irrigates, and the Egyptians were the people who lived below Elephantine, and drank the waters of that river.
19. So said the oracle. Now the Nile, when it overflows, floods not only the Delta, but also the tracts of country on both sides the stream which are thought to belong to Libya and Arabia, in some places reaching to the extent of two days' journey from its banks, in some even exceeding that distance, but in others falling short of it.
19. Concerning the nature of the river, I was not able to gain any information either from the priests or from others. I was particularly anxious to learn from them why the Nile, at the commencement of the summer solstice, begins to rise, and continues to increase for a hundred days- and why, as soon as that number is past, it forthwith retires and contracts its stream, continuing low during the whole of the winter until the summer solstice comes round again. On none of these points could I obtain any explanation from the inhabitants, though I made every inquiry, wishing to know what was commonly reported- they could neither tell me what special virtue the Nile has which makes it so opposite in its nature to all other streams, nor why, unlike every other river, it gives forth no breezes from its surface.
20. Some of the Greeks, however, wishing to get a reputation for cleverness, have offered explanations of the phenomena of the river, for which they have accounted in three different ways. Two of these I do not think it worth while to speak of, further than simply to mention what they are. One pretends that the Etesian winds cause the rise of the river by preventing the Nile-water from running off into the sea. But in the first place it has often happened, when the Etesian winds did not blow, that the Nile has risen according to its usual wont; and further, if the Etesian winds produced the effect, the other rivers which flow in a direction opposite to those winds ought to present the same phenomena as the Nile, and the more so as they are all smaller streams, and have a weaker current. But these rivers, of which there are many both in Syria and Libya, are entirely unlike the Nile in this respect.
21. The second opinion is even more unscientific than the one just mentioned, and also, if I may so say, more marvellous. It is that the Nile acts so strangely, because it flows from the ocean, and that the ocean flows all round the earth.
22. The third explanation, which is very much more plausible than either of the others, is positively the furthest from the truth; for there is really nothing in what it says, any more than in the other theories. It is, that the inundation of the Nile is caused by the melting of snows. Now, as the Nile flows out of Libya, through Ethiopia, into Egypt, how is it possible that it can be formed of melted snow, running, as it does, from the hottest regions of the world into cooler countries? Many are the proofs whereby any one capable of reasoning on the subject may be convinced that it is most unlikely this should be the case. The first and strongest argument is furnished by the winds, which always blow hot from these regions. The second is that rain and frost are unknown there. Now whenever snow falls, it must of necessity rain within five days; so that, if there were snow, there must be rain also in those parts. Thirdly, it is certain that the natives of the country are black with the heat, that the kites and the swallows remain there the whole year, and that the cranes, when they fly from the rigours of a Scythian winter, flock thither to pass the cold season. If then, in the country whence the Nile has its source, or in that through which it flows, there fell ever so little snow, it is absolutely impossible that any of these circumstances could take place.
23. As for the writer who attributes the phenomenon to the ocean, his account is involved in such obscurity that it is impossible to disprove it by argument. For my part I know of no river called Ocean, and I think that Homer, or one of the earlier poets, invented the name, and introduced it into his poetry.
24. Perhaps, after censuring all the opinions that have been put forward on this obscure subject, one ought to propose some theory of one's own. I will therefore proceed to explain what I think to be the reason of the Nile's swelling in the summer time. During the winter, the sun is driven out of his usual course by the storms, and removes to the upper parts of Libya. This is the whole secret in the fewest possible words; for it stands to reason that the country to which the Sun-god approaches the nearest, and which he passes most directly over, will be scantest of water, and that there the streams which feed the rivers will shrink the most.
25. To explain, however, more at length, the case is this. The sun, in his passage across the upper parts of Libya, affects them in the following way. As the air in those regions is constantly clear, and the country warm through the absence of cold winds, the sun in his passage across them acts upon them exactly as he wont to act elsewhere in summer, when his path is in the middle of heaven- that is, he attracts the water. After attracting it, he again repels it into the upper regions, where the winds lay hold of it, scatter it, and reduce it to a vapour, whence it naturally enough comes to pass that the winds which blow from this quarter- the south and south-west- are of all winds the most rainy. And my own opinion is that the sun does not get rid of all the water which he draws year by year from the Nile, but retains some about him. When the winter begins to soften, the sun goes back again to his old place in the middle of the heaven, and proceeds to attract water equally from all countries. Till then the other rivers run big, from the quantity of rain-water which they bring down from countries where so much moisture falls that all the land is cut into gullies; but in summer, when the showers fail, and the sun attracts their water, they become low. The Nile, on the contrary, not deriving any of its bulk from rains, and being in winter subject to the attraction of the sun, naturally runs at that season, unlike all other streams, with a less burthen of water than in the summer time. For in summer it is exposed to attraction equally with all other rivers, but in winter it suffers alone. The sun, therefore, I regard as the sole cause of the phenomenon.
26. It is the sun also, in my opinion, which, by heating the space through which it passes, makes the air in Egypt so dry. There is thus perpetual summer in the upper parts of Libya. Were the position of the heavenly regions reversed, so that the place where now the north wind and the winter have their dwelling became the station of the south wind and of the noon-day, while, on the other hand, the station of the south wind became that of the north, the consequence would be that the sun, driven from the mid-heaven by the winter and the northern gales, would betake himself to the upper parts of Europe, as he now does to those of Libya, and then I believe his passage across Europe would affect the Ister exactly as the Nile is affected at the present day.
27. And with respect to the fact that no breeze blows from the Nile, I am of opinion that no wind is likely to arise in very hot countries, for breezes love to blow from some cold quarter.
28. Let us leave these things, however, to their natural course, to continue as they are and have been from the beginning. With regard to the sources of the Nile, I have found no one among all those with whom I have conversed, whether Egyptians, Libyans, or Greeks, who professed to have any knowledge, except a single person. He was the scribe who kept the register of the sacred treasures of Minerva in the city of Sais, and he did not seem to me to be in earnest when he said that he knew them perfectly well. His story was as follows:- "Between Syene, a city of the Thebais, and Elephantine, there are" (he said) "two hills with sharp conical tops; the name of the one is Crophi, of the other, Mophi. Midway between them are the fountains of the Nile, fountains which it is impossible to fathom. Half the water runs northward into Egypt, half to the south towards Ethiopia." The fountains were known to be unfathomable, he declared, because Psammetichus, an Egyptian king, had made trial of them. He had caused a rope to be made, many thousand fathoms in length, and had sounded the fountain with it, but could find no bottom. By this the scribe gave me to understand, if there was any truth at all in what he said, that in this fountain there are certain strong eddies, and a regurgitation, owing to the force wherewith the water dashes against the mountains, and hence a Sounding-line cannot be got to reach the bottom of the spring.
29. No other information on this head could I obtain from any quarter. All that I succeeded in learning further of the more distant portions of the Nile, by ascending myself as high as Elephantine and making inquiries concerning the parts beyond, was the following:- As one advances beyond Elephantine, the land rises. Hence it is necessary in this part of the river to attach a rope to the boat on each side, as men harness an ox, and so proceed on the journey. If the rope snaps, the vessel is borne away down stream by the force of the current. The navigation continues the same for four days, the river winding greatly, like the Maeander, and the distance traversed amounting to twelve schoenes. Here you come upon a smooth and level plain, where the Nile flows in two branches, round an island called Tachompso. The country above Elephantine is inhabited by the Ethiopians, who possess one-half of this island, the Egyptians occupying the other. Above the island there is a great lake, the shores of which are inhabited by Ethiopian nomads; after passing it, you come again to the stream of the Nile, which runs into the lake. Here you land, and travel for forty days along the banks of the river, since it is impossible to proceed further in a boat on account of the sharp peaks which jut out from the water, and the sunken rocks which abound in that part of the stream. When you have passed this portion of the river in the space of forty days, you go on board another boat and proceed by water for twelve days more, at the end of which time you reach a great city called Meroe, which is said to be the capital of the other Ethiopians. The only gods worshipped by the inhabitants are Jupiter and Bacchus, to whom great honours are paid. There is an oracle of Jupiter in the city, which directs the warlike expeditions of the Ethiopians; when it commands they go to war, and in whatever direction it bids them march, thither straightway they carry their arms.
30. On leaving this city, and again mounting the stream, in the same space of time which it took you to reach the capital from Elephantine, you come to the Deserters, who bear the name of Asmach. This word, translated into our language, means "the men who stand on the left hand of the king." These Deserters are Egyptians of the warrior caste, who, to the number of two hundred and forty thousand, went over to the Ethiopians in the reign of king Psammetichus. The cause of their desertion was the following:- Three garrisons were maintained in Egypt at that time, one in the city of Elephantine against the Ethiopians, another in the Pelusiac Daphnae, against the Syrians and Arabians, and a third, against the Libyans, in Marea. (The very same posts are to this day occupied by the Persians, whose forces are in garrison both in Daphnae and in Elephantine.) Now it happened, that on one occasion the garrisons were not relieved during the space of three years; the soldiers, therefore, at the end of that time, consulted together, and having determined by common consent to revolt, marched away towards Ethiopia. Psammetichus, informed of the movement, set out in pursuit, and coming up with them, besought them with many words not to desert the gods of their country, nor abandon their wives and children. "Nay, but," said one of the deserters with an unseemly gesture, "wherever we go, we are sure enough of finding wives and children." Arrived in Ethiopia, they placed themselves at the disposal of the king. In return, he made them a present of a tract of land which belonged to certain Ethiopians with whom he was at feud, bidding them expel the inhabitants and take possession of their territory. From the time that this settlement was formed, their acquaintance with Egyptian manners has tended to civilise the Ethiopians.
31. Thus the course of the Nile is known, not only throughout Egypt, but to the extent of four months' journey either by land or water above the Egyptian boundary; for on calculation it will be found that it takes that length of time to travel from Elephantine to the country of the Deserters. There the direction of the river is from west to east. Beyond, no one has any certain knowledge of its course, since the country is uninhabited by reason of the excessive heat.
32. I did hear, indeed, what I will now relate, from certain natives of Cyrene. Once upon a time, they said, they were on a visit to the oracular shrine of Ammon, when it chanced that in the course of conversation with Etearchus, the Ammonian king, the talk fell upon the Nile, how that its sources were unknown to all men. Etearchus upon this mentioned that some Nasamonians had once come to his court, and when asked if they could give any information concerning the uninhabited parts of Libya, had told the following tale. (The Nasamonians are a Libyan race who occupy the Syrtis, and a tract of no great size towards the east.) They said there had grown up among them some wild young men, the sons of certain chiefs, who, when they came to man's estate, indulged in all manner of extravagancies, and among other things drew lots for five of their number to go and explore the desert parts of Libya, and try if they could not penetrate further than any had done previously. The coast of Libya along the sea which washes it to the north, throughout its entire length from Egypt to Cape Soloeis, which is its furthest point, is inhabited by Libyans of many distinct tribes who possess the whole tract except certain portions which belong to the Phoenicians and the Greeks. Above the coast-line and the country inhabited by the maritime tribes, Libya is full of wild beasts; while beyond the wild beast region there is a tract which is wholly sand, very scant of water, and utterly and entirely a desert. The young men therefore, despatched on this errand by their comrades with a plentiful supply of water and provisions, travelled at first through the inhabited region, passing which they came to the wild beast tract, whence they finally entered upon the desert, which they proceeded to cross in a direction from east to west. After journeying for many days over a wide extent of sand, they came at last to a plain where they observed trees growing; approaching them, and seeing fruit on them, they proceeded to gather it. While they were thus engaged, there came upon them some dwarfish men, under the middle height, who seized them and carried them off. The Nasamonians could not understand a word of their language, nor had they any acquaintance with the language of the Nasamonians. They were led across extensive marshes, and finally came to a town,where all the men were of the height of their conductors, and black-complexioned. A great river flowed by the town, running from west to east, and containing crocodiles.
33. Here let me dismiss Etearchus the Ammonian, and his story, only adding that (according to the Cyrenaeans) he declared that the Nasamonians got safe back to their country, and that the men whose city they had reached were a nation of sorcerers. With respect to the river which ran by their town, Etearchus conjectured it to be the Nile; and reason favours that view. For the Nile certainly flows out of Libya, dividing it down the middle, and as I conceive, judging the unknown from the known, rises at the same distance from its mouth as the Ister. This latter river has its source in the country of the Celts near the city Pyrene, and runs through the middle of Europe, dividing it into two portions. The Celts live beyond the pillars of Hercules, and border on the Cynesians, who dwell at the extreme west of Europe. Thus the Ister flows through the whole of Europe before it finally empties itself into the Euxine at Istria, one of the colonies of the Milesians.
34. Now as this river flows through regions that are inhabited, its course is perfectly well known; but of the sources of the Nile no one can give any account, since Libya, the country through which it passes, is desert and without inhabitants. As far as it was possible to get information by inquiry, I have given a description of the stream. It enters Egypt from the parts beyond. Egypt lies almost exactly opposite the mountainous portion of Cilicia, whence a lightly-equipped traveller may reach Sinope on the Euxine in five days by the direct route. Sinope lies opposite the place where the Ister falls into the sea. My opinion therefore is that the Nile, as it traverses the whole of Libya, is of equal length with the Ister. And here I take my leave of this subject.
35. Concerning Egypt itself I shall extend my remarks to a great length, because there is no country that possesses so many wonders, nor any that has such a number of works which defy description. Not only is the climate different from that of the rest of the world, and the rivers unlike any other rivers, but the people also, in most of their manners and customs, exactly reverse the common practice of mankind. The women attend the markets and trade, while the men sit at home at the loom; and here, while the rest of the world works the woof up the warp, the Egyptians work it down; the women likewise carry burthens upon their shoulders, while the men carry them upon their heads. They eat their food out of doors in the streets, but retire for private purposes to their houses, giving as a reason that what is unseemly, but necessary, ought to be done in secret, but what has nothing unseemly about it, should be done openly. A woman cannot serve the priestly office, either for god or goddess, but men are priests to both; sons need not support their parents unless they choose, but daughters must, whether they choose or no.
36. In other countries the priests have long hair, in Egypt their heads are shaven; elsewhere it is customary, in mourning, for near relations to cut their hair close: the Egyptians, who wear no hair at any other time, when they lose a relative, let their beards and the hair of their heads grow long. All other men pass their lives separate from animals, the Egyptians have animals always living with them; others make barley and wheat their food; it is a disgrace to do so in Egypt, where the grain they live on is spelt, which some call zea. Dough they knead with their feet; but they mix mud, and even take up dirt, with their hands. They are the only people in the world- they at least, and such as have learnt the practice from them- who use circumcision. Their men wear two garments apiece, their women but one. They put on the rings and fasten the ropes to sails inside; others put them outside. When they write or calculate, instead of going, like the Greeks, from left to right, they move their hand from right to left; and they insist, notwithstanding, that it is they who go to the right, and the Greeks who go to the left. They have two quite different kinds of writing, one of which is called sacred, the other common.
37. They are religious to excess, far beyond any other race of men, and use the following ceremonies:- They drink out of brazen cups, which they scour every day: there is no exception to this practice. They wear linen garments, which they are specially careful to have always fresh washed. They practise circumcision for the sake of cleanliness, considering it better to be cleanly than comely. The priests shave their whole body every other day, that no lice or other impure thing may adhere to them when they are engaged in the service of the gods. Their dress is entirely of linen, and their shoes of the papyrus plant: it is not lawful for them to wear either dress or shoes of any other material. They bathe twice every day in cold water, and twice each night; besides which they observe, so to speak, thousands of ceremonies. They enjoy, however, not a few advantages. They consume none of their own property, and are at no expense for anything; but every day bread is baked for them of the sacred corn, and a plentiful supply of beef and of goose's flesh is assigned to each, and also a portion of wine made from the grape. Fish they are not allowed to eat; and beans- which none of the Egyptians ever sow, or eat, if they come up of their own accord, either raw or boiled - the priests will not even endure to look on, since they consider it an unclean kind of pulse. Instead of a single priest, each god has the attendance of a college, at the head of which is a chief priest; when one of these dies, his son is appointed in his room.
38. Male kine are reckoned to belong to Epaphus, and are therefore tested in the following manner:- One of the priests appointed for the purpose searches to see if there is a single black hair on the whole body, since in that case the beast is unclean. He examines him all over, standing on his legs, and again laid upon his back; after which he takes the tongue out of his mouth, to see if it be clean in respect of the prescribed marks (what they are I will mention elsewhere); he also inspects the hairs of the tail, to observe if they grow naturally. If the animal is pronounced clean in all these various points, the priest marks him by twisting a piece of papyrus round his horns, and attaching thereto some sealing-clay, which he then stamps with his own signet-ring. After this the beast is led away; and it is forbidden, under the penalty of death, to sacrifice an animal which has not been marked in this way.
39. The following is their manner of sacrifice:- They lead the victim, marked with their signet, to the altar where they are about to offer it, and setting the wood alight, pour a libation of wine upon the altar in front of the victim, and at the same time invoke the god. Then they slay the animal, and cutting off his head, proceed to flay the body. Next they take the head, and heaping imprecations on it, if there is a market-place and a body of Greek traders in the city, they carry it there and sell it instantly; if, however, there are no Greeks among them, they throw the head into the river. The imprecation is to this effect:- They pray that if any evil is impending either over those who sacrifice, or over universal Egypt, it may be made to fall upon that head. These practices, the imprecations upon the heads, and the libations of wine, prevail all over Egypt, and extend to victims of all sorts; and hence the Egyptians will never eat the head of any animal.
40. The disembowelling and burning are, however, different in different sacrifices. I will mention the mode in use with respect to the goddess whom they regard as the greatest, and honour with the chiefest festival. When they have flayed their steer they pray, and when their prayer is ended they take the paunch of the animal out entire, leaving the intestines and the fat inside the body; they then cut off the legs, the ends of the loins, the shoulders, and the neck; and having so done, they fill the body of the steer with clean bread, honey, raisins, figs, frankincense, myrrh, and other aromatics. Thus filled, they burn the body, pouring over it great quantities of oil. Before offering the sacrifice they fast, and while the bodies of the victims are being consumed they beat themselves. Afterwards, when they have concluded this part of the ceremony, they have the other parts of the victim served up to them for a repast.
41. The male kine, therefore, if clean, and the male calves, are used for sacrifice by the Egyptians universally; but the females they are not allowed to sacrifice, since they are sacred to Isis. The statue of this goddess has the form of a woman but with horns like a cow, resembling thus the Greek representations of Io; and the Egyptians, one and all, venerate cows much more highly than any other animal. This is the reason why no native of Egypt, whether man or woman, will give a Greek a kiss, or use the knife of a Greek, or his spit, or his cauldron, or taste the flesh of an ox, known to be pure, if it has been cut with a Greek knife. When kine die, the following is the manner of their sepulture:- The females are thrown into the river; the males are buried in the suburbs of the towns, with one or both of their horns appearing above the surface of the ground to mark the place. When the bodies are decayed, a boat comes, at an appointed time, from the island called Prosopitis, - which is a portion of the Delta, nine schoenes in circumference,- and calls at the several cities in turn to collect the bones of the oxen. Prosopitis is a district containing several cities; the name of that from which the boats come is Atarbechis. Venus has a temple there of much sanctity. Great numbers of men go forth from this city and proceed to the other towns, where they dig up the bones, which they take away with them and bury together in one place. The same practice prevails with respect to the interment of all other cattle- the law so determining; they do not slaughter any of them.
42. Such Egyptians as possess a temple of the Theban Jove, or live in the Thebaic canton, offer no sheep in sacrifice, but only goats; for the Egyptians do not all worship the same gods, excepting Isis and Osiris, the latter of whom they say is the Grecian Bacchus. Those, on the contrary, who possess a temple dedicated to Mendes, or belong to the Mendesian canton, abstain from offering goats, and sacrifice sheep instead. The Thebans, and such as imitate them in their practice, give the following account of the origin of the custom:- "Hercules," they say, "wished of all things to see Jove, but Jove did not choose to be seen of him. At length, when Hercules persisted, Jove hit on a device- to flay a ram, and, cutting off his head, hold the head before him, and cover himself with the fleece. In this guise he showed himself to Hercules." Therefore the Egyptians give their statues of Jupiter the face of a ram: and from them the practice has passed to the Ammonians, who are a joint colony of Egyptians and Ethiopians, speaking a language between the two; hence also, in my opinion, the latter people took their name of Ammonians, since the Egyptian name for Jupiter is Amun. Such, then, is the reason why the Thebans do not sacrifice rams, but consider them sacred animals. Upon one day in the year, however, at the festival of Jupiter, they slay a single ram, and stripping off the fleece, cover with it the statue of that god, as he once covered himself, and then bring up to the statue of Jove an image of Hercules. When this has been done, the whole assembly beat their breasts in mourning for the ram, and afterwards bury him in a holy sepulchre.
43. The account which I received of this Hercules makes him one of the twelve gods. Of the other Hercules, with whom the Greeks are familiar, I could hear nothing in any part of Egypt. That the Greeks, however (those I mean who gave the son of Amphitryon that name), took the name from the Egyptians, and not the Egyptians from the Greeks, is I think clearly proved, among other arguments, by the fact that both the parents of Hercules, Amphitryon as well as Alcmena, were of Egyptian origin. Again, the Egyptians disclaim all knowledge of the names of Neptune and the Dioscuri, and do not include them in the number of their gods; but had they adopted the name of any god from the Greeks, these would have been the likeliest to obtain notice, since the Egyptians, as I am well convinced, practised navigation at that time, and the Greeks also were some of them mariners, so that they would have been more likely to know the names of these gods than that of Hercules. But the Egyptian Hercules is one of their ancient gods. Seventeen thousand years before the reign of Amasis, the twelve gods were, they affirm, produced from the eight: and of these twelve, Hercules is one.
44. In the wish to get the best information that I could on these matters, I made a voyage to Tyre in Phoenicia, hearing there was a temple of Hercules at that place, very highly venerated. I visited the temple, and found it richly adorned with a number of offerings, among which were two pillars, one of pure gold, the other of emerald, shining with great brilliancy at night. In a conversation which I held with the priests, I inquired how long their temple had been built, and found by their answer that they, too, differed from the Greeks. They said that the temple was built at the same time that the city was founded, and that the foundation of the city took place two thousand three hundred years ago. In Tyre I remarked another temple where the same god was worshipped as the Thasian Hercules. So I went on to Thasos, where I found a temple of Hercules which had been built by the Phoenicians who colonised that island when they sailed in search of Europa. Even this was five generations earlier than the time when Hercules, son of Amphitryon, was born in Greece. These researches show plainly that there is an ancient god Hercules; and my own opinion is that those Greeks act most wisely who build and maintain two temples of Hercules, in the one of which the Hercules worshipped is known by the name of Olympian, and has sacrifice offered to him as an immortal, while in the other the honours paid are such as are due to a hero.
45. The Greeks tell many tales without due investigation, and among them the following silly fable respecting Hercules:- "Hercules," they say, "went once to Egypt, and there the inhabitants took him, and putting a chaplet on his head, led him out in solemn procession, intending to offer him a sacrifice to Jupiter. For a while he submitted quietly; but when they led him up to the altar and began the ceremonies, he put forth his strength and slew them all." Now to me it seems that such a story proves the Greeks to be utterly ignorant of the character and customs of the people. The Egyptians do not think it allowable even to sacrifice cattle, excepting sheep, and the male kine and calves, provided they be pure, and also geese. How, then, can it be believed that they would sacrifice men? And again, how would it have been possible for Hercules alone, and, as they confess, a mere mortal, to destroy so many thousands? In saying thus much concerning these matters, may I incur no displeasure either of god or hero!
46. I mentioned above that some of the Egyptians abstain from sacrificing goats, either male or female. The reason is the following:- These Egyptians, who are the Mendesians, consider Pan to be one of the eight gods who existed before the twelve, and Pan is represented in Egypt by the painters and the sculptors, just as he is in Greece, with the face and legs of a goat. They do not, however, believe this to be his shape, or consider him in any respect unlike the other gods; but they represent him thus for a reason which I prefer not to relate. The Mendesians hold all goats in veneration, but the male more than the female, giving the goatherds of the males especial honour. One is venerated more highly than all the rest, and when he dies there is a great mourning throughout all the Mendesian canton. In Egyptian, the goat and Pan are both called Mendes.
47. The pig is regarded among them as an unclean animal, so much so that if a man in passing accidentally touch a pig, he instantly hurries to the river, and plunges in with all his clothes on. Hence, too, the swineherds, notwithstanding that they are of pure Egyptian blood, are forbidden to enter into any of the temples, which are open to all other Egyptians; and further, no one will give his daughter in marriage to a swineherd, or take a wife from among them, so that the swineherds are forced to intermarry among themselves. They do not offer swine in sacrifice to any of their gods, excepting Bacchus and the Moon, whom they honour in this way at the same time, sacrificing pigs to both of them at the same full moon, and afterwards eating of the flesh. There is a reason alleged by them for their detestation of swine at all other seasons, and their use of them at this festival, with which I am well acquainted, but which I do not think it proper to mention. The following is the mode in which they sacrifice the swine to the Moon:- As soon as the victim is slain, the tip of the tail, the spleen, and the caul are put together, and having been covered with all the fat that has been found in the animal's belly, are straightway burnt. The remainder of the flesh is eaten on the same day that the sacrifice is offered, which is the day of the full moon: at any other time they would not so much as taste it. The poorer sort, who cannot afford live pigs, form pigs of dough, which they bake and offer in sacrifice.
48. To Bacchus, on the eve of his feast, every Egyptian sacrifices a hog before the door of his house, which is then given back to the swineherd by whom it was furnished, and by him carried away. In other respects the festival is celebrated almost exactly as Bacchic festivals are in Greece, excepting that the Egyptians have no choral dances. They also use instead of phalli another invention, consisting of images a cubit high, pulled by strings, which the women carry round to the villages. A piper goes in front, and the women follow, singing hymns in honour of Bacchus. They give a religious reason for the peculiarities of the image.
49. Melampus, the son of Amytheon, cannot (I think) have been ignorant of this ceremony- nay, he must, I should conceive, have been well acquainted with it. He it was who introduced into Greece the name of Bacchus, the ceremonial of his worship, and the procession of the phallus. He did not, however, so completely apprehend the whole doctrine as to be able to communicate it entirely, but various sages since his time have carried out his teaching to greater perfection. Still it is certain that Melampus introduced the phallus, and that the Greeks learnt from him the ceremonies which they now practise. I therefore maintain that Melampus, who was a wise man, and had acquired the art of divination, having become acquainted with the worship of Bacchus through knowledge derived from Egypt, introduced it into Greece, with a few slight changes, at the same time that he brought in various other practices. For I can by no means allow that it is by mere coincidence that the Bacchic ceremonies in Greece are so nearly the same as the Egyptian- they would then have been more Greek in their character, and less recent in their origin. Much less can I admit that the Egyptians borrowed these customs, or any other, from the Greeks. My belief is that Melampus got his knowledge of them from Cadmus the Tyrian, and the followers whom he brought from Phoenicia into the country which is now called Boeotia.
50. Almost all the names of the gods came into Greece from Egypt. My inquiries prove that they were all derived from a foreign source, and my opinion is that Egypt furnished the greater number. For with the exception of Neptune and the Dioscuri, whom I mentioned above, and Juno, Vesta, Themis, the Graces, and the Nereids, the other gods have been known from time immemorial in Egypt. This I assert on the authority of the Egyptians themselves. The gods, with whose names they profess themselves unacquainted, the Greeks received, I believe, from the Pelasgi, except Neptune. Of him they got their knowledge from the Libyans,by whom he has been always honoured, and who were anciently the only people that had a god of the name. The Egyptians differ from the Greeks also in paying no divine honours to heroes.
51. Besides these which have been here mentioned, there are many other practices whereof I shall speak hereafter, which the Greeks have borrowed from Egypt. The peculiarity, however, which they observe in their statues of Mercury they did not derive from the Egyptians, but from the Pelasgi; from them the Athenians first adopted it, and afterwards it passed from the Athenians to the other Greeks. For just at the time when the Athenians were entering into the Hellenic body, the Pelasgi came to live with them in their country, whence it was that the latter came first to be regarded as Greeks. Whoever has been initiated into the mysteries of the Cabiri will understand what I mean. The Samothracians received these mysteries from the Pelasgi, who, before they went to live in Attica, were dwellers in Samothrace, and imparted their religious ceremonies to the inhabitants. The Athenians, then, who were the first of all the Greeks to make their statues of Mercury in this way, learnt the practice from the Pelasgians; and by this people a religious account of the matter is given, which is explained in the Samothracian mysteries.
52. In early times the Pelasgi, as I know by information which I got at Dodona, offered sacrifices of all kinds, and prayed to the gods, but had no distinct names or appellations for them, since they had never heard of any. They called them gods (Theoi, disposers), because they disposed and arranged all things in such a beautiful order. After a long lapse of time the names of the gods came to Greece from Egypt, and the Pelasgi learnt them, only as yet they knew nothing of Bacchus, of whom they first heard at a much later date. Not long after the arrival of the names they sent to consult the oracle at Dodona about them. This is the most ancient oracle in Greece, and at that time there was no other. To their question, "Whether they should adopt the names that had been imported from the foreigners?" the oracle replied by recommending their use. Thenceforth in their sacrifices the Pelasgi made use of the names of the gods, and from them the names passed afterwards to the Greeks.
53. Whence the gods severally sprang, whether or no they had all existed from eternity, what forms they bore- these are questions of which the Greeks knew nothing until the other day, so to speak. For Homer and Hesiod were the first to compose Theogonies, and give the gods their epithets, to allot them their several offices and occupations, and describe their forms; and they lived but four hundred years before my time, as I believe. As for the poets who are thought by some to be earlier than these, they are, in my judgment, decidedly later writers. In these matters I have the authority of the priestesses of Dodona for the former portion of my statements; what I have said of Homer and Hesiod is my own opinion.
54. The following tale is commonly told in Egypt concerning the oracle of Dodona in Greece, and that of Ammon in Libya. My informants on the point were the priests of Jupiter at Thebes. They said "that two of the sacred women were once carried off from Thebes by the Phoenicians, and that the story went that one of them was sold into Libya, and the other into Greece, and these women were the first founders of the oracles in the two countries." On my inquiring how they came to know so exactly what became of the women, they answered, "that diligent search had been made after them at the time, but that it had not been found possible to discover where they were; afterwards, however, they received the information which they had given me."
55. This was what I heard from the priests at Thebes; at Dodona, however, the women who deliver the oracles relate the matter as follows:- "Two black doves flew away from Egyptian Thebes, and while one directed its flight to Libya, the other came to them. She alighted on an oak, and sitting there began to speak with a human voice, and told them that on the spot where she was, there should henceforth be an oracle of Jove. They understood the announcement to be from heaven, so they set to work at once and erected the shrine. The dove which flew to Libya bade the Libyans to establish there the oracle of Ammon." This likewise is an oracle of Jupiter. The persons from whom I received these particulars were three priestesses of the Dodonaeans, the eldest Promeneia, the next Timarete, and the youngest Nicandra- what they said was confirmed by the other Dodonaeans who dwell around the temple.
56. My own opinion of these matters is as follows:- I think that, if it be true that the Phoenicians carried off the holy women, and sold them for slaves, the one into Libya and the other into Greece, or Pelasgia (as it was then called), this last must have been sold to the Thesprotians. Afterwards, while undergoing servitude in those parts, she built under a real oak a temple to Jupiter, her thoughts in her new abode reverting- as it was likely they would do, if she had been an attendant in a temple of Jupiter at Thebes- to that particular god. Then, having acquired a knowledge of the Greek tongue, she set up an oracle. She also mentioned that her sister had been sold for a slave into Libya by the same persons as herself.
57. The Dodonaeans called the women doves because they were foreigners, and seemed to them to make a noise like birds. After a while the dove spoke with a human voice, because the woman, whose foreign talk had previously sounded to them like the chattering of a bird, acquired the power of speaking what they could understand. For how can it be conceived possible that a dove should really speak with the voice of a man? Lastly, by calling the dove black the Dodonaeans indicated that the woman was an Egyptian. And certainly the character of the oracles at Thebes and Dodona is very similar. Besides this form of divination, the Greeks learnt also divination by means of victims from the Egyptians.
58. The Egyptians were also the first to introduce solemn assemblies, processions, and litanies to the gods; of all which the Greeks were taught the use by them. It seems to me a sufficient proof of this that in Egypt these practices have been established from remote antiquity, while in Greece they are only recently known.
59. The Egyptians do not hold a single solemn assembly, but several in the course of the year. Of these the chief, which is better attended than any other, is held at the city of Bubastis in honour of Diana. The next in importance is that which takes place at Busiris, a city situated in the very middle of the Delta; it is in honour of Isis, who is called in the Greek tongue Demiter (Ceres). There is a third great festival in Sais to Minerva, a fourth in Heliopolis to the Sun, a fifth in Buto to Latona, and a sixth in Papremis to Mars.
60. The following are the proceedings on occasion of the assembly at Bubastis:- Men and women come sailing all together, vast numbers in each boat, many of the women with castanets, which they strike, while some of the men pipe during the whole time of the voyage; the remainder of the voyagers, male and female, sing the while, and make a clapping with their hands. When they arrive opposite any of the towns upon the banks of the stream, they approach the shore, and, while some of the women continue to play and sing, others call aloud to the females of the place and load them with abuse, while a certain number dance, and some standing up uncover themselves. After proceeding in this way all along the river-course, they reach Bubastis, where they celebrate the feast with abundant sacrifices. More grape-wine is consumed at this festival than in all the rest of the year besides. The number of those who attend, counting only the men and women and omitting the children, amounts, according to the native reports, to seven hundred thousand.
61. The ceremonies at the feast of Isis in the city of Busiris have been already spoken of. It is there that the whole multitude, both of men and women, many thousands in number, beat themselves at the close of the sacrifice, in honour of a god, whose name a religious scruple forbids me to mention. The Carian dwellers in Egypt proceed on this occasion to still greater lengths, even cutting their faces with their knives, whereby they let it been seen that they are not Egyptians but foreigners.
62. At Sais, when the assembly takes place for the sacrifices, there is one night on which the inhabitants all burn a multitude of lights in the open air round their houses. They use lamps in the shape of flat saucers filled with a mixture of oil and salt, on the top of which the wick floats. These burn the whole night, and give to the festival the name of the Feast of Lamps. The Egyptians who are absent from the festival observe the night of the sacrifice, no less than the rest, by a general lighting of lamps; so that the illumination is not confined to the city of Sais, but extends over the whole of Egypt. And there is a religious reason assigned for the special honour paid to this night, as well as for the illumination which accompanies it.
63. At Heliopolis and Buto the assemblies are merely for the purpose of sacrifice; but at Papremis, besides the sacrifices and other rites which are performed there as elsewhere, the following custom is observed:- When the sun is getting low, a few only of the priests continue occupied about the image of the god, while the greater number, armed with wooden clubs, take their station at the portal of the temple. Opposite to them is drawn up a body of men, in number above a thousand, armed, like the others, with clubs, consisting of persons engaged in the performance of their vows. The image of the god, which is kept in a small wooden shrine covered with plates of gold, is conveyed from the temple into a second sacred building the day before the festival begins. The few priests still in attendance upon the image place it, together with the shrine containing it, on a four-wheeled car, and begin to drag it along; the others stationed at the gateway of the temple, oppose its admission. Then the votaries come forward to espouse the quarrel of the god, and set upon the opponents, who are sure to offer resistance. A sharp fight with clubs ensues, in which heads are commonly broken on both sides. Many, I am convinced, die of the wounds that they receive, though the Egyptians insist that no one is ever killed.
64. The natives give the subjoined account of this festival. They say that the mother of the god Mars once dwelt in the temple. Brought up at a distance from his parent, when he grew to man's estate he conceived a wish to visit her. Accordingly he came, but the attendants, who had never seen him before, refused him entrance, and succeeded in keeping him out. So he went to another city and collected a body of men, with whose aid he handled the attendants very roughly, and forced his way in to his mother. Hence they say arose the custom of a fight with sticks in honour of Mars at this festival.
The Egyptians first made it a point of religion to have no converse with women in the sacred places, and not to enter them without washing, after such converse. Almost all other nations, except the Greeks and the Egyptians, act differently, regarding man as in this matter under no other law than the brutes. Many animals, they say, and various kinds of birds, may be seen to couple in the temples and the sacred precincts, which would certainly not happen if the gods were displeased at it. Such are the arguments by which they defend their practice, but I nevertheless can by no means approve of it. In these points the Egyptians are specially careful, as they are indeed in everything which concerns their sacred edifices.
65. Egypt, though it borders upon Libya, is not a region abounding in wild animals. The animals that do exist in the country, whether domesticated or otherwise, are all regarded as sacred. If I were to explain why they are consecrated to the several gods, I should be led to speak of religious matters, which I particularly shrink from mentioning; the points whereon I have touched slightly hitherto have all been introduced from sheer necessity. Their custom with respect to animals is as follows:- For every kind there are appointed certain guardians, some male, some female, whose business it is to look after them; and this honour is made to descend from father to son. The inhabitants of the various cities, when they have made a vow to any god, pay it to his animals in the way which I will now explain. At the time of making the vow they shave the head of the child, cutting off all the hair, or else half, or sometimes a third part, which they then weigh in a balance against a sum of silver; and whatever sum the hair weighs is presented to the guardian of the animals, who thereupon cuts up some fish, and gives it to them for food- such being the stuff whereon they are fed. When a man has killed one of the sacred animals, if he did it with malice prepense, he is punished with death; if unwittingly, he has to pay such a fine as the priests choose to impose. When an ibis, however, or a hawk is killed, whether it was done by accident or on purpose, the man must needs die.
66. The number of domestic animals in Egypt is very great, and would be still greater were it not for what befalls the cats. As the females, when they have kittened, no longer seek the company of the males, these last, to obtain once more their companionship, practise a curious artifice. They seize the kittens, carry them off, and kill them, but do not cat them afterwards. Upon this the females, being deprived of their young, and longing to supply their place, seek the males once more, since they are particularly fond of their offspring. On every occasion of a fire in Egypt the strangest prodigy occurs with the cats. The inhabitants allow the fire to rage as it pleases, while they stand about at intervals and watch these animals, which, slipping by the men or else leaping over them, rush headlong into the flames. When this happens, the Egyptians are in deep affliction. If a cat dies in a private house by a natural death, all the inmates of the house shave their eyebrows; on the death of a dog they shave the head and the whole of the body.
67. The cats on their decease are taken to the city of Bubastis, where they are embalmed, after which they are buried in certain sacred repositories. The dogs are interred in the cities to which they belong, also in sacred burial-places. The same practice obtains with respect to the ichneumons; the hawks and shrew-mice, on the contrary, are conveyed to the city of Buto for burial, and the ibises to Hermopolis. The bears, which are scarce in Egypt, and the wolves, which are not much bigger than foxes, they bury wherever they happen to find them lying.
68. The following are the peculiarities of the crocodile:- During the four winter months they eat nothing; they are four-footed, and live indifferently on land or in the water. The female lays and hatches her eggs ashore, passing the greater portion of the day on dry land, but at night retiring to the river, the water of which is warmer than the night-air and the dew. Of all known animals this is the one which from the smallest size grows to be the greatest: for the egg of the crocodile is but little bigger than that of the goose, and the young crocodile is in proportion to the egg; yet when it is full grown, the animal measures frequently seventeen cubits and even more. It has the eyes of a pig, teeth large and tusk-like, of a size proportioned to its frame; unlike any other animal, it is without a tongue; it cannot move its under-jaw, and in this respect too it is singular, being the only animal in the world which moves the upper-jaw but not the under. It has strong claws and a scaly skin, impenetrable upon the back. In the water it is blind, but on land it is very keen of sight. As it lives chiefly in the river, it has the inside of its mouth constantly covered with leeches; hence it happens that, while all the other birds and beasts avoid it, with the trochilus it lives at peace, since it owes much to that bird: for the crocodile, when he leaves the water and comes out upon the land, is in the habit of lying with his mouth wide open, facing the western breeze: at such times the trochilus goes into his mouth and devours the leeches. This benefits the crocodile, who is pleased, and takes care not to hurt the trochilus.
69. The crocodile is esteemed sacred by some of the Egyptians, by others he is treated as an enemy. Those who live near Thebes, and those who dwell around Lake Moeris, regard them with especial veneration. In each of these places they keep one crocodile in particular, who is taught to be tame and tractable. They adorn his ears with ear-rings of molten stone or gold, and put bracelets on his fore-paws, giving him daily a set portion of bread, with a certain number of victims; and, after having thus treated him with the greatest possible attention while alive, they embalm him when he dies and bury him in a sacred repository. The people of Elephantine on the other hand, are so far from considering these animals as sacred that they even eat their flesh. In the Egyptian language they are not called crocodiles, but Champsae. The name of crocodiles was given them by the Ionians, who remarked their resemblance to the lizards, which in Ionia live in the walls and are called crocodiles.
70. The modes of catching the crocodile are many and various. I shall only describe the one which seems to me most worthy of mention. They bait a hook with a chine of pork and let the meat be carried out into the middle of the stream, while the hunter upon the bank holds a living pig, which he belabours. The crocodile hears its cries, and making for the sound, encounters the pork, which he instantly swallows down. The men on the shore haul, and when they have got him to land, the first thing the hunter does is to plaster his eyes with mud. This once accomplished, the animal is despatched with ease, otherwise he gives great trouble.
71. The hippopotamus, in the canton of Papremis, is a sacred animal, but not in any other part of Egypt. It may be thus described:- It is a quadruped, cloven-footed, with hoofs like an ox, and a flat nose. It has the mane and tail of a horse, huge tusks which are very conspicuous, and a voice like a horse's neigh. In size it equals the biggest oxen, and its skin is so tough that when dried it is made into javelins.
72. Otters also are found in the Nile, and are considered sacred. Only two sorts of fish are venerated, that called the lepidotus and the eel. These are regarded as sacred to the Nile, as likewise among birds is the vulpanser, or fox-goose.
73. They have also another sacred bird called the phoenix which I myself have never seen, except in pictures. Indeed it is a great rarity, even in Egypt, only coming there (according to the accounts of the people of Heliopolis) once in five hundred years, when the old phoenix dies. Its size and appearance, if it is like the pictures, are as follow:- The plumage is partly red, partly golden, while the general make and size are almost exactly that of the eagle. They tell a story of what this bird does, which does not seem to me to be credible: that he comes all the way from Arabia, and brings the parent bird, all plastered over with myrrh, to the temple of the Sun, and there buries the body. In order to bring him, they say, he first forms a ball of myrrh as big as he finds that he can carry; then he hollows out the ball, and puts his parent inside, after which he covers over the opening with fresh myrrh, and the ball is then of exactly the same weight as at first; so he brings it to Egypt, plastered over as I have said, and deposits it in the temple of the Sun. Such is the story they tell of the doings of this bird.
74. In the neighbourhood of Thebes there are some sacred serpents which are perfectly harmless. They are of small size, and have two horns growing out of the top of the head. These snakes, when they die, are buried in the temple of Jupiter, the god to whom they are sacred.
75. I went once to a certain place in Arabia, almost exactly opposite the city of Buto, to make inquiries concerning the winged serpents. On my arrival I saw the back-bones and ribs of serpents in such numbers as it is impossible to describe: of the ribs there were a multitude of heaps, some great, some small, some middle-sized. The place where the bones lie is at the entrance of a narrow gorge between steep mountains, which there open upon a spacious plain communicating with the great plain of Egypt. The story goes that with the spring the winged snakes come flying from Arabia towards Egypt, but are met in this gorge by the birds called ibises, who forbid their entrance and destroy them all. The Arabians assert, and the Egyptians also admit, that it is on account of the service thus rendered that the Egyptians hold the ibis in so much reverence.
76. The ibis is a bird of a deep-black colour, with legs like a crane; its beak is strongly hooked, and its size is about that of the land-rail. This is a description of the black ibis which contends with the serpents. The commoner sort, for there are two quite distinct species, has the head and the whole throat bare of feathers; its general plumage is white, but the head and neck are jet black, as also are the tips of the wings and the extremity of the tail; in its beak and legs it resembles the other species. The winged serpent is shaped like the water-snake. Its wings are not feathered, but resemble very closely those of the bat. And thus I conclude the subject of the sacred animals.
77. With respect to the Egyptians themselves, it is to be remarked that those who live in the corn country, devoting themselves, as they do, far more than any other people in the world, to the preservation of the memory of past actions, are the best skilled in history of any men that I have ever met. The following is the mode of life habitual to them:- For three successive days in each month they purge the body by means of emetics and clysters, which is done out of a regard for their health, since they have a persuasion that every disease to which men are liable is occasioned by the substances whereon they feed. Apart from any such precautions, they are, I believe, next to the Libyans, the healthiest people in the world- an effect of their climate, in my opinion, which has no sudden changes. Diseases almost always attack men when they are exposed to a change, and never more than during changes of the weather. They live on bread made of spelt, which they form into loaves called in their own tongue cyllestis. Their drink is a wine which they obtain from barley, as they have no vines in their country. Many kinds of fish they eat raw, either salted or dried in the sun. Quails also, and ducks and small birds, they eat uncooked, merely first salting them. All other birds and fishes, excepting those which are set apart as sacred, are eaten either roasted or boiled.
78. In social meetings among the rich, when the banquet is ended, a servant carries round to the several guests a coffin, in which there is a wooden image of a corpse, carved and painted to resemble nature as nearly as possible, about a cubit or two cubits in length. As he shows it to each guest in turn, the servant says, "Gaze here, and drink and be merry; for when you die, such will you be."
79. The Egyptians adhere to their own national customs, and adopt no foreign usages. Many of these customs are worthy of note: among others their song, the Linus, which is sung under various names not only in Egypt but in Phoenicia, in Cyprus, and in other places; and which seems to be exactly the same as that in use among the Greeks, and by them called Linus. There were very many things in Egypt which filled me with astonishment, and this was one of them. Whence could the Egyptians have got the Linus? It appears to have been sung by them from the very earliest times. For the Linus in Egyptian is called Maneros; and they told me that Maneros was the only son of their first king, and that on his untimely death he was honoured by the Egyptians with these dirgelike strains, and in this way they got their first and only melody.
80. There is another custom in which the Egyptians resemble a particular Greek people, namely the Lacedaemonians. Their young men, when they meet their elders in the streets, give way to them and step aside; and if an elder come in where young men are present, these latter rise from their seats. In a third point they differ entirely from all the nations of Greece. Instead of speaking to each other when they meet in the streets, they make an obeisance, sinking the hand to the knee.
81. They wear a linen tunic fringed about the legs, and called calasiris; over this they have a white woollen garment thrown on afterwards. Nothing of woollen, however, is taken into their temples or buried with them, as their religion forbids it. Here their practice resembles the rites called Orphic and Bacchic, but which are in reality Egyptian and Pythagorean; for no one initiated in these mysteries can be buried in a woollen shroud, a religious reason being assigned for the observance.
82. The Egyptians likewise discovered to which of the gods each month and day is sacred; and found out from the day of a man's birth what he will meet with in the course of his life, and how he will end his days, and what sort of man he will be- discoveries whereof the Greeks engaged in poetry have made a use. The Egyptians have also discovered more prognostics than all the rest of mankind besides. Whenever a prodigy takes place, they watch and record the result; then, if anything similar ever happens again, they expect the same consequences.
83. With respect to divination, they hold that it is a gift which no mortal possesses, but only certain of the gods: thus they have an oracle of Hercules, one of Apollo, of Minerva, of Diana, of Mars, and of Jupiter. Besides these, there is the oracle of Latona at Buto, which is held in much higher repute than any of the rest. The mode of delivering the oracles is not uniform, but varies at the different shrines.
84. Medicine is practised among them on a plan of separation; each physician treats a single disorder, and no more: thus the country swarms with medical practitioners, some undertaking to cure diseases of the eye, others of the head, others again of the teeth, others of the intestines, and some those which are not local.
85. The following is the way in which they conduct their mournings and their funerals:- On the death in any house of a man of consequence, forthwith the women of the family beplaster their heads, and sometimes even their faces, with mud; and then, leaving the body indoors, sally forth and wander through the city, with their dress fastened by a band, and their bosoms bare, beating themselves as they walk. All the female relations join them and do the same. The men too, similarly begirt, beat their breasts separately. When these ceremonies are over, the body is carried away to be embalmed.
86. There are a set of men in Egypt who practice the art of embalming, and make it their proper business. These persons, when a body is brought to them, show the bearers various models of corpses, made in wood, and painted so as to resemble nature. The most perfect is said to be after the manner of him whom I do not think it religious to name in connection with such a matter; the second sort is inferior to the first, and less costly; the third is the cheapest of all. All this the embalmers explain, and then ask in which way it is wished that the corpse should be prepared. The bearers tell them, and having concluded their bargain, take their departure, while the embalmers, left to themselves, proceed to their task. The mode of embalming, according to the most perfect process, is the following:- They take first a crooked piece of iron, and with it draw out the brain through the nostrils, thus getting rid of a portion, while the skull is cleared of the rest by rinsing with drugs; next they make a cut along the flank with a sharp Ethiopian stone, and take out the whole contents of the abdomen, which they then cleanse, washing it thoroughly with palm wine, and again frequently with an infusion of pounded aromatics. After this they fill the cavity with the purest bruised myrrh, with cassia, and every other sort of spicery except frankincense, and sew up the opening. Then the body is placed in natrum for seventy days, and covered entirely over. After the expiration of that space of time, which must not be exceeded, the body is washed, and wrapped round, from head to foot, with bandages of fine linen cloth, smeared over with gum, which is used generally by the Egyptians in the place of glue, and in this state it is given back to the relations, who enclose it in a wooden case which they have had made for the purpose, shaped into the figure of a man. Then fastening the case, they place it in a sepulchral chamber, upright against the wall. Such is the most costly way of embalming the dead.
87. If persons wish to avoid expense, and choose the second process, the following is the method pursued:- Syringes are filled with oil made from the cedar-tree, which is then, without any incision or disembowelling, injected into the abdomen. The passage by which it might be likely to return is stopped, and the body laid in natrum the prescribed number of days. At the end of the time the cedar-oil is allowed to make its escape; and such is its power that it brings with it the whole stomach and intestines in a liquid state. The natrum meanwhile has dissolved the flesh, and so nothing is left of the dead body but the skin and the bones. It is returned in this condition to the relatives, without any further trouble being bestowed upon it.
88. The third method of embalming, which is practised in the case of the poorer classes, is to clear out the intestines with a clyster, and let the body lie in natrum the seventy days, after which it is at once given to those who come to fetch it away.
89. The wives of men of rank are not given to be embalmed immediately after death, nor indeed are any of the more beautiful and valued women. It is not till they have been dead three or four days that they are carried to the embalmers. This is done to prevent indignities from being offered them. It is said that once a case of this kind occurred: the man was detected by the information of his fellow-workman.
90. Whensoever any one, Egyptian or foreigner, has lost his life by falling a prey to a crocodile, or by drowning in the river, the law compels the inhabitants of the city near which the body is cast up to have it embalmed, and to bury it in one of the sacred repositories with all possible magnificence. No one may touch the corpse, not even any of the friends or relatives, but only the priests of the Nile, who prepare it for burial with their own hands- regarding it as something more than the mere body of a man- and themselves lay it in the tomb.
91. The Egyptians are averse to adopt Greek customs, or, in a word, those of any other nation. This feeling is almost universal among them. At Chemmis, however, which is a large city in the Thebaic canton, near Neapolis, there is a square enclosure sacred to Perseus, son of Danae. Palm trees grow all round the place, which has a stone gateway of an unusual size, surmounted by two colossal statues, also in stone. Inside this precinct is a temple, and in the temple an image of Perseus. The people of Chemmis say that Perseus often appears to them, sometimes within the sacred enclosure, sometimes in the open country: one of the sandals which he has worn is frequently found- two cubits in length, as they affirm- and then all Egypt flourishes greatly. In the worship of Perseus Greek ceremonies are used; gymnastic games are celebrated in his honour, comprising every kind of contest, with prizes of cattle, cloaks, and skins. I made inquiries of the Chemmites why it was that Perseus appeared to them and not elsewhere in Egypt, and how they came to celebrate gymnastic contests unlike the rest of the Egyptians: to which they answered, "that Perseus belonged to their city by descent. Danaus and Lynceus were Chemmites before they set sail for Greece, and from them Perseus was descended," they said, tracing the genealogy; "and he, when he came to Egypt for the purpose" (which the Greeks also assign) "of bringing away from Libya the Gorgon's head, paid them a visit, and acknowledged them for his kinsmen- he had heard the name of their city from his mother before he left Greece- he bade them institute a gymnastic contest in his honour, and that was the reason why they observed the practice."
92. The customs hitherto described are those of the Egyptians who live above the marsh-country. The inhabitants of the marshes have the same customs as the rest, as well in those matters which have been mentioned above as in respect of marriage, each Egyptian taking to himself, like the Greeks, a single wife; but for greater cheapness of living the marsh-men practise certain peculiar customs, such as these following. They gather the blossoms of a certain water-lily, which grows in great abundance all over the flat country at the time when the Nile rises and floods the regions along its banks- the Egyptians call it lotus - they gather, I say, the blossoms of this plant and dry them in the sun, after which they extract from the centre of each blossom a substance like the head of a poppy, which they crush and make into bread. The root of the lotus is likewise eatable, and has a pleasant sweet taste: it is round, and about the size of an apple. There is also another species of the lily in Egypt, which grows, like the lotus, in the river, and resembles the rose. The fruit springs up side by side with the blossom, on a separate stalk, and has almost exactly the look of the comb made by wasps. It contains a number of seeds, about the size of an olive-stone, which are good to eat: and these are eaten both green and dried. The byblus (papyrus), which grows year after year in the marshes, they pull up, and, cutting the plant in two, reserve the upper portion for other purposes, but take the lower, which is about a cubit long, and either eat it or else sell it. Such as wish to enjoy the byblus in full perfection bake it first in a closed vessel, heated to a glow. Some of these folk, however, live entirely on fish, which are gutted as soon as caught, and then hung up in the sun: when dry, they are used as food.
93. Gregarious fish are not found in any numbers in the rivers; they frequent the lagunes, whence, at the season of breeding, they proceed in shoals towards the sea. The males lead the way, and drop their milt as they go, while the females, following close behind, eagerly swallow it down. From this they conceive, and when, after passing some time in the sea, they begin to be in spawn, the whole shoal sets off on its return to its ancient haunts. Now, however, it is no longer the males, but the females, who take the lead: they swim in front in a body, and do exactly as the males did before, dropping, little by little, their grains of spawn as they go, while the males in the rear devour the grains, each one of which is a fish. A portion of the spawn escapes and is not swallowed by the males, and hence come the fishes which grow afterwards to maturity. Whan any of this sort of fish are taken on their passage to the sea, they are found to have the left side of the head scarred and bruised; while if taken on their return, the marks appear on the right. The reason is that as they swim down the Nile seaward, they keep close to the bank of the river upon their left, and returning again up stream they still cling to the same side, hugging it and brushing against it constantly, to be sure that they miss not their road through the great force of the current. When the Nile begins to rise, the hollows in the land and the marshy spots near the river are flooded before any other places by the percolation of the water through the riverbanks; and these, almost as soon as they become pools, are found to be full of numbers of little fishes. I think that I understand how it is this comes to pass. On the subsidence of the Nile the year before, though the fish retired with the retreating waters, they had first deposited their spawn in the mud upon the banks; and so, when at the usual season the water returns, small fry are rapidly engendered out of the spawn of the preceding year. So much concerning the fish.
94. The Egyptians who live in the marshes use for the anointing of their bodies an oil made from the fruit of the sillicyprium, which is known among them by the name of "kiki." To obtain this they plant the sillicyprium (which grows wild in Greece) along the banks of the rivers and by the sides of the lakes, where it produces fruit in great abundance, but with a very disagreeable smell. This fruit is gathered, and then bruised and pressed, or else boiled down after roasting: the liquid which comes from it is collected and is found to be unctuous, and as well suited as olive-oil for lamps, only that it gives out an unpleasant odour.
95. The contrivances which they use against gnats, wherewith the country swarms, are the following. In the parts of Egypt above the marshes the inhabitants pass the night upon lofty towers, which are of great service, as the gnats are unable to fly to any height on account of the winds. In the marsh-country, where there are no towers, each man possesses a net instead. By day it serves him to catch fish, while at night he spreads it over the bed in which he is to rest, and creeping in, goes to sleep underneath. The gnats, which, if he rolls himself up in his dress or in a piece of muslin, are sure to bite through the covering, do not so much as attempt to pass the net.
96. The vessels used in Egypt for the transport of merchandise are made of the Acantha (Thorn), a tree which in its growth is very like the Cyrenaic lotus, and from which there exudes a gum. They cut a quantity of planks about two cubits in length from this tree, and then proceed to their ship-building, arranging the planks like bricks, and attaching them by ties to a number of long stakes or poles till the hull is complete, when they lay the cross-planks on the top from side to side. They give the boats no ribs, but caulk the seams with papyrus on the inside. Each has a single rudder, which is driven straight through the keel. The mast is a piece of acantha-wood, and the sails are made of papyrus. These boats cannot make way against the current unless there is a brisk breeze; they are, therefore, towed up-stream from the shore: down-stream they are managed as follows. There is a raft belonging to each, made of the wood of the tamarisk, fastened together with a wattling of reeds; and also a stone bored through the middle about two talents in weight. The raft is fastened to the vessel by a rope, and allowed to float down the stream in front, while the stone is attached by another rope astern. The result is that the raft, hurried forward by the current, goes rapidly down the river, and drags the "baris" (for so they call this sort of boat) after it; while the stone, which is pulled along in the wake of the vessel, and lies deep in the water, keeps the boat straight. There are a vast number of these vessels in Egypt, and some of them are of many thousand talents' burthen.
97. When the Nile overflows, the country is converted into a sea, and nothing appears but the cities, which look like the islands in the Aegean. At this season boats no longer keep the course of the river, but sail right across the plain. On the voyage from Naucratis to Memphis at this season, you pass close to the pyramids, whereas the usual course is by the apex of the Delta, and the city of Cercasorus. You can sail also from the maritime town of Canobus across the flat to Naucratis, passing by the cities of Anthylla and Archandropolis.
98. The former of these cities, which is a place of note, is assigned expressly to the wife of the ruler of Egypt for the time being, to keep her in shoes. Such has been the custom ever since Egypt fell under the Persian yoke. The other city seems to me to have got its name of Archandropolis from Archander the Phthian, son of Achaeus, and son-in-law of Danaus. There might certainly have been another Archander; but, at any rate, the name is not Egyptian.
99. Thus far I have spoken of Egypt from my own observation, relating what I myself saw, the ideas that I formed, and the results of my own researches.
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According to legend, who fired the arrow that hit Achilles in the heel, his only vulnerable spot? | History Jeopardy Template
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In Greek mythology, who was the queen of the underworld and wife of Hades? | Achilles (Greek Mythology )
Greek Mythology
Thursday, 31 March 2011 17:47 administrator
Achilles
Character Overview
In Greek mythology, Achilles (Ancient Greek: Ἀχιλλεύς, Achilleus) was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.
Achilles (pronounced uh-KILL-eez) is one of the most important warriors in Greek mythology. He had strength, bravery, military skills, pride, and honor—all qualities that the ancient Greeks prized as manly virtues. Yet his behavior was also shaped by anger, stubbornness, and revenge. The conflict between Achilles’ larger-than-life virtues and his all-too-human weaknesses plays an important part in the heroic tragedy of the Iliad.
Like many mythological heroes, Achilles was part human and part supernatural being. His parents were Peleus (pronounced pe-LAY-uhs), a king of Thessaly in northern Greece, and a sea nymph named Thetis (pronounced THEE-tis). According to Homer, Thetis raised both Achilles and his closest friend and companion, Patroclus (pronounced pa-TROH-kluhs). According to legend, Achilles’ mother Thetis tried to make her infant son invulnerable (incapable of being wounded, injured, or harmed) by dipping him into the river Styx, which flowed through the underworld, or land of the dead. Afterward, no sword or arrow could pierce Achilles wherever the Styx’s water had touched him. However, the water did not touch the heel by which Thetis held Achilles, so this remained the only vulnerable spot on his body. This myth is the source of the term Achilles’ heel, which refers to a person’s most notable weakness.
Achilles’ strength and athletic superiority emerged early. At age six, he could run fast enough to catch deer. Some myths say that Achilles learned to run from the centaur Chiron (pronounced KYE-ron), who also taught him music, medicine, and the skills of warfare. According to some legends, Achilles was destined from birth to suffer one of two fates: a long life without glory, or a glorious death in battle.
The Trojan War Achilles played a central role in the Trojan War. The Trojan War was a ten-year conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans. The war began when the Trojan prince Paris kidnapped a beautiful Greek queen named Helen. Her husband, King Menelaus, pulled together a large army and chased Paris and Helen, tracking them to the city of Troy. The Greek army camped outside of the city walls and laid siege (engaged in a persistent attack against the city) to Troy for ten years. When the Trojan War began, Achilles’ parents tried to keep him from joining the Greek forces against the Trojans in order to prevent the prophecy regarding his death in battle from coming true. But the Greeks felt they needed Achilles to fight with them because they had received a prophecy that they could not defeat the Trojans without him. They therefore sent the Greek leader Odysseus (pronounced oh- DIS-ee-uhs) to persuade Achilles to join the war. Achilles agreed to fight with them—even though he knew his choice might cost him his life—because he valued glory in battle more than a quiet existence in peace.
Achilles did indeed earn great glory in battle against the Trojans. Throughout the ten-year siege he killed many Trojans and struck fear into the hearts of the Trojan forces. The Trojans were helpless against his mighty strength and his invulnerability to weapons. He was, however, an extremely proud warrior; when he felt that he had been insulted by the leader of the Greek forces, Agamemnon, he refused to fight for the Greeks. He only returned to the fight when his friend Patroclus died at the hands of the great Trojan warrior Hector.
Achilles rushed into battle in a furious desire to avenge the death of Patroclus. He chased Hector around the walls of Troy three times before killing the Trojan prince in one-on-one combat. He then dragged the body behind his chariot for nine days, which prevented the Trojans from holding a proper funeral. The gods forced Achilles to surrender the body of Hector to his grieving father, King Priam of Troy. Soon after, Achilles was killed on the battlefield when he was struck in his vulnerable heel by an arrow fired by Hector’s brother, Paris.
Achilles in Context
The Trojan War in which Achilles fought was a struggle between two different groups—the Greeks and the Trojans—over Helen, who was a symbol of Greek pride as the most beautiful woman in the world. Modern-day scholars do not know for sure just how much of the story of the Trojan War is fiction, but the story reflects the reality of living in a time period when the ancient Greeks were frequently in conflict with nearby regions for control of land and resources. The warrior culture of ancient times arose from the need to protect land used for farming or keeping animals. Warriors also conquered more land when poor farming conditions or conflict with other peoples made moving necessary. Young men were trained in warrior skills as well as in the warrior code of honor and glory. Under the command of Alexander the Great, the Greeks succeeded on the battlefield and spread their empire across much of what is now the Middle East and western Asia. In an oral culture such as ancient Greece, the tales of battles and heroism passed on from generation to generation highlighted the importance of heroic deeds and glory.
The glory Achilles achieves does not make him a perfect example of a Greek man, however. His pride causes him to put himself above that of the army in which he fights, and results in both heavy Greek losses in battle and the death of his own best friend Patroclus. This flaw in the character of Achilles reflects the importance of the group over that of an individual to the ancient Greeks. In ancient Greek society, life was so difficult that people relied heavily on their social relationships in order to survive; one person acting for his or her own interests rather than that of the group could bring about the downfall of everyone.
Key Themes and Symbols
Achilles represents the ultimate warrior, seeking glory through his skills as a soldier. He chooses to die on the battlefield, knowing his heroic deeds will be remembered forever, rather than live a long, unremarkable life away from battle.
Another theme of the story of Achilles is revenge. After having an argument with Agamemnon, Achilles gets his revenge on the king by refusing to fight.This leads to the death of Patroclus,which prompts Achilles to seek revenge against his friend’s killer, Hector. After Achilles killsHector, Paris seeks revenge against Achilles for the death of his brother.
Achilles in Art, Literature, and Everyday Life
Achilles and his story have appeared in many forms over the centuries. In addition to being the main character of Homer’s Iliad, he was the subject of several plays written by Greek dramatists Aeschylus (pronounced ES-kuh-lus) and Sophocles (pronounced SOF-uh-kleez).
During the Renaissance, he was featured as a character in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, and appears in modern works such as Disney’s animated television series Hercules (1998).
U.X.L Encyclopedia of World Mythology
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"Which entertainer said, ""He was into animal husbandry--until they caught him at it?" | Tom Lehrer (Music) - TV Tropes
Tom Lehrer
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"Come back tomorrow night, we're gonna do� fractions."
"I find that if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene—or, as they say in New York , sophisticated."
—Tom Lehrer
Thomas Andrew Lehrer (born April 9, 1928) is an American satirist who managed to achieve remarkable popularity and impact on popular culture, despite having produced only three albums' worth of material in the 1950s and '60s before retiring to a life in academia as a mathematician. Lehrer's pieces often take the form of witty parodies of various popular song forms. Other common themes in his work are disapproval of nuclear war, Cold War politics, and folk singing . Of course, he undercuts that last by putting forth as perfect a rendition of such songs as can be done with only a piano ("imagine that I am playing an 88-string guitar", as he said in his intro to "The Folk Song Army," on his 1965 album That Was the Year That Was) as accompaniment.
He also wrote 10 songs for the children's educational series The Electric Company (1971) .
Lehrer is still alive, and occasionally performing. At the 80th birthday party of a fellow mathematician and friend Irving "Kaps" Kaplansky, he dusted off a handful of mathematics songs
to an appreciative crowd of students and fellow mathematicians.
"Weird Al" Yankovic cites Tom Lehrer as one of his inspirations, while Dr Demento has described him as "the greatest musical satirist of the 20th Century." Lehrer's own inspirations notably include Gilbert and Sullivan , Danny Kaye and Cole Porter . He also claimed to have invented the Jell-O shot
as a way of circumventing military base regulations, though the idea goes at least as far back as the 1862 book, How to Mix Drinks or The Bon-Vivant�s Companion.
More of Tom Lehrer (1959)
An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer (1959)note A live album with the material from More of...
Revisited (1960)note A live album with the material from Songs by...; the CD version also contains two songs he wrote for The Electric Company (1971)
That Was the Year That Was (1965)
Mr. Lehrer's works display examples of:
Acting Unnatural : In one of Tom Lehrer's compositions for The Electric Company (1971) , "L-Y", this trope comes into play in the second verse. Enhanced by the animation for the song, in which the "secret agent man" leans against the safe he is trying to open while playing with a yo-yo and smiling ear to ear.
You're a secret agent man
Who's after the secret plan
How do you act so they don't know you're a spy?
Ah-normally ( Not-So-Innocent Whistle ) Normally (whistles again)
Normal... L-Y!
Alma Mater Song :
"Bright College Days".
"Fight Fiercely, Harvard". It is actually a parody of a Football Fight Song , but Harvard is Tom Lehrer's alma mater.
Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking : The final verse of "The Irish Ballad":
And when at last the police came by
Her little pranks she did not deny
For to do so she would have had to lie...
And lyin' she knew was a sin.
Inverted with the the review-quotes he included on at least one of his album covers:
"More desperate than amusing" � New York Herald Tribune
"He seldom has any point to make except obvious ones" � The Christian Science Monitor
"Mr. Lehrer's muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste." � New York Times
"Obvious, jejune, and remarkably unsophisticated." � London Evening Standard
From the introduction to "In Old Mexico":
He majored in animal husbandry until they... caught him at it one day.
From "I Got It from Agnes":
She then gave it to Daniel, whose spaniel has it now.
Bilingual Bonus : In the recorded version of "Lobachevsky", the reviews from Pravda and Izvestia are, respectively: "There once was a king who had a pet flea," the first line of Mussorgsky's "Song of the Flea", and "I must go where the Tsar himself goes on foot," a Russian idiom meaning "I have to go to the bathroom". Lehrer usually substituted nonsense when he performed before an audience whose members were likely to include Russian speakers.
Black Comedy : Lots and lots of examples, but "I Got It from Agnes" has this doozy: "Max got it from Edith, who gets it every spring/ She got it from her daddy, who just gives her everything ..."
It gets better : "She gave it to Daniel whose spaniel has it now/ Our dentist's even got it and we're still wondering how ."
Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick :
"My Home Town" begins with idyllic reminiscences of his home town and quickly slides into recalling "the guy who took a knife/and monogrammed his wife".
"Be Prepared" exhorts Boy Scouts to be prepared for all situations...such as smoking dope and pimping out their own sisters.
"I Hold Your Hand in Mine" sounds romantic, up to the lyrics "My joy would be complete, dear/If only you were here/But still I keep your hand/As a precious souvenir." And: "I hold your hand in mine, dear/I press it to my lips/I take a healthy bite from your dainty fingertips".
His song "The Old Dope Peddler" sings admiringly of the cornerstone of any neighborhood, the Heroin Dealer. In more recent interviews, he's admitted that in retrospect he finds that particular song "chilling".
"I Wanna Go Back to Dixie" does this as well. It's mostly an almost sweet, happy song about wanting to go back home...but it's after he includes the line "Ol' times there are not forgotten/Whuppin' slaves and selling cotton" that it gets dark.
"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" starts off like a lovely ode to springtime and young love, but when he suddenly starts the chorus, the song takes a major left turn into this trope, along with some Lyrical Dissonance because of the song still being sung the same way, despite the lyrics. He actually tries to justify this:
We've gained notoriety
And quite a variety of unpleasant names.
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon!
Most of Tom Lehrer's songs, and their humor, stem from this trope.
Bunny-Ears Lawyer : Aside from being a quirky satirist, he's a Harvard-educated mathematician and a very accomplished pianist.
Cheap Heat : Since That Was the Year That Was was recorded in San Francisco, he sings "the breakfast garbage that you throw into the bay, they drink at lunch in San Jose" in "Pollution" and gets an enthusiastic reaction from the crowd. The songbook Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer suggests that anyone singing the song should similarly localize that line.
Competition Coupon Madness : Parodied in "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier".
Once all the Germans were warlike, and mean, but that couldn't happen again,
We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they've hardly bothered us since then!
Pretty much the entirety of "Dr. Wernher Von Braun" is this, including such gems as "'once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down, that's not my department' says Wernher Von Braun."
Filk Song : Virtually everything he wrote has been adopted as "Found Filk," notwithstanding—or perhaps in spite of—Lehrer's feelings about folk music. There have even been full Tom Lehrer Sing-Alongs.
The Film of the Book : Parodied at least twice. "Lobachevsky" describes a film version of a mathematics textbook. "Oedipus Rex", meanwhile, was a modest proposal for a title tune "which the people could hum" for the film of the eponymous play .
Filth : The subject matter of "Smut".
"I Got It from Agnes." What "it" is is never specified, but we can guess.
I love my friends, and they love me
We're just as close as we can be
And just because we really care
Whatever we get, we share.
Sadly, Lehrer did not originally get this past the radar, as his recording of it was not released until 1997 as a bonus track on Songs & More Songs by Tom Lehrer, a compilation rerelease of two albums from the 1950s. The first released recording of it was from the Tom Foolery soundtrack in 1980. However, Lehrer himself was responsible for the song's being unreleased at the time because he felt it was too racy, although he would perform it in nightclubs going back to the 1950s.
"The Elements" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin ; all of the chemical elements known at the time, set to "a possibly recognizable tune": " The Major-General's Song " from The Pirates of Penzance .
"Lobachevsky" also includes a verse that's largely a list of towns in the Soviet Union. "I have a friend in Minsk, who has a friend in Pinsk, whose friend in Omsk has friend in Tomsk with a friend in Akmolinsk!" That's not the complete list, by the way. And the return journey somehow manages to squeeze in two more cities that weren't mentioned the first time.
A Love to Dismember : "I Hold Your Hand in Mine", " The Masochism Tango ".
Lyrical Dissonance : Particularly his nuclear war songs.
Also, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" is a bright, happy, song about guess what.
Special mention has to go to "We Will All Go Together When We Go," a cheery, toe-tapping number about the complete extinction of the human race. And how that's a good thing because it means there'll be nobody left alive to feel sad about it afterward.
We will all go directly to our respective Valhallas
Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dolla's ...
"So Long Mom" is also a song about nuclear war set to a cheerful tune. The narrator is a pilot in World War III adressing his mother:
While we're attacking frontally,
Taken to Patter Song extremes in The Musical production Tomfoolery.
Namely, the original song only has the following: debility, utility, mobility, possibility, probability, virility, fertility, desirability, liability, sterility, hostility, futility, agility, facility, senility, and ability. Tomfoolery adds: compatibility, fragility, advisability, durability, inflexibility, volatility, inconceivability, humility, nobility, puerility, indispensability, versatility, irresponsibility, juvenility, adorability, and imbecility.
Painful Rhyme : Sometimes spectacularly so, and entirely deliberate . For instance, these lines from "We Will All Go Together When We Go":
When you attend a funeral
It is sad to think that sooner or l...
...ater those you love will do the same for you
And you may have found it tragic
Not to mention other adjec...
...tives to think of all the weeping they will do
Also, during "The Masochism Tango":
Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany.
That's why I'm in such exquisite ah-gony.
Also the section from "A Christmas Carol" from the Convenience Store Gift Shopping part mentioned above.
There are some truly rough ones in "(I'm Spending) Hannukah in Santa Monica":
Those Eastern winters, I can't endure 'em
So every year I pack my gear and come out here till Purim
Rosh Hashanah, I spend in Ari-zah-na
And Yom Kippur, way down in Mississippur...
Parental Bonus : While most of his songs are still funny, there are lines he says that are rather topical to the 1960s. An example would be when he mentions that Massachusetts is the only state with three senators, it's because Robert Kennedy (from Massachusetts) happened to be a New York senator at the time.
The lead-in to "In Old Mexico" includes the line "... Where he majored in animal husbandry, until they ... caught him at it one day..." which kids probably won't get, but to adults is racy even by today's standards.
Poe's Law : Lehrer responded to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger by commenting that "satire is obsolete". (Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, that's not why he quit performing. He had already quit because he was tired of touring and redoing the same songs over and over.)
Polluted Wasteland : The whole topic of "Pollution", which is a reversal of how Americans going overseas would be warned not to drink the water there, and how foreigners coming to America should prepare for it. Example:
If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!
Pollution, pollution!
He really liked that, and used to quote it often .
The liner notes for his albums would say, "If you did not enjoy this album, you will most definitely not enjoy (names of his other albums)."
There's also the fact that he teaches at and went to Harvard and wrote "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" essentially saying how wussy he thinks Harvard is. Harvard itself plays the song at their games.
Scary Musician, Harmless Music : Inverted. Lehrer looks like the math professor he is, and his tunes are all happy, upbeat piano pieces, but egad, the lyrics!
Serial Escalation : Each verse of "I Got it from Agnes" endeavours to be more controversial than the last, gradually implying Depraved Bisexual tendencies, a gay threesome , Parental Incest , a man who bred with his dog and finally that their dentist raped one of them while they were under anaesthetic.
If you've only heard one song of Lehrer's, it's probably "Silent E" from The Electric Company (1971) . Beware: Ear Worm . Or "L-Y" from the same show.
Or maybe your Chemistry teacher introduced you to "The Elements".
"The Elements" has even been used in science documentaries.
And now The Big Bang Theory .
And on the NCIS episode "Ex-File."
And frequently, Daniel Radcliffe will dust off the song from memory when he's a guest on daytime, evening, and late-night talk-shows, so does that mean Lehrer also has Diagon Alley cred to his name?
Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness : Professor Lehrer would frequently utilize very elongated words and sophisticated language.
Shout-Out : In some cases. For example, "Smut" has Shout Outs to two classic works of erotic literature, Fanny Hill and Lady Chatterley's Lover . Lehrer also joked that he'd always wanted to write a mathematics textbook because he had a title he knew would sell a million copies: Tropic of Calculus .
Various recorded versions of "Lobachevsky" credit Brigitte Bardot , Ingrid Bergman , Doris Day , and Marilyn Monroe as playing the hypotenuse in the film version of The Eternal Triangle.
Southern-Fried Private : "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier"
Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion : "The Folk Song Army" and "My Home Town" being the two best examples.
Take us to your Lieder
(sorry about that)
Take That : A lot of his songs are attacks on someone or something, but as already noted folk-singers have been a repeated target, and his "ode" to Wernher von Braun also stands out.
Take That, Audience! : At the end of "Oedipus Rex", his response to the audience applauding is "The outpatients are out in force tonight, I see".
Teen Genius : He earned a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Harvard. At 19. Yeah.
Those Wacky Nazis : As mentioned above, he references Wernher von Braun's Nazi past:
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown...
"Heh, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun!
Three Chords and the Truth : He has a dig at this trope in the spoken intro to "Folk Song Army":
"I have a song here which I realize should be accompanied on a folk instrument, in which category the piano does not, alas, qualify. So imagine, if you will, that I am playing an 88-string guitar."
Then he does it again in the song itself, where he also pokes fun at the lyrical version:
The tune don't have to be clever,
And it don't matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line.
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English,
And it don't even gotta rhyme—excuse me—rhyne.
| Tom Lehrer |
"According to hippy guru Dr. Timothy Leary, what did you do before you ""drop out?""" | An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer @ Bright Tom Lehrer Days
Poisoning Pigeons In The Park
I'd like to take you now on wings of song, as it were, and try and help you forget perhaps for a while your drab, wretched lives. Here's a song all about spring-time in general, and in particular, about one of the many delightful pastimes the coming of spring affords us all.
Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don't you? 'Course you do.
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes ev'ry Sunday a treat for me.
All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Ev'ry Sunday you'll see
As we poison the pigeons in the park.
When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun's shining bright,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Lalaalaalalaladoodiedieedoodoodoo
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.
So if Sunday you're free,
Why don't you come with me,
And we'll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we'll do
In a squirrel or two,
While we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment.
Except for the few we take home to experiment.
My pulse will be quickenin'
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon.
It just takes a smidgin!
To poison a pigeon in the park.
Bright College Days
<applause>
Thank you. For my first encore I'd like to turn to a type of song that people like myself find ourselves subjected to with increasing frequency as time goes on, and that is the college alma mater. You'll find yourself at a reunion of grads, and old undergrads, and eh... somebody will start croaking out one of these things and everyone will gradually join in - each in his own key, of course - until the place is just soggy with nostalgia. Well, a typical such song might be called Bright College Days, and might go like this.
Bright college days, oh, carefree days that fly,
To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high.
Let's drink a toast as each of us recalls
Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls.
Turn on the spigot,
Pour the beer and swig it,
And gaudeamus igit-ur.
Here's to parties we tossed,
To the games that we lost,
We shall claim that we won them some day.
To the girls young and sweet,
To the spacious back seat
Of our roommate's beat up Chevrolet.
To the beer and benzedrine,
To the way that the dean
Tried so hard to be pals with us all.
To excuses we fibbed,
To the papers we cribbed
From the genius who lived down the hall.
To the tables down at Morey's (wherever that may be)
Let us drink a toast to all we love the best.
We will sleep through all the lectures,
And cheat on the exams,
And we'll pass, and be forgotten with the rest.
Oh, soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife.
Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life.
<laughter>
A Christmas Carol
One very familiar type of song is the Christmas carol. Although it is perhaps a bit out of season at this time. However, I'm informed by my "disk jockey" friends - of whom I have none, that in order to get a song popular by Christmas time, you have to start plugging it well in advance. So here goes. It has always seemed to me after all. That Christmas, with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful opportunity each year to reflect on what we all most sincerely and deeply believe in. I refer of course, to money. And yet none of the Christmas carols that you hear on the radio or in the street, even attempt to capture the true spirit of Christmas as we celebrate it in the United States. That is to say the commercial spirit. So I should like to offer the following Christmas carol for next year, as being perhaps a bit more appropriate.
Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly,
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don't say "when."
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens,
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.
On Christmas Day you can't get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore,
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four.
Relations, sparing no expense'll
Send some useless old utensil,
Or a matching pen and pencil.
"Just the thing I need! How nice!"
It doesn't matter how sincere it
Is, nor how heartfelt the spirit,
Sentiment will not endear it,
What's important is the price.
Hark the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
God rest ye merry, merchants,
May you make the Yuletide pay.
Angels we have heard on high
Tell us to go out and buy!
So let the raucous sleigh bells jingle,
Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle,
Driving his reindeer across the sky.
Don't stand underneath when they fly by.
Actually I did rather well myself, this last Christmas. The nicest present I received was a gift certificate "good at any hospital for a lobotomy". Rather thoughtful.
The Elements
Now, if I may digress momentarily from the main stream of this evenings symposium, I'd like to sing a song which is completely pointless but which is something I picked up during my career as a scientist. This may prove useful to somebody some day perhaps, in a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances. It's simply the names of the chemical elements set to a possibly recognizable tune.
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium,
<gasp>
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.
Isn't that interesting?
<laughter>
I knew you would.
I hope you're all taking notes, because there's going to be a short quiz next period.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
<gasp>
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium,
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha'vard,
And there may be many others, but they haven't been discavard.
Now, may I have the next slide please?
Got carried away there.
Oedipus Rex
It seems that most of the songs that you hear these days on the radio played by the disc-jockeys, apart from Rock-n-Roll and other childrens' records, tend to be motion-picture title-songs. Apparently producers feel that we will not attend their movies unless we have the titles well drilled into our heads in advance. Of course, we don't go anyway, but at least this way they make back on the song some of what they've lost on the picture. With the rise of the motion-picture title-song, we've had such hits in the past few years as The Ten Commandments Mambo, Brothers Karamazov Cha-Cha, Incredible Shrinking Man, I Love You. I'm sure you're all familiar with these, but a few years ago a motion picture version appeared of Sophocles' immortal tragedy Oedipus Rex. This picture played only in the so-called art theaters, and it was not a financial success. And I maintain that the reason it was not a financial success...
<laughter>
(You're away ahead of me.) ...was, that it did not have a title tune, which the people could hum and which would make them actually eager to attend this particular play. So, I have attempted to supply this need and here then is the prospective title song from Oedipus Rex.
From the Bible to the popular song,
There's one theme that we find right along.
Of all ideals they hail as good,
The most sublime is Motherhood.
There was a man, oh, who it seems,
Once carried this ideal to extremes.
He loved his mother and she loved him,
And yet his story is rather grim.
There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex.
You may have heard about his odd complex.
His name appears in Freud's index
'Cause he loved his mother.
His rivals used to say quite a bit,
That as a monarch he was most unfit.
But still in all they had to admit
That he loved his mother.
Yes he loved his mother like no other.
His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother.
One thing on which you can depend is,
He sure knew who a boy's best friend is!
When he found what he had done,
He tore his eyes out one by one.
A tragic end to a loyal son
Who loved his mother.
So be sweet and kind to Mother,
Now and then have a chat.
Buy her candy or some flowers or a brand new hat.
But maybe you had better let it go at that!
Or you may find yourself with a quite complex complex,
And you may end up like Oedipus.
I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus,
Than end up like old Oedipus Rex.
The out-patients are out in force tonight, I see.
In Old Mexico
Now, I'm sure you're all aware that this week is national gall-bladder week. So as sort of an educational feature at this point I thought I would acquaint you with some of the results of my recent researches into the career of the late doctor Samuel Gall, inventor of the gall-bladder. Which certainly ranks as one of the more important technological advances since the invention of the joy-buzzer and the dribble-glass. Doctor Gall's faith in his invention was so dramatically vindicated last year, as you no doubt recall, when, for the first time in history, in a nation-wide poll the gall-bladder was voted among the top ten organs. His educational career began interestingly enough in agricultural school, where he majored in animal husbandry, until they caught him at it one day. Whereupon he switched to the field of medicine in which field he also won renown as the inventor of gargling. Which prior to that time had been practiced only furtively by a remote tribe in the Andes who passed the secret down from father to son as part of their oral tradition. He soon became a specialist, specializing in diseases of the rich. He was therefore able to retire at an early age. To the land we all dream about, sunny Mexico of course. The last part of which is completely irrelevant, as with the whole thing I guess, except, it's a rather sneaky way of getting into this next type of popular song which is one of those things about that magic, and romantic land south of the border.
When it's fiesta time in Guadalajara,
Then I long to be back once again
In Old Mexico.
Where we lived for today,
Never giving a thought to tomara.
To the strumming of guitars,
In a hundred grubby bars
I would whisper "Te amo."
The mariachis would serenade,
And they would not shut up till they were paid.
We ate, we drank, and we were merry,
And we got typhoid and dysentery.
But best of all, we went to the Plaza de Toros.
Now whenever I start feeling morose,
I revive by recalling that scene.
And names like Belmonte, Dominguin, and Manolete,
If I live to a hundred and eighty,
I shall never forget what they mean.
(For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this
world than the sight of a lone man facing singlehandedly
a half a ton of angry pot roast!)
Out came the matador,
Who must have been potted or
Slightly insane, but who looked rather bored.
Then the picadors of course,
Each one on his horse,
I shouted "Ole!" ev'ry time one was gored.
I cheered at the bandilleros' display,
As they stuck the bull in their own clever way,
For I hadn't had so much fun since the day
My brother's dog Rover
(Rover was killed by a Pontiac. And it was done with
such grace and artistry that the witnesses awarded the
driver both ears and the tail - but I digress.)
The moment had come,
We knew there'd be blood on the sand pretty soon.
The crowd held its breath,
Hoping that death
Would brighten an otherwise dull afternoon.
At last, the matador did what we wanted him to.
He raised his sword and his aim was true.
In that moment of truth I suddenly knew
That someone had stolen my wallet.
Now it's fiesta time in Akron, Ohio,
But it's back to old Guadalajara I'm longing to go.
Far away from the strikes of the A.F. of L. and C.I.O.
How I wish I could get back
To the land of the wetback,
And forget the Alamo,
Clementine
I should like to consider the folk song, and expand briefly on a theory I have held for some time, to the effect that the reason most folk songs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people. If professional songwriters had written them instead, things might have turned out considerably differently. For example, consider the old favorite, with which, I'm sure, you're all familiar, "Clementine", you know:
In a cavern, in a canyon,
dadada dadadada...
A song with no recognizable merit whatsoever, and imagine what might have happened if, for example, Cole Porter had tried writing this song. The first verse might have come out like this:
In a cavern, in a canyon,
Excava-ha-ha-hating for a mine,
Far away from the boom-boom-boom of the city
She was so pretty, what a pity, Clementine.
Oh Clementine, can't you tell from the howls of me
This love of mine calls to you from the bowels of me.
Are you discerning the returning
Of this churning, burning, yearning for you-oo-oo... ah-ah...
Well, supposing at this point that Mozart (or one of that crowd) had tried writing a verse, the next one might have come out as a baritone aria from an Italian opera, somewhat along these lines:
Era legera e come un fairy
E suo shoes numero nine,
Herring bo-ho-ho-hoxes senza to-ho-ho-hopses,
Sandalae per Clementina si, per Clementina si,
Per Clementina sandalae, per Clementina sandalae, per Clementine.
Clehementina, Clehementina, Clehe-he-mentina...
Herring boxes senza topses sandalae per Clementina,
Herring boxes senza topses sandalae per Clementina,
Che sciagura Clementina, che sciagura Clementina, cara Clementina, cara
Clementina-na-na-na-na-na-na-na!
Supposing at this rather dramatic juncture in the narrative, one of our modern "cool school" of composers had tried writing a verse, the next one might have come out like this:
Drove those ducklings to the water
Yeah brach! doddley doo doo uh ah!
Ev'ry morning like 9am
Ooh pah! de do de do do do, biddley da!
Got hung up on a splinter, got a-hung up on a splinter
Cloo ge mop! Huh huh!
Do de do de do do do
Fell into the foamy brine, dig that crazy Clementine, man!
To end on a happy note, one can always count on Gilbert and Sullivan for a rousing finale, full of words and music and signifying nothing.
That I missed her depressed her young sister named Esther,
This mister to pester she tried.
Now her pestering sister's a festering blister,
You're best to resist her, say I.
The mister resisted, the sister persisted,
I kissed her, all loyalty slipped.
When she said I could have her, her sister's cadaver
Must surely have turned in its crypt.
Yes, yes, yes, yes!
But I love she and she loves me.
Enraptured are the both of we.
Yes I love she and she loves I
And will through all eternity!
See what I mean?
It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier
I have only comparatively recently emerged from the United States army so that I am now of course in the radio-active reserve and, the usual jokes about the army aside, one of the many fine things one has to admit is the way that the army has carried the American democratic ideal to its logical conclusion in the sense that not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed, and color, but also on the grounds of ability. Be that as it may, some of you may recall the publicity a few years ago about the army's search for an official army song to be the counterpart of the navy's Anchors Away and the airforce's Up In The Air Junior Birdman songs. I was in basic training at the time and I recall our platoon sergeant, who was an unfrocked marine. Actually, the change of service had come as quite a blow to him because it meant that he had to memorize a new serial number which took up most of his time. At any rate I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time. Well, I submitted the following song which is called It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier which, I think, demonstrates the proper spirit you'll agree. However, the fact that it did not win the contest, I can ascribe only to blatant favoratism on the part of the judges.
The heart of every man in our platoon must swell with pride,
For the nation's youth, the cream of which is marching at his side.
For the fascinating rules and regulations that we share,
And the quaint and curious costumes that we're called upon to wear.
Now Al joined up to do his part defending you and me.
He wants to fight and bleed and kill and die for liberty.
With the hell of war he's come to grips,
Policing up the filter tips,
It makes a fella proud to be a soldier!
When Pete was only in the seventh grade, he stabbed a cop.
He's real R.A. material and he was glad to swap
His switchblade and his old zip gun
For a bayonet and a new M-1.
It makes a fella proud to be a soldier!
After Johnny got through basic training, he
Was a soldier through and through when he was done.
It's effects were so well rooted,
That the next day he saluted
A Good Humor man, an usher, and a nun.
Now Fred's an intellectual, brings a book to every meal.
He likes the deep philosophers, like Norman Vincent Peale.
He thinks the army's just the thing,
Because he finds it broadening.
It makes a fella proud to be a soldier!
Now Ed flunked out of second grade, and never finished school.
He doesn't know a shelter half from an entrenching tool.
But he's going to be a big success.
He heads his class at OCS.
It makes a fella proud to be a soldier!
Our old mess sergeant's taste buds had been shot off in the war.
But his savory collations add to our esprit de corps.
To think of all the marvelous ways
They're using plastics nowadays.
It makes a fella proud to be a soldier!
Our lieutenant is the up-and-coming type.
Played with soldiers as a boy you just can bet.
It is written in the stars
He will get his captain's bars,
But he hasn't got enough box tops yet.
Our captain has a handicap to cope with, sad to tell.
He's from Georgia, and he doesn't speak the language very well.
He used to be, so rumor has, the Dean of Men at Alcatraz.
It makes a fella proud to be,
When as a kid I vowed to be,
One ought to be allowed to be
A soldier. (At ease!)
She's My Girl
And now to the love song. I'm sure you're familiar with love songs on the order of He's Just My Bill, my man, my Joe, my Max, and so on where the girl who sings them tells you that, although the man she loves is anti-social, alcoholic, physically repulsive, or just plain unsanitary, nevertheless she is his because he is hers, or something like that. But as far as I know there has never been a popular song from the analogous male point of view, that is to say, of a man who finds himself in love with, or in this case married to, a girl who has nothing whatsoever to recommend her. I have attempted to fill this need. The song is called She's My Girl.
Sharks gotta swim, and bats gotta fly,
I gotta love one woman till I die.
To Ed or Dick or Bob
She may be just a slob,
But to me, well,
In winter the bedroom is one large ice cube,
And she squeezes the toothpaste from the middle of the tube.
Her hairs in the sink
Have driven me to drink,
But she's my girl, she's my girl, she's my girl,
And I love her.
The girl that I lament for,
The girl my money's spent for,
The girl my back is bent for,
The girl I owe the rent for,
The girl I gave up Lent for
Is the girl that heaven meant for me.
So though for breakfast she makes coffee that tastes like shampoo,
I come home for dinner and get peanut butter stew,
Or if I'm in luck,
It's broiled hockey puck,
But, oh well, what the hell,
She's my girl,
The Masochism Tango
Another familiar type of lovesong is the passionate or firy variety, usually in tango tempo, in which the singer exhorts his partner to haunt him and taunt him and, if at all possible, to consume him with a kiss of fire. This particular illustration of this genre is called The Masochism Tango.
I ache for the touch of your lips, Dear,
But much more for the touch of your whips, Dear.
You can raise welts
As we dance to the Masochism Tango.
Let our love be a flame, not an ember,
Say it's me that you want to dismember.
Blacken my eye,
Set fire to my tie,
As we dance to the Masochism Tango.
At your command
Before you here I stand,
My heart is in my hand. Ecch!
It's here that I must be.
My heart entreats,
Just hear those savage beats,
And go put on your cleats
And come and trample me.
Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany,
That's why I'm in such exquisite agony.
My soul is on fire,
It's aflame with desire,
Which is why I perspire
When we tango.
In your left castanet, Love,
I can feel the pain yet, Love,
Ev'ry time I hear drums.
And I envy the rose
That you held in your teeth, Love,
With the thorns underneath, Love,
Sticking into your gums.
Your eyes cast a spell that bewitches.
The last time I needed twenty stitches
To sew up the gash
That you made with your lash,
As we danced to the Masochism Tango.
Bash in my brain,
And make me scream with pain,
Then kick me once again,
And say we'll never part.
I know too well
So, Darling, if you smell
Something burning, it's my heart.
Excuse me!
Take your cigarette from its holder,
And burn your initials in my shoulder.
Fracture my spine,
And swear that you're mine,
As we dance to the Masochism Tango.
We Will All Go Together When We Go
I am reminded at this point of a fellow I used to know who's name was Henry, only to give you an idea of what an individualist he was he spelt it HEN3RY. The 3 was silent, you see. Henry was financially independent having inherited his father's tar-and-feather business and was therefore able to devote his full time to such intellectual pursuits as writing. I particularly remember a heart-warming novel of his about a young necropheliac who finally achieved his boy-hood ambition by becoming coroner.
<moderate laughter>
The rest of you can look it up when you get home. In addition to writing he indulged in a good deal of philosophizing. Like so many contemporary philosophers he especially enjoyed giving helpful advice to people who were happier than he was. One particular bit of advice which I recall, which is the reason I bring up this whole, dreary story is something he said once before they took him away to the Massachussetts state home for the bewilderd. He said: "Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." It's always seems to me that this is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need in these trying times of crisis and universal broo-ha-ha, and so with this in mind I have here a modern positive dynamic uplifting song in the tradition of the great old revival hymns. This one might more accurately be termed a survival hymn.
When you attend a funeral,
It is sad to think that sooner or
Later those you love will do the same for you.
And you may have thought it tragic,
Not to mention other adjec-
Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do.
But don't you worry.
No more ashes, no more sackcloth.
And an armband made of black cloth
Will some day never more adorn a sleeve.
For if the bomb that drops on you
Gets your friends and neighbors too,
There'll be nobody left behind to grieve.
And we will all go together when we go.
What a comforting fact that is to know.
Universal bereavement,
Yes, we all will go together when we go.
We will all go together when we go.
All suffuse with an incandescent glow.
No one will have the endurance
To collect on his insurance,
Lloyd's of London will be loaded when they go.
Oh we will all fry together when we fry.
We'll be french fried potatoes by and by.
There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie,
Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.
Down by the old maelstrom,
There'll be a storm before the calm.
And we will all bake together when we bake.
There'll be nobody present at the wake.
With complete participation
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What is Nelson Mandela's middle name? | Names – Nelson Mandela Foundation
Names
The late Mr Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is sometimes referred to by other names.
Each name has its own special meaning and story. When you use them you should know what you are saying and why. So here is a brief explanation of each name:
Rolihlahla
This was Mr Mandela’s birth name: it is an isiXhosa name that means “pulling the branch of a tree”, but colloquially it means “troublemaker”. His father gave him this name.
Nelson
This name was given to him on his first day at school by his teacher, Miss Mdingane. Giving African children English names was a custom among Africans in those days and was influenced by British colonials who could not easily, and often would not, pronounce African names. It is unclear why Miss Mdingane chose the name “Nelson” for Mr Mandela.
Madiba
This is the name of the clan of which Mr Mandela was a member. A clan name is much more important than a surname as it refers to the ancestor from which a person is descended. Madiba was the name of a Thembu chief who ruled in the Transkei in the 18th century. It is considered very polite to use someone’s clan name.
Tata
This isiXhosa word means “father” and is a term of endearment that many South Africans use for Mr Mandela. Since he was a father figure to many, they call him Tata regardless of their own age.
Khulu
Mr Mandela is often referred to as “Khulu”, which means great, paramount, grand. The speaker means “Great One” when referring to Mr Mandela in this way. It is also a shortened form of the isiXhosa word “Tat'omkhulu” for “grandfather”.
Dalibhunga
This is the name Mr Mandela was given at the age of 16 once he had undergone initiation, the traditional Xhosa rite of passage into manhood. It means “creator or founder of the council” or “convenor of the dialogue”.
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Home » Biographies » Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
Biographical information
Synopsis:
Lawyer, anti-apartheid activist, banned person, ANC member, SACP member, MK Commander in Chief, 1956 Treason Trialist, Robben Island prisoner, Nobel Peace Prize winner and first elected President of a democratic South Africa.
First name:
Mvezo, a village near Mthatha, Eastern Cape, South Africa
Date of death:
Houghton, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Position Held:
President (1991 - 1997) Deputy President (1952 - 1958) (1985 - 1991)
Lives of Courage
Ban information:
Act No. 44 of 1950 Sec. 9 (1)<br><em>Issued Period(s)</em> [1956 to March 1961 1/10/1967] [28 April 1967]
Contents
Awards 2000s
In November 2009, the United Nations General Assembly declared, 18 July Nelson Mandela International Day, to honour his birthday. This is the first time that the United Nations (UN) has designated a day dedicated to a person.
The UN has also asked the people of the world to set aside 67 minutes of their day to undertake a task that would contribute to bringing joy or relief to the millions of disadvantaged and vulnerable people of the world.
Mandela’s fame rests on his role as a revolutionary leader who spent nearly seven decades of his life in the struggle against white minority rule and for a free and democratic non-racial society. His greatness lies in the fact that he is a visionary, a democrat and international political leader who exercises his influence and leadership with humility and respect for his colleagues and opponents alike. He is, above all, a man who is stubborn in his resolve to fight all forms of discrimination, injustice and inequality.
South African History Online’s contribution to celebrating the life and times of Nelson Mandela has been, since 2008, to add to the Mandela feature on our website. Together, with the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s website, this constitutes one of the most authoritative and up to date online resources on Mandela.
2012 marks the 100th year anniversary of the African National Congress (ANC) . Our aim is to create a feature that will not only look at the liberation struggle but also celebrate the achievements of the peoples and organisations that shaped our freedom and democracy.
On the 5th of December Mandela passed away at 8.50pm at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg, surrounded by his wife, Graça Machel and members of his family.
Childhood and education (1918-1930s) ↵
Mandela in Umtata, in his first suit, presented to him by the Regent, Jongintaba. © Mayibuye Centre
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is the son of Nonqaphi Nosekeni and Henry Mgadla Mandela, a chief and chief councillor to the paramount chief of the Thembu and a member of the Madiba clan.
Mandela’s middle name is Rolihlahla, which literally means ‘pulling the branch of a tree’, or colloquially, ‘troublemaker’. His was given the name Nelson by his white missionary school teacher.
In 1930 when his father died, Mandela was placed under the care of his father’s cousin, David Dalindyebo , the acting paramount chief of the Thembu. Mandela was the first member of his family to attend high school and when he matriculated at Healdtown Methodist Boarding School in 1938 he formed part of a very small number of black pupils who had attained a high school education in the country.
The patronage of Mandela’s relative the paramount chief resulted in Mandela joining the chief’s sons, Justice when they were sent to the only university for Blacks (African, Coloured and Indian) at Fort Hare near Alice in the Eastern Cape . At Fort Hare, Mandela befriended African, Indian and Coloured students, many of whom went on to play leading roles in the South African liberation struggle and in the anti-colonial struggle in some African countries. One of Mandela’s fellow students was Oliver Tambo . They would become business partners, close comrades and lifelong friends.
Mandela did not complete his degree at Fort Hare. He was involved in a dispute related to elections of the Student Representative Council. Mandela refused to take his seat on the council because he disagreed with the way the elections were run. After he rejected the university’s ultimatum to take the seat to which the was elected or face expulsion, the university gave him until the end of the student holidays to think the matter through, but he felt there were principles at stake that could not be compromised. He informed his guardian that he was not going back to Fort Hare and stubbornly stood his ground when the Regent, Jongintaba , pleaded with him.
The Regent had coincidently also made arrangements for his son Justice and Mandela to marry two young women chosen by the Regent. Both young men decided to defy the Regent, stole two of his cattle and used them to raise funds to secretly leave for Johannesburg .
In Johannesburg, they contacted a ”homeboy“ who was employed at a gold mine as an Induna. He gave them shelter and jobs in the mine compound, but within days both were dismissed when the Induna learnt they had defied the chief and had left the Great Place without the chief’s permission.
Mandela found temporary lodging in Alexandra townships and communicated to the Regent his regret about defying and disrespecting him. Mandela convinced the Regent that he wanted to further his study in Johannesburg and received the Regent’s consent to remain in Johannesburg as well as financial support.
A few months into his stay in Johannesburg Mandela was introduced to a young estate agent named Walter Sisulu who immediately took him under his wing. Mandela moved in with Sisulu and his mother in their home in Orland, Soweto . Sisulu became Mandela’s lifelong friend, political mentor and closest political confident.
Sisulu found Mandela a white firm of attorneys who were prepared to give him a job and register him as an articled clerk , an exceedingly rare offer in segregated South Africa. While working at the firm Mandela enrolled for a BA degree in law at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) . At Wits he befriended fellow students I.C. Meer , J. Singh , Joe Slovo and Ruth First, all of whom were members of the South African Communist Party . Mandela became very close to I.C. Meer and J.N. Singh, both of whom played leading roles under the leadership of Dr. Yusuf Dadoo in making the Transvaal and Natal Indian Congress becoming mass-based and militant organisations. Both Meer and Singh served prison terms during the 1946 Indian Passive Resistance campaign .
An African Nationalist comes of age (1940s) ↵
In 1944 Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC) and soon became part of a group of young intellectuals that included Walter Sisulu , Oliver Tambo , Anton Lembede , and Ashley Mda . The group articulated its dissatisfaction with the way the ANC was being run, critiqued its policy of appeasement, and became the driving force in the formation of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) in April of the same year. Influenced by the militant action of the Natal and Transvaal Indian Congresses’ Passive Resistance campaign of 1946 and the mineworkers strike, the ANC Youth League began drafting what came to be known as the Programme of Action for the ANC.
Nelson Mandela and Evelyn Mase at Walter Sisulu's wedding in 1944. Photograph: Eli Weinberg.
On 15 July 1944 Mandela married Evelyn Mase, a nurse and Walter Sisulu's cousin. The newlyweds moved to live with Evelyn's married sister and became neighbours with EsÁ¢kia (Es'kia) Mphalele , a teacher and later a noted scholar, journalist, writer and activist. In 1945 Evelyn Mandela gave birth to the couple's first child, a boy named Madiba Thembekile (Thembi for short). They were able to get a council house in Orlando, No 8115 which had three rooms, but neither electricity nor an inside toilet. Mandela's younger sister, Nomabandla (Leaby), came to live with them and enrolled at Orlando High School. Evelyn was the breadwinner in the family while Mandela studied law at Wits where he devoted much of his time to politics.
In 1948 the National Party narrowly won a Whites-only national election on the platform of a new policy of total racial segregation called apartheid (which literally means apartness). By that stage, Mandela was National Secretary of the ANCYL. Mandela, Sisulu and Tambo began lobbying the ANC to embark on militant mass action against a plethora of new laws that the Nationalists were drawing up to give effect to apartheid. The lobbying paid off as at the ANC’s annual conference in December 1949, the Youth League’s Programme of Action adopted by the parent organization. Perhaps more importantly for the influence of the ANCYL, Walter Sisulu was elected Secretary General of the ANC.
From its inception, the ANCYL was heavily influenced by the strident African nationalism espoused by Anton Lembede, the League’s foremost ideologue. Mandela was a strong advocate of the Lembede line that the ANC should stand on its own and not enter into alliances with the Indian congress, the Communists Party or the Non-European Unity Movement . The Youth League’s policy of going it alone brought it into conflict with the ANC and led to the League opposing some of the most important campaigns of the 1940s, including the Mine Workers Strike, the Passive Resistance Campaign and the cooperation pact signed between the ANC President Dr Xuma and the South African Indian Congress (the ‘Doctor’s Pact’ ).
In 1950, when the Communist Party, the Transvaal and Natal Indian Congresses, and the ANC jointly endorsed the Free Speech Convention, Mandela was strident in his criticism, believing that the endorsement undermined the ANC Programme of Action and the ANC’s position as the leading liberation organisation. Notwithstanding his Africanist political stance, Mandela did not allow the issue to influence his personal relationships with Indian, White and African communist leaders.
A pivotal moment came in May 1950. The ANC, Communist Party and South African Indian Congress jointly called a national strike to protest the proposed banning of the Communist Party. The 'May Day' (1 May) strike was immensely successful and the government responded with unrestrained brutality. This experience was the spark that convinced Mandela that freedom would only come from forging a broad-based non-racial alliance against apartheid and white minority rule. Confronted by opposition from the ANC’s Africanist wing, Mandela stuck by this new position and together with Tambo and Communist Party general secretary Moses Kotane , they joined their friend Walter Sisulu in forging what came to be known as the Congress Alliance .
In 1952 the Congress Alliance embarked on the first of its national campaigns against a select number of Apartheid governments laws. The campaigns were modelled on the earlier passive resistance campaigns of the 1940s. In 1952 the Congress Alliance launched the Defiance Campaign , which continued for two years. While the Defiance Campaign did not succeed in changing any laws, the campaign transformed the ANC into a mass-based and militant organization and the largest of the liberation movements, growing from 7000 to over 100 000 by the time the campaign ended in 1954. The Defiance Campaign and the increasing stature of the ANC changed the nature of the South African freedom struggle.
'Volunteer in chief'- A decade of defiance (1950s) ↵
Mandela burns his passbook in an act of Defiance against apartheid pass laws. Photograph: Eli Weinberg, UWC Robben Island Mayibuye Archives.
During the Defiance Campaign , Mandela emerged as one of the most influential leaders of the liberation struggle, alongside Walter Sisulu and Chief Albert Luthuli . Mandela was the public spokesperson and leader of the campaign and was appointed National 'Volunteer-in-chief'. Together with Maulvi Cachalia of the Indian Congress, Mandela travelled around South Africa enlisting volunteers to defy apartheid laws. As a consequence, both were charged with recruiting and training ‘congress volunteers’.
The campaign officially began on 26 June 1952 when 51 volunteers led by President of the Transvaal Indian Congress Nana Sita and Patrick Duncan entered Boksburg Native Location in defiance of the law that required non-Africans to have permits to enter an African location. In the course of the campaign thousands of volunteers served harsh prison terms, but Mandela was instructed not to break the law or court arrest to ensure that the campaign would not be rendered leaderless should all the leaders be imprisoned at the same time. He was nevertheless arrested on several occasions during the course of the campaign and released after short stints in jail.
Nelson Mandela pictured in 1952 at the offices of his legal partnership with Oliver Tambo. Photographer: JÁ¼rgen Schadeberg
At the height of the Defiance Campaign, the ANC recognised the likelihood that the organisation would be banned as the Communist Party had been three years earlier. Asked by the ANC executive to devise a contingency plan for such an eventuality, Mandela drew up what became known as the 'M Plan' , which provided for the creation of street-based cell structures. During the same period, Mandela become more and more uneasy with the policy of non-violent resistance, but was held back by the ANC leadership’s strong advocacy of non-violence.
In December 1952, Tambo joined Mandela as a partner in his legal practice - the first African-run legal partnership in the country. During the next two years Mandela and Tambo worked together in their legal practice defending hundreds of people affected by apartheid laws. Their practice became very successful.
During the same month Mandela and 19 other leading congress alliance activists were arrested and charged under the Suppression of Communism Act . Mandela, like all the others, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment with hard labour, suspended for three years. He was also served with a banning order that prohibited him from attending gatherings for six months and from leaving the Johannesburg magisterial district. For the following nine years his banning orders were repeatedly renewed.
Mandela with Moses Kotane outside the Old Synagogue, Pretoria, on the day when the last of the accused were finally acquitted. Photograph: Jurgen Schardenberg
Although Mandela was officially the deputy national president of the ANC, he was not legally allowed to play any role in ANC activities because of his banning order. However, he continued to meet clandestinely with the ANC and Congress Alliance leadership. Thus, he played a key role in the planning of all the major campaigns during the 1950s. The ANC-led Alliance called off the Defiance Campaign at the end of 1953 after the government passed new legislation proposing very harsh sentences for people breaking apartheid laws.
One of the most important Congress Alliance campaigns was the Freedom Charter campaign . Mandela along with his banned colleagues Dr. Yusuf Dadoo , Moses Kotane and Joe Slovo played a leading role. The campaign culminated in the convening of the historic Congress of the People on 25-26th June 1955 in Kliptown near Soweto. However Mandela, Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada could not attend the conference because their banning orders prohibited their participation. They viewed the proceedings of the Kliptown conference from the rooftop of a nearby Indian-owned shop. At the end of 1955, while Mandela was imprisoned for two weeks, his wife moved out of their home. He found his house empty when he was released on bail.
Mandela was one of 156 African, Indian, Coloured and White men and women leaders in the Congress Alliance who were arrested and charged with Treason following a dramatic police raid in December 1956. For four-and-a-half years the Treason Trial dragged on with charges being periodically withdrawn against some of the accused.
In 1958, half way through the trial, Mandela married Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela , a social worker 16 years younger than him from Bizana in the Transkei.
In March 1961, Justice Rumpff found Mandela and the remaining 36 accused not guilty and discharged them.
Revolutionary Guerrilla Leader (1960s) ↵
In 1959, with the Treason Trial still in progress, the ANC planned an anti-pass law campaign to begin on 31 March 1960. However, the campaign was pre-empted by the newly formed Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) , which called for mass anti-pass protests on 21 March 1960. Heavily armed police outside a police station in the small southern Transvaal township of Sharpeville opened fire on a peaceful gathering of protesters killing 69 people and wounding more than 200 others, many of whom were shot in the back as they fled. The Sharpeville Massacre changed the face of South African politics. On 30 March 1960 the government declared a state of emergency , Mandela and 2000 other political activists across all liberation movements were detained.
Mandela addressing the All in African Conference at Plessislaer Hall in Pietermaritzburg in 1961. Source: Baileys African History Archive (BAHA)
On 8 April 1960 the government banned the ANC and PAC. The banning of political organisations and the shutting down of space for political protest prompted Mandela to begin seriously thinking about the armed struggle. The discussion to take up arms against the apartheid regime was also being discussed independently by activists detained under the emergency regulations as well as some leaders who had gone underground across all the remaining anti-apartheid groupings. The underground Communist Party had already smuggled a small group of people out of the country to receive military training in China.
Mandela and Tambo’s law firm had virtually collapsed, and Mandela rarely saw his family because of his semi-clandestine life. In August, when the state of emergency was lifted, Tambo was smuggled out of South Africa to establish an ANC office abroad.
With the release of political detainees, Mandela immediately became involved in discussions about convening a national convention. He was made secretary of the organising committee of the All-In Africa Conference and secretly travelled around the country preparing for the meeting. The All-In Africa Conference was held in Pietermaritzburg on 22 March 1961 and was attended by 1400 representatives from 145 political, cultural, sports and religious organisations. Mandela's banning order expired on the eve of the conference. Anticipating that his ban would be renewed, he went into hiding and made a dramatic appearance at the conference, where he made his first public speech since his first banning in 1952.
The conference appointed him honorary secretary of the All-In African National Action Council, whose task was to organise a three day stay-at-home on 29, 30 and 31 May 1961 to coincide with the proclamation of South Africa as a Republic on 31 May. This was the last public meeting he addressed for the next 29 years. On 3 April 1961 Mandela issued a statement on behalf of the All-in African National Action Council calling on students and scholars to support the stay-at-home campaign.
Immediately after being acquitted in the Treason Trial which began in 1956 Mandela went underground. He and Sisulu secretly travelled around the country organising the strike, and Mandela (nicknamed the Black Pimpernel at the time) remained a fugitive for the next 17 months. Mandela called off the stay-at-home protest on its second day after massive police repression of strikers. The failure of this action was important in changing his political thinking and he became more committed to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation, also known as MK) as the military wing of the ANC.
Nelson Mandela, second from left, with members of the National Liberation Front in Algeria, 1962. Source: Pretoria News Library
At about this time, Mandela and some of his colleagues concluded that violent resistance in South Africa was inevitable and that it was unreasonable for African leaders to continue with their policy of non-violent protest when the government met their demands with force. The decision to form MK, however, was not made by the ANC alone, but by a small leadership group comprised of Mandela, Sisulu and others representing the ANC, and the members of the Communist Party, including Joe Slovo. Thus, MK was jointly formed and launched by the ANC and Communist Party. Mandela was appointed MK's first Commander-in-Chief. The decision to form MK was endorsed by a secret meeting of the Congress Alliance chaired by Chief Albert Luthuli .
On 11 January 1962 Mandela travelled under a pseudonym to Botswana and made a surprise appearance at the Pan-African Freedom Movement Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia . His address to the conference on 3 February, a few weeks after the first sabotage attacks by MK, explained and justified the turn to violent action.
During this trip he received 'guerrilla' training in Morocco by Algerian freedom fighters before travelling to London where he met with leaders of British opposition parties. He returned to South Africa in July and he travelled to Tongaat in Natal to meet with banned ANC President Albert Luthuli. After visiting friends in Durban, he began driving back with his white friend Cecil Williams to Johannesburg disguised as his chauffeur. On 5 August they were stopped and arrested just outside the Natal midlands town of Howick. It is alleged that the police were informed of Mandela’s movements by an American CIA agent based in Durban. Mandela was tried in Pretoria's Old Synagogue and in November 1962 sentenced to five years' imprisonment for incitement and illegally leaving the country. He was imprisoned at Pretoria Central Prison where he met his old friend and political opponent Robert Sobukwe , the leader of the breakaway PAC. Mandela spent seven months at Pretoria Central Prison before he was transferred to Robben Island .
In July police raided the underground safe house of the South African Communist Party at Lilliesleaf Farm , Rivonia. Among those arrested Walter Sisulu , Govan Mbeki , Raymond Mhlaba , Ahmed Kathrada , Dennis Goldberg and Lionel Bernstein . Police found Mandela's diary of his African tour, documents relating to the manufacture of explosives, and copies of a draft memorandum entitled 'Operation Mayibuye' , which set out the stages and requirements for a 'guerrilla' war.
The Rivonia Trial , as it came to be known, commenced in October 1963. Mandela was brought from Robben Island to stand trial with the rest of his comrades on charges of sabotage, conspiracy to overthrow the government by revolution, and assisting an armed invasion of South Africa by foreign troops. Mandela and his co-accused were convinced that they would be executed. Mandela, in a statement from the dock at the end of their trial, gave a powerful address in which he explained why he had turned from non-violent protest to armed struggle. ‘ I am Prepared to Die ’, as the statement came to be known, received worldwide publicity and enhanced Mandela’s status as the acknowledged leader of the South African liberation struggle.
Prisoner for Life (1964-1990) ↵
On 12 June 1964 all the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment and held at Pretoria Central prison. That same night Mandela and his co-accused were flown by a military plane to Robben Island Prison. Upon arrival at the Robben Island airstrip, Mandela with others were handcuffed, loaded into a vehicle and taken into an old building as B Section, where he would be imprisoned, was still under construction. He was issued with prison clothes, shorts pants, no socks and sandals - not shoes. As the apartheid logic of racial segregation extended to the prison system, African prisoners received different food rations and clothes in contrast to their Indian and Coloured inmates. Mandela and his comrades were held in the Old Jail until 25 June.
Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu chat while working in the Robben Island Prison courtyard. Source: STE Publishers
Once construction of B section was complete, Mandela was relocated there. This section housed leaders and politically influential figures in single cells from across political formations, separate from other political prisoners and common law prisoners. The state feared that the influence of those in B Section might spread to other prisoners. Mandela and his comrades was held together and leaders of other South African political organisations. For instance, he shared B Section leading figures of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), African Resistance Movement (ARM) and the National Liberation Front (NLF). In addition, there was also a member of South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), Andimba Herman Toivo ya Toivo . In the 60s there were about 30 prisoners in B Section.
In January 1965 Mandela alongside other B Section prisoners were forced to work at the Lime Quarry where they dug lime which was used to pave roads. He was exposed to the glare of the lime particularly during summer resulting in eye damage despite their three year fight against prison authorities to obtain dark glasses for protection. In 1966 he took part in the hunger strike that was aimed at forcing prison officials to improve the food quality. Daily routine involved working for eight hours a day breaking slate boulders into gravel-sized stones. Prisoners were allowed one letter and one family visit every six months.
While Mandela was in prison, a number of people visited him. His wife Winnie Madikizela Mandela visited him in July 1966 after being granted permission to do so by the government on condition that she had a passbook. The visit was 30 minutes long and their conversations were monitored by prison guards. This was followed by another visit in June 1967. Then the following year in 1968 Mandela was visited by his mother, who was accompanied by his sister Mabel, his eldest daughter Makie and youngest son Makgatho. After visiting him, his mother died a few weeks later and prison authorities refused to grant him permission to bury his mother. Another tragedy struck in 1969 when his eldest son Thembi died in road accident.
There were other visits from government officials, members of Parliament and other political figures from outside South Africa. In 1976 the Minister of Prisons Jimmy Kruger visited him and offered to release him on condition that he recognized the independence of the Transkei , and that he goes to live there. Mandela out rightly rejected this overture by Kruger. That same year Helen Suzman , a member of the Progressive Party, visited him in prison. Dennis Healey a British MP from the Labour Party visited Mandela on Robben Island.
Nelson Mandela takes a break during work at Robben Island prison. Source: The Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory
In the 1970s prisoners were allowed to keep a vegetable garden after years on petitioning the authorities. Mandela took great interest in gardening. By 1975 Mandela had been reclassified as an “A” group prisoner allowing him three letters and two non contact visits. Between 1975 and 1976, Mandela worked on writing his autobiography. Mac Maharaj was due for release in 1976, and it was felt that Mandela’s biography could be smuggled out of prison by Mac and published on his 60 birthday anniversary in 1978. Mandela spent four months secretly writing his autobiography. His script was re-written by Mac Maharaj and Laloo Chiba into a very small handwriting and hidden in the Maharaj’s study books. Copies of the original manuscripts were wrapped in plastic cocoa containers and buried in the different sections of the garden. As planned, Mac smuggled copies of Mandela’s biography on his release. But, in 1977 when prison authorities began building a wall to completely isolate B Section they discovered the manuscript hidden in the garden. As a consequence, study privileges for Mandela, Kathrada and Sisulu were revoked for four years.
On 31 March 1982 Mandela, Walter Sisulu , Raymond Mhlaba and Andrew Mlangeni were transferred from Robben Island to Pollsmoor Prison , while Ahmed Kathrada, Elias Motsoaledi and Govan Mbeki were left behind. They were also finally moved to Pollsmoor in April. That same year a campaign demanding the release of all political prisoners was launched in South Africa and abroad. The campaign was titled ‘Release Nelson Mandela’ and together with the campaign for economic and other sanctions against South Africa become the symbol of the international Anti-Apartheid Movement. For several decades it was the largest social movement in the world.
With the apartheid government reeling under international pressure and mounting internal unrest, state president P.W Botha was forced to issue a statement on 31 January 1985 that he was prepared to release Mandela and other Rivonia Trialists. This was on condition that he renounced violence and the armed struggle. Mandela issued his response through a letter read by his daughter Zinzi Mandela at a United Democratic Front (UDF) organised Rally in Soweto which rejected the offer. Despite this rejection, Botha repeated his willingness to release Mandela on 15 February under the same conditions stated in the previous statement, but Mandela stood his ground. From July 1986 onwards a small group of the government and intelligence agents visited Mandela to persuade him to renounce the armed struggle. Mandela refused but did not close the door to dialogue with the government. He had contact with government representatives, first with Minister of Justice Kobie Coetzee and subsequently with Minister of Constitutional Development Gerrit Viljoen .
In 1988 the ANC and the Mass democratic Movement inside South Africa planned worldwide celebrations to mark Mandela's 70th birthday prepared for mass celebrations inside the country. The government banned all gatherings and arrested some activists and leaders of the birthday celebrations. A 12-hour music concert in London, broadcasted to over 50 countries, drew enormous attention and many foreign countries pressured the South African government to release Mandela.
On 12 August 1988 Mandela was taken to Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town for treatment for fluid on the lungs. He stayed in hospital for six weeks. It was subsequently revealed that he was suffering from tuberculosis. On 31 August he was transferred to the Constantiaberg Medi-Clinic where he was treated until 7 December. From here Mandela was moved to a house in the grounds of the Victor Verster Prison, near Paarl. On 4 July 1989, Nelson Mandela held a short meeting with State President P.W Botha at Tuynhuys in the Parliamentary precinct. Botha resigned as state president in August 1989 and was succeeded by F.W De Klerk.
In December 1989, Mandela met the new state president, FW de Klerk . Unknown to the government, Mandela had kept Oliver Tambo, the President of the ANC in exile informed of his discussions with the government through Mac Maharaj , a former Robben Island prisoner and a confidant of Mandela. Maharaj had secretly entered South African and established a highly sophisticated underground network known as ‘Operation Vula’. In addition to meeting government representatives, Mandela was allowed to meet with senior members of the UDF, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and other political groups. At this point, the government realised that apartheid was nearing its end, and opted for formal negotiations with the ANC through Mandela.
Free at last - negotiations to presidency (1994-1999) ↵
Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie, after his release from Victor Verster Prison, February 1990. Source: Getty Images
On 2 February 1990 State President FW De Klerk announced in his speech upon formally opening Parliament the unbanning of the ANC and all other proscribed political parties; and the release Mandela and all other political prisoners. On Sunday 11 February, after 27 years in prison, Mandela was released from Victor Verster prison.
That same day he addressed a mass rally in the centre of Cape Town, his first public appearance in nearly three decades, beginning his speech with, “I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all”. Subsequent welcome rallies held in Soweto and Durban drew thousands of people.
The following month Mandela travelled to Lusaka to meet the ANC's Executive Committee. He then travelled to Sweden to meet his comrade and friend Oliver Tambo, but had to cut short the rest of his proposed trip abroad as a result of increased unrest in South Africa.
In May 1990, Mandela headed an ANC delegation in talks with South African government representatives at Groote Schuur in Cape Town. At the end of the meeting a document known as the Groote Schuur Minute was signed. In June, he began a six week tour of Europe, the United Kingdom, North America and Africa. His reception by heads of state and hundreds of thousands of admirers confirmed his stature as an internationally respected leader. In July that year he attended the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia but had to leave for Kenya when he contracted pneumonia. Talks resumed with the South African government in August and in the same month Mandela visited Norway. This was followed by visits to Zambia, India and Australia.
In February 1991, Mandela met with Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi , president of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) , in an attempt to end the political violence sweeping Natal and the Transvaal. However, despite their pledges to work towards peace, the violence continued. Mandela then issued an ultimatum to the government, setting a deadline by which it had to fire the Minister of Defence and Minister of Law and Order and end the ongoing violence. He indicated that the ANC would quit the negotiation process if these demands were not met. The government failed to meet these demands.
Mandela addressing the press after a meeting between the government and the ANC at Groote Schuur. Source: http://news.za.msn.com/
Mandela attended a meeting between the ANC and the PAC in Harare in April 1991 where the movement resolved to work together to oppose apartheid. A joint sub-committee was established to lobby the European Community to reverse its decision to lift bans on steel imports from South Africa. The meeting also agreed to convene a conference of anti-apartheid organisations in support of the demand for a national constituent assembly.
In June 1991 Mandela attended the OAU summit in Abuja, Nigeria, following which he travelled to the United Kingdom and Belgium. A month later, at the ANC conference in Durban, he was elected ANC president, succeeding the ailing Oliver Tambo. In August Mandela travelled to countries in South America.
He signed the National Peace Accord on behalf of the ANC in September 1991. This agreement between a number of political organisations, including the ANC, Inkatha Freedom Party and the National Party , established structures and procedures to attempt to end political violence which had become widespread.
In October 1991, a meeting of the Patriotic Front was held in Durban in an attempt to bring together all the anti-apartheid groupings in the country. All attended with the exception of the Azanian People's Organisation . Policy regarding future negotiations was formulated and the ANC and the PAC began preparatory meetings for the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) . However, the PAC could not see its way clear to participate in the convention. In November that year, Mandela travelled to West Africa and the following month met United States President George Bush Snr.
The first meeting of Codesa, set up to negotiate procedures for constitutional change, was held in December 1991. At the end of the plenary session, after De Klerk had raised the question of disbanding Umkhonto we Sizwe , Mandela delivered a scathing personal attack on him. Mandela argued that even the head of an illegitimate, discredited minority regime should have certain moral standards.
During 1992, Mandela continued his programme of extensive international travel, visiting Tunisia, Libya and Morocco. He and De Klerk jointly accepted Unesco’s Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize in Paris on 3 February. At the same time the two men attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
On 13 April 1992, Mandela called a press conference at which he stated that he and his wife, Winnie, had agreed to separate as a result of differences which had arisen between them in recent months. Later in April Mandela, De Klerk and the IFP’s Buthelezi addressed a gathering of more than a million members of the Zion Christian Church (ZCC) at Moria, near Pietersburg, and committed themselves to end the ongoing violence and move speedily towards a political settlement.
Nelson Mandela at CODESA, December 1991 Photograph: Greame Williams, Permission: Africamediaonline
In May 1992 the second plenary meeting of Codesa was held, but the working group dealing with constitutional arrangements reached a deadlock when the ANC and the government could not reach agreement on certain constitutional principles. Codesa's management committee was asked to find a way out of the logjam but by 16 June (by then known as Soweto Day) no progress had been made and the ANC called for a mass action campaign to put pressure on the South African government.
While visiting the Scandinavian countries and Czechoslovakia in May, Mandela suggested that FW de Klerk was personally responsible for the political violence in South Africa. He likened the violence in South Africa to the killing of Jews in Nazi Germany. Mandela also criticised what he felt was the stranglehold imposed on the South African press, which represented White-owned conglomerates; however, he expressed support for a critical, independent and investigative press.
Following the Boipatong massacre of June 1992, Mandela announced the suspension of negotiations until ANC demands were met, including that the government take steps to end political violence, form a transitional government and move towards the election of a constituent assembly. At the end of June Mandela addressed a Heads of States Summit of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Dakar, Senegal. The OAU agreed to raise the issue of South Africa's continuing political violence at the United Nations. In July, Mandela and representatives of other South African parties addressed the UN Security Council. Mandela asked the UN to provide continuous monitoring of the violence and submitted documents, which he claimed, proved the 'criminal intent' of the government, both in the instigation of violence and in failing to curb it. He maintained that the government was conducting a 'cold-hearted strategy of state terror to impose its will on negotiations'.
On his return to South Africa, Mandela called for disciplined and peaceful protest and involved himself in the ANC's mass action campaign. Following violent incidents between ANC supporters in the Transvaal, Mandela admitted that the organisation had disciplinary problems with some of its followers, particularly in township Self-Defence Units and promised to take action against those who abused positions of power and authority.
During 1992, Mandela indicated that the ANC had shifted its economic thinking, particularly with regard to nationalisation. This was no longer viewed as an ideological imperative, but merely as one policy option. He continued to stress the need to redress economic imbalances, but noted that the ANC was aware of both local and international business hostility towards nationalisation.
Mandela indicated in September 1992 that he was prepared to meet De Klerk on condition that he agreed to fence off township hostels, ban the public display of dangerous weapons and release political prisoners. They met at the end of the month and these bi-lateral talks resulted in the signing of a Record of Understanding between the two leaders, thereby enabling negotiations to resume.
During 1992 and 1993 Mandela repeatedly called for peace. Following the assassination of the South African Communist Party (SACP) leader, Chris Hani , in April 1993, he again called for restraint, discipline and peace. At a rally in Soweto's Jabulani Stadium he was booed by a militant crowd when he tried to convey a message of peace in the wake of the killing. Mandela caused a political row in May when he suggested that South Africa's voting age should be lowered to enable 14 year old children to vote. However, he was persuaded to accept that only people aged 18 and above could vote in the April 1994 elections.
In September 1993, after the election date had been set for 27-29 April 1994, Mandela used a visit to the United States of America to urge world business leaders to lift economic sanctions and invest in South Africa. During the latter half of 1993 and early 1994 he campaigned on behalf of the ANC for the 1994 election and addressed a large number of rallies and people's forums. At the same time, he continued his efforts to draw the Freedom Alliance partners (White right wing groups, IFP, Bophuthatswana and Ciskei Bantustan governments) into the election process. However, he ruled out the possibility of delaying the election date to accommodate them.
In March 1994, following a civil uprising in the Bophuthatswana bantustan, which led to the downfall of the Mangope government, Mandela guaranteed striking civil servants their jobs, but harshly criticised the looting that had occurred during the unrest. In April, last minute talks were held in the Kruger Park between Mandela, De Klerk, Buthelezi and Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini to try to break the deadlock on IFP participation in the elections. The meeting was unsuccessful and was followed by an attempt at international mediation. This, too, failed, but a final effort by Kenyan academic, Washington Okumu, brought the IFP back into the election process. Mandela and De Klerk then signed an agreement regarding the future status of the Zulu King.
Mandela contested the April 1994 election as the head of the ANC. He cast his vote in Inanda, Durban, on the first day of voting on 27 April 1994. Early in May the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) announced that the ANC had won 62% of the national vote. Mandela indicated his relief that the ANC did not achieve a two-thirds majority, as this would allay fears that it would unilaterally re-write the constitution. He restated his commitment to a government of national unity wherein each party shared in the exercise of power.
Nelson Mandela casts his vote for the first time in April 1994. Photographer: Paul Weiberg, Permission: Africamediaonline
On 9 May, Mandela was elected unopposed as president of South Africa in the first session of the Constituent Assembly. His presidential inauguration took place the next day at the Union Buildings in Pretoria and was attended by the largest gathering of international leaders in South African history, as well as about 100 000 jubilant supporters on the lawns. The ceremony was televised and broadcast internationally. In his inaugural speech Mandela called for a 'time of healing' and stated that his government would fight against discrimination of any kind. He pledged to enter into a covenant to build a society in which all South Africans, Black and White, could walk tall without fear, assured of their rights to human dignity, 'a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world'.
In his State of the Nation speech in parliament on 24 May 1994 , Mandela announced that R2.5 billion would be allocated in the 1994/95 budget for the government's Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) . His pragmatic economic policy was welcomed by business in general.
Mandela continued to draw the right White wing into the negotiation process and in May 1994 held a breakthrough meeting with the leader of the Conservative Party (CP) , Ferdie Hartzenberg. Negotiations also involved a possible meeting with Eugene Terre Blanche , leader of the neo-nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) .
In June Mandela attended the OAU summit in Tunis and was appointed second vice-president of the organisation. The following month he held talks with his Angolan, Mozambican and Zairean counterparts in an attempt to further peace-making efforts in Angola. UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi welcomed his participation in the peace process.
Mandela underwent eye surgery for a cataract in July. The operation was complicated by the fact that his tear glands had been damaged by the alkalinity of the stone at Robben Island where he had done hard labour breaking rocks.
In September 1994 Mandela made a crucial speech at the annual conference of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) where he called on the labour movement to transform itself from a liberation movement to one that would assist in the building of a new South Africa. He warned that workers would lose their jobs if production costs rose because of unnecessary labour unrest and he called on workers to assist in making the ANC's RDP programme work.
The government of national unity nearly collapsed in January 1995 over an alleged secret attempt by two former cabinet ministers and 3 500 police to obtain indemnity on the eve of the April 1994 elections. At a cabinet meeting on 18 January, Mandela attacked Deputy President De Klerk, stating that he did not believe De Klerk was unaware of the indemnity applications. He went on to question De Klerk's commitment to reconciliation. At a press conference on 20 January, De Klerk maintained that this attack on his integrity and good faith could seriously jeopardise the future of the government of national unity.
In April 1995, Mandela discharged his estranged wife, Winnie , as Deputy Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, following a series of controversial issues in which she was involved. She challenged her dismissal in the Supreme Court, claiming that it was unconstitutional. She obtained an affidavit from IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi to the effect that he had not, as a leader of a party in the government of national unity, been consulted about her dismissal. This was a constitutional requirement. Winnie Mandela was then briefly reinstated before being dismissed again, Mandela having consulted with all party leaders involved in the government.
In May 1995, following a dispute between the IFP and the ANC regarding international mediation for the new constitution, Buthelezi called on Zulus to 'rise and resist' any imposed constitutional dispensation. Mandela accused Buthelezi of encouraging violence and attempting to foment an uprising against central government. In this context, Mandela threatened to cut off central government funding to KwaZulu-Natal, indicating that he would not allow public funds to be used to finance an attempt to overthrow the constitution by violent means. Although a subsequent meeting between the two leaders seemed cordial in tone, the matter of mediation remained an unresolved point of conflict and the ANC’s relationship with the IFP remained strained.
Mandela in retirement (1999 - 2013) ↵
Mandela retired from active political life in June 1999 after his first term of office as president. He was succeeded by Thabo Mbeki , who had been elected as ANC president in 1997. Mandela continued to play an active role in mediating conflicts around the world. For instance, in 2000 he was appointed mediator in the war-torn, Burundi, a mission he accomplished with applause.
Mandela retired from active political life in June 1999.
Mandela has a son and a daughter from his first marriage to Evelyn Ntoko Mase, a nurse, whom he divorced in 1957. Their third child, Thembi, was killed in a car accident. In 1958 he married Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela , from whom he separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996 after a marriage of 38 years. They have two daughters. He has eighteen grandchildren.
On his eightieth birthday on 18 July 1998 he married Graca Machel . In 2003 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
He has devoted a large amount of his time to raising funds for the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. In November 2003 a concert was held at Green Point Stadium to raise funds for the Nelson Mandela Foundation , the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and global AIDS organisations. International stars responded to Mandela's call and the concert was called Nelson Mandela's 46664 Global AIDS initiative (466/64 was Mandela’s prisoner number during his 27 years of incarceration).
Evelyn Mase died on 4 April 2004 and Mandela cut short his overseas trip to attend her funeral. On 10 May 2004 Mandela addressed a joint-sitting of parliament in celebrating a decade of democracy. Throughout the months of April and May, Mandela lobbied intensely in support of South Africa’s bid to host the 2010 World Cup. According to him, it was going to be a befitting present for the 10 years of democracy. On 15 May 2004 he was in Zurich, Switzerland when South Africa was awarded the right to host the 2010 soccer showpiece. Mandela cried openly at the achievement. He said he felt like a 15-year-old boy and the memory would live with him forever.
In 2005, in an attempt to destigmatise HIV and AIDS , he came out openly to announce that his son Makgatho, from his first wife Evelyn Mase, had died of AIDS.
46664 is a global HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention campaign.
On 1 June 2004 Mandela announced that he was bowing out of public life to lead a quieter life, issuing the now famous statement: Don't call me, I'll call You, to those who would require his presence at their functions. Though retired from public life, Mandela carried the Olympic torch on Robben Island on 14 June 2004 on its first journey on African soil since the inception of the Olympic Games.
Mandela is a recipient of numerous awards and honours both within South Africa and abroad. The unending invitation to him to receive more awards and honours prompted him to publicly urge that other leaders in the struggle to liberate and democratise South Africa should be recognised and honoured as he had been.
His 88th birthday celebrations on 18 July 2006 kicked off with a new round of honours, including a photo exhibit and the release of a book called The Meaning of Mandela during the week before his birthday. The event was meant to be part of a series of three, which the Nelson Mandela Foundation would be conducting to celebrate Mandela's birthday, according to Jakes Gerwel , chairman of the foundation's board. The photo exhibition by South African veterans Alf Khumalo and Jurgen Schadeberg capture Mandela's years as a young lawyer and the emergence of Black resistance before he was jailed for 27 years in 1964 and includes photographs of his family.
Events to celebrate the birthday of the ageing statesman that year also included a ceremony to present him and fellow graduates of Fort Hare University with honorary rings, as well as the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture, to be delivered by South African President Thabo Mbeki. However, he also spent some quiet time with his family. Gifts for his birthday were countless. Among the notable ones were cigars and rum from his old friend, President Fidel Castro of Cuba. Although he retired from active politics and cut down on functions, Mandela still continued to do charitable work. He campaigned for health and educational issues through the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund.
Mandela and his wife grace Machel wave to people during the closing ceremony of the 2010 World Cup at Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg, Photographer: Michael Kooren, Source: The Guardian
As part of his 89th birthday in 2007, Mandela established The Elders, a group of 12 eminent leaders chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu , who aim to use their wisdom to tackle global problems. On 30 April 2008 the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the flagging of Mandela on the US terrorist watch lists "embarrassing”, and US lawmakers’ erased references to Mandela as a terrorist from national databases on 26 June. To celebrate his 90th birthday, the Soweto Heritage Trust began restoration work on Mandela House, in Soweto. The United Nations General Assembly announced on 10 November 2009 that Mandela's birthday would henceforth be known as “Mandela Day” marking his contribution to world freedom.
Tragedy struck when Zenani, Mandela’s great-granddaughter, was killed in a car accident in June 2010, forcing Mandela to cancel plans to attend the opening of the 2010 World Soccer Cup at Soccer City, Johannesburg. She was buried on 17 June. However, Mandela was able to briefly attend the closing ceremony of the Soccer World Cup at Soccer City, Johannesburg.
At the beginning of January 2011, Mandela was checked into Milpark Hospital with acute respiratory difficulties but returned home on 28 January. Mandela soon moved back to his home in Qunu, in the Eastern Cape.
On 27 March, Google and The Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory’s launched the Nelson Mandela Multimedia Archive. The archive digitises photographs, recordings and documents related to Mandela and makes them available online.
Throughout 2012 and 2013 rumours abounded about Mandela's failing health until the nation's worst fears were confirmed on 5 December 2013. Mandela had passed away in Houghton Estate in Johannesburg. His memorial service was held 15 December in the FNB Stadium, Johannesburg and was attended by 91 sitting heads of state and a number of other dignitaries.
Nelson Mandela Awards 1960s - 2000s ↵
1964
28 January, Received the Deutscher Medienpreis, Baden Baden, Germany
9 March, Awarded the Oneness-Peace: Earth-Summit-Transcendence-Fragrance Award, Pretoria.
10 March, Received the Golden Medal of the City of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
12 March, Received an Honorary Doctorate from Leiden University, the Netherlands.
16 April, Awarded the Freedom of the City of Durban, Durban.
30 April, Received an Honorary Doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
5 May, Received Ukraine's Highest Decoration, the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, Cape Town.
9 June, Appointed Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia, Canberra.
21 September, Received Jesse Owens Global Award, Johannesburg.
11 October, Received insignia of Honour from the African Renaissance Institute, Johannesburg.
14 October, Received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Botswana, Gaborone.
26 October, Received the Baker Institute Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service at Rice University, Houston.
3 November, Awarded the Freedom of the City of Lydenburg, Lydenburg.
15 November, Received the Order of Australia from Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Pretoria
5 December, Presented with the Temple of Understanding Annual Award to Religious and Political Leaders for Outstanding Service to Humanity, Cape Town.
5 December, Presented with the Gandhi-King Award by the World Movement for Non-violence at the Parliament of World Religions, Cape Town.
Awards 2000s ↵
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Barry Clifford found fame discovering what? | Barry Clifford, at it again! | PiratesAhoy!
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by Thagarr , Aug 20, 2010 at 10:04 AM
Thagarr Pining for the Fjords! Staff Member Administrator Creative Support Storm Modder News Gatherer Hearts of Oak Donator
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[imgleft]http://lh6.ggpht.com/_cQOyQjTP3GY/SzdzZcJpthI/AAAAAAAAAIU/lTv6nE8qBxo/pa-logo.gif[/imgleft]In late September, Barry Clifford will be off to an island off the east coast of Madagascar to do what he does best, explore sunken pirate ships! Clifford is headed to the small island of ÃŽle Sainte-Marie This is the first major expedition that I know of to search for pirate history in the area. It makes sense as these were some of the most pirate infested waters of the Golden Age!
Ile Sainte-Marie, or St. Mary's Island as it is known in English, became a popular base for pirates throughout the 17th and 18th centuries due to several reasons: it was not far from the maritime routes along which ships returning from the East Indies sailed in transit, their holds overflowing with wealth, it was provided with bays and inlets protected from storms and finally, it had abundant fruit and was situated in quiet waters. Legendary pirates like William Kidd, Robert Culliford, Olivier Levasseur, Henry Every, and Thomas Tew, lived in the île aux Forbans, an island located in the bay of Sainte Marie's main town, Ambodifotatra. Many of them would found a family line. A lot of vestiges of this history remains at Sainte Marie. For example, several authentic pirate vessels still lie within a few meters of the surface in the Baie des Forbans. Two of these have been tentatively identified as the remains of Captain Kidd's Adventure Galley and Captain Condent's Fiery Dragon.
The utopian pirate republic of Libertatia was also rumored to exist in this area, although the republic's existence, let alone its location, has never been proven.
Click to expand...
Barry Clifford made a name for himself in 1984 by discovering the first authentic pirate shipwreck ever found, The Whydah! If you haven't read up on the Whydah, it is really quite fascinating, this single wreck has done more to give a picture of what real pirate life was like than almost any other source. You can read more about it HERE! This time Clifford will be looking to explore 5 sunken ships he first discovered in 1999, and he also has plans to explore some underwater tunnels in the area. This time, he will be looking for artifacts of the pirate Olivier Le Vasseur, known as "The Buzzard." I can't wait to see just what this expedition uncovers, it should be fascinating to say the least!
P'town explorer heading to pirate ships
PROVINCETOWN  Pirating the world's great sailing ships in the Indian Ocean was a career option in the early 1700s. In late September, underwater explorer Barry Clifford of Province-town will head to an island off the east coast of Madagascar to get to the bottom of it.
Clifford first discovered five antique ships sunken in the harbor of Sainte Marie Island in 1999 and 2000 along with underwater tunnels that may hold the stashes of renowned French pirate Olivier Le Vasseur, known as "The Buzzard."
"The Buzzard" was an apprentice pirate with Capt. "Black Sam" Bellamy, Clifford told the Times yesterday. Bellamy captured 50 ships in the Caribbean and the Atlantic, including the Whydah in 1717, a three-masted English slave ship with silver and gold treasure that sunk off Wellfleet three months after it was seized. Clifford discovered the Whydah wreck in 1984, shooting him to fame.
Artifacts from the Whydah are housed at Clifford's museum at MacMillan Pier in Provincetown and a National Geographic exhibition "Pirates of the Whydah," in cooperation with Clifford, is currently touring museums across the country.
The shipwrecks off Sainte Marie Island, which Clifford calls "pirate central" of the late 1600s and early 1700s, include the Adventure Galley, a ship of Scottish pirate William Kidd, and the Fiery Dragon, commanded by pirate William Condon, according to Clifford. Three other shipwrecks in the area are the Ruparrel, the Mocha Frigate and possibly the New Soldado, he said. The ship presumed to be the New Soldado may be another ship that was returning from a religious pilgrimage and possibly be loaded with religious items, Clifford said.
The pirates who holed up around Sainte Marie Island would capture ships on the high seas of the Indian Ocean, get rid of the passengers, raid the jewels, then sink the ships in the island's harbor, he said.
"The pirates had no use for porcelain or religious artifacts," Clifford said.
Clifford and his crew will work with Madagascar government officials to excavate the wrecks and investigate the tunnels in waters that are 30 feet deep and prowled by white sharks and stone fish.
A contract with a cable television network is helping to fund the trip, he said.
Clifford said he does not sell any of the artifacts that he brings to the surface. He said artifacts recovered off Sainte Marie Island would go primarily to the government of Madagascar, with some returning to the United States for Clifford's exhibitions.
An archeological observer representing the Madagascar government will participate in the exploration effort, Clifford said.
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What was Christopher Reeve's first movie? | Barry Clifford, at it again! | PiratesAhoy!
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Barry Clifford, at it again!
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by Thagarr , Aug 20, 2010 at 10:04 AM
Thagarr Pining for the Fjords! Staff Member Administrator Creative Support Storm Modder News Gatherer Hearts of Oak Donator
Joined:
Steeler Country
[imgleft]http://lh6.ggpht.com/_cQOyQjTP3GY/SzdzZcJpthI/AAAAAAAAAIU/lTv6nE8qBxo/pa-logo.gif[/imgleft]In late September, Barry Clifford will be off to an island off the east coast of Madagascar to do what he does best, explore sunken pirate ships! Clifford is headed to the small island of ÃŽle Sainte-Marie This is the first major expedition that I know of to search for pirate history in the area. It makes sense as these were some of the most pirate infested waters of the Golden Age!
Ile Sainte-Marie, or St. Mary's Island as it is known in English, became a popular base for pirates throughout the 17th and 18th centuries due to several reasons: it was not far from the maritime routes along which ships returning from the East Indies sailed in transit, their holds overflowing with wealth, it was provided with bays and inlets protected from storms and finally, it had abundant fruit and was situated in quiet waters. Legendary pirates like William Kidd, Robert Culliford, Olivier Levasseur, Henry Every, and Thomas Tew, lived in the île aux Forbans, an island located in the bay of Sainte Marie's main town, Ambodifotatra. Many of them would found a family line. A lot of vestiges of this history remains at Sainte Marie. For example, several authentic pirate vessels still lie within a few meters of the surface in the Baie des Forbans. Two of these have been tentatively identified as the remains of Captain Kidd's Adventure Galley and Captain Condent's Fiery Dragon.
The utopian pirate republic of Libertatia was also rumored to exist in this area, although the republic's existence, let alone its location, has never been proven.
Click to expand...
Barry Clifford made a name for himself in 1984 by discovering the first authentic pirate shipwreck ever found, The Whydah! If you haven't read up on the Whydah, it is really quite fascinating, this single wreck has done more to give a picture of what real pirate life was like than almost any other source. You can read more about it HERE! This time Clifford will be looking to explore 5 sunken ships he first discovered in 1999, and he also has plans to explore some underwater tunnels in the area. This time, he will be looking for artifacts of the pirate Olivier Le Vasseur, known as "The Buzzard." I can't wait to see just what this expedition uncovers, it should be fascinating to say the least!
P'town explorer heading to pirate ships
PROVINCETOWN  Pirating the world's great sailing ships in the Indian Ocean was a career option in the early 1700s. In late September, underwater explorer Barry Clifford of Province-town will head to an island off the east coast of Madagascar to get to the bottom of it.
Clifford first discovered five antique ships sunken in the harbor of Sainte Marie Island in 1999 and 2000 along with underwater tunnels that may hold the stashes of renowned French pirate Olivier Le Vasseur, known as "The Buzzard."
"The Buzzard" was an apprentice pirate with Capt. "Black Sam" Bellamy, Clifford told the Times yesterday. Bellamy captured 50 ships in the Caribbean and the Atlantic, including the Whydah in 1717, a three-masted English slave ship with silver and gold treasure that sunk off Wellfleet three months after it was seized. Clifford discovered the Whydah wreck in 1984, shooting him to fame.
Artifacts from the Whydah are housed at Clifford's museum at MacMillan Pier in Provincetown and a National Geographic exhibition "Pirates of the Whydah," in cooperation with Clifford, is currently touring museums across the country.
The shipwrecks off Sainte Marie Island, which Clifford calls "pirate central" of the late 1600s and early 1700s, include the Adventure Galley, a ship of Scottish pirate William Kidd, and the Fiery Dragon, commanded by pirate William Condon, according to Clifford. Three other shipwrecks in the area are the Ruparrel, the Mocha Frigate and possibly the New Soldado, he said. The ship presumed to be the New Soldado may be another ship that was returning from a religious pilgrimage and possibly be loaded with religious items, Clifford said.
The pirates who holed up around Sainte Marie Island would capture ships on the high seas of the Indian Ocean, get rid of the passengers, raid the jewels, then sink the ships in the island's harbor, he said.
"The pirates had no use for porcelain or religious artifacts," Clifford said.
Clifford and his crew will work with Madagascar government officials to excavate the wrecks and investigate the tunnels in waters that are 30 feet deep and prowled by white sharks and stone fish.
A contract with a cable television network is helping to fund the trip, he said.
Clifford said he does not sell any of the artifacts that he brings to the surface. He said artifacts recovered off Sainte Marie Island would go primarily to the government of Madagascar, with some returning to the United States for Clifford's exhibitions.
An archeological observer representing the Madagascar government will participate in the exploration effort, Clifford said.
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The Porcaro Brothers featured in which group? | Mike Porcaro dies at 59; bassist played with two brothers in rock band Toto - LA Times
Mike Porcaro dies at 59; bassist played with two brothers in rock band Toto
Toto
Jim Shea / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
The Grammy-winning rock group Toto in 1984: Mike Porcaro, left, Steve Porcaro, David Paich, Jeff Porcaro, Steve Lukather and Fergie Frederiksen.
The Grammy-winning rock group Toto in 1984: Mike Porcaro, left, Steve Porcaro, David Paich, Jeff Porcaro, Steve Lukather and Fergie Frederiksen. (Jim Shea / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)
Steve Chawkins
Mike Porcaro, a bass player who performed along with his two brothers in the rock group Toto, dies at 59
Mike Porcaro, a bass player who performed along with his two brothers in the rock group Toto , died Sunday at his Los Angeles home. He was 59.
Porcaro had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative neuromuscular disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
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FOR THE RECORD
Mike Porcaro: A news obituary in the March 17 California section of Mike Porcaro, former bass player with the rock group Toto, said he was born in Hartford, Conn. He was born in South Windsor, Conn.
Notable Deaths
Photos of leaders, stars and other notable figures who died in 2015.
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His death was announced in a Facebook post by his brother Steve, a former keyboardist for the Grammy-winning band.
A third Porcaro brother, Jeff, was Toto's drummer. He died of a heart attack at his Hidden Hills home in 1992.
The sons of studio session percussionist Joe Porcaro, the brothers attended Grant High School in Van Nuys and honed their skills in a garage their family had transformed into a rehearsal and recording studio.
Jeff, Steve and four other musicians formed Toto in 1978. Mike joined after David Hungate, the group's original bass player, left in 1982.
In 1983, Toto won a best-album Grammy for "Toto IV," a best-song Grammy for "Rosanna" and several other Grammy awards. On that February evening in the Shrine Auditorium, Joe Porcaro performed in the pit orchestra as his sons collected their music industry honors.
Born May 29, 1955, in Hartford, Conn., Michael Joseph Porcaro performed with Seals and Crofts, Boz Scaggs and other groups before signing on with Toto.
When he was 50, he noticed a puzzling weakness in his hands and fingers. Doctors diagnosed him with ALS in 2006 and he retired the following year.
Toto went on hiatus in 2008 but returned two years later, staging a summer tour to benefit Porcaro and draw attention to ALS.
| Toto |
What is Iggy Pop's real name? | Mike Porcaro Obituary | Mike Porcaro Funeral | Legacy.com
Mike Porcaro Obituary
5/29/1955 - 3/15/2015| Visit Guest Book
Mike Porcaro (Photo by Paul Bergen/Redferns)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mike Porcaro, who was the son and brother of prominent musicians and carved out a long, successful career as the bass player for the Grammy-winning pop group Toto, has died at age 59.
Porcaro died Sunday, Toto's publicist Keith Hagen told The Associated Press.
No cause was given, but he had suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease for several years. He left the group in 2007 because of declining health.
Lou Gehrig's disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, attacks the cells that control muscles.
Toto was formed in the late 1970s by keyboard player, David Paich, Porcaro's brothers Steve and Jeff, and other prominent session musicians who have recorded and toured over the years with Michael Jackson, Sonny and Cher, Boz Scaggs, Steely Dan and numerous others.
Porcaro came on board in the early 1980s when bassist David Hungate left to resume his session career.
The three siblings were the sons of jazz percussionist Joe Porcaro. Jeff Porcaro died in 1992.
Toto's merging of jazz, power-pop, soul and other musical forms sold millions of records in the late 1970s and early '80s and made the group one of the most popular of that time.
The album "Toto IV" won the Grammy for album of the year in 1982. The song "Rosanna" won record of the year.
Other Toto standards include "Hold the Line" and "Africa."
The group was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2009.
Toto's first new studio album in 10 years, "Toto XIV," is scheduled for release later this month. A European tour is slated for the spring and summer.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Mike Porcaro (Photo by Paul Bergen/Redferns)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mike Porcaro, who was the son and brother of prominent musicians and carved out a long, successful career as the bass player for the Grammy-winning pop group Toto, has died at age 59.
Porcaro died Sunday, Toto's publicist Keith Hagen told The Associated Press.
No cause was given, but he had suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease for several years. He left the group in 2007 because of declining health.
Lou Gehrig's disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, attacks the cells that control muscles.
Toto was formed in the late 1970s by keyboard player, David Paich, Porcaro's brothers Steve and Jeff, and other prominent session musicians who have recorded and toured over the years with Michael Jackson, Sonny and Cher, Boz Scaggs, Steely Dan and numerous others.
Porcaro came on board in the early 1980s when bassist David Hungate left to resume his session career.
The three siblings were the sons of jazz percussionist Joe Porcaro. Jeff Porcaro died in 1992.
Toto's merging of jazz, power-pop, soul and other musical forms sold millions of records in the late 1970s and early '80s and made the group one of the most popular of that time.
The album "Toto IV" won the Grammy for album of the year in 1982. The song "Rosanna" won record of the year.
Other Toto standards include "Hold the Line" and "Africa."
The group was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2009.
Toto's first new studio album in 10 years, "Toto XIV," is scheduled for release later this month. A European tour is slated for the spring and summer.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Dorval International airport is in which country? | Montreal-Dorval International Airport, QC profile - Aviation Safety Network
Montreal-Dorval International Airport, QC profile
Last updated: 5 November 2013
Canada IATA code:YUL ICAO code: CYUL Elevation: 118 feet / 36 m Opened: 1941 Notams: Notams for CYUL Airport history:
SEP 1941
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In square miles how big is lake Michigan? | Montreal Trudeau YUL Airport | Dorval, Quebec, QZ Canada
Change Airport
Montreal Trudeau YUL Airport Overview
Montreal-Trudeau International Airport YUL serves the Canadian Province of Quebec and the City Montreal. It is Canada's third-busiest airport (and one of eight with U.S. border preclearance). Increasingly, YUL also serves the northern regions of U.S. states Vermont & New York. Over 60 percent of its air traffic is now derived from international flights.
YUL Airport is located in Dorval, 12 miles or a 20-minute drive from downtown Montreal, and accessible via highways 20 & 520.
With three active runways serving over 13 million passengers per year, Montreal Trudeau International Airport is hub to Air Canada, Air Canada Jazz, Air Transat, CanJet & Sunwing Airlines, and is served by numerous U.S. and international airlines offering nonstop and connecting flights to all points of the globe.
The new on-Airport four-star Marriott Hotel (tel. 514-636-6700 /fax 6600; toll-free reservations 1-866-580-6279) is connected to U.S. Departures terminal by escalator.
The toll-free number for Airport inquiries from Canada, Vermont & Albany (NY) is 1-800-465-1213
Checking in: Depending on the airline you use, you can take advantage of three types of self-service checkin:
- at self-check-in kiosks in the departure area of the terminal,
- via web check-in and
- via mobile check-in. Some airlines even allow you to print out your luggage tags.
Dedicated CATSA security screening lines are now available for transborder flights at Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto Pearson, and Montreal airports. Eligible 'Trusted Travelers' - including: members of NEXUS & Global Entry programs; Canadian and US military, and aircrew in uniform with valid ID - may use these lines. Self-serve NEXUS kiosks clear customs and immigration faster.
NOTE: While Trudeau Airport offers US Customs clearance - as of March 15, 2016 arriving visa-exempt foreign nationals (except US citizens and travelers with a valid visa) need an Elecronic Travel Authorization (eTA). Eligible travelers may now apply online for such eTA, and before it becomes mandatory. For more information visit:
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/visit/eta.asp?utm_source=partner-eng&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=eta
The passenger terminal at Montreal Trudeau Airport has Concourses A, B & C.
Address:
975 Romeo Vachon Blvd. North
Dorval, Quebec, QZ HH4 1H1
Canada
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Who wrote the song Momma Told Me Not To Come? | Mama Told Me (Not to Come) by Three Dog Night Songfacts
Songfacts
This was written by Randy Newman , the nephew of Academy Award-winning composer Lionel Newman. The song is about a party that left a "bad taste" in the writer's mouth. The drug scene was fairly new to American middle-class youth at that time.
This song has the distinction of being the very first #1 hit on the American Top 40 syndicated radio program. The show, hosted by Casey Kasem, became popular on AM radio throughout the world until its decline in the mid-1990s. This beat out The Beatles' " The Long and Winding Road " (their last hit record before the final breakup) and Elvis Presley's "The Wonder of You" for top chart honors in early August 1970. >>
Suggestion credit:
Charles - Charlotte, NC, for above 2
Newman's original version was included on his 1970 album 12 Songs. His version was only 2 minutes 12 seconds, over a minute shorter than Three Dog Night's version.
Cory Wells, who sang lead on this track, was the Three Dog Night band member who pushed to record it. He was a big fan of the song and played it with his previous band. >>
Suggestion credit:
| Randy Newman |
What star sign is Harrison Ford? | Mama Told Me (Not to Come) by Three Dog Night Songfacts
Songfacts
This was written by Randy Newman , the nephew of Academy Award-winning composer Lionel Newman. The song is about a party that left a "bad taste" in the writer's mouth. The drug scene was fairly new to American middle-class youth at that time.
This song has the distinction of being the very first #1 hit on the American Top 40 syndicated radio program. The show, hosted by Casey Kasem, became popular on AM radio throughout the world until its decline in the mid-1990s. This beat out The Beatles' " The Long and Winding Road " (their last hit record before the final breakup) and Elvis Presley's "The Wonder of You" for top chart honors in early August 1970. >>
Suggestion credit:
Charles - Charlotte, NC, for above 2
Newman's original version was included on his 1970 album 12 Songs. His version was only 2 minutes 12 seconds, over a minute shorter than Three Dog Night's version.
Cory Wells, who sang lead on this track, was the Three Dog Night band member who pushed to record it. He was a big fan of the song and played it with his previous band. >>
Suggestion credit:
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Who founded the Organization of Afro American Unity? | Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) 1965 | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed
Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) 1965
Malcolm X at the Founding Rally of the OAAU,
Audubon Ballroom, New York City, 1964
Image Ownership: Public Domain
The Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) was founded by Malcolm X , John Henrik Clarke , and other black nationalist leaders on June 24, 1964 in Harlem, New York . Formed shortly after his break with the Nation of Islam , the OAAU was a secular institution that sought to unify 22 million non- Muslim African Americans with the people of the African Continent. The OAAU was modeled after the Organization of African Unity (OAU) , a coalition of 53 African nations working to provide a unified political voice for the continent. In the coalition spirit of the OAU, Malcolm X sought to reconnect African Americans with their African heritage, establish economic independence, and promote African American self-determination. He also sought OAAU representation on the OAU.
The OAAU was designed to encompass all peoples of African origin in the Western hemisphere, as well those on the African continent. Malcolm X insisted that progress for African Americans was intimately tied to progress in Africa, and outlined a platform of five fronts for this progress called "The Basic Unity Program." This program called for Restoration, Reorientation, Education, Economic Security, and Self-Defense as a means of promoting Pan-African unity and interests. With a strong focus on education as the primary means of repairing the damages of slavery, economic discrimination, and physical violence directed towards African Americans, the OAAU hoped to foster pan-African consciousness. Among the more controversial positions taken by the OAAU was the suggestion that leaders of African states held more legitimate political power for African Americans than did the American government.
At the founding conference, Malcolm X stressed the importance of escaping terms like "negro," " integration ," or "emancipation," insisting that such language was inherently pejorative and antithetical to the ideology of the OAAU. The OAAU called for African American-run institutions within the black community as well as increased participation in mainstream politics. In order to keep the OAAU strictly in African American hands, Malcolm X insisted that there be no monetary donations from non-African sources. The organization also refused membership to whites.
After Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom on February 19, 1965, the fledgling movement died. Malcolm's half-sister Ella Collins took over the OAAU, but without his charismatic leadership, most members deserted the organization. Nonetheless the OAAU became the inspiration for hundreds of "black power" groups that emerged during the next decade.
Sources:
Bruce Perry, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America (Tarrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill Press, 1991).; http://www.panafricanperspective.com/mxoaaufounding.html
Contributor:
| Malcolm X |
Which NASA space probe was launched to Venus in 1989? | (1964) Malcolm X’s Speech at the Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed
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(1964) Malcolm X’s Speech at the Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity
Malcolm X’s life changed dramatically in the first six months of 1964. On March 8, he left the Nation of Islam. In May he toured West Africa and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, returning as El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. While in Ghana in May, he decided to form the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Malcolm returned to New York the following month to create the OAAU and on June 28 gave his first public address on behalf of the new organization at the Audubon Ballroom in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. That address appears below.
Salaam Alaikum, Mr. Moderator, our distinguished guests, brothers and sisters, our friends and our enemies, everybody who's here.
As many of you know, last March when it was announced that I was no longer in the Black Muslim movement, it was pointed out that it was my intention to work among the 22 million non-Muslim Afro-Americans and to try and form some type of organization, or create a situation where the young people – our young people, the students and others – could study the problems of our people for a period of time and then come up with a new analysis and give us some new ideas and some new suggestions as to how to approach a problem that too many other people have been playing around with for too long. And that we would have some kind of meeting and determine at a later date whether to form a black nationalist party or a black nationalist army.
There have been many of our people across the country from all walks of life who have taken it upon themselves to try and pool their ideas and to come up with some kind of solution to the problem that confronts all of our people. And tonight we are here to try and get an understanding of what it is they've come up with.
Also, recently when I was blessed to make a religious pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca where I met many people from all over the world, plus spent many weeks in Africa trying to broaden my own scope and get more of an open mind to look at the problem as it actually is, one of the things that I realized, and I realized this even before going over there, was that our African brothers have gained their independence faster than you and I here in America have. They've also gained recognition and respect as human beings much faster than you and I.
Just ten years ago on the African continent, our people were colonized. They were suffering all forms of colonization, oppression, exploitation, degradation, humiliation, discrimination, and every other kind of -ation. And in a short time, they have gained more independence, more recognition, more respect as human beings than you and I have. And you and I live in a country which is supposed to be the citadel of education, freedom, justice, democracy, and all of those other pretty-sounding words.
So it was our intention to try and find out what it was our African brothers were doing to get results, so that you and I could study what they had done and perhaps gain from that study or benefit from their experiences. And my traveling over there was designed to help to find out how.
One of the first things that the independent African nations did was to form an organization called the Organization of African Unity. This organization consists of all independent African states who have reached the agreement to submerge all differences and combine their efforts toward eliminating from the continent of Africa colonialism and all vestiges of oppression and exploitation being suffered by African people. Those who formed the organization of African states have differences. They represent probably every segment, every type of thinking. You have some leaders that are considered Uncle Toms, some leaders who are considered very militant. But even the militant African leaders were able to sit down at the same table with African leaders whom they considered to be Toms, or Tshombes, or that type of character. They forgot their differences for the sole purpose of bringing benefits to the whole. And whenever you find people who can't forget their differences, then they're more interested in their personal aims and objectives than they are in the conditions of the whole. Well, the African leaders showed their maturity by doing what the American white man said couldn't be done. Because if you recall when it was mentioned that these African states were going to meet in Addis Ababa, all of the Western press began to spread the propaganda that they didn't have enough in common to come together and to sit down together. Why, they had Nkrumah there, one of the most militant of the African leaders, and they had Adoula from the Congo. They had Nyerere there, they had Ben Bella there, they had Nasser there, they had Sekou Toure, they had Obote; they had Kenyatta I guess Kenyatta was there, I can't remember whether Kenya was independent at that time, but I think he was there. Everyone was there and despite their differences, they were able to sit down and form what was known as the Organization of African Unity, which has formed a coalition and is working in conjunction with each other to fight a common enemy. Once we saw what they were able to do, we determined to try and do the same thing here in America among Afro Americans who have been divided by our enemies. So we have formed an organization known as the Organization of Afro American Unity which has the same aim and objective – to fight whoever gets in our way, to bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere, and first here in the United States, and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary.
That's our motto. We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. We don't feel that in 1964, living in a country that is supposedly based upon freedom, and supposedly the leader of the free world, we don't think that we should have to sit around and wait for some segregationist congressmen and senators and a President from Texas in Washington, D. C., to make up their minds that our people are due now some degree of civil rights. No, we want it now or we don't think anybody should have it.
The purpose of our organization is to start right here in Harlem, which has the largest concentration of people of African descent that exists anywhere on this earth. There are more Africans in Harlem than exist in any city on the African continent. Because that's what you and I are Africans. You catch any white man off guard in here right now, you catch him off guard and ask him what he is, he doesn't say he's an American. He either tells you he's Irish, or he's Italian, or he's German, if you catch him off guard and he doesn't know what you're up to. And even though he was born here, he'll tell you he's Italian. Well, if he's Italian, you and I are African even though we were born here.
So we start in New York City first. We start in Harlem– and by Harlem we mean Bedford – Stuyvesant, any place in this area where you and I live, that's Harlem with the intention of spreading throughout the state, and from the state throughout the country, and from the country throughout the Western Hemisphere. Because when we say Afro American, we include everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent. South America is America. Central America is America. South America has many people in it of African descent. And everyone in South America of African descent is an Afro-American. Everyone in the Caribbean, whether it's the West Indies or Cuba or Mexico, if they have African blood, they are Afro Americans. If they're in Canada and they have African blood, they're Afro Americans. If they're in Alaska, though they might call themselves Eskimos, if they have African blood, they're Afro Americans.
So the purpose of the Organization of Afro American Unity is to unite everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent into one united force. And then, once we are united among ourselves in the Western Hemisphere, we will unite with our brothers on the motherland, on the continent of Africa. So to get right with it, I would like to read you the "Basic Aims and Objectives of the Organization of Afro American Unity;" started here in New York, June, 1964.
"The Organization of Afro American Unity, organized and structured by a cross section of the Afro American people living in the United States of America, has been patterned after the letter and spirit of the Organization of African Unity which was established at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May of 1963.
"We, the members of the Organization of Afro American Unity, gathered together in Harlem, New York:
"Convinced that it is the inalienable right of all our people to control our own destiny;
"Conscious of the fact that freedom, equality, justice and dignity are central objectives for the achievement of the legitimate aspirations of the people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere, we will endeavor to build a bridge of understanding and create the basis for Afro American unity;
"Conscious of our responsibility to harness the natural and human resources of our people for their total advancement in all spheres of human endeavor;
"Inspired by our common determination to promote understanding among our people and cooperation in all matters pertaining to their survival and advancement, we will support the aspirations of our people for brotherhood and solidarity in a larger unity transcending all organizational differences;
“Convinced that, in order to translate this determination into a dynamic force in the cause of human progress conditions of peace and security must be established and maintained;" – And by "conditions of peace and security," [we mean] we have to eliminate the barking of the police dogs, we have to eliminate the police clubs, we have to eliminate the water hoses, we have to eliminate all of these things that have become so characteristic of the American so called dream. These have to be eliminated. Then we will be living in a condition of peace and security. We can never have peace and security as long as one black man in this country is being bitten by a police dog. No one in the country has peace and security. "Dedicated to the unification of all people of African descent in this hemisphere and to the utilization of that unity to bring into being the organizational structure that will project the black people's contributions to the world;
"Persuaded that the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights are the principles in which we believe and that these documents if put into practice represent the essence of mankind's hopes and good intentions;
"Desirous that all Afro American people and organi¬zations should henceforth unite so that the welfare and well being of our people will be assured;
"We are resolved to reinforce the common bond of purpose between our people by submerging all of our differences and establishing a nonsectarian, constructive program for human rights;
"We hereby present this charter.
"I–Establishment.
"The Organization of Afro American Unity shall include all people of African descent in the Western Hemisphere, as well as our brothers and sisters on the African continent." Which means anyone of African descent, with African blood, can become a member of the Organization of Afro American Unity, and also any one of our brothers and sisters from the African continent. Because not only it is an organization of Afro American unity meaning that we are trying to unite our people in the West, but it's an organization of Afro American unity in the sense that we want to unite all of our people who are in North America, South America, and Central America with our people on the African continent. We must unite together in order to go forward together. Africa will not go forward any faster than we will and we will not go forward any faster than Africa will. We have one destiny and we've had one past.
In essence, what it is saying is instead of you and me running around here seeking allies in our struggle for freedom in the Irish neighborhood or the Jewish neighborhood or the Italian neighborhood, we need to seek some allies among people who look something like we do. It's time now for you and me to stop running away from the wolf right into the arms of the fox, looking for some kind of help. That's a drag.
"II–Self Defense.
"Since self preservation is the first law of nature, we assert the Afro American's right to self defense.
"The Constitution of the United States of America clearly affirms the right of every American citizen to bear arms. And as Americans, we will not give up a single right guaranteed under the Constitution. The history of unpunished violence against our people clearly indicates that we must be prepared to defend ourselves or we will continue to be a defenseless people at the mercy of a ruthless and violent racist mob.
"We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our people are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary.”I repeat, because to me this is the most important thing you need to know. I already know it. "We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our people are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary."
This is the thing you need to spread the word about among our people wherever you go. Never let them be brainwashed into thinking that whenever they take steps to see that they're in a position to defend themselves that they're being unlawful. The only time you're being unlawful is when you break the law. It's lawful to have something to defend yourself. Why, I heard President Johnson either today or yesterday, I guess it was today, talking about how quick this country would go to war to defend itself. Why, what kind of a fool do you look like, living in a country that will go to war at the drop of a hat to defend itself, and here you've got to stand up in the face of vicious police dogs and blue eyed crackers waiting for somebody to tell you what to do to defend yourself!
Those days are over, they're gone, that's yesterday. The time for you and me to allow ourselves to be brutalized nonviolently is passé. Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then I'll get nonviolent. But don't teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some of those crackers to be nonviolent. You've never seen a nonviolent cracker. It's hard for a racist to be nonviolent. It's hard for anyone intelligent to be nonviolent. Everything in the universe does something when you start playing with his life, except the American Negro. He lays down and says, " Beat me, daddy." So it says here: "A man with a rifle or a club can only be stopped by a person who defends himself with a rifle or a club." That's equality. If you have a dog, I must have a dog. If you have a rifle, I must have a rifle. If you have a club, I must have a club. This is equality. If the United States government doesn't want you and me to get rifles, then take the rifles away from those racists. If they don't want you and me to use clubs, take the clubs away from the racists. If they don't want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don't teach us nonviolence while those crackers are violent. Those days are over.
"Tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when you are dealing with people who are moral or a system that is moral. A man or system which oppresses a man because of his color is not moral. It is the duty of every Afro-American person and every Afro-American community throughout this country to protect its people against mass murderers, against bombers, against lynchers, against floggers, against brutalizers and against exploiters.
"I might say right here that instead of the various black groups declaring war on each other, showing how militant they can be cracking each other's heads, let them go down South and crack some of those crackers' heads. Any group of people in this country that has a record of having been attacked by racists – and there's no record where they have ever given the signal to take the heads of some of those racists – why, they are insane giving the signal to take the heads of some of their ex-brothers. Or brother X's, I don't know how you put that.
III– Education
"Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today."
And I must point out right there, when I was in Africa I met no African who wasn't standing with open arms to embrace any Afro-American who returned to the African continent. But one of the things that all of them have said is that every one of our people in this country should take advantage of every type of educational opportunity available before you even think about talking about the future. If you're surrounded by schools, go to that school.
"Our children are being criminally shortchanged in the public school system of America. The Afro-American schools are the poorest run schools in the city of New York. Principals and teachers fail to understand the nature of the problems with which they work and as a result they cannot do the job of teaching our children." They don't understand us, nor do they understand our problems; they don't. "The textbooks tell our children nothing about the great contributions of Afro-Americans to the growth and development of this country."
And they don't. When we send our children to school in this country they learn nothing about us other than that we used to be cotton pickers. Every little child going to school thinks his grandfather was a cotton picker. Why, your grandfather was Nat Turner; your grandfather was Toussaint L'Ouverture; your grandfather was Hannibal. Your grandfather was some of the greatest black people who walked on this earth. It was your grandfather's hands who forged civilization and it was your grandmother's hands who rocked the cradle of civilization. But the textbooks tell our children nothing about the great contributions of Afro Americans to the growth and development of this country.
"The Board of Education's integration plan is expensive and unworkable; and the organization of principals and supervisors in New York City's school system has refused to support the Board's plan to integrate the schools, thus dooming it to failure before it even starts.”The Board of Education of this city has said that even with its plan there are 10 percent of the schools in Harlem and the Bedford Stuyvesant community in Brooklyn that they cannot improve." So what are we to do? "This means that the Organization of Afro American Unity must make the Afro American community a more potent force for educational self improvement.
"A first step in the program to end the existing system of racist education is to demand that the 10 percent of the schools the Board of Education will not include in its plan be turned over to and run by the Afro-American community itself." Since they say that they can't improve these schools, why should you and I who live in the community, let these fools continue to run and produce this low standard of education? No, let them turn those schools over to us. Since they say they can't handle them, nor can they correct them, let us take a whack at it.
What do we want? "We want Afro-American principals to head these schools. We want Afro-American teachers in these schools." Meaning we want black principals and black teachers with some textbooks about black people. " We want textbooks written by Afro-Americans that are acceptable to our people before they can be used in these schools.
"The Organization of Afro-American Unity will select and recommend people to serve on local school boards where school policy is made and passed on to the Board of Education." And this is very important.
"Through these steps we will make the 10 percent of the schools that we take over educational showplaces that will attract the attention of people from ail over the nation." Instead of them being schools turning out pupils whose academic diet is not complete, we can turn them into examples of what we can do ourselves once given an opportunity.
"If these proposals are not met, we will ask Afro-American parents to keep their children out of the present inferior schools they attend. And when these schools in our neighborhood are controlled by Afro Americans, we will then return our children to them.
"The Organization of Afro American Unity recognizes the tremendous importance of the complete involvement of Afro-American parents in every phase of school life. The Afro American parent must be willing and able to go into the schools and see that the job of educating our children is done properly." This whole thing about putting all of the blame on the teacher is out the window. The parent at home has just as much responsibility to see that what's going on in that school is up to par as the teacher in their schools. So it is our intention not only to devise an education program for the children, but one also for the parents to make them aware of their responsibility where education is concerned in regard to their children.
"We call on all Afro-Americans around the nation to be aware that the conditions that exist in the New York City public school system are as deplorable in their does as they are here. We must unite our efforts and spread our program of self improvement through education to every Afro American community in America.
"We must establish all over the country schools of our own to train our own children to become scientists, to become mathematicians. We must realize the need for adult education and for job retraining programs that will emphasize a changing society in which automation plays the key role. We intend to use the tools of education to help raise our people to an unprecedented level of excellence and self respect through their own efforts.
"IV – Politics and Economics."
And the two are almost inseparable, because the politician is depending on some money; yes, that's what he's depending on.
"Basically, there are two kinds of power that count in America: economic power and political power, with social power being derived from those two. In order for the Afro-Americans to control their destiny, they must be able to control and affect the decisions which control their destiny: economic, political, and social. This can only be done through organization.
"The Organization of Afro-American Unity will organize the Afro American community block by block to make the community aware of its power and its potential; we will start immediately a voter registration drive to make every unregistered voter in the Afro-American community an independent voter."
We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party. I can prove it. All you've got to do is name everybody who's running the government in Washington, D. C., right now. He's a Democrat and he's from either Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, from one of those cracker states. And they've got more power than any white man in the North has. In fact, the President is from a cracker state. What's he talking about? Texas is a cracker state, in fact, they'll hang you quicker in Texas than they will in Mississippi. Don't you ever think that just because a cracker becomes president he ceases being a cracker. He was a cracker before he became president and he's a cracker while he's president. I'm going to tell it like it is. I hope you can take it like it is.
"We propose to support and organize political clubs, to run independent candidates for office, and to support any Afro-American already in office who answers to and is responsible to the Afro-American community." We don't support any black man who is controlled by the white power structure. We will start not only a voter registration drive, but a voter education drive to let our people have an understanding of the science of politics so they will be able to see what part the politician plays in the scheme of things; so they will be able to understand when the politician is doing his job and when he is not doing his job. And any time the politician is not doing his job, we remove him whether he's white, black, green, blue, yellow or whatever other color they might invent.
"The economic exploitation in the Afro-American community is the most vicious form practiced on any people in America." In fact, it is the most vicious practiced on any people on this earth. No one is exploited economically as thoroughly as you and I, because in most countries where people are exploited they know it. You and I are in this country being exploited and sometimes we don't know it. "Twice as much rent is paid for rat-infested, roach crawling, rotting tenements."
This is true. It costs us more to live in Harlem than it costs them to live on Park Avenue. Do you know that the rent is higher on Park Avenue in Harlem than it is on Park Avenue downtown? And in Harlem you have everything else in that apartment with you roaches, rats, cats, dogs, and some other outsiders disguised as landlords. "The Afro-American pays more for food, pays more for clothing, pays more for insurance than anybody else." And we do. It costs you and me more for insurance than it does the white man in the Bronx or somewhere else. It costs you and me more for food than it does them. It costs you and me more to live in America than it does anybody else and yet we make the greatest contribution.
You tell me what kind of country this is. Why should we do the dirtiest jobs for the lowest pay? Why should we do the hardest work for the lowest pay? Why should we pay the most money for the worst kind of food and the most money for the worst kind of place to live in? I'm telling you we do it because we live in one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this earth. It's the system that is rotten; we have a rotten system. It's a system of exploitation, a political and economic system of exploitation, of outright humiliation, degradation, discrimination – all of the negative things that you can run into, you have run into under this system that disguises itself as a democracy, disguises itself as a democracy. And the things that they practice against you and me are worse than some of the things that they practiced in Germany against the Jews. Worse than some of the things that the Jews ran into. And you run around here getting ready to get drafted and go someplace and defend it. Someone needs to crack you up 'side your head.
"The Organization of Afro American Unity will wage an unrelenting struggle against these evils in our community. There shall be organizers to work with our people to solve these problems, and start a housing self-improvement program." Instead of waiting for the white man to come and straighten out our neighborhood, we'll straighten it out ourselves. This is where you make your mistake. An outsider can't clean up your house as well as you can. An outsider can't take care of your children as well as you can. An outsider can't look after your needs as well as you can. And an outsider can't under¬stand your problems as well as you can. Yet you're looking for an outsider to do it. We will do it or it will never get done.
"We propose to support rent strikes." Yes, not little, small rent strikes in one block. We'll make Harlem a rent strike. We'll get every black man in this city; the Organization of Afro-American Unity won't stop until there's not a black man in the city not on strike. Nobody will pay any rent. The whole city will come to a halt. And they can't put all of us in jail because they've already got the jails full of us.
Concerning our social needs I hope I'm not frightening anyone. I should stop right here and tell you if you're the type of person who frights, who gets scared, you should never come around us. Because we'll scare you to death. And. you don't have far to go because you're half dead already. Economically you're dead- dead broke. Just got paid yesterday and dead broke right now.
"V Social.
"This organization is responsible only to the Afro-American people and the Afro-American community." This organization is not responsible to anybody but us. We don't have to ask the man downtown can we demonstrate. We don't have to ask the man downtown what tactics we can use to demonstrate our resentment against his criminal abuse. We don't have to ask his consent; we don't have to ask his endorsement; we don't have to ask his permission. Anytime we know that an unjust condition exists and it is illegal and unjust, we will strike at it by any means necessary. And strike also at whatever and whoever gets in the way.
"This organization is responsible only to the Afro-American people and community and will function only with their support, both financially and numerically. We believe that our communities must be the sources of their own strength politically, economically, intellectually, and culturally in the struggle for human rights and human dignity.
"The community must reinforce its moral responsibility to rid itself of the effects of years of exploitation, neglect, and apathy, and wage an unrelenting struggle against police brutality." Yes. There are some good policemen and some bad policemen. Usually we get the bad ones. With all the police in Harlem, there is too much crime, too much drug addiction, too much alcoholism, too much prostitution, too much gambling.
So it makes us suspicious about the motives of Commissioner Murphy when he sends all these policemen up here. We begin to think that they are just his errand boys, whose job it is to pick up the graft and take it back downtown to Murphy. Anytime there's a police commissioner who finds it necessary to increase the strength numerically of the policemen in Harlem and, at the same time, we don't see any sign of a decrease in crime, why, I think we're justified in suspecting his mo¬tives. He can't be sending them up here to fight crime, because crime is on the increase. The more cops we have, the more crime we have. We begin to think that they bring some of the crime with them.
So our purpose is to organize the community so that we ourselves since the police can't eliminate the drug traffic, we have to eliminate it. Since the police can't eliminate organized gambling, we have to eliminate it. Since the police can't eliminate organized prostitution and all of these evils that are destroying the moral fiber of our community, it is up to you and me to eliminate these evils ourselves. But in many instances, when you unite in this country or in this city to fight organized crime, you'll find yourselves fighting the police department itself because they are involved in the organized crime. Wherever you have organized crime, that type of crime cannot exist other than with the consent of the police, the knowledge of the police and the cooperation of the police.
You'll agree that you can't run a number in your neighborhood without the police knowing it. A prostitute can't turn a trick on the block without the police knowing it. A man can't push drugs anywhere along the avenue without the police knowing it. And they pay the police off so that they will not get arrested. I know what I'm talking about I used to be out there. And I know you can't hustle out there without police setting you up. You have to pay them off.
The police are all right. I say there's some good ones and some bad ones. But they usually send the bad ones to Harlem. Since these bad police have come to Harlem and have not decreased the high rate of crime, I tell you brothers and sisters it is time for you and me to organize and eliminate these evils ourselves, or we'll be out of the world backwards before we even know where the world was.
Drug addiction turns your little sister into a prostitute before she gets into her teens; makes a criminal out of your little brother before he gets in his teens drug addiction and alcoholism. And if you and I aren't men enough to get at the root of these things, then we don't even have the right to walk around here complaining about it in any form whatsoever. The police will not eliminate it. "Our community must reinforce its moral responsibility to rid itself of the effects of years of exploitation, neglect, and apathy, and wage an unrelenting struggle against police brutality."
Where this police brutality also comes in the new law that they just passed, the no knock law, the stop and-frisk law, that's an anti Negro law. That's a law that was passed and signed by Rockefeller. Rockefeller with his old smile, always he has a greasy smile on his face and he's shaking hands with Negroes, like he's the Negro's pappy or granddaddy or great uncle. Yet when it comes to passing a law that is worse than any law that they had in Nazi Germany, why, Rockefeller couldn't wait till he got his signature on it. And the only thing this law is designed to do is make legal what they've been doing all the time.
They've passed a law that gives them the right to knock down your door without even knocking on it. Knock it down and come on in and bust your head and frame you up under the disguise that they suspect you of something. Why, brothers, they didn't have laws that bad in Nazi Germany. And it was passed for you and me, it's an anti Negro law, because you've got an anti-Negro governor sitting up there in Albany – I started to say Albany, Georgia – in Albany, New York. Not too much difference. Not too much difference between Albany, New York, and Albany, Georgia. And there's not too much difference between the government that's in Albany, New York, and the government in Albany, Georgia.
"The Afro-American community must accept the responsibility for regaining our people who have lost their place in society. We must declare an all out war on organized crime in our community; a vice that is controlled by policemen who accept bribes and graft must be exposed. We must establish a clinic, whereby one can get aid and cure for drug addiction."
This is absolutely necessary. When a person is a drug addict, he's not the criminal; he's a victim of the criminal. The criminal is the man downtown who brings drug into the country. Negroes can't bring drugs into this country. You don't have any boats. You don't have any airplanes. You don't have any diplomatic immunity. It is not you who is responsible for bringing in drugs. You're just a little tool that is used by the man downtown. The man that controls the drug traffic sits in city hall or he sits in the state house. Big shots who are respected, who function in high circles those are the ones who control these things. And you and I will never strike at the root of it until we strike at the man downtown.
"We must create meaningful, creative, useful activities for those who were led astray down the avenues of vice.”The people of the Afro- American community must be prepared to help each other in all ways possible; we must establish a place where unwed mothers can get help and advice." This is a problem, this is one of the worst problems in our. . . [A short passage is lost here as the tape is turned.]
"We must set up a guardian system that will help our youth who get into trouble." Too many of our children get into trouble accidentally. And once they get into trouble, because they have no one to look out for them, they're put in some of these homes where others who are experienced at getting in trouble are. And immediately it's a bad influence on them and they never have a chance to straighten out their lives. Too many of our children have their entire lives destroyed in this manner. It is up to you and me right now to form the type of organizations wherein we can look out for the needs of all of these young people who get into trouble, especially those who get into trouble for the first time, so that we can do something to steer them back on the right path before they go too far astray.
"And we must provide constructive activities for our own children. We must set a good example for our children and must teach them to always be ready to accept the responsibilities that are necessary for building good communities and nations. We must teach them that their greatest responsibilities are to themselves, to their families and to their communities.
"The Organization of Afro-American Unity believes that the Afro American community must endeavor to do the major part of all charity work from within the community. Charity, however, does not mean that to which we are legally entitled in the form of government benefits. The Afro-American veteran must be made aware of all the benefits due to him and the procedure for obtaining them."
Many of our people have sacrificed their lives on the battlefront for this country. There are many government benefits that our people don't even know about. Many of them are qualified to receive aid in all forms, but they don't even know it. But we know this, so it is our duty, those of us who know it, to set up a system where¬ in our people who are not informed of what is coming to them, we inform them, we let them know how they can lay claim to everything that they've got coming to them from this government. And I mean you've got much coming to you. "The veterans must be encouraged to go into business together, using GI loans," and all other items that we have access to or have available to us.
"Afro Americans must unite and work together. We must take pride in the Afro American community, for it is our home and it is our power," the base of our power.
"What we do here in regaining our self respect, our manhood, our dignity and freedom helps all people everywhere who are also fighting against oppression." Lastly, concerning culture and the cultural aspect of the Organization of Afro American Unity.
" 'A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.' "
"Our history and our culture were completely destroyed when we were forcibly brought to America in chains. And now it is important for us to know that our history did not begin with slavery. We came from Africa, a great continent, wherein live a proud and varied people, a land which is the new world and was the cradle of civilization. Our culture and our history are as old as man himself and yet we know almost nothing about it."
This is no accident. It is no accident that such a high state of culture existed in Africa and you and I know nothing about it. Why, the man knew that as long as you and I thought we were somebody, he could never treat us like we were nobody. So he had to invent a system that would strip us of everything about us that we could use to prove we were somebody. And once he had stripped us of all human chacteristics stripped us of our language, stripped us of our history, stripped us of all cultural knowledge, and brought us down to the level of an animal – he then began to treat us like an animal, selling us from one plantation to another, selling us from one owner to another, breeding us like you breed cattle.
Why, brothers and sisters, when you wake up and find out what this man here has done to you and me, you won't even wait for somebody to give the word. I'm not saying all of them are bad. There might be some good ones. But we don't have time to look for them. Not nowadays.
"We must recapture our heritage and our identity if we are ever to liberate ourselves from the bonds of white supremacy. We must launch a cultural revolution to unbrainwash an entire people." A cultural revolution. Why, brothers, that's a crazy revolution. When you tell this black man in America who he is, where he came from, what he had when he was there, he'll look around and ask himself, "Well, what happened to it, who took it away from us and how did they do it?" Why, brothers, you'll have some action just like that. When you let the black man in America know where he once was and what he once had, why, he only needs to look at himself now to realize something criminal was done to him to bring him down to the low condition that he's in today.
Once he realizes what was done, how it was done, where it was done, when it was done, and who did it, that knowledge in itself will usher in your action program. And it will be by any means necessary. A man doesn't know how to act until he realizes what he's acting against. And you don't realize what you're acting against until you realize what they did to you. Too many of you don't know what they did to you, and this is what makes you so quick to want to forget and forgive. No, brothers, when you see what has happened to you, you will never forget and you'll never forgive. And, as I say, all of them might not be guilty. But most of them are. Most of them are.
"Our cultural revolution must be the means of bringing us closer to our African brothers and sisters. It must begin in the community and be based on community participation. Afro-Americans will be free to create only when they can depend on the Afro-American community for support, and Afro-American artists must realize that they depend on the Afro-American community for inspiration."
Our artists we have artists who are geniuses; they don't have to act the Stepin Fetchit role. But as long as they're looking for white support instead of black support, they've got to act like the old white supporter wants them to. When you and I begin to support the black artists, then the black artists can play that black role. As long as the black artist has to sing and dance to please the white man, he'll be a clown, he'll be clowning, just another clown. But when he can sing and dance to please black men, he sings a different song and he dances a different step. When we get together, we've got a step all our own. We have a step that nobody can do but us, because we have a reason for doing it that nobody can understand but us.
"We must work toward the establishment of a cultural center in Harlem, which will include people of all ages and will conduct workshops in all of the arts, such as film, creative writing, painting, theater, music, and the entire spectrum of Afro American history.
"This cultural revolution will be the journey to our rediscovery of ourselves. History is a people's memory, and without a memory man is demoted to the level of the lower animals." When you have no knowledge of your history, you're just another animal; in fact, you're a Negro; something that's nothing. The only black man on earth who is called a Negro is one who has no knowl¬edge of his history. The only black man on earth who is called a Negro is one who doesn't know where he came from. That's the one in America. They don't call Africans Negroes.
Why, I had a white man tell me the other day, "He's not a Negro." Here the man was black as night, and the white man told me, “He’s not a Negro, he's an African." I said, "Well, listen to him." I knew he wasn't, but I wanted to pull old whitey out, you know. But it shows you that they know this. You are Negro because you don't know who you are, you don't know what you are, you don't know where you are, and you don't know how you got here. But as soon as you wake up and find out the positive answer to all these things, you cease being a Negro. You become somebody.
"Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past." And to quote a passage from Then We Heard the Thunder by John Killens, it says: "He was a dedicated patriot: Dignity was his country, Manhood was his gov¬ernment, and Freedom was his land.'" Old John Killens.
This is our aim. It's rough, we have to smooth it up some. But we're not trying to put something together that's smooth. We don't care how rough it is. We don't care how tough it is. We don't care how backward it may sound. In essence it only means we want one thing. We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.
I'm sorry I took so long. But before we go farther to tell you how you can join this organization, what your duties and responsibilities are, I want to turn you back into the hands of our master of ceremonies, Brother Les Edmonds.
[A collection is taken. Malcolm resumes.]
One of the first steps we are going to become involved in as an Organization of Afro-American Unity will be to work with every leader and other organization in this country interested in a program designed to bring your and my problem before the United Nations. This is our first point of business. We feel that the problem of the black man in this country is beyond the ability of Uncle Sam to solve it. It's beyond the ability of the United States government to solve it. The government itself isn't capable of even hearing our problem, much less solving it. It's not morally equipped to solve it.
So we must take it out of the hands of the United States government. And the only way we can do this is by internationalizing it and taking advantage of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Charter on Human Rights, and on that ground bring it into the UN before a world body where¬ in we can indict Uncle Sam for the continued criminal injustices that our people experience in this government.
To do this, we will have to work with many organizations and many people. We've already gotten promises of support from many different organizations in this country and from many different leaders in this country and from many different independent nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. So this is our first objective and all we need is your support. Can we get your support for this project?
For the past four weeks since my return from Africa, several persons from all walks of life in the Afro-American community have been meeting together, pooling knowledge and ideas and suggestions, forming a sort of a brain trust, for the purpose of getting a cross section of thinking, hopes, aspirations, likes and dislikes, to see what kind of organization we could put together that would in some way or other get the grass roots support, and what type of support it would need in order to be independent enough to take the type of action necessary to get results.
No organization that is financed by white support can ever be independent enough to fight the power structure with the type of tactics necessary to get real results. The only way we can fight the power structure, and it's the power structure that we're fighting we're not even fighting the Southern segregationists, we're fighting a system that is run in Washington, D. C. That's the seat of the system that we're fighting. And in order to fight it, we have to be independent of it. And the only way we can be independent of it is to be independent of all support from the white community. It's a battle that we have to wage ourselves.
Now, if white people want to help, they can help. But they can't join. They can help in the white community, but they can't join. We accept their help. They can form the White Friends of the Organization of Afro-American Unity and work in the white community on white people and change their attitude toward us. They don't ever need to come among us and change our attitude. We've had enough of them working around us trying to change our attitude. That's what got us all messed up. So we don't question their sincerity, we don't question their motives, we don't question their integrity. We just encourage them to use it somewhere else in the white community. If they can use all of this sincerity in the white community to make the white community act better toward us, then we'll say, "Those are good white folks." But they don't have to come around us, smiling at us and showing us all their teeth like white Uncle Toms, to try and make themselves acceptable to us. The White Friends of the Organization of Afro American Unity, let them work in the white community.
The only way that this organization can be independent is if it is financed by you. It must be financed by you. Last week I told you that it would cost a dollar to join it. We sat down and thought about it all week long and said that charging you a dollar to join it would not make it an organization. We have set a membership joining fee, if that's the way you express it, at $2.00. It costs more than that, I think, to join the NAACP.
By the way, you know I attended the NAACP convention Friday in Washington, D. C., which was very enlightening. And I found the people very friendly. They've got the same kind of ideas you have. They act a little different, but they've got the same kind of ideas, because they're catching the same hell we're catching. I didn't find any hostility at that convention at all. In fact, I sat and listened to them go through their business and learned a lot from it. And one of the things I learned is they only charge, I think, $2.50 a year for membership, and that's it. Well, this is one of the reasons that they have problems. Because any time you have an organization that costs $2.50 a year to belong to, it means that that organization has to turn in another direction for funds. And this is what castrates it. Because as soon as the white liberals begin to support it, they tell it what to do and what not to do.
This is why Garvey was able to be more militant. Garvey didn't ask them for help. He asked our people for help. And this is what we're going to do. We're going to try and follow his books.
So we're going to have a $2.00 joining fee and ask every member to contribute a dollar a week. Now, the NAACP gets $2.50 a year, that's it. And it can't ever go anywhere like that because it's always got to be putting on some kind of drive for help and will always get its help from the wrong source. And then when they get that help, they'll have to end up condemning all the enemies of their enemy in order to get some more help. No, we condemn our enemies, not the enemies of our enemies. We condemn our enemies.
So what we are going to ask you to do is, if you want to become a member of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, it will cost you $2.00. We are going to ask you to pay a dues of a dollar a week. We will have an accountant, a bookkeeping system, which will keep the members up to date as to what has come in, what has been spent, and for what. Because the secret to success in any kind of business venture – and anything that you do that you mean business, you'd better do in a businesslike way – the secret to your success is keeping good records, good organized records.
Since today will be the first time that we are opening the books for membership, our next meeting will be next Sunday here. And we will then have a membership. And we'll be able to announce at that time the officers of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. I'll tell you the top officer is the chairman, and that's the office I'm holding. I'm taking the responsibility of the chairman, which means I'm responsible for any mistakes that take place; anything that goes wrong, any failures, you can rest them right upon my shoulders. So next week the officers will be announced.
And this week I wanted to tell you the departments in this organization that, when you take out your membership, you can apply to work in. We have the department of education. The department of political action. For all of you who are interested in political action, we will have a department set up by brothers and sisters who are students of political science, whose function it will be to give us a breakdown of the community of New York City. First, how many assemblymen there are and how many of those assemblymen are black, how many congressmen there are and how many of those congressmen are black. In fact, let me just read something real quick and I'll show you why it's so necessary. Just to give you an example.
There are 270,000 eligible voters in the twenty first senatorial district. The twenty first senatorial district is broken down into the eleventh, seventh, and thirteenth assembly districts. Each assembly district contains 90,000 eligible voters. In the eleventh assembly district, only 29,000 out of 90,000 eligible voters exercise their voting rights. In the seventh assembly district, only 36,000 out of the 90,000 eligible voters vote. Now, in a white assembly district with 90,000 eligible voters, 65,000 exercise their voting rights, showing you that in the white assembly districts more whites vote than blacks vote in the black assembly districts. There's a reason for this. It is because our people aren't politically aware of what we can get by becoming politically active.
So what we have to have is a program of political education to show them what they can get if they take political action that's intelligently directed. Less than 25 percent of the eligible voters in Harlem vote in the primary election. Therefore, they have not the right to place the candidate of their choice in office, as only those who were in the primary can run in the general election. The following number of signatures are required to place a candidate to vote in the primaries: for assemblyman it must be 350 signatures; state senator, 750; countywide judgeship, 1,000; borough president, 2,250; mayor, 7,500. People registered with the Republican or Democratic parties do not have to vote with their party.
There are fifty eight senators in the New York state legislature. Four are from Manhattan; one is black. In the New York state assembly, there are 150 assemblymen. I think three are black; maybe more than that. According to calculation, if the Negro were proportionately represented in the state senate and state assembly, we would have several representatives in the state senate and several in the state assembly. There are 435 members in the United States House of Representatives. According to the census, there are 22 million Afro Americans in the United States. If they were represented proportionately in this body, there would be 30 to 40 members of our race sitting in that body. How many are there? Five. There are 100 senators in the United States Senate. Hawaii, with a population of only 600 thousand, has two senators representing it. The black man, with a population of in excess of 20 million, is not represented in the Senate at all. Worse than this, many of the congressmen and representatives in the Congress of the United States come from states where black people are killed if they attempt to exercise the right to vote.
What you and I want to do in this political department is have our brothers and sisters who are experts in the science of politics acquaint our people in our community with what we should have, and who should be doing it, and how we can go about getting what we should have. This will be their job and we want you to play this role so we can get some action without having to wait on Lyndon B. Johnson, Lyndon B. Texas Johnson.
Also, our economics department. We have an economics department. For any of you who are interested in business or a program that will bring about a situation where the black man in Harlem can gain control over his own economy and develop business expansion for our people in this community so we can create some employment opportunities for our people in this community, we will have this department.
We will also have a speakers bureau because many of our people want to speak, want to be speakers, they want to preach, they want to tell somebody what they know, they want to let off some steam. We will have a department that will train young men and young women how to go forth with our philosophy and our program and project it throughout the country; not only throughout this city but throughout the country.
We will have a youth group. The youth group will be designed to work with youth. Not only will it consist of youth, but it will also consist of adults. But it will be designed to work out a program for the youth in this country, one in which the youth can play an active part.
We also are going to have our own newspaper. You need a newspaper. We believe in the power of the press. A newspaper is not a difficult thing to run. A newspaper is very simple if you have the right motives. In fact, anything is simple if you have the right motives. The Muhammad Speaks newspaper, I and another person started it myself in my basement. And I've never gone past the eighth grade. Those of you who have gone to all these colleges and studied all kinds of journalism, yellow and black journalism, all you have to do is contribute some of your journalistic talent to our newspaper department along with our research department, and we can turn out a newspaper that will feed our people with so much information that we can bring about a real live revolution right here before you know it.
We will also have a cultural department. The task or duty of the cultural department will be to do research into the culture, into the ancient and current culture of our people, the cultural contributions and achievements of our people. And also all of the entertainment groups that exist on the African continent that can come here and ours who are here that can go there. Set up some kind of cultural program that will really emphasize the dormant talent of black people.
When I was in Ghana I was speaking with, I think his name is Nana Nketsia, I think he's the minister of culture or he's head of the culture institute. I went to his house, he had a – he had a nice, beautiful place; I started to say he had a sharp pad. He had a fine place in Accra. He had gone to Oxford, and one of the things that he said impressed me no end. He said that as an African his concept of freedom is a situation or a condition in which he, as an African, feels completely free to give vent to his own likes and dislikes and thereby develop his own African personality. Not a condition in which he is copying some European cultural pattern or some European cultural standard, but an atmosphere of complete freedom where he has the right, the leeway, to bring out of himself all of that dormant, hidden talent that has been there for so long.
And in that atmosphere, brothers and sisters, you'd be surprised what will come out of the bosom of this black man. I've seen it happen. I've seen black musicians when they'd be jamming at a jam session with white musicians – a whole lot of difference. The white musician can jam if he's got some sheet music in front of him. He can jam on something that he's heard jammed before. If he's heard it, then he can duplicate it or he can imitate it or he can read it But that black musician, he picks up his horn and starts blowing some sounds that he never thought of before. He improvises, he creates, it comes from within. It's his soul, it's that soul music. It's the only area on the American scene
where the black man has been free to create. And he his mastered it. He has shown that he can come up with something that nobody ever thought of on his horn.
Well, likewise he can do the same thing if given intellectual independence. He can come up with a new philosophy. He can come up with a philosophy that nobody has heard of yet. He can invent a society, a social system, an economic system, a political system, that is different from anything that exists or has ever existed anywhere on this earth. He will improvise; he'll bring it from within himself. And this is what you and I want.
You and I want to create an organization that will give us so much power we can sit down and do as we please. Once we can sit down and think as we please, speak as we please, and do as we please, we will show people what pleases us. And what pleases us won't always please them. So you've got to get some power before you can be yourself. Do you understand that? You've got to get some power before you can be yourself. Once you get power and you be yourself, why, you're gone, you've got it and gone. You create a new society and make some heaven right here on this earth.
And we're going to start right here tonight when we open up our membership books into the Organization of Afro-American Unity. I'm going to buy the first memberships myself – one for me, my wife, Attillah, Qubilah, these are my daughters, Ilyasah, and something else I expect to get either this week or next week. As I told you before, if it's a boy I'm going to name him Lumumba, the greatest black man who ever walked the African continent.
He didn't fear anybody. He had those people so scared they had to kill him. They couldn't buy him, they couldn't frighten him, they couldn't reach him. Why, he told the king of Belgium, "Man, you may let us free, you may have given us our independence, but we can never forget these scars." The greatest speech – you should take that speech and tack it up over your door. This is what Lumumba said: "You aren't giving us anything. Why, can you take back these scars that you put on our bodies? Can you give us back the limbs that you cut off while you were here?" No, you should never forget what that man did to you. And you bear the scars of the same kind of colonization and oppression not on your body, but in your brain, in your heart, in your soul, right now.
So, if it's a boy, Lumumba. If it's a girl, Lumumbah.
[Malcolm introduces several people from the platform and from the audience, then continues:]
If I passed over some of the rest of you, it's because my eyes aren't too good, my glasses aren't too good. But everybody here are people who are from the street who want some kind of action. We hope that we will be able to give you all the action you need. And more than likely we'll be able to give you more than you want. We just hope that you stay with us. Our meeting will be next Sunday night right here. We want you to bring all of your friends and we'll be able to go forward. Up until now, these meetings have been sponsored by the Muslim Mosque, Inc. They've been sponsored and paid for by the Muslim Mosque, Inc. Beginning next Sunday, they will be sponsored and paid for by the Organization of Afro American Unity.
I don't know if I'm right in saying this, but for a period of time, let's you and me not be too hard on other Afro-American leaders. Because you would be surprised how many of them. have expressed sympathy and support in our efforts to bring this situation confronting our people before the United Nations. You'd be surprised how many of them, some of the last ones you would expect, they're coming around. So let's give them a little time to straighten up. If they straighten up, good. They're our brothers and we're responsible for our brothers. But if they don't straighten up, then that's another point.
And one thing that we are going to do, we're going to dispatch a wire, a telegram that is, in the name of the Organization of Afro-American Unity to Martin Luther King in St. Augustine, Florida, and to Jim Forman in Mississippi, worded in essence to tell them that if the federal government doesn't come to their aid, call on us. And we will take the responsibility of slipping some brothers into that area who know what to do by any means necessary.
I can tell you right now that my purpose is not to become involved in a fight with Black Muslims, who are my brothers still. I do everything I can to avoid that because there's no benefit in it. It actually makes our enemy happy. But I do believe that the time has come for you and me to take the responsibility of forming whatever nucleus or defense group is necessary in places like Mississippi. Why, they shouldn't have to call on the federal government – that's a drag. No, when you and I know that our people are the victims of brutality, and all times the police in those states are the ones who are responsible, then it is incumbent upon you and me, if we are men, if we are to be respected and recognized, it is our duty. . . [A passage is lost here through a defect in the tape.]
Johnson knew that when he sent [Allen] Dulles down there. Johnson has found this out. You don't disappear. How are you going to disappear? Why, this man can find a missing person in China. They send the CIA all the way to China and find somebody. They send the FBI anywhere and find somebody. But they can't find them whenever the criminal is white and the victim is black, then they can't find them.
Let's don't wait on any more FBI to look for criminals who are shooting and brutalizing our people. Let's you and me find them. And I say that it's easy to do it. One of the best organized groups of black people in America was the Black Muslims. They've got all the machinery, don't think they haven't; and the experience where they know how to ease out in broad daylight or in dark and do whatever is necessary by any means necessary. They know how to do that. Well, I don't blame anybody for being taught how to do that. You're living in a society where you're the constant victim of brutality. You must know how to strike back.
So instead of them and us wasting our shots, I should say our time and energy, on each other, what we need to do is band together and go to Mississippi. That's my closing message to Elijah Muhammad: If he is the leader of the Muslims and the leader of our people, then lead us against our enemies, don't lead us against each other.
I thank you for your patience here tonight, and we want each and every one of you to put your name on the roll of the Organization of Afro- American Unity. The reason we have to rely upon you to let the public know where we are is because the press doesn't help us; they never announce in advance that we're going to have a meeting. So you have to spread the word over the grapevine. Thank you. Salaam Alaikum.
Sources:
Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary: Speeches, Interviews, and a Letter by Malcolm X (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), pp. 35-67.
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Harry Weinstein became a world champion under which name? | Garry Kasparov | Russian chess player | Britannica.com
Russian chess player
Alternative Titles: Garri Kimovich Kasparov, Garri Weinstein, Harry Weinstein
Garry Kasparov
Garry Kasparov, in full Garri Kimovich Kasparov, original name Garri Weinstein or Harry Weinstein (born April 13, 1963, Baku , Azerbaijan , U.S.S.R.), Russian chess master who became the world chess champion in 1985.
Garry Kasparov contemplating his next move against former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov …
Abilio Lope/Corbis
Kasparov was born to a Jewish father and an Armenian mother. He began playing chess at age 6, by age 13 was the Soviet youth champion, and won his first international tournament at age 16 in 1979. Kasparov became an international grandmaster in 1980. From 1973 to 1978 he studied under former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik .
Kasparov first challenged the reigning world champion Anatoly Karpov in a 1984–85 match, after he survived the Fédération Internationale des Échecs ( FIDE ; the international chess federation) series of elimination matches. Kasparov lost four out of the first nine games but then adopted a careful defensive stance, taking an extraordinarily long series of drawn games with the champion. With Kasparov finally having won three games from the exhausted Karpov, FIDE halted the series after 48 games, a decision protested by Kasparov. In the two players’ rematch in 1985, Kasparov narrowly defeated Karpov in a 24-game series and thereby became the youngest official champion in the history of the game.
In 1993 Kasparov and the English grandmaster Nigel Short left FIDE and formed a rival organization, the Professional Chess Association (PCA). In response, FIDE stripped the title of world champion from Kasparov, who defeated Short that same year to become the PCA world champion. In 1995 he successfully defended his PCA title against Viswanathan Anand of India .
In 1996 Kasparov defeated a powerful IBM custom-built chess computer known as Deep Blue in a match that attracted worldwide attention. Kasparov and the team of Deep Blue programmers agreed to have a rematch in 1997. Deep Blue’s intelligence was upgraded, and the machine prevailed. Kasparov resigned in the last game of the six-game match after 19 moves, granting the win to Deep Blue. In 2000 Kasparov lost a 16-game championship match to Vladimir Kramnik of Russia .
Garry Kasparov playing against Deep Blue, the chess-playing computer built by IBM.
Adam Nadel/AP
Kasparov retired from competitive chess in 2005, though not from involvement in chess. In particular, he produced an acclaimed series of books, Kasparov on My Great Predecessors (2003–06), that covered all the world chess champions from Wilhelm Steinitz through Karpov, as well as many other great players. He also kept in the public eye with his decision in 2005 to start a political organization, the United Civil Front, to oppose Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin . In 2006 Kasparov was one of the prime movers behind a broad coalition of political parties that formed the Other Russia, a group held together by only one goal: ousting Putin from power. In 2007, following several protest marches organized by the coalition in which Kasparov and other participants were arrested, the Other Russia chose Kasparov as its candidate for the 2008 presidential election but was unable to nominate him by the deadline.
Learn More in these related articles:
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| Garry Kasparov |
Who directed Good Morning Vietnam? | The chess games of Garry Kasparov
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One of the greatest players of all time, Kasparov was undisputed World Champion from 1985 until 1993, and Classical World Champion from 1993 until 2000. Known to chess fans world wide as the <Beast From Baku> on account of his aggressive and highly successful style of play, his main early influence was the combative and combinative style of play displayed by Alexander Alekhine .
Early Years
Originally named Garry Kimovich Weinstein (or Weinshtein), he was born in Baku, in what was then the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (now the Republic of Azerbaijan), and is the son of Klara Shagenovna Kasparova and Kim Moiseyevich Weinstein. At five years old, young Garry Weinstein taught himself how to play chess from watching his relatives solve chess puzzles in a newspaper. His immense natural talent was soon realized and from age 7, he attended the Young Pioneer Palace in Baku (where for some time he was known as "Garry Bronstein".*). At 10, he began training at the Mikhail Botvinnik Soviet chess school. He was first coached by Vladimir Andreevich Makogonov and later by Alexander Shakarov . Five years after his father's untimely death from leukemia, the twelve year old chess prodigy adopted the Russian-sounding name Garry Kasparov (Kas-PARE-off) a reference to his mother's Armenian maiden name, Gasparyan (or Kasparian).
Championships
Junior Twelve-year old Kasparov won the Soviet Junior Championship, held in Tbilisi in 1976 scoring 7/9, and repeated his success in 1977, winning with a score of 8� of 9. The next several years were spent marking his rise as a world-class talent. He became World Junior Champion in 1980 in Dortmund, the same year he earned the grandmaster title.
National He first qualified for the Soviet Chess Championship at age 15 in 1978, the youngest ever player at that level. He won the 64-player Swiss system tournament at Daugavpils on tiebreak over Igor Vasilievich Ivanov , to capture the sole qualifying place. He was joint Soviet Champion in 1980-81 with Lev Psakhis ** and in 1988 Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov tied in the Super-Soviet Championship***. In 2004, Garry Kasparov won the Russian Championships (2004) with a stunning +5 score.
World On the basis of his result in the 1981 Soviet Championship, which doubled as a zonal tournament for the USSR region, he earned a place in the 1982 Moscow Interzonal tournament, which he won, to qualify for the Candidates Tournament matches that were held in 1983 and 1984. At age 19, he was the youngest Candidate since Robert James Fischer , who was 15 when he qualified in 1958. At this stage, he was already the #2-rated player in the world, trailing only world champion Karpov on the January 1983 list. These Candidates matches were the first and last Candidates matches Kasparov contested, as he declined to participate in the Candidates held under the auspices of the PCA in 2002 to decide a challenger to his successor as classical World Champion, Vladimir Kramnik . Kasparov's first Candidates match in Moscow was a best-of-ten affair against Alexander Beliavsky , whom he defeated 6�3 (+4 -1 =4). After much political ado, Kasparov defeated Viktor Korchnoi in London in the best-of-12 semi-final match by 7�4 (+4 -1 =6), and in early 1984 in Vilnius he defeated former World Champion Vasily Smyslov in the best-of-16 finals played by 8.5-4.5 (+4 =9 -0) to earn his challenge against Karpov. By the time the match with Smyslov was played, Kasparov had become the number-one ranked player in the world with a FIDE rating of 2710. He became the youngest ever world number-one, a record that lasted 12 years until being broken by Vladimir Kramnik in January 1996 and again by his former pupil, Magnus Carlsen in 2010.
At one stage during the Karpov - Kasparov World Championship Match (1984) , Kasparov trailed 5-0 in the first-to-win-6 match. He then fought back to win three games and bring the score to 5�3 in Karpov's favour after 48 games, making it the longest world championship match ever. At that point, the match was ended without result by the then FIDE President, the late Florencio Campomanes , with Karpov thus retaining the title. Further details can be found in the match link at the head of this paragraph. Kasparov won the best-of-24 games Karpov - Kasparov World Championship Match (1985) in Moscow by 13�11, winning the 24th and last game with Black. He was then 22, the youngest ever World Champion, and broke the record held by Mikhail Tal for over 20 years. Karpov exercised his right to a rematch, the Karpov - Kasparov World Championship Rematch (1986) , which took place in 1986, hosted jointly in London and Leningrad, with each city hosting 12 games. Kasparov won 12��11�, retaining the title. The fourth match, the Kasparov - Karpov World Championship Match (1987) was held in Seville. Karpov had been directly seeded into and won the final match of the Candidates' Matches to again become the official challenger. Kasparov retained his title by winning the final game and drawing the match 12�12. The fifth and last championship match between the two, Kasparov - Karpov World Championship Match (1990) , was held in New York and Lyon in 1990, with each city hosting 12 games. Kasparov won by 12��11�. In their five world championship matches, the combined game tally was +21 -19 =104 in Kasparov�s favour.
Kasparov subsequently defended his title against Nigel Short under the auspices of the PCA in 1993, and against Viswanathan Anand in 1995. Five years later, in 2000 ( Kasparov - Kramnik World Championship Match (2000) ), Kasparov finally relinquished his crown to his former student, Vladimir Kramnik, who was granted the right to challenge without having to qualify, the first time this had happened since 1935, when Alexander Alekhine selected Max Euwe as his challenger. Subsequently, Kasparov remained the top rated player in the world, ahead of both Kramnik and the FIDE World Champions, on the strength of a series of wins in major tournaments.
Under the "Prague Agreement� which was put together by Yasser Seirawan to reunite the two titles, Kasparov was to play a match against the 2002 FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov in September 2003. But this match was cancelled when Ponomariov was dissatisfied with the terms of the contract. Subsequent plans for a match against 2004 FIDE World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov , to be held in January 2005 in the United Arab Emirates, fell through due to lack of funding. Shortly after this, Kasparov announced his retirement from competitive chess.
In an interview in 2007, Kasparov said that <�my decision in 1993 to break away from the world chess federation, FIDE, with Nigel Short was the worst mistake of my career. It was a serious miscalculation on my part. I thought we could start fresh with a professional organisation, but there was little support among the players. It led to short-term progress in commercial sponsorship for chess, but in the long run hurt the game...> ****
Classical Tournaments
In 1978, Kasparov won the Sokolsky Memorial tournament in Minsk as a wild card entry, a victory which convinced Kasparov he could aim for the World Championship. He played in a grandmaster tournament in Banja Luka, Yugoslavia in 1979 while still unrated, due to Korchnoi�s withdrawal. He took first place with an undefeated record, two points ahead of the field. Game Collection: Banja Luka 1979 He emerged with a provisional rating of 2595, immediately landing at world number 15, a feat only surpassed by Gata Kamsky in July 1990. His first win in a superclass-level international tournament was scored at Bugojno, Yugoslavia in 1982, and his win in Linares in 2002 was the tenth victory in a row, a record for the most consecutive victories in super tournaments: Linares 4 (1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, Wijk aan Zee 3 (1999, 2000, 2001), Sarajevo 2 (1999, 2000) and Astana 1 (2001). Kasparov also holds the record for most consecutive professional tournament victories, placing first or equal first in 15 individual tournaments from 1981 to 1990. It started with the 1981 USSR Championship and finished in Linares in 1990. His five epic title matches against Karpov were held during this period. Subsequently, Kasparov won Linares again in 1992, 1993, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2005, the latter being his swan song from the game.
Olympiads
Kasparov played in eight Olympiads. He represented the Soviet Union four times, in 1980, 1982, 1986 and 1988, and Russia four times: in 1992, 1994, 1996 and 2002 playing board 1 on each occasion apart from 1980 (2nd reserve) and 1982 (2nd board). In 82 games, he scored (+50 =29 -3), for 78.7% and won a total of 19 medals, including 8 team gold medals, 5 board golds, 2 performance golds, 2 performance silvers and 2 board bronzes. Kasparov also represented the USSR once in Youth Olympiad competition at Graz in 1981, when he played board 1 for the USSR board 1, scoring 9/10 (+8 =2 -0), the team winning the gold medal.
Team chess
Kasparov made his international teams debut for the USSR at age 16 in the 1980 European Team Championship at Skara and played for Russia in the 1992 edition of that championship. He won a total of five medals including at Skara 1980, as USSR 2nd reserve, 5�/6 (+5 =1 -0), team gold, board gold and at Debrecen 1992, Russia board 1, 6/8 (+4 =4 -0), team gold, board gold, performance silver.
Matches
<Computer> Kasparov defeated the chess computer Deep Thought (Computer) in both games of a two-game match in 1989. In February 1996, he defeated IBM's chess computer Deep Blue (Computer) with three wins and two draws and one loss. In 1997, an updated version of Deep Blue defeated Kasparov 3��2� in a highly publicised six-game match. The match was even after five games but Kasparov lost Game 6 - Deep Blue vs Kasparov, 1997 - to lose the match. This was the first time a computer had ever defeated a world champion in match play. In January 2003, he played and drew a six game FIDE Man - Machine WC (2003) match against Deep Junior (Computer) . In November 2003, he played and drew a four-game Man - Machine World Chess Championship (2003) against the computer program X3D Fritz (Computer) X3D Fritz, although he was constrained through the use of a virtual board, 3D glasses and a speech recognition system.
<Human � classical> Kasparov played several matches apart from his matches in the World Championship cycles. Full details can be seen at Game Collection: Match Kasparov! .
<Human � rapid> In 1998, Kasparov played a blitz match against Kramnik in Moscow, that match being drawn +7-7=10. He fared better in the 2000 internet blitz match against Judit Polgar , winning one and drawing one. The following year, he played a blitz match against the many times Greek speed chess champion Hristos Banikas of Greece, winning 5 and drawing one. In his 2002 blitz against Elisabeth Paehtz in Munich, he won 6-0. Later in 2002, Kasparov lost a four game rapid match (+1 -2 =1) over two days in December 2002 in New York City against Anatoly Karpov. In 2009 in Valencia, Spain, he again played Karpov, and won the Kasparov - Karpov Rapid Match (2009) 3-1 and the Kasparov - Karpov Blitz Match (2009) by 6-2. In 2011, as part of his Chess In Schools campaign, he played a two game Kasparov - Lagrave Blitz Match (2011) in Clichy France, winning by 1.5-0.5. A few months later in October 2011, he won the Kasparov - Short Blitz Match (2011) 4.5-3.5 (+3 -2 =3), breaking the deadlock after game 7 by winning game 8 to win the match.
<Simuls> In 1985, Kasparov played his first simul against a team, the Hamburg Bundesliga team lead by GM Murray Chandler , and lost 3.5-4.5, the first and only time he lost a simul against a team. In 1987, he played a simul against the same albeit slightly stronger team, but this time he was prepared and crushed the Hamburg players 7-1; later in 1987 he also crushed the Swiss team: Game Collection: Kasparov vs Swiss Team Simul by 5.5-0.5, drawing only with former World Junior Champion Werner Hug . In 1988 he played a simul against the French team in Evry ( Game Collection: Kasparov vs French Team Simul ), winning 4, drawing one and losing one; he played the French team again in 1989 ( Game Collection: Kasparov vs French Team Simul 1989 ), this time winning three and drawing 3 games. Also in 1988 he played a simul against a group of powerful US Juniors, and won by 4-2 (+3 -1 =2)*****. In 1992, Kasparov played a clock simul against the German team ( Game Collection: Kasparov vs German National Team Simul which included former title contender Vlastimil Hort with whom he drew, winning 2 and drawing 2. He played a simul against the Argentinean team ( Game Collection: Kasparov vs Argentinian Team Simul ) winning (+7 -1 =4); in 1998 he played the Israeli team ( Game Collection: Kasparov vs Israeli National Team Simul ) winning 7-1, and in 2001 he played the Czech team ( Game Collection: Kasparov vs Czech National Team Simul ) in Prague, winning by +4 -1 =3.
Rating
Kasparov's ratings achievements include being rated world #1 according to Elo rating almost continuously from 1986 until his retirement in 2005. He was the world number-one ranked player for 255 months, a record that far outstrips all other previous and current number-one ranked players. Kasparov had the highest Elo rating in the world continuously from 1986 to 2005. However, Vladimir Kramnik equaled him in the January 1996 FIDE ratings list, technically supplanting him because he played more games. He was also briefly ejected from the list following his split from FIDE in 1993, but during that time he headed the rating list of the rival PCA. At the time of his retirement, he was still ranked #1 in the world, with a rating of 2812. In January 1990 Kasparov achieved the (then) highest FIDE rating ever, passing 2800 and breaking Bobby Fischer's old record of 2785. On the July 1999 and January 2000 FIDE rating lists Kasparov reached a 2851 Elo rating, which became the highest rating ever achieved until surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013. There was a time in the early 1990s when Kasparov was over 2800 and the only person in the 2700s was Anatoly Karpov.
Other
Under Kasparov's tutelage, Carlsen became the youngest ever to achieve a FIDE rating higher than 2800, and the youngest ever world number one. Kasparov also assisted Anand�s preparation for the Anand - Topalov World Chess Championship (2010) against challenger Veselin Topalov . Since his retirement, Kasparov has concentrated much of his time and energy in Russian politics. He is also a prolific author, most famously his <My Great Predecessors> series. His politics and authorship are discussed at some detail in the wiki article and at his official website cited below. In 2007, he was ranked 25th in The Daily Telegraph's list of 100 greatest living geniuses and has won 11 Chess Oscars.
Kasparov has been married three times: first to Masha, with whom he had a daughter, Polina (b. 1993), before divorcing; to Yulia, with whom he had a son, Vadim (b. 1996) before their 2005 divorce; and to Daria, with whom he also has a daughter, Aida (b. 2006).
Biography: http://www.kasparovagent.com/garry_... Kasparov�s official website: http://kasparov.com/ Kasparov Chess Foundation: http://www.kasparovchessfoundation.... ]
Jan-20-05
yoozum : Guys, as I found out yesterday, CG.com wants the bios as short as possible, while still covering his life.
The match scores, current strength, which tournaments he won, etc.. are quite irrelevant. If you're looking for a more complete bio, search elsewhere.
Jan-20-05 centercounter : Ironically, Kasparov's withdrawal sort of accomplishes what FIDE could not - a unified champion. With the lack of credibility of the FIDE KO "WC" in Libya (no disrespect to Kasimdzhanov, or to his fine result), this makes Kramnik pretty much the only game in town. Although a Kramnik-Anand WC match would be very welcome :)
If FIDE and ACP are serious about unification, my suggestion is that a round-robin tournament might be held in a neutral location (Iceland, Switzerland, etc.) with the top 16 players by FIDE rating, no "president's nomination" and no right of the host country to seed extra players. If a player declines to participate, the tournament goes on with less players, the next player in the FIDE rating list would not be seeded.
The top 4 players from that event could then be broken into 1-3 and 2-4 and the winners of those matches could play for the WC. No rapid or blitz tiebreakers, all games with a legitimate time control.
A huge prize fund for the tournament part is not necessary - the top 4 will have cemented their position and have earned the right to command appropriate compensation in future events, in addition to receiving more lucrative earnings in the matches.
Jan-20-05 Dedalus : centercounter: I agree.
This settles thing in some strange fashion... Now it must be clear for everyone that the WCH is Kramnik - and that he, in fact, just recently defended his title in a very exciting match vs (probably, in my opinion, maybe alongside Kasparov) the strongest challenger around right now).
Jan-20-05
Appaz : Actually, I thought his name was Harri or Harry Weinstein. But that could just be a matter of translation.
Jan-20-05 yoozum : It may have something to do with the fact that American H's are pronounced "G" in Russian. And W is pronounced as V.
ex.
Jan-20-05 Backward Development : http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp...
FIDE strikes back! (cue Darth Vader music)
Jan-20-05 aw1988 : <The World Chess Federation (FIDE: http://www.fide.com ) regrets Garry Kasparov�s announcement to withdraw from playing the World Chess Championship match against Rustam Kasimdzhanov at the scheduled dates of April 25th to May 14th 2005.
During the latest FIDE congress in Spain, the Turkish Chess Federation expressed its strong desire to organize this match. FIDE informed the General Assembly that the Turkish bid was actively supported by the former world champion Garry Kasparov who urged FIDE to �give somebody else the authority to act unless FIDE already has the money from the Dubai organizer�. On 2 December 2004, FIDE entered discussions with the Turkish Chess Federation and requested the necessary bank guarantees before signing any agreement or issuing player�s contracts. Garry Kasparov had made it clear several times that he would not sign anything before he receives �acceptable� financial guarantees.
During the negotiations with the Turkish Chess Federation Garry Kasparov and World Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov were kept fully informed about all developments. They knew that:
a) FIDE authorized the Turkish Chess Federation on December 7 to secure the necessary funds in order to organize this match in Turkey with an initial deadline of 29 December.
b) On 3 January 2005 the Deputy Prime Minister of the Turkish Republic, Mr Mehmet Ali Sahin, informed FIDE in writing that Turkey is ready to provide all necessary guarantees for the organization of the match, including the prize fund of 1.000.000 USD, organizational costs, etc.
c) Following this letter of the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister, FIDE gave the Turkish Chess Federation a new deadline of 18 January for the issue of bank guarantees of 200.000 USD for each player and 50.000 USD for FIDE. The total amount of 1.272.000 USD would have to be transferred to FIDE�s bank account no later than 25 March 2005.
Meanwhile, both players agreed that the match would begin on 25 April 2005.
A few days ago, the representative lawyer of the Turkish Chess Federation, Mr Cemal Dursun, informed Garry Kasparov that no bank guarantees could be issued before 25 January. After receiving this information, Garry Kasparov sent an email to FIDE on 18 January announcing that he is no longer available to participate in this match for the dates that had been agreed (25 April � 14 May).
It is obvious that we are facing again a stalemate situation concerning the realization of the Prague Agreement, a situation for which FIDE cannot be held accountable. The official letter of the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister represents for FIDE a strong guarantee in order to provide the Turkish organizers with the necessary time to deal with the formal procedures concerning the issuance of the required financial guarantees.
Garry Kasparov, who for a long time has sincerely co-operated towards the realization of the Prague Agreement, should have at least shown his respect to his opponent Rustam Kasimdzhanov and his appreciation for the efforts of the Turkish Chess Federation and the Turkish Government before announcing his unilateral decision to withdraw from this match.
It has to be clear to everyone that it is impossible to secure such high prize funds from legitimate sponsors, acceptable to FIDE and the IOC, without providing the candidate organizers with the necessary time to complete their efforts, especially when the government of a country is the guarantor for the organization of the match. It is even more difficult to secure these prize funds when the participants demand excessive financial guarantees before committing themselves in writing.
FIDE continues to seek solutions concerning the funding of the World Chess Championship, in co-operation with its national federations and in close contact with all interested parties.>
Jan-20-05 dafish298 : yea i was right..see fide wont throw in the towel..i would think kasparov would accept this but who knows he could be stubborn
Jan-20-05 centercounter : While probably not feasible, perhaps he should speak either through his representation or directly with the representative of the sponsoring organization in Turkey. FIDE has lost credibility with Garry (Garri? Harri?) and it's important that he receive information from a source he feels is more reliable, or at least is a more direct source.
Failing that, FIDE could be stringing him along hoping for a miracle or they could really have made the stated progress, and Kasparov is simply frustrated with the misinformation, miscommunications, and absence of communication he perceives coming from FIDE.
Not being either Kaspy or a FIDE rep, myself, I can only give opinions on what I read and do not know the facts and the feelings firsthand ...
Jan-20-05 Sylvester : If Kasparov and Kramnik just held a unification match it would generate a lot of interest. They would not need a large purse. The winner could cash in later. A clear Champion would make the next match much more attractive to the money people.
Jan-21-05 ughaibu : Unification is between Kramnik and Kasimdzhanov. Kasparov has nothing to do with it, he's not the champion of either side.
Jan-21-05 dafish298 : I want to see kasparov play in a title match, because everytime he does he brings out an opening he never plays and revolutionizes it or wins with it. I.E. The sicilian dragon against anand in '95 (he won twice and drew 1 or 2 i think)
Jan-21-05 Poisonpawns : Nice picture chessgames! Kasparov`s Suit,teeth,and the chessboard in the backround match :-)
Jan-21-05 GazoGypsy : <yoozum:Not surprisingly, FIDE uses this as an opportunity to pass most of the blame on Kasparov. I wish we could finally get some objective facts about this.> The only relevent facts I see are Ilyumshinov is attempting to reign in the last mavarick Kaspy to complete his world domination, Garry would love to be the unified Champ, but I don't believe that would be in Ilyumshinov's best interest. Unfortunately Kasporov's withdrawal hurts him a lot more than it hurts FIDE and or Kirsan.
Jan-21-05 GazoGypsy : Garry if your reeding this - Not all of are blind to the politics behind the game and you have our support and encouragement. Good on ya'
Jan-21-05 tinashawn499 : Kasparov made the best move! By eliminating himself from the current confusion of the WC match he may in fact be able to unfiy the title quicker. There is no reason why FIDE should not schedule a match with Kramink now.
Jan-21-05 centercounter : Actually, it was all the stop and go scheduling of the match with Kasimdzhanov that hurt Kasparov. He does not need this to prove anything. He is not hurting for money (I would assume) and his place among the greats in chess cannot be put into question.
The cycle should start anew with a proper qualification system. In today's world, interzonals are just not feasible in the form some of us old-timers remember, but the structure needs to be analyzed and rebuilt in some manner to restore credibility.
FIDE and the ACP both have their agendas, and would profit from meeting and working together not as independent agencies, as it appears is being attempted (badly), but as one group.
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What was Bette Davis's real first name? | Bette Davis - Biography - IMDb
Bette Davis
Biography
Showing all 210 items
Jump to: Overview (5) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (4) | Trade Mark (3) | Trivia (108) | Personal Quotes (80) | Salary (9)
Overview (5)
The First Lady of Film
Height
5' 3" (1.6 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge.
After graduation from Cushing Academy, she was refused admittance to Eva Le Gallienne 's Manhattan Civic Repertory. She enrolled in John Murray Anderson 's Dramatic School and was the star pupil. She was in the off-Broadway play "The Earth Between" (1923), and her Broadway debut in 1929 was in "Broken Dishes". She also appeared in "Solid South". Late in 1930, she was hired by Universal, where she made her first film, called Way Back Home (1931). When she arrived in Hollywood, the studio representative who went to meet her train left without her because he could find no one who looked like a movie star. An official at Universal complained she had "as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville " and her performance in The Bad Sister (1931) didn't impress.
In 1932, she signed a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers Pictures. Her first film with them was Seed (1931). She became a star after her appearance in The Man Who Played God (1932), known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. She had a significant number of write-in votes for the Best Actress Oscar, but didn't win. Warner Bros. felt their seven-year deal with Bette was more than justified. They had a genuine star on their hands. With this success under her belt, she began pushing for stronger and more meaningful roles. In 1935, she received her first Oscar for her role in Dangerous (1935) as Joyce Heath.
In 1936, she was suspended without pay for turning down a role that she deemed unworthy of her talent. She went to England, where she had planned to make movies, but was stopped by Warner Bros. because she was still under contract to them. They did not want her to work anywhere. Although she sued to get out of her contract, she lost. Still, they began to take her more seriously after that.
Returning after losing her lawsuit, her roles improved dramatically. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award nomination for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda . The only role she didn't get that she wanted was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Warners wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless he hired Errol Flynn to play Rhett Butler, which both Selznick and Davis thought was a terrible choice. It was rumored she had numerous affairs, among them George Brent and William Wyler , and she was married four times, three of which ended in divorce. She admitted her career always came first.
She made many successful films in the 1940s, but each picture was weaker than the last and by the time her Warner Brothers contract had ended in 1949, she had been reduced to appearing in such films as the unintentionally hilarious Beyond the Forest (1949). She made a huge comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ill Claudette Colbert in, and received an Oscar nomination for, All About Eve (1950). She worked in films through the 1950s, but her career eventually came to a standstill, and in 1961 she placed a now famous Job Wanted ad in the trade papers.
She received an Oscar nomination for her role as a demented former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). This brought about a new round of super-stardom for generations of fans who were not familiar with her work. Two years later, she starred in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Bette was married four times.
In 1977 she received the AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1979 she won a Best Actress Emmy for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979). In 1977-78 she moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles and filmed a pilot for the series Hotel (1983), which she called Brothel. She refused to do the TV series and suffered a stroke during this time.
Her last marriage, to actor Gary Merrill , lasted ten years, longer than any of the previous three. In 1985, her daughter Barbara Davis ("B.D.") Hyman published a scandalous book about Bette called "My Mother's Keeper." Bette worked in the later 1980s in films and TV, even though a stroke had impaired her appearance and mobility. She wrote a book, "This 'N That", during her recovery from the stroke. Her last book was "Bette Davis, The Lonely Life", issued in paperback in 1990. It included an update from 1962 to 1989. She wrote the last chapter in San Sebastian, Spain.
Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Many of her fans refused to believe she was gone.
Ironical and often biting sense of humor
Portrayal of strong female characters
Trivia (108)
While she was the star pupil at John Murray Anderson 's Dramatic School in New York, another of her classmates was sent home because she was "too shy". It was predicted that this girl would never make it as an actress. The girl was Lucille Ball .
Ranked #15 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list. [October 1997]
In 1952 she was asked to perform in a musical, "Two's Company". After several grueling months at rehearsals, her health deteriorated due to osteomyelitis of the jaw and she had to leave the show only several weeks after it opened. She was to repeat this process in 1974 when she rehearsed for the musical version of The Corn Is Green (1945), called "Miss Moffat", but bowed out early in the run of the show for dubious medical reasons.
On her sarcophagus is written "She did it the hard way".
She suffered a stroke and had a mastectomy in 1983.
Attended Northfield Mt. Hermon high school.
Interred at Forest Lawn (Hollywood Hills), Los Angeles, California, USA, just outside and to the left of the main entrance to the Court of Remembrance.
Mother of Barbara Merrill (aka B.D. Hyman) and grandmother of J. Ashley Hyman . Marion Sherry was B.D.'s nanny until William Grant Sherry left Davis for her.
Director Steven Spielberg won the Christie's auction of her 1938 Best Actress Oscar for Jezebel (1938) for $578,000. He then gave it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. [July 2001]
When Bette learned that her new brother-in-law was a recovering alcoholic, she sent the couple a dozen cases of liquor for a wedding present.
She was elected as first female president of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in October 1941. She resigned less then two months later, publicly declaring herself too busy to fulfill her duties as president while angrily protesting in private that the Academy had wanted her to serve as a mere figurehead.
She considered her debut screen test for Universal Pictures to be so bad that she ran screaming from the projection room.
Her third husband Arthur Farnsworth died after a fall on Hollywood Boulevard in which he took a blow to the head. He had shortly before banged his head on a train between LA and New England, followed by another fall down the stairway at their New Hampshire home.
It is said that one of her real true loves was director William Wyler but he was married and refused to leave his wife.
In Marked Woman (1937), Davis is forced to testify in court after being worked over by some Mafia hoods. Disgusted with the tiny bandage supplied by the makeup department, she left the set, had her own doctor bandage her face more realistically, and refused to shoot the scene any other way.
When she first came to Hollywood as a contract player, Universal Pictures wanted to change her name to Bettina Dawes. She informed the studio that she refused to go through life with a name that sounded like "Between the Drawers".
Nominated for an Academy Award 5 years in a row, in 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943. She shares the record for most consecutive nominations with Greer Garson .
After the song "Bette Davis Eyes" became a hit single, she wrote letters to singer Kim Carnes and songwriters Donna Weiss and Jackie DeShannon , asking how they knew so much about her. One of the reasons Davis loved the song is that her grandson heard it and thought it "cool" that his grandmother had a hit song written about her.
While touring the talk show circuit to promote What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), she told one interviewer that when she and Joan Crawford were first suggested for the leads, Warner studio head Jack L. Warner replied: "I wouldn't give a plugged nickel for either of those two old broads." Recalling the story, Davis laughed at her own expense. The following day, she reportedly received a telegram from Crawford: "In future, please do not refer to me as an old broad!".
Was one of two actresses (with Faye Dunaway ) to have two villainous roles ranked in the American Film Institute's 100 Years of The Greatest Heroes and Villains, as Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes (1941) at #43 and as Baby Jane Hudson in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) at #44.
Was named #2 on The Greatest Screen Legends actress list by the American Film Institute.
She was voted the 10th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
After her first picture, Davis was sitting outside the office of Universal Pictures executive Carl Laemmle Jr. when she overhead him say about her, "She's got as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville . Who wants to get her at the end of the picture?".
Attended Cushing Academy; a prep school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts. An award in her namesake is given annually to one male and one female scholar-athlete of exceptional accomplishment in both fields.
Joan Crawford and Davis had feuded for years. During the making of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Bette had a Coca-Cola machine installed on the set due to Crawford's affiliation with Pepsi (she was the widow of Pepsi's CEO). Joan got her revenge by putting weights in her pockets when Davis had to drag her across the floor during certain scenes.
Desperately wanted to win a third Best Actress Oscar for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), as three wins in the leading category was unprecedented ( Walter Brennan had won three Oscars, but all of his were in the supporting category). It was the general feeling among Academy voters that while Davis was superb, the movie itself was little better than a potboiler exploitation film, the kind that doesn't deserve the recognition that an Oscar would give it.
Each of her four husbands were Gentiles, while her friend Joan Blondell 's husband Michael Todd was Jewish. Blondell called Davis' brace of husbands the "Four Skins.".
According to her August 1982 Playboy Magazine interview, in her youth she posed nude for an artist, who carved a statue of her that was placed in a public spot in Boston, MA. After the interview appeared, Bostonians searched for the statue in vain. The statue, four dancing nymphs, was later found in the possession of a private Massachusetts collector.
She came to Cardiff in 1975 for a theatre tour and went to the Welsh Valleys in search of relatives - and found them. She had been learning Welsh in order to come to Wales; however, she only used the words "Nos Da" (meaning "good night") while in the country and had forgotten all the other phrases she had learned.
She claimed to have given the Academy Award the nickname "Oscar" after her first husband, Harmon Nelson , whose middle name was Oscar, although she later withdrew that claim. Most sources say it was named by Academy librarian and eventual executive director Margaret Herrick, who thought the statuette resembled her Uncle Oscar.
Murdoch University (Western Australia) Communications Senior Lecturer Tara Brabazon, in her article "The Spectre of the Spinster: Bette Davis and the Epistemology of the Shelf," quotes the court testimony of Davis' first husband Harmon Nelson to show what a debacle her private life was. During divorce proceedings, Nelson was successful in sustaining his charge of mental cruelty by testifying that Davis had told him that her career was more important than her marriage. Brabazon writes that Davis, claiming she was beaten by all four of her husbands, believed that she should have remained single.
She was voted the 25th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere Magazine.
In 1952, she accepted the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role on behalf of Kim Hunter , who wasn't present at the awards ceremony.
She is one of the many movie stars mentioned in the lyrics of Madonna 's song "Vogue". She is also mentioned in the song "Industrial Disease" by rock band Dire Straits .
Is portrayed by Elissa Leeds in My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn (1985).
She said that among the jokes told about her, her favorite came from impressionist Charles Pierce who, dressed as her, demanded of the audience, "Someone give me a cigarette". When the request was granted the performer threw it on the floor and shouted "LIT!".
For many years she was a popular target for impressionists but she was perplexed by the often used phrase "Pee-tah! Pee-tah! Pee-tah!". She said she had no idea who Pee-tah was and had never even met anyone by that name.
While filming Death on the Nile (1978), aboard ship, no one was allowed his or her own dressing room, so she shared a dressing room with Angela Lansbury & Maggie Smith .
Her performance as Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950) is ranked #5 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
Is portrayed by Nancy Linehan Charles in Norma Jean & Marilyn (1996).
Declined a role in 4 for Texas (1963) (which turned out to be a big hit) to do Dead Ringer (1964) (which turned out to be a big flop).
Described the last three decades of her life as a "my macabre period". She hated being alone at night and found growing older "terrifying".
Had a long-running feud with Miriam Hopkins due to her affair with Hopkins' husband, director Anatole Litvak , as well as Davis' getting many roles that Hopkins wanted.
When she died, her false eyelashes were auctioned off, fetching a price of $600. Previously, she had said that her biggest secret was brown mascara.
In an interview with Dick Cavett in 1971, she said her salary at the time she shot Jezebel (1938) was $650 a week.
She was of English descent, and also had remote Scottish and Welsh roots. Most of her ancestors had lived almost exclusively in New England since moving to the United States in the 1600s.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 232-235. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.
In Italian films, she was dubbed in most cases by Lidia Simoneschi or Andreina Pagnani . Occasionally, she was also dubbed by Tina Lattanzi , Giovanna Scotto , Rina Morelli or Wanda Tettoni .
Was first offered the role of Luke's mother in Cool Hand Luke (1967), but refused the bit part. Jo Van Fleet accepted the role.
Salary for 1941, $252,333.
Salary for 1948, $365,000.
During her great film career, she reportedly did not get along with her co-stars Miriam Hopkins , Susan Hayward , Celeste Holm and most infamously Joan Crawford .
When she died in 1989, she reportedly left an estate valued between $600,000 and $1 million, consisting mainly of a condominium apartment she owned in West Hollywood. 50% of her estate went to her son, Michael Merrill , and the remaining 50% went to her secretary and companion, Kathryn Sermack . Her daughter, Barbara Merrill aka B.D. Hyman, was left nothing due to her lurid book about life with her mother. During her long life, she spent the majority of her wealth supporting her mother, three children, and four husbands.
Played dual roles of twin sisters in two movies: A Stolen Life (1946) and Dead Ringer (1964).
She was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of her outstanding contribution to film culture.
Pictured on a 42¢ USA commemorative postage stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series, issued 18 September 2008.
In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Elizabeth Taylor does an exaggerated impression of Bette Davis saying a line from Beyond the Forest (1949): "What a dump!" In an interview with Barbara Walters , Davis said that in Beyond the Forest (1949), she really did not deliver the line in such an exaggerated manner. She said it in a more subtle, low-key manner, but it has passed into legend that she said it the way Elizabeth Taylor delivered it in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). During the interview, the clip of Bette delivering the line in Beyond the Forest (1949) was shown to prove that she was correct. However, since people expected Bette Davis to deliver the line the way Taylor had in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), she always opened her in-person, one woman show by saying the line in a campy, exaggerated manner: "What... a... dump!!!". It always brought down the house. "I imitated the imitators", Davis said.
Her father was Harlow Morrell Davis, a lawyer. Her mother was Ruth Favor. She had a sister, Barbara Davis.
Has a street named after her in Iowa City, Iowa.
Bette Davis had been nominated for Best Actress in her film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), which also starring Joan Crawford . If Bette had won, it would have set a record number of wins for an actress. According to the book "Bette & Joan - The Divine Feud" by Shaun Considine, the two had a life long mutual hatred, and a jealous Joan Crawford actively campaigned against Bette Davis for winning Best Actress, and even told Anne Bancroft that if Anne won and was unable to accept the Award, Joan would be happy to accept it on her behalf. According to the book - and this may or may not be 100% true, but it makes a good anecdote - on Oscar night, Bette Davis was standing in the wings of the theatre waiting to hear the name of the winner. When it was announced that Anne Bancroft had won Best Actress for The Miracle Worker (1962), Bette Davis felt an icy hand on her shoulder as Joan Crawford said "Excuse me, I have an Oscar to accept".
Campaigned for the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934), but the part was eventually given to Claudette Colbert , who went on to win a Best Actress Oscar for her performance.
Campaigned for the part of Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) but Elizabeth Taylor , who went on to win a Best Actress Oscar for her performance, was cast instead.
Was originally offered the role of fiery pianist Sandra Kovac in The Great Lie (1941). Instead she took the less showy role of Maggie Patterson and suggested her good friend Mary Astor for the role of Sandra -- Davis thought it would help boost Astor's career, which had been hurt by a very nasty custody battle, in 1936, with her ex-husband. Astor went on to win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.
For William Randolph Hearst's 75th birthday, the famous 'Circus Party' at San Simeon, she came dressed as a bearded lady (1937).
Became pregnant by first husband Harmon Nelson in 1933 and 1936, by her lover William Wyler in 1940, and by her second husband Arthur Farnsworth in 1941, 1942 and 1943. On all of these occasions she had abortions.
Was originally sought for the part of "Shirley Drake" in Career (1959).
Onscreen, Bette Davis played spinsters named Charlotte in 3 different movies: The Old Maid (1939), Now, Voyager (1942), and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).
Returned to work three months after giving birth to her daughter Barbara Merrill in order to begin filming June Bride (1948).
Played twin Sisters Kate and Patricia Bosworth in A Stolen Life (1946) and Margaret DeLorca and Edith Phillips in Dead Ringer (1964) In both she played a good and bad twin and, in both movies, one of the sisters met a tragic death.
Was close friends with Greer Garson , Ginger Rogers , George Brent , Henry Fonda , Geraldine Fitzgerald , Ronald Reagan , Claude Rains , Olivia de Havilland and Gladys Cooper .
Her role in The Petrified Forest (1936) got parodied in the cartoon "She Was an Acrobat's Daughter". It depicts a movie called "The Petrified Florist", starring Leslie Coward (a spoof of Leslie Howard) and Bette Savis.
She was a lifelong liberal Democrat. She was a solid supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt , Harry Truman , John F. Kennedy , Robert F. Kennedy , Adlai Stevenson , Lyndon Johnson , and Jimmy Carter . She was also a chairwoman for the Hollywood Democratic Committee and was an honored guest speaker at both the 1940/1944 Democratic National Convention.
She was very active in leading Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts due in part that in her childhood she was a decorated Girl Scout.
Her favorite song was "Stardust" by Hoagy Carmichael .
Davis' arch rival Joan Crawford once said in an interview that she and Davis had nothing in common. In reality, they had a handful of similarities in their personal lives. They both had father's who abandoned their families at a young age; both rose from poverty to success while breaking into films during the late 1920s and early 1930s; both had siblings and mothers who milked them financially once they became famous; both became Oscar-winning leading ladies; both were staunch liberal Democrats and feminists; and both had daughters who wrote lurid books denouncing them as bad mothers.
Filmed a television pilot in 1965 for a show to be called "The Bette Davis Show," which was not picked up for series by any of the television networks, but which was broadcast as a television movie entitled The Decorator (1965).
Actress Kirstie Alley modeled her character of Madison "Maddie" Banks for her TV show Kirstie (2013) after Davis; so much in fact, that on the first seasons fifth episode she donned a Margo Channing style dress.
In honor of her 100th birthday, she was honored as Turner Classic Movie's Star of the Month in April 2008.
Her hometown of Lowell, Massachussetts, was featured in a 2007 episode of Cops (1989).
Was the 8th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Actress Oscar for Dangerous (1935) at The 8th Academy Awards on March 5, 1936.
Was the favorite actress of Katharine Hepburn .
The United States Postal Service honored Davis with a commemorative postage stamp in 2008, marking the 100th anniversary of her birth. The First Day of Issue celebration took place September 18, 2008, at Boston University, which houses an extensive Bette Davis archive. Featured speakers included her son Michael Merrill and Lauren Bacall .
Was the first actor to receive ten Academy Award nominations.
Was the highest ranking female on Quigley Publishing's Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll from 1939 to 1941.
Wrote the book "This 'n That" in response to her daughter's book, "My Mother's Keeper".
Was replaced by Shelley Winters when she left the original Broadway production of "The Night of the Iguana".
Was originally cast in Hotel (1983), when she had to back out due to ill health she was replaced by her friend and former All About Eve (1950) co-star, Anne Baxter .
Was a fan of Susan Hayward , however when they co-starred in Where Love Has Gone (1964), they occasionally clashed over disagreements about the script.
Was portrayed by Kelly Moore in the stage play "Jezebel and Me".
Turned down the role of Rose Sayer in The African Queen (1951) due to pregnancy.
Made her Broadway debut in 1929.
Credited actor George Arliss with giving her her "break" by choosing her as his leading lady in The Man Who Played God (1932).
Was under contract to Warner Brothers from 1932 to 1949.
Was one of the many people in the entertainment business who lived in The Osborne Apartments in Manhattan. Other famous residents have included Robert Osborne , Ira Levin and Leonard Bernstein .
Stated George Brent was her favorite male co-star.
Was signed to a contract at Universal Studios in 1930.
Subject of the book "Me and Jezebel: When Bette Davis Came for Dinner -- And Stayed..." by Elizabeth Fuller.
In an interview with Barbara Walters , she claimed her daughter's book, "My Mother's Keeper", was as devastating as her stroke.
In 1982, she was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, the Defense Department's highest civilian award, for founding and running the Hollywood Canteen during World War II.
Was the highest paid woman in US in 1942.
Whilst a student at Cushing Academy she saw a production of The Wild Duck, which inspired her to seriously pursue acting.
LIFE Magazine described her performance in Of Human Bondage (1934) as "probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress".
Was honored by James Stewart , Angela Lansbury', Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy when she received her Kennedy Centre Honors.
Davis, whom most critics and cinema historians rank as the greatest American movie actress ever, sent a letter to Meryl Streep early in her career. Davis told Streep that she felt that she was her successor as The First Lady of the American Screen.
The "Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts" TV show once roasted Bette Davis. Vincent Price said, "Bette has always suffered in every picture she has ever made. When I appeared with her in Elizabeth And Essex she gave up her beauty. In Dark Victory she gave up her eyesight. And in The Virgin Queen...(laughter)...she gave up her hobby.".
Played by Karen Teliha in Hollywood Mouth (2008). Since there is a Joan Crawford segment in the film, director Jordan Mohr thought it would be effective to have a Bette Davis character making comments about her rival.
She claimed her favourite part was that of Mrs. Agnes Hurley in the Catered Affair because of the challenge of the part.
As of 2016, she holds the record of youngest actress to receive seven Academy Award nominations. She earned her seventh Oscar nomination in 1945, at the age of 36, for Mr. Skeffington (1944).
Personal Quotes (80)
[when told by director Robert Aldrich that the studios wanted Joan Crawford as her co-star for Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)] I wouldn't piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.
[in 1982] Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should ALL be bigger than life.
Getting old is not for sissies.
I see - she's the original good time that was had by all.
Until you're known in my profession as a monster, you're not a star.
At 50, I thought proudly, 'Here we are, half century!' Being 60 was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my 70th birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black afro wig, wore black clothes, and hung a black wreath on my door.
I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.
I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.
[on rival Joan Crawford ] She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie .
[on her character in All About Eve (1950)] Margo Channing was not a bitch. She was an actress who was getting older and was not too happy about it. And why should she be? Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it. As people get older their bodies begin to decay. They get sick. They forget things. What's good about that?
Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.
Success only breeds a new goal.
What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent.
I have never known the great actor who... didn't plan eventually to direct or produce. If he has no such dream, he is usually bitter, ungratified and eventually alcoholic.
There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.
I would advise any woman against having an affair with a married man believing he will ever leave his wife, no matter how often he says his wife does not understand him. Love is not as necessary to a man's happiness as it is to a woman's. If her marriage is satisfactory, a woman will seldom stray. A man can be totally contented and still be out howling at the moon.
The male ego, with few exceptions, is elephantine to start with.
To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year.
An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring. I ought to know.
[referring to her parents' divorce when she was 7] Of course I replaced my father. I became my own father and everyone else's.
I will never be below the title.
If you want a thing well done, get a couple of old broads to do it.
Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.
[about Katharine Hepburn 's tie for the 1968 Oscar with Barbra Streisand ] I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.
[referring to her fourth husband, Gary Merrill ] Gary was a macho man, but none of my husbands was ever man enough to become Mr. Bette Davis.
[when told that "at one time" she had a reputation for being difficult] At one time?! I've been known as difficult for 50 years, practically! What do you mean "at one time"? Nooo, I've been like this for 50 years. And it's always always to make it the best film I can make it!
Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why [ Joan Crawford ] always plays ladies.
[when told not to speak ill of the dead] Just because someone is dead does not mean they have changed!
[on sex] God's biggest joke on human beings.
[commenting on the death of long-time nemesis Joan Crawford ] You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good.
[commenting about her mother, an aspiring actress] I had to be the monster for both of us.
If Hollywood didn't work out, I was prepared to be the best secretary in the world.
I have been uncompromising, peppery, infractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile and offtimes disagreeable. I suppose I'm larger than life.
[ Joan Crawford ] and I have never been warm friends. We are not simpatico. I admire her, and yet I feel uncomfortable with her. To me, she is the personification of the Movie Star. I have always felt her greatest performance is Crawford being Crawford.
[after having blown the same line several times in Hollywood Canteen (1944), in which she plays herself] I don't know what's wrong with me, but I think I just can't play myself. I don't know how! But, if you give me a drink - give me a cigarette - give me a gun - I'll play any old bag you want me to. I just can't play myself!
Beyond the Forest (1949) was a terrible movie! It had the longest death scene ever seen on the screen.
I was a person who couldn't make divorce work. For me, there's nothing lonelier than a turned-down toilet seat.
[before taking her final flight in 1989] I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.
I always had the will to win. I felt it baking cookies. They had to be the best cookies anyone baked.
When I die, they'll probably auction off my false eyelashes.
My favorite person to work with was Claude Rains .
[on John Wayne ] I certainly would have given anything to have worked with John Wayne. He's the most attractive man who ever walked the earth, I think.
[on Errol Flynn ] He was just beautiful . . . Errol. He himself openly said, "I don't know really anything about acting," and I admire his honesty because he's absolutely right.
[on director Lindsay Anderson ] I think he's a very talented man, but I think he's a difficult man to work with. He really prefers theatre and not film, and that's a little depressing, I must say.
[on Errol Flynn ] He was not an actor of enormous talent -- he would have admitted that himself -- but in all those swashbuckling things he was beautiful.
[in 1977, on why she was still working] So I am up to my ears in taxes and debts, and that's why I come out of my house in Connecticut every few years and work. I can hole up for just so long, then I gotta get out and stir things up again. It's half for income and half for me.
[during tension on the set of The Whales of August (1987) about her esteemed costar Lillian Gish ] She ought to know about close-ups! Jesus, she was around when they invented them!
I think acting should look as if we were working a *little* ... It's like the juggler who loses it twice and then gets it, you know, finally. Which is a very old-fashioned theory today. See, you mustn't have *any* idea that *anybody* knows the camera's on them at all. You see: it's just life. Well, we all have life, 24, 12 hours a day, and sometimes we want to forget life, you know. And I think it should be a *little* larger than life. A little bit theatrical.
[to TV interviewer Dick Cavett] People say, when I'm coming on with someone like you for ninety minutes, "Don't you want to know what's going to happen?" I *don't* want to know the questions ahead, because number one, I trust your taste, but if you should ask me something that I *really* don't want to go into, I'd give a *perfectly* nice smile, not insulting, and say, "I don't want to talk about it." Nobody can *make* you talk about something. So if I'm *fool* enough to talk about it, then it's not your fault, it's mine. Like many bad interviews, this is what happens: it's the actor's fault. They get five good hookers in them, and tell their life story. Well, you cannot blame the interviewer who goes out and prints it. ... Anybody who does an interview with drinks is a fool. Because we all know we talk more with drinks.
[of the studio executives] Four compliments a year, we never would have asked for so much money. Truthfully! They never knew it! Actors are complete suckers for good parts, you know, and just saying, "You did a *good* job, Bette!" Never. Never. Never.... I think it would've made a whole different salary scale in California, yes, I do. They only respected you by how much money you made. You could be the same actress at six-fifty a week or thirty thousand a week, and you're a *much* better actress at thirty thousand a week.
[on being idolized and spoiled while traveling] This is *part* of the reward, but boy, you don't get that for a long time! And that must never be your motive. See that *can't* be the motive. Because that isn't what you want the most. You want to get on that stage and work.
On work: This became a credo of mine...attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
On desire: From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.
On sexual politics: I am a woman meant for a man, but I never found a man who could compete.
On growth: I have always been driven by some distant music -- a battle hymn no doubt -- for I have been at war from the beginning. I've never looked back before. I've never had the time and it has always seemed so dangerous. To look back is to relax one's vigil.
On experience: Old age ain't no place for sissies.
The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone's concern and like vampires they suck our life's blood.
[on working with Joan Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)] We were polite to each other - all the social amenities, 'Good morning, Joan' and 'Good Morning, Bette' crap - and thank God we weren't playing roles where we had to like each other. But people forget that our big scenes were alone - just the camera was on me or her. No actresses on earth are as different as we are, all the way down the line. Yet what we do works. It's so strange, this acting business. It comes from inside. She was always so damn proper. She sent thank you notes for thank you notes. I screamed when I found out she signed autographs: 'Bless you, Joan Crawford.'
You can't tell me that any man who has really loved a woman, or vice versa, can really be friends again after a divorce. And kidding about it is like tying a pink ribbon on a machine gun.
[After hearing that Joan Crawford cried copiously over "Dark Victory"] Joan always cries a lot. Her tear ducts must be very close to her bladder.
"I am returning to the stage, to refine my craft." That's what Hollywood actors always say. But that's a bunch of BS. No one leaves movies for the stage unless they can't get work; and I'm no exception.
[Of her longtime rival] We must hand it to her. Where she came from and all that--she accomplished *much*. She became a movie star, and I became the great actress. There is of course a need for both in this business, but you have to know *when* to put a stop to the nonsense that goes with the job. Stars are people *too*. They have to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom too, without applause or a standing ovation. But I don't *think* Joan Crawford ever sleeps. She never *quits* being Joan Crawford. I find that tedious and quite insane.
When I was filming Dangerous in 1935, I had a crush on my costar, Franchot Tone. Everything about him reflected his elegance, from his name to his manners. He had a great deal going for him, including Miss Joan Crawford.
I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.
[on the making of Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)]: I can't tell you what I went through during those weeks that shooting stopped, waiting for Crawford to get well. It was sheer torture.
[on Joan Crawford ]: I was not Miss Crawford's biggest fan, but, wisecracks to the contrary, I did and still do respect her talent. What she did not deserve was that detestable book written by her daughter. I've forgotten her name. Horrible. I looked at that book, but I did not need to read it. I wouldn't read trash like that, and I think it was a terrible, terrible thing for a daughter to do. An abomination! To do something like that to someone who saved you from the orphanage, foster homes, who knows what. If she didn't like the person who chose to be her mother, she was grown up and could choose her own life. I felt very sorry for Joan Crawford, but I knew she wouldn't appreciate my pity, because that's the last thing she would have wanted, anyone being sorry for her, especially me. I can understand how hurt Miss Crawford had to be. Well, no I can't. It's like trying to imagine how I would feel if my own beloved, wonderful daughter, B.D., were to write a bad book about me. Unimaginable. I am grateful for my children and for knowing they would never do to me anything like what Miss Crawford's daughter did to her. Of course, dear B.D., of whom I'm so proud, is my natural child, and there always are certain risks in adopting. Gary [Merrill] and I adopted two babies, because when we married I was too old to have our own. We were very pleased with our little boy, Michael, but our adopted daughter, who was a beautiful baby, was, brain-damaged. I never have had regrets, though, because I think we provided for her better than anything else that could have happened to her, and we gave her some happiness in her life. You can't return a baby like you can a carton of cracked eggs.
[on Miriam Hopkins] Miriam is a perfectly charming person, socially. Working with her is another story. Miriam used, and I must give her credit, every trick in the book. I became fascinated watching them appear one by one. When she was supposed to be listening to me, her eyes would wander off into some world in which she was the sweetest of them all. Her restless little spirit was impatiently awaiting her next line, her golden curls quivering with expectancy. Miriam was her own worst enemy. I usually had better things to do than waste my energies on invective and cat fights.
[on Greta Garbo ] Oh, Garbo was divine. Soooo beautiful. I worshipped her. When I became a star, I used to have my chauffeur follow her in my car. I always wanted to meet her.
[when asked if she and Joan Crawford were ever up for the same role] We were two different types entirely. I can't think of a single part I played that Joan could do. Not one. Can you?
[on The Unforgiven (1960) Oh yes, I had a chance to go to Mexico, to play 'Burt Lancaster's mother. I turned it down. I'll be damned if I play Burt Lancaster's mother after thirty years in the business.
[on Cool Hand Luke (1967)] Warner Brothers asked me to play Paul Newman 's mother in Cool Hand Luke. They offered me $25,000 for one day's work. I said 'No.' I would have been on and off the screen in three minutes. That would be a cheat to the audience.
Warner Brothers sent me a letter saying they wanted to use a clip from Now, Voyager (1942) in the Summer of '42 (1971). They implied that they wanted to use it as a laugh. My lawyer wrote back saying, if they wanted a clip to laugh at, why didn't they choose a scene from one of their current films.
[ Burnt Offerings (1976)] Karen Black changes her makeup in the middle of the scene, so nothing matches on the screen. She sleeps all day, never goes to rushes and you can't hear a bloody thing she says on the set. When I made movies you could hear me in a tunnel.
[on Elizabeth Taylor 's declining to have Davis as her co-star in A Little Night Music (1977)] She is such a fool. One would think that after all her years in the business she would want to work with a professional.
[after attending President Jimmy Carter's 1977 inauguration] Miss Lillian [the President's mother] doesn't like any women. She was perfectly terrible to all of us at the inauguration. She only wanted to see the men. When any women came up to her, she just glared at us like this!
[on her second husband, Arthur Farnsworth] Farney was a real charmer, but an alcoholic who was tied to his mother's apron strings... and what a mother. Christ, what a cold bitch.
[on The Star (1952), (1983)] Oh, yes, that was [Joan] Crawford. I wasn't imitating her, of course. It was just that whole approach of hers to the business as regards the importance of glamor and all the off stage things. I adored the script.
[When asked by Johnny Carson about who she was inspired by] No-one, but that I always envied Katherine Hepburn's looks.
I don't think of myself as a character actress. That's become a phrase that means you've had it.
Salary (9)
| Ruth |
In which sport did Hollywood star Sonja Henie win Olympic Gold? | Bette Davis - IMDb
IMDb
Actress | Soundtrack | Make Up Department
Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing... See full bio »
Born:
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Won 2 Oscars. Another 21 wins & 22 nominations. See more awards »
Known For
1986 As Summers Die (TV Movie)
Hannah Loftin
1983 Right of Way (TV Movie)
Mini Dwyer
1981 Family Reunion (TV Movie)
Elizabeth Winfield
1980 White Mama (TV Movie)
Adele Malone
1973 Scream, Pretty Peggy (TV Movie)
Mrs. Elliott
1965 The Decorator (TV Short)
Liz
1963 Perry Mason (TV Series)
Constant Doyle
1962 The Virginian (TV Series)
Celia Miller
1959-1961 Wagon Train (TV Series)
Bettina May / Madame Elizabeth McQueeny / Ella Lindstrom
1959 Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series)
Miss Fox
- Out There - Darkness (1959) ... Miss Fox
1958 Suspicion (TV Series)
1957-1958 General Electric Theater (TV Series)
Christine Marlowe / Miss Burrows
1957 Telephone Time (TV Series)
Mrs. Beatrice Enter
1957 Schlitz Playhouse (TV Series)
Irene Wagner
1952 All Star Revue (TV Series)
Guest Actress
1972 Johnny Carson Presents the Sun City Scandals '72 (TV Movie) (performer: "Just Like a Man")
1965 The Love Goddesses (Documentary) (performer: "Willie the Weeper" - uncredited)
1964 Dead Ringer (performer: "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" - uncredited)
1951 Payment on Demand (performer: "A Woman's Intuition" - uncredited)
1943 Thank Your Lucky Stars (performer: "They're Either Too Young or Too Old" (1943) - uncredited)
1941 The Bride Came C.O.D. ("Carry Me Back to the Lone Prairie", uncredited)
1940 All This, and Heaven Too (performer: "The War of the Roses" - uncredited)
1939 The Old Maid (music: "Bridal Chorus (Here Comes the Bride)" (1850) - uncredited) / (performer: "Bridal Chorus (Here Comes the Bride)" (1850) - uncredited)
1938 Jezebel (performer: "Raise a Ruckus", "Beautiful Dreamer" (1862), "Waltz" - uncredited)
1937 Kid Galahad (performer: "The Moon Is in Tears Tonight" (1937) - uncredited)
| i don't know |
In which decade was Alzheimer's disease first clinically described? | National Institute on Aging | The Leader in Aging Research
100 years ago...
Diciembre 1, 2006
The year 2006 marked the 100th anniversary of Dr. Alois Alzheimer’s presentation of a case study of a 51-year-old German woman, Auguste D., who had been admitted to a hospital in 1901 with an unusual cluster of symptoms. Those symptoms included reduced comprehension and memory, aphasia, disorientation, unpredictable behavior, paranoia, auditory hallucinations, and pronounced psychosocial impairment. When Dr. Alzheimer first observed her in 1903, Auguste D. was bedridden, incontinent, and was becoming increasingly disoriented, delusional, and incoherent. She eventually required assistance to be fed, was unable to speak, and was often hostile. Hospital staff tried to keep her as safe and comfortable as possible, but little else could be done to treat her illness, and she died on April 8, 1906.
Dr. Alzheimer used the latest medical techniques and innovations, including a new silver tissue-staining method and greatly improved microscopes, to conduct the post mortem study of Auguste D.’s brain tissue. No stranger to the fields of pathology and psychiatry, Dr. Alzheimer was involved in a wide range of clinical studies of manic depression and schizophrenia. He worked at the Royal Psychiatric Clinic in Munich, Germany, for Dr. Emil Kraepelin, a leading psychiatrist. Dr. Kraepelin believed that most mental illnesses were actually organic brain diseases, as opposed to his rival, Dr. Sigmund Freud, who maintained that most mental illnesses were psychoses of the mind. Dr. Kraepelin’s Handbook of Psychiatry, was the first systematic classification of mental diseases.
The first “Alzheimer’s” case was presented at a meeting of the South-West German Society of Alienists (“alienists” were superintendents of early “insane asylums” and were usually psychiatrists) on November 3, 1906. Dr. Alzheimer’s paper, “Regarding a Curious Disease of the Cortex,” described numerous globs of sticky proteins in the spaces between neuron cells and “a tangled bundle of fibrils” within cells throughout the cortex.
These sticky proteins (plaques) and fibrils (tangles) had previously been seen only in the brains of much older patients diagnosed with “senile dementia.” At age 51, Auguste D. was thought to be far too young to be suffering from senile dementia, and Dr. Alzheimer’s “new” disease was initially classified as “presenile dementia.” Because of her age, clinicians did not consider the possibility that the plaques and tangles Dr. Alzheimer described could also be the cause of dementia in old age, thus the characterization as presenile dementia.
Dr. Alzheimer and his colleagues studied the histology of 5 cases with similar brain pathologies during the first decade of the new century. Although other researchers had linked the presence of plaques to symptoms of dementia seen in older people, it was Dr. Alzheimer who first observed both plaques and tangles in a younger patient.
It was not until 1910 that the term “Alzheimer’s disease” was coined by Dr. Kraepelin in his 8th edition of the Handbook of Psychiatry. He stated that “a particular group of cases with extremely serious cell alterations was described by Alzheimer…the plaques were excessively numerous and almost one-third of the cortical cells had died off. In their places, were peculiar, deeply stained bundles of neurofibrils.” He mentioned “Alzheimer’s disease” for the first time, stating, “The clinical interpretation of this Alzheimer’s disease is still unclear. Although the anatomical findings suggest that we are dealing with a particularly serious form of senile dementia, the fact is that this disease sometimes starts as early as in the late forties.”
In 1912, Dr. Alzheimer accepted an appointment as full professor of psychiatry at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), but his health deteriorated, and he was never able to fully carry out his university duties. From October 1915 onward, Alois Alzheimer became increasingly ill and finally died on December 19, 1915.
“In his day, Dr. Alzheimer’s discoveries were enormous strides forward. I believe that, just as Drs. Alzheimer and Kraepelin established the clinical pathways for researching this disease 100 years ago, we are creating strong foundations—in neuroimaging and genetics in particular—for the major discoveries to come,” commented Richard A. Hodes, M.D., Director, NIA. “Tremendous progress continues every day toward our efforts to conquer this disease.”
“Many of the world’s premier scientific thinkers are exploring every aspect of this highly complex disease. We’re discovering new information on AD’s earliest preclinical phases and intriguing insights into connections with other diseases and conditions,” said Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, Ph.D., Director, Neuroscience and Neuropsychology of Aging Program, NIA. “New research is examining potential preventive mechanisms, molecular sequences, treatment, and caregiver interventions. Though pleased with our achievements, we’ll never be satisfied until we find a cure and ways to prevent the disease altogether.”
A Century of Research
Dr. Alois Alzheimer presents case study and Alzheimer’s disease is named.
1920s
Amyloid is identified as the core substance of plaques.
1930s
Familial AD is first suggested.
1940s
Belief persists that senile dementia is normal part of aging caused by cerebral arteriosclerosis.
1950s
Biological structure of plaques and tangles is investigated.
1960s
Landmark study suggests that dementia is directly related to the number of senile plaques present in the cerebral cortex.
Structure of neurofibrillary tangles is described as “paired helical filaments.”
1970s
National Institute on Aging is created and assumes lead role in AD research.
Mini-Mental State Exam is introduced.
Memory and cholinergic function are linked; reduction of choline acetyltransferase is seen in AD.
Editorial describes AD as a major public heath problem and “Alzheimer’s disease” becomes a common term.
Coalition of grass-roots AD advocacy groups begins to rally public awareness of and interest in AD research.
1980s
National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Diseases and Stroke/Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association (NINCDS-ADRDA) criteria are written.
Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association forms, becomes the Alzheimer’s Association.
First Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers are funded by NIA.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM III) categorizes AD.
Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scale is established.
Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease (CERAD) is created by NIA.
AD is linked to chromosome 21 and amyloid precursor protein.
Beta-amyloid protein is sequenced.
NIA forms the Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Referral (ADEAR) Center.
1990s
FDA approves tacrine (Cognex) following successful clinical trial.
NIA funds Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study.
First amyloid precursor protein (APP) mutation is discovered.
Early-onset genes and late-onset risk factor gene are discovered.
First in series of transgenic mice models is created.
Abnormal tau in neurofibrillary tangles is identified.
NIA-Reagan criteria for AD pathology diagnosis are developed.
Mutation in tau gene is cause of some chromosome 17 frontotemporal dementia.
National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center is formed.
Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) characteristics are defined.
2000s
Clinical trials, initiatives, and studies examine cholinesterase inhibitors, anti-inflammatories, vitamins, statins, supplements, valproate, antioxidants, hormones, beta amyloid vaccines, and alternative medicines.
Late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease Genetics Study begins.
Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative is launched.
Pittsburgh B compound is developed, allowing researchers to “see” amyloid plaques in PET scans.
Triple transgenic mouse is introduced.
New focus on translational studies to facilitate drug discovery and development begins.
| The First Decade |
What star sign is Glenda Jackson? | National Institute on Aging | The Leader in Aging Research
100 years ago...
Diciembre 1, 2006
The year 2006 marked the 100th anniversary of Dr. Alois Alzheimer’s presentation of a case study of a 51-year-old German woman, Auguste D., who had been admitted to a hospital in 1901 with an unusual cluster of symptoms. Those symptoms included reduced comprehension and memory, aphasia, disorientation, unpredictable behavior, paranoia, auditory hallucinations, and pronounced psychosocial impairment. When Dr. Alzheimer first observed her in 1903, Auguste D. was bedridden, incontinent, and was becoming increasingly disoriented, delusional, and incoherent. She eventually required assistance to be fed, was unable to speak, and was often hostile. Hospital staff tried to keep her as safe and comfortable as possible, but little else could be done to treat her illness, and she died on April 8, 1906.
Dr. Alzheimer used the latest medical techniques and innovations, including a new silver tissue-staining method and greatly improved microscopes, to conduct the post mortem study of Auguste D.’s brain tissue. No stranger to the fields of pathology and psychiatry, Dr. Alzheimer was involved in a wide range of clinical studies of manic depression and schizophrenia. He worked at the Royal Psychiatric Clinic in Munich, Germany, for Dr. Emil Kraepelin, a leading psychiatrist. Dr. Kraepelin believed that most mental illnesses were actually organic brain diseases, as opposed to his rival, Dr. Sigmund Freud, who maintained that most mental illnesses were psychoses of the mind. Dr. Kraepelin’s Handbook of Psychiatry, was the first systematic classification of mental diseases.
The first “Alzheimer’s” case was presented at a meeting of the South-West German Society of Alienists (“alienists” were superintendents of early “insane asylums” and were usually psychiatrists) on November 3, 1906. Dr. Alzheimer’s paper, “Regarding a Curious Disease of the Cortex,” described numerous globs of sticky proteins in the spaces between neuron cells and “a tangled bundle of fibrils” within cells throughout the cortex.
These sticky proteins (plaques) and fibrils (tangles) had previously been seen only in the brains of much older patients diagnosed with “senile dementia.” At age 51, Auguste D. was thought to be far too young to be suffering from senile dementia, and Dr. Alzheimer’s “new” disease was initially classified as “presenile dementia.” Because of her age, clinicians did not consider the possibility that the plaques and tangles Dr. Alzheimer described could also be the cause of dementia in old age, thus the characterization as presenile dementia.
Dr. Alzheimer and his colleagues studied the histology of 5 cases with similar brain pathologies during the first decade of the new century. Although other researchers had linked the presence of plaques to symptoms of dementia seen in older people, it was Dr. Alzheimer who first observed both plaques and tangles in a younger patient.
It was not until 1910 that the term “Alzheimer’s disease” was coined by Dr. Kraepelin in his 8th edition of the Handbook of Psychiatry. He stated that “a particular group of cases with extremely serious cell alterations was described by Alzheimer…the plaques were excessively numerous and almost one-third of the cortical cells had died off. In their places, were peculiar, deeply stained bundles of neurofibrils.” He mentioned “Alzheimer’s disease” for the first time, stating, “The clinical interpretation of this Alzheimer’s disease is still unclear. Although the anatomical findings suggest that we are dealing with a particularly serious form of senile dementia, the fact is that this disease sometimes starts as early as in the late forties.”
In 1912, Dr. Alzheimer accepted an appointment as full professor of psychiatry at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), but his health deteriorated, and he was never able to fully carry out his university duties. From October 1915 onward, Alois Alzheimer became increasingly ill and finally died on December 19, 1915.
“In his day, Dr. Alzheimer’s discoveries were enormous strides forward. I believe that, just as Drs. Alzheimer and Kraepelin established the clinical pathways for researching this disease 100 years ago, we are creating strong foundations—in neuroimaging and genetics in particular—for the major discoveries to come,” commented Richard A. Hodes, M.D., Director, NIA. “Tremendous progress continues every day toward our efforts to conquer this disease.”
“Many of the world’s premier scientific thinkers are exploring every aspect of this highly complex disease. We’re discovering new information on AD’s earliest preclinical phases and intriguing insights into connections with other diseases and conditions,” said Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, Ph.D., Director, Neuroscience and Neuropsychology of Aging Program, NIA. “New research is examining potential preventive mechanisms, molecular sequences, treatment, and caregiver interventions. Though pleased with our achievements, we’ll never be satisfied until we find a cure and ways to prevent the disease altogether.”
A Century of Research
Dr. Alois Alzheimer presents case study and Alzheimer’s disease is named.
1920s
Amyloid is identified as the core substance of plaques.
1930s
Familial AD is first suggested.
1940s
Belief persists that senile dementia is normal part of aging caused by cerebral arteriosclerosis.
1950s
Biological structure of plaques and tangles is investigated.
1960s
Landmark study suggests that dementia is directly related to the number of senile plaques present in the cerebral cortex.
Structure of neurofibrillary tangles is described as “paired helical filaments.”
1970s
National Institute on Aging is created and assumes lead role in AD research.
Mini-Mental State Exam is introduced.
Memory and cholinergic function are linked; reduction of choline acetyltransferase is seen in AD.
Editorial describes AD as a major public heath problem and “Alzheimer’s disease” becomes a common term.
Coalition of grass-roots AD advocacy groups begins to rally public awareness of and interest in AD research.
1980s
National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Diseases and Stroke/Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association (NINCDS-ADRDA) criteria are written.
Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association forms, becomes the Alzheimer’s Association.
First Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers are funded by NIA.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM III) categorizes AD.
Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scale is established.
Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease (CERAD) is created by NIA.
AD is linked to chromosome 21 and amyloid precursor protein.
Beta-amyloid protein is sequenced.
NIA forms the Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Referral (ADEAR) Center.
1990s
FDA approves tacrine (Cognex) following successful clinical trial.
NIA funds Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study.
First amyloid precursor protein (APP) mutation is discovered.
Early-onset genes and late-onset risk factor gene are discovered.
First in series of transgenic mice models is created.
Abnormal tau in neurofibrillary tangles is identified.
NIA-Reagan criteria for AD pathology diagnosis are developed.
Mutation in tau gene is cause of some chromosome 17 frontotemporal dementia.
National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center is formed.
Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) characteristics are defined.
2000s
Clinical trials, initiatives, and studies examine cholinesterase inhibitors, anti-inflammatories, vitamins, statins, supplements, valproate, antioxidants, hormones, beta amyloid vaccines, and alternative medicines.
Late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease Genetics Study begins.
Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative is launched.
Pittsburgh B compound is developed, allowing researchers to “see” amyloid plaques in PET scans.
Triple transgenic mouse is introduced.
New focus on translational studies to facilitate drug discovery and development begins.
| i don't know |
Who won Super Bowl XXV? | Super Bowl XXV Game Recap
New York 20, Buffalo 19
SuperBowl.com wire reports
Scott Norwood's potential game-winning field goal attempt sailed wide right. (AP)
The NFC champion New York Giants won their second Super Bowl in five years with a 20-19 victory over AFC titlist Buffalo.
New York, employing its ball-control offense, had possession for 40 minutes, 33 seconds, a Super Bowl record. The Bills, who scored 95 points in their previous two playoff games leading to Super Bowl XXV, had the ball for less than eight minutes in the second half and just 19:27 for the game.
Fourteen of New York's 73 plays came on its initial drive of the third quarter, which covered 75 yards and consumed a Super Bowl-record 9:29 before running back Ottis Anderson ran one yard for a touchdown.
Giants quarterback Jeff Hostetler kept the long drive going by converting three third-down plays – an 11-yard pass to running back David Meggett on third-and-eight, a 14-yard toss to wide receiver Mark Ingram on third-and-13, and a 9-yard pass to Howard Cross on third-and-four-to give New York a 17-12 lead in the third quarter.
Buffalo jumped to a 12-3 lead midway through the second quarter before Hostetler completed a 14-yard scoring strike to wide receiver Stephen Baker to close the score to 12-10 at halftime.
Buffalo's Thurman Thomas ran 31 yards for a touchdown on the opening play of the fourth quarter to help Buffalo recapture the lead 19-17. Matt Bahr's 21-yard field goal gave the Giants a 20-19 lead, but Buffalo's Scott Norwood had a chance to win the game with seconds remaining before his 47-yard field-goal attempt sailed wide right.
Hostetler completed 20 of 32 passes for 222 yards and one touchdown. Anderson rushed 21 times for 102 yards and a touchdown to capture most-valuable-player honors.
Thomas totaled 190 scrimmage yards, rushing 15 times for 135 yards and catching five passes for 55 yards.
Information
| New York Giants |
Robert Mueller Municipal Airport is in which US state? | Super Bowl History 1990 - 1999 - Superbowl in the 1990's
Super Bowl History 1990 - 1999
Super Bowl XXIV
On January 28th, 1990, new head coach, George Seifert, led the San Francisco 49ers to their second straight Super Bowl Title, blowing-out Dan Reeves' Denver Broncos 55-10 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. John Elway, Vance Johnson and the Broncos lost for the 3rd time in 4 years, while the 49ers tied the Steelers' record 4 Super Bowl victories, with the Super Bowl 24 win. Jerry Rice caught three touchdowns, John Taylor caught one, and Brent Jones reeled in another. Tom Rathman rushed for two short scores. Joe Montana threw a record breaking 5 touchdown passes, taking home MVP honors, and his 4th Super Bowl victory. Matt Millen, Ronnie Lott, Bill Romanowski, Kevin Fagan, Chet Brooks, Michael Walter and Don Griffin led San Francisco's defensive charge.
Super Bowl XXV
On January 27th, 1991, Marv Levy and the Buffalo Bills lost Super Bowl 25 to Bill Parcells' New York Giants, 20-19. Fans at Tampa Stadium in Florida watched Otis Anderson take home Super Bowl Twenty-Five's MVP. Jeff Hostetler completed passes to seven different players including Mark Bevaro, Mark Ingram, and Dave Megget. His lone touchdown went to Stephen Baker. Thurman Thomas had 190 total yards. Jim Kelly found James Lofton and Andre Reed, but couldn't find the end zone. Lawrence Taylor and Pepper Johnson harassed Kelly often. Matt Bahr's kick put the Giants up 20-19 in the fourth. Scott Norwood attempted a 46 yard field goal to win the game as time expired, but the kick sailed wide right.
Super Bowl XXVI
On January 26th, 1992 in the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Marv Levy's Buffalo Bills lost 37-24 to the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl Twenty-Six. It was Joe Gibbs' turn to deliver Levy a loss. Jim Kelly was tormented by Tim Johnson, Charles Mann, Brad Edwards, Darrell Green and the rest of the Redskin defense, as he was intercepted 4 times. Thurman Thomas rushed for a season low 10 yards. Mark Rypien had 292 yards, throwing touchdowns to Gary Clark and Earnest Byner. Art Monk had 113 yards. Bruce Smith, Darryl Talley, and Cornelius Bennett couldn't break through the Hog's frontline as Washington dominated Super Bowl 26.
Super Bowl XXVII
January 31st, 1993 marked the third Super Bowl loss in as many years for Marv Levy and the Buffalo Bills'. Jimmy Johnson's Dallas Cowboys took Super Bowl 27 away from the Bills. James Washington (1), Larry Brown (1), and Thomas Everett (2), intercepted Jim Kelly 4 times, while Charles Haley, Russell Maryland, Jimmie Jones, and Ken Norton led the Dallas defense in recovering 5 Buffalo fumbles. On offense, it was Super Bowl Twenty-Seven MVP, Troy Aikman throwing 4 touchdowns; Michael Irvin caught 2, Alvin Harper 1, and Jay Novecek 1. Emmitt Smith led the game with 108 yards rushing in an easy NFC victory.
Super Bowl XXVIII
Super Bowl 28 was a rematch of Super Bowl 27. On January 30th, 1994 in Atlanta's Georgia Dome, Marv Levy and the Buffalo Bills watched Jimmy Johnson's Dallas Cowboys take home the Lombardi Trophy for the second straight year, dealing the Bills their fourth straight Super Bowl loss, 30-13. The game marked the 10th straight time the NFC defeated the AFC in the Championship Game. Thurman Thomas had only 37 yards rushing and Jim Kelly didn't throw a touchdown. Super Bowl MVP, Emmitt Smith, had 156 total yards. While waltzing into the end zone, Leon Lett was stripped by Don Beebe, but otherwise James Washington, Darrin Smith and the Cowboys had a brilliant day defensively, helping Dallas win their second straight Super Bowl.
Super Bowl XXIX
On January 29th, 1995 at Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami, Florida, Siefert's San Francisco 49ers won Super Bowl 29 against Bobby Ross' San Diego Chargers, 49-26, in the highest scoring Super Bowl of all time. Super Bowl Twenty-Nine's MVP, Steve Young rushed for 49 yards and threw for a record breaking 6 touchdown passes; 3 to Jerry Rice, 2 to Ricky Watters, 1 to William Floyd. Natrone Means and Tony Martin scored offensive touchdowns for the Chargers, and Andre Coleman returned a kickoff for a 98 yard score. San Fran's secondary compiled of Martin Hanks, Deion Sanders, Eric Davis, and Tim McDonald held Stan Humphries under 50% passing.
Super Bowl XXX
Super Bowl 30 was played on January 28th, 1996 at Tempe, Arizona's Sun Devil Stadium. Barry Switzer's Dallas Cowboys beat Bill Cowher's Pittsburgh Steelers, 27-17. Larry Brown's two interceptions led to two Dallas touchdowns and a Pete Rozelle MVP Trophy for Brown. Chris Boniol hit 2 field goals. Emmitt Smith ran for two scores. Troy Aikman hit Michael Irvin on his lone touchdown pass. With 4:15 left in the game Neil Odonnell threw his second pick to Brown ending Pittsburgh's comeback hopes. Lavon Kirkland, Chad Brown, Kevin Greene and Greg Lloyd led the Steeler defense. Brock Marion, Deion Sanders, Charles Haley, Leon Lett, and Darren Woodson all played great for Dallas' defense.
Super Bowl XXXI
On January 26th, 1997 Mike Holmegren's Green Bay Packers beat Bill Parcells' New England Patriots, 35-21, in Super Bowl 31 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. Brett Favre ran for a score and threw touchdowns to Antonio Freeman and Andre "Bad Moon" Rison, but Heisman Trophy Winner Desmond Howard took home the MVP after returning a kickoff for 99 yards and piling up a Super Bowl record 244 return yards. Brian Williams, Doug Evens, Craig Newsome, and Mike Prior each intercepted a Drew Bledsoe pass, as Reggie White and Gilbert Brown caused havoc in the Patriot backfield. Ty Law, Otis Smith, Willie McGinest, Lawyer Milloy and the rest of the Pats couldn't stop Favre's Super Bowl Thirty-One Champion Packers.
Super Bowl XXXII
On January 25, 1998 at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California, Holmgren's Green Bay Packers lost to Mike Shanahan's Denver Broncos 31-24 in Super Bowl 32. John Elway played his worst statistical Super Bowl, 123 yards and an interception, however Terrell Davis carried the Broncos on his back as he rushed for 157 yards and a record 3 touchdowns on route to Super Bowl Thirty-Two MVP. Brett Favre threw two touchdowns to Antonio Freeman and one to Mark Chmura, but his last minute 4th down pass was batted away by John Mobley. Safeties Eugene Robinson and Tyrone Braxton each had an interception. Other key players were Steve Atwater, Neil Smith, and Keith Traylor for the Broncos, and Reggie White, Santana Dotson, and Seth Joyner for the Packers.
Super Bowl XXXIII
Dan Reeves' Atlanta Falcons fell victim to Mike Shanahan's Defending Champion Denver Broncos on January 1st, 1999 at Pro Player Stadium in Miami, Florida. Super Bowl 33 had Dan Reeves' old club, Denver, against his new club, "The Dirty Birds." John Elway played well in his last game, throwing an 80 yard touchdown to Rod Smith, while taking home MVP honors. Terrell Davis had 100 yards for the second straight year. Tony Martin and Terrence Mathis were Chris Chandler's main targets, but Chandler also threw 3 interceptions; 2 to Darrien Gordon; 1 to Darrius Johnson. Jamal Anderson had 96 yards, and Tim Dwight had a 96 yard kick return for Atlanta. Trevor Price, Glenn Cadrez and Ray Crockett led Denver's defense.
| i don't know |
In what year were women first admitted to Harvard? | Harvard's Black Admissions | News | The Harvard Crimson
Harvard's Black Admissions
By Keith Butler ,
September 1, 1974
IN 1968, just after Martin Luther King was assassinated, Harvard and other white universities agreed to make concerted efforts to increase their schools' black student enrollments. The plan was to admit more blacks until the percentage of each race within the student body mirrored the distribution of races in the country as a whole. Consequently, the number of black students admitted increased over 100 per cent from 1968 to 1969.
One hundred of the 1250 freshmen enrolled in 1969 were black. Though the ratio fell short of the 12 per cent figure representing the blacks' share of the national population, those who pushed for increased black enrollment were pleased by Harvard's apparent effort.
For three years, 1969 to 1971, the number of blacks enrolled in Harvard's freshmen class hovered near the 100 mark. In 1972, the number dropped to 88 and then dropped to 77 in the present freshmen class. In the last two years the number of blacks enrolled at Harvard has decreased nearly 25 per cent. The University claims that the decline in the number of black enrollees was unplanned, but official explanations for the phenomenon are unconvincing.
Admissions officers have cited two reasons for the 25 per cent decline in black enrollment. First, teacher strikes in major Eastern urban centers interfered with recruiting. Second, black undergraduates now are less enthusiastic about recruiting new blacks than they have been in the past years.
The first explanation is faulty because Philadelphia was the only Eastern urban center plagued by teacher strikes in 1972-1973 and very few Harvard blacks prep in Philadelphia's public schools. The second explanation is difficult to attack statistically, but the perverse logic behind it is evident.
Claims by admissions officers that black undergraduates were insufficiently enthusiastic about recruiting suggest that black students are ultimately responsible for duties which other students can leave up to the admissions office. While every student should contribute something to recruiting, ultimate responsibility for the composition of a new class lies with the admissions office. When an important component of the student body drops 25 per cent in size the University, not undergraduates, is to be blamed. Ironically, admissions had engineered a 100 per cent increase in the number of black enrollees when there were very few black undergraduates around to lend assistance with recruiting.
SUCH SIGNIFICANT declines in enrollment probably do not occur without some type of change in admissions practices. At present, black students are more vulnerable to policy changes than any other group. As new members of the Harvard student community, blacks do not have an alumni or faculty power base to deal with admissions policy. WASPs and Jews have either one or both of these two powerful supports in their corner. As ethnic groups jockey for more slots in the College, places that belong to black students are least secure.
Now that student activism has passed, black students have lost their only means of influencing Harvard admissions policy. Blacks are going to have to come to grips with their powerlessness in both alumni and faculty quarters. While it is not blacks's exclusive responsibility to go out and recruit, it is incumbent upon them to reinitiate an active vigil over Harvard admissions. If black students neglect this responsibility there is nobody else to carry it out for them.
Martin Luther King's assassination stirred both intellectual and emotional commitments to solve America's social problems. In 1968 Harvard gave the impression that it was making a serious and conscious decision to institutionalize the admission of a representative number of blacks in the College. In 1973, it seems that Harvard's pledge to enroll more blacks was no more than an emotional reaction to a tragedy. This year's admission decision will be a decisive test of the validity of Harvard's commitment to black admissions.
| 1969 |
Balice international airport is in which country? | Hard-earned gains for women at Harvard | Harvard Gazette
© 2017 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Hard-earned gains for women at Harvard
Hard-earned gains for women at Harvard
Horowitz reviews obstacles, milestones in Radcliffe lecture
April 26, 2012 | Editor's Pick
Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Women’s exclusion from the University began “as a part of the social order of the time," one that went largely unquestioned by both men and women and that was connected to both “tradition and privilege,” said historian Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, speaking at the Radcliffe Institute, in a talk titled “It’s Complicated: 375 Years of Women at Harvard."
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Harvard’s history with women is indeed complicated, said historian Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz Monday at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study .
In a talk titled “It’s Complicated: 375 Years of Women at Harvard,” the professor emerita of history and American studies at Smith College examined the University’s shifting gender landscape, contending that while the Harvard of today has much to celebrate in regards to women, it still has room to improve.
The lecture took shape as Harvard President Drew Faust and Radcliffe Dean Lizabeth Cohen discussed how the Radcliffe Institute could, said Cohen, “make an intellectual contribution” to commemorate Harvard’s 375th anniversary.
Just as important to the two historians, said Cohen, “was how the history of women at Harvard might be well represented in the course of the anniversary year.”
Faust offered opening remarks at Monday’s event, saying that the past 100 years can be seen as “a narrative of progress” for women at Harvard. Horowitz’s talk, she said, offered “important and enduring lessons for Harvard” — about how change happens, and about how those committed to learning and opportunity “can make their way into a world that comes increasingly to accept and embrace them.”
Women’s exclusion from the University began “as a part of the social order of the time,” said Horowitz, one that went largely unquestioned by both men and women and that was connected to both “tradition and privilege.”
Established in 1636 to educate an all-male clergy, Harvard by the 18th century had developed into a college to educate the “sons of the arriving mercantile elite.” During the industrial revolution of the 19th century, Boston bluebloods and Harvard, she said, “rose together.”
The first women to knock at Harvard’s doors came from the middle class, typically schoolteachers looking for extra instruction in the sciences. But they were merely “thrown crumbs,” such as access to lectures or labs, said Horowitz.
When a group of powerful women, including Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, widow of the famous Harvard scientist Louis Agassiz, founded the Women’s Education Association of Boston, in 1872, and sought to gain the entrance of women into Harvard, it was met with steady resistance.
“We were told not to disturb the present system of education which is the result of the experience and wisdom of the past,” read Horowitz from the group’s records. She noted that at the time both Harvard President Charles William Eliot and the Harvard Corporation were “deeply opposed” to allowing women into Harvard.
Eliot, Faust remarked in her 2004 essay titled “Mingling Promiscuously: A History of Women and Men at Harvard,” “established his position in his inaugural address, declaring that the policing of hundreds of young men and women of marriageable age would be impossible. He had doubts, moreover, about what he called the ‘natural mental capacities’ of the female sex.”
But the association, said Horowitz, would not be deterred. They turned to an innovative solution, developing an institution of their own, one located near Harvard that would offer female students instruction by Harvard professors, “the same courses they taught men in the Yard.”
The “Harvard Annex” opened its doors in 1879. By 1890 more than 200 women were being taught by 70 men. Yet Agassiz continued to push for more. In 1894, Radcliffe College was granted an official charter by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Agassiz was its first president.
Faust, Harvard’s Lincoln Professor of History, described the new college in her 2004 paper. Radcliffe, she wrote, represented a “compromise between what women wanted and what Harvard would give them, as an alternative to the two prevailing models of coeducation and separate women’s institutions. Radcliffe College would educate women by contracting with individual Harvard faculty to provide instruction, would offer its own diplomas, to be countersigned by Harvard’s president, and would be subjected in academic matters to the supervision of ‘visitors’ from Harvard.”
Yet though women were making significant inroads, they were still set apart from Harvard, a separation that may have come with unseen costs, said Horowitz.
“What does it mean to a woman student that there are no female models?” she wondered.
“For better or worse,” said Horowitz, “professors are models, as well as inspirers.”
A more complex picture emerged Harvard’s graduate Schools. The Harvard Graduate School of Education was the first to admit women in 1920. Harvard Medical School accepted its first female enrollees in 1945 — though a woman first applied almost 100 years earlier, in 1847. Women began petitioning Harvard Law School for admittance in 1871. The School opened its doors in 1950, but that was 20 years behind most law schools in the country, said Horowitz.
The author and former Radcliffe fellow even offered her own experience with Harvard’s “complicated” approach to women. When she was denied acceptance to Harvard’s graduate program in history in 1962, she protested her rejection to Dean Kirby-Miller, the recently displaced dean of the Radcliffe Graduate School. Kirby-Miller agreed that she had been discriminated against, then promptly refused to take her case, telling Horowitz “she had lost two better ones in the last week.”
Horowitz ultimately received both her master’s and doctorate degrees from Harvard in American civilization in 1965 and 1969
In 1963, Harvard degrees were awarded to Radcliffe students for the first time. In 1967, Lamont Library allowed women access. In 1975, the two Colleges merged their admissions. In 1977, “a critical date,” Harvard’s ratio of four men to one woman ended with “sex-blind admissions.” In 1999, Radcliffe officially merged with Harvard, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study was born.
“Moving an institution towards equity turns out to be hard work,” said Horowitz. Harvard has made great progress, she said.
Of the 16 members of the Harvard Council of Deans, seven are women, and women also hold many other top administrative posts at the University, she said. While the faculty still strives for greater diversity, what’s important to remember, said Horowitz, is that the University has a “clear tenure track system” in place, which offers women a road in.
Still, other changes are needed if women are to be convinced to stay at Harvard, and other academic institutions, long enough to pursue tenure — specifically, changes in regards to starting a family and caregiving.
“To achieve equity requires that educational institutions provide women with a wide range of services and a flexible career clock, enabling the balance of working and caregiving. To be gender blind about this, is to be blind about the reality of many women’s lives.”
President Drew Faust offered opening remarks at the event, saying that the past 100 years can be seen as “a narrative of progress” for women at Harvard.
| i don't know |
What was the first name of the original food manufacturer Mr. Heinz? | Heinz | Heinz Story
Heinz Story
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Heinz Story
The story of how Heinz came to be one of the world's best loved brands began over 140 years ago. Take a trip back with us, and find out how Henry J Heinz ensured his name would become associated with quality, variety and good taste by food lovers everywhere.
1869
In the beginning
Two young American businessmen, Henry J Heinz and L Clarence Noble, launch Heinz & Noble. Their first product is Henry's 'pure and superior' grated horseradish, bottled in clear glass to show its purity. The horseradish is grown on a garden patch given to Henry by his parents.
1876
The world's first taste of ketchup
Henry sets up business with two of his relations, launching F & J Heinz Company, with Henry as manager. In the US, they launch Heinz Tomato Ketchup followed by a launch in the UK in 1886.
1886
'I think Mr Heinz, we will take the lot'
Henry sells his first products 'seven varieties of our finest and newest goods' to London's famous Fortnum & Mason food store.
1896
An historic train journey
Riding the New York railway he saw a poster for a shoe company advertising its 21 styles of shoe. He is taken with the ad and totting up the number of products that his company produced, settles on 57 - although there were more, even then! On that journey Heinz 57 Varieties was born.
1910
Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup was imported into the UK.
1920s
UK production starts
Heinz is still exporting Baked Beans, Spaghetti and Tomato Ketchup to the UK from America and Canada. When production expands to the UK, 10,000 tonnes are produced here in the first year.
1930s
You gotta talk the talk
Heinz salesmen are expected to be at least 6ft tall, impeccably dressed and particularly eloquent at promoting Heinz products. Their equipment including chrome vacuum flasks, pickle forks and olive spears weighs about 30lbs!
1931
Hard times, good food
Howard Heinz, Henry's son, fights the big Depression by adding ready-to-serve soups and baby food to the Heinz range. Feeding families looking for value, taste and quality, they become top sellers
1940s
What, no ketchup?
Because of the war, ingredients are in short supply. Heinz Tomato Ketchup does not appear on shelves in the UK from 1939 until 1948. What on earth did they do without it? Eat more Heinz Salad Cream, that's what.
1944
Beans for victory!
Because of its major contribution to wartime food production, our Harlesden factory is bombed at least twice. Production carries on regardless as Heinz is so vital to maintaining food resources.
1951
A right Royal result
The Royal Warrant is granted, and in 1954 granted again as Purveyors of Heinz Products to HM Queen Elizabeth II.
1955
Heinz goes on air for the first time
'Heinz 57' varieties are advertised on the new ITV channel. Colour posters were also produced. The jingle went: 'Heinz 57, Heinz 57. You've a family to feed. Heinz have everything you need. Ready when you are, yes indeed. That's Heinz 57!
1959
Wigan goes bean bonkers
Heinz opens a Beans factory in Wigan on 21 May 1959. It uses 1,000 tonnes of dry beans every week. That's a lot of beans.
1961
The biggest promotion in the UK ever!
Heinz give-away 57 Mini-Minors in a soup competition. From then on Heinz can't stop; we give away 57 caravans, 57 holidays and much, much more.
1967
The most famous slogan of them all is born
Remember it? A million housewives everyday pick up a tin of beans and say: 'Beanz Meanz Heinz.'
1986
Heinz commemorates 100 years of providing British families with quality convenience foods.
1987
Ketchup gets the easy, squeezy treatment
The plastic Heinz Tomato Ketchup bottle is launched. Now it is easier than ever to enjoy the world's favourite tomato ketchup with your favourite dishes.
1990s
The bean goes east
Heinz expands distribution to Russia and China. In total, we now export Heinz Beanz to 60 countries.
1998
Twelve of the best
Heinz Beanz is selected as one of twelve brands that people think best represent the final ten years of the Millennium.
1999
We're now the world's fourth biggest food and drink brand behind Coke, McDonald's and Nescafé.
2000
Time to go organic
Heinz launches organic ranges for our main brands: Organic Tomato Ketchup and Organic Heinz Beanz. Soon after, we introduce Organic Cream of Tomato Soup.
2003
Everything turned upside down
Heinz Tomato Ketchup is turned on its head and the Heinz Top Down Tomato Ketchup bottle is born. For the traditionalists, the distinctive glass bottles remain on sale too.
2004
Less salt for beans lovers
Heinz introduces Reduced Sugar and Salt Baked Beanz while continuing to drive down added salt in standard beans which first started in 1986.
2005
Mean Beanz for a new millennium
For the first time in 103 years, Heinz launches a new Heinz Beanz range: Mean Beanz, that come in world varieties Mexican, Sweet Chilli and Smokey BBQ.
2005
HP Sauce joins the Heinz family
HP™ Sauces and Lea & Perrins™ Worcestershire Sauce joins a roster of 10 category-leading consumer brands at Heinz including Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Heinz Beanz and Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup.
2007
Busy lives have never bean so easy
Heinz launches a new format to their iconic Heinz Beanz and Spaghetti Hoops brands with Snap Pots, a personalised portion that can be popped into the microwave without the need to hover by the hob, worry about waste or adding to the pile of unwashed pots and pans.
2008
Global Sustainability goals launched
Heinz unveils nine global sustainability goals including the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2015.
2009
Still coming up with inspiring food ideas
IT HAS TO BE HEINZ marketing campaign was launched in October across TV, radio, in-store, digital and PR.
On 21 May 2009 Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh visited the Heinz Beanz factory in Kitt Green near Wigan to mark the 50th Anniversary of the official opening of the factory. The Queen also opened a new packing operation.
2010
Heinz Beanz Fridge Pack is launched
Heinz Beanz Fridge Pack: the first-ever resealable beans product from Heinz is launched. The ground-breaking innovation allows you to use as many beans as you like before resealing the screw top and popping the remaining beans into the fridge to keep fresh for up to five days. There's also a handy see-through measure on the side showing if there are enough beans left to put on toast or partner with a spud.
2011
Heinz Tomato Ketchup with Balsamic Vinegar is launched
Heinz Tomato Ketchup sells it first ever limited edition exclusively on Facebook©
More than 130 years after the world's first taste of Heinz Tomato Ketchup, the iconic global brand caused a media stir with the innovative launch of Heinz Tomato Ketchup with Balsamic Vinegar.
Only one million and 57 bottles of the sauce were initially made, and fans of the official UK Facebook page were given the chance to try the sauce before anyone else - with the first 3,000 sold exclusively on the site.
2012
YouGov BrandIndex
Consumers put their trust in Heinz as the most highly rated food brand according to a poll published by YouGov. (YouGov BrandIndex 2011)
| Henry |
Panama proclaimed independence in 1903 from which country? | H.J. Heinz - - Biography.com
H.J. Heinz
Operating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, businessman H.J. Heinz used his reputation for quality to make his food manufacturing company a success.
IN THESE GROUPS
“It is more pleasant to remember others than to be remembered.”
“Our market is the world.”
“A man is nowhere without money.”
H.J. Heinz
Synopsis
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 11, 1844, H.J. Heinz first demonstrated his business acumen as a child, selling vegetables and then bottled horseradish. In 1876, the business that would become the H.J. Heinz Company was founded. Known for his well-made products, Heinz condiments and pickles would end up being sold around the world. Heinz died in Pittsburgh on May 14, 1919, at age 74.
Early Life
The son of German immigrants, Henry John Heinz was born on October 11, 1844, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1850, his family moved to nearby Sharpsburg. There, he went into business selling vegetables from his family's garden, building a client list that included grocers in Pittsburgh.
As a teenager, Heinz also sold prepared horseradish. Other sellers usually offered the condiment in dark glass bottles, which made it hard to see the product. Heinz stood out by using clear glass containers, thus permitting customers to see the quality of his horseradish for themselves.
Starting a Company
In 1869, H.J. Heinz formed a partnership to sell bottled horseradish. After doing well for several years—and branching out to offer pickles, vinegar and other items—the repercussions of a financial panic made it hard for the company to meet its obligations. The business failed in 1875, forcing Heinz to declare bankruptcy.
Despite this setback, Heinz—who had developed a reputation for quality products—was ready to try again. His financial troubles meant that he could not start another business himself, but, in 1876, he became the manager of F & J Heinz (a company formed by his cousin, Frederick, and brother, John). That same year, ketchup was added to the product line. In 1888, having discharged his bankruptcy obligations, Heinz took control of the business, which became the H.J. Heinz Company.
Running a Business
Disappointed by the lack of customers at his second-floor booth at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Heinz began offering a free pickle charm. Support beams had to be added to keep the floor from sagging under the weight of visitors. In 1896, Heinz came up with the slogan "57 Varieties"—the company had more than 57 products at the time, but he liked the number 57—and began to use it in advertisements.
By offering factory tours, Heinz was able to show the safety and cleanliness of his manufacturing process (the tours also allowed visitors to try his products). His considerate treatment of employees was also notable for the time; in addition to comfortable working conditions, he directed managers to listen to workers' concerns. During his time at the company, Heinz's workers never went on strike.
Although many food manufacturers opposed 1906's Pure Food and Drug Act, Heinz was a proponent of the measure. His advocacy for its passage helped increase sales, as customers felt they were able to trust the safety of Heinz's manufactured foods. In 1905, the company was incorporated and Heinz became its president—a position that he would hold for the rest of his life.
Personal Life and Legacy
Heinz married Sarah (Sallie) Sloan Young in 1869. They had five children together before her death in 1894. At the age of 74, Heinz died of pneumonia on May 14, 1919, at home in Pittsburgh. He left behind a business with more than 6,500 employees, 25 factories and products that were distributed in countries around the world.
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How old was Ronald Reagan when he became US President? | Ronald Reagan | whitehouse.gov
Air Force One
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan, originally an American actor and politician, became the 40th President of the United States serving from 1981 to 1989. His term saw a restoration of prosperity at home, with the goal of achieving "peace through strength" abroad.
At the end of his two terms in office, Ronald Reagan viewed with satisfaction the achievements of his innovative program known as the Reagan Revolution, which aimed to reinvigorate the American people and reduce their reliance upon Government. He felt he had fulfilled his campaign pledge of 1980 to restore "the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism."
On February 6, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born to Nelle and John Reagan in Tampico, Illinois. He attended high school in nearby Dixon and then worked his way through Eureka College. There, he studied economics and sociology, played on the football team, and acted in school plays. Upon graduation, he became a radio sports announcer. A screen test in 1937 won him a contract in Hollywood. During the next two decades he appeared in 53 films.
From his first marriage to actress Jane Wyman, he had two children, Maureen and Michael. Maureen passed away in 2001. In 1952 he married Nancy Davis, who was also an actress, and they had two children, Patricia Ann and Ronald Prescott.
As president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan became embroiled in disputes over the issue of Communism in the film industry; his political views shifted from liberal to conservative. He toured the country as a television host, becoming a spokesman for conservatism. In 1966 he was elected Governor of California by a margin of a million votes; he was re-elected in 1970.
Ronald Reagan won the Republican Presidential nomination in 1980 and chose as his running mate former Texas Congressman and United Nations Ambassador George Bush. Voters troubled by inflation and by the year-long confinement of Americans in Iran swept the Republican ticket into office. Reagan won 489 electoral votes to 49 for President Jimmy Carter.
On January 20, 1981, Reagan took office. Only 69 days later he was shot by a would-be assassin, but quickly recovered and returned to duty. His grace and wit during the dangerous incident caused his popularity to soar.
Dealing skillfully with Congress, Reagan obtained legislation to stimulate economic growth, curb inflation, increase employment, and strengthen national defense. He embarked upon a course of cutting taxes and Government expenditures, refusing to deviate from it when the strengthening of defense forces led to a large deficit.
A renewal of national self-confidence by 1984 helped Reagan and Bush win a second term with an unprecedented number of electoral votes. Their victory turned away Democratic challengers Walter F. Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.
In 1986 Reagan obtained an overhaul of the income tax code, which eliminated many deductions and exempted millions of people with low incomes. At the end of his administration, the Nation was enjoying its longest recorded period of peacetime prosperity without recession or depression.
In foreign policy, Reagan sought to achieve "peace through strength." During his two terms he increased defense spending 35 percent, but sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union. In dramatic meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he negotiated a treaty that would eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Reagan declared war against international terrorism, sending American bombers against Libya after evidence came out that Libya was involved in an attack on American soldiers in a West Berlin nightclub.
By ordering naval escorts in the Persian Gulf, he maintained the free flow of oil during the Iran-Iraq war. In keeping with the Reagan Doctrine, he gave support to anti-Communist insurgencies in Central America, Asia, and Africa.
Overall, the Reagan years saw a restoration of prosperity, and the goal of peace through strength seemed to be within grasp.
The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The Presidents of the United States of America,” by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.
For more information about President Reagan, please visit
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Which Iowa-born artist painted American Gothic and Spring Turning? | Ronald Reagan's Boyhood Home--Presidents: A Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary
Ronald is about 2 years old.
Ronald Reagan Home Preservation Foundation
“All of us have to have a place we go back to. Dixon is that place for me. There was the life that has shaped my body and mind for all the years to come.” -Ronald Reagan
When Reagan became president in 1980, he pledged himself to restore “the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism.” By the end of his two terms, the nation was enjoying its longest recorded period of peacetime prosperity, and Reagan’s personal meetings with reform Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev seemed to bring his goal of peace through strength within grasp. Americans loved Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States; polls showed that he was more popular than any other retiring president had ever been.
This modest house in Dixon, Illinois was Reagan’s home from 1920 to 1924, the site of his earliest childhood memories, and a place he recalled with great fondness. The gable-roofed, two-story white frame house is a typical late 19th-century small-town American home. A broad one-story front porch with a white painted balustrade stretches across the entire front elevation. The first floor includes an entry hall, double parlor, dining room, kitchen, and pantry. The front parlor, the most formal room in the house, contains a tile-trimmed fireplace. Stairs in the front hall lead to the second-floor bedrooms. Period furniture fills the house, which is restored to its 1920 appearance.
Born in Tampico, Illinois, on February 6, 1911, Ronald Reagan and his family moved many times during his childhood. In December 1920, when he was nine years old, they rented a house on Hennepin Avenue in Dixon. Reagan remembered raising rabbits in the back yard with his older brother Neil, and collecting birds’ nests and butterflies. He lived in this northern Illinois town until he was 21. Here he developed the outgoing personality that served him so well in Hollywood and Washington, DC. His mother was an active member of the First Christian Church in Dixon, where he sometimes taught Sunday school. She started him on his acting career by encouraging him to participate in church plays.
Ronald Reagan as a lifeguard in 1927 Ronald Reagan Home Preservation Foundation
After graduating from high school in 1928, Reagan worked his way through Eureka College. In addition to pursuing his studies, he played on the football team and acted in school plays. He got a job as a radio sports announcer after graduation, no small feat in 1932. During a spring training trip to California in 1937, he took a screen test and won a Hollywood contract. Over the next 20 years, he appeared in 53 movies. One of his most famous roles was as George Gipp in Knute Rockne—All American; his nickname of “The Gipper” stayed with him for the rest of his life. He served in the military during World War II, although he never left the country. His marriage to actress Jane Wyman ended in divorce. In 1952, he married actress Nancy Davis. They were married for 52 years.
Reagan was a Democrat during the 1930s and 1940s, but the disputes over the influence of communism in the film industry he encountered as president of the Screen Actors Guild turned him in a more conservative direction. Famous as the host of a popular TV series, he was soon touring the country as a spokesman for conservatism. Reagan’s political ambitions grew as he became more conservative. Elected governor of California in 1966 as a Republican, he won reelection in 1970 by a million-vote margin. In 1976, Reagan challenged incumbent President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination. He lost, but his strong showing laid the foundation for his success four years later. When he became the Republican presidential nominee in 1980, he selected future President George H. W. Bush as his running mate. The election took place in the midst of the long American hostage crisis in Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, runaway inflation, and a sagging economy. Reagan asked voters whether they were better off than they had been in 1976, and defeated Jimmy Carter in a landslide victory.
Visitors at the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home
Ronald Reagan Home Preservation Foundation
President Reagan took office in January 1981, announcing that “Government is not the solution to our problem; it is the problem.” The release of the American hostages in Iran on the day of his inauguration started his administration on a high note. His popularity increased 69 days later when mentally ill John Hinckley Jr. shot him in an assassination attempt. Americans were impressed with his courage and gallantry in the wake of a life-threatening injury—in the hospital emergency room, he told his wife “I forgot to duck.” He continued to carry out his responsibilities as president during his recovery.
President Reagan’s economic policies called for limiting government spending, reducing the burden of regulation, cutting taxes, and strengthening national defense. When increases in defense expenditures created a budget deficit, he continued to cut taxes. By 1984, the economy was booming, and Reagan won reelection with an unprecedented number of electoral votes. One of the highlights of his second term was the passage of a new tax code eliminating many deductions and exempting many low-income Americans from paying any taxes at all. Reagan declared war on drugs, and witnessed the onset of the AIDS epidemic and the tragedy of the Challenger space shuttle.
Ronald Reagan's statue
Ronald Reagan Home Preservation Foundation
Reagan’s fierce anti-communism was central to his foreign policy. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union intensified during his first term, with both sides increasing their military expenditures. That changed in his second term, when the Russian economy began to crumble, and reformer Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power in 1985. Reagan met personally with Gorbachev to agree on a treaty eliminating intermediate-range nuclear missiles. He gave strong, sometimes controversial support to anti-communist insurgencies in Central America, Asia, and Africa. He sent bombers to Libya, when he received information tying terrorists from that country to an attack on American soldiers in West Berlin.
Reagan left office at the end of his second term in 1989, retiring to his California ranch. In 1994, the nation grieved with him and his wife, Nancy, when, with his customary honesty, he revealed that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He passed away at 93 years of age on June 5, 2004, after suffering for ten years with Alzheimer’s disease. News of his death in June 2004 seemed to plunge the whole country into mourning.
Reagan friends and supporters formed the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home Preservation Foundation in the early 1980s to preserve the house on Hennepin Avenue. They restored it to its appearance when he lived there, based on his and his brother’s recollections, and opened it to the public. Both brothers were present at its dedication in 1984. The foundation also added a visitor center and a statue of Reagan to the property.
Plan your visit
The Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home located at 816 S. Hennepin Ave., Dixon, IL is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The home is open daily April-October, Monday–Saturday from 10:00am to 4:00pm, and Sunday 1:00pm to 4:00pm. An admission fee is charged. For more information, visit the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home website or call 815-288-5176. Visitors can tour the home along with an interpretive Visitor Center next door.
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Which country does the airline Garuda come from? | The Airline of Indonesia - Garuda Indonesia
Check In
Terms & Conditions Web Check-In
<Important> Each booking is only allowed one Online Check-in. If there is more than one passenger on a booking, all passengers must check-in all at once, otherwise the remaining passenger(s) will not be able to do Online Check-in and it can only be done at the airport.
Online Check-in service is available from 24 hours to 4 hours before departure; for domestic flights departing from Jakarta (CGK), the online check-in is available from 24 hours to 2 hours before departure.
Online Check-in is not available for the following passengers:
Passengers without e-ticket
Infants under 2 years old who are not occupying a seat.
Passengers who need special assistance at the airport, such as pregnant passengers, children younger than 12 years old who travel alone, Unaccompanied Minor (UM), the passengers that require wheelchair, stretcher case, or any other special handlings at the airport.
Group bookings (more than 9 persons)
The system will automatically assign you a seat, but you can change it by accessing the preferred seat option in our Online Check-in function.
For international flights, please show your Online Boarding Passes (both PDF and QR barcode boarding pass) to the Airport Check-in Counter before boarding.
For international flights, please make sure that your passport is valid up to at least 6 months from the travel date and secure other valid travel documents such as any visa documents required for the trip. Present them to the Airport Check-in Counter before boarding.
Boarding gate number and seat number may change without prior notice for the following reasons: the circumstances at the airport on the day of the flight or a change of aircraft. You may check boarding gate updates on the airport information display system at the airport.
If you fail to complete the Online Check-in procedure due to technical problems such as printer or system error, please refer to the instructions on the page and complete the boarding procedure at the Airport Check-in Counter.
Information:
To use Online Check-in, please use your e-ticket with confirmed reservation.
For prompt customs and immigration procedures, please bring your passport and fill in your passport information during Online Check-in.
Passengers with connecting flights can check-in sequentially.
Please arrive early for quarantine and security checks. Please complete the check-in procedure at the Airport Check-in Counter at least 60 minutes before departure for domestic flights, and 90 minutes before departure for international flights.
Carry-on baggage should be limited to one piece, must not weigh more than 7 kg (for both Economy and Business Class), with maximum size: 56 cm length, 23 cm width, and 36 cm height (for CRJ and ATR Aircraft type maximum size is 41 cm length, 17 cm width, and 34 cm height).
Make sure that you are not carrying any valuable items in your checked baggage
For the safety and security of our passengers, crew, and the aircraft, please make sure that you are not carrying any dangerous items in your carry-on and checked baggage. Please click here for baggage restrictions information details
Please make sure that you pack your own baggage or supervise the person who does it for you.
The Airport Check-in Counter will be closed 45 minutes prior to departure for international flights and 30 minutes prior to departure for domestic flights.
For flights departing from Terminal 3 Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, the Airport Check-in Counter is closed 45 minutes prior to scheduled departure for domestic flights.
Boarding Gate is opened 120 minutes prior to departure and aircraft door is closed 10 minutes prior to departure.
Passengers who want to cancel must report to the Airport Check-in Counter or Garuda Indonesia Call Center.
For further information please contact the Garuda Indonesia Call Center at 0804-1-807-807 (within Indonesia region only) or +62-21-2351 9999.
I have read Online Check-in notice and information
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| Indonesia |
To ten thousand square miles, what is the area of Idaho? | Jakarta: Arriving & Departing - TripAdvisor
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Comments (7)
ARRIVING
Most international travelers arrive via the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport about 15mi (25km) west of the city. The majority of international flights to Indonesia come through this airport. Some of the larger airlines represented are China Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Emirates, Etihad, Korean Air, Lufthansa, Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines, Mihin Lanka, and Qantas. Garuda Indonesia, the national flag carrier also connects Jakarta to international destinations in Australia, Far East, Asia, and the Middle East. To get to Indonesia from Western Europe or North America, it will probably be necessary to transfer at one of the larger gateway cities in Asia or the Middle East such as Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Dubai, Doha, or Abu Dhabi. The rise of budget airlines has seen a sharp fall in the cost of services to Jakarta from places like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok so more and more budget travellers are arriving into the city by air rather than the traditional overland routes.
There are currently 3 Terminals in operation. Terminal 1 has 3 concourses in 1-storey building with configuration of Departure Hall - Arrival Hall for concourses A, B, and C. It serves only domestic flights (Lion Air, Batavia Air, Sriwijaya Air to name a few). Terminal 2 consists of 2 stories -- upper level for departures and lower level for arrivals. It also has 3 concourses; D (all international flights), E (Garuda Indonesia international flights plus KLM and Lionair), and F (Garuda Indonesia and Merpati domestic flights). Terminal 3 serves Air Asia, Batik Air and Mandala Air for both international and domestic flights, and Lion Air flights to Denpasar, Bali (DPS)
for complete TERMINAL GUIDE, please refer to this page: Jakarta Airport Terminal Guide
http://www.soekarnohatta-airport.co.id/
The arrival procedure for DOMESTIC flight is as follows:
1. Disembark from airplane p
2. Proceed to baggage claim. For those with connections, go to the transfer desk.
3. Executive taxi, limousine, and car rental are available.
The arrival procedure for INTERNATIONAL flight is as follows:
1/ Disembark plane, proceed to the passport check ( those who need a VOA aproach VOA counter first).
2/ After you clear immigration, you may proceed to baggage claim. CGK is awfully inefficient with bagge carosels, expect up to 60 min for your luggae to apper on the conveyer.
3/ You need to go through custom inspection. Hand-in customs declaration form to the officer and screen all baggage. Only 1 declaration form is required per group/family. Mind DF allowance on alcohol.
4/ You can find car rental, limousine counter, and executive taxi counter just after clearing customs, before meet&greet area. Those who require regular taxi may proceed outside to the taxi rank (see moving on section below)
VISA
Nationals holding passport from the following 168 countries and territories are eligible to enter and remain in Indonesia without a visa for 30 days. The visa free facility does not allow the change into other permits or visa extension. Passport holders from all visa exempt countries can enter Indonesia through one of the 124 designated border crossings. All visitors must hold a passport valid for 6 months, even those with visa free access, onward tickets from Indonesia, itinerary, hotel booking and proof of sufciient funds may be asked by the immigration to to verify your purpose of visit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_po...
DEPARTING
The departure airport tax is now included in the price of any flight booked after 9 February 2015.
DEPARTURE PROCEDURE
The departure procedure for DOMESTIC flight is as follow:
1. Passenger drop off, proceed to luggage screening prior entering check-in hall. All bags must be screened at this point, passengers are searched through metal detector.
2. If flying Garuda airlines, first proceed to get your checked baggage strapped (free) opposite the check-in counters. Check-in at respective counter.
3. Proceed to departure hall. Check Flight Information Display, if it's open, you may proceed to wait at the waiting room in the gate area. Second security screening on hand luggage and passengers before entering the waiting room.
The departure procedure for INTERNATIONAL flight is as follow:
1. Passenger drop off, proceed to luggage screening prior entering check-in hall. All bags must be screened at this point, passengers aresearched through metal detector.
2. If flying Garuda airlines, first proceed to get your checked baggage strapped (free) opposite the check-in counters. Check-in at respective counter.
3. Immigration
4. Proceed to the departure hall. Airline lounges, duty free, and restaurants are located here.
5. Check Flight Information Display, if it's open, you may proceed to wait at the waiting room in the gate area. Second security screening on hand luggage and passengers before entering the waiting room.
TERMINAL 3 international: lines for arrival immigration can be very long. For departure if you fly Air Asia internationally, have no checked bags, and have aslready checked in on the web, you can proceed directly from your car to the immigration desk without having to go to the AirAsia checkin desk: it makes the process really quick.
MOVING ON
There are taxi ranks outside airport terminals. It is ALWAYS recommended to take a taxi from one of these than to employ the services of unofficial drivers who will approach you inside and outside the terminal building (they are touts). Any deal that you are offered will not be cheaper than a metered taxi and you'll run the risk of being robbed. The most reputable taxi company is Blue Bird Group (identifieable by sticker bearing the same name) and it's more upmarket arm, Silver Bird. When using the official taxi you will be given a card with the taxis' details on it. Keep this, in case you have any problems. When taking a taxi from the airport passengers are charged a small surcharge that is based on your destination (airport surcharge), information about this is on the back of the taxi card that you are given. Passenger are also responsible for paying the motorway tolls. Both of this charges are inaddition to the meter fare.
Buses to the city are also available from these terminals. The DAMRIairport bus connects the airport to several points in the city, for example, Gambir Train Station in Central Jakarta, Blok M Bus Station and Lebak Bulus Bus Station both in South Jakarta. Taking a bus will be a lot cheaper especially for single travellers. DAMRI bus also serves Bogor. Other than DAMRI, there is small shuttle services to several points in the city (as well as to Bandung) using small bus or minivan such as X-Trans and Cipaganti Travel. There is also a bus service directly to Bandung operated by Primajasa.
For inter-airport connections, there is a complimentary Airport Shuttle operating in a loop between Terminal 1 - Terminal 2 - Terminal 3. Approx 10 min. interval from 5AM to around 10PM.
Train services in Indonesia is divided into three classes: economy, business and executive trains. Economy and business trains are non airconditioned ones and slower than executive trains. Executive trains are the most comfortable, with AC and reclining seats. All executive class leave from Gambir station which is located on Lapangan Merdeka in Central Jakarta. There are day and overnight services to Surabaya, Solo, Malang and Yogakarta as well as frequent services to Bandung, Cirebon, Semarang and many other places. For details on services see http://kereta-api.co.id/index.php. Moving on by train is a much better alternative than the bus because the city's bus stations are located far from the centre of the city and you will need to battle Jakarta's terrible traffic to reach them. The terminal that you need to head to depends on your destination. For points west of Jakarta like Cilegon and Merak The Kailderes terminal in West Jakarta has very frequent departures. Pulo Gadung terminal in East Jakarta handles services to Sumarta and also to Central and East Java as well as Bali. Kampung Rambutan, also in East Jakarta, handles services to cities in West Java, like Bogor, Tasikmalaya and Bandung. Rawamangun bus terminal in East Jakarta handles executive bus services to Sumatra, Central Java, Yogyakarta, East Java and Bali. It is advisable to book the ticket first to avoid ticket touts and scams. The better option of using mid and long-range bus is to depart from their ticket office, hence avoiding the hazard in the bus terminals. However the train is a 100% better option for these destinations.
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Sarah Vaughan first joined which band as singer? | Sarah Vaughan | Biography & History | AllMusic
google+
Artist Biography by Scott Yanow
Possessor of one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century, Sarah Vaughan ranked with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday in the very top echelon of female jazz singers. She often gave the impression that with her wide range, perfectly controlled vibrato, and wide expressive abilities, she could do anything she wanted with her voice. Although not all of her many recordings are essential (give Vaughan a weak song and she might strangle it to death), Sarah Vaughan 's legacy as a performer and a recording artist will be very difficult to match in the future.
Vaughan sang in church as a child and had extensive piano lessons from 1931-39; she developed into a capable keyboardist. After she won an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater, she was hired for the Earl Hines big band as a singer and second vocalist. Unfortunately, the musicians' recording strike kept her off record during this period (1943-44). When lifelong friend Billy Eckstine broke away to form his own orchestra, Vaughan joined him, making her recording debut. She loved being with Eckstine 's orchestra, where she became influenced by a couple of his sidemen, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie , both of whom had also been with Hines during her stint. Vaughan was one of the first singers to fully incorporate bop phrasing in her singing, and to have the vocal chops to pull it off on the level of a Parker and Gillespie .
Other than a few months with John Kirby from 1945-46, Sarah Vaughan spent the remainder of her career as a solo star. Although she looked a bit awkward in 1945 (her first husband George Treadwell would greatly assist her with her appearance), there was no denying her incredible voice. She made several early sessions for Continental: a December 31, 1944 date highlighted by her vocal version of "A Night in Tunisia," which was called "Interlude," and a May 25, 1945 session for that label that had Gillespie and Parker as sidemen. However, it was her 1946-48 selections for Musicraft (which included "If You Could See Me Now," "Tenderly" and "It's Magic") that found her rapidly gaining maturity and adding bop-oriented phrasing to popular songs. Signed to Columbia where she recorded during 1949-53, "Sassy" continued to build on her popularity. Although some of those sessions were quite commercial, eight classic selections cut with Jimmy Jones ' band during May 18-19, 1950 (an octet including Miles Davis ) showed that she could sing jazz with the best.
During the 1950s, Vaughan recorded middle-of-the-road pop material with orchestras for Mercury, and jazz dates (including Sarah Vaughan , a memorable collaboration with Clifford Brown ) for the label's subsidiary, EmArcy. Later record label associations included Roulette (1960-64), back with Mercury (1963-67), and after a surprising four years off records, Mainstream (1971-74). Through the years, Vaughan 's voice deepened a bit, but never lost its power, flexibility or range. She was a masterful scat singer and was able to out-swing nearly everyone (except for Ella ). Vaughan was with Norman Granz 's Pablo label from 1977-82, and only during her last few years did her recording career falter a bit, with only two forgettable efforts after 1982. However, up until near the end, Vaughan remained a world traveler, singing and partying into all hours of the night with her miraculous voice staying in prime form. The majority of her recordings are currently available, including complete sets of the Mercury/Emarcy years, and Sarah Vaughan is as famous today as she was during her most active years.
| Earl Hines |
Elmas international airport is in which country? | Sarah Vaughan — Listen for free on Spotify
Sarah Vaughan
Play on Spotify
Possessor of one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century, Sarah Vaughan ranked with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday in the very top echelon of female jazz singers.
She often gave the impression that with her wide range, perfectly controlled vibrato, and wide expressive abilities, she could do anything she wanted with her voice. Although not all of her many recordings are essential (give Vaughan a weak song and she might strangle it to death), Sarah Vaughan's legacy as a performer and a recording artist will be very difficult to match in the future.
Vaughan sang in church as a child and had extensive piano lessons from 1931-39; she developed into a capable keyboardist. After she won an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater, she was hired for the Earl Hines big band as a singer and second vocalist. Unfortunately, the musicians' recording strike kept her off record during this period (1943-44). When lifelong friend Billy Eckstine broke away to form his own orchestra, Vaughan joined him, making her recording debut. She loved being with Eckstine 's orchestra, where she became influenced by a couple of his sidemen, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie , both of whom had also been with Hines during her stint. Vaughan was one of the first singers to fully incorporate bop phrasing in her singing, and to have the vocal chops to pull it off on the level of a Parker and Gillespie.
Other than a few months with John Kirby from 1945-46, Sarah Vaughan spent the remainder of her career as a solo star. Although she looked a bit awkward in 1945 (her first husband George Treadwell would greatly assist her with her appearance), there was no denying her incredible voice. She made several early sessions for Continental: a December 31, 1944 date highlighted by her vocal version of "A Night in Tunisia," which was called "Interlude," and a May 25, 1945 session for that label that had Gillespie and Parker as sidemen. However, it was her 1946-48 selections for Musicraft (which included "If You Could See Me Now," "Tenderly" and "It's Magic") that found her rapidly gaining maturity and adding bop-oriented phrasing to popular songs. Signed to Columbia where she recorded during 1949-53, "Sassy" continued to build on her popularity. Although some of those sessions were quite commercial, eight classic selections cut with Jimmy Jones' band during May 18-19, 1950 (an octet including Miles Davis ) showed that she could sing jazz with the best.
During the 1950s, Vaughan recorded middle-of-the-road pop material with orchestras for Mercury, and jazz dates (including Sarah Vaughan, a memorable collaboration with Clifford Brown ) for the label's subsidiary, EmArcy. Later record label associations included Roulette (1960-64), back with Mercury (1963-67), and after a surprising four years off records, Mainstream (1971-74). Through the years, Vaughan's voice deepened a bit, but never lost its power, flexibility or range. She was a masterful scat singer and was able to out-swing nearly everyone (except for Ella ). Vaughan was with Norman Granz's Pablo label from 1977-82, and only during her last few years did her recording career falter a bit, with only two forgettable efforts after 1982. However, up until near the end, Vaughan remained a world traveler, singing and partying into all hours of the night with her miraculous voice staying in prime form. The majority of her recordings are currently available, including complete sets of the Mercury/Emarcy years, and Sarah Vaughan is as famous today as she was during her most active years. ~ Scott Yanow, Rovi
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Which pioneering aviator had a plane called Percival Gull? | Jean Batten (1909 -1982), New Zealand Pioneer Aviatrix
De Havilland Gipsy Moth Biplane G-AALG*
England - India
(*Originally owned by The Prince of Wales 5 Sep 29 - 4 Feb 33) 1934
De Havilland Gipsy Moth Biplane G-AARB
England - Australia (women's record) 10,500 miles in 14 days 22 hours 30 minutes
1935
De Havilland Gipsy Moth G-AARB
Australia - England in 17 days 15 hours. First woman to make return flight.
Percival Gull Monoplane G-ADPR
England - Brazil: 5000 miles in 61 hours 15 minutes elapsed time. World record for any type of aeroplane. Also fastest crossing South Atlantic Ocean, 13 1/4 hours, and first woman to make England - South America flight.
1936
Percival Gull Monoplane G-ADPR
England - New Zealand. World record for any type. 14,224 miles in 11 days 45 minutes total elapsed time, including 21/2 days in Sydney.
Also first direct flight from England to Auckland. Also world record for fastest flight between Australia and New Zealand (101/2 hours). Established on same flight: England - Australia solo record, 10,500 miles in 5 days 21 hours total elapsed time.
1937
Percival Gull Monoplane G-ADPR
Australia - England solo record, 5 days 18 hours 15 minutes. First person to hold both England - Australia and Australia - England solo records at the same time.
The New Zealand Edge : Heroes : Speedsters : Jean Batten
http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/batten.html
New Zealand Speedsters - Jean Batten - Hine-o-te-Rangi (Daughter of the Skies) - She was the manifestation of triumph and hope through the dark days of the depression. In 1934 she smashed the world record between England and Australia by six days. In 1936 she made the first ever direct flight between England and New Zealand. Jean Batten stood for adventure, daring and exploration. ...more
Batten, Jean Gardner 1909-1982 Aviator
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/dnzb/vol4/Batten.htm
One of the great international aviators of the 1930s, Jean Gardner Batten was born on 15 September 1909 in Rotorua, the only daughter of a dentist, Frederick Harold Batten, and his wife, Ellen (Nellie) Blackmore. She was christened Jane after her grandmother, but soon became known as Jean. ...more
Famous New Zealanders - Jean Batten's Principal Achievements
1933 : England - India. De Havilland Gipsy Moth G-AALG
1934 : England - Australia (women's record) 10,500 miles in 14 days 22 hours 30 minutes
1935 : Australia - England in 17 days 15 hours. First woman to make return flight. De Havilland Gipsy Moth G-AARB
At right, Jean Batten at Croydon, England on April 29, 1935 after her solo flight from Australia to England
Jean Batten takes delivery of her new aircraft, a Percival Vega Gull at Gravesend Airport, September 1, 1935
http://www.carjam.ic24.net/airport3.htm
1935 : England - Brazil: 5000 miles in 61 hours 15 minutes elapsed time. World record for any type of aeroplane. Also fastest crossing South Atlantic Ocean, 13 1/4 hours, and first woman to make England - South America flight. Percival Vega Gull Monoplane G-ADPR
1936 : England - New Zealand. World record for any type. 14,224 miles in 11 days 45 minutes total elapsed time, including 21/2 days in Sydney. Also first direct flight from England to Auckland. Also world record for fastest flight between Australia and New Zealand (101/2 hours). Established on same flight: England - Australia solo record, 10,500 miles in 5 days 21 hours total elapsed time. Percival Vega Gull Monoplane G-ADPR
1937 : Australia - England solo record, 5 days 18 hours 15 minutes. First person to hold both England - Australia and Australia - England solo records at the same time. Percival Vega Gull Monoplane G-ADPR.
and now, complete, with full acknowlegement to the individual sources, four shorter essays, ideal for school projects etc.
Jean Gardner Batten (1909 - 1982)
http://www.xrefer.com/entry/359291
Born in Rotorua, Jean had an early ambition to fly, and particularly to fly solo from England to New Zealand. In 1929 she went to England to join the London Aeroplane Club and gained private and commercial licences by 1932. She found sponsors and after two unsuccessful attempts to fly solo to Australia her persistence was repaid in 1934 when she cut Amy Johnson's solo record by four days.
In 1935 Jean became the first woman to fly the south Atlantic from England to Brazil, establishing a new record speed for the flight. She had replaced her Gipsy Moth by a Percival Vega Gull monoplane and in this she flew from London to New Zealand, establishing a solo flight record which was maintained for 44 years, as well as a new solo England-Australia record and one for the fastest crossing of the Timor Sea.
Before tackling this dangerous stretch she instructed the station commander: "If I go down in the sea no one must fly out to look for me...I have no wish to imperil the lives of others..." Her final record was for a flight from Australia to England in 1937, after which she kept up an active interest in aviation. She received many honours, including the Freedom of the City of London (1978) and Chevalier, Légion d'honneur.
Women in Aviation and Space History: Jean Batten
http://www.nasm.edu/nasm/aero/women_aviators/jean_batten.htm
Jean Batten grew up in New Zealand and developed a love for aviation than overcame her desire to be a concert pianist. Her interest in flying stemmed from the 1919 England to Australia flight by Ross and Keith Smith, and later solo flights, including Charles Kingsford Smith who gave Batten her first airplane ride.
Batten's father did not approve of her aviation enthusiasm but she convinced her mother to move to England with her and help her become a pilot. She received her license and her commercial rating at the London Aeroplane Club at Stag Lane and then began planning for a flight from England to Australia. Her first two attempts failed, but she succeeded in 1934, flying a Gipsy Moth.
Batten became an instant sensation in Australia, New Zealand and in England upon her return flight the next year (it was the first round trip by a woman). In 1935, she broke James Mollison's records for England to Brazil and Dakar to Natal while becoming the first woman to solo across the South Atlantic.
Then, in 1936, she realized her dream of flying solo from England to New Zealand in a Percival Vega Gull in 11 days and earned her second consecutive Harmon Trophy, having shared the first one in 1935 with Amelia Earhart. In 1937 she set another record for an Australia to England flight.
Unable to obtain a flying job during World War II, Batten gave up flying and eventually became a recluse, living with her mother in Majorca, Spain and appearing in public only for a few anniversary events. In 1937, she published her autobiography, My Life
Copyright © 2000 National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution (information compiled by D. Cochrane and P. Ramirez 12/15/99)
New Zealand Aviation Pioneer Jean Batten (1909 -1982)
http://www.auckland-airport.co.nz/batten.html
Jean Batten was a pioneer aviator in the 1920s and 1930s when pilots proved to the world the potential of air travel as a means of transport. Jean Batten was born in Rotorua in 1909. Her interest in becoming a pilot was sparked when, in 1929, she met the Australian pilot, Charles Kingsford-Smith who took her for a flight in his famous plane, The Southern Cross. He had become a hero when he made the first trans-Pacific flight (1928) from America to Australia.
When Jean travelled to London in 1930 with her mother, she joined an Aero Club which led to the fulfillment of her dream of becoming a pilot. Not satisfied with just gaining her Commercial Pilot's Licence, she was determined that she, too, would make a solo flight to Australia. Her first attempt in a second-hand Gipsy Moth ended when she crashed in Karachi. A second attempt, also in a Gipsy Moth, failed when she made a forced landing after running out of fuel near Rome.
Instant fame came to her when her third attempt, in May 1934, was not only successful but also smashed Amy Johnson's England-Australia record. However, her finest hour was to come on 16 October, 1936 when she arrived at Auckland where she was welcomed by a crowd of 6,000 people who had flocked to the small grass air strip at Mangere to greet her at the end of what was the first flight from England to New Zealand. Her 14,224 mile journey from England took 11 days and 45 minutes, a time which was to remain a solo record for 44 years.
The Percival Vega Gull G-ADPR in which she made the journey now hangs in the Jean Batten International Terminal. This little monoplane enabled her to establish herself as one of the great women aviators of all time. Her flights were characterised by brilliant navigation precision, achieved without radio, using only a map, watch and simple magnetic compass.
She flew the Vega Gull from England to Brazil in 1935 in 61 hours 15 minutes; from England to Australia in five days 21 hours (en route to New Zealand in 1936); and in the spectacular solo record time of five days 18 hours 15 minutes from Australia back to England in 1937. During the Second World War, Jean Batten was involved in campaigns in England to raise money for guns and aeroplanes. Her Percival Vega Gull was commissioned to active service but Jean never flew again.
After the War, she and her mother lived together in various locations around the world, although never in New Zealand, until Mrs. Batten's death in 1965 at the age of eighty nine. Jean, herself died alone in Majorca on 22 November, 1982 where, unknown, she was buried in a communal paupers' grave with the world unaware of her fate for a further five years.
In her will, Jean Batten requested that her body be taken to London for cremation and her ashes carried to Auckland to be interred at Auckland International Airport. Due to the nature of her burial in Palma this was not possible, but her memory remains alive in the Jean Batten International Terminal.
Jean Batten, Heroine of the Skies
http://www.humanbeams.com/slices/batten.shtml Today, with the entire world at our fingertips, it's difficult to imagine that there was a time when long-distance air travel was a heroic deed. But back in the thirties, the pioneer aviators flew at low altitudes in the midst of adverse weather, alone, without radio, relying only on the most rudimentary equipment. Some of the pioneers were women
Jean Batten was born in Rotorua, New Zealand, in 1909, the daughter of an impoverished dentist and a dominating mother. She met renowned pilot Kingsford-Smith on a visit to Australia in 1929 and took a ride in his plane. It was then that Jean decided to become a pilot. She travelled to London, joined an aero club, and in 1930 at the age of 21 she made her first solo flight for her private pilot licence.
At twenty, Jean was a bit of a slow learner. Her colleagues described her as "far from being a natural pilot". One of them recalled the day she crashed: flying solo, she had overshot on landing, hit a wire fence and overturned. Although she emerged physically unscathed, her confidence was shaken. She doubted that she would ever be any good at flying.
Yet she persisted, urged on by the prominence of Amy Johnson's historic flight from England to Australia in just 19.5 days. Jean obtained her commercial licence in 1932, and immediately made two attempts to fly to Australia. In the first, the engine of her Gipsy Moth stopped, and she was forced to land short of Karachi Airfield in India.
A year later, in another second-hand Gipsy Moth, she ran out of fuel, and had to land near Rome. But Jean was no quitter. In May 1934, her day came. She knocked four days off Amy Johnson's 1930 record, by flying alone in a tiny aircraft made of wood and fabric, from England to Australia, in just under fifteen days.
To top it, she flew back. Later, she piloted a small cabin plane across the South Atlantic; and became the first person ever to fly solo from England to New Zealand. Her record (covering 14,224 miles in 11 days and 45 minutes) stood for 44 years. Her flights became legendary in the years of the Depression, when people craved escapism. Long-distance solo record flying became an epidemic. The public would literally cause traffic jams to see the flying celebrities touch down in their moment of glory.
But in the late thirties, with the war looming, solo aviation records lost their appeal. Jean Batten hung up her flying helmet and went into fiercely guarded seclusion. She resurfaced briefly in the sixties, when she offered herself for media interviews. But by then, most people didn't know her name. The Garbo of the skies had achieved obscurity.
In 1982 she went to Majorca to look for a new home. That was the last time anybody heard from her. In fact, Jean had died in Palma just five weeks after arriving on the island. But it took five years for that fact to be unearthed. Her death certificate gives no indication of the cause of death. Nobody knows where she is buried. (these last two facts are incorrect; she died of a pulmonary abscess the end result of an improperly tended dogbite and is buried in a known 'pauper's' grave in Palma. Ed. 07/2001 ref. Mackersey)
copyright ©1999 Yvonne Eve Walus
Jean Batten's Aircraft : DH-60 Gipsy Moth and Percival Vega Gull 6
1933-34
DH-60 Gipsy Moths similar to Jean's G-AALG of1933 and G-AARB of 1934
De Havilland DH-60 Gipsy Moth Insignia
In fact from Amy Johnson's de Havilland Gipsy Moth, 'Jason'
De Havilland DH-60 Gipsy Moth Cockpit
In fact the cockpit of Amy Johnson's de Havilland DH-60 Gipsy Moth, 'Jason'
De Havilland DH-60 Gipsy Moth, G-AAMX
Photo : TBA
you may also wish to download a 750 pixel image
De Havilland DH-60 Gipsy Moth, G-****
Photo: © Dave Stewart
you may also wish to download a 750 pixel image
De Havilland DH-60 Gipsy Moth, G-**AG
Photo: © Dave Stewart
you may also wish to download a 750 pixel image
De Havilland DH-60 Gipsy Moth, G-IUAJ
Photo : TBA
you may also wish to download a 750 pixel image
De Havilland DH-60 Gipsy Moth, G-AADR
Photo : TBA
Percival Vega Gull 6 : G-ADPR
Jean Batten's Percival Vega Gull G-ADPR
The first Percival Vega Gull, built in 1932, was considered highly advanced when it first appeared.
Its sleek looks contrasted with the biplanes typical of the period.
Jean Batten's three seater version, of which there were only 19, was built in 1935 and cost her 1750 pounds sterling, "every penny I owned".
The monoplane was constructed of wood and fabric and has a wingspan of 11.02 metres and a length of 7.6 metres. It made many record breaking flights until war broke out in 1939 when it was requisitioned by the Royal Air Force as a communication aircraft bearing the designation AX866.
Percival Aircraft, designers and manufacturers of the Vega Gull, (later to become the Hunting Group) bought the plane in 1946 at the end of the war. The Company used it only intermittently, so in April 1961 the Group presented it to the Shuttleworth Trust to join their collection of historical aircraft.
Jean Batten's Percival Vega Gull G-ADPR, on display at Auckland International Airport.
http://tinpan.fortunecity.com/blur/862/aucklandsep99/
The Vega Gull was flown occasionally on public display days until it required major restoration. This was sponsored by the Hunting Group in association with the Shuttleworth Trust and began in 1987. It was a massive task to make this historic aircraft completely airworthy again.
Auckland International Airport Limited borrowed the plane to be displayed in The International Terminal during 1990 for New Zealand's 150th anniversary celebrations which coincided with the 25th anniversary of the opening of Auckland International Airport.
After its return to England, the Airport Company negotiated to purchase the Percival Vega Gull G-ADPR. The last time it flew was over Auckland in 1996 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Jean Batten's record breaking flight between England and Auckland.
Percival Vega Gull - 4view
http://nz.com/NZ/News/WYSIWYG/1996_News/1996November10.html
Jean Batten's lovely little Percival Mew Gull was recently acquired by the Auckland International Airport company. Last Sunday (Nov. 4, 1996; Ed.) , it was scheduled to fly over the Auckland region to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Jean Batten's epic solo flight from England to New Zealand.
The aircraft took off with Cherie Marshall at the controls, but while over the Auckland harbour, the engine started to run roughly. Ms Marshall put in a Mayday call and headed back to Mangere, where to everyone's immense relief, a safe landing was made. The aircraft will now go on permanent display, and in all probability, will never fly again.
Percival Vega Gull
http://www.planefacts.ndirect.co.uk
The Vega Gull is a four seater cabin monoplane of the familiar Percival low-wing type, constructed of wood and fabric. Good stream-lining and a 200 h.p. Gipsy Six engine give it a cruising speed of 170 m.p.h. and a range of 660 miles. Dual controls are provided for the two front seats, the pilot normally sitting on the port side, as is usual with the larger types of aircraft.
Percival Series Vega Gull
http://www.franklyncards.com/one/pilot.htm
Mrs Beryl Markham (card 21) pilot of a Percival Gull. [...] Beryl was the first woman to make the East-to-West N.Atlantic Crossing and also hold the record for the fastest East-West N.Atlantic crossing.
The Percival Gull was obviously something to be seen flying about in. Harry Frank Broadbent (Australian) is seen in one. In 1935 he beats C.J. Melrose record for a solo flight around Australia and in the same year flew from Australia to England.
It was also the aircraft of choice for Miss Jean Batten (card 43). While it seems everyone wanted to get from Australia to England she was keen as mustard to do it the other way around. It was third time lucky for her, the previous attempts ending in India and Italy.
Mrs Harry Bonny [Lores Bonney, Ed.] (isn't that annoying, I'd have liked the card to at least tell us what her mother used to call her when it was time for dinner. Perhaps it was Harry but I doubt it) was an Australian airwoman.
Australians were pretty keen pilots as lets face it half of them needed airstrips in the back garden if they wanted to visit the neighbours for coffee. The card shows her plane [Lores Bonney's Percival Gull?] as being a pretty lurid pink, very Penelope Pitstop. The card notes her principal acheivement as being a solo flight from Australia to England.
Further Reading
In Print
Mackersey, Ian, Jean Batten : The Garbo of the Skies, Warner Books,1999, 466pp, ISBN: 0 7515 3019 0 Jean Batten was one of the great aviation megastars of the 193Os.
Her spectacular flights ranked with those of Britain's Amy Johnson and American's Amelia Earhart. Yet, despite her brilliance as a pilot, she remained the least well-known of them all. For the dentist's daughter from New Zealand built an impregnable wall around her private life - which was dominated, though few ever knew it, by the formidable influence of her mother.
Drawing on secret memoirs found after Jean Batten's death and on hundreds of interviews with people who knew her, this biography of Jean's sad and elusive life explodes the enduring myths of happiness and perfection that she created for herself. It also finally solves the mystery of her bizarre and lonely end.
The real Jean Batten emerges as a fascinating woman, who combined bravery and ruthlessness with the stunning and seductive beauty she used so effectively to fulfil her great ambitions.
''A fascinating book ... superbly researched'' Mary S. Lovell, author of Straight On Till Morning
"I find it impossible to over-praise a story which reads like a superior detective novel while bringing a totally new depth of understanding to this extraordinary woman'' Daily Mail
''Ian Mackersey's tireless digging has done Jean, her family and aviation a great service." Guardian
also...
Batten, Jean, Alone In The Sky. illus. with 12 full page plates t/out. pub. N.Z. Technical books 1979 1st.ed. or.cl. d/w. 8vo. pp.190. signed by Jean Batten.
Batten, Jean, My Life. illus. with frontis. & 31 plates pub. Lond. Harrap 1938 1st.ed. or.cl. 8vo. pp.304.
On Line
My Century : BBC World Service : Jean Batten
Transcript
| Jean Batten |
Which British political figure became Baroness Kesteven? | Flying under the radar of aviation history – The Chronikler
A lad from the Australian bush ended up designing and building the slickest, quickest aircraft of the 1920/30s. How come nobody has heard of him?
Photo: ©Christian Nielsen
Thursday 10 December 2015
Edgar Wickner (‘EW’) Percival had a knack for crafting sleek and modern monoplanes that outperformed anything in their class during the inter-war years. His planes shot record-breaking fliers like Charles Kingsford Smith and New Zealand’s Jean Batten to fame, yet the man behind the Percival Aircraft Company remains largely unknown… an enigma even.
“EW Percival was not given the recognition he deserved,” commented aviator Alex Henshaw after Percival’s death in relative obscurity in 1984. Henshaw once flew a Percival ‘Mew Gull’ from England to South Africa and back in record-breaking time.
Percival grew up on a farm beside a dusty landing strip in Albury and spent his spare time helping out around the hanger. In his teens, Percival dabbled with his own aircraft designs until WWI broke out and, like many farm boys, he joined the famous Light Horse Brigade.
Shortly after arriving in Europe, Percival applied for transfer to the Royal Air Force and, by the time he demobilised around 1920, had reached the rank of captain.
He returned to Australia with two aircraft in tow and spent several years as a typical flyboy of the era doing barnstorming and running charters. This wasn’t enough for Percival: he had to build his own planes. But with a British ban on the colonies producing aircraft, Percival had no choice but to return to England, sometime around 1927.
Even there, he faced stiff head winds. His first move was to register as a test pilot, offering him the chance to see first-hand the calibre of the competition and build a network that would be essential to break into the flying establishment.
Soon after, he teamed up with well-known aircraft-maker Basil ‘Hendy’ Henderson and others before eventually designing what would become the blueprint for the light, superfast single-engine monoplanes of the 1930s and ’40s – the Gull. Early models were entered in the renowned King’s Cup Air Race and immediately captured the eye of rich sportsman fliers.
“It may be difficult today to fully appreciate the impact of the ‘Gull’ on the sporting aviation community and their open cockpit biplanes. Percival entered his prototype in most significant competitions emerging from his [fast] aircraft in business suit and trilby hat to be applauded by his competitors clad in leather coats and helmets,” wrote historians who documented the complete refurbishment of a rare Percival Gull Four (G-ACGR) – see ‘Plucked from obscurity’ – which is today proudly displayed on the upper landing of the Brussels Air Museum .
From accolades to anonymity
The graceful lines and “terrifying” acceleration of the Gull propelled Percival and his team to great heights during the 1930s. In around 1935, he flew one of his own aircraft from England to Algeria and back in under a day. This clearly established the Gull as both fast and durable for long-distance leisure and adventure travel. It also proved to be a clever marketing stunt, inspiring fliers from all over the world to similar feats in various Gull models.
“To fly [a Gull] is a mixture of terror and delight… Take-off is very fast. It climbs amazingly and in flight is very stable… [But] visibility is marginal and landings are for adrenalin junkies – they’re terrifying.” – (David Beale, pilot and owner of a Gull replica, LAA Rally 2014)
Alex Henshaw, for example, not only whipped down to South Africa and back in his Mew Gull, but also won the 1938 King’s Cup Air Race at an average speed of 236 miles per hour. Kingsford Smith and aviatrix Jean Batten, meanwhile, both piloted Gulls in their famous long-distance exploits. Battens ‘Vega Gull’ – one of around 90 produced in total – is on display at Auckland International Airport.
“Jean, you are a very naughty girl, and really I think you want a good spanking for giving us such a terribly anxious time here. We knew you could do it, but we did not want you to run the risk,” condescended Auckland Mayor Ernest Davis upon Batten’s late touchdown on 5 October 1936, after flying solo from England to New Zealand in just over 11 days.
With the spectre of war on the horizon, Percival seemed intuitively to understand that the sportsman flier market would be short-lived. He had already developed a more sedate courier plane and with the same sense of practicality developed a military communications version of the Vega Gull, called a Proctor, which could carry four people in comfort, as well as light transport and training versions (the Q4 and Q6) which could be used for civilian purposes. As orders came in for all three models, he desperately needed capital and a new production plant so took Percival Aircraft public to attract investors.
Percival wore many hats – chief engineer, test pilot, managing director – in the new company, and the strain started to show. “Suddenly, in 1939, with no official explanation ever given, Captain EW Percival resigned his three positions within the company,” noted the Brussels Air Museum in its ‘Percival Gull IV G-ACGR story’. He remained on the board until he sold his holding at the end of the War to the Hunting Group, which would eventually become part of the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) ,which was itself absorbed by British Aerospace, now BAE Systems.
Between 1939 and 1954, Percival literally went off the radar. At the outbreak of the World War II, he reportedly represented the British Ministry of Aircraft Production on missions to select US aircraft for use by the RAF. He is thought to have returned to Australia, spent some time in New Zealand and resurfaced in England around 1953 where he attempted to launch a new company making aeroplanes for farm use, with little success as the market was flooded with modified surplus military aircraft.
As for the rest of the war and the decade that followed it, what he did and where he travelled is something of a mystery. It is hard to believe that a man of such uncanny engineering and practical skills would sit idle for 15 years during the prime of his life.
In Percival’s obituary, his brother explained that the man he knew was a timid person who often gave the wrong impression of gruffness. What remains is the legacy of a quiet but determined country boy who battled the odds, succeeded, and then promptly retreated into relative obscurity.
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Henri Becquerel shared a Nobel prize for his work in discovering what? | Henri Becquerel - Biographical
Henri Becquerel
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1903
Henri Becquerel, Pierre Curie, Marie Curie
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Henri Becquerel - Biographical
Antoine Henri Becquerel was born in Paris on December 15, 1852, a member of a distinguished family of scholars and scientists. His father, Alexander Edmond Becquerel, was a Professor of Applied Physics and had done research on solar radiation and on phosphorescence, while his grandfather, Antoine César, had been a Fellow of the Royal Society and the inventor of an electrolytic method for extracting metals from their ores. He entered the Polytechnic in 1872, then the government department of Ponts-et-Chaussées in 1874, becoming ingénieur in 1877 and being promoted to ingénieur-en-chef in 1894. In 1888 he acquired the degree of docteur-ès-sciences. From 1878 he had held an appointment as an Assistant at the Museum of Natural History, taking over from his father in the Chair of Applied Physics at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. In 1892 he was appointed Professor of Applied Physics in the Department of Natural History at the Paris Museum. He became a Professor at the Polytechnic in 1895.
Becquerel's earliest work was concerned with the plane polarization of light, with the phenomenon of phosphorescence and with the absorption of light by crystals (his doctorate thesis). He also worked on the subject of terrestrial magnetism. In 1896, his previous work was overshadowed by his discovery of the phenomenon of natural radioactivity. Following a discussion with Henri Poincaré on the radiation which had recently been discovered by Röntgen (X-rays) and which was accompanied by a type of phosphorescence in the vacuum tube, Becquerel decided to investigate whether there was any connection between X-rays and naturally occurring phosphorescence. He had inherited from his father a supply of uranium salts, which phosphoresce on exposure to light. When the salts were placed near to a photographic plate covered with opaque paper, the plate was discovered to be fogged. The phenomenon was found to be common to all the uranium salts studied and was concluded to be a property of the uranium atom. Later, Becquerel showed that the rays emitted by uranium, which for a long time were named after their discoverer, caused gases to ionize and that they differed from X-rays in that they could be deflected by electric or magnetic fields. For his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity Becquerel was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, the other half being given to Pierre and Marie Curie for their study of the Becquerel radiation.
Becquerel published his findings in many papers, principally in the Annales de Physique et de Chimie and the Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences.
He was elected a member of the Academie des Sciences de France in 1889 and succeeded Berthelot as Life Secretary of that body. He was a member also of the Accademia dei Lincei and of the Royal Academy of Berlin, amongst others. He was made an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1900.
He was married to Mlle. Janin, the daughter of a civil engineer. They had a son Jean, b. 1878, who was also a physicist: the fourth generation of scientists in the Becquerel family.
Antoine Henri Becquerel died at Le Croisic on August 25, 1908.
From Nobel Lectures , Physics 1901-1921, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1967
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel . It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures . To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
| Radioactive decay |
Who was the first white music star to record on Atlantic, through its sister label Atco? | Antoine-Henri Becquerel
For anything and everything on science from India
Antoine-Henri Becquerel
Dr V B Kamble
Antoine-Henri Becquerel (1852-1908) is known for his discovery of radioactivity, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with Marie Curie (1897-1934) and Pierre Curie (1859-1906) in 1903 and the contributions he made to that field. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences, became its President, and was elected to the far more influential post of permanent Secretary. He held three chairs of Physics in Paris - at the Museum of Natural History, at the cole Polytechnique,and at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Méésartiers' - and attained high rank as an engineer in the National Administration of Bridges and Highways.
Henri's father, Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel, and his grandfather, Antoine César becquerel,were renowned physicists, both members of the Academy of Sciences and each in his turn professor of Physics at the Muserum of Natural History. Henri Becquerel was born on December 15, 1852, and was educated at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand,Ecolésar Polytechnique (1872-1874) and at the Ecolésar des Ponts et Chaussees (1874-1877), where he received his engineering training. On leaving the Polytechnique, he married Lucie-Zoe-Marie Jamin, daughter of J.C. Jamin, academician and professor of Physics in the Faculty of Sciences in Paris. Before the end of his schooling, he had begun both his private research and his teaching career at the Polytechnique.His wife died in March 1878, a few weeks after the birth of their son Jean.Becquerel succeeded to the post of his father at the Museum, and from then on,his professional life was shared among the Museum, the Polytechnique, and the Ponts et Chaussees.
Becquerel's early research was almost exclusively in optics.His first extensive investigations (1875-1882) dealt with the rotation of plane-polarised light by magnetic fields. He next turned to infra-red spectra, making visual observations by means of the light released from certain phosphorescent crystals under infra-red illumination. He then studied the absorption of light in crystals.With these researches, Becquerel obtained his doctorate from the Faculty of Sciences of Paris (1888) and election to the Academy of Sciences (1889). In 1890, he married his second wife. Following the death of his father in 1891,he succeeded in the following year to his father's two chairs of Physics at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers and at the Museum. Thus, in the beginning of 1896, at the age of forty three, Becquerely was established in the rank and responsibility, his years of active research behind him and all that for which he is now remembered still undone!
There are few scientific discoveries whose circumstances are known as minutely as those around the almost accidental finding of radioactivity. On January 7, 1896, the great French mathematician Jules-Henri Poincare (1854-1912) received a letter containing several astonishing photographs of the bones in someone's hand. The bones belonged to Wilhelm Conrad Rööntgen (1845-1923), a scientist Poincare had never visited. The letter explained that the pictures had been taken with the aid of a new discovery, X-rays that Ròöntgen had turned up the previous month, and that he was publicizing his findings by mailing off prints all over Europe. Publicized they were: The photographs created a sensation across the globe(fig.3). Within three weeks, little Eddie McCarthy of Dartmouth, New Hampshire, became a local celebrity when his broken arm was set by physicians armed with X-rays images of the fracture(fig.4). It is easy to imagine Poincare's amazement-photographs of the inside of a human being! -and he quickly asked two local doctors if they could duplicate Röntgen's work. On January 20, they showed their own X-ray photographs to the assembled members of the French Academie des Sciences. The reaction was immediate and extreme. In the next fortnight, five members of the Academie presented papers on the new phenomenon.
Antoine-Henri Becquerel (1852-1908), too, was sitting in the audience when the X-ray photographs were shown. He was fascinated by the strange ghostly images and the mysterious emanations that produced them.Both he and his father had studied the phenomenon of phosphorescence-the museum laboratory was filled with lumps of stone and wood that shone in the dark. The glow of X-ray emission put Becquerel in mind of the light in his study; although he had not done much active research in the last few years, he thought immediately of putting some phosphorescent rock on photographic paper to see if it would darken it in the same way as one of Röntgen's X-ray sources. It would not be all that much work. Born on December 15, 1852, Becquerel was the third in the line of Becquerel who held the chair of applied physics at what is today called the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Like his grand father Antoine-Cesar Becquerel, and father Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel, before him, he was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and attended its weekly meetings. During the meeting of January 20, 1896, he felt that the X-rays appeared to emanate from the area of a glass vacuum tube made fluorescent when struck by a beam of cathode rays. Poincare wondered aloud if such radiation was emitted by other luminescent bodies.
Becquerel was immediately challenged by this question. In fact, he was ideally suited to answer it. Not only was he expert in the investigation of various luminescent effects, a common activity in physical laboratories of the 19th century, but he had studied the phosphorescence of some uranium compounds in particular. He also was skilled in laboratory applications of photography. And, like most physicists, he sought a better understanding of the nature of matter, so perhaps the mechanics of phosphorescence would bring him closer to reaching this final, philosophical goal.
What is Radioactivity?
Imagine that you are holding a water melon in your hands. All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, one of its seeds comes flying out through the thick skin. At the same time, you find that the water melon has turned into a musk melon. Before you realise what happened, the musk melon throws out a seed and turns into an apple.As you are looking at the apple wondering to bite into it or not, a seed shoots out of it, and now what you have in your hand is an orange. By the time you try comprehend this unbelievable chain of event, the orange throws out a seed and becomes a emon. Surely, you would not like to eat a lemon, so you wait for it to turn into a berry or into a grape. You keep waiting, but nothing happens. The lemon remains a lemon. You may think that may be the a magician is trying to keep you awaiting from eating, or that there is a hitherto unknown power which is responsible for the entire chain of events. Fortunately, we never find one fruit changing into another kind of fruit the way it is described here.However, you may like to note that a very similar process is called Radioactivity.
Atoms are the smallest constituents that make up of elements, and hence all matter. At the centre of each atom, there is a much smaller nucleus that contains even tinier particles called Protons and Neutrons. The nucleus of a "Radioactive"atom - throw out one or more of these tinier articles, sometime particles other than proton or neutron thereby changing into a different element, or sometimes electromagnetic radiation. Such a nucleus is said to decay, or break apart when the decay of a nucleus occur. One type of atom is changed into a different type., and hence one element into another.
and will consider his watch to be slow!
An expert on uranium phosphorescence:
In the second half of the 19th century, Henri's father, Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (1820-1891), was the leading authority in Europe on the subject of the phosphorescence of solids. It was an important field, made prominent by Robert Wilhelm Bunsen's (1811-1899) and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff's (1824-1887) recent spectroscopic analyses. Incidentally, "Fluorescence" is defined as the emission of light only during stimulation by external radiation. "Phosphorescence" persists after the external radiation ceases. "Luminescence" is the umbrella term. Edmond was drawn to the investigation of uranium salts because of their exceptionally bright phosphorescence and their interesting spectra. One of his contributions was to show that the uranic series of salts is phosphorescent and that the uranous series is not.His son, Henri, began publishing on phosphorescence in 1883, and wrote twenty papers on this and related areas of study over the next 13 years, being attracted especially to the effects of infrared radiations. Like his father, Henri was fascinated by uranium salts, and he examined their absorption bands in both infrared and visible regions.
Although uranium and its compounds interested the Becquerels, the study of these substances remained in something of a scientific backwater throughout the 19th century. Uranium had been discovered in 1789 by a German analytical chemist, Martin Klaproth, while he had been examining pitchblende from Saxony. Its name was chosen in honor of William Herschel's discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781 (a practice continued in the 20th century with the naming of neptunium and plutonium). Not until 1841, however, was it recognized that Klaproth had obtained only the oxide. Eugene Peligot, a noted French chemist,then succeeded in separating the metal.
Attention was again directed to uranium when Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907) formulated his periodic table in 1869 and showed it to be the heaviest element. But in an age of burgeoning chemical production, few applications for it were found. Compounds were tried as toning agents in photography, as dyes or stains for leather and wool and as mordants for silk and wool, and attempts were made with the metal to form an alloy with steel. The greatest use was in the ceramic and glass industries, in which uranium was valued for making coloured glazes and coloured clear glass. By varying the percentage of the salt used, one could get yellow, orange, brown, green or black.
Photography entered the laboratory around the middle of the 19th century, being used to complement the microscope, telescope and balloon (for aerial photography),and to capture events such as sound waves, flying bullets, drop splashes, the motion of animals and lightning. Röntgen's encounter with X-rays, which evoked tremendous public interest, relied heavily on photography for its fame. By far the greatest scientific use of this tool came in the century's last two decades,which suggests the impact of dry, gelatin emulsion plates. By 1896 Becquerel would probably have had at his disposal dry photographic plates of relatively good quality, uniform emulsion and long shelf life. Luminescence, uranium, photography Becquerel was in the right place at the right time. But he still might have failed to recognizes radioactivity as a phenomenon separate from phosphorescence if he had not been an accomplished physicist (Figure).
Why does an apple remain an apple?
Most atoms are not radio active, fortunately. Their neuclei are "stable",i.e. they do not decay. This is why an ordinary object, such as an apple or a watermelon with millions and millions of atoms with stable neuclei, always remains the same. Incidentally, we call a radioactive nucleus unstable because it can decay. When it does decay, both the number of protons and neutrons can change. Will the resulting nucleus be stable? Well, it may be stable or it too may be radioactive. If it is radio active, it may be further decay to form yet another new nucleus, which could be radioactive as well. This is how a "decay series" could occur. Each kind of chemical element in the series changes into the next kind. Ultimately, the series may end with an element such as lead, i.e. not radio active. The atoms in this element are stable, they do not decay. Thus after a sufficiently long time one may find that radium or uranium has completely changed into lead!
A model of scientific method:
Becquerel's working hypothesis was that a body had to luminesce to emit penetrating radiation such as Röö;ntgen had found. His technique was to wrap a photographic plate in light tight black paper, position the mineral on the plate, and leave the experiment on his window sill where sunlight would stimulate the mineral to glow. At a meeting of the Academy of Sciences on 24 February 1896, he claimed success, reporting that several materials in particular, phosphorescent crystals of potassium uranyl sulfate emitted rays that penetrated thick black paper and exposed the photographic plate. This exposure was little more than a smudge. To refine the results and to make them more attractive to others Becquerel also placed coins and other thin, metallic objects under the crystals, producing interesting silhouettes and showing their penetrating power. It must, however,be stated that X-rays, which produced far sharper photographic images in less time were overwhelmingly more popular.
On Wednesday and Thursday, 26 and 27 February, 1896, Becquerel prepared several arrays of crystals and photographic plates. The Parisian winter, however, brought half a week of overcast skies, forcing Becquerel to postpone the experiments;he felt that he needed strong sunlight. The plates rested in a dark drawer until Sunday, 1 March, when Becquerel developed them, "expecting to find very weak images. To the contrary", he wrote in his memoirs, "the silhouettes appeared with great intensity".
The following day, on 2 March 1896, Becquerel reported to the Academy of Sciences that the potassium uranium sulfate crystals could be stimulated to emit the new rays by diffuse daylight hrough a thin cloud cover, as well as by reflected and refracted direct sunlight. He also described using different thicknesses of copper foil to examine the absorption of the rays. But the most astounding result that Becquerel offered was that stimulation of the crystals by sunlight immediately before or during the experiment was apparently not necessarry.
The Uranium, it seemed, was spitting out X-rays all by itself. This, too, was not entirely correct. In fact, the lump of potassium uranyl sulfate was emitting a whole spectrum of radiation, of which only a small portion was X-rays. Nonetheless, the discovery caused a sensation, in part because it was so easy to duplicate. Almost every laboratory in the world had construction paper,photographic plates, and chunks of uranium ore. Within weeks, scientists across the Continent were looking in astonishment at the blurred black patches on their photographs making Becquerel a celebrity (Figure).
Within weeks, news of Becquerel's findings had spread to Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States, further exciting researchers already stirred by the discovery of X-rays. Tests of the two phenomena were often conducted on the same workbench. The consequences of each discovery, however, were far different. X-rays were found to be simply pulses of light light of an intensity and power never before seen, but light nonetheless. Radioactivity, on the other hand, was something entirely new, something that did not fit anywhere. The existence of radioactivity metal that somehow shot out energy! was a direct attack on the most ardent beliefs of Becquerel and his colleagues. When the strange behaviour of uranium was first noted, Becquerel wrote in his memoirs, "There was no reason to presume that the phenomenon was [anything but] a new example of a known type of energy transformation. Contrary to every expectation, the first experiments demonstrated the existence of an apparently spontaneous production of energy" . They had spent many years, those nineteenth century scientists, establishing the law of conservation of energy: Energy was neither created not destroyed. But every single piece of uranium seemed of its own accord to produce radiation that fogged photographic plates, electrified gases, and sometimes even burned physicists and the energy needed to do these things evidently came from no place at all. The metal just sat there, its atoms quietly working away, continuously beaming out penetrating rays in seeming disregard for the conservation of energy.
A page from the doctoral thesis of Marie Curie (1903)
Marie Curie's representation of alpha, beta and gamma rays in a magnetic field from a radioactive material placed in a narrow but deep cavity in a block of lead. The magnetic field is applied in a direction perpendicular to and out of the plane of the paper. In the absence of electric and magnetic fields, the rays would emerge as a thin vertical beam. The alpha particles being positively charged and relatively heavy, would be slightly deflected to the right. The beta particles, being negatively charged and light, would be deviated to a greater extent to the left, whereas the gamma rays, carrying no electric charge, would not be deflected at all.
What prompted Becquerel to develop the plates?
But why had Becquerel bothered to develop those plates, which he thought were faintly exposed at best? His behavior has been explained as thoroughness: Jean Becquerel has suggested that his father planned to resume his experiments and wished to use fresh plates, so why to develop the old ones anyway? The explanation (proffered by G.E.M. Jauncey in a 1946 paper in the American Journal of Physics) is "impatience after awaiting four days for the sun to shine". Yet other reasons, suggested, are "simple thrift or an overriding curiosity". We can dismiss the belief that Becquerel planned to resume his experiments on that Sunday: Meteorological records indicate that the day was less sunny than the average of the ceding four days
A better explanation for Becquerel's activity is that he wanted to have sufficient material to report at the next day's session of the academy. In previous experiments he had already found, or so he believed, that weak illumination triggered his crystals somewhat. Perhaps he thought that these newly prepared plates had been exposed to some diffuse daylight, if not a short period of sunlight, before he placed them in the dark drawer. Thus, even if he could not describe many additional experiments, he might furnish evidence of the connection between the intensity of the photographic image and the intensity and duration of phosphorescence.
Another page from Marie Curie's doctoral thesis describing the set-up for measuring the ionisation power of "uranium rays" The method employed consists in measuring the conductivity acquired by air under the action of radioactive bodies; this method possesses the advantage of being rapid and of furnishing figures which are comparable. The apparatus employed by me for the purpose consists essentially of a plate condenser, AB (Figure 1). The active body, finely powdered, is spread over the plate B, making the air between the plates a conductor. In order to measure the conductivity, the plate B is raised to a high potential by connecting it with one pole of a battery of small accumulators. P, of which the other pole is connected to earth. The plate A being maintained at the potential of the earth by the connection CD,an electric current is set up between the two plates. The potential of plate A is recorded by an electrometer, E. If the earth connection be broken at C, the plate A becomes charged, and this charge causes a deflection of the electrometer. The velocity of the deflection is proportional to the intensity of the current, and serves to measure the latter. But a preferable method of measurement is that of complensating the charge of plate A, so as to cause no deflection of the electrometer. The charges in question are extremely weak; they may be compensated by means of a quartz electric balance, Q, one sheath of which is connected to plate A and other to the earth. The quartz lamina is subjected to known tension, produced by placing weights in a plate,T; the tension is produced progressively, and has the effect of generating progressively a known quantity of electricity during the time observed. The operation can be so regulated that, at each instant, there is compensation between the quantity of electricity that traverses the condenser and that of the opposite kind furnished by the quartz. In this way, the quantity of electricity passing through the condenser for a given time, i.e., the intesity of the current, can be measured in absolute units. The measurement is independent of the sensitiveness of the electrometer. (Source Resonance, March 2001) (fig.6). That he found the plates as blackened as they would have been had the crystals phosphoresced continuously, and that he recognized the significance of his surprising observation, shows that the discovery of radioactivity was not simply a happy accident but also a product of genuine scientific talent. Becquerel's example is comforting to us: His genius emerged because he mistakenly believed in a connection between the penetrating rays and phosphorescence, and because he felt compelled to speak at the academy's meeting.
Though a major step, this event does not deserve to be called the discovery of radioactivity. The discovery was a process, not an instantaneous occurrence, for even at this point Becquerel had not sufficiently localized the phenomenon. No doubt Becquerel was a skilled and ingenious experimenter. However, in this early research he was not sufficiently meticulous to exclude extraneous influences and to see that some of his experimental results could bear more than one explanation. Thus, he often concluded that his experiments proved uranium rays to posses a certain physical property, only to have it shown later that the effect was due to another cause. Indeed, his investigations are particularly interesting for their many false trails, unreproducible results and misinterpreted effects.
Yet,his erroneous conclusions inexorably led him to further experiments, which often revealed the true nature of the phenomenon. This uneven progress is perhaps the most striking facet in the story of the discovery of radioactivity. But it must be understood that few scientists are able to avoid false trails.
He recognized that the next step must be to determine if any light at all was necessary to stimulate the crystals. Working in a dark room, he placed different minerals atop photographic plates in an opaque cardboard box. When developed five hours later, the plates showed strong images in samples in which the crystals lay directly on the emulsion and less intense images in those in which the crystals were separated from the emulsion by sheets of aluminum and glass. Besides showing attenuation, the samples involving aluminum and glass also indicated that chemical action was not the explanation for the photographic smudges. Nor could the smudges result from the luminous radiation, because the phosphorescence of uranium salts is perceptible only for about 0.01 second, too short a time to expose a plate.Becqurel therefore suggested that phosphorescent bodies might give off an invisible emission that lasts much longer than the visible radiation.
Even before Rö;ntgen's discovery of X-ray, it had become almost a standard procedure for scientists exploring various types of radiation to perform some of the experiments that Rö;ntgen conducted to determine the properties of X-rays. Becquerel followed suit, as was only logical, because he believed that his own rays were similar to X-rays. He only had to substitute a layer of uranium salts for a cathode-ray tube, for example, to show that the separate gold leaves of an electroscope were made to fall. Having established this electrical property, he next examined whether the rays were reflected and refracted and he claimed they were. This conclusion, however, would be corrected by Rutherford some three years later.
Through March and the succeeding months of 1896, Becquerel found that those crystals kept in darkness retained their ability to expose a photographic plate. Surely, he felt, this was a remarkable example of long-lived phosphorescence. But he was at a loss to explain the equally intense images produced by non-phosphorescent uranous sulfate. This discovery led him on a new path of investigation. Since uranium nitrate ceases to luminesce when dissolved or melted in its water of crystalization, Becquerel, in darkness, heated a crystal in a sealed glass tube, protecting it even from the light of the alcohol flame. He then allowed it to recrystallize in darkness. All phosphorescence had been destroyed in this process, yet the salt still produced results on a photographic plate as strong as crystals exposed to light. Indeed, Becquerel admitted the anomalous behaviour of his samples: All salts of uranium emitted the invisible radiation, while other phosphorescent bodies did not. Finally, he tried a disk of pure uranium metal and found that it produced penetrating radiation three to four times as intense as that he had first seen with potassium uranyl sulfate. With this last announcement, on May 18, 1986, Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity was complete, although he continued with ionization studies of his penetrating radiation until the following spring. The new rays emerged from the element uranium, and with the implicit consequence that this was an atomic phenomenon, it may be said that the process of the discovery of radioactivity was essentially over. It was a process that took several months, notable for a number of conclusions that were later overturned!
Enter Marie and Pierre Curie
Marie Curie (1867-1934) leaped into this exciting new field. She soon discovered at roughly the same time that Becquerel and Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937)(fig8) did that the radiations given off by uranium were composed of more than one type. Some rays were bent one way by a magnetic field; others were bent another way. Rutherford named the positively charged rays alpha rays and the negatively charged ones beta rays (also known as alpha particles and beta particles). Exactly what these rays or particles were composed of, no one knew, but by 1898 Marie Curie suggested a name for these radiations radioactivity and that is the name that stuck. And in 1900, Paul Ulrich Villard discovered a third, unusually penetrating type of ray in radioactive radiation, one that did not bend at all n a magnetic field, which he named the gamma ray. The use of Greek letters to name these rays simply meant that their identity was unknown, as with the X in X-ray. The Law of Exponential Decay Rutherfod and Soddy observed in 1902 that the activity of a radioactive element was diminishing in an exponential or (logarithmic) manner. This implied that the rate of decay of an active species, that is, the number of atoms that disintegrate in a unit interval of time, is proportional to the total number of atoms of that species present at that time. If we suppose that at a given instant, there are N atoms present of a particular radioelement, the rate of disintegration is represented by dN/dt. Since the rate of disintegration is proportional to the total number of atoms N, the relationship between the two, following methods of simple calculus, can be written as
- dN/dt = N
where l is is a constant which Rutherford and Soddy called the "radioactive constant". It is now referred to as the disintegration constant or the decay constant of the element under consideration. The negative sign is due to the fact that the number of atoms of the radioactive element decreases with time, and hence the rate dN/dt is a negative quantity. The value of l depends on the property of a given radioelement and is independent of the physical condition or state of chemical combination. In an equivalent exponential form, the above equation yields the result,
N t = N 0 e - lt
where N 0 is the number of atoms present at any arbitrary zero time and N t is the number remaining after the lapse of a further time t. Another constant introduced by Rutherfod in 1904, called the "half-life" is the time required for the radioactivity of a given amount of the element to decay to half its initial value, that is, when half of the N0 atoms present at the zero time have decayed.
Marie Sklodowska, a Polish girl came to Paris at the Sorbonne University to study physics and mathematics and qualified with honours and distinction. She married Pierre Curie (1859-1906) of the same university in 1895. Pierre was already famous for his discovery of piezo electricity - a property shown by some crystals such as quartz of developing an electrical voltage between opposite ends when subjected to pressure. Marie Curie used the discovery of her husband (see Box) to measure radioactivity. Radioactive rays, like X rays, ionized any gas they passed through (including air) making it capable of conducting electricity. She found that she could measure the current so conducted with a galvanometer and offset it with the potential of a crystal under pressure. By measuring the amount of pressure it took to balance the current, she could obtain the reading of the intensity of the radioactivity. She systematically tested radioactive salts and succeeded in showing that the degree of radioactivity was in proportion to the amount of uranium in the radioactive material thereby narrowing the source of the radioactivity in her samples down to uranium. Then in 1898 she made yet another find: the heavy element thorium was also radioactive. It was already known that natural pitchblende is three or four times more active than uranium. Even more interesting is the fact that as Marie was working to separate uranium out of pitchblende, she found that the residues she produced had a much higher measurement of radioactivity than the uranium content alone could account for. Since the other minerals present in the ore were not radioactive, that could mean only one thing. Some other radioactive element, in amounts too small to detect, must also be present! By this time, Marie's work had developed so much potential that her husband Pierre joined her to help with the backbreaking, tedious work of crystallizing the elements from the ores. Though himself a fine scientist with a successful career, he set his own work aside and spent the remaining seven years of his life assisting her, recognizing both her extraordinary gifts as a scientist and the importance of the path she was following. By July 1898 the two had succeeded. Working together, they had isolated a tiny amount of powder from the uranium ore from the fraction that contained bismuth. It was a new element, never before detected, with a level of radioactivity 400 times higher than uranium. They named the new element polonium, after Marie's home country. But something still seemed strange. The ore still gave off more radioactivity even than the uranium and polonium combined could account for. There must still be something else. In December 1898 they found the answer: another, even more radioactive element obtained from the fraction that contained barium which was 900 times more active than uranium. This one they named radium (from Latin radius meaning ray). Marie and Pierre could not really offer a good description of new element radium because the amount they were able to derive from the ore they had was so minuscule. They could measure its radiations, and Eugene Demarcay, a specialist in elemental line spectra, was able to provide the spectral characteristics. (Different elements give off different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation or light, and these can be observed as discrete lines.) The next project was to produce a large enough quantity of radium that they could weigh it and measure it and see it. For this, they required a much bigger laboratory and financial resources which Sorbonne University could not provide. Undaunted by the circumstances, they set to work in a make-shift laboratory housed in a neighbouring abandoned court-yard. Through the courtesy of the Academy of Sciences, Vienna, they managed at a reasonable cost, stacks of the required ore pitchblende. The new laboratory was damp with a leaky glass roof, walls made of card-boards, a few tables knocked together as the work tables, a gas stove and no exhaust to remove noxious fumes arising from the work upto 20 kg of the ore every day. It was a back breaking, hazardous and almost suicidal adventure with no help coming from any quarters. They spent their life savings to obtain large masses of waste ore from a nearby mine, and they began the monumental task. They spent four years, during which Marie lost 5 pounds, purifying and repurifying the ore into small amounts of radium, say, about 0.1 gram. Marie Curie wrote her doctoral dissertation on the subject in 1903, for which she, Pierre and Henri Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize in physics that year. In 1906, two years after receiving an appointment as professor of physics at the Sorbonne, Pierre Curie was run over by a horse-drawn truck at the age of 47. Marie was appointed in his place and she became the first woman to teach physics at the Sorbonne. Eight years after Pierre's death (1914), she received another Nobel for her discovery of two new elements, viz. Polonium and Radium, this time in chemistry and this time alone, Pierre - her partner and collaborator - no longer at her side. Years later, in 1935 to be precise, their daughter Irene and her husband Frederic Joliot-Curie - the second husband and wife team - were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discovery of artificial radioactivity.
Nobel Prizes awarded for work with radioactivity
The discovery of radioactivity brought about a revolution in our conceptiual understanding of the matter and found applications various fields of human activity. Here is a list of Nobel Prizes awarded for work with radioactivity.
1903
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Who took the assumed name Sebastian Melmoth when living in Paris? | Playwright Oscar Wilde, Biography and Plays
Born: October 16th, 1854
Died: November 30th, 1900
Although his given name was Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills, most lovers of his plays, fiction, and essays know him as Oscar Wilde. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, his father was an esteemed surgeon. His father’s career and Oscar’s scholarships enabled the young man to attain an impressive college education:
Trinity College, Dublin (1871 – 1874)
Magdalen College, Oxford (1874 – 1878)
During his college years, he became part of the “Oxford Movement,” a group that expounded upon the virtues of classical culture and artistry. Also during his studies, Wilde became a devotee of the school of aestheticism, the belief that art should be created for the sake of beauty and not as a lesson in ethics. (In other words, he believed in “art for the sake of art”).
Throughout his college days, he exhibited a cunning wit and a love of attention. This increased when he moved to London in 1878. His first plays (Vera and The Duchess of Padua) were tragedies (not simply because they were depressing but also because they were dismal failures).
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Scholars often debate the sexual identity of Oscar Wilde, labeling him either homosexual or bisexual. Biographers indicate that he had physical relationships with other males as early as age 16. However, in 1884 he married wealthy heiress Constance Lloyd. Thanks to her father’s fortune, Wilde was freed from economic concerns, and he focused more on his creative endeavors. By 1886 Oscar and Constance had two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan. Despite his seemingly idealistic family dynamic, Wilde still loved being a celebrity – and still loved the decadent parties and homosexual affairs which his social status afforded.
His greatest successes occurred when he began writing comedies for the stage:
Lady Windermere’s Fan:
A stormy and amusing four act comedy about an adulterous husband and a wife that decides that two can play at this game. What begins as a tale of romantic hi-jinks and amorous revenge turns into a tale with an unusual moral for its time:
LADY WINDERMERE: There is the same world for all of us, and good and evil, sin and innocence, go through it hand in hand. To shut one’s eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.
The play ends with the reconciliation of both the philandering husband and errant wife, with the agreement to keep their past affairs a secret.
An Ideal Husband:
A delightful comedy of manners about a lovably roguish bachelor who learns about honor, and his highly honorable friends who learn that the are not as righteous as they feign to be. In addition to the romantic aspects of this comedy, An Ideal Husband offers a critical look at a woman’s capacity for love in contrast with a man’s capacity. For more on this subject, read Wilde’s monologue spoken by the character Sir Robert Chiltern.
The Importance of Being Earnest :
One of Oscar Wilde’s more boastful quotes about himself happened when the famous author was visiting America. A New York customs officer asked if he had any goods to declare. Wilde replied, “No, I have nothing to declare (pause) except my genius.” If Wilde was justifed in such self-love it is perhaps because of his most acclaimed play, The Importance of Being Earnest. Of all the plays, this is the most merry, and perhaps the most balanced with witty dialogue, romantic misunderstandings, and laughter-inducing coincidences.
Oscar Wilde on Trial:
Sadly, Wilde’s life did not end in the manner of his “drawing room comedies.” Oscar Wilde had an intimate relationship with Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, a considerably younger gentleman. Douglas’ father, the Marquis of Queensbury, publicly accused Wilde of sodomy. In response, Oscar Wilde took the Marquis to court, charging him with criminal libel .
The attempt at justice backfired, however. During the course of the trial, Wilde’s various sexual relationships were exposed. These details, and the defense’s threat of bringing male prostitutes to the stand, prompted Wilde to drop the case. Soon afterwards, Oscar Wilde was arrested on the charge of “gross indecency."
Oscar Wilde’s Death:
The playwright received the harshest penalty afforded by law for such a crime. The judge sentenced Wilde to two years of hard labor in Reading Prison. Afterwards, his creative energy waned. Although he did write the famous poem, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” his career as London’s celebrated playwright had come to an abrupt end. He lived in a hotel in Paris, adopting the assumed name, Sebastian Melmoth. Most of his friends no longer associated with Wilde. Afflicted with cerebral meningitis, he died three years after his prison term, impoverished. One friend, Reginald Turner, remained loyal. He was there by Wilde’s side when the playwright passed away.
Rumor has it that Wilde’s last words were: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
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Who signed the Pacific Security Treaty with the USA in 1951? | Oscar Wilde facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Oscar Wilde
Paris , France
Irish-born English author, dramatist, and poet
The English author Oscar Wilde was part of the "art for art's sake" movement in English literature at the end of the nineteenth century. He is best known for his brilliant, witty comedies including the play The Importance of Being Earnest and his classic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Outstanding childhood
Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, on October 16, 1854. His father, Sir William Wilde, was a well-known surgeon; his mother, Jane Francisca Elgee Wilde, wrote popular poetry and other work under the pseudonym (pen name) Speranza. Because of his mother's literary successes, young Oscar enjoyed a cultured and privileged childhood.
After attending Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Ireland, Wilde moved on to study the classics at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1871 to 1874. There, he began attracting public attention through the uniqueness of his writing and his lifestyle. Before leaving Trinity College, Wilde was awarded many honors, including the Berkely Gold Medal for Greek.
Begins writing career
At the age of twenty-three Wilde entered Magdalen College, Oxford, England . In 1878 he was awarded the Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna." He attracted a group of followers whose members were purposefully unproductive and artificial. "The first duty in life," Wilde wrote in Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894), "is to be as artificial as possible." After leaving Oxford he expanded his cult (a following). His iconoclasm (attacking of established religious institutions) clashed with the holiness that came with the Victorian era of the late nineteenth century, but this contradiction was one that he aimed for. Another of his aims was the glorification of youth.
Wilde published his well-received Poems in 1881. The next six years were active ones. He spent an entire year lecturing in the United States and then returned to lecture in England. He applied unsuccessfully for a position as a school inspector. In 1884 he married, and his wife bore him children in 1885 and in 1886. He began to publish extensively in the following year. His writing activity became as intense and as inconsistent as his life had been for the previous six years. From 1887 to 1889 Wilde edited the magazine Woman's World. His first popular success as a fiction writer was The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). The House of Pomegranates (1892) was another collection of his fairy tales.
Sexuality of Oscar Wilde
In 1886 Wilde became a practicing homosexual, or one who is sexually attracted to a member of their own sex. He believed that his attacks on the Victorian moral code was the inspiration for his writing. He considered himself a criminal who challenged society by creating scandal. Before his conviction (found guilty) for homosexuality in 1895, the scandal was essentially private. Wilde believed in the criminal mentality. "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime," from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891), treated murder and its successful cover-up comically. The original version of The Picture of Dorian Gray in Lippincott's Magazine emphasized the murder of the painter Basil Hallward by Dorian as the turning point in Dorian's downfall. Wilde stressed that criminal tendency became criminal act.
Dorian Gray was published in book form in 1891. The novel was a celebration of youth. Dorian, in a gesture typical of Wilde, is parentless. He does not age, and he is a criminal. Like all of Wilde's work, the novel was a popular success. His only book of formal criticism, Intentions (1891), restated many of the views that Dorian Gray had emphasized, and it points toward his later plays and stories. Intentions emphasized the importance of criticism in an age that Wilde believed was uncritical. For him, criticism was an independent branch of literature, and its function was important.
His dramas
Between 1892 and 1895 Wilde was an active dramatist (writer of plays), writing what he identified as "trivial [unimportant] comedies for serious people." His plays were popular because their dialogue was baffling, clever, and often short and clear, relying on puns and elaborate word games for their effect. Lady Windermere's Fan was produced in 1892, A Woman of No Importance in 1893, and An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895.
On March 2, 1895, Wilde initiated a suit for criminal libel (a statement that damages someone's reputation) against the Marquess of Queensberry, who had objected to Wilde's friendship with his son, Lord Alfred Douglas. When his suit failed in April, countercharges followed. After a spectacular court action, Wilde was convicted of homosexual misconduct and sentenced to two years in prison at hard labor.
Prison transformed Wilde's experience as extremely as had his 1886 introduction to homosexuality. In a sense he had prepared himself for prison and its transformation of his art. De Profundis is a moving letter to a friend and apologia (a formal defense) that Wilde wrote in prison; it was first published as a whole in 1905. His theme was that he was not unlike other men and was a scapegoat, or one who bears blame for others. The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) was written after his release. In this poem a man murdered his mistress and was about to be executed, but Wilde considered him only as criminal as the rest of humanity. He wrote: "For each man kills the thing he loves, / Yet each man does not die."
After Wilde was released from prison he lived in Paris, France. He attempted to write a play in his style before his imprisonment, but this effort failed. He died in Paris on November 30, 1900.
For More Information
Bloom, Harold, ed. Oscar Wilde. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2002.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York : Knopf, 1988.
Kaufman, Moises. Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.
Pearce, Joseph. The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde. London: HarperCollins, 2000.
Woodcock, George. Oscar Wilde: The Double Image. New York: Black Rose Books, 1989.
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How many miles long is the canal which links the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans? | Panama Canal | canal, Central America | Britannica.com
canal, Central America
Alternative Title: Canal de Panamá
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Central America
Panama Canal, Spanish Canal de Panamá , lock -type canal , owned and administered by the Republic of Panama , that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the narrow Isthmus of Panama . The length of the Panama Canal from shoreline to shoreline is about 40 miles (65 km) and from deep water in the Atlantic (more specifically, the Caribbean Sea ) to deep water in the Pacific about 50 miles (82 km). The canal, which was completed in August 1914, is one of the two most-strategic artificial waterways in the world, the other being the Suez Canal . Ships sailing between the east and west coasts of the United States, which otherwise would be obliged to round Cape Horn in South America , shorten their voyage by about 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km) by using the canal. Savings of up to 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km) are also made on voyages between one coast of North America and ports on the other side of South America. Ships sailing between Europe and East Asia or Australia can save as much as 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) by using the canal.
A small tugboat leads a large ship out of one of the Panama Canal’s locks.
Danny Lehman/Corbis
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The third lock systems of the Third Set of Locks Project, begun in 2007, were inspired by the Berendrecht lock in Antwerp, Belgium, and water-saving basins used in canals in Germany. Some 190,000 tons of steel, mostly from Mexico, are entrenched in heavily reinforced concrete to build the lock chambers on the Atlantic and Pacific sides, and the new lock gates measure up to 33 feet (10 metres) wide, 98 feet (30 metres) high, and 190 feet (58 metres) long. The new chambers and basins, which will control the water flowing from Gatún Lake, were designed to minimize the turbulence of water flow and the disturbance to transiting vessels. The basins were completed in June 2016 and include 158 valves consisting of 20,000 tons of structural material. Officials say those water-saving basins are the largest in the world and facilitate a 60 percent reuse of water. Whereas the existing locks use 52 million gallons (197 million litres) with each use, the new locks use 48 million gallons (182 million litres).
Breakwaters
Long breakwaters have been constructed near the approach channels in both oceans. Breakwaters extend from the west and east sides of Limón Bay; the west breakwater protects the harbour against severe gales , and the east one reduces silting in the canal channel. On the Pacific side a causeway extends from Balboa to three small islands (Naos, Perico, and Flamenco) and diverts crosscurrents that carry soft material from the shallow harbour of Panama City into the canal channel.
Operation
Pearl Harbor attack
Traffic through the Panama Canal is a barometer of world trade, rising in times of world economic prosperity and declining in times of recession. From a low of 807 transits in 1916, traffic rose to a high point of 15,523 transits of all types in 1970. The cargo carried through the canal that year amounted to more than 132.5 million long tons (134.6 million metric tons). Although the number of annual transits has decreased since then, the canal carries more freight than ever before because the average size of vessels has increased. There were nearly 210 million long tons (213 million metric tons) of cargo through the canal in 2013.
The principal trade routes served by the Panama Canal run between the following points: the east coast of the U.S. mainland and Hawaii and East Asia; the U.S. east coast and the west coast of South America; Europe and the west coast of North America; Europe and the west coast of South America; the east coast of North America and Oceania; the U.S. east and west coasts; and Europe and Australia.
Trade between the east coast of the United States and East Asia dominates international canal traffic. Among the principal commodity groups carried through the canal are motor vehicles, petroleum products, grains, and coal and coke .
Panama Canal Authority
The Panama Canal Authority (Spanish: Autoridad del Canal de Panamá [ACP]) took over management of the canal from the joint U.S.-Panamanian Panama Canal Commission at noon on December 31, 1999. Created by an amendment to the Panamanian constitution as an autonomous agency of the Panamanian government, the ACP is charged with the administration, operation, conservation, maintenance, and modernization of the Panama Canal. It is also tasked with the care, maintenance, and preservation of water resources in the entire Panama Canal watershed. The watershed is essential to the operation of the canal, and it also supplies water to cities at either end of the canal route.
The ACP is governed by a board of directors that consists of 11 members. The chairman, who has the rank of minister of state for canal affairs, is selected by the president of the republic. The legislative branch of the government designates one director, and the remaining nine members are appointed by the president with the concurrence of the cabinet council. They must be ratified by an absolute majority of the legislative assembly.
Tolls
While the canal was under U.S. administration, tolls for its use were set at rates calculated to cover costs of maintenance and operation, thereby making the canal self-financing. The charge for each transit was based upon the interior cargo or passenger-carrying capacity of a vessel. The rates established in 1914 remained virtually unchanged for 60 years. In 1973 the canal operated at a loss for the first time, and in 1974 the first of several rate increases went into effect.
Traditionally, cargoes were carried below deck, and tolls were assessed on goods carried there. However, because of changes in marine design and the widespread use of containerized cargoes, a large portion of the burden is now carried on deck. The volume of containerized cargo passing through the canal is outranked only by shipments of grain and petroleum products. Those changes led to modifications in rules of admeasurement and the assessment of tolls for on-deck container capacity, and a segmentation system based on vessel type and size was implemented . Following the lead of the Panama Canal Commission, the ACP approved similar changes in admeasurement regulations and retained the U.S. toll rates in effect when the canal was transferred.
Cargo ship loaded with on-deck freight containers.
© iStockphoto/Thinkstock
In 2006 the ACP announced that its expansion programs would be financed by a new series of toll increases, sparking much debate and opposition from canal users. It was not until 2012 that the cabinet council approved a proposal to restructure the Panama Canal’s pricing system, and the two stages of the toll increase were implemented in October 2012 and October 2013. The new toll structure increased the number of segments from 8 to 10. The tanker segment was separated into three segments: petroleum and petroleum products tankers, gas vessels carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and chemical vessels. Roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) vessels, which are designed to carry wheeled cargo, became part of the vehicle carrier segment, and the container/break-bulk segment was eliminated. Tolls for general cargo, dry bulk, tanker, chemical tanker, LPG, and vehicle carrier and ro-ro were increased.
From the tolls collected, the ACP must pay an annual fee to the Panamanian national treasury. Any surplus remaining after that and the payment of canal operational and maintenance expenses also goes to the treasury.
History
As early as the 16th century, the Spanish recognized the advantages of a canal across the Central American isthmus. Eventually two routes came to be considered, one through Panama and the other through Nicaragua. Impetus for selecting the route through Panama increased with the construction (by the United States) of the Panama Railroad in the mid-19th century. The eventual route of the canal closely followed that of the railroad.
Panama railroad terminus at Culebra, 1854.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Lessep’s failed attempt
The first attempt to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama began in 1881 after the Colombian government granted a concession to the privately owned Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique. The company, under the leadership of Ferdinand de Lesseps , was financed by French capital from countless small investors. Because of Lesseps’s recent triumph building the Suez Canal , he was able to attract public support for building a sea-level canal across Panama. That proposal was protested strongly by Adolphe Godin de Lépinay, baron de Brusly, an engineer who had studied the isthmus. Lépinay knew the surface features at Panama: the Continental Divide 9 miles (15 km) from the Pacific, the torrential Chagres River flowing into the Atlantic, and the smaller Río Grande flowing into the Pacific—both rivers suitable for creating artificial lakes. In 1879 he proposed a “practical” plan for building a canal, calling for a dam at Gatún and another at Miraflores (or as close to the seas as the land would permit), letting the waters rise to form two lakes about 80 feet (25 metres) high, joining the lakes by cutting across the Continental Divide, and connecting them to the oceans through locks.
Lépinay’s conception eventually established him as an architectural and engineering genius and as the originator of the plan from which the Panama Canal was built. Unfortunately for the French, however, his idea was ignored at the time, and the Compagnie Universelle embarked on its ill-fated undertaking. Lesseps was unfamiliar with conditions in Panama or was unwilling to acknowledge that they were vastly different from Suez. Unlike the arid desert of the Isthmus of Suez, Panama was a tropical jungle, with diluvial rains, debilitating heat and humidity, and tropical diseases. Topographic conditions along the proposed route varied considerably and ranged from coastal marshes to the mountains of the Continental Divide. Despite competent engineering, there was no sound overall plan. Machinery used to dig the canal was either too light or ill-suited for the tough inland terrain, and disease took a terrible toll in workers’ lives.
Progress was costly and extremely slow. As a cost-saving measure, the plans for a sea-level canal were eventually dropped in favour of a high-level lock-type canal, but that change had little effect. With no foreseeable return on its investment, the French public lost faith in the project and its leader. Attempts at further financing failed, and the company collapsed in 1889. Although the company reorganized in 1894, it virtually ceased to function by 1898. Any possibility of completing the canal across Panama was gone; its sole hope lay in holding together an enterprise that could be offered for sale. In the end, less than half of the excavation made by the French was used in the U.S. canal.
American intervention
Hope became reality with the passage of the Spooner Act of 1902 by the U.S. Congress, which authorized purchasing the assets of the French company and building a canal, provided that a satisfactory treaty could be negotiated with Colombia (of which Panama was then an integral part). When treaty negotiations with Colombia broke down, Panama, with the implicit backing of the United States, declared its independence and was recognized by the United States in November 1903. The Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty was then negotiated between Panama and the United States. The treaty satisfied the Spooner Act and created the Panama Canal Zone ; it was proclaimed in February 1904.
Map of central Panama (c. 1900), from the 10th edition of Encyclopædia …
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
From the first Senate resolution in 1835 favouring Nicaragua until the dramatic change of location for the canal in the Spooner Act, the American public and government had consistently and overwhelmingly supported a canal through Nicaragua. That the canal was built in Panama is primarily attributable not to the intrinsic merits of the Panama route but to the ingenuity and zeal of two remarkable men who worked separately toward a common goal: the French engineer Phillipe-Jean Bunau-Varilla and the American lawyer William Nelson Cromwell. The political power that turned the U.S. government in favour of Panama was supplied by two people: Pres. Theodore Roosevelt and Sen. Mark Hanna . Roosevelt, once committed, supported the project so enthusiastically that he is almost universally thought of as the “father” of the canal. Most of the actual work on the canal was done during the administration of William Howard Taft (1909–13), who had also been involved earlier in Roosevelt’s administration.
By the summer of 1904, work under American administration was under way all along the canal route. The French had abandoned the sea-level approach in favour of a high-level canal with locks, and indeed that was desirable as it would cost less and would eliminate potential problems arising from differences in sea levels at either end of the waterway. Yet engineers still disagreed on the type of canal that should be built, and they faced another problem of equal importance: how to manage the Chagres River , which rose in the northeast highland region of Panama and emptied into the Atlantic. From Gamboa to Gatún the route of the proposed canal tended to follow the path of the river as it made its way to the sea. Fed by runoff created by the area’s frequent tropical downpours, the river was subject to tremendous and rapid variations in its rate of flow. Left unchecked, its menacing flood could easily inundate a waterway built near its path.
Since its opening in 1914, the Panama Canal has linked the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
In 1906 Roosevelt resolved the matter when he sided with Chief Engineer John Frank Stevens , who argued for a lock-type canal. The plan ultimately approved by Congress was similar in all essential respects to the one proposed by Lépinay but rejected by Lesseps. Included in the proposal was an enormous earthen dam across the Chagres River at Gatún. The dam created what was then the largest artificial lake in the world (Gatún Lake), and at the same time, it brought a considerable part of the Chagres River under control. So massive was the lake that it was able to accommodate the greater part of the river even at flood stage. Perhaps more important, the man-made lake formed more than 20 miles (32 km) of the canal route.
Men working on the locks of the Panama Canal.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Human costs and completion
Where tropical fevers— yellow fever and malaria in particular—had decimated the ranks of French workers with an estimated loss of over 20,000 lives, those in charge of the American effort were determined to prevent the same thing from happening again. American medical staff understood how the diseases were transmitted and how they could be controlled, and by 1906 the Canal Zone had become safer for work to resume in earnest. Even with such precautions, accidents and disease claimed the lives of 5,609 workers during the American effort. At times more than 40,000 people were employed on the project, mostly labourers from the West Indian islands of Barbados, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, though many engineers, administrators, and skilled tradesmen were from the United States.
Dredges working on the Culebra Cut (later known as the Gaillard Cut) during construction of the …
Panama Canal Authority
Railroads and heavy machinery were critical elements. Most notable was the use of more than 100 steam shovels, many of which were used to dig the Culebra Cut, later called Gaillard Cut after David du Bose Gaillard, the American engineer who supervised its construction until his death in 1913. The unstable nature of the soil and rock in the area of the cut made it one of the most difficult and challenging sections of the entire canal project, however, and numerous lives were lost in landslides and dynamite accidents during that phase of the project. Indeed, hillsides were subject to unpredictable earth slides and mudslides, and at times the floor of the excavation was known to rise precipitously simply owing to the weight of the hillsides. The well-known Cucaracha slide of 1907 continued for years and poured millions of cubic yards into the canal excavation. Workers, often labouring in temperatures of 100 °F (38 °C) or higher, used rock drills, dynamite, and steam shovels to remove as much as 96 million cubic yards (73 million cubic metres) of earth and rock as they lowered the floor of the excavation to within 40 feet (12 metres) of sea level.
Workers on the Panama Canal dug by hand through the 1907 Cucaracha landslide in Gaillard (Culebra) …
Corbis
Despite all of those challenges, the canal was opened to traffic on August 15, 1914, more than three decades after the first attempt to build the canal had begun. It remains the greatest engineering feat yet attempted.
Two men standing on railroad tracks in front of canal locks under construction in 1913 as part of …
Corbis
Treaties governing the canal’s international status
The Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty was an irritant to Panamanian sensibilities from the moment it was signed, in 1903. It had been written and negotiated for the infant republic by Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla , a French citizen who had not been in Panama for 18 years and who later openly admitted that he was willing for Panama to pay any price to ensure acceptance of the treaty by the U.S. Senate. The most-onerous part of the treaty, in the Panamanian view, was the right granted to the United States to act in the entire 10-mile- (16-km-) wide ocean-to-ocean Canal Zone as “if it were the sovereign.” Thus, the Canal Zone became in effect a foreign colony that bisected Panama, despite Theodore Roosevelt ’s declaration in 1906 that no such result was intended. As eventually constituted by the middle of the century, the Canal Zone was administered by an American governor appointed by the U.S. president. Judicial matters were settled before magistrates appointed by the governor or by a circuit court judge appointed by the president. The governor was ex officio a director and president of the Panama Canal Company, an American corporate body whose directors were charged with operating and maintaining the canal in a businesslike manner. In order to guarantee operation of the canal in the event of war, U.S. military units were stationed in the Canal Zone.
Some of the harsher effects of the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty were ameliorated by subsequent treaties, principally those of 1936 and 1955. The United States relinquished its claimed right to acquire additional lands and waters adjacent to the canal, granted Panamanian control over the ports at Colón and Panama City, and brought the wages of Panamanians employed in the Canal Zone closer to the level of Americans. But the Panamanians continued to press for more-drastic changes, including eventual full sovereignty over the canal. After years of negotiation, agreement was reached between the two governments in 1977. The Panama Canal Treaty was signed on September 7 of that year by Gen. Omar Torrijos Herrera of Panama and Pres. Jimmy Carter of the United States. It terminated all prior treaties between the United States and Panama concerning the canal and abolished the Canal Zone. The treaty recognized Panama as territorial sovereign in the former Canal Zone, but it gave the United States the right to continue managing, operating, and maintaining the canal and to use lands and waters necessary for those purposes during a transition period of 20 years covered by the agreement. The treaty also provided for joint study of the feasibility of a sea-level canal and gave the United States the right to add a third lane of locks to the existing canal, though those were never built by the United States. The treaty went into effect on October 1, 1979, and expired on December 31, 1999.
The 1977 treaty was supplemented by a separate, but interrelated, Neutrality Treaty that also went into effect in 1979 but has no termination date. Under the Neutrality Treaty the United States and Panama guarantee the permanent neutrality of the canal, with nondiscriminatory tolls and access for all nations; U.S. and Panamanian warships, however, are entitled to expeditious passage. No nation other than Panama may operate the canal or maintain military installations within Panamanian territory. The United States, however, reserved the right to use military force, if necessary, to keep the canal open; that was, in part, the rationale behind the U.S. military intervention in Panama in 1989–90, which, nonetheless, did not prevent the canal from being closed down for about a day in December 1989.
The U.S. Senate ratified the two treaties in 1978, after one of the lengthiest treaty debates in American history. The treaties were then implemented into U.S. domestic law by the Panama Canal Act of 1979. That act, among other things, established the Panama Canal Commission, which replaced both the Panama Canal Company and the Canal Zone government. The commission was controlled by a board consisting of five American and four Panamanian members. Until 1990 the administrator was an American and the assistant administrator a Panamanian national; after 1990 the roles were reversed, and Panamanians assumed the leadership position. The function of the commission was somewhat different from its predecessor, as activities not directly related to the canal, such as maintenance and operation of terminals and the Panama Canal Railway, were transferred to Panama in preparation for the final turnover. With the turnover of the canal in December 1999, the ACP assumed complete responsibility for the canal.
The international status of the canal also is affected by two older treaties. In the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901, the United Kingdom gave up its interest in an isthmian canal. And, while the United States was free to take any measures in order to protect a canal, it agreed that there would be “entire equality” in the treatment of ships of all nations with respect to “conditions and charges of traffic.” In the Thomson-Urrutia Treaty of 1914, the government-owned vessels of Colombia were exempted from paying tolls in exchange for Colombian recognition of the autonomy of Panama.
Capital improvements
The first major capital improvement on the canal was the construction of the Madden Dam and Power Project, which was completed in 1935. That not only stemmed and controlled the flow of water moving into Gatún Lake to a rate of some 200 billion cubic feet (6 billion cubic metres) per year but also created a large reservoir , Lake Madden (now Alajuela Lake). It also increased the production of electric power in the region. The Boyd-Roosevelt Highway was then built across the isthmus, thereby adding a third means of transportation to the waterway and the railroad. In 1955 the Thatcher Ferry Bridge (now called the Bridge of the Americas) was built, which connected Panama City and Balboa to the west side of the canal. From 1957 to 1971 Gaillard Cut (also called the Culebra Cut) was widened from its original 300 feet (90 metres) to 492 feet (150 metres).
In 1991, within two years of the final transition of power, the ACP began its first expansion program, a $219 million project to widen the nearly 8.5-mile- (14-km-) long Gaillard Cut from 500 feet (152 metres) to a maximum of 728 feet (222 metres). Completed in 2001, that ambitious development allowed the two-way passage of so-called Panamax ships (the then largest ships allowable in the canal) and decreased the average canal travel time by about 6 hours to about 10 hours total. The ACP also invested $54 million in new lock locomotives, new tracks and tugboats, conversion of mitre gate locks to hydraulics, and a $30 million GPS vessel tracking system.
Despite such improvements, many supertankers and large naval vessels were still too large to pass through the canal. There was much study of the feasibility of either widening the existing canal and locks or building a larger sea-level canal at another location. Cost and environmental concerns eliminated the latter option, and in 2006 the Panamanian government and voters backed the Third Set of Locks Project, a $5.2 billion expansion program to increase the width of Gatún Lake’s navigational channels to 920 feet (280 metres) in the straight sections and 1,200 feet (366 metres) at the turning points to facilitate cross-navigation. The project, completed in June 2016, raised Gatún Lake’s maximum operating level to 89 feet (27 metres), with the goal of increasing Gatún Lake’s usable water reserves by a daily average of 165 million gallons (625 million litres). Furthermore, the project included four phases of dry excavation that created a new 3.8-mile- (6.1-km-) long access channel connecting the new Pacific locks with the Gaillard Cut and also widened and deepened the existing navigational channels and deepened the cut. Freshwater dredging totaled more 37.9 million cubic yards (29 million cubic metres) of earth taken from the lake, 11.4 million cubic yards (8.7 million cubic metres) as part of the Pacific access channel, and 23.5 million cubic yards (18 million cubic metres) from the Atlantic entrance. Each sea-entrance navigation channel was widened to 738 feet (225 metres) and deepened to at least 18 feet (15.5 metres) below the lowest tide levels. The project doubled the canal’s capacity by adding two new steps of three-step locks, one at either end of the canal, and to allow the passage of a new generation of supersized ships, dubbed “neo-Panamax,” that can carry 13,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units; 1 TEU is the capacity of a container 20 by 8 by 9 feet [6.1 by 2.4 by 2.7 metres]).
After approval of the Third Set of Locks Project, ACP began awarding major contracts to firms from around the world, including an environmental-impact study conducted by the American firm URS and two Panamanian universities in 2007. To address concerns about the project’s effect on wildlife, the builders conducted extensive monitoring, both in person and with cameras, to determine what types of traps and how many traps would be required to capture and relocate animals to safe locations during construction.
On September 3, 2007, Panamanians celebrated groundbreaking on the first dry excavation project on the Pacific side. By December ACP had qualified four global consortia to bid on the main component of the program—the construction of the third pair of locks. In July 2009 ACP selected Grupo Unidos por el Canal—led by the Spanish firm Sacyr and including companies from Italy, Panama, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States—to design and build the new locks, which the group proposed to do at a cost of $3.12 billion. The final cost of the expansion totaled over $5.25 billion.
The first explosions during the ceremony marking the beginning of the expansion of the Panama Canal …
Susana Gonzales—AFP/Getty Images
The canal expansion required a significant concrete-procuring effort. Two concrete plants operated 24 hours a day, six days a week, and were supported by a system of trucks, barges, conveyor belts, stockpiles, crushers, and coolers. At the height of construction, 8,000 tons of aggregate a day were transported from the Pacific side to the Atlantic side by barge and then carried by as many as 60 trucks to the site. Aggregates varying from coarse rock to fine sand were added to various types of concrete mixes and applied to different sections of the locks. An on-site quarry operation produced basalt for the concrete mixes, though some material was reused from existing excavation if it was of sufficiently high quality.
In 2012 ACP announced an eight-month delay due to the extensive challenges associated with procuring concrete with a 100-year design life, a weeklong strike by one of Panama’s biggest construction labour unions, and bad weather. With the anticipated completion of Third Set of Locks Project pushed back to 2016, the expansion was still under way during the canal’s centennial in 2014.
Effects of expansion
The construction of the third set of locks inspired numerous articles, reports, and studies speculating on how the passage of post-Panamax ships through the canal would have an impact on global shipping patterns. In the United States, many East Coast ports began ramping up expansion and modernization plans in anticipation of increasing amounts of those large ships, which generally require channels with depths of more than 50 feet (15 metres) if fully loaded. However, the global recession in 2008 brought a long-term pattern of yearly U.S. import growth to a halt, implying increased trade uncertainty and much slower growth rates.
Despite uncertainties in future shipping patterns, the Third Set of Locks Project brought global attention from the engineering industry to Panama and the ACP. Unlike the original construction of the canal, the Panamanians hold proprietorship over the expansion, and the ACP has signed multiple partnership agreements with port authorities and other entities throughout the Americas and the world. In 2012 the ACP hosted an inaugural Engineering and Infrastructure Congress, which drew hundreds of geotechnical, electrical, structural and civil engineering practitioners, as well as exhibitors and vendors, and featured multiple sessions to address the ongoing issues associated with the canal expansion.
Panama Canal - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
A great water tollway often called the "Big Ditch," the Panama Canal links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It weaves across a strip of tropical land where the Isthmus of Panama narrows in the shape of a long flattened letter S. The fame of the Panama Canal is not in its size, for it is only about 51 miles (82 kilometers) long. Rather, the canal is an engineering triumph over nature. It has also been a major influence on world trade. The canal is owned and administered by the country of Panama.
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Who founded the off-Broadway theater where Hair had its premier? | BBC - History - British History in depth: Panama Canal Gallery
By Panama Canal Authority
Last updated 2011-02-17
The Panama Canal is around 80km (50 miles) long and links the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, running across the centre of Panama. Locks at the Pacific and Atlantic ends of the Canal either lower vessels to sea level or raise them up to the Canal. The Canal itself is made up of the Gaillard Cut channel and the artificial Gatun Lake. The lake was formed by the damming of the Chagres River.
The first attempt to build the Canal was made by a French company, but the attempt ended in failure in 1889. The American government eventually bought out the French for 40 million dollars, and their attempt to build the Canal started in 1904. The project ended in triumph, with the Canal opening in 1914, and it is now a vital artery of international trade, with nearly 14,000 ships travelling through it every year.
The total financial cost to the American government was around $375 million, but there was also a very great human cost. The death toll as the work progressed is thought to have been as high as 25,000.
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Established in 1919, which is the world's oldest surviving airline? | Oldest Airline in the World - BootsnAll Toolkit
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Oldest Airline in the World
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Q: Which is the oldest airline?
Tracing the genealogies of various carriers can be complicated, as many companies have changed names and identities. But most airline historians (there really are such things) agree that the world’s oldest continuously operating airline is Amsterdam-based KLM (that’s Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij for those of you speaking Dutch), which lists its founding date as 1919. Other pioneers include Colombia’s Avianca, also harking back to 1919, and even the national airline of Bolivia, LAB, which started flying in 1925.
In the USA, Northwest is the oldest, beginning operations in 1926. (Northwest’s pilot uniforms pay tribute to their airline’s origins as a mail carrier by featuring the words ‘US Mail’ in the center of their emblems.) As many people know, KLM and Northwest joined several years ago in the first of the big strategic alliances, but for whatever reason they never exploited their status as two of the world’s first airlines.
This Q&A is part of a collection that originally appeared on Salon.com. Patrick Smith, 38, is an erstwhile airline pilot, retired punk rocker and air travel columnist. His book, Ask the Pilot (Riverhead) was voted “Best Travel Book of 2004” by Amazon.com. Patrick has traveled to more than 55 countries and always asks for a window seat. He lives near Boston.
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"Which US First Lady said, ""No one can make you feel interior unless you consent?""" | 25 Fun Aviation Facts You Never Knew | Flight Centre Blog
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Look up the hash tag #avgeek on Twitter or Instragram and you'll see that there's a world filled with airline and aviation enthusiasts. Call it a hobby, an obsession or anything in between, but this is one interest group whose reach has swelled beyond the borders for a global reach.
Now for my confession. I'm an #avgeek. Total aviation nerd and love any sort of fun or amazing fact.
So I compiled some interesting and different aviation fast facts that you may not have heard before.
Did you know...
KLM is the world's oldest airline, established in 1919
1920
Qantas is the world's second oldest airline, established in 1920
USD$40,000
In 1987 American Airlines saved $40,000 by removing 1 olive from each salad served in first class
37 seconds
An aircraft takes off or lands every 37 seconds at Chicago O’Hare's International Airport
Wingspan
The wing-span of the A380 is longer than the aircraft itself. Wingspan is 80m, the length is 72.7m
$700 million
Singapore Airlines spends approximately $700 million on food every year and $16 million on wine
1.5 litres
Travelling by air can shed up to 1.5 litres of water from the body during an average 3 hour flight
JFK
JFK Airport in New York was originally named Idlewild Airport
10 tons
Lufthansa is the world's largest purchaser of caviar, buying over 10 tons per year
120 feet
The Boeing 747 wing-span (195 feet) is longer than the Wright Brothers first flight of 120ft
Check-in
The internet and on-line check-in was first introduced by Alaska Airlines in 1999
2.4 metres
The winglets on an Airbus A330-200 are the same height as the world's tallest man (2.4m)
480,000
Total electricity capacity of a 747-8 can power up to 480,000 32inch flat screen TVs
78 Billion
The world-wide 747 fleet has logged more than 78 billion kilometres, equivalent to 101,500 trips to the moon and back
80%
The 747 family has flown more than 5.6 billion people - equivalent of 80% of the world's population
61,000 people
At any given hour there are over 61,000 people airborne over the USA
70% more
70% of aircraft today are over 70% more fuel-efficient per seat kilometre than jets in the 1960s
1979
Did you know Qantas invented business class in 1979?
Longest Flight
Sydney to Dallas on Qantas A380 is the world's longest flight by distance
iPad
By American Airlines switching a pilots paper manuals to iPad they will save $1.2 million in fuel
240km
The average 747 has between 240-280 kilometres of wiring
30,000
In the U.S.A., over two million passengers board over 30,000 flights each day
Meals
Pilots and co-pilots are required to eat different meals in case of food poisoning
Taste Buds
About 1/3 of your taste buds are numbed while flying. Maybe that meal was not bland after all?
800kmph
A commercial aircraft flies at an average speed of 800 kilometres per hour.
Do you have any other facts? Let us know in the comments below.
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Who won super bowl X? | Super Bowl X Game Recap
Pittsburgh 21, Dallas 17
SuperBowl.com wire reports
The Steelers won the Super Bowl for the second year in a row on Terry Bradshaw's 64-yard touchdown pass to Lynn Swann and an aggressive defense that snuffed out a late rally by the Cowboys with an end-zone interception on the final play of the game.
In the fourth quarter, Pittsburgh ran on fourth down and gave up the ball on the Cowboys' 39 with 1:22 to play. Roger Staubach ran and passed for two first downs but his last desperation pass was picked off by Glen Edwards.
Dallas's scoring was the result of two touchdown passes by Staubach, one to Drew Pearson for 29 yards and the other to Percy Howard for 34 yards. Toni Fritsch had a 36-yard field goal.
The Steelers scored on two touchdown passes by Bradshaw, one to Randy Grossman for seven yards and the long bomb to Swann.
Roy Gerela had 36- and 18-yard field goals. Reggie Harrison blocked a punt through the end zone for a safety.
Swann set a Super Bowl record by gaining 161 yards on his four receptions.
Information
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Who brought to an end Jahangir Khan's long unbeaten run of success in squash in the 80s? | Super Bowl Winners and Results - Super Bowl History - National Football League - ESPN
Super Bowl Winners and Results
NO.
Green Bay 35, Kansas City 10
II
Green Bay 33, Oakland 14
III
New York Jets 16, Baltimore 7
IV
Kansas City 23, Minnesota 7
V
Pittsburgh 31, Los Angeles 19
XV
San Francisco 26, Cincinnati 21
XVII
Los Angeles 38, Washington 9
XIX
San Francisco 38, Miami 16
XX
Chicago 46, New England 10
XXI
New York Giants 39, Denver 20
XXII
Jack Murphy Stadium (San Diego)
Washington 42, Denver 10
San Francisco 20, Cincinnati 16
XXIV
San Francisco 55, Denver 10
XXV
New York Giants 20, Buffalo 19
XXVI
San Francisco 49, San Diego 26
XXX
Sun Devil Stadium (Tempe, Ariz.)
Dallas 27, Pittsburgh 17
Green Bay 35, New England 21
XXXII
Denver 31, Green Bay 24
XXXIII
St. Louis 23, Tennessee 16
XXXV
Raymond James Stadium (Tampa, Fla.)
Baltimore 34, New York Giants 7
XXXVI
New England 20, St. Louis 17
XXXVII
Tampa Bay 48, Oakland 21
XXXVIII
New England 32, Carolina 29
XXXIX
New England 24, Philadelphia 21
XL
University of Phoenix Stadium (Glendale, Ariz.)
New York Giants 17, New England 14
XLIII
Raymond James Stadium (Tampa, Fla.)
Pittsburgh Steelers 27, Arizona Cardinals 23
XLIV
New Orleans Saints 31, Indianapolis Colts 17
XLV
Green Bay Packers 31, Pittsburgh Steelers 25
XLVI
New York Giants 21, New England Patriots 17
XLVII
Baltimore Ravens 34, San Francisco 49ers 31
XLVIII
MetLife Stadium (East Rutherford, N.J.)
Seattle Seahawks 43, Denver Broncos 8
XLIX
University of Phoenix Stadium (Glendale, Ariz.)
New England Patriots 28, Seattle Seahawks 24
50
Levi's Stadium (Santa Clara, Calif.)
Denver Broncos 24, Carolina Panthers 10
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Jomo Kenyatta was born into which tribe? | Jomo Kenyatta, first Prime Minister and President of Kenya
Jomo Kenyatta
[joh' moh kehn yah' tah] first Prime Minister and President of Kenya
Kamau wa Ngengi was born about 1890 in the village of Ichaweri, Gatundu, in British East Africa, a member of the Kikuyu tribe. He was educated at the Church of Scotland Mission at Kikuyu, and baptized in 1914 with the name John Peter (which he later changed to Johnstone Kamau). During the First World War he lived with Maasai relatives in Nairobi, where he worked as a government clerk.
Overseas Work and Study
In 1922, while still living in Nairobi, Kamau joined the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), a political protest movement. By 1928, as secretary of the association, he was chief advocate for Kikuyu land rights. In 1929 the KCA sent him to London to lobby for their views; he also wrote articles to British newspapers about the matter. After a brief return to Kenya, he enrolled at Woodbrooke Quaker College in Birmingham, England, in 1931. From 1931 to 1946 he worked and studied in Western Europe and Moscow. By 1938 he had adopted the name Jomo Kenyatta (Burning Spear Beaded Belt), and it was under this name that he published Facing Mount Kenya, his thesis for the London School of Economics. During this period he continued to lobby on behalf of Kikuyu land rights.
During World War II , Kenyatta worked at a British farm in Sussex to avoid conscription into the British Army. He also lectured on Africa for the Workman's Education Association.
Return to Africa
On returning to Africa in 1946, Kenyatta became a principal of Kenya Teachers College. In 1947 he was elected president of the newly-founded Kenya African Union (later Kenya African National Union, or KANU).
In 1952, Kenyatta was charged with leading the Mau Mau Rebellion against the British and, despite his denials, was sentenced to seven years in prison, after which he spent two more years in exile in a remote part of Kenya.
Leadership of Kenya
On May 14, 1960, Kenyatta was elected president of KANU, even though he was still in exile. The state of emergency in Kenya was lifted in December 1960, and Kenyatta was finally fully released on August 21, 1961. In 1962 he was admitted into the Legislative Council, where he played a crucial role in the creation of a new constitution. Kenyatta became Prime Minister of the autonomous Kenyan government on June 1, 1963, and retained the position after independence was declared on December 12, 1963. Kenya became a republic on December 12, 1964, and Kenyatta became its first President. He was re-elected in 1966, 1969, and 1974.
Despite having helped gain Kenya's independence from Great Britain , Kenyatta sought to maintain good relations with that country, even encouraging white residents to remain in Kenya and allowing many colonial-era civil servants to keep their jobs. He asked for, and received, British help against Somali rebels in the northeast, and against an army mutiny in Nairobi. Kenyatta is credited with making Kenya one of the most politically stable nations in Africa. His period in Kenyan history is also known as one of economic progress as well as agricultural, industrial and educational advances.
President Jomo Kenyatta died in Mombasa on August 22, 1978, and was buried in Nairobi on August 31.
Wives and Children
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Bryan Abrams, Sam Walters, Mark Calderon and Kevin Thornton formed which group? | Jomo Kenyatta - Early Days to His Political Awakening
Jomo Kenyatta - Early Days to His Political Awakening
Part 1: From Early Days to His Political Awakening
Jomo Kenyatta Monument, City Square, Nairobi. Mark Daffey / Getty Images
By Alistair Boddy-Evans
Updated August 21, 2016.
First president of Kenya and prominent independence leader. Born into dominant Kikuyu culture, Kenyatta became its most famous interpreter of Kikuyu traditions through his book Facing Mount Kenya.
Date of Birth: Early 1890s1, Gatundu Division, Central Highlands, British East Africa (now Kenya)
Date of Death: 22 August 1978
Early Life
Jomo Kenyatta was born Kamau to parents Moigoi and Wamboi -- his father was the chief of a small agricultural village in Gatundu Division, Kiambu District - one of five administrative districts in the Central Highlands of British East Africa. Moigoi died when Kamau was very young and he was, as custom dictated, adopted by his uncle Ngengi to become Kamau wa Ngengi. Ngengi also took over the chiefdom and Moigoi's wife Wamboi.
When his mother died giving birth to a boy, James Moigoi, Kamau moved to live with his grandfather, Kungu Mangana, who was a noted medicine man2 in the area. Around the age of 10, suffering form a jigger infection, Kamau was taken to the Church of Scotland mission at Thogoto (about 12 miles north of Nairobi), where surgery was successfully carried out on both feet and one leg.
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Kamau was impressed by his first exposure to Europeans and determined to join the mission school. He ran away from home to become a resident pupil at the mission, studying amongst other subjects, the Bible, English, mathematics, and carpentry. He paid the school fees by working as a houseboy and cook for a nearby white settler.
British East Africa During World War I
In 1912, having completed his mission school education, Kamau became an apprentice carpenter. The following year he underwent initiation ceremonies ( including circumcision ) and became a member of the kehiomwere age group. In August of 1914 Kamau was baptized at the Church of Scotland mission, initially taking the name John Peter Kamau, but swiftly changing it to Johnson Kamau. Looking to the future, he departed the mission for Nairobi to seek employment.
Initially, he worked as an apprentice carpenter on a sisal farm in Thika, under the tutelage of John Cook, who had been in charge of the building program at Thogoto. As World War I progressed, able-bodied Kikuyu were forced into work by the British authorities, to avoid this, Kamau moved to Narok, living amongst the Maasai, where he worked as a clerk for an Asian contractor. It was around this time that he took to wearing a traditional beaded belt known as a 'Kenyatta', a Swahili word which means 'light of Kenya'.
Marriage and Family
In 1919 he met and married his first wife Grace Wahu, according to Kikuyu tradition. When it became apparent that Grace was pregnant, his church elders ordered him to get married before a European magistrate and undertake the appropriate church rites. (The civil ceremony didn't take place until November 1922.) On 20 November 1920 Kamau's first son, Peter Muigai, was born. Amongst other jobs he undertook during this period, Kamau served as an interpreter in the Nairobi High Court and ran a store out of his Dagoretti (an area of Nairobi) home.
Jomo Kenyatta
In 1922 Kamau adopted the name Jomo (a Kikuyu name meaning 'burning spear') Kenyatta, and began working for the Nairobi Municipal Council Public Works Department (once again under John Cook who is the Water Superintendent) as a store clerk and water-meter reader. It was also the start of his political career -- the previous year Harry Thuku, a well educated and respected Kikuyu, had formed the East African Association, EAA, to campaign for the return of Kikuyu lands given over to white settlers when the country became the British Crown Colony of Kenya in 1920. Kenyatta joined the EAA in 1922.
A Start in Politics
In 1925 the EAA disbanded under governmental pressure, but its members came together again as the Kikuyu Central Association, KCA, as formed by James Beauttah and Joseph Kangethe. Kenyatta worked as editor of the KCA's journal between 1924 and 1929, and by 1928 he had become the KCA's general secretary (having given up his job with the municipality to make time). In May 1928 Kenyatta launched a monthly Kikuyu-language newspaper called Mwigwithania (Kikuyu word meaning 'he who brings together') which was intended to draw all sections of the Kikuyu together. The paper, supported by an Asian-owned printing press, had a mild and unassuming tone, and was tolerated by the British authorities.
The Territory's Future in Question
Worried about the future of its East African territories, the British government began toying with the idea of forming a union of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika. Whilst this was fully supported by white settlers in the Central Highlands, it would be disastrous to Kikuyu interests -- it was believed that the settlers would be given self-government and that the rights of the Kikuyu would be ignored. In February 1929 Kenyatta was dispatched to London to represent the KCA in discussions with the Colonial Office, but the Secretary of State for the Colonies refused to meet him. Undeterred, Kenyatta wrote several letters to British papers, including The Times.
Kenyatta's letter published in The Times in March 1930 set out five points:
The security of land tenure and the demand for land taken by European settlers to be returned
Improved educational opportunities for Black Africans
The repeal of Hut and poll taxes
Representation for Black Africans in the Legislative Council
Freedom to pursue traditional customs (such as female genital mutilation)
His letter concluded by saying that a failure to satisfy these points "must inevitably result in a dangerous explosion -- the one thing all sane men with to avoid".
He returned to Kenya on 24 September 1930, landing at Mombassa. He had failed on his quest for all except one point, the right to develop independent educational institutions for Black Africans.
Next > Part 3: From the Mau Mau Rebellion to Presidency
Notes
1 Kenyatta maintained he did not remember the year of his birth. Many sources now cite 20 October 1891 as the correct date.
2 Kenyatta refers to his grandfather in his book Facing Mount Kenya as a seer and a magician.
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When was the Scrabble World championship first held? | World SCRABBLE Championship - NASPAWiki
World SCRABBLE Championship
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The World SCRABBLE® Championship (WSC) was the world’s top international SCRABBLE championship tournament. Although it ceased to be held under this name in 2011, this page also lists its successor events, which continue to fill the same role within the global competitive SCRABBLE community.
It is currently sponsored solely by Mattel , Inc. The tournament rules and word list are set by the World English-Language Scrabble Players' Association (WESPA). The involvement of NASPA is limited to selecting the American and Canadian teams and to the participation of Copresident John Chew as event director.
For more information about the next event, see 2014 World SCRABBLE Championship .
Contents
14 1991
History
The first WSC was organized by Philip Nelkon of Mattel in London in 1991 and won by Peter Morris , a Canadian residing in the United States, who defeated American Brian Cappelletto in a best-of-three finals.
Two years later in 1993, the National SCRABBLE Association under John D. Williams, Jr. organized the next event, sponsored by Hasbro and directed by Michael R. Wise in New York City. It was won by Mark Nyman of England.
From then until 2003, the WSC was organized and sponsored in biennial alternation by Hasbro and Mattel , during which period Americans and Canadians won two more titles each, and and Thailand one.
From 2005 to 2011, the event was organized and sponsored by Nelkon and Mattel.
In 2013 and 2014, Mattel licensed Mind Sports International (MSI) to hold the 2013 World SCRABBLE Championship in place of the WSC.
WESPA has announced that they will be holding the 2015 WESPA Invitational Masters as a replacement event for the WSC in Perth, Australia.
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Arlanda international airport is in which country? | Craig Beevers becomes second-ever English world Scrabble champion - Telegraph
UK News
Craig Beevers becomes second-ever English world Scrabble champion
The 33-year-old beat his American opponent 3-1 in the final at the ExCel Centre, London, with words including Ventrous, Gleet and Diorite
Craig Beevers Photo: David Rose/ Telegraph
By Tom Brooks-Pollock
6:27AM GMT 24 Nov 2014
You are unlikely to hear 'talaq', 'umu' and 'gapo' uttered in in everyday conversation.
But the words for a type of muslim divorce, a Polynesian earth over and a South American forest near a river, allowed Craig Beevers, 33, from Teesside, to be crowned World Scrabble Champion.
In doing so, Beevers became only the second English player to claim the title and the first since Mark Nyman in 1993.
In a tense final at the Excel Centre in London, Beevers, who organises Scrabble tournaments for a living, beat the American Chris Lipe by 440 points to 412 in the final game. it sealed a 3-1 victory for the Englishman in the best-of-five match.
Proceedings in the decisive fourth game had been more or less neck and neck until Beevers' decisive play of 'talaq'. The word scored 42 points, after which there was no realistic way back for Lipe, a relative newcomer from Clinton, New York, could win.
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Beevers had raced into a 2-0 lead, but a mistake in the third game, in which Beevers opted not to play 'updrags', a portmanteau of 'up and 'drags', allowed Lipe to reduce his arrears to 2-1.
But Beevers made it over the line in the fourth board with words including 'ventrous', an archaic synonym of 'adventurous' scoring 65 points, 'gleet', inflammation of the urethra with a slight discharge of thin puss and mucus scoring 24, and 'diorite', an igneous rock, for 69 points.
It brought to a close four days of intense competition, between 100 players from 25 countries, at the World Scrabble Championships 2014, the 13th edition of the bi-annual tournament first held in 1991.
The winning Scrabble board (David Rose/Telegraph)
For Beevers, who takes home a cheque for £3,000, it is also the culmination of a Scrabble-playing career that began after he dropped out of a Maths degree at the University of Sheffield, where, the champion said, he had spent most of his time in the computer room playing online word games, including Scrabble, because he found the course "too abstract".
While occasionally unemployed, he slowly got into the real form of the game in the following years, and gradually began to enter, and win, competitions.
Beevers, who was the British Scrabble Champion in 2009 and was also crowned champion of the Channel 4 words and numbers game-show Countdown in 2007, said he was "absolutely thrilled" and "relieved" to win.
"Obviously I am delighted. it was stressful really, when you're tired after four days of tough matches, when you know you're not playing your best.
"I slipped up in the third, so it was a relief to get decent tiles in the fourth and to get over the line."
Remarkably, the new champion said he had played less Scrabble in the past year than in previous years, because he had moved in with his girlfriend, Karen, 31, and was concentrating on organising, rather than playing in, tournaments.
He added: "She doesn't really play. We have only played each other once, and it was pretty one-sided."
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What year was the centenary of Arkansas joining the Union? | Full text of "Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana, 1922-1942"
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The Glory Years of Football Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 X ea Centenary By Bentley Sloane 03 01 IP 100 The Glory Years of Football Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 By Bentley Sloane 03 01 IP 100 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 The Glory Years of Football Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 By Bentley Sloane The author was a student at Centenary College during 1923-1927 when the McMillin teams were opening a new era. The story of football at Centenary College of Louisiana in the 1920s is so dramatic and unique that it deserves special treatment all of its own. A small, obscure liberal arts college with a student body of less than 300 suddenly fields a powerful football team in 1922, and for the next 20 years plays and defeats teams in the Southwest Conference (Texas) and some of the nation's best in other athletic conferences, including Boston College, the University of Iowa, the University of Mississippi, Oklahoma A & M, and Louisiana State University. How was this accomplished, what did it mean, and what was its contribution to the history of Centenary College of Louisiana? This special brochure will attempt to answer these questions. Intercollegiate athletics was not a tradition that Centenary College brought to its Shreveport campus in September 1908, when the school opened for its first semester of academic work. College authorities had frowned upon any organized teams of baseball or football as reflected in the following resolution adopted by the Board of Trustees in 1898: "Resolved, that we will not countenance or permit students of the college or any professor to engage in any intercollegiate contests of baseball or football, or in any physical games outside the college campus, and we forbid all ball play within a hundred yards of any building." Prior to this resolution, and no doubt the reason for it, a makeshift Centenary football team had played Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and was not only beaten by a large score, but two of Centenary's players had to be hospitalized in Baton Rouge for several days. In 1901 these restrictions were eased somewhat for the baseball teams as recorded in the Trustee minutes: "Games with other schools are allowed provided our boys do not travel on Sunday going to or returning from games." The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 The first official records of athletic teams at Centenary College in Shreveport are to be found in the 1908-1909 college catalog and the November 1909 issue of the Maroon and White, a monthly publication edited by the students. The 1908 catalog states that the Centenary Athletic Association was organized and included all students interested in baseball, football, tennis, and track teams. Professor James Hinton who taught Latin and Greek, was president of the Association. One year later, the college catalog announced that a spacious and attractive athletic park was ready for use. This park was no doubt on the northwest section of the campus, which had been cleared "out of the woods" and would be the site of the first athletic grandstand erected a few years later. The Maroon and White gave the schedule and scores of the football games played in 1909. The team was called the "Maroons," and Professor James Hinton was listed as the coach. Players were listed as follows: Clint Willis, Archie Johnson, William C. Honey cutt, Earl Whittington, K. Hundley, and D.B. Boddie. No games were won that year. Scores were as follows: Louisiana Industrial Institute in Ruston 60, Centenary 0; Henderson College, Arkadelphia, Arkansas 83, Centenary 0; Louisiana State Normal, Natchitoches, Louisiana 17, Centenary 0. This same year a girls' basketball team was announced with Professor H.C. Henderson as coach. In November 1910, another student publication called The Lookout representing the Union Literary Society listed members of the football team with D.B. Boddie, one of the players, as manager and coach. Boddie later became a Methodist preacher in the Louisiana Conference. The college catalog for 1912-1913 noted that an "outdoor gymnasium" had been erected and included rings, parallel bars, vaulting horses, ladders, etc. No doubt it included basketball goals since the College was fielding basketball teams at that time. This was the year when military drill was introduced and the War Department furnished rifles and other equipment. Candidates for all the teams mentioned were in short supply since there were only 70 students enrolled in 1913, and 36 of these were in the Academy (prep school attached to the College). In 1912, Paul M. Brown, Jr., was a student in the College and participated in the athletic program. In 1981, as an honored alumnus and trustee, he was interviewed by Dr. Walter Lowrey of the History Department, who gave his account of the program: "I was involved in athletics and hungry all the time. We had a whole lot of light bread and syrup in the dining hall; The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 and when we came in, they would fill us up with this. I don't know how good it was for our health, but we endured it. I ran with the baseball team most of the time. We played baseball in the spring and football in the winter. Two of my friends, Clint Willis and A.W. Baird, went on to LSU and Tulane University, where they starred in football and baseball. The sports we had at Centenary were "pick up," and there was no such thing as pure amateurism. It was an accepted practice to pick up a good athlete, pay his way, and give him some spending money." In 1916, President Wynn, in his annual report to the Board of Trustees, stated that Centenary's venture into intercollegiate athletics was too costly since the total school enrollment was 77 and only 25 of these were college students. Post- War Athletics in the 1920s After World War I, the men and women of the United States armed forces returned to civilian life and began to channel their competitive energies into the arena of sports, creating a new generation of heroes unrelated to war. In baseball Babe Ruth was the famous name. His team, the New York Yankees, had a spring training camp in Shreveport in 1921, and the natives began to dream of a team of national prominence to make Shreveport its home. Other sports heroes of that day were Jack Dempsey in boxing, Bobby Jones in golf, Bill Tilden in tennis, and Jim Thorpe in football. In American colleges and universities, football was becoming king, and the famous coaches and players, trainers, cheerleaders, academic tutors (seldom mentioned), and camp followers were the subjects of a growing army of sports writers who kept the public informed as to school ratings, won-and-lost records, and statistics of individual players. The big-name schools were building huge stadiums to accommodate the growing crowds. Winning teams brought publicity and fame to their schools, and recruiters were hired to lure the best high school players. Ivy League schools such as Yale, Harvard, and Princeton were producing great teams. The University of Notre Dame was widely known through its great coach Knute Rockne and his famous football backfield called the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." (The public knew this much about the Book of Revelation.) Some thought the Roman Catholic Church in some way brought divine wisdom and power to this winning team and its great coach! The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 Move to Upgrade Athletics in 1919 - 1920 Homer Norton Arrives During the presidency of W.H. Bourne, beginning May 27, 1919, Centenary College made a definite move toward an academic renaissance with the ultimate goal of qualifying for an "A" grade status and being accepted into the highest accrediting associations of the nation. As one of the steps toward this goal, a full-time coach and athletic director, Homer Norton, was brought in during the 1919 - 1920 school year. Norton had excelled as an athlete at Birmingham-Southern College, where he was named best all-round college athlete of the southeast. After his college career, he played professional baseball two years prior to his coming to Centenary. Since President Bourne had come to Centenary from the faculty of Birmingham-Southern, he no doubt had known Norton and saw in him a man of character and coaching ability who would enhance the athletic program of Centenary. Norton also was the son of a Methodist minister, and this fact added to his credentials. After he arrived at Centenary, Norton began to put together respectable teams in basketball, football, and baseball, and the College was playing as a member of the LIAA (Louisiana Intercollegiate Athletic Association), having been admitted in 1921. In 1922, the basketball team, built around the "Coushatta five," won the LIAA championship and added Ole Miss as one of its victims. Homer Norton By the fall season of 1921, Norton was able to rejuvenate the football program and make a respectable record of four games won and three lost against mostly Louisiana teams. Team members were from Shreveport or from nearby Louisiana towns. The names of this 1921 team are as follows: George Pattison, Coty Rosenblath, Lloyd McDade, Clyde Wafer, Robert L. "Dugan" Brown, Lamar "Red" Lowery, James Horton, Haywood Manheim, W.B. Worley, Albert Harper, Lloyd Townsend, Robert Read, Larry Armstrong, Stith Bynum, J.V. Hendrick, Sidney Conger, Eugene Williamson, Erwin LeBlanc, and John Preston. Several members of this 1921 team became prominent Shreveport doctors and businessmen, and one became a Methodist minister. The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 A College Football Team That Prayed In 1920, a small church-related institution in Danville, Kentucky, Centre College, captured the imagination of the nation with a football team that had not lost a game since 1917. Coached by a unique man, Uncle Charlie Moran, who was not only coach but a friend, guide, philosopher, and trainer to the team, Centre had beaten teams such as Syracuse and Princeton, and in 1920 was invited to the Harvard stadium for a game with this national giant. Centre's team, known as the "Praying Colonels" of Kentucky, and led by the famous quarterback "Bo" McMillin, was of such national renown that over 40,000 football fans greeted them as they entered the stadium on that momentous day. Although losing 24 to 14, Centre scored twice on a Harvard team that had not been scored on in two years. The climax came the next year, 1921, when the Centre team returned for a re-match and beat the Harvard aggregation 6-0. It was accomplished by a reverse run of 32 yards by none other than the famous "Bo" McMillin. He had taken the measure of mighty Harvard University. This electrifying news was announced to the Centenary student body by President Sexton on November 4, 1921, when the College had a special interest in securing the services of this Centre College athlete. This famous football hero received attention from all the major newspapers and magazines of the country. His coach and the athletic director at Centre College, who produced the "Praying Colonels," were placed in the spotlight as noble characters who drew upon the resources of Divine Power to inspire the team to victory. In explanation of how the Centre team had come to be known as the "Praying Colonels," Bo relates the following incident: "We were in the gymnasium getting ready for the game (with Kentucky State) and Uncle Charles (the coach) had been outlining our battle tactics. Presently he stopped short, and when he spoke again his voice was low and serious. 'I suppose I've been what some folks would call a rough cuss, but I've always played the game of life straight. You know that. I don't go in for religion, and I reckon most of you don't, either. But I believe in God and I'm sure He looks after folks who are doing their best. Won't one of you say just a word of prayer?' And then one of the players, asking The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 the privilege of doing so in a very unconventional way, to say the least, prayed. "It wasn't a prayer for victory. It was just an honest, whole-hearted appeal that every man that day might give the best he had in him for Old Centre; that he might play a clean game, and not be hurt badly enough so that he would have to be taken out. And Centre won the game, 3-0! That is a prayer for all of us-that we may play a clean game, and that we may not be hurt badly enough to have to be taken out. Since that afternoon, no Centre College football team has gone on to the field for a game without that word of prayer. We don't pray to win. We play to win, and pray to play our best. But we believe there's a God who wants people to be square and give the best they've got to everything they go into. I have noticed, however, that there has seldom been any profanity or rough talk around the dressing room or on the field since we started this particular habit. And I don't think there's a man of us who doesn't feel that he's stronger and finer as a result of it." Shreveport and Centenary Venture into Big Time Football Needless to say, the sports-minded citizens of Shreveport were fascinated by the Cinderella story of "Bo" McMillin and his famous football team from Centre College. Here, indeed, was another version of David and Goliath. Little Centre was the giant killer among the great universities. And a football team that prayed! Sunday School teachers could use this fact to illustrate their lessons on prayer. Youth were inspired by the example of the "Praying Colonels," and a Methodist College would certainly be blessed with a football coach such as "Bo" McMillin. "Bo" McMillin Members of the Board of Trustees were impressed, especially the sports-minded, and there were several. President Sexton, forever an opportunist in his relation to the Shreveport community when Centenary College was involved, began to dream of a new coach and great football team. If Centre College could do it, Centenary could do it better! The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 In February 1921, a key person in the "Bo" McMillin episode, Miss Laura Bishop, was added to the Centenary faculty as professor of English. She had been a teacher in North Fort Worth, Texas, where "Bo" was one of her favorite students in grammar school and later in high school. She had been teacher, counselor, and friend of this restless young athlete, and when the Fort Worth school secured R.L. Meyer from Centre College as coach, this team won the North Texas championship with "Bo" as the quarterback. When Coach Meyer returned to Centre College as athletic director, he took with him "Bo" McMillin and five other members of this high school championship team. This group of athletes from the North Fort Worth High School formed the core of the famous Centre College football team of the early 1920s. "Bo" McMillin was calling signals for his former high school teammates. Miss Laura Bishop knew all about the six members of the "Praying Colonels" football team. When the Trustees of Centenary College voted to offer "Bo" McMillin the coaching job, President Sexton turned to Miss Laura Bishop as the one person who could persuade him to come to Centenary. She had continued her correspondence with "Bo" after he went to Centre College, and now she was given authority to negotiate with him for the job at Centenary. After she contacted him, he wired back to her that he had offers from a school in Birmingham and one in Dallas at $7,000 per year. Player McMillin Miss Bishop conveyed this information to President Sexton and a Board of Trustees meeting was called for December 10, 1921. Dr. George Sexton, wise in the way of worldly publicity, presented the name of "Bo" McMillin as a possible coach for the Centenary College football team. This was done in an apologetic manner since he saw no way the College could pay $8,000 a year for a coach. The salary of the president was only $6,000. But E.A. Frost immediately rose to the occasion, perhaps not unprepared, and moved that McMillin be offered $8,000 per year on a two-year contract and that the citizens of Shreveport guarantee the money. The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 Soon thereafter, McMillin signed a contract and arrived in Shreveport to make preparations for the 1922 football season. President Sexton made it plain to the student body that the popular Coach Norton would be retained. It is interesting to note that McMillin came to Shreveport from Centre College, in Danville, Kentucky, the town which had given the College of Louisiana its first president in 1825, a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Jeremiah Chamberlain. A college that had eschewed football as a brutal and distracting game and intercollegiate athletics as wasteful of time, energy, and money, now embraces the sport with all fervor as a means of attracting attention to itself. Madison Avenue could have learned some lessons from President George Sexton. The Maroon and White (Centenary's student newspaper) ran the following headline on December 16, 1921: "Santa Klaus puts McMillin in Centenary 's Sock! " Other headlines followed: "For a secluded college, Centenary has leaped into fame overnight! " "The histories of McMillin and Centenary are being run on presses in every state in the Union. " "Bo McMillin signs a 3-year contract with Centenary" was the flaring headline that streamed across the sport pages of the leading newspapers of the United States and caused the nation's eyes to focus on Centenary. Soon thereafter a new song was written for the Centenary student body, including the following stanza and chorus (not necessarily approved by the English Department!): Unto Shreveport from the north and from the south, the east and the west, Crowds the jam of eager students to the city's pine clad crest. To develop brain and body Centenary gets the best. Great "Bo " is coming here. Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! Great "Bo " is coming here! The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 On January 13, 1922, the new coach and his bride of a few weeks were introduced at a chapel service, and he spoke of his delight in coming to Centenary and his plans for a great football team. Soon thereafter, a group of prominent citizens organized the Shreveport-Centenary Athletic Association and gave a banquet for 250 people at the Youree Hotel honoring the new coach and saluting Centenary's promising future. Members of this new athletic association included several prominent trustees and other strong supporters of the college: George Wray, chairman, J.C. Palmer, E.A. Frost, J. B. Atkins, B.C. Garrett, T.C. Clanton, and H.B. Hearn. This new Athletic Association, organized to aid and promote athletics at Centenary, was another link in the chain that bound the city and the College together in mutual helpfulness. ONCOP!N.. !9i :^' : 4:W Page 88, 1922 Yoncopin The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 The First "Bo" McMillin Football Team 1922 The new coach lost no time in recruiting a large contingent of prospective football players, some coming as transfers from other colleges and many from various high schools who were anxious to play under the famous coach. Since several players on this first McMillin team were destined to be famous names in the athletic world, we herewith list the roster of lettermen: *Coty Rosenblath, Captain *Clyde Wafer Mickey Lyvers * John Preston Les Phillips James Weaver Herman Hilden Bryan Bush Maurice Ellsworth Sam York Cal Hubbard Harry White Bard Ferrall James Pierson Charles Dutton *R. L. Brown H. L. Bridges * George Pattison Carl Anderson Marion Wills Harold Dillman Richard Denman *Albert Harper * From previous squad Shreveport, La. Coushatta, La. Kansas City, Mo. Shreveport, La. DeQueen, Ark. Monroe, N. C. Boonville, Mo. Ruston, La. Willoughby, Ohio Kansas City, Mo. Keytesville, Mo. Tyler, Tx. Albuquerque, N. M. Natchitoches, La. Minden, La. Jonesboro, La. Minden, La. Mitchell, La. Ft. Worth, Tx. Ridgefarm, 111. Champagne, 111. Waxahachie, Tx. Shreveport, La. Only six players were carried over from the previous squad coached by Homer Norton and they are marked with asterisks. The first innovation of the new coach was a football summer camp in 1922. As previously mentioned, Centenary had acquired a tract of land on Rich Mountain near Mena, Arkansas, through some friends of President Sexton. The College experimented with a summer school at that location in 1922, and the McMillin team set up training at "Camp Standing Rock" in connection with the 10 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 summer school. One player wrote of his experience there as follows: "Never will we forget those days spent at Camp Standing Rock. It is true that the greater part of the time was spent in intensive training. When we were not out on the field in the hot August sun we were up in the classroom listening to a lecture. But we did have some time to ourselves and many of us got a good knowledge of the mountains before leaving. The moonlight nights in the Ouachita Mountains are wonderful and they were especially impressive from the top of Standing Rock where we congregated after supper." * Centenary Yoncopin 1923. When the fall of 1922 arrived, the Centenary community and the citizens of Shreveport were in full anticipation of a new day in Centenary College football. President Sexton had christened the team "Centenary Gentlemen," remembering the "Praying Colonels of Kentucky" who sent the famous "Bo" McMillin to Centenary. "Doc George," as the president was affectionately called, attended the 1922 Summer School and continued to be an avid fan, accompanying the team on its many trips. McMillin Team Opens New Era The first game of the 1922 season was with Marshall College, and when Centenary won 77-0, the athletic world realized that something new had been added to the Shreveport school. At the end of the season with the Centenary Gentlemen scoring 295 points and the opponents scoring only 41, there was no doubt that a great new football dynasty was at hand at Centenary College. The one loss of the season was to the University of Tennessee Medical School at Memphis 0-14. Fifty players reported for duty when the season opened in 1923. Nine new names were added to the 1922 team roster: Murrell Hogue, Clarence Davis, Paul Rebsamen, Glenn Letteer, Wilburn Miller, Wayne Stone, Oscar Hill, and Hiram Lawrence. All nine came from the Ark-La-Tex. This was the year when the team lost only to Boston College in Boston, and Centenary's Cal Hubbard was named All-American. Twenty-three thousand fans saw the game in Boston, and the eastern newspapers gave little Centenary College (400 students) good national exposure. From the results of the 1923 football season, it was clear that Centenary was ready to drop the weaker teams and seek competition in the stronger athletic conferences. 11 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 The 1923 scores tell the story: 35-0 Southwestern Louisiana Institute 40-3 Henderson-Brown 46-7 Chattanooga 31-13 Hendrix College 46-0 Louisiana State Normal 23-0 Texas Christian University 75-0 Kentucky Normal 0-14 Boston College 34-0 Southwestern (Texas) University 14-0 Oglethorpe 27-0 Louisiana Polytechnic Institute This 1923 season heralded things to come when Centenary ventured into the Southwest Conference for the first time and defeated TCU in Fort Worth 23-0. The Gentlemen played against a team coached by Matty Bell, who had also come from Centre College and was later to become famous at Southern Methodist University. McMillin's Last Year - 1924 Eight new names appear on the 1924 team roster: O.K. Place, Theodore Schwarzer, Bryon Faulkner, Pat Weekley, Percy Wood, Emmett Meadows, Mack Flenniken, and O.W. Maddox. The previous loss to Boston College was avenged by a score of 10-9. Centenary lost only one game and that to the "Tennessee Doctors" of Memphis. One excuse offered for the loss was that doctors knew just where to hit to cause the most bodily injuries. This was not sustained by any scientific evidence! At the end of the 1924 football season, the three "Bo" McMillin football teams had won 90 percent of their games (26 out of 29) and as a result Centenary was favorably known throughout the nation. But there were also irritating problems in connection with the program. One of the obstacles to Centenary's entrance into the SIAA (Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association) was its over- emphasis on football and the cost of the athletic program. There was also considerable criticism by other schools that Centenary was using ineligible players, so much so that President Sexton, in 12 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 November 1923, requested the College's athletic committee to folly investigate the classroom standing of all football players. At this time, Centenary was hopefol of entering the Southwest Conference, made up primarily of Texas schools. Football Program Costly The College trustees were gravely concerned over the deficits incurred in the athletic budget, and, despite the winning record of the team, the gate receipts did not cover the expenses. Historically, this was a new and troublesome condition faced by the trustees, who in a previous century had opposed all intercollegiate athletics and banned football in particular as a brutal and dangerous game. The 1924 financial report for the football program alone showed a loss of $7, 199. Gate Receipts $28,293 Student Fees 523 Signs and Ad Space 600 Total Receipts $29,416 Coach: Salary & Housing $9,000 Assistant Coaches 2,775 Game Expenses 1 9,8 1 3 Supplies 2,500 Field 369 Other Expenses 1,872 Total $36,615 The above budget does not include athletic scholarships. The athletic budget was a disproportionate amount for a college with fewer than 500 students and a total budget of only $1 19,585. Some disturbing reports surfaced at the December meeting of the College trustees that same year. Centenary had been denied entrance into the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools as well as the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association because of the large salary of Coach McMillin and his general reputation in athletic circles. It appeared that the chief factor in making Centenary nationally known and providing growth incentive was now the chief factor in preventing the College from entering the 13 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 best academic and athletic circles of the South and of the nation. These agencies had serious reservations about admitting a college with an enrollment of 404 (as of June 4, 1924) that paid its football coach a $9,000 (including housing) salary and its president a salary of $6,000 plus housing. After much discussion at the December 19, 1924 meeting, the Board of Trustees ordered that McMillin be offered a one-year contract at $5,000 per annum. This of course was tantamount to a request for resignation, and it was soon forthcoming. The Centenary Conglomerate (student newspaper) of December 19, 1924, stated that after McMillin' s salary was reduced and he was relieved as coach of the football team, Centenary was admitted into the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association. The article further states that "in losing Bo McMillin Centenary loses one of the most spectacular football players and one of the most successful coaches found in college football. Such was the price Centenary had to pay for membership in the SIAA." McMillin quickly accepted a coaching position at Geneva College in Pennsylvania, and a large contingent of students and other well- wishers gathered at the railway station on February 6, 1925, to bid this remarkable athlete farewell. Four Centenary players followed McMillin to Geneva : Cal Hubbard, Carl Anderson, Mack Flenniken, and O.W. Maddox. With the help of these four, Geneva was able to defeat Harvard in 1926, another upset. Cal Hubbard went on to the professional football and baseball leagues. He was later elected to both the Football Hall of Fame and the Baseball Hall of Fame, a unique honor for one of the great players of Centenary College. Earl Davis, a One- Year Coach On February 18, 1925, Centenary obtained a new coach in the person of Earl Davis from McKendree College, Lebanon, Illinois, another Methodist institution, to replace McMillin. However, the job was too difficult for the new coach. He was unpopular with the faculty and the student body, and the football players, for whatever reasons, rejected him outright. A scurrilous letter purported to be written by one of the football players raised some doubts as to the intelligence and leadership of Coach Davis. This widely distributed letter may or may not have influenced the College administration to release the coach, but in any event he was soon fired. 14 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 The Homer Norton Era Begins The 1925 team, with the impetus carried over from the McMillin era, lost only two games, to Tulane and Butler. The powerful Tulane team was a member of the Southwestern Conference and drew 10,000 to the game on Thanksgiving Day in Shreveport. Members of this 1925 Centenary varsity team were: Paul Rebsaman, Percy Wood, Byron Faulkner, W.F. Bozeman, Otto Duckworth, John Preston, Ernest Kepke, Audie Marsalis, Glen Crawford, Sam York, Jim Pierson, Clarence Davis, Zolie Benett, Wayne Stone, J. Horton, Hiram Lawrence, Crawford Young, Clyde Faulk, Walter Stewart, Glen Letteer, Emmet Meadows, Files Binion, Harry White, Al Beam, Beverly Faulk, and Lloyd Clanton. A strong freshman team was waiting in the wings. Most of these players were from the Ark-La-Tex. For the 1926 football season, a wise move was made when Norton was named head coach and George D. Hoy, coach of the strong Shreveport High School football team, was brought to Centenary as assistant coach. Coach Hoy brought with him several of his football players who graduated that year, including Jake Hanna, who became an outstanding star and later the head coach of the Gentlemen. The choice of Norton as head coach in 1926 was soon followed by another national honor for Centenary when Norton was elected to membership in the National Coaches Association. Homer Norton George Hoy Curtis Parker Joins Coaching Staff Another successful deal in 1926 brought Curtis Parker as basketball coach and coach of the freshman football team. Parker was a recent graduate of the University of Arkansas where he had been an all-round athlete. He fitted into the Centenary tradition with his zeal, intelligence, and dedication not only to the athletic program but to the general welfare of the College. He was a popular figure on the campus and in the Shreveport community. His basketball teams had a winning record, and, at a later date, Curtis Parker 15 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 after Norton left, he moved up to head football coach, in which position he was a winning coach in his own right. Winning in the Southwest Conference As previously noted, the Centenary Gentlemen in 1923 played one game in the Southwest Conference, defeating Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. President Sexton and his coaching staff had high hopes of Centenary's being admitted to this conference, and beginning in 1926 teams from this conference were scheduled on a regular basis. The 1926 schedule included Texas Christian, Southern Methodist, and the University of Arkansas. Although losing to all three by a close margin in 1926, Centenary soon took the full measure of these powerful schools and became the scourge of that conference. One year later, four of these schools were victims of the undefeated Centenary Gentlemen. The 1927 Undefeated Team By 1927, the Centenary football team began to reach its zenith. Coach Parker, of the freshman team, was feeding well-trained players into the varsity unit, and coaches Norton and Hoy were producing great teams from a large roster of young athletes who were coming mostly from the surrounding towns and cities. This 1927 team was the first to go through the season without a loss, and among the teams defeated were four powers in the Southwest Conference - Southern Methodist, Baylor, Rice, and Texas Christian. > I >*,<"« 1927 Undefeated Centenary Football Team 16 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 The large roster of varsity players gives some idea of the dominant place football now played in the program of Centenary: Franklin Allday, W. F. Bozeman, Robert Brown, Emory Browne, John T. Cox, Paul Crawford, Elwood Davis, Harry Davis, Beverly Faulk, Roland Faulk, Robert Goodrich, Ted Gregg, Ernest Guinn, Clarence Hamel, Jake Hanna, Tony Hernandez, Joe Holloway, Ted Jefferies, Louis Jennings, Wiltz Ledbetter, Charles Lindsay, Joe Magrill, Peyton Mangum, Audie Marsalis, J. B. Parrish, Leon Price, Hubert A. Reaves, Jerome Scanlon, R. D. Sims, Charles Smith, Marvin Speights, Kermit Stewart, Stanley Thomas, Tom Wafer, W. E. Ward, Fred Willis, E. L. Zechiedrich, Files Binion, Fritz Blackshear, Otto Duckworth, Morris Jarratt, William A. Robinson, and Ryland Schaal. In 1927, as Centenary began to win games in the Southwest Conference, sports writers in some of the Texas newspapers accused it of playing "ineligible ringers," even declaring that some players were sent by McMillin from his Geneva team for the SMU game to be played in Shreveport. These libelous reports aroused the ire of President Sexton, and he fired off telegrams and letters stating clearly that Centenary played only eligible players under the rules of the SIAA. The Dallas Times Herald, heeding the warning of President Sexton, quickly published an apology and correction on October 8, 1927: A Correction "There appeared in The Times Herald of Wednesday, October 5, 1927, a paragraph under the heading 'Pigskin Cracklins, 1 by Bill Parker, reflecting upon the character, personnel and eligibility of Centenary college football team. "The statement that 'they will be playing a bunch of ringers,' referring to Centenary college football team, made by Bill Parker, is untrue. It unjustly reflects upon Centenary college football team. n The Times Herald apologizes to Centenary college and to the boys composing the football team for this statement made by Bill Parker." 17 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 The Jake Hanna Years We are indebted to Jake Hanna, bearing a famous Shreveport family name, for a colorfiil account of his years as a football player at Centenary and later as coach. "I entered Centenary in February 1927 with 12 other members of the Byrd High School football team because our assistant coach, George Hoy, was joining the athletic department there. On September 24, 1927 I played my first varsity game on our home field, and a local newspaper promoted it with the following article: Bargain price for Gents first battle of year "In an effort to bring out new patrons and to stimulate interest in football, admission price has been cut to $1 . Interest in the Centenary football team has been high and season ticket sales greater than ever. President Sexton hopes to increase the football colony this fall. "Coaches Norton and Hoy had an aggregation of young fellows who loved the game of football, and the great psychologist Norton used more than we realized to produce the undefeated team of 1927 and other successful seasons to follow. "As the Gentlemen became more and more a threat to Southwest Conference teams there was much speculation as to the chances for Centenary to become a member of that powerful conference. Texas sports writers and the Associated Press spoke favorably for this, but practical evaluation must have prevailed. At this time Centenary's total enrollment was about 500 and this must have had a great bearing in the matter being dropped." "On October 13, 1928 after Centenary defeated Texas A & M, the lead story from College Station read as follows: 18 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 Coach Homer Norton's Centenary College Gentlemen dropped in from Shreveport Saturday afternoon to hand the Texas Aggies the first licking they had received on Kyle Field since 1926. "Coach Dana X. Bible's Texas Aggies had been conference champions in 1927. "During those years Shreveport fans were the most loyal to be found. When the special trains of supporters followed the team to out of town games there can be no doubt that their kind of enthusiasm carried over to the players. Newspaper coverage for all the games was superb." 1932 Undefeated Centenary Football Team The great team of 1932, which helped celebrate the opening of the new stadium by beating Louisiana State University and going on to an undefeated season, was composed of the following who won letters that year: Melford Allums, Perry Ames, John Henry Blakemore, Ben Cameron, Paul Geisler, Louis Glumac, Joe Guillory, Morse Harper, Maurice Morgan, Ralph Murff, Joe Oliphant, Wood Osborne, Harold Oslin, Raymond Parker, Jerry Sellers, Manning Smith, Theo Taylor, Eddie Townson, Robert Waters, Fred Williams, Tommy Wilson and Richard Young. After the win over Louisiana State University, a Shreveport sports writer noted, "A tiny gridiron spark that had been smoldering in the hearts of successive Centenary College football players for about ten years burst into a roaring flame at Centenary College stadium Saturday afternoon and claimed as its victim the LSU Tigers, a prey it had stalked lo these many moons." The Associated Press wrote of this 1932 team: "Centenary College of Shreveport with about 400 students and hardly enough players to make two football teams, has the title 'wonder team of the south'. Not since the praying colonels of little Centre College 19 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 wrote southern football history a decade ago has a smaller college taken the spotlight like the Centenary Gentlemen of 1932. It's a little team that never gives up." So great were the achievements of Coach Homer Norton in this 1932 season that the college Yoncopin of 1933 was dedicated to him. Football Wins Wide Support In the middle and late 1930s when the economic depression was taking its greatest toll on the nation, and the College was cutting back on all expenditures, even to the point of delaying salary payments to the faculty, the football teams lifted the spirits of the College and the Shreveport community with victories against some of the great colleges and universities of the nation. The football trip to Los Angeles and to schools in Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Arizona generated excitement and enthusiasm as special trains carried the teams, the band, the cheering squads and large contingents of Shreveport supporters. Pullman cars were plastered with Centenary banners and graffiti for all to see as the trains moved through the towns and cities. In 1936 a special football train of the Illinois Central was announced for the game with the University of Mississippi at Jackson on November 23. The train left Shreveport at 7 a.m. and arrived at Jackson at 12:15 p.m. After the game, the train left Jackson at 6: 1 5 p.m. and arrived in Shreveport at 1 1 :45 p.m. The round-trip fare in the day coach was $3.25. In 1937, for the game with Loyola at Los Angeles, special cars carried the team, the band, the Maroon Jackets, and a large group of students and Shreveport supporters. The trips into Texas for games at Dallas, Houston, Austin, and Fort Worth provided ample opportunity for fun and frolic by the student body and the numerous Shreveport fans. The Texas sports writers gave wide publicity to this little Shreveport school; and when the team won, it was an easy matter to recruit students from the Lone Star State. We have already mentioned the benefits of the football program in the Shreveport community in drawing support for the College from wealthy citizens who had a special interest in sports. The spectacular athletic teams of Centenary provided the Shreveport- Bossier City complex with bragging rights and a measure of civic pride. 20 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 Ten Years of Football Glory Beginning in 1927, when the football program at Centenary had fully developed, and continuing through the 1936 season, the teams of that decade wrote a glorious chapter in the annals of the oldest chartered liberal arts college west of the Mississippi River. With fewer than 900 students in any one year and during the darkest days of the economic depression this little Southern college was able to fashion a football team made up of athletes recruited mostly from Louisiana and the nearby states, that won 73 games, lost 22, and tied 1 1 in competition with some of the great schools of the nation. Playing against the powerful teams of the Southwest Conference during these ten years, Centenary established a record of 23 victories, 1 1 losses, and 5 ties. In addition to the teams named above, Centenary played and defeated several of the outstanding colleges and universities of the country: Boston College, University of Chattanooga, University of Iowa, University of Arizona, University of Mississippi, Loyola University of Los Angeles, De Paul University, University of Louisville, St. Louis University, and Louisiana State University. w; Homer Norton to Texas A & M 'ith a nation-wide reputation as coach and athletic director, and with a winning record against the football teams of the Southwest Conference, Homer Norton was persuaded to accept a lucrative coaching job at Texas A & M in 1934. Norton was soon well established there, and after a successful career in coaching he settled in College Station as a successful businessman. At Centenary, Curtis Parker moved up to athletic director and head football coach with E. T. Renfro as assistant. Walter "Cowboy" Hohmann: A Football Great Tells His Story O: ne of the athletes playing on the football team 1933-1936 (was Walter "Cowboy" Hohmann. He heard of Centenary College as a football power from the coach of his high school near Chicago. His arrival at Centenary in 1933 and his subsequent experiences there are the subject of a taped interview made by the author after Hohmann' s retirement. "After arriving by bus from Chicago I was checked in and then had to wait to see if I made the football team. It was hard living and my scholarship required that I work on the 21 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 campus. Our team played and beat some of the great schools of the nation. Homer Norton, our coach from Birmingham-Southern College, was a great influence on the lives of the players, and after he went to Texas A & M Curtis Parker carried on. All athletes were required to meet the academic requirements. I found the teachers to be wonderful people as well as great instructors, and I especially remember Dean Hardin, Dr. R.E. Smith, Dr. J.B. Entrikin, Mrs. Arthur Campbell, Dr. Pierce Cline, Dr. S.A. Steger, Dr. Mary Warters, and others. "The Shreveport business community was very much in support of the college, and the athletic teams in their games proved to be a rallying point for the town people, and the entire college community. All of us were aware of the strong sense of fellowship throughout the life of the college. When I came back in 1963 as dean of students I found a college that had grown in amazing proportions with many new professors and buildings, but the same great community spirit in the students and faculty." Hohmann fitted into the Centenary tradition not only as an outstanding football player but also as an all-round student and leader on the campus, serious about getting an education and being useful in society. In 1937, he was named freshman football coach. Centenary Football Casualty of Word War II With the advent of World War II in 1939, the great years of Centenary football came to an end. The actual decline in football power began in 1937 with an increase in the number of games lost and a decrease in the number of major teams scheduled. With former coach Homer Norton installed as the successful coach of Texas A & M and the rising powers of the Southwest Conference, recruiting in Texas was no longer an easy matter for the Gentlemen. Centenary continued to be a small college with fewer than 1,000 students as opposed to the great schools of the Southwest Conference and other conferences included in Centenary's schedule. Since Centenary was never admitted to the major athletic conferences, it became more and more difficult to include the larger schools in its schedule. Interest in the home games began to wane, and subsequent losses in income created a continuous financial crisis at a time when the College could ill afford any financial losses. 22 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 The decline of the great Centenary Gentlemen football program may be plotted by the won and lost records beginning in 1937: 1937 Won 6, lost 4, tied 2 1938 Won 7, lost 4 1939 Won 2, lost 9, tied 1 1940 Won 3, lost 7 1941 Won 1, lost 7, tied 2 Although these were losing seasons, there were several outstanding players on the teams whose personal records are worthy of note: Alvin Birklebach, Winfred Bynum, Ogbourne Rawlinson, Ed Whitehurst, Claude Teel, Jimmy Patterson, and others. Curtis Parker Resigns - Jake Hanna Returns The year 1940 brought another coaching change for the Centenary Gentlemen football team when Curtis Parker resigned to enter the oil business in Shreveport and Centenary brought Jake Hanna, one of its own great players of recent years, back to the campus as head coach. The 1940 Yoncopin presented a full-page picture of Hanna with this caption: "A Star Returns." C Coach Hanna' s Last Teams oach Jake Hanna has written an interesting account of the last teams prior to the end of World War II. "Eleven years after graduation from Centenary the great privilege of returning to the school was given me when I was offered the position of athletic director and head coach. In January 1940, my contract was presented by the Centenary Athletic Committee composed of Charlton H. Lyons, Sr., John McCormick, Henry O'Neal, Bonneau Peters and Allen Norris. Dr. Pierce Cline, who had been my history professor while I was a student, was now president of the college and he encouraged me to accept the coaching position. He had been one of the best of friends to me as a student and continued to be to the end of his life. Returning to my alma mater as a member of the faculty might be considered my post-graduate degree. "I was fortunate to have continue on the athletic staff the capable service and support of Elmer Smith as backfield 23 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 coach and scout, Tom Cobb as line coach, and trainer Marvin "Hoof Gibson. "I was soon to meet a group of strong, talented and knowledgeable young men who were the material I was to work with in preparing for a football season in 1940. "I was not prepared for the financial difficulties under which the athletic department had operated for a number of years. This obstacle combined with the cloud of World War II became my major problems and made long-range planning a dismal prospect. "Perhaps the best summary of events taking place in the athletic department over the next two years, 1940-1942, may be compared to another era in Centenary College's history when in 1861 inscribed in the faculty minutes were written the dramatic words: 'Students have all gone to war. College suspended. And God help the right."' ■ v - - ?* \ x /^ 1939 team meets new coach, Jake Hanna As Coach Jake Hanna indicated in his article previously quoted, the military draft in 1940 and 1941 wrought havoc with his squad of players, and Centenary's football program declined precipitously. The record for the 1940 season was three games won and seven lost. The final season, 1941, recorded no games won, eight lost and two tied against the following opponents: 24 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 Centenary 0, Millsaps 20 Centenary 20, Creighton 32 Centenary 6, Louisiana Normal 6 Centenary 6, Hardin - Simmons 27 Centenary 0, Texas Tech 25 Centenary 7, Washington Univ. (St. Louis), 13 Centenary 0, Rice University 54 Centenary 7, Texas Christian University 35 Centenary 0, Southwestern (Memphis) Centenary 7, Louisiana Tech 39 After football was dropped, Jake Hanna continued at Centenary as athletic director and developed an excellent program of intramural sports that included most of the student body. Demise of the Football Program As early as May 1939, the trustees began to think seriously about discontinuing the football program. Two of the strongest trustees, J.B. Atkins and George Wray, headed the athletic committee. They were well aware of the problem of deficit financing for the program each year. The gate receipts continued to decline. At the end of the 1939 season, two meetings of the executive committee gave full attention to problems of the athletic program. At the annual meeting of the College trustees on May 21, 1940, it was reported that $5,000 had been advanced to the football program from the operating fund, and again the program was placed on probation. One year later the Board of Trustees again considered scrapping the football program. Attendance and gate receipts continued downward, and the team was no longer playing colleges from the major athletic conferences. The executive committee of the Board of Trustees finally blew the whistle on the football program on December 12, 1941, after another disastrous season. For the duration of the war, football was dead at Centenary. A committee was named to solicit funds to pay the athletic program deficit, a problem which had plagued the College since the glory years of football in the 1920s and 1930s despite the support of the Chamber of Commerce and many sports- minded citizens. After the war ended in 1945, the College moved to reinstate all phases of intercollegiate athletics. However, football had to wait 25 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 until 1947. The basketball program was reinstated in full, beginning with the 1946 season. In December of 1946, a committee of seven was created to reinstate a football program. Jess Thompson of Lawton, Oklahoma, was invited to the coaching position, with Paul Cochran as assistant. These two had been coaches at Cameron State Junior College in Lawton, Oklahoma. Mr. Charles Rollins, a local business executive, was employed as administrative assistant to the athletic committee, with responsibility for ticket sales and arranging the game schedules. The coach was paid $5500 and his assistant, $4000. Since the old wooden stadium was in disrepair, arrangements were made to use the Shreveport Fair Grounds stadium. Mr. Arch Haynes gave $10,000 to improve the Centenary athletic field for baseball and for football practice. Again we see the great interest of Mr. Haynes in the Centenary athletic program and his continual financial support of the College. The attempt to reinstate the football program came to a halt at the end of the 1947 season. The trial run of one year was a disaster in terms of the won-lost columns, the attendance for the home games, and consequently the financial loss. The 1948 college Yoncopin gave pictures of the coaches and players of the 1947 team and an apologetic write up of each game. Out often games, Centenary won only one and that was against lowly Louisiana College, never a great football power. Few of the competing colleges were well known in Shreveport. Perhaps the crudest blow of all that year was the loss to Centenary's ancient rival, Louisiana Tech, by a score of 51 to 14. This 1948 Yoncopin portrays coach Jess Thompson as a big muscular man with a hard-set jaw and serious demeanor. Thirty- five players are featured in various action poses with fierce and threatening gestures, carrying or throwing the ball, but on the playing field the whole aggregation was easily subdued. The Chamber of Commerce withdrew its subsidy of the program, and coaches Thompson and Cochran were relieved of their duties. The executive committee of the Board of Trustees on December 15, 1947 made it official and final that intercollegiate football was dead at Centenary College. This was confirmed at the annual meeting of the Board of Trustees on May 29, 1948, and President Mickle mildly lamented the demise of this once spectacular program at Centenary. Other programs were now developing that gave lasting fame and prestige to the institution. 26 The Glory Years of Football, Centenary College of Louisiana 1922-1942 Football Remembered The football program at Centenary College had written a glorious chapter and deposited a vast fund of memories in the annals of this ancient and honorable institution of learning. All hail to President George Sexton, who wisely set the enlarged football program in motion, to the Board of Trustees and the athletic committees, to the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, and the loyal friends of the College whose financial support made it all possible. All hail to the capable and dedicated coaches, Homer Norton, "Bo" McMillin, Curtis Parker, and Jake Hanna, the trainers and business managers, and the assistant coaches. All hail to the outstanding athletes of the great teams including those who failed to win the coveted letter "C" but bore the brunt of pounding from the varsity squad. All hail to the supportive student body and the fans who filled the stadium and accompanied the team on its many trips. Hail to all those known and unknown who made possible this epic period in the history of Centenary College of Louisiana. To the glory years of football at Centenary, Hail and Farewell! The End 27
| 1936 |
Which singer formed his own Berlee record label? | Arkansas: History
Arkansas
History
Early History to Statehood
A people known as the Bluff Dwellers, who inhabited caves, probably lived in the Arkansas area before 500. They were followed by the Mound Builders , who received their name from the mounds they constructed, apparently for ceremonial purposes. The first Europeans to arrive in Arkansas (1541–42) were probably members of the Spanish expedition under Hernando De Soto . Later the French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet came S along the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas River. A number of Native American groups, such as the Osage , Quapaw , and Caddo , lived in the vicinity.
In 1682, Robert La Salle's lieutenant, Henri de Tonti , established Arkansas Post , the first white settlement in the Arkansas area. La Salle claimed the Mississippi valley for France, and the region became part of the French territory of Louisiana. The French ceded the Louisiana territory to Spain in 1762 but regained it before it passed to the United States under the Louisiana Purchase (1803).
Arkansas became part of the Territory of Missouri in 1812. The cotton boom of 1818 brought the first large wave of settlers, and the Southern plantation system, moving west, fixed itself in the alluvial plains of S and E Arkansas. In 1819 the area was made a separate entity, and the first territorial legislature met at Arkansas Post. The capital was moved to Little Rock in 1821. Arkansas achieved statehood in 1836.
The Civil War
As the Civil War began, poorer farmers were generally indifferent to questions of slavery and states' rights. The slaveholding planters held the most political power, however, and after some hesitation, Arkansas seceded (1861) from the Union. In the Civil War, Confederate defeats at Pea Ridge (Mar., 1862), Prairie Grove (Dec., 1862), and Arkansas Post (Jan., 1863) led to Union occupation of N Arkansas, and General Grant's Vicksburg campaign separated states W of the Mississippi from the rest of the Confederacy. In Sept., 1863, federal troops entered Little Rock, where a Unionist convention in Jan., 1864, set up a government that repudiated secession and abolished slavery. Because the state refused at first to enfranchise former slaves, Arkansas was not readmitted to the Union until 1868, when a new constitution gave African Americans the right to vote and hold office.
Reconstruction
Reconstruction in Arkansas reached a turbulent climax in the struggle (1874) of two Republican claimants to the governorship, Elisha Baxter and Joseph Brooks. Baxter's apparent success in the election was not accepted by Brooks, and followers of the two men resorted to violence in what became known as the Brooks-Baxter War. After President Ulysses S. Grant declared Baxter to be governor, Baxter called a constituent assembly dominated by Democrats to frame a new state constitution. The convention adopted (1874) the constitution that, in amended form, still remains in force.
During Reconstruction the so-called carpetbaggers and scalawags were detested by most Arkansas whites, but their administrations brought advances in education and (at exorbitant costs caused by corruption) railroad construction. Because of high cotton prices and the failure to give the freed slaves any economic status, the broken plantation system was replaced by sharecropping and farm tenancy. The lives of the people of the Ozarks remained largely unchanged; they retained the customs, skills, and superstitions that have given the hill folk their distinctive regional characteristics. In the late 19th cent., as railroad construction proceeded, Arkansas's population grew substantially, and bauxite and lumbering industries developed. Oil was discovered in Arkansas, near El Dorado , in 1921.
Hard Times
Disaster struck in 1927 when the Mississippi River overflowed, flooding one fifth of the state. With the fortunes of the state pegged to the price of cotton, the depression of the early 1930s (see Great Depression ) struck hard. Dispossessed tenants, black and white, formed (1939) the Southern Tenant Farmers Union; after trouble with the authorities, it moved its headquarters to Memphis, Tenn. A strike called in 1936 spread to other regions before its strength waned. Other impoverished farmers migrated west to California as "Arkies"—like the "Okies" from neighboring Oklahoma. After World War I, African Americans left the state in a steady stream to the industrial North. World War II brought further loss of population as workers left Arkansas for war factories elsewhere. The war, however, created a boom for new industries in the state, notably the processing of bauxite into aluminum.
The Postwar Era
The decline of industrial output after the war was offset by the vigorous efforts of a state development commission formed in 1955 to attract new industry to Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas became a center of national and world attention in 1957 when he resisted the desegregation of public schools in Little Rock (see integration ). Arkansas has long been dominated by the Democratic party, but in 1966 Winthrop Rockefeller (see under Rockefeller, John Davison was elected the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction. Although reelected in 1968, Rockefeller lost the governorship to a Democrat, Dale Bumpers, in 1970.
In 1971, Arkansas and Oklahoma joined in the Arkansas River Navigation System, a project that developed the Arkansas River basin to provide water transportation to the Mississippi. In the early 1990s, the Arkansas-based Wal-Mart merchandise chain, founded by Arkansan Sam Walton in 1962 as a small-town discount store, became the largest retailer in the United States. Bill Clinton, the governor of Arkansas (1979–81, 1983–92), was elected president of the United States in 1992. In the mid- to late 1990s national attention focused on Arkansas as Clinton associates, including Jim Guy Tucker, his successor as governor, were embroiled in Whitewater and other scandals.
Sections in this article:
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Who duetted with Barbra Streisand on Till I Loved You in 1988? | Till I Loved You - Barbra Streisand | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic
Till I Loved You
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AllMusic Review by William Ruhlmann
Barbra Streisand 's first album of new studio material in four years, Till I Loved You was led by its title song, a duet with Streisand 's current paramour, actor Don Johnson , on a tune from a Columbia Records pet project, a studio musical called Goya, written by Maury Yeston (composer of the Broadway show Nine), that the label was encouraging its artists to promote. That embarrassing recording made the album as a whole seem worse than it was. But Till I Loved You , which was given over to newly written romantic ballads by people like Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager , still wasn't very good. Eighteen songwriters, six producers, nine recording studios: like Emotion , Till I Loved You was a big-budget effort. But it was like a movie with a great star, great production values, and a mediocre script, so how much you liked it depended on how much you liked Streisand , and it sold to her fans only.
Track Listing
| Don Johnson |
What was first published on 21st December 1913 in the New York World? | The Places You Find Love (5:09)
On My Way to You (3:44)
Till I Loved You (5:10) met Don Johnson
Love Light (4:32)
All I Ask of You (4:02)
You and Me for Always (3:49)
Why Let It Go? (4:25)
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What finally knocked One Sweet Day off the No 1 position in the charts in the 90s? | Learn and talk about One Sweet Day, 1995 singles, 1995 songs, Billboard Adult Contemporary number-one singles, Billboard Adult Top 40 number-one singles
"I Remember"
(1995)
"One Sweet Day" is a song by American singer Mariah Carey and R&B group Boyz II Men . The song was written by Carey, Walter Afanasieff and Boyz II Men: Wanya Morris , Shawn Stockman , Nathan Morris , and Michael McCary . "One Sweet Day" was produced by Carey and Afanasieff for her fifth studio album, Daydream , and was released as the album's second single on November 14, 1995 (1995-11-14). The song speaks about death of a loved one, how the protagonist took their presence for granted and misses them, and finally about seeing the person in heaven. Both Carey and Boyz II Men wrote the song about specific people in their lives, being inspired by sufferers of the AIDS epidemic, which was globally prevalent at that time.
"One Sweet Day" received widespread acclaim from critics, many of whom praised its lyrical content and vocals, as well as calling it a standout track from Daydream. It was ranked first in Rolling Stone 's reader's poll for the Best Collaboration of All Time. The song spent 16 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, becoming the longest running number one song on the chart . Subsequently, "One Sweet Day" became the Billboard's most successful song of the 1990s, topping the Hot 100 decade-end chart. Internationally, the song topped the charts in Canada and New Zealand, and reached the top-ten in Australia, Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Carey performed "One Sweet Day" live alongside Boyz II Men at the 38th Grammy Awards ceremony, held on February 26, 1996. Additionally, the song was performed at Princess Diana 's memorial service in September 1997. "One Sweet Day" was part of the set list on several of Carey's succeeding tours, making its debut during the album's accompanying set of concerts, the Daydream World Tour . It is featured on her compilation albums, #1's (1998), Greatest Hits (2001), The Ballads (2008), and #1 to Infinity (2015).
The music video for "One Sweet Day" was filmed in February 1995, and features snippets of Carey and Boyz II Men in and around the studio, and recording the song. The busy schedule of both Carey and Boyz II Men did not allow time to record a proper video. The singer later said that she was content a real music video was never filmed, fearing that no video could truly capture the song's strong lyrical message. Critics felt the video choice was wise, and agreed that the simple concept paid homage to the song's selfless message.
Contents
Background[ edit ]
"When I found out she had AIDS I cried for days. She really could never care for her son again, he now lives with my mother. This sad story made me care more about other children in need. To give them advice and see that they get a better life."
—Carey, on her sister being diagnosed with HIV [1]
"One Sweet Day" was a song that Carey wrote with the R&B group Boyz II Men. After Carey's friend and past collaborator David Cole died, she began writing and developing a song that would pay homage to him and all the friends and family her fans had lost along the life's journey. [2] Carey had the idea and chorus composed , and after meeting with Boyz II Men, they realized they too had a similar idea in development. [2] Together, using Carey's chorus and idea, as well as the melody they had produced, they wrote and composed the song. The song was produced by Afanasieff, who built on the song's melody and added various grooves and beats. [2] Carey expressed how the song was "meant to be" and how all the pieces fit into place:
"I wrote the initial idea for 'One Sweet Day' with Walter, and I had the chorus...and I stopped and said, 'I really wanna do this with Boyz II Men,' because...obviously I'm a big fan of theirs and I just thought that the work was crying out for them, the vocals that they do, so I put it away and said, 'Who knows if this could ever happen, but I just don't wanna finish this song because I want it to be our song if we ever do it together. [The] whole idea of when you lose people that are close to you, it changes your life and changes your perspective. When they came into the studio, I played them the idea for the song and when [it] was finished, they looked at each other, a bit stunned, and told me that Nathan "Nate" Morris had written a song for his road manager who had passed away. It had basically the same lyrics and fitted over the same chord changes. It was really, really weird, we finished the song right then and there. We were all kinda flipped about it ourselves. Fate had a lot to do with that. I know some people won't believe it, but we wouldn't make up such a crazy story." [2]
After they began working on the song, Carey began to incorporate other lyrics into the chorus, trying to make the song relatable to the AIDS epidemic that was in full force in the mid-1990s. [3] Additionally, Mariah's sister Alison Carey had been diagnosed with HIV in 1988 when she was 27, an event that ruined their relationship and tore them apart. [4] Carey has stated that she wrote the song hoping that all her fans that have lost someone could relate to "One Sweet Day" and maybe help ease the pain of the loss. [4] Carey described the song as "[the] whole idea of when you lose people that are close to you, it changes your life and changes our perspective." [2]
A sample of "One Sweet Day," which features organ instrumentation.
Problems playing this file? See media help .
"One Sweet Day" is a "big" R&B ballad. [5] It incorporates organ instrumentation and different contemporary grooves and beats into its primary arrangement, adding percussion and synthesizers as well, [6] whilst incorporating "flourishes and harmonies" from both Carey and Boyz II Men. [5] The song is set in the time signature common time and moves at a slow tempo of 64 beats per minute. It is written in the key of A♭ major and features a basic chord progression of A♭–D♭
maj9
–G♭
add9
, [6] while the basic melodic line spans roughly an octave and a half from E♭4 to A♭5; the piano in the piece ranges from D♭2 to A♭5. [6] The song contains choral lyrics written by Carey, who also arranged and co-produced the song alongside Walter Afanasieff. [2] Author Chris Nickson complimented the song's instrumentation and arrangement, calling its use of synthesizers "wise" and "efficient." Additionally, he claimed Afanasieff's production and Carey's vocal and production arrangement helped the song's vocals and lyrical content flow together. [2] The song finishes with the last chorus and coda in the key of B major .
Reception and accolades[ edit ]
"One Sweet Day" has been lauded with widespread acclaim from contemporary music critics . AllMusic 's Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised the song for its craft and writing, commenting that "[in] "One Sweet Day," a duet with Boyz II Men, Carey appeals to both audiences equally because of the sheer amount of craft and hard work she puts into her albums. [7] Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly felt the song truly highlighted the album, "[One Sweet Day] radiates a breezy sexiness that Carey, for all the brazen hussiness of her public persona, rarely permits herself to reveal in song. [8] Stephen Holden from The New York Times shared similar sentiments and wrote "On 'One Sweet Day,' the singer joins forces with Boyz II Men, those masters of pleading post-doo-wop vocal harmonies, for a tender eulogy that suggests that the singers have been personally touched by the AIDS crisis." [9] People felt the song was a "stand-out track" and called Carey's vocal performance "bravura belting". [10]
"One Sweet Day" won many prestigious awards throughout 1996. At the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards , the song won the award for "Favorite Adult Contemporary Single Female 'One Sweet Day'". [11] "One Sweet Day" also won the award for "Song of the Year" at the BMI Awards and a "Special Award for 16 weeks at #1" at the Billboard Music Awards . [11] Together, Daydream and "One Sweet Day" were nominated for six Grammy Awards at the 38th annual ceremony , however, to Carey's surprise, also to the surprise of many critics, they lost all of the nominations. [12] [13] In a readers' poll conducted by Rolling Stone , the song was ranked first for the category of the Best Collaboration of All Time. [14]
Year
Commercial performance[ edit ]
"One Sweet Day" became Carey's tenth chart topping single on the Billboard Hot 100 and Boyz II Men's fourth. The song remained at the peak for a record-breaking, 16 consecutive weeks, from December 2, 1995 to March 16, 1996. [20] Boyz II Men had previously held this record twice, with " End of the Road " (1992) spending 13 weeks at the top and " I'll Make Love to You " (1994) spending 14. [20] [21] The former song shares this record with Brandy and Monica 's " The Boy Is Mine ", and the latter song shared its record with Whitney Houston 's " I Will Always Love You ". [20] [21] Carey's 2005 song " We Belong Together ", The Black Eyed Peas 's 2009 " I Gotta Feeling " and Mark Ronson 's 2014 track, " Uptown Funk ", managed to stay at number one for 14 weeks as well. [21] "One Sweet Day" replaced " Exhale (Shoop Shoop) " by Whitney Houston at number one, and was replaced by Celine Dion 's " Because You Loved Me ". [20] The single also debuted at number one, making Carey the first artist to have more than one number-one debut, and one of the two artists ever to have two consecutive singles debut at the top of the chart, along with Britney Spears , with " 3 " (2009) and " Hold It Against Me " (2011). [2] [22] One Sweet Day was the third best-selling single of 1995 in the US, with sales of over 1,300,000, with the second best-selling single being Carey's " Fantasy ". [23] The song spent 26 weeks in the top 40, was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and was ranked number one on Billboard's "Decade-End Charts". [24] To date the single sold 2,334,000 physical units. [25]
Outside the U.S., "One Sweet Day" was not as successful but did manage to reach the top-ten in over 13 countries and topped the chart in Canada and New Zealand, where it was certified platinum . In Canada, the song debuted on the RPM Singles Chart at number 89 on the RPM issue dated December 4, 1995, [26] and reached the top of the chart on January 22, 1996. [27] It was present on the chart for a total of 24 weeks, [28] and ranked 12th on the RPM Year-end chart for 1996. [29] It reached the top-two in Australia (platinum), The Netherlands; the top-five in France (silver) and Ireland and the top-ten in Belgium, Norway (platinum), Sweden and the United Kingdom (silver). In the UK, it is one of Carey's best-selling singles, with estimated sales of 255,000. [30]
Music video[ edit ]
The song's music video was directed by Larry Jordan . When Carey and Boyz II Men got together to record "One Sweet Day", they did not have enough time to re-unite and film a video. Instead, a filming crew was present during the song's recording, and filmed bits of Carey and Boyz recording the song. Walter Afanasieff later told Fred Bronson that shooting the video was "crazy", stating "They had film crews and video guys, while I'm at the board trying to produce. And these guys were running around having a ball, because Mariah and them are laughing and screaming and they're being interviewed. And I'm tapping people on the shoulder. 'We've got to get to the microphone!' They're gone in a couple of hours, so I recorded everything they did, praying that it was enough." After the song's release, Carey expressed her content with the video. that she was happy a real music video was never filmed, fearing that no video could truly capture the song's "precious message". Critics agreed, feeling that the song was a perfect match for the video and its message. Aside from the recording sessions, the video also shared bits of Carey and Boyz bonding and sharing their ideas in the studio, where Carey felt they "bonded". [2]
Live performances[ edit ]
Carey and Boyz II Men performing "One Sweet Day" at Madison Square Garden on October 10, 1995
"One Sweet Day" was performed at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards, held on February 28, 1996. During the performance, Carey wore a long black dress and matching sleeveless blouse, while the group wore white jackets and black pants. After the song's bridge, a choir of male and female vocalists took place on the rafters placed over the stage, all wearing white gowns. [31] The song was also performed at the memorial service for Princess Diana in September 1997, where other performers included Elton John . During the service and song recital, Carey wore a conservative long black sheer gown, with long golden curls. Boyz II Men all wore similar matching dark suit and garments. [31] The song became part of Carey's BET Christmas special in 2001, where she sang the song alongside Boyz II Men. [31] During the special, Carey wore a red gown in honor of the show's holiday theme, and featured a long golden hairstyle. One of the male vocalists had already been switched, as one of the group members had already resigned. [31]
Aside from live television appearances, the song was performed on many of Carey's tours. [32] "One Sweet Day" was performed at every show on her Daydream World Tour (1996), where Boyz II Men were featured on a large projection screen. [33] The footage was taken from Carey's filmed concert at Madison Square Garden in late-1995, and was played in sync with Carey's verses. A similar concept was used for her Butterfly World Tour (1998), with the addition of several live back up vocalists joining on stage. [32] Additionally, the song was performed on select dates on her The Adventures of Mimi tour (2006). During the tour's filmed show in Anaheim California, the group joined Carey live on stage and performed the song together. [34] For the segment of the show, Carey wore a long turquoise gown, with several slits and cuts fashioned into the sides. During the Angels Advocate Tour in 2010, Carey performed a snippet of the song in Singapore, with Trey Lorenz filling in for the group's verses. [35] Carey also performed the song as a part of her 2015 Las Vegas residency, Mariah Carey Number 1's , with Lorenz reprising his role as well as Daniel Moore.
Cover versions[ edit ]
"One Sweet Day" was performed by the seven finalists on the seventh season of American Idol . [36] The performance was taped due to the "Mariah Carey" themed week, where all the competitors sang songs from Carey's repertoire. [36] The song was additionally sung on the fifth season of the UK TV show The X Factor , by the British boy-band JLS . [37] Their performance received praise from all four judges, who commented how it was an "impossibly hard song to sing" because it was a "Mariah song". [37] The song was also performed by John Adeleye during the seventh season The X Factor. The theme of the night was "#1 songs". [38] Shannon Magrane performed the song on the eleventh season of American Idol the week the contestants performed songs from their birth years. Andy Williams released a version in 2007 on his album, I Don't Remember Ever Growing Up .
Formats and track listings[ edit ]
Worldwide Cassette CD single [39]
"One Sweet Day" (Album Version) – 4:41
| Because You Loved Me |
In which American state are the Merril Collection and the Burke Museum of Fine Arts? | Learn and talk about One Sweet Day, 1995 singles, 1995 songs, Billboard Adult Contemporary number-one singles, Billboard Adult Top 40 number-one singles
"I Remember"
(1995)
"One Sweet Day" is a song by American singer Mariah Carey and R&B group Boyz II Men . The song was written by Carey, Walter Afanasieff and Boyz II Men: Wanya Morris , Shawn Stockman , Nathan Morris , and Michael McCary . "One Sweet Day" was produced by Carey and Afanasieff for her fifth studio album, Daydream , and was released as the album's second single on November 14, 1995 (1995-11-14). The song speaks about death of a loved one, how the protagonist took their presence for granted and misses them, and finally about seeing the person in heaven. Both Carey and Boyz II Men wrote the song about specific people in their lives, being inspired by sufferers of the AIDS epidemic, which was globally prevalent at that time.
"One Sweet Day" received widespread acclaim from critics, many of whom praised its lyrical content and vocals, as well as calling it a standout track from Daydream. It was ranked first in Rolling Stone 's reader's poll for the Best Collaboration of All Time. The song spent 16 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, becoming the longest running number one song on the chart . Subsequently, "One Sweet Day" became the Billboard's most successful song of the 1990s, topping the Hot 100 decade-end chart. Internationally, the song topped the charts in Canada and New Zealand, and reached the top-ten in Australia, Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Carey performed "One Sweet Day" live alongside Boyz II Men at the 38th Grammy Awards ceremony, held on February 26, 1996. Additionally, the song was performed at Princess Diana 's memorial service in September 1997. "One Sweet Day" was part of the set list on several of Carey's succeeding tours, making its debut during the album's accompanying set of concerts, the Daydream World Tour . It is featured on her compilation albums, #1's (1998), Greatest Hits (2001), The Ballads (2008), and #1 to Infinity (2015).
The music video for "One Sweet Day" was filmed in February 1995, and features snippets of Carey and Boyz II Men in and around the studio, and recording the song. The busy schedule of both Carey and Boyz II Men did not allow time to record a proper video. The singer later said that she was content a real music video was never filmed, fearing that no video could truly capture the song's strong lyrical message. Critics felt the video choice was wise, and agreed that the simple concept paid homage to the song's selfless message.
Contents
Background[ edit ]
"When I found out she had AIDS I cried for days. She really could never care for her son again, he now lives with my mother. This sad story made me care more about other children in need. To give them advice and see that they get a better life."
—Carey, on her sister being diagnosed with HIV [1]
"One Sweet Day" was a song that Carey wrote with the R&B group Boyz II Men. After Carey's friend and past collaborator David Cole died, she began writing and developing a song that would pay homage to him and all the friends and family her fans had lost along the life's journey. [2] Carey had the idea and chorus composed , and after meeting with Boyz II Men, they realized they too had a similar idea in development. [2] Together, using Carey's chorus and idea, as well as the melody they had produced, they wrote and composed the song. The song was produced by Afanasieff, who built on the song's melody and added various grooves and beats. [2] Carey expressed how the song was "meant to be" and how all the pieces fit into place:
"I wrote the initial idea for 'One Sweet Day' with Walter, and I had the chorus...and I stopped and said, 'I really wanna do this with Boyz II Men,' because...obviously I'm a big fan of theirs and I just thought that the work was crying out for them, the vocals that they do, so I put it away and said, 'Who knows if this could ever happen, but I just don't wanna finish this song because I want it to be our song if we ever do it together. [The] whole idea of when you lose people that are close to you, it changes your life and changes your perspective. When they came into the studio, I played them the idea for the song and when [it] was finished, they looked at each other, a bit stunned, and told me that Nathan "Nate" Morris had written a song for his road manager who had passed away. It had basically the same lyrics and fitted over the same chord changes. It was really, really weird, we finished the song right then and there. We were all kinda flipped about it ourselves. Fate had a lot to do with that. I know some people won't believe it, but we wouldn't make up such a crazy story." [2]
After they began working on the song, Carey began to incorporate other lyrics into the chorus, trying to make the song relatable to the AIDS epidemic that was in full force in the mid-1990s. [3] Additionally, Mariah's sister Alison Carey had been diagnosed with HIV in 1988 when she was 27, an event that ruined their relationship and tore them apart. [4] Carey has stated that she wrote the song hoping that all her fans that have lost someone could relate to "One Sweet Day" and maybe help ease the pain of the loss. [4] Carey described the song as "[the] whole idea of when you lose people that are close to you, it changes your life and changes our perspective." [2]
A sample of "One Sweet Day," which features organ instrumentation.
Problems playing this file? See media help .
"One Sweet Day" is a "big" R&B ballad. [5] It incorporates organ instrumentation and different contemporary grooves and beats into its primary arrangement, adding percussion and synthesizers as well, [6] whilst incorporating "flourishes and harmonies" from both Carey and Boyz II Men. [5] The song is set in the time signature common time and moves at a slow tempo of 64 beats per minute. It is written in the key of A♭ major and features a basic chord progression of A♭–D♭
maj9
–G♭
add9
, [6] while the basic melodic line spans roughly an octave and a half from E♭4 to A♭5; the piano in the piece ranges from D♭2 to A♭5. [6] The song contains choral lyrics written by Carey, who also arranged and co-produced the song alongside Walter Afanasieff. [2] Author Chris Nickson complimented the song's instrumentation and arrangement, calling its use of synthesizers "wise" and "efficient." Additionally, he claimed Afanasieff's production and Carey's vocal and production arrangement helped the song's vocals and lyrical content flow together. [2] The song finishes with the last chorus and coda in the key of B major .
Reception and accolades[ edit ]
"One Sweet Day" has been lauded with widespread acclaim from contemporary music critics . AllMusic 's Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised the song for its craft and writing, commenting that "[in] "One Sweet Day," a duet with Boyz II Men, Carey appeals to both audiences equally because of the sheer amount of craft and hard work she puts into her albums. [7] Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly felt the song truly highlighted the album, "[One Sweet Day] radiates a breezy sexiness that Carey, for all the brazen hussiness of her public persona, rarely permits herself to reveal in song. [8] Stephen Holden from The New York Times shared similar sentiments and wrote "On 'One Sweet Day,' the singer joins forces with Boyz II Men, those masters of pleading post-doo-wop vocal harmonies, for a tender eulogy that suggests that the singers have been personally touched by the AIDS crisis." [9] People felt the song was a "stand-out track" and called Carey's vocal performance "bravura belting". [10]
"One Sweet Day" won many prestigious awards throughout 1996. At the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards , the song won the award for "Favorite Adult Contemporary Single Female 'One Sweet Day'". [11] "One Sweet Day" also won the award for "Song of the Year" at the BMI Awards and a "Special Award for 16 weeks at #1" at the Billboard Music Awards . [11] Together, Daydream and "One Sweet Day" were nominated for six Grammy Awards at the 38th annual ceremony , however, to Carey's surprise, also to the surprise of many critics, they lost all of the nominations. [12] [13] In a readers' poll conducted by Rolling Stone , the song was ranked first for the category of the Best Collaboration of All Time. [14]
Year
Commercial performance[ edit ]
"One Sweet Day" became Carey's tenth chart topping single on the Billboard Hot 100 and Boyz II Men's fourth. The song remained at the peak for a record-breaking, 16 consecutive weeks, from December 2, 1995 to March 16, 1996. [20] Boyz II Men had previously held this record twice, with " End of the Road " (1992) spending 13 weeks at the top and " I'll Make Love to You " (1994) spending 14. [20] [21] The former song shares this record with Brandy and Monica 's " The Boy Is Mine ", and the latter song shared its record with Whitney Houston 's " I Will Always Love You ". [20] [21] Carey's 2005 song " We Belong Together ", The Black Eyed Peas 's 2009 " I Gotta Feeling " and Mark Ronson 's 2014 track, " Uptown Funk ", managed to stay at number one for 14 weeks as well. [21] "One Sweet Day" replaced " Exhale (Shoop Shoop) " by Whitney Houston at number one, and was replaced by Celine Dion 's " Because You Loved Me ". [20] The single also debuted at number one, making Carey the first artist to have more than one number-one debut, and one of the two artists ever to have two consecutive singles debut at the top of the chart, along with Britney Spears , with " 3 " (2009) and " Hold It Against Me " (2011). [2] [22] One Sweet Day was the third best-selling single of 1995 in the US, with sales of over 1,300,000, with the second best-selling single being Carey's " Fantasy ". [23] The song spent 26 weeks in the top 40, was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and was ranked number one on Billboard's "Decade-End Charts". [24] To date the single sold 2,334,000 physical units. [25]
Outside the U.S., "One Sweet Day" was not as successful but did manage to reach the top-ten in over 13 countries and topped the chart in Canada and New Zealand, where it was certified platinum . In Canada, the song debuted on the RPM Singles Chart at number 89 on the RPM issue dated December 4, 1995, [26] and reached the top of the chart on January 22, 1996. [27] It was present on the chart for a total of 24 weeks, [28] and ranked 12th on the RPM Year-end chart for 1996. [29] It reached the top-two in Australia (platinum), The Netherlands; the top-five in France (silver) and Ireland and the top-ten in Belgium, Norway (platinum), Sweden and the United Kingdom (silver). In the UK, it is one of Carey's best-selling singles, with estimated sales of 255,000. [30]
Music video[ edit ]
The song's music video was directed by Larry Jordan . When Carey and Boyz II Men got together to record "One Sweet Day", they did not have enough time to re-unite and film a video. Instead, a filming crew was present during the song's recording, and filmed bits of Carey and Boyz recording the song. Walter Afanasieff later told Fred Bronson that shooting the video was "crazy", stating "They had film crews and video guys, while I'm at the board trying to produce. And these guys were running around having a ball, because Mariah and them are laughing and screaming and they're being interviewed. And I'm tapping people on the shoulder. 'We've got to get to the microphone!' They're gone in a couple of hours, so I recorded everything they did, praying that it was enough." After the song's release, Carey expressed her content with the video. that she was happy a real music video was never filmed, fearing that no video could truly capture the song's "precious message". Critics agreed, feeling that the song was a perfect match for the video and its message. Aside from the recording sessions, the video also shared bits of Carey and Boyz bonding and sharing their ideas in the studio, where Carey felt they "bonded". [2]
Live performances[ edit ]
Carey and Boyz II Men performing "One Sweet Day" at Madison Square Garden on October 10, 1995
"One Sweet Day" was performed at the 38th Annual Grammy Awards, held on February 28, 1996. During the performance, Carey wore a long black dress and matching sleeveless blouse, while the group wore white jackets and black pants. After the song's bridge, a choir of male and female vocalists took place on the rafters placed over the stage, all wearing white gowns. [31] The song was also performed at the memorial service for Princess Diana in September 1997, where other performers included Elton John . During the service and song recital, Carey wore a conservative long black sheer gown, with long golden curls. Boyz II Men all wore similar matching dark suit and garments. [31] The song became part of Carey's BET Christmas special in 2001, where she sang the song alongside Boyz II Men. [31] During the special, Carey wore a red gown in honor of the show's holiday theme, and featured a long golden hairstyle. One of the male vocalists had already been switched, as one of the group members had already resigned. [31]
Aside from live television appearances, the song was performed on many of Carey's tours. [32] "One Sweet Day" was performed at every show on her Daydream World Tour (1996), where Boyz II Men were featured on a large projection screen. [33] The footage was taken from Carey's filmed concert at Madison Square Garden in late-1995, and was played in sync with Carey's verses. A similar concept was used for her Butterfly World Tour (1998), with the addition of several live back up vocalists joining on stage. [32] Additionally, the song was performed on select dates on her The Adventures of Mimi tour (2006). During the tour's filmed show in Anaheim California, the group joined Carey live on stage and performed the song together. [34] For the segment of the show, Carey wore a long turquoise gown, with several slits and cuts fashioned into the sides. During the Angels Advocate Tour in 2010, Carey performed a snippet of the song in Singapore, with Trey Lorenz filling in for the group's verses. [35] Carey also performed the song as a part of her 2015 Las Vegas residency, Mariah Carey Number 1's , with Lorenz reprising his role as well as Daniel Moore.
Cover versions[ edit ]
"One Sweet Day" was performed by the seven finalists on the seventh season of American Idol . [36] The performance was taped due to the "Mariah Carey" themed week, where all the competitors sang songs from Carey's repertoire. [36] The song was additionally sung on the fifth season of the UK TV show The X Factor , by the British boy-band JLS . [37] Their performance received praise from all four judges, who commented how it was an "impossibly hard song to sing" because it was a "Mariah song". [37] The song was also performed by John Adeleye during the seventh season The X Factor. The theme of the night was "#1 songs". [38] Shannon Magrane performed the song on the eleventh season of American Idol the week the contestants performed songs from their birth years. Andy Williams released a version in 2007 on his album, I Don't Remember Ever Growing Up .
Formats and track listings[ edit ]
Worldwide Cassette CD single [39]
"One Sweet Day" (Album Version) – 4:41
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Which actor paid $93,500 for the baseball which rolled between Bill Buckner's legs in game six of the 1986 World Series? | Mets-Red Sox: The Story of the Ball That Got Through Billy Buckner's Legs | Bleacher Report
Mets-Red Sox: The Story of the Ball That Got Through Billy Buckner's Legs
By Ash Marshall , Senior Analyst
May 24, 2010
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"A little roller up along first...behind the bag. It gets through Buckner. Here comes Knight, and the Mets win it."
It's a call that Mets fans have heard hundreds of times, and it's a call that never, ever gets old. It's the same call that brings Red Sox fans close to tears, and it's the call that reinforced the Curse of the Bambino.
Mets fans of a certain age will tell you exactly where they were when Mookie Wilson's groundball down the line went between Billy Buckner's legs, and for people in New York, it is one of the most defining plays in the club's 48-year history.
ESPN voted it as the second most memorable moment of the last 25 years (losing out only to the 1980 Miracle on Ice victory in Lake Placid which topped the 100-strong list) and the Mets voted it as their No. 1 historic moment of all time.
Lost in the excitement of Ray Knight hopping and jumping towards home plate on that October night in 1986 was the ball that created history. As the fans celebrated and the Red Sox filed away, right field umpire Ed Montague snatched it up from the floor, took a pen, and marked a small 'X' near the seam. Who would have known that some 24 years later it would be on display for fans everywhere to enjoy.
The baseball that Mookie hit—yes, the baseball—is now on display in the New York Mets Hall of Fame and Museum, and I had the chance to speak with the owner of the famous ball, L.A.-based songwriter Seth Swirsky.
"It was picked up in the outfield by the right field umpire and he put an 'x' on it and gave it to the Mets traveling secretary Arthur Richman," Seth said.
"Arthur then went into the clubhouse and gave it to Mookie and said 'This is the one' and Mookie kissed it, everybody kissed it, and there is a tobacco stain, and there was just this big celebration, and the Mookie wrote on it 'To Arthur, the ball won it for us.'"
After holding onto the ball for several years, Richman eventually put it up for auction in 1992.
Tina Mannix, the senior director of marketing at the New York Mets, said: "Arthur got the ball from one of the umpires and Mookie actually told me that Arthur called him to ask for his permission to sell it and give the money to charity.
I had always heard, 'Grr Arthur Richman sold it.' I never knew that he had sold it for charity and I never knew that he had asked Mookie's permission to, which I think was great."
Just to be sure that the ball up for auction was the “Buckner Ball”—as it came to be known—Arthur also wrote a letter to verify the ball’s authenticity. Dated May 26, 1992, he wrote: “This is the actual baseball, hit by Mookie Wilson, which went between Bill Buckner’s legs in the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox at Shea Stadium Flushing, New York.
"Ed Montague, who was the right field umpire for that game, picked up the baseball. He later presented it to me, saying that he thought I would appreciate having it more than he would…This baseball is 100 percent authentic."
The ball was eventually snapped up by actor Charlie Sheen for $93,500, and the star held on to the ball for almost eight years until he decided to part with a lot of his sporting memorabilia collection in 2000.
Seth said that when the ball was originally up for auction in 1992, he wasn’t collecting at that point. He said he didn't think he even read about the auction. "I wasn't a collector then, I was a songwriter," he admitted.
"I started writing letters to baseball players in the mid '90s for the fun of it to show my young son one day and they became my first best-selling book called Baseball Letters.
"In the midst of writing these letters I would find out different things about the players and I just got into the history of baseball in a big way and before I knew it I was bidding in an auction here and trading there.
"And then before I knew it I was getting these fantastic artifacts...Reggie Jackson's third home run ball from Game Six when he hit three in a row, the letter Judge Landis wrote to Shoeless Joe Jackson forever banning him from playing baseball again for his 'throwing of the World Series' in 1919..."
That is where he was in April 2000 when Charlie Sheen was changing his life a little bit and decided to rid himself of his memorabilia. Seth stayed up late into the night to bid on the ball and he came away with the high bid, well after 3 a.m. Eastern time.
"I'm a kid that grew up in Great Neck on Long Island. I was at the '69 World Series.
"I was a kid that went to camp and used to bring a transistor radio and played shortstop on my camp team and right in between each play the whole summer of '69 I'd pick up the transistor radio and hear 'Al Weis hit a home run' or 'Tom Seaver struck out the side' all the great Mets from '69.
"So I'm a diehard longtime fan. I went to Shea Stadium, I went to the World Series at nine years old in '69, and I really grew up with it. So for me to end up with it was a tremendously humbling experience and I was very glad to be able to lend it to the Mets, and I'm so, so happy that fans are getting a good feeling from it."
Seth reunited Mookie Wilson with the ball when he brought it to Shea Stadium in 2006 for the 20th anniversary of the '86 World Series victory and he said he had no hesitations about loaning the ball to the Mets for the inaugural year of the new museum.
As Eric Strohl, the senior director of collections at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, said: "As far as that moment in history goes, it was a pretty drastic part of Mets history. I would say that probably ranks up there as one of the most important moments in all of Mets history."
While the ball may be seen as ‘priceless’ to some Mets fans, there is—like most things in life—a price attached if you dig deep enough. Seth actually got the ball at the bargain price of $63,945, almost one-third cheaper than what Sheen had paid for it some eight years earlier, and now it has rocketed in value.
While Seth and the Mets refused to disclose how much they agreed the ball was worth when they signed documents to have the ball on display at Citi Field, Seth said it is fair to say it has increased in value multiple times over.
"I'd say it's worth between $500,000 and $1,000,000 if you look at some of the prices of equally-valued things...Babe Ruth's home run at the very first All-Star Game in 1933 went for $900,000, Mickey Mantle's first home run ball almost $1,000,000, Mark McGwire's home run ball—although it was overpriced at the time—went for $3.2 million.
"But for me, I want to share my pieces, I don't want them hidden away. I just want to make sure they are secure. I see myself as a guardian, someone who has a responsibility to keep these pieces in good shape. This is real, real history here and it's my job to protect it.
"I always imagine a nine-year-old kid walking through the new Mets museum with his dad and his dad saying to hi, 'Let me tell you about that game.' For me, that’s the Bobby Thomson game that my dad would tell me about. And I'm just imagining that kid being thrilled, and so any way I can give back to the Mets makes me completely happy."
It’s not just fans who get a kick out of seeing the ball. One day, Seth was being interviewed on the field at Dodger stadium by legendary broadcaster Vin Scully, the man who made the now-famous call of that World Series moment.
Seth decided to bring the ball along to show Vin, and before he knew it he was surrounded by players and clubhouse staff all hoping to get a glimpse of the ball.
"Vin Scully takes me out on the Dodgers ' field and he's asking me about my different books, and at the end of the interview I said 'Can I ask you a question?' He was taken by surprise, and I pulled out the Mookie ball because he was the one who made that famous call on TV...'a little roller up along first...'
"All of the players were on the field working out—it was the Marlins against the Dodgers—and Mike Lowell comes over. Then Bill Robinson, who was coaching first base for the Mets that night, comes over, and soon everybody is over there wanting to touch the ball.
"These players were 10 years old in 1986, 12, 13 years old playing in Little League, but they all came over when they were supposed to be going through their routines on the field. I’ve never seen anything like it.
"To them, that game [in 1986] was that same Bobby Thomson home run game; that was the shot heard around the world of their generation. That was the moment that was most crystallized. People could talk about Joe Carter's home run that ended the World Series in 1992, but I don't think it has the same kind of clout.
"It's Toronto , it's not New York City. It was the Mets-Red Sox. It had everything made for folklore. So I think that's why it has an 'otherness' to it. And I mean, it was the ball.
"It's never the glove. The game’s called base ball. It's about the ball. It's always about the ball. It's never about the bat. The bat is a great piece, don't get me wrong, the shoes Buckner was wearing was incredible, the glove, all of it's good. I don't denigrate anybody's piece of memorabilia that goes to the play, but it's about the ball.
"This ball mean something to me. I like things that tell a story. My heart is with the Mookie ball because I grew up a Mets fan. All that stuff about Buckner saying he had the original ball was bitter grapes. He was still very stung by it. How could he have the ball? I didn't see him run out into right field to get it. Did you?
"The more that sees it, the merrier."
**********
Seth Swirsky is the author of three baseball books: Baseball Letters (Three Rivers Press, 1996), Every Pitcher Tells A Story (Times Books, 1999) and Something to Write Home About (Random House, 2003). His second solo album, Watercolor Day (2010) has just been released.
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Who was Theodore Roosevelt's Vice President between 1905 and 1909? | The House of Montague / For 80 years, it's been about baseball - SFGate
The House of Montague / For 80 years, it's been about baseball
By Ron Kroichick , San Francisco Chronicle
Published 4:00 am, Sunday, June 29, 2003
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The last time a professional baseball season unfolded without an Ed Montague was 1921, the year before a 16-year-old boy joined his hometown San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League .
Before long, that kid was playing shortstop for the Cleveland Indians , evading Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb as they barreled into second base. But Montague left his most indelible mark as a scout for the Giants, signing a teenage outfielder named Willie Mays .
Montague also passed along a passion for baseball to his oldest son, another Ed, now in his 28th season as a major-league umpire. Montague the ump followed his father's lead in carving out his place in a small corner of the game, fighting for respect just like his dad did.
Montague climbed from the playgrounds of Daly City to big-league ballparks across America, where he became a peripheral player in some of the most memorable moments in baseball history. His career runs the gamut, from calling balls and strikes in Game 7 of the World Series to planting himself in
the middle of labor strife.
Just as Ed Montague the player and scout worked on the fringes, Ed Montague the umpire also operates in baseball's no-man's land, far removed from glory.
"I'd just as soon be anonymous forever," Montague, 54, said. "I'm part of the game, but I'm not."
Montague's dad shaped him in many ways. It's evident in a wide-eyed Montague sharing stories his dad told him about playing in the majors in the 1920s and '30s. And it's also evident in Montague's determination to make sure umpires do not become the game's forgotten figures, as scouts often have been.
Montague's dad, who died in 1988 at age 82, crossed paths with many notable players in his day. He made his major-league debut on May 14, 1928, against Lefty Grove and he counted Lefty Gomez, Joe Cronin and Pie Traynor among his friends.
"I guess you could say Eddie came from history," said umpire Bruce Froemming , a longtime friend of the younger Montague.
That lineage had practical advantages. When Montague's dad ran the Giants' rookie-league team in the early 1960s, young Eddie often visited the Candlestick Park clubhouse. He would fill his pockets with Bazooka bubble gum, take extra Mays and Felipe Alou caps and scoop up leftover bats.
The end result: Some cool sandlot games on the playground at Daniel Webster elementary school. Montague and his friends would saw off the top of the barrels of Mays' bats, or nail together and tape broken bats from Alou and other Giants players.
"Here we were, kids in Daly City playing with major-league bats," said Jim Ragland , one of Montague's childhood friends.
Still, the influence of his dad's long career in baseball (he spent 40 years with the Giants) stretches beyond the innocence of sandlot ball. The adult Montague sports a defiant edge, hardened through epic battles between umpires and the baseball establishment.
As a young man in the Bay Area, he drove a truck, worked in a warehouse and was a member of the Teamsters Union . By age 16, he already had gone on strike as a Candlestick Park vendor.
As an adult, Montague, who now lives in San Mateo, emerged as a strong voice of the old umpires' union. And the roots of his fierce pro-labor stance rest, in part, with his father's place in the game.
Former National League umpire Dutch Rennert , who worked on the same crew with Montague for 10 years, and Froemming both recalled their colleague bemoaning the way baseball treated his dad. Scouts never got paid much -- his dad's highest salary was about $18,000, Montague said.
Montague's dad tried to form a union for scouts in the 1950s, but that went nowhere.
"I think Eddie realized that with all his dad did for the game, he ended up with zilch," Rennert said. "Eddie realized baseball wasn't fair with all those old timers, all the scouts."
Said Montague: "I've always said umpires and scouts were in the same boat --
we're at the bottom of the barrel."
That's hardly the case for major-league umpires today, with even first-year umps earning about $85,000. Montague, given his experience, makes $320,000 and has four weeks of vacation scattered throughout the season.
The Babe was larger than life, even to other players. Opposing teams would gather in the dugout to watch Ruth take batting practice, long before the scene became common for Mark McGwire , Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds.
So when the New York Yankees great sent Montague's dad reeling on a play at second and visited the trainer's room after the game to check on him, it was a tale for a lifetime.
"He said that was one of his biggest thrills, getting taken out at second by the Babe," Montague said. "And when Ruth came into the trainer's room, my dad was like, 'Wow, that's Babe Ruth!' "
Montague's dad drifted out of the majors in 1932, after 220 games over four seasons. He played in the minor leagues and later managed in the minors in addition to scouting for the Boston Braves and New York/ San Francisco Giants .
He was based in the Bay Area and working for the Giants when he went to Alabama on a scouting mission in 1950. Montague's dad planned to check out a big first baseman named Alonzo Perry , who played for the Birmingham Barons of the Negro Leagues .
Instead, he noticed Mays.
Montague's dad followed the Barons for a few days and quickly fell for Mays,
who hit to all fields with power and had a rifle arm. Mays remembers going something like 8 for 11 during games in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.
"I understood the Giants were sending down a guy to see Alonzo," Mays said in a recent interview. "I guess he saw me and switched over right quick."
Montague's dad visited Mays at his Aunt Sarah's house, where he had dinner and convinced Mays' father to let his son sign with the Giants. Accounts of the signing bonus vary, but Mays said the club gave him $15,000 and the Barons a similar amount.
Mays became possibly the greatest player ever and Perry bounced around the Negro Leagues, Mexican League and Dominican Republic for much of the 1950s. He never reached the majors.
Even so, several people who knew Montague's dad well, including fellow scouts and Montague himself, said he seldom talked about his role in signing Mays.
"He was a very quiet man," Mays said. "He was very nice in explaining things to me, what I had to do and all that stuff."
This association with Mays stayed with the Montagues as "Eddie" grew up. His childhood memories include a trip to Seals Stadium in 1958, the Giants' first year in San Francisco. Montague's dad introduced him to Mays, and 9-year- old Eddie left with one of Mays' new gloves.
"I remember going home," Montague said, "kind of hanging out the window, saying, 'This is Willie Mays' glove!' "
Montague played semipro ball, but he relinquished his dream of reaching The Show after his dad told him he would never rise higher than Double-A. So when his mom, Fran, suggested he try umpires' school, 22-year-old Eddie drove to Florida.
Montague started in the California League , earning $300 per month in salary and $300 more in expenses (major-league umpires now receive $300 per day to cover expenses). He got his big break when he worked a major-league spring- training game with Froemming, who recommended him to supervisor Al Barlick .
Montague reached the majors for good in 1976, in an era of simmering hostility between managers/players and umpires. He routinely clashed with Whitey Herzog and Joe Torre , among others, in his early years. Montague estimated that he ejected 18 people in his first season in the majors.
"I wasn't going to back off from anybody," he said.
That included one unusual conflict with Cubs outfielder Jose Cardenal in 1977. Montague tossed Cardenal for arguing a call during a spring-training game, then tossed him again when he ran sprints along the warning track after his ejection.
The next day, Montague said, Cardenal spit toward him in the runway leading to the field. When Cubs manager Herman Franks handed his lineup card to the umpires, Montague grabbed a pen and crossed off Cardenal's name. Ejected once again.
This hard-line approach was typical of Montague as a young umpire. He came from a baseball background -- after all, his dad signed Willie Mays! -- and he rocketed to the majors so quickly, arriving at age 27, his cohorts called him "Phenom."
"When Eddie was younger, I thought he was overconfident -- he really thought he could do the job," Rennert said. "He was cocky, I guess, but he had great natural ability."
As Montague mellowed, the ejections subsided (he recalled only one last season, A's pitching coach Rick Peterson). His career moved along, his reputation improved and another Montague was part of history: He has worked four World Series, eight League Championship Series and experienced enough great moments to create his own highlight video.
Lou Brock 's 3,000th hit. Pete Rose breaking Cobb's all-time hits record. Kirby Puckett 's game-winning home run in Game 6 of the 1991 World Series. Edgar Renteria 's decisive Game 7 single in '97. Bonds' 71st, 72nd and 73rd home runs in 2001.
No moment was more memorable than Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Montague was the right-field umpire when Mookie Wilson's grounder infamously rolled through first baseman Bill Buckner 's legs. Montague retrieved the ball, marked it and gave it to then- Mets executive Arthur Richman .
Nearly six years later, Richman put the ball up for auction. He expected it might snare a few thousand dollars, but actor Charlie Sheen bought "the Buckner ball" for a then-staggering $93,500, with most of the proceeds going to charity. Buckner questioned the ball's authenticity, though Montague and Richman vehemently insisted it was the actual one.
Montague avoided controversy in his other World Series stints -- no easy feat considering he worked home plate for Game 6 in '91 (Puckett's homer) and Game 7 in '97 (Renteria's hit). Both games went 11 innings, magnifying Montague's anxiety.
"It's like you're in a bubble," he said. "It's an out-of-body experience when you're working those games."
He also worked the 2000 Subway Series in which the Yankees beat the Mets in five games.
Now the times of high anxiety come when Montague listens to his son's minor- league games on his laptop computer. The latest in this chain of Ed Montagues is a 23-year-old outfielder for the Class-A South Georgia Waves, a Los Angeles Dodgers affiliate.
Montague Jr., who played at Pepperdine before joining the Dodgers' organization in June 2002, turns his dad from objective arbiter to passionate fan.
"It's wearing me out," Montague said. "I've got to learn not to hang on every at-bat."
Said the younger Montague: "He changes into the father for my games. He's not an umpire anymore."
Montague always stood by the umpires' union and its longtime leader, Richie Phillips . He attributes today's working conditions, notably the salary and in- season vacation, to decades of union solidarity, including a seven-week strike in 1979.
Thus, the events of 1999, when the union disintegrated, were disturbing to Montague.
Phillips wanted to force Major League Baseball to begin negotiations on a new labor agreement. The umps' contract, set to expire after the '99 season, forbid them from going on strike.
But in a meeting in Philadelphia on the day after the All-Star Game, Phillips recommended the umps all sign letters of resignation. Stick together, the thinking went, and MLB will have to get serious about the next contract.
The strategy backfired because MLB accepted the resignations and a group of umpires challenged Phillips' leadership and formed a new union. Most umpires successfully rescinded their resignations, including Montague, but MLB let go of 22 umps, several of whom remain out of the majors today.
"I'm still bitter about (some umps) jumping off the ship when it came down to the nuts-and-bolts deal," Montague said. "I really believed we were a solid union and we were going to get things resolved. We've had to fight for everything since I've been in the big leagues."
Montague became further embedded in the dispute when his wife, Marcia, sent a letter to Denise Hirschbeck, the wife of umpire John Hirschbeck , leader of the dissident group. Marcia Montague called John Hirschbeck a "traitor" and an "embarrassment to all real umpires."
She forwarded copies of the letter to the spouses of other umpires, prompting MLB officials to issue a memo warning umps about "harassment and intimidation" of their colleagues.
"The point I was trying to make was, I couldn't believe they wouldn't all stick together," Marcia Montague says now. "Everyone wouldn't have signed that (resignation) letter if they knew they were slitting their own throats."
Today, Montague is one of 23 umpires (out of 68 in the majors) who still have not joined the new union. Montague said the umps hope to resolve that and have the 23 become part of the new union before negotiations begin on the next labor agreement with MLB. The current contract expires after the '04 season.
It's a safe bet Eddie Montague will not be a passive bystander.
Witness to history Here are some of the memorable moments that occurred during games in which Ed Montague was an umpire:
10/5-10/7/01
-- Barry Bonds hits home runs #71, 72 and 73 in season-ending series vs. Dodgers at Pacific Bell Park
4/11/00
| i don't know |
Which nation was the first to ratify the United Nations charter in 1945? | The United States and the Founding of the United Nations, August 1941 - October 1945
The United States and the Founding of the United Nations, August 1941 - October 1945
The impetus to establish the United Nations stemmed in large part from the inability of its predecessor, the League of Nations, to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite Germany�s occupation of a number of European states, and the League�s failure to stop other serious international transgressions in the 1930s, such as Japan�s invasion of Manchuria, many international leaders remained committed to the League�s ideals. Once World War II began, President Franklin D. Roosevelt determined that U.S. leadership was essential for the creation of another international organization aimed at preserving peace, and his administration engaged in international diplomacy in pursuit of that goal. He also worked to build domestic support for the concept of the United Nations. After Roosevelt�s death, President Harry S Truman also assumed the important task of maintaining support for the United Nations and worked through complicated international problems, particularly with the Soviet Union, to make the founding of the new organization possible. After nearly four years of planning, the international community finally established the United Nations in the spring of 1945.
Origins of the United Nations
The concept of creating a global organization of member states dedicated to preserving international peace through collective security increased in popularity during World War I. The bloodshed of the �Great War� persuaded President Woodrow Wilson, and a number of other American and international leaders, to seek the creation of an international forum in which conflicts could be resolved peacefully. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, which Wilson negotiated on behalf of the United States, contained a framework for a League of Nations, intended to maintain peace and stability. However, despite Wilson�s efforts to gain the domestic support of political leaders and the American public, he was unable to convince the United States Senate to approve U.S. membership in the League. This was due to strong isolationist sentiment and partisan conflicts, stemming in part from his failure to include any prominent Republicans in the peace negotiations. The League�s opponents criticized it as a threat to American sovereignty and security, and objected most stridently to Article Ten of the League Charter, which committed member states to protect the territorial integrity of all other member states against external aggression. Many American lawmakers argued that Article Ten might obligate the United States to take part in wars in defense of dubious, often contested, colonial boundaries. After considering membership in the League with reservations, the Senate ultimately prevented the United States from joining the League. The absence of the United States weakened the League, which was also hindered in its efforts to resolve disputes by the widespread economic crises of the 1930s, its inability to compel states to abide by its decisions, and its requirement that many decisions--including those involving a response to aggression--be decided unanimously. The fact that member states involved in a dispute were granted a seat on the League�s Council, thereby allowing them to prevent unanimous action, meant that the League eventually resorted to expelling aggressor states such as Japan and Italy, with little effect.
Proposing the United Nations Concept
President Roosevelt recognized the inherent weaknesses of the League of Nations, but faced with the reality of another world war, also saw the value of planning for the creation of an international organization to maintain peace in the post-World War II era. He felt that this time, the United States needed to play a leading role both in the creation of the organization, and in the organization itself. Moreover, in contrast to the League, the new organization needed the power to enforce key decisions. The first wartime meeting between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt, the Atlantic Conference held off the coast of Newfoundland in August 1941, took place before the United States had formally entered the war as a combatant. Despite its official position of neutrality, the United States joined Britain in issuing a joint declaration that became known as the Atlantic Charter. This pronouncement outlined a vision for a postwar order supported, in part, by an effective international organization that would replace the struggling League of Nations. During this meeting, Roosevelt privately suggested to Churchill the name of the future organization: the United Nations.
The governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and China formalized the Atlantic Charter proposals in January 1942, shortly after the United States entered the war. In the Declaration of the United Nations, these major Allied nations, along with 22 other states, agreed to work together against the Axis powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy), and committed in principle to the establishment of the United Nations after the war.
Learning from Woodrow Wilson�s failure to gain Congressional support for the League of Nations, the Roosevelt Administration aimed to include a wide range of administration and elected officials in its effort to establish the proposed United Nations. The State Department played a significant role in this process, and created a Special Subcommittee on International Organization in the Advisory Committee on Postwar Planning to advise Congress. The subcommittee reviewed past efforts at international cooperation, and by March 1943 had drafted a formal proposal to establish a new, more effective international organization. Secretary of State Cordell Hull took the proposal to members of Congress in an effort to build bipartisan support for the proposed postwar organization. Consultations between Congress and the Department of State continued into the summer of 1943, and by August, produced a draft United Nations Charter. Congress repeatedly passed resolutions declaring its support for the establishment of an international organization--and for United States membership in that organization.
The major Allied Powers--the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and China--reiterated their commitment to forming an international organization in the Moscow Declaration of October 30, 1943, and more concrete international planning for the structure of the new organization commenced. Representatives from these four countries met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, from August 21 through October 7, 1944, and the four Allied powers issued a statement of Proposals for the Establishment of a General International Organization, largely based on the draft charter formulated by the State Department�s Subcommittee on International Organization, in consultation with the U.S. Congress.
The Department of State undertook a public relations campaign to build support for the United Nations. As part of that effort, the Department printed over 200,000 copies of the Dumbarton Oaks proposal and an informative, eight-page guide to the draft United Nations Charter. The Department worked in concert with interested groups to inform the public about the United Nations and even dispatched officials around the country to answer questions on the proposed organization. By the end of the effort, the Department of State had coordinated almost 500 such meetings.
Creation of the United Nations
The basic framework for the proposed United Nations rested on President Roosevelt�s vision that the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and China would provide leadership in the postwar international system. It was these four states, with the addition of France, that would assume permanent seats in the otherwise rotating membership of the United Nations Security Council. At the Anglo-American Malta Conference in early 1945, the two sides proposed that the permanent members of the Security Council would have a veto. Immediately thereafter, at the Yalta Conference, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom agreed on veto power for the permanent members of the Security Council. This crucial decision essentially required unanimity between the five permanent members on the pressing international decisions related to international security and use of force that would be brought before the Security Council.
Churchill and Roosevelt also made an important concession to Soviet leader Josef Stalin�s request that the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic be seated in the United Nations General Assembly, thus increasing the Soviet Union�s seats in that body to three. Stalin had originally requested seats for all sixteen Soviet Socialist Republics, but at Yalta this request was turned down, and the compromise was to allow Ukraine and Byelorussia into the United Nations. The United States originally had countered Stalin�s proposal with the request to allow all fifty American states into the United Nations, a suggestion that encouraged Stalin to agree to the compromise. At Yalta, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom also drafted invitations to a conference beginning in April 1945 in San Francisco that would formally establish the United Nations.
After Roosevelt�s death on April 12, 1945, days before the scheduled San Francisco Conference, Vice President Harry S Truman took the oath of office and immediately announced that the Conference should go forward as planned. Moved by Roosevelt�s death, Stalin, who had initially planned to send Ambassador Andrei Gromyko as the Soviet representative to the San Francisco conference, announced that he would send Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov as well. This news heartened American officials, who had been concerned about maintaining Soviet interest and participation in the United Nations after a number of disagreements over the extent of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and the fate of Germany in the postwar period. In an address to Congress shortly thereafter, Truman called upon Americans �regardless of party, race, creed or color, to support our efforts to build a strong and lasting United Nations organization.�
The San Francisco Conference, formally known as the United Nations Conference on International Organization, opened on April 25, 1945, with delegations from fifty countries present. The U.S. delegation to San Francisco included Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., former Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Senators Tom Connally (D-Texas) and Arthur Vandenberg (R-Michigan), as well as other Congressional and public representatives. Among the most controversial issues at the San Francisco Conference was the seating of certain countries, in particular, Argentina, the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics, and Poland. The vote to seat Argentina was particularly contentious because the Soviet Union strongly opposed Argentine membership arguing that Argentina had supported the Axis during the war. However, the other Latin American states refused to support the Ukrainian and Byelorussian candidacies if Argentina were blocked. The United States supported Argentina�s membership, but also defended the Ukrainian and Byelorussian seats in order to maintain the Soviet Union�s participation in the United Nations. The makeup of the Polish government was a continuing source of tension between the wartime allies, and thus a Polish delegation was not seated until after the conference.
At San Francisco, the delegates reviewed and often rewrote the text agreed to at Dumbarton Oaks. The delegations negotiated a role for regional organizations under the United Nations umbrella and outlined the powers of the office of Secretary General, including the authority to refer conflicts to the Security Council. Conference participants also considered a proposal for compulsory jurisdiction for a World Court, but Stettinius recognized such an outcome could imperil Senate ratification. The delegates then agreed that each state should make its own determination about World Court membership. The conference did approve the creation of an Economic and Social Council and a Trusteeship Council to assist in the process of decolonization, and agreed that these councils would have rotating geographic representation. The United Nations Charter also gave the United Nations broader jurisdiction over issues that were �essentially within� the domestic jurisdiction of states, such as human rights, than the League of Nations had, and broadened its scope on economic and technological issues.
Determining the extent of the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council proved a more serious potential obstacle to agreement on a United Nations charter. The Soviet Union advocated broad use of the veto, viewing it as a possible tool to curb discussion on conflicts involving a permanent member. Such an interpretation worried the smaller states, which were already hesitant about the permanent veto. In order to gain Soviet agreement to modify such an expansive interpretation of the veto, Truman directed Harry Hopkins, who had many wartime discussions with Stalin, to travel to Moscow and negotiate with the Soviet leader on the issue. After bilateral Soviet-American negotiations in Moscow, the Soviet Union eventually agreed to a less extensive veto power. While the permanent members retained veto power with respect to non-procedural matters, the Security Council would not require a unanimous vote to act, and would have the power to take decisions that would be binding on Member States.
Following the resolution of most outstanding issues, the San Francisco Conference closed on June 26, 1945. In a show of support, Truman attended the final session for the signing of the United Nations Charter, and congratulated the delegates for creating a �solid structure upon which we can build a better world.� However, Truman still needed to secure Senate ratification of the Charter. Both he and Stettinius urged the Senate to give its advice and consent to ratification; Truman said, �I want to see the United States do it first.� In a testament to the sustained wartime efforts to build support for the United Nations, the Charter was approved in the Senate on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2, with 5 abstentions. (The U.S. ratification followed that of Nicaragua and El Salvador.) The United Nations officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, after the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, China, and France, as well as a majority of the other signatories, had ratified the United Nations Charter.
Early Challenges and Future Changes
At its first session, on February 14, 1946, the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish its permanent headquarters in New York City. In a world emerging from the overwhelming conflict of World War II, the United Nations seemed to represent hope that such devastation would not recur. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, symbolized this optimism and idealism. Yet the first true test of the United Nations� ability to prevent widespread international conflict came in June 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea. In response, the United Nations Security Council initiated military sanctions against North Korea, an action made possible by the absence of the Soviet representative, who had walked out in protest against the Council�s refusal to seat representatives of Communist China. This allowed the Security Council to assist South Korea in repelling its attackers and maintaining its territorial integrity.
Other issues brought before the United Nations in its early years included the Greek and Turkish dispute over Cyprus and the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, as relations between the East and the West deteriorated in the Cold War era, the Yalta decision to grant all permanent members of the Security Council veto power frequently stymied the Security Council. This increased the profile of the General Assembly, where no state enjoyed a veto. As issues pertaining to international security remained deadlocked in the Security Council during the Cold War, the increasingly active General Assembly expanded the focus of the United Nations to include economic development, famine relief, women�s rights, and environmental protection, among other issues.
With the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has taken on increasing security responsibilities, negotiated peaceful resolutions to conflict, and deployed peacekeeping forces around the world. In recognition of the organization�s significant contributions, the United Nations and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan were awarded the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee declared in its award citation, �Today the organization is at the forefront of efforts to achieve peace and security in the world, and of the international mobilization aimed at meeting the world's economic, social and environmental challenges...the only negotiable route to global peace and cooperation goes by way of the United Nations.�
| Nicaragua |
What is the Alaskan terminus of the Alaskan Highway? | The United States and the Founding of the United Nations, August 1941 - October 1945
The United States and the Founding of the United Nations, August 1941 - October 1945
The impetus to establish the United Nations stemmed in large part from the inability of its predecessor, the League of Nations, to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite Germany�s occupation of a number of European states, and the League�s failure to stop other serious international transgressions in the 1930s, such as Japan�s invasion of Manchuria, many international leaders remained committed to the League�s ideals. Once World War II began, President Franklin D. Roosevelt determined that U.S. leadership was essential for the creation of another international organization aimed at preserving peace, and his administration engaged in international diplomacy in pursuit of that goal. He also worked to build domestic support for the concept of the United Nations. After Roosevelt�s death, President Harry S Truman also assumed the important task of maintaining support for the United Nations and worked through complicated international problems, particularly with the Soviet Union, to make the founding of the new organization possible. After nearly four years of planning, the international community finally established the United Nations in the spring of 1945.
Origins of the United Nations
The concept of creating a global organization of member states dedicated to preserving international peace through collective security increased in popularity during World War I. The bloodshed of the �Great War� persuaded President Woodrow Wilson, and a number of other American and international leaders, to seek the creation of an international forum in which conflicts could be resolved peacefully. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, which Wilson negotiated on behalf of the United States, contained a framework for a League of Nations, intended to maintain peace and stability. However, despite Wilson�s efforts to gain the domestic support of political leaders and the American public, he was unable to convince the United States Senate to approve U.S. membership in the League. This was due to strong isolationist sentiment and partisan conflicts, stemming in part from his failure to include any prominent Republicans in the peace negotiations. The League�s opponents criticized it as a threat to American sovereignty and security, and objected most stridently to Article Ten of the League Charter, which committed member states to protect the territorial integrity of all other member states against external aggression. Many American lawmakers argued that Article Ten might obligate the United States to take part in wars in defense of dubious, often contested, colonial boundaries. After considering membership in the League with reservations, the Senate ultimately prevented the United States from joining the League. The absence of the United States weakened the League, which was also hindered in its efforts to resolve disputes by the widespread economic crises of the 1930s, its inability to compel states to abide by its decisions, and its requirement that many decisions--including those involving a response to aggression--be decided unanimously. The fact that member states involved in a dispute were granted a seat on the League�s Council, thereby allowing them to prevent unanimous action, meant that the League eventually resorted to expelling aggressor states such as Japan and Italy, with little effect.
Proposing the United Nations Concept
President Roosevelt recognized the inherent weaknesses of the League of Nations, but faced with the reality of another world war, also saw the value of planning for the creation of an international organization to maintain peace in the post-World War II era. He felt that this time, the United States needed to play a leading role both in the creation of the organization, and in the organization itself. Moreover, in contrast to the League, the new organization needed the power to enforce key decisions. The first wartime meeting between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt, the Atlantic Conference held off the coast of Newfoundland in August 1941, took place before the United States had formally entered the war as a combatant. Despite its official position of neutrality, the United States joined Britain in issuing a joint declaration that became known as the Atlantic Charter. This pronouncement outlined a vision for a postwar order supported, in part, by an effective international organization that would replace the struggling League of Nations. During this meeting, Roosevelt privately suggested to Churchill the name of the future organization: the United Nations.
The governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and China formalized the Atlantic Charter proposals in January 1942, shortly after the United States entered the war. In the Declaration of the United Nations, these major Allied nations, along with 22 other states, agreed to work together against the Axis powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy), and committed in principle to the establishment of the United Nations after the war.
Learning from Woodrow Wilson�s failure to gain Congressional support for the League of Nations, the Roosevelt Administration aimed to include a wide range of administration and elected officials in its effort to establish the proposed United Nations. The State Department played a significant role in this process, and created a Special Subcommittee on International Organization in the Advisory Committee on Postwar Planning to advise Congress. The subcommittee reviewed past efforts at international cooperation, and by March 1943 had drafted a formal proposal to establish a new, more effective international organization. Secretary of State Cordell Hull took the proposal to members of Congress in an effort to build bipartisan support for the proposed postwar organization. Consultations between Congress and the Department of State continued into the summer of 1943, and by August, produced a draft United Nations Charter. Congress repeatedly passed resolutions declaring its support for the establishment of an international organization--and for United States membership in that organization.
The major Allied Powers--the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and China--reiterated their commitment to forming an international organization in the Moscow Declaration of October 30, 1943, and more concrete international planning for the structure of the new organization commenced. Representatives from these four countries met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, from August 21 through October 7, 1944, and the four Allied powers issued a statement of Proposals for the Establishment of a General International Organization, largely based on the draft charter formulated by the State Department�s Subcommittee on International Organization, in consultation with the U.S. Congress.
The Department of State undertook a public relations campaign to build support for the United Nations. As part of that effort, the Department printed over 200,000 copies of the Dumbarton Oaks proposal and an informative, eight-page guide to the draft United Nations Charter. The Department worked in concert with interested groups to inform the public about the United Nations and even dispatched officials around the country to answer questions on the proposed organization. By the end of the effort, the Department of State had coordinated almost 500 such meetings.
Creation of the United Nations
The basic framework for the proposed United Nations rested on President Roosevelt�s vision that the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and China would provide leadership in the postwar international system. It was these four states, with the addition of France, that would assume permanent seats in the otherwise rotating membership of the United Nations Security Council. At the Anglo-American Malta Conference in early 1945, the two sides proposed that the permanent members of the Security Council would have a veto. Immediately thereafter, at the Yalta Conference, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom agreed on veto power for the permanent members of the Security Council. This crucial decision essentially required unanimity between the five permanent members on the pressing international decisions related to international security and use of force that would be brought before the Security Council.
Churchill and Roosevelt also made an important concession to Soviet leader Josef Stalin�s request that the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic be seated in the United Nations General Assembly, thus increasing the Soviet Union�s seats in that body to three. Stalin had originally requested seats for all sixteen Soviet Socialist Republics, but at Yalta this request was turned down, and the compromise was to allow Ukraine and Byelorussia into the United Nations. The United States originally had countered Stalin�s proposal with the request to allow all fifty American states into the United Nations, a suggestion that encouraged Stalin to agree to the compromise. At Yalta, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom also drafted invitations to a conference beginning in April 1945 in San Francisco that would formally establish the United Nations.
After Roosevelt�s death on April 12, 1945, days before the scheduled San Francisco Conference, Vice President Harry S Truman took the oath of office and immediately announced that the Conference should go forward as planned. Moved by Roosevelt�s death, Stalin, who had initially planned to send Ambassador Andrei Gromyko as the Soviet representative to the San Francisco conference, announced that he would send Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov as well. This news heartened American officials, who had been concerned about maintaining Soviet interest and participation in the United Nations after a number of disagreements over the extent of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and the fate of Germany in the postwar period. In an address to Congress shortly thereafter, Truman called upon Americans �regardless of party, race, creed or color, to support our efforts to build a strong and lasting United Nations organization.�
The San Francisco Conference, formally known as the United Nations Conference on International Organization, opened on April 25, 1945, with delegations from fifty countries present. The U.S. delegation to San Francisco included Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., former Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Senators Tom Connally (D-Texas) and Arthur Vandenberg (R-Michigan), as well as other Congressional and public representatives. Among the most controversial issues at the San Francisco Conference was the seating of certain countries, in particular, Argentina, the Ukrainian and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republics, and Poland. The vote to seat Argentina was particularly contentious because the Soviet Union strongly opposed Argentine membership arguing that Argentina had supported the Axis during the war. However, the other Latin American states refused to support the Ukrainian and Byelorussian candidacies if Argentina were blocked. The United States supported Argentina�s membership, but also defended the Ukrainian and Byelorussian seats in order to maintain the Soviet Union�s participation in the United Nations. The makeup of the Polish government was a continuing source of tension between the wartime allies, and thus a Polish delegation was not seated until after the conference.
At San Francisco, the delegates reviewed and often rewrote the text agreed to at Dumbarton Oaks. The delegations negotiated a role for regional organizations under the United Nations umbrella and outlined the powers of the office of Secretary General, including the authority to refer conflicts to the Security Council. Conference participants also considered a proposal for compulsory jurisdiction for a World Court, but Stettinius recognized such an outcome could imperil Senate ratification. The delegates then agreed that each state should make its own determination about World Court membership. The conference did approve the creation of an Economic and Social Council and a Trusteeship Council to assist in the process of decolonization, and agreed that these councils would have rotating geographic representation. The United Nations Charter also gave the United Nations broader jurisdiction over issues that were �essentially within� the domestic jurisdiction of states, such as human rights, than the League of Nations had, and broadened its scope on economic and technological issues.
Determining the extent of the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council proved a more serious potential obstacle to agreement on a United Nations charter. The Soviet Union advocated broad use of the veto, viewing it as a possible tool to curb discussion on conflicts involving a permanent member. Such an interpretation worried the smaller states, which were already hesitant about the permanent veto. In order to gain Soviet agreement to modify such an expansive interpretation of the veto, Truman directed Harry Hopkins, who had many wartime discussions with Stalin, to travel to Moscow and negotiate with the Soviet leader on the issue. After bilateral Soviet-American negotiations in Moscow, the Soviet Union eventually agreed to a less extensive veto power. While the permanent members retained veto power with respect to non-procedural matters, the Security Council would not require a unanimous vote to act, and would have the power to take decisions that would be binding on Member States.
Following the resolution of most outstanding issues, the San Francisco Conference closed on June 26, 1945. In a show of support, Truman attended the final session for the signing of the United Nations Charter, and congratulated the delegates for creating a �solid structure upon which we can build a better world.� However, Truman still needed to secure Senate ratification of the Charter. Both he and Stettinius urged the Senate to give its advice and consent to ratification; Truman said, �I want to see the United States do it first.� In a testament to the sustained wartime efforts to build support for the United Nations, the Charter was approved in the Senate on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2, with 5 abstentions. (The U.S. ratification followed that of Nicaragua and El Salvador.) The United Nations officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, after the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, China, and France, as well as a majority of the other signatories, had ratified the United Nations Charter.
Early Challenges and Future Changes
At its first session, on February 14, 1946, the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish its permanent headquarters in New York City. In a world emerging from the overwhelming conflict of World War II, the United Nations seemed to represent hope that such devastation would not recur. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly in 1948, symbolized this optimism and idealism. Yet the first true test of the United Nations� ability to prevent widespread international conflict came in June 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea. In response, the United Nations Security Council initiated military sanctions against North Korea, an action made possible by the absence of the Soviet representative, who had walked out in protest against the Council�s refusal to seat representatives of Communist China. This allowed the Security Council to assist South Korea in repelling its attackers and maintaining its territorial integrity.
Other issues brought before the United Nations in its early years included the Greek and Turkish dispute over Cyprus and the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, as relations between the East and the West deteriorated in the Cold War era, the Yalta decision to grant all permanent members of the Security Council veto power frequently stymied the Security Council. This increased the profile of the General Assembly, where no state enjoyed a veto. As issues pertaining to international security remained deadlocked in the Security Council during the Cold War, the increasingly active General Assembly expanded the focus of the United Nations to include economic development, famine relief, women�s rights, and environmental protection, among other issues.
With the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has taken on increasing security responsibilities, negotiated peaceful resolutions to conflict, and deployed peacekeeping forces around the world. In recognition of the organization�s significant contributions, the United Nations and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan were awarded the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee declared in its award citation, �Today the organization is at the forefront of efforts to achieve peace and security in the world, and of the international mobilization aimed at meeting the world's economic, social and environmental challenges...the only negotiable route to global peace and cooperation goes by way of the United Nations.�
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What was Buster Keaton's actual first name? | Buster Keaton - Biography - IMDb
Buster Keaton
Biography
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Jump to: Overview (5) | Mini Bio (2) | Spouse (3) | Trade Mark (4) | Trivia (52) | Personal Quotes (25) | Salary (16)
Overview (5)
5' 5" (1.65 m)
Mini Bio (2)
When at six months of age he tumbled down a flight of stairs unharmed, he was given the name "Buster" by Harry Houdini who, along with W.C. Fields , Bill Robinson ("Bojangles"), Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson shared headlines with "The Three Keatons": Buster, his father Joe Keaton and mother Myra Keaton . Their act, one of the most dangerous in vaudeville, was about how to discipline a prankster child. Buster was thrown all over the stage and even into the audience. No matter what the stunt, he was poker-faced. By the time Buster turned 21, however, his father was such a severe alcoholic that the stunts became too dangerous to perform and the act dissolved. He first saw a movie studio in March 1917 and, on April 23, his debut film, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle 's The Butcher Boy (1917), was released. He stayed with Fatty through 15 two-reelers, even though he was offered much more to sign with Fox or Warner Bros. after returning from ten months with the U.S. Army (40th Infantry Division) in France. His first full-length feature, The Saphead (1920), established him as a star in his own right. By the middle of 1921 he had his own production company--Buster Keaton Productions--and was writing, directing and starring in his own films. With a small and close team around him, Keaton created some of the most beautiful and imaginative films of the silent era. The General (1926), his favorite, was one of the last films over which he had artistic control. In 1928 he reluctantly signed with MGM after his contract with independent producer Joseph M. Schenck expired. MGM quickly began to enforce its rigid, mechanized style of filmmaking on Keaton, swamping him with gag writers and scripts. He fought against it for a time, and the compromise was initially fruitful, his first film for MGM-- The Cameraman (1928)--being one of his finest. However,with his creativity becoming increasingly stifled he began to drink excessively, despondent at having to perform material that was beneath him. Ironically, his films around 1930 were his most successful to date in terms of box-office receipts, which confirmed to MGM that its formula was right. His drinking led to a disregard for schedules and erratic behavior on the MGM lot, and a disastrous confrontation with Louis B. Mayer resulted in him being fired. The diplomatic producer Irving Thalberg attempted to smooth things over but Keaton was past caring. By 1932 he was a divorced alcoholic, getting work where he could, mostly in short comedies. In 1935 he entered a mental hospital. MGM rehired him in 1937 as a $100-a-week gag writer (his salary ten years before was more than ten times this amount). The occasional film was a boost to this steady income. In 1947 his career rebounded with a live appearance at Cirque Medrano in Paris. In 1952 James Mason , who then owned Keaton's Hollywood mansion, found a secret store of presumably lost nitrate stock of many of Buster's early films; film historian and archivist Raymond Rohauer began a serious collection/preservation of Buster's work. In 1957 Buster appeared with Charles Chaplin in Limelight (1952) and his film biography, The Buster Keaton Story (1957), was released. Two years later he received a special Oscar for his life work in comedy, and he began to receive the accolades he so richly deserved, with festivals around the world honoring his work. He died in 1966, age 70.
Older brother of Harry Keaton and Louise Keaton .
Unlike many silent movie stars, Buster was eager to go into sound considering he had a fine baritone voice with no speech impediments and years of stage experience, so dialogue was not a problem.
Following his death, he was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.
Pictured on one of ten 29¢ US commemorative postage stamps celebrating stars of the silent screen, issued 27 April 1994. Designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld , this set of stamps also honored Rudolph Valentino , Clara Bow , Charles Chaplin , Lon Chaney , John Gilbert , Zasu Pitts , Harold Lloyd , Theda Bara and the Keystone Kops .
Fractured his neck while filming Sherlock Jr. (1924) and did not learn about it until a doctor saw X-rays of his neck during a routine physical examination many years later.
Died quietly at home, in his sleep, shortly after playing cards with his wife.
He was already quite ill with the cancer that would eventually kill him by the time he made his last completed film, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966). He used a stunt double in this film, as well as most of the films he made as an MGM contract player. Before signing with MGM in 1928, he had performed all of his own stunts, and even doubled for cast members in his own films, as in Sherlock Jr. (1924), where he played both himself, riding on the handlebars of a motorcycle, and the man who falls off the back of it.
His mother was of British/German ancestry, and his father was of Scottish/Irish ancestry.
Because most of his childhood was spent in vaudeville with his parents, he had few peers. However, he enjoyed a more regular childhood during his family's annual summer getaways to an Actor's Colony on Lake Michigan in Muskegon, MI. In fact, the city of Muskegon has erected a historical marker to note his stomping ground.
First married Mae Scriven in Mexico on January 1, 1932 before his divorce from Natalie Talmadge was final, then again legally in 1933.
He became an alcoholic when he his career collapsed around 1930, only kicking his habit and regaining his self-esteem when he married Eleanor Norris ( Eleanor Keaton ), his wife from 1940 until his death in 1966.
Was voted the 7th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly, making him the highest rated comedy director. Charles Chaplin didn't make the list.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 523-531. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
He was voted the 35th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
When he married Natalie Talmadge , the Talmadge family was one of the great acting dynasties in both theater and film, and the gossip in Hollywood was that Keaton married her to gain respect in the industry, a rumor he never quite lived down during his peak. Ironically, Keaton is now a film legend, while most people would be hard-pressed to answer who the Talmadges are.
Not only did Keaton do all his own stunts, but, when needed, he acted as a stunt double for other actors in the films.
He often surrounded himself with tall and heavy-set actors in his films, typically as his antagonist, to make his character seem to be at as much of a physical disadvantage as possible. The similarly diminutive Charlie Chaplin ( Charles Chaplin ) also did this.
The three top comedians in silent-era Hollywood were Keaton, Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd . All three produced, controlled and owned their own films. Keaton was convinced to sell his studio and films to MGM in the 1920s, while Chaplin and Lloyd retained ownership of their films. Chaplin and Lloyd became wealthy, while Keaton endured years of financial and personal problems.
In one scene in Sherlock Jr. (1924), filmed at a train station, Keaton was hanging from a tube connected to a water basin. The water poured out and washed him on to the track, fracturing his neck. This footage appears in the released film.
Was named the 21st Greatest Actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends List by the American Film Institute
Was hearing-impaired since 1918, after serving in Germany fighting World War I.
Met Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle for the first time strolling down Broadway in New York City. Arbuckle was with Keaton's old vaudeville acquaintance Lou Anger , who introduced them. Arbuckle immediately asked Keaton to visit the Colony Studio, where he was set to begin a series of comedies for Joseph M. Schenck . The famous comedy team was born.
Loved to play baseball. He would sometimes play between takes on the movie set. Furthermore, for the annual Hollywood charity baseball game for Mt. Sinai Hospital in the 1930s, he always led the comedians' team and developed comedy business on field with his writers.
Said he learned everything about moviemaking and comedy from Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle .
The Navigator (1924) was his most successful movie by gross revenue.
There is much legend regarding the conception of his nickname, Buster. Many attribute the name to the legendary Harry Houdini , who was the partner of Joe Keaton (Buster's father) in the medicine-show group "Kathleen Marownen", after he saw a young Buster fall down a set of stairs without any injury. Others have said that it was Joe who conceived the name after he saw Buster's accident, while still others say that Joe Keaton fabricated the incident for a good story to tell on vaudeville. Which of these stories is actually true is unknown.
He and his parents formed an acrobatic group called "The Three Keatons" in his early youth.
Wanted to become an engineer as a child.
His performance as Johnny Gray in The General (1926) is ranked #34 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
His last film work was The Railrodder (1965), but because it was such a short film it was released before other movies, like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), which had completed filming before "The Railrodder".
Is mentioned in the song "Cinéma" by Paola Del Medico .
When he was three years old he got his right index finger caught in a clothes wringer and it was crushed and had to be amputated at the first knuckle. The injury is most clearly visible in The Garage (1920), when Keaton steadies Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle 's head with his right hand while wiping oil off his face with his left.
He died the same day as his The Stolen Jools (1931), Speak Easily (1932) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) co-star Hedda Hopper .
In 1952 while remodeling his home, James Mason discovered several reels of Keaton's "lost" films (Mason had purchased Keaton's Hollywood mansion) and immediately recognized their historical significance. He took upon himself the responsibility for their preservation.
He is believed to be the first person to use "Buster" as a name, and popularized its usage ever after.
Keaton was one of the few actors who welcomed the advent of sound films. He knew his character didn't need dialog, but he looked forward to sound effects. "When somebody goes boom, they really go *boom*" he once said.
Keaton, Charles Chaplin and Stan Laurel all referred to their screen characters as "The Little Fellow".
A baseball fanatic, Keaton not only held games between takes, but also incorporated it into applications for employment. According to legend, two of the questions on the application he used to hire actors read "Are you a good actor?" and "Are you a good baseball player?" Anyone who answered "Yes" to either had a job with Keaton.
He appears in four of the American Film Institute's 100 Funniest Movies: The General (1926) at #18, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) at #40, Sherlock Jr. (1924) at #62 and The Navigator (1924) at #81.
Broke his ankle while filming The Electric House (1922) when he slipped on the escalator and was still recovering from it when he made The Play House (1921) in which his stunts were considered to be tamer than usual.
Acting mentor to comedienne Lucille Ball .
He was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Pictures at 6619 Hollywood Blvd. and for Television at 6321 Hollywood Blvd.
Most biographers overlook his appearance on the ABC-TV variety show The Hollywood Palace (1964). At the end of the first winter-spring season, series producers Nick Vanoff and William O. Harbach scheduled the show's host Gene Barry with guest stars Keaton and Gloria Swanson to appear together in a comedy sketch. Keaton was at that time appearing in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963). Bringing famous Hollywood film stars onto the show was the producers' main goal. Getting Swanson and Keaton on the show was considered a coup and an opportunity to promote the film. The sketch starred Swanson as Cleopatra and Keaton as Marc Antony, staged on a stepped Roman platform terrace surrounded by a 20-inch-high parapet wall and Roman columns, with the pair falling in love. It was written by Joe Bigelow and Jay Burton , but director Grey Lockwood encouraged Swanson and Keaton to contribute any bits, routines and ideas that they wanted to, which they did. On the first day of rehearsal Swanson was on the stage, gazing up at the lighting fixtures overhead. She asked for lighting director Jack Denton to come to the stage, which he did, and Swanson began pointing out how she wanted which lights to focus on her and Keaton during the sketch--side light, key light, back light, which color gels to use, etc. Denton made sure that all of her suggestions were implemented. Keaton's idea was that the sketch should end with "Antony" and "Cleopatra" sitting on the parapet wall bench, join hands, raising their legs high and falling backwards out of sight over the wall. He and Swanson rehearsed the fall several times, and did the stunt themselves when it came time to actually shoot the scene for the show.
Contributed gags (uncredited) to the Red Skelton film A Southern Yankee (1948). No one could figure out a simple, yet funny way to get Aubrey out of the house when he was being held captive by the angry dog. Buster , employed by MGM as a roving gag man, was called to the set, looked at the set up, and came up with the idea of removing the door hinges and letting the dog in as Aubrey got out. The most famous gag in the movie took him all of five minutes to devise. Some of the other gags he contributed were some he'd done himself years earlier.
David Jason is one of his biggest fans, and claims to channel him whenever he did his own stunts. He was quite honored when the Daily Mirror compared them.
Perhaps as a result of an accident that crushed his right index finger at age three, he developed the ability to use his right hand for certain tasks and his left hand for others. He wrote left-handed but played the ukulele right-handed. When he played baseball (his favorite sport), he threw right-handed and batted left-handed.
A heavy smoker for most of his life, he was diagnosed with lung cancer during the first week of January 1966 after a month-long coughing bout, but he was never told that he was terminally ill or that he had cancer, as his doctors feared that the news would be detrimental to his health. Keaton thought that he was recovering from a severe case of bronchitis. Despite his failing health, he was active and walking about almost until the day he died.
Personal Quotes (25)
No man can be a genius in slapshoes and a flat hat.
Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.
I gotta do some sad scenes. Why, I never tried to make anybody cry in my life! And I go 'round all the time dolled up in kippie clothes--wear everything but a corset . . . can't stub my toe in this picture nor anything! Just imagine having to play-act all the time without ever getting hit with anything!
[Asked by a reporter at an MGM premiere, "Are you happy to be here?"] Of course, I got off location for this!
What used to get my goat at MGM were comedians like The Marx Brothers or [ Bud Abbott ] and [ Lou Costello ], who never worried about the script or the next scene. My God, we ate, slept and dreamed our pictures.
Is Hollywood the cruelest city in the world? Well, it can be. New York can be like that, too. You can be a Broadway star here one night, and something happens, and then you're out--nobody knows you on the street. They forget you ever lived. It happens in Hollywood, too.
The first thing I did in the studio was to want to tear that camera to pieces. I had to know how that film got into the cutting room, what you did to it in there, how you projected it, how you finally got the picture together, how you made things match. The technical part of pictures is what interested me. Material was the last thing in the world I thought about. You only had to turn me loose on the set and I'd have material in two minutes, because I'd been doing it all my life.
They say pantomime's a lost art. It's never been a lost art and never will be, because it's too natural to do.
[on his time working as an uncredited gag writer for The Marx Brothers at MGM] It was an event when you could get all three of them on the set at the same time. The minute you started a picture with the Marx Brothers you hired three assistant directors, one for each Marx brother. You had two of 'em while you went to look for the third one and the first two would disappear.
Think slow, act fast.
Silence is of the gods; only monkeys chatter.
[on the differences between his and Charles Chaplin 's characters] Charlie's tramp was a bum with a bum's philosophy. Lovable as he was, he would steal if he got the chance. My little fellow was a working man and honest.
All my life, I have been happiest when the folks watching me said to each other, "Look at the poor dope, will ya?".
Not long ago, a friend asked me what was the greatest pleasure I got from spending my whole life as an actor. There have been so many that I had to think about that for a moment. Then I said, "Like everyone else, I like to be with a happy crowd.".
Dumb show is best for screen people, if they must appear in public.
I've had few dull moments [in my life] and not too many sad and defeated ones. In saying this, I am by no means overlooking the rough and rocky years I've lived through. But I was not brought up thinking life would be easy. I always expected to work hard for my money and to get nothing I did not earn. And the bad years, it seems to me, were so few that only a dyed-in-the-wool grouch who enjoys feeling sorry for himself would complain.
Only things that one could imagine happening to real people, I guess, remain in a person's memory.
When I've got a gag that spreads out, I hate to jump a camera into close-ups. So I do everything in the world I can to hold it in that long-shot and keep the action rolling. Close-ups are too jarring on the screen, and this type of cut can stop an audience from laughing.
Half of our scenes, for God's sakes, we only just talked over. We didn't actually get out there and rehearse 'em. We would just walk through it and talk about it. We crank that first rehearsal. Because any thing can happen--and generally did . . . We used the rehearsal scenes instead of the second take.
[on the advent of sound in the movies] In every picture it got tougher. They'd laugh their heads off at dialogue written by all your new writers. They were joke-happy. They didn't look for action; they were looking for funny things to say.
I always want the audience to out-guess me, and then I double-cross them.
A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny.
[on why he did all his own stunts] Stuntmen don't get laughs.
Pop made me the featured performer of our act when I was five. There were dozens of other family acts in vaudeville at the turn of the century, but none of the children in them was featured as early as that. Many of those kids were very talented, and their parents were as eager as mine to give them the same head start in show business that I was getting. The reason managers approved of my being featured was because I was unique, being at that time the only little hell-raising Huck Finn type boy in vaudeville. The parents of the others presented their boys as cute and charming Little Lord Fauntleroys. The girls were Dolly Dimples types with long, golden curls. I doubt that any kid actor had more attempts made to save him [by civic do-gooders] than did our Little Buster. The reason of course was our slam-bang act. Even people who most enjoyed our work marvelled when I was able to get up after my bashing, crashing, smashing sessions with pop.
Railroads are a great prop. You can do some awful wild things with railroads.
Salary (16)
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From 1903 to 1958, every Pope--bar one--took which name? | Keaton Surname, Family Crest & Coats of Arms
Keaton Surname, Family Crest & Coats of Arms
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The Anglo-Saxon name Keaton comes from when the family resided in either of the settlements called Ketton in Durham or Rutland, or in the place called Keaton in Ermington, in Devon . The surname Keaton belongs to the large category of Anglo-Saxon habitation names, which are derived from pre-existing names for towns, villages, parishes, or farmsteads.
Keaton Early Origins
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The surname Keaton was first found in Leicestershire . One of the first records of the family was Robert of Ketton (Latin: Robertus Cetenensis) ( c. 1110-1160), an English medieval theologian, astronomer, translator and Arabist. His is thought to have been from village in Rutland, near Stamford, Lincolnshire . Today Ketton is a village and civil parish in Rutland in the East Midlands but dates back to the Domesday Book of 1086 when it was known as Chetone. [1] CITATION[CLOSE]
Williams, Dr Ann. And G.H. Martin, Eds., Domesday Book A Complete Translation. London: Penguin, 1992. Print. (ISBN 0-141-00523-8) It is thought that the village name originated from "an old river name, possibly a derivation of the Celtic "ced" meaning "wood" + the Old English word "ea" meaning "river." [2] CITATION[CLOSE]
Mills, A.D., Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Print. (ISBN 0-19-869156-4)
The second record of the family was Robert de Keton who was listed in the Calendar of Inquisitiones post mortem from Nottinghamshire in 1362. [3] CITATION[CLOSE]
Reaney, P.H and R.M. Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames. London: Routledge, 1991. Print. (ISBN 0-415-05737-X) The Yorkahire Poll Tax Rolls of 1379 list: Johannes de Keton; and Henry de Ketton. Thomas Keton was rector of Langale and Kirksted, Norfolk in 1506. [4] CITATION[CLOSE]
Bardsley, C.W, A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames: With Special American Instances. Wiltshire: Heraldry Today, 1901. Print. (ISBN 0-900455-44-6)
Keaton Spelling Variations
Keaton Spelling Variations
Before English spelling was standardized a few hundred years ago, spelling variations of names were a common occurrence. Elements of Latin, French and other languages became incorporated into English through the Middle Ages, and name spellings changed even among the literate. The variations of the surname Keaton include Keaton, Keeton, Ketton, Keton, Ketyn, Keetyn and many more.
Keaton Early History
Keaton Early History
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Keaton research. Another 495 words (35 lines of text) covering the years 1362, 1379, 1397, 1399, 1423, 1506, 1805, 1134, 1143 and 1500 are included under the topic Early Keaton History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Keaton Early Notables (pre 1700)
Keaton Early Notables (pre 1700)
Notables of the family at this time include Robert of Ketton, a medieval theologian, who traveled to France, the Byzantine Empire, and the Crusader States in Palestine with fellow scholar Herman of Carinthia, in 1134. In...
Another 35 words (2 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Keaton Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
The Great Migration
The Great Migration
A great wave of immigration to the New World was the result of the enormous political and religious disarray that struck England at that time. Families left for the New World in extremely large numbers. The long journey was the end of many immigrants and many more arrived sick and starving. Still, those who made it were rewarded with an opportunity far greater than they had known at home in England . These emigrant families went on to make significant contributions to these emerging colonies in which they settled. Some of the first North American settlers carried this name or one of its variants:
Keaton Settlers in United States in the 18th Century
Thomas Keaton, who landed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1745
William Keaton, who sailed to Philadelphia in 1775
Samuel Keaton arrived in Philadelphia in 1799
Keaton Settlers in United States in the 19th Century
John Keaton, aged 41, landed in Pennsylvania in 1814
A.J. Keaton, aged 26, who settled in America, in 1893
Michael Keaton, aged 38, who emigrated to the United States, in 1893
Patrick Keaton, aged 26, who landed in America, in 1893
Duncan Keaton, aged 30, who emigrated to the United States from Liverpool, in 1897
Keaton Settlers in United States in the 20th Century
Mrs. Charles Keaton, aged 53, who landed in America, in 1907
Mrs. Edgar Keaton, aged 27, who emigrated to America, in 1907
Ben. C. Keaton, aged 26, who landed in America, in 1912
James Keaton, aged 60, who settled in America, in 1923
Thomas Keaton, aged 49, who emigrated to the United States, in 1923
... (More are available in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.)
Keaton Settlers in Canada in the 18th Century
Michael Keaton, who arrived in Nova Scotia in 1750
Contemporary Notables of the name Keaton (post 1700)
Contemporary Notables of the name Keaton (post 1700)
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (1895-1966), American comic actor and filmmaker, best known for his silent films, nicknamed "The Great Stone Face," ranked the 21st-greatest male star by the American Film Institute in 1999
Michael John Keaton (b. 1951), born Michael John Douglas, American multiple award winning actor known for his leading roles in Beetlejuice, Batman and Batman Returns and many more
Diane Keaton (b. 1946), born Diane Hall, American multiple award winning film actress, director, producer, and screenwriter, probably best known for her role in Annie Hall for which she received 7 awards
Danielle Wiener Keaton, American actress, sister of Josh Keaton
Curtis Isaiah Keaton (b. 1976), former American NFL football running back
Teddy Keaton, American football coach
Myra Keaton (1877-1955), born Myra Edith Cutler, an American vaudeville performer and film actress mother of Buster Keaton
Joe Keaton (1867-1946), American vaudeville performer and silent film actor, father of Buster Keaton
Joshua "Josh" Keaton (b. 1979), born Joshua Luis Wiener, an American actor, voice actor, singer and music producer
Camille Keaton (b. 1947), American actress, best known for her role in the 1978 film I Spit on Your Grave
... (Another 2 notables are available in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.)
Keaton Family Crest Products
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Which brothers were Warner Bros' first major record success? | Warner Brothers Records Story
Warner Brothers Records Story
By David Edwards, Patrice Eyries, and Mike Callahan
Last update: April 23, 2004
Warner Brothers, as a company, goes back to 1918, when four brothers (Jack, Albert, Harry, and Samuel Warner) opened their first Warner Brothers studio. They incorporated as a production and distribution entity five years later under the name Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. In 1944, they purchased Leon Schlesinger's cartoon studio, Looney Tunes, and became the owners of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and the rest. The Warner Brothers animation division then churned out high quality cartoons, comic books, and shorts for decades, until it was closed in 1963. Meanwhile, Warner Brothers continued to be one of the big Hollywood players in the movie industry.
Following the lead of MGM, who started a record label in the late 1940s, and Paramount, who established ABC-Paramount in 1957, Warner Brothers formed its own Warner Brothers Records as a division of Warner Brothers Studios on March 19, 1958. The office was located above the film studio's machine shop at 3701 Warner Blvd. in Burbank, California. The President of the label was James B. Conklin. Directors of A&R were Harris Ashburn, George Avakian and Bob Prince. The Warner Brothers label initially recorded pop, jazz, classical, spoken word, folk and gospel.
Over the years, it had not bothered Warner Brothers too much that they didn't have a record company, but it was in early 1957, when Randy Wood's Dot Records signed Warners' movie star Tab Hunter to a recording contract, that the Warner Brothers brass started seeing red. Wood could sign Hunter because although his Warner Brothers contract was exclusive, Warners had no record label. In fact, the timing of when Warner Brothers started their record label was very much linked to their getting their star's recording contract away from Dot. Hunter, who by his own admission could barely sing at all, was coached by Wood to make a few passable records which were major hits in 1957, while Warners steamed. When Warner Brothers finally got their record label off the ground in 1958, they reclaimed Tab Hunter, who made several albums for the label and had a few singles in the mid-ranges of the charts, although nothing like the success he had had with Dot. In fact, Tab Hunter's "Jealous Heart" [WB 5008], which only made #62 on the charts, was the only chart record Warner Brothers had during its first year, 1958.
Initially, Warner Brothers ignored most of the teenage rock and roll or pop artists, and were focusing on the adult "popular" record market, which was still regarded as the main outlet for albums. By 1959, they were floundering, becoming known as a "piano album record company," desperately needing to do something to survive. First, they tried looking younger by cashing in with albums by the younger members of Warner Brothers television shows. Ed "Kookie" Burns ("Kookie Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)" [WB 5047, #4] and "Like I Love You" [WB 5087, #42]) and Roger Smith ("Beach Time" [WB 5068, #64]) from the popular television series 77 Sunset Strip had single hits and albums released. The album 77 Sunset Strip by Don Ralke also provided their first album charter, making #3 and spawning a well-known single of the same name [WB 5025, #69]. Unfortunately, it was the only album which charted for Warner Brothers in 1959. Connie Stevens, who played Cricket on Hawaiian Eye, later had several albums for the label (and was heard as Kookie's girlfriend on the hit record, "Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)"). Even Clint Walker, star of the western series Cheyenne had an album of religious songs. This ploy made the label look like it was an extension of the movie and television studio, but didn't do much to establish it in the music industry or in the minds of record buyers as a top-40 music force. In 1959, in addition to the two Edd Byrnes hits and the Roger Smith charter, WB had two Tab Hunter records ("I'll Be With You In) Apple Blossom Time" [WB 5032, #31] and "No Fool Like a Young Fool" [WB 5051, #59]), and a revival of the old Ken Griffin tune "You Can't Be True Dear" by the Mary Kaye Trio [WB 5050, #75]. For the second year of a label with such solid financial resources, it was less than an overwhelming success. But things were about to change.
Using the deep pockets of the Warner Brothers Studios, James Conklin started trolling for some bigger-name performers. In 1960, he signed the Everly Brothers away from Archie Bleyer's Cadence label when their contract with cadence expired. The Everly Brothers (Don and Phil) were major rock and roll stars at the time, and in a gigantic publicity move, they were signed to the first million dollar contract in recording history. This contract, which ran ten years (!), seems paltry by today's standards, but at the time it made headlines. The Everly Brothers started off at Warners with their biggest seller ever, "Cathy's Clown," in April of 1960. They continued to have chart hits for Warner Brothers into 1967, but they never again equaled the success of "Cathy's Clown" [WB 5151, #1]. As was typical of the Everly Brothers, both sides of the 45 made the charts, with "Always It's You" reaching #56. They followed this success in 1960 with "So Sad" (#7)/"Lucille" (#21) [WB 5163].
Another big name signed to Warner Brothers in 1960, as part of the attempt to get into the then-current music market, was Bill Haley & the Comets. Haley had many seminal rock and roll hits on Decca in the mid-fifties, but by 1960, his very identifiable sound was passé. Although he produced a couple of albums, he had little success for Warner Brothers.
In addition to the Everly Brothers' success, Warner Brothers placed several other records on the charts in 1960. Connie Stevens made her "solo" chart debut with "16 Reasons" [WB 5137], which hit #3, followed by a commentary on the "tragedy songs" of the day which registered a surprising hit by country artist Don Luman called "Let's Think About Livin'" [WB 5172, #7]. Two more minor hits, Connie Stevens' followup, "Too Young to Go Steady" [WB 5159, #71], and "Beautiful Obsession" by Sir Chauncey [WB 5150, #89], completed the singles chart story for 1960.
On the album side in 1960, comedian Bob Newhart scored a #1 album with The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, the success of which started Warner Brothers to look around for other comedians to sign to record contracts. Eventually, Warner Brothers would become one of the most successful in the comedy album genre, with stars like Allan Sherman and Bill Cosby also becoming household names by 1965.
In 1961, the modicum of success that Warner Brothers had the previous year all but dried up. Although Don and Phil's successes continued, they were the only consistent chartmakers, and their chart success was slipping. The Everlys charted with "Walk Right Back" (#7)/"Ebony Eyes" (#8) [WB 5199], "Temptation" (#27)/"Stick With Me Baby" (#41) [WB 5220], and "Don't Blame Me" (#20)/"Muskrat" (#82) [WB 5501], the latter an EP, with shortened versions of two "oldies" ("Walk Right Back" and "Lucille") also included as an experiment to boost sales. The only other artist on the singles chart in 1961 was Bill Doggett, who reached #66 with "(Let's Do) The Hully Gully Twist" [WB 5181].
Bill Doggett, the Everly Brothers, Tab Hunter, and Bill Haley all shared one interesting characteristic: they had been successful on other record labels before they appeared on Warner Brothers. In fact, for their first ten years of existence, it was quite common for an artist to have had a decent career with another label, then have a chart hit or so for Warner Brothers before fading into obscurity. The list is long: Beau Brummels (ex-Autumn Records), Vic Damone (Columbia), James Darren (Colpix), Dick and Dee Dee (Liberty), Dion (Laurie, Columbia), Bill Doggett (King), Everly Brothers (Cadence), Tab Hunter (Dot), Van Morrison (Bang), and the Tokens (RCA). Even Petula Clark, who had her major hits with Warner Brothers, had been on Laurie earlier. With a few exceptions like Peter, Paul & Mary, it wasn't until the late 1960s that Warner Brothers seemed to more frequently sign their own talent from the start.
Although their last few singles had been slipping in the charts, the Everly Brothers came back strong in 1962 with "Crying in the Rain" (#6) [WB 5250] and "That's Old Fashioned" (#9)/"How Can I Meet Her" (#75) [WB 5273]. By this time, the Everly Brothers were quietly consulting with Archie Bleyer, their old boss from Cadence days, about their material, and it was Bleyer that pulled out the old, unreleased Chordettes song "That's Old Fashioned" and suggested it to the Brothers. The link with Archie Bleyer remained intact even though they had jumped ship in 1960; in fact, Phil Everly married Bleyer's stepdaughter Jackie Ertel in 1963.
"That's Old Fashioned" proved to be the Everly Brothers' last Top-10 hit. The followup single, "Don't Ask Me to Be Friends" [WB 5297] only made #48, and from there they hit a long spell off the charts altogether. They managed two more top-40 entries, "Gone Gone Gone" [WB 5478, #31 in 1964] and "Bowling Green" [WB 7020, #40 in 1967], but the last seven years of the Everly Brothers' 10-year pact was short on hits. Despite the limited later chart success during this time, the Everly Brothers produced a series of outstanding albums in the late 1960s for Warner Brothers. Arguably their finest album was the great Roots [WS 1752], which featured traditional folk and country songs interspersed with segments taken from the Everly Family radio show when the brothers were children. In the early 1970s, the brothers had a well-publicized breakup and didn't reconcile until the 1980s, when they had a reunion concert and signed with Mercury Records. Their last chart single to date was the 1984 top-50 single "On the Wings of a Nightingale" [Mercury 880213], penned by Paul McCartney and produced by Dave Edmunds.
Also in 1962, Connie Stevens had two more mid-chart hits, and songstress Cathy Carroll eked into the top-100 with "Poor Little Puppet" [WB 5284, #91]. The film Rome Adventure produced the big hit "Al Di La" by Italian crooner Emilio Pericoli [WB 5259, #2], and countryman Saviero Sardis also had a minor hit with "Love Is the Sweetest Thing" [WB 5243, #86]. The year 1962 was one where beach and car songs were quite popular (if out of reach for Warner Brothers, for the most part). Surprisingly, Warner Brothers came up with a car/surf song hit that is well remembered even today, because it was based on an old cheerleaders' chant that has been used in sporting events ever since: "Let's Go (Pony)" by the Routers [WB 5283], which reached #19.
But the biggest Warner Brothers signing in 1962 was the folk singing trio, Peter, Paul & Mary (Peter Yarrow, Noel Stookey, and Mary Travers). They had their first hit with "Lemon Tree" in 1962 [WB 5274, #35], and followed that with a remake of the Weavers' tune of four years earlier, "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)", which reached the top 10 [WB 5296]. After a couple of minor charters, they hit #2 in the spring of 1963 with "Puff" [WB 5348]. The song was an innocent reflection on childhood featuring a mythical "Puff the Magic Dragon" and his friend Jackie Paper. In a bizarre twist, when songs of the late 1960s began featuring drug references, a wry joke became an urban legend. "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" suddenly got the reputation of being a drug song!
The words to "Puff" were written in 1958 by Peter Yarrow's college roommate, Leonard Lipton, with Yarrow writing the music. Lipton noted that at Cornell University in 1958, it was years prior to the start of the popular drug culture of the mid-1960s, and "no one smoked grass." And there was no controversy at all about the song when it was a hit in 1963, or even for years afterward. But in 1967, Newsweek Magazine published an article about songs "purported" to have drug-related lyrics. The author of the article later admitted that he was looking for some of the most innocent songs he could find to show how they could be interpreted to have drug references. (Interestingly, the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," written about a drawing by John Lennon's child, was also a target in this article ... Lucy Sky Diamonds = LSD, get it? wink wink ... which, given the Beatles' well-publicized experimentation with drugs, is at least understandable, if false). The author never dreamed that his somewhat tongue-in-cheek analysis would start rumors that are "known facts" by millions even today, and reportedly he apologized to Yarrow later.
After "Puff," the trio again hit #2 in the summer of 1963, this time with what would become a folk anthem, Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" [WB 5368]. The followup, another Dylan tune, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" [WB 5385] not only got them their third straight Top-10 hit at #9, but firmly put Dylan in the sights of top-40 radio and the teen audiences. Peter, Paul & Mary continued to record for Warner Brothers into the late sixties, having moderate but consistent chart Success. Ironically, in 1969, their last chart hit, "Leaving on a Jet Plane" [WB 7340] was their only #1 hit. It also introduced the writing of another future superstar to pop radio: John Denver. The group disbanded in 1971, but has had several reunions and tours since then.
In 1963, other than Peter, Paul & Mary's three top-10 hits, Warner Brothers only had two others. On the heels of the success of Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby in the comedy genre, Allan Sherman, whose Jewish-flavored humor hit home with "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah! (A Letter from Camp)" [WB 5378], hit #2 in late summer. Although Sherman never had another single make it to the top-10, he did quite well in album sales for years. The other top-10 hit was by the Marketts, who fashioned an instrumental inspired by the television show The Outer Limits. In fact, the song was titled "Outer Limits" until the ABC-TV folks heard of it, and pressured Warner Brothers to change the title. The result was "Out of Limits" [WB 5391], which made #3. Interestingly, the Marketts and the Routers were essentially the same "group", actually a group of studio musicians put together by Joe Saraceno. According to Saraceno, the "live" touring groups by those names were "whoever was available to play that day."
Dick and Dee Dee (Dick St. John Gostling and Deedee Sperling) had registered a couple of hit singles for Liberty in 1961-62 before switching to Warner Bros. in 1963. At Warners, they managed two top-30 singles in 1963, "Young and in Love" [WB5342, #17] and "Turn Around" [WB 5396, #27]. Other than a late-1964 hit with "Thou Shalt Not Steal" [WB 5482, #13], the two erstwhile high school friends would not reach even the top-70 again.
Jimmy Durante had been a comedian, performer, television personality, and actor for decades, and by 1963 was on the downside of a stellar career. The one thing he really wanted, he said with an ironic smile, was a top-40 record. Given the, uhh, uniqueness of "Old Schnozzola's" voice, this was unlikely, but strange things do happen. In 1963, he hit #51 nationally (and, yes, #40 in Chicago) with a revival of "September Song" [WB 5382], a 1938 hit for Walter Huston. Although he never again cracked the top-100, lost in the follow up singles was a true gem from 1964: "I Came Here to Swim" [WB 5483], a bona fide rocker where Durante visits a discotheque and among other things, ponders why "Debussy never wrote a good watusi." Although obscure (it never made it to LP or CD), a single well worth hearing.
Other charters in 1963 for Warner Brothers included a followup for the Routers, "Sting Ray" [WB 5349], which made #50, and a saxophone instrumental called "Sax 5th Ave." [WB 5341, #65] by Johnny Beecher. Beecher was the pseudonym of saxophonist Plas Johnson, who had been prominently featured on several of Duane Eddy's early recordings.
Also in 1963, Warner Brothers Records purchased the Reprise label. Reprise had been started by Frank Sinatra in 1960 as a vehicle for his own recordings and the recordings of his Las Vegas cronies, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. By 1963, it was starting to be termed "ailing" in the record trade press, and Warner's deep pockets rescued it from failing. The combined Warner Brothers/Reprise labels kept separate A&R divisions for a while, with Jimmy Bowen heading A&R for Reprise. Bowen was even able to get hits for the boss' good-looking daughter, Nancy Sinatra, who had a rather limited vocal range (even so, she was more of a singer than Tab Hunter was).
After the promise of 1963, with a number of top-10 hits, 1964 was a real bummer for Warner Brothers. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and other British bands were tearing up the charts, while Warner Brothers was left outside with their nose against the window. The only top-20 hit they had all year (other than the Dick and Dee Dee hit mentioned earlier) was a master purchase with no follow up: "Farmer John" [WB 5443, #19] by the Premiers, a Latin rock band from California who originally had released the record on the Faro label.
But in December, 1964, things took a turn for the better. Warner Brothers signed British songstress Petula Clark as their own corner on the British Invasion. Her first hit was "Downtown" [WB 5494], which went straight to #1 in early 1965. For the next several years, "Pet" Clark would be the label's most consistent hitmaker, rarely out of the top 20 and most of the time in the top 10. Clark didn't cool off chartwise until 1968. Aside from Petula Clark, 1965 brought more of the same doldrums that had beset 1964. The Marketts/Routers, Everly Brothers, Peter Paul & Mary, Connie Stevens, and the others in the Warner stable were having great difficulty scoring hits in the face of the new musical trends. Pop crooners were on the way out, and high energy rock and roll was in. So who was the newest artist signing for Warner Brothers in 1965? Las Vegas veteran Vic Damone, who scraped into the top-30 with "You Were Only Fooling" [WB 5616, #30], after which he was never heard from again.
1966 brought four big hits from Petula Clark, a #17 hit for the Marketts with "Batman Theme" [WB 5696], and two oddball "one hit wonder" hits: "Day for Decision" by country singer Johnny Sea [WB 5820, #35], and Jerry Samuels' infamous "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haa!" [WB 5831, #3]. The latter disc, recorded under the pseudonym "Napoleon XIV," was possibly the most obnoxious record ever to hit the top 5, and considering the other candidates, that's saying something. It stormed up the charts to #3 and then plummeted just as fast, lasting a mere 6 weeks total on the top 100. The flip side of the record was the same track backwards, and featured a backwards Warner Brothers label. As obnoxious as the record was frontwards, the backwards version playing over and over on a jukebox was surreally perverse. The other Warner Brothers artists were still having trouble making hits in 1966. Soul singer Lorraine Ellison was added to the roster and had a mid-charter with "Stay With Me" [WB 5850, #64], and the Beau Brummels were signed well after their prime hit making days ("One Too Many Mornings", WB 5813, #95) but otherwise it was a year much like the past two.
Some changes had to be made, and in 1967, they were. Warner Brothers Records was sold to Seven Arts, Ltd. for $85 million. The new label, called Warner-Seven Arts, then purchased Atlantic Records . In the late '60s, Warner-Seven Arts, under the direction of Mo Austin and Joe Smith, became a much stronger label with Van Morrison, Harper's Bizarre, James Darren, the Tokens, Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, J.J. Jackson, the Neon Philharmonic, Mason Williams, and the Association all producing hits, in addition to roster holdovers Petula Clark, the Everly Brothers, and Peter, Paul & Mary.
At Reprise, things were even more optimistic. The hits were coming from Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Neil Young and Arlo Guthrie. Reprise also made distribution deals with UK labels and got Jimi Hendrix Experience from Track, the Kinks from Pye, Jethro Tull from Chryalis and Fleetwood Mac from UK Warner-Reprise.
Corporately, as the 1960s came to a close, more changes took place. In 1969, the Kinney National Company purchased Warner Brothers/Reprise/Atlantic from Seven Arts. Kinney had started as a funeral parlor chain, but had moved into the entertainment field in 1967 by purchasing D.C. Comics, All- American Comics, and the Ashley Famous Talent Agency. In 1970, after purchasing Warner and Atlantic, Kinney also bought Elektra Records from Jac Holzman, putting Warner/Reprise, Elektra, and Atlantic all under the Kinney empire. In 1972, Kinney renamed itself Warner Communications, Inc., which included the giant WEA Distribution corporation (for "Warner/Elektra/Atlantic"). Warner Brothers Records had become part of a gigantic conglomerate, one of the biggest forces in the music industry.
The early 1970s saw the Warner Brothers label grow to the major label it had always aspired to become. New artists included rockers Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Grateful Dead, Ides of March, Alice Cooper, and the Faces. On the more acoustic side, there was James Taylor, Seals and Crofts, Dion, and America. Also added were soul bands Tower of Power and Malo as well as pop/soul singer Dionne Warwick. By 1973, Warner Brothers was firmly ensconced in a leadership position in the music industry, and that is where they remain today.
Epilogue: In 1989, Warner Communications merged with Time, Inc., to form Time-Warner, Inc., putting the Time- Life Music catalog under the same roof as WEA, and in the late 1990s, Rhino Records was added to this group. After a merger with AOL to form AOL-Time Warner in January, 2001, and the subsequent plunge in high tech stocks in the early 2000s, the company was saddled with much debt, and began selling off portions of the conglomerate. By late 2003, AOL-Time Warner reverted to Time Warner, Inc. once again when Steve Case, founder of AOL, resigned as AOL-Time Warner Chairman.. On December 31, 2003, Time-Life, Inc., the former book company who abandoned books in favor of CDs and DVDs in 2002, was sold off to a group of private investors headed by Strauss Zetnick, a former record company executive.
This discography covers the Warner Brothers and Reprise Labels. Also covered are labels distributed by Warner Brothers/Reprise including: Ampex, Bearsville, Bizarre, Brother, Diety, Discreet, Dove, Lizard, Loma, Palladium, Paradise, Purple, Qwest, Raccoon, RFC, Ruby, Slash, Straight, Valiant, Viva, Warner- Curb, Warner-Spector, and Whitfield. The Atlantic and Elektra labels and their subsidiaries are listed elsewhere. Discographies for Warner Special Products and Time-Life Music asre also included. A discography for Rhino Records will be added at a later date.
This discography was constructed using our personal record collections, Schwann catalogs, Phonolog catalog and other discographical resources.
Track listings containing a double slash mark (//) are the actual song listings on the album with the double slash mark dividing side one from side two. Track listings that have a (*) in front of the number are shown in alphabetical order because actual track listings are unknown. Track listings without the // or the * are shown as printed in the Schwann catalog or Phonolog catalog. Usually these listings are consistent with the actual record lineup although side one/side two breakdown is not known.
We would appreciate any additions or corrections to this discography. Just send them to us via e-mail . Both Sides Now Publications is an information web page. We are not a catalog, nor can we provide the records listed in these discographies. We have no association with Warner Brothers Records or any of its associated labels. Should you be interested in acquiring albums listed in this discography (all of which are out of print), we suggest you see our Frequently Asked Questions page and follow the instructions found there. This story and discography are copyright 2004 by Mike Callahan.
WARNER BROTHERS RECORDS ALBUM DISCOGRAPHY:
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What was the title of Kitty Kelley's book about Elizabeth Taylor? | Grateful Dead Family Discography: Warner Brothers Records
Warner Brothers Records
Warner Brothers Records was originally founded in the mid-1920's by the Warner Brothers film company as part of their development of sound in movies. Poor sales in the early 1930's forced the studio to sell off subsidiary labels and close down the record company. The Warner Brothers label was re-established in the late 1950's again partly as an outlet for sound recordings related to their movie and TV products. The first big success was with a 77 Sunset Strip related song. Other releases in the early years of the restarted company included albums by the Everly Brothers, Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Newhart. In the early sixties Frank Sinatra signed to the company in a deal that included movies and recordings, this deal also linked Sinatra's Reprise label with Warner Brothers. In the mid sixties the company started acquiring smaller labels, including Autumn Records . The label signed the Grateful Dead in 1966.
During the late sixties the company changed ownership a number of times finally becoming part of the Kinney Corporation which also owned Atlantic Records, Elektra and Asylum. Signings to the label in the seventies included James Taylor, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, The Doobie Brothers and Rod Stewart. Later signings included REM, Van Halen and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and on subsidiary labels, Madonna and Prince. Warner Brothers is now part of the Time Warner group.
The Grateful Dead signed with Warner Brothers in 1966, their first major records deal. They remained with the company until setting up their own label in 1973. See the Grateful Dead on Warner Brothers discography for a full list of their recordings for the label. Solo projects by group members were also released on the label during this period
The third, fourth and fifth Beau Brummels albums were release on Warner Brothers.
The first five Stoneground albums were release on the label.
| i don't know |
In which country was Julie Christie born? | Julie Christie - Biography - IMDb
Julie Christie
Biography
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Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trade Mark (3) | Trivia (67) | Personal Quotes (28) | Salary (6)
Overview (4)
5' 3" (1.6 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Julie Christie, the British movie legend whom Al Pacino called "the most poetic of all actresses", was born in Chukua, Assam, India, on April 14, 1941, the daughter of a tea planter, Frank St. John Christie, and his wife, Rosemary (Ramsden), who was a painter. Her family was of English, and some Scottish, origin. The young Christie grew up on her father's tea plantation before being sent to England for her education. Finishing her studies in Paris, where she had moved to improve her French with an eye to possibly becoming a linguist (she is fluent in French and Italian), the teenager became enamored of the freedom of the Continent. She also was smitten by the bohemian life of artists and planned on becoming an artist before she enrolled in London's Central School of Speech Training. She made her debut as a professional in 1957 as a member of the Frinton Repertory of Essex.
Christie was not fond of the stage, even though it allowed her to travel, including a professional gig in the United States. Her true métier as an actress was film, and she made her screen debut in the science-fiction television serial A for Andromeda (1961) in 1961. Her first film role was as the unlikely fiancé of Leslie Phillips in the Ealing-like comedy Crooks Anonymous (1962), which was followed up by an ingénue role in another comedy, The Fast Lady (1962). The producers of the "James Bond" series were sufficiently intrigued by the young actress to consider her for the role that subsequently went to Ursula Andress in Dr. No (1962), but dropped the idea because she was not busty enough.
Christie first worked with the man who would kick her career into high gear, director John Schlesinger , when he choose her as a replacement for the actress originally cast in Billy Liar (1963). Christie's turn in the film as the free-wheeling "Liz" was a stunner, and she had her first taste of becoming a symbol if not icon of the new British cinema. Her screen presence was such that the great John Ford cast her as the Irish prostitute, Daisy Battles, in Young Cassidy (1965). Charlton Heston wanted her for his film The War Lord (1965), but the studio refused her salary demands.
Although Amercan magazines portrayed Christie as a "newcomer" when she made her breakthrough to super-stardom in Schlesinger's seminal Swinging Sixties film Darling (1965), she actually had considerable work under her professional belt and was in the process of a artistic quickening. Schlesinger called on Christie, whom he adored, to play the role of mode "Diana Scott" when the casting of Shirley MacLaine fell through. (MacLaine was the sister of the man who would become Christie's long-time paramour in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Warren Beatty , whom some, like actor Rod Steiger , believe she gave up her career for. Her Doctor Zhivago (1965) co-star, Steiger -- a keen student of acting -- regretted that Christie did not give more of herself to her craft).
As played by Christie, Diana is an amoral social butterfly who undergoes a metamorphosis from immature sex kitten to jaded socialite. For her complex performance, Christie won raves, including the Best Actress Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Film Academy. She had arrived, especially as she had followed up Darling (1965) with the role of "Lara" in two-time Academy Award-winning director David Lean 's adaptation of Boris Pasternak 's Doctor Zhivago (1965), one of the all-time box-office champs.
Christie was now a superstar who commanded a price of $400,000 per picture, a fact ruefully noted in Charlton Heston 's diary (his studio had balked at paying her then-fee of $35,000). More interested in film as an art form than in consolidating her movie stardom, Christie followed up Doctor Zhivago (1965) with a dual role in Fahrenheit 451 (1966) for director François Truffaut , a director she admired. The film was hurt by the director's lack of English and by friction between Truffaut and Christie's male co-star Oskar Werner , who had replaced the more-appropriate-for-the-role Terence Stamp . Stamp and Christie had been lovers before she had become famous, and he was unsure he could act with her, due to his own ego problems. On his part, Werner resented the attention the smitten Truffaut gave Christie.
Stamp overcame those ego problems to sign on as her co-star in John Schlesinger 's adaptation of Thomas Hardy 's Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), which also featured two great English actors, Peter Finch and Alan Bates . It is a film that is far better remembered now than when it was received in 1967. The film and her performance as the Hardy heroine "Bathsheba Everdene" was lambasted by film critics, many of whom faulted Christie for being too "mod" and thus untrue to one of Hardy's classic tales of fate. Some said that her contemporary, Vanessa Redgrave , would have been a better choice as "Bathsheba", but while it is true that Redgrave is a very fine actress, she lacked the sex appeal and star quality of Christie, which makes the story of three men in love with one woman more plausible, as a film.
Although no one then knew it, the period 1967-68 represented the high-water mark of Christie's career. Fatefully, like the Hardy heroine she had portrayed, she had met the man who transformed her life, undermining her pretensions to a career as a movie star in their seven-year-long love affair, the American actor Warren Beatty . Living his life was always far more important than being a star for Beatty, who viewed the movie star profession as a "treadmill leading to more treadmills" and who was wealthy enough after Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to not have to ever work again. Christie and Beatty had visited a working farm during the production of Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and had been appalled by the industrial exploitation of the animals. Thereafter, animal rights became a very important subject to Christie. They were kindred souls who remain friends four decades after their affair ended in 1974.
Christie's last box-office hit in which she was the top-liner was Petulia (1968) for Richard Lester , a film that featured one of co-star George C. Scott 's greatest performances, perfectly counter-balanced by Christie's portrayal of an "arch-kook" who was emblematic of the '60s. It is one of the major films of the decade, an underrated masterpiece. Despite the presence of the great George C. Scott and the excellent Shirley Knight , the film would not work without Julie Christie. There is frankly no other actress who could have filled the role, bringing that unique presence and the threat of danger that crackled around Christie's electric aura. At this point of her career, she was poised for greatness as a star, greatness as an actress.
And she walked away.
After meeting Beatty, Julie Christie essentially surrendered any aspirations to screen stardom, or at maintaining herself as a top-drawer working actress (success at the box office being a guarantee of the best parts, even in art films). She turned down They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) and Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), two parts that garnered Oscar nominations for the second choices, Jane Fonda and Geneviève Bujold . After shooting In Search of Gregory (1969), a critical and box office flop, to fulfill her contractual obligations, she spent her time with Beatty in California, renting a beach house at Malibu. She did return to form in Joseph Losey 's The Go-Between (1971), a fine picture with a script by the great Harold Pinter , and she won another Oscar nomination as the whore-house proprietor in Robert Altman 's minor classic McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) that she made with her lover Beatty. However, like Beatty, himself, she did not seek steady work, which can be professional suicide for an actor who wants to maintain a standing in the first rank of movie stars.
At the same time, Julie Christie turned down the role of the Russian Empress in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), another film that won the second-choice ( Janet Suzman ) a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Two years later, she appeared in his landmark mystery-horror film Don't Look Now (1973), but that likely was as a favor to the director, Nicolas Roeg , who had been her cinematographer on Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and Petulia (1968). In the mid-70s, her affair with Beatty came to an end, but the two remained close friends and worked together in Shampoo (1975) (which she regretted due to its depiction of women) and Heaven Can Wait (1978).
Christie was still enough of a star, due to sheer magnetism rather than her own pull at the box-office, to be offered $1 million to play the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis character in The Greek Tycoon (1978) (a part eventually played by Jacqueline Bisset to no great acclaim). She signed for but was forced to drop out of the lead in Agatha (1979) (which was filled by Vanessa Redgrave ) after she broke a wrist roller-skating (a particularly southern Californian fate!). She then signed for the female lead in American Gigolo (1980) when Richard Gere was originally attached to the picture, but dropped out when John Travolta muscled his way into the lead after making twin box-office killings as disco king "Tony Manero" in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and greaser "Danny Zuko" in Grease (1978). Christie could never have co-starred with such a camp figure of dubious talent. When Travolta himself dropped out and Gere was subbed back in, it was too late for Christe to reconsider, as the part already had been filled by model-actress Lauren Hutton .
Finally, the end of the American phase of her movie career was realized when Christie turned down the part of "Louise Bryant" in Reds (1981), a part written by Warren Beatty with her in mind, as she felt an American should play the role. (Beatty's latest lover, Diane Keaton , played the part and won a Best Actress Oscar nomination). Still, she remained a part of the film, Beatty's long-gestated labor of love, as it is dedicated to "Jules".
Julie Christie moved back to the UK and become the UK's answer to Jane Fonda , campaigning for various social and political causes, including animal rights and nuclear disarmament. The parts she did take were primarily driven by her social consciousness, such as appearing in Sally Potter 's first feature-length film, The Gold Diggers (1983) which was not a remake of the old Avery Hopwood 's old warhorse but a feminist parable made entirely by women who all shared the same pay scale. Roles in The Return of the Soldier (1982) with Alan Bates and Glenda Jackson and Merchant-Ivory's Heat and Dust (1983) seemed to herald a return to form, but Christie -- as befits such a symbol of the freedom and lack of conformity of the '60s -- decided to do it her way. She did not go "careering", even though her unique talent and beauty was still very much in demand by filmmakers.
At this point, Christie's movie career went into eclipse. Once again, she was particularly choosy about her work, so much so that many came to see her, essentially, as retired. A career renaissance came in the mid-1990s with her turn as "Gertrude" in Kenneth Branagh 's ambitious if not wholly successful Hamlet (1996). As Christie said at the time, she didn't feel she could turn Branagh down as he was a national treasure. But the best was yet to come: her turn as the faded movie star married to handyman Nick Nolte and romanced by a younger man in Afterglow (1997), which brought her rave notices. She received her third Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, and showed up at the awards as radiant and uniquely beautiful as ever. Ever the iconoclast, she was visibly relieved, upon the announcement of the award, to learn that she had lost!
Christie lived with left-wing investigative journalist Duncan Campbell (a Manchester Guardian columnist) since 1979, first in Wales, then in Ojai, California, and now in London's East End, before marrying in 2008. In addition to her film work, she has narrated many books-on-tape. In 1995, she made a triumphant return to the stage in a London revival of Harold Pinter 's "Old Times", which garnered her superb reviews. In the decade since Afterglow (1997), she has worked steadily on film in supporting roles.
Christie -- an actress who eschewed vulgar stardom -- proved to be an inspiration to her co-star Sarah Polley who was in No Such Thing (2001) and The Secret Life of Words (2005). Polley says that Christie is uniquely aware of her commodification by the movie industry and the mass media during the 1960s. Not wanting to be reduced to a product, she had rebelled and had assumed control of her life and career. Her attitude makes her one of Polley's heroes, who calls her one of her surrogate mothers. (Polley lost her own mother when she was 11 years old).
Polley wrote the screenplay for her adaptation of Alice Munro 's short story "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" with only one actress in mind: Julie Christie. Polley had first read the short story on a flight back from Iceland, where she had made No Such Thing (2001) with Christie and, as she read, it was Julie whom she pictured as "Fiona", the wife of a one-time philandering husband, who has become afflicted with Alzheimer's disease and seeks to save her hubby the pain of looking after her by checking herself into a home. After finishing the screenplay, it took months to get Christie to commit to making the film. Polley then found out why Christie is so reticent about making movies: "She gives all of herself to what she does. Once she said yes, she was more committed than anybody".
According to David Germain , a cinema journalist who interviewed Christie for the Associated Press, "Polley and Christie share a desire to do interesting, unusual work, which generally means staying away from Hollywood. The collaboration between the two rebels yielded a small gem of a film. Lions Gate Films was so impressed, it purchased the American distribution rights to the film in 2006, then withheld it until the following year to build up momentum for the awards season. Julie Christie's performance in Away from Her (2006) is superb, and already has garnered her the National Board of Review's Best Actress Award.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
Spouse (1)
Often plays women who inspire great passion in all the male characters rotating around her
Deep husky yet smooth voice
Incredible seductive beauty
Trivia (67)
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#26). [1995]
Julie's father managed a tea plantation in Assam, India, where she grew up.
Her romance with Terence Stamp has been said to have inspired The Kinks "Waterloo Sunset", hence the line "Terry met Julie" in the song. However in a 2004 interview, lead singer Ray Davies , who penned the song, denied this, saying: "No, Terry and Julie were real people. I couldn't write for stars.".
Stamp later turned down the role of Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451 (1966) because of his complicated emotions over co-starring with Christie, backing out of the role on the pretext of Julie receiving top billing. Oskar Werner subsequently played Montag. A year later, Stamp had overcome his insecurities and agreed to co-star with Christie in Far from the Madding Crowd (1967).
Former co-owner of Katira Productions, along with boyfriend Warren Beatty (named after Beatty's parents Kathlyn and Ira).
Was best friends with actress Sharon Tate .
Is currently active in nuclear disarmament and animal rights. [2004]
Brother Clive Christie is a professor of SouthEast Asian studies at Hull University.
Director David Lean nicknamed her 'sunflower' for her beautiful personality and director John Schlesinger nicknamed her 'Trilby' after the 19th century novel about a lovable bohemian.
Directors she works with often enjoy working with her so much that they use her several times, Robert Altman in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and Nashville (1975); John Schlesinger in Billy Liar (1963), Darling (1965), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and Separate Tables (1983); Nicolas Roeg directed her in Don't Look Now (1973) and was cinematographer on Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and Petulia (1968) and lover Warren Beatty used her in Shampoo (1975) and Heaven Can Wait (1978).
Speaks English, French and Italian fluently.
Has lived with investigative journalist Duncan Campbell since 1979. They are married, but the reported date they wed is disputed by Christie.
Her idol is legendary actor Marlon Brando .
Resided with Don Bessant, a lithographer and art teacher (1963-1967). Bessant passed away in 1993 at age 52.
In 1967, Time magazine said of her, "What Julie Christie wears has more real impact on fashion than all the clothes of the ten Best-Dressed women combined.".
She discovered she wanted to become an actress when, at the age of nine, she snuck out of her Paris boarding school and spent the day with a complete stranger who was an aspiring actor.
Julie gave friend Sharon Tate a copy of Thomas Hardy 's novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" with the inscription "For my Hardy heroine" (Julie had recently become a Thomas Hardy heroine in Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)). Sharon gave the novel to her husband Roman Polanski shortly before her death. When Polanski later made the film Tess (1979) he dedicated it "For Sharon".
Robert Altman said of her, "She's my incandescent, melancholy, strong, gold-hearted, sphinx-like, stainless steel little soldier.".
The infamous dinner-party scene in Shampoo (1975) was completely improvised by Julie and Warren Beatty , much to the surprise of the rest of the cast and director Hal Ashby .
Turned down roles in The Sand Pebbles (1966), Valley of the Dolls (1967), Rosemary's Baby (1968), The Godfather (1972), Blume in Love (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), The Wind and the Lion (1975), Coma (1978), American Gigolo (1980), Looker (1981), The Verdict (1982), Under Fire (1983), Steaming (1985) and a remake of the Greta Garbo classic Camille (1936). Was in serious consideration for the female leads in Two for the Road (1967), Heroes (1977), Blow Out (1981) and Out of Africa (1985).
Was once fashion designer Christian Lacroix 's muse, he designed the pink chiffon gown with matching slippers that she wore to the 1971 Academy Awards, and continued to outfit her through her career.
Ranked #29 in Mr. Skin's Top 100 Celebrity Nude Scenes.
Ranked #34 in Celebrity Skin's 50 Sexiest Starlets of All Time.
Ranked #5 in Hello magazine's 25 British Beauties.
Ranked #9 in FHM magazine's "100 Sexiest Women of All Time".
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars (#91).
In an April 29, 1966 Life magazine cover story, Christie named Sidney Lumet as the only American among a list of directors she would like to work with. Twenty years later, she got her wish, appearing in the Lumet-directed Power (1986).
Turned down the role of Louise Bryant in her former lover Warren Beatty 's Reds (1981) as she thought the role should be played by an American. Beatty's then-lover Diane Keaton won a Best Actress Academy Award nomination playing the role.
Originally signed for the role of the Senator's wife in American Gigolo (1980) when Richard Gere was signed to the project, but quit when Gere was ditched in favor of John Travolta . Travolta later dropped out and Gere was hired for the film, but Christie was not offered the role that was eventually played by Lauren Hutton . Ironically, a rumor in the 1970s held that Christie and Hutton were lovers. Christie and Gere would eventually appear together in Sidney Lumet 's Power (1986).
Was Charlton Heston 's first choice as co-star The War Lord (1965), according to Heston's published diaries "Charlton Heston: The Actor's Life; Journals 1956-1976". She was vetoed by the studio because her fee was too high, much to Heston's consternation, who believed she was about to become a major star. He was proved right at the end of 1965, the year that "The War Lord" was released.
Was a top contender for the role of Honey Rider in the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962). She was not chosen because producer Albert R. Broccoli reportedly thought her breasts were too small. The role went to Ursula Andress .
Was the producers first choice to play Presidential widow Liz Cassidy, a role modeled on Jacqueline Kennedy , in The Greek Tycoon (1978). Despite being offered a $1 million fee, she turned down the role, which was played by Jacqueline Bisset .
Lived with Warren Beatty from 1967 to 1974, albeit intermittently. According to a revealed blind item published early in the couple's relationship, Christie was unfazed by the fact that he was seeing other women on the side.
Turned down the leads in The Collector (1965), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), Ryan's Daughter (1970), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), Cabaret (1972), Chinatown (1974) and Reds (1981), all roles that won the actresses who eventually played them Best Actress Academy Award nominations.
Accompanied her longtime lover Warren Beatty on a trip to Russia which inspired him to write his Oscar-winning epic Reds (1981) which ultimately took him 13 years to write. Beatty had always planned to have Christie play the role of Louise Bryant, but when Reds (1981) began filming several years after the couple's breakup, Christie turned down and Beatty gave the role to Diane Keaton . However, Beatty dedicated the film to Christie by hinting to her in his best director Oscar acceptance speech. "For Jules" can also be seen in the final credits of the film.
Her favorite filmmaker is Rainer Werner Fassbinder .
Turned down the role of Lara in Doctor Zhivago (1965) at the time the most coveted role in Hollywood, several times before finally accepting.
Was a member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1979.
Her mentor, director John Schlesinger , envisioned a cast of Al Pacino , Julie Christie and Sir Laurence Olivier for Marathon Man (1976). Pacino has said that the only actress he had ever wanted to work with was Christie, who he claimed was "the most poetic of actresses". Producer Robert Evans , who disparaged the vertically challenged Pacino as "The Midget" when Francis Ford Coppola wanted him for The Godfather (1972) and had thought of firing him during the early shooting of the now-classic film, vetoed Pacino for the lead, insisted on the casting of the even-shorter Dustin Hoffman instead! On her part, Christie -- who was notoriously finicky about accepting roles, even in prestigious, sure-fire material -- turned down the female lead, which was then taken by Marthe Keller (who, ironically, became Pacino's lover after co-starring with him in Bobby Deerfield (1977). Of his dream cast, Schlesinger only got Olivier, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Pacino has yet to co-star with Christie.
Has played the mother of two Defense Against the Dark Arts professors from the "Harry Potter" series. In Hamlet (1996), she plays the mother of Kenneth Branagh , who went on to play Gilderoy Lockhart. In DragonHeart (1996), she plays mother to David Thewlis , who plays Remus Lupin. Christie herself also appears in the third film, with Thewlis.
Has worked with director-screenwriter and actress Sarah Polley three times: co-starring with Polley in No Such Thing (2001) and the Goya Award-winning "La Vida secreta de las palabras" (aka The Secret Life of Words (2005)), and taking the lead in Polley's first feature film as a director, Away from Her (2006). Polley is one of the many co-workers impressed by not only Christie's talent, but her intelligence and independence. After appearing with her in No Such Thing (2001), Polley -- who lost her mom when she was 11 years old -- said that Julie had become one of her surrogate mothers.
Future long-term lover Warren Beatty first espied Christie at the 1966 Royal Command Performance of the film Born Free (1966) in London, which he attended with his then-girlfriend, Leslie Caron . Caron and Beatty were situated near Christie in the reception line for Queen Elizabeth II , and Beatty first saw Christie in person when he turned to watch the Queen shake hands with her. Beatty inveigled his friend Richard Sylbert , who was production designer on Christie's film Petulia (1968), to tell her to call him. She did, he flew up to the San Francisco location of the Petulia (1968) shoot and, after a rocky start, they became lovers. She made her first public appearance with Beatty at a sneak preview of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) for the Hollywood elite. It took them several months to rid themselves of their then-current lovers before they came together in a committed relationship, although they usually maintained separate households for the length of their long romance. Most of those who knew them said they shared a passion for the truth. Beatty told his friends he had asked Christie to marry him, but she refused as she did not want children. Christie believed in monogamy, but Beatty felt that as long as they were not married, he could engage in multiple affairs as long as he remained loyal to her. Eventually, Christie tired of his womanizing and their relationship ended after seven years. His longest and most lasting relationship until he married Annette Bening , the mother of his four children, Beatty considered Christie his wife and told the press in 1971 that he would pay her alimony if they split up, if she wanted it. They did, but she did not. When Beatty was awarded the Irving Thalberg Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the year 2000, Christie was one of the friends and co-workers who appeared in a film tribute to her former lover.
Her performance as Diana Scott in Darling (1965) is ranked #75 on Premiere magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time (2006).
Inspired the song "Julie Christie" on the soundtrack for Better Than Chocolate (1999).
Turned down the role of Laura Fischer, Paul Newman 's girlfriend, in The Verdict (1982). Subsequently, Charlotte Rampling was cast in the role.
She reluctantly agreed to star in writer-director Sarah Polley 's debut feature-film Away from Her (2006) after many months of persuasion. Christie, who had acted previously with Polley, liked her script, but -- like Polley -- is ambivalent about her acting career. She finally capitulated and her brilliant performance in the film, which debuted at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and is due to be released in the United States in the Spring of 2007, has generated buzz predicting that the film likely will bring Christie her fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Friends with actresses Faye Dunaway , Shirley MacLaine , Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet .
Great admirer of Princess Diana of Wales and was extremely affected by her 1997 death.
Close friends with actress Goldie Hawn . The two women were introduced by Warren Beatty in the late 1960s. Beatty and Christie came to consider Goldie as family, and she co-starred with them in Shampoo (1975). Hawn also introduced Christie to yoga, which she still practices today.
Became very close with director Robert Altman while filming McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971). (Ironically, her lover and co-star Warren Beatty did not get along with Altman, primarily due to his use of overlapping dialog.) She later appeared as herself in Altman's classic Nashville (1975) and received an Oscar nomination starring in the Altman-produced Afterglow (1997), directed by Altman protégé Alan Rudolph . The two remained very close until Altman's death in 2006.
One of her first roles was playing young Anne Frank in a London theatrical production of "The Diary of Anne Frank".
Producer Joseph Janni , who produced four of Christie's earliest pictures ( Billy Liar (1963), Darling (1965), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and In Search of Gregory (1969)) and generally is credited, along with director John Schlesinger , in launching her career, created a complex tax shelter for Christie to insulate her earnings from the prohibitively high British tax rate during the 1960s. When the UK Inland Revenue finally investigated the tax shelter many years later, Inland Revenue officials declared it was one of the most complicated tax-avoidance scheme it had come across. Christie herself was cleared of any wrongdoing.
Said to have been the inspiration for the character Julie Baker in François Truffaut 's Day for Night (1973).
Is a huge fan of actress Meryl Streep .
Variety Club of Great Britain film Actress Award for 1965 for her performance in Darling (1965).
Variety Club of Great Britain Most Promising Newcomer Award 1963 joint winner with James Fox .
Her paternal half-sister June (1934-2005) was the product of an affair between Frank Christie and a teenage Indian peasant girl on the tea estate he managed in Chabua, Assam. June's existence was never spoken publicly about by Julie and their connection was only revealed for the first time in 2000 by biographer Anthony Hayward. Reportedly, Julie has gone to every effort to block June of her mind.
Was replaced by Vanessa Redgrave for the title role in Agatha (1979) after dropping out of the production due to an injury.
In March 1979, a 22-month-old boy drowned in a 2-ft. duck pond on Christie's farm in Wales. The infant's parents, Jonathan and Leslie Heale, were live-in caretakers of the property. Christie has never publicly spoken about the tragedy.
Her favorite cigarette brand is Craven A.
Her mother Rosemary (1912-1982), a Welsh painter, grew up with some of Richard Burton 's older siblings (Burton was the twelfth of thirteen children).
At one time, was dating musician Brian Eno .
Said in 2003 that her Oscar is boxed away in storage, showing off awards by displaying them in her home is something she does not do.
Currently resides in Ojai, California with her long-time companion, the journalist Duncan Campbell of the Manchester (UK) Guardian. [August 2006]
Turned down roles that went to Glenn Close in Cookie's Fortune (1999), Goldie Hawn in Town & Country (2001) and Celia Imrie in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011).
Subject of books: "Julie Christie" (1985) by Michael Feeney Callan, "Julie Christie" (2000) by Anthony Hayward and "Julie Christie: The Biography" (2009) by Tim Ewbank.
As of 2016 she is the 9th earliest living recipient of a Best Actress Oscar nomination, tied with Samantha Eggar and behind only Olivia de Havilland , Leslie Caron , Carroll Baker , Joanne Woodward , Shirley MacLaine , Doris Day , a tied Piper Laurie and Sophia Loren , and Julie Andrews . She was nominated (and won) for Darling (1965).
Personal Quotes (28)
[In the mid-1990s, on why she never got married] Men don't want any responsibility, and neither do I.
[on making Shampoo (1975) with Warren Beatty and Robert Towne ] We showcased an utterly immoral, grotesquely greedy, decadent society that we felt was imminent.
[on her relationship with Warren Beatty ] I'm terribly dependent on him, like a baby to its mother, so we travel backwards and forward to be with each other.
[on the prospect of her directing a film] Always a foot soldier, never a general.
[on fame] All that concentrated adulation is terribly corroding.
In the '60s, you did not know you were going to get older. But you do and you are. People become much dearer. When I see someone like Warren [ Warren Beatty ], with his four kids, there is that wonderful recognition of the life we have led. And a terrific sense of mortality, which is like a blessing almost: you suddenly realize what life is about.
All women are aware of that moment when suddenly the boys don't look at you. It's a fairly common thing, when suddenly you no longer attract that instant male attention because of the way you look. I never really knew how to enjoy beauty, but it took the form of a subconscious arrogance, expecting things, all muddled up with celebrity. Then you begin to deal with it. In the 1970s, I was amazed to be talked about as a 60s sex symbol. I wasn't that person, as if I were a doll from the past. I had to learn to come to terms with that. It's funny, it's silly, the ridiculousness of having asked so much of celebrity. Then it becomes really interesting and very much part of the excitement of the life you're living now, knowing you're approaching the end of it.
If I don't make films, no one is going to write about me. And most people have forgotten who I am anyway. My life is not interrupted because I am more or less anonymous.
What's most gratifying to me is Sarah Polley getting a nomination for screenplay adaptation. I was afraid she wouldn't be recognized. I wondered if they were going to get this great piece of work. I'm very glad I did it because it's a terribly important issue. We've got to face the fact that we're living longer. This is the comeuppance of wishing for immortality. Back in the day we weren't so obsessed about them [Oscars] in England. I didn't know about the Academy Awards. I didn't know what it was. I got the smell of the thing that it was terribly important but I wasn't interested in it, but I figured maybe I could get something out of this. I told them I would go if my boyfriend and I could get a holiday in the desert. It almost feels the same today.
Hollywood doesn't give a damn about me, and it is not going to change the way people think. Let's be realistic: you want to see people like Johnny Depp on the red carpet, or Angelina Jolie , a young woman I admire. That is the place for beautiful young people.
It felt, to me, like a permanent cocktail party, without the drinks. Acting took me away from real life to a pretend life. I wanted that real life back. I am not a dedicated actress, I'm afraid. I never have been.
Time has been savage in its relentless eating up of the years. Have I made the most of it? I have had an endless struggle not to be a coward about things. I know what I feel, but hate being looked at, hate doing anything in public, hate making speeches.
I am innumerate. I had great earning years, but it went through my fingers. I no longer have a career to build. So I do a few things to pay the bills. I cannot complain. I am comfortable, my God.
I cannot even talk about waste without being indignant. My introduction to Hollywood was a society that used it, sniffed it and threw it away. We've become a bit like that ourselves in the past 30 years. There's an attitude among the successful people of spend and spend, flaunt and flaunt, and don't think of anyone else.
It is a complicated business, and we are very insecure, we actors. We all feel - and fear - we are going to be found out at any moment. Someone is going to point and say, "You are really not very good, are you?".
I met such interesting people with Warren Beatty , whom I would never have met otherwise. And the film Shampoo (1975) stands the test of time. I cherish all those days. But I could not hack L.A., Hollywood was basically a throwaway society, run by publicity machines.
I found films to be turbulent and stressful. They have caused me an enormous amount of anxiety, because I do not have a lot of confidence. You are working, intellectually and mentally, and you are having to be with people and socialise all the time. Actors like it, on the whole, but I was not born with that quality. I am very quiet and would much prefer to talk to a few people rather than a crowd.
The film company wants you to look fantastic, and borrows clothes and diamonds from designers and jewelers for you to wear. I will not do that again. It is a pernicious pastime. Models wear designer things, so you become like a salesperson. There are actual signs outside the ceremony that say, "Turn around". Why? Because they want you to advertise the dress. I don't want to be involved in an advertising jamboree.
I could never really see the point of being high-profile when I loathed it so much. Every now and then, you can go to something like an Oscars ceremony, but nobody is holding a gun to your head. The rules were the same 40 years ago as they are now. You can either choose your spotlight - or you can stay at home.
[observation, 1966] Being on top right now is a fluke.
I know that I'm obviously not as famous as I was. I know that a whole generation of young people don't know anything about me. I haven't made (big) films for ages and ages. I make such tiny films.
I think I work, actually work, every 10 years. I don't care about pissing off Hollywood because it doesn't really exist anymore. But pissing off the media? It was difficult when I was a girl and they're not any kinder now. I just hate not being strong enough.
I know the sorts of things that appeal to me does not appeal the way that Forrest Gump (1994) does. I really like ambiguity and I really like all sorts of complexity.
Some of my opinions are quite radical.
I told a friend I wasn't going to a party because I was so shy. I couldn't socialize. And she said, "Oh, you must come. I've told everybody the prettiest girl in the world is going to come." And I thought, "But I'm an ugly girl," and I remember that clearly. So that was the turning point, because you've only got to be told about that once -- despite all that background of being told by the nuns about, "Making faces, Julie Christie, you're quite ugly enough as it is.".
[on what motivated her to get a facelift in her 50s] People who are older than you appear to be younger. It is really undermining. You know they are older than you, yet you look like their mother.
I'd rather talk to my ducks than some of the freaks I met in Hollywood.
[2008, on reports that she and longtime boyfriend Duncan Campbell recently snuck off for a secret wedding in India] Nonsense. I have been married for a few years. Don't believe what you read in the papers.
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Which artist created the Katzenjammer Kids? | Julie Christie | British actress | Britannica.com
British actress
Alternative Title: Julie Frances Christie
Julie Christie
Dame Maggie Smith
Julie Christie, (born April 14, 1941, Chukua, Assam , India ), British film actress renowned for a wide range of roles in English and American films of the 1960s and ’70s, as well as for her strikingly attractive looks and offbeat, free-spirited personality.
Julie Christie, 2008.
© Paul Smith—Featureflash/Shutterstock.com
Christie was born on her father’s Indian tea plantation but was educated in England and France. She studied acting at London’s Central School for Drama and made her stage debut in 1957. Her first major film role was in director John Schlesinger ’s Billy Liar (1963). In 1965 she found stardom and won an Academy Award for playing a self-destructive fashion model in Schlesinger’s Darling . That same year, she also appeared as the romantic heroine Lara in David Lean ’s enormously successful screen adaptation of Boris Pasternak ’s Doctor Zhivago . She played dual roles in director François Truffaut ’s production of Ray Bradbury ’s science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and portrayed the Thomas Hardy heroine Bathsheba in Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), her final theatrical film with Schlesinger.
Julie Christie in Darling (1965).
Embassy Pictures/The Kobal Collection
At the peak of her popularity, Christie made it a point to resist easy money and to be leery of fame. Often shunning the lure of mediocre Hollywood projects, the actress opted instead to play interesting roles in a series of films by respected international directors such as Lean, Truffaut, Richard Lester , Robert Altman , and Nicolas Roeg . Christie was comfortable in both contemporary and period pieces; in Lester’s Petulia (1968), she gave the defining performance of a 1960s free spirit, and in Altman’s period western McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), she won another Oscar nomination for her portrait of a tough, unflappable madam. In Roeg’s disturbing psychological thriller Don’t Look Now (1973)—a film that has become something of a cult classic—Christie turned in what was perhaps her most emotionally layered performance to date as a woman haunted by the deaths of her daughter and husband yet determined to maintain her poise and dignity.
Her romance with American actor, producer, and director Warren Beatty was echoed on-screen in three noteworthy films: McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Shampoo (1975), and Heaven Can Wait (1978). Christie appeared only sporadically in films during the 1980s, finding few compelling roles for an actress in her 40s. A notable exception was her performance in the 1983 made-for-television adaptation of Terence Rattigan ’s play Separate Tables.
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Editorial Reviews
Includes Johnny Angel; Bye Bye Birdie; Johnny Loves Me; I'm Growing Up; Telephone (Won't You Ring), and more.
Track Listings
5. Ronnie Call Me When You Get A Chance
6. I Left A Note To Say Goodbye
7. Welcome Home
8. Telephone (Won't You Ring)
9. Football Season's Over
Audio CD (July 19, 2005)
Original Release Date: July 19, 2005
Number of Discs: 1
By Jay on July 1, 2010
Format: Audio CD
If you are a fan of Shelley Fabares and love listening to the girl singers from the late 50s early 60s you will really enjoy listening to this cd. Johnny Angel has always been my all time favorite song and I have always thought that Shelley had a beautiful singing voice. These songs have an innocence and charm to them that made this music very pleasant and relaxing to listen to. I love listening to all these songs and hearing this music makes me feel very happy. I love also listening to the other girl singers from that same time period- Connie Francis - Annette - Brenda Lee - Connie Stevens - Lesley Gore . You will be very happy to have this cd in your collection. By the way I am 51 years old and I am a child of the 60s and a teenager of the 70s - so I discovered this music in 1976 when I was 17. At that time no one my age was listening to this music or even heard of it. After listening to this music for 34 years it still gives me so much pleasure to hear it. If anyone would like to comment on my review I look forward to hearing from you. Jay
| Shelley Fabares |
Which country does the airline VIASA come from? | Johnny Angel by Shelley Fabares Songfacts
Johnny Angel by Shelley Fabares Songfacts
Songfacts
This song is a tale of a girl who has a huge crush on a boy (Johnny) who has no knowledge of her. She loves him so much and is so desperate to win his heart that she turns down any other boy who asks her for a date.
Songwriters Lyn Duddy and Lee Pockriss wrote this song while they were trapped in Duddy's apartment during a blackout. They each had other songwriting partners (Pockriss and Paul Vance were the creative minds behind "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini") but with nothing else to do, they decided to brainstorm some ideas.
"I had always wanted to write a soliloquy - a song written from the point of view of someone who waited on the corner every night for someone to pass by," Duddy told Billboard. He had the idea for one called "Seven-thirty," but changed it to "Johnny Angel" when Pockriss suggested it should be a guy's name. "I just picked that name out of thin air. It didn't mean anything," he said. Although they produced a chart-topping hit out of their alliance, Duddy and Pockriss never worked together again.
Fabares, who was primarily an actress, sang this in an episode of The Donna Reed Show, in which she was a regular cast member. On that episode, her character Mary Stone abandons her plans to attend college to pursue a singing career.
This song features Glen Campbell and Carol Kaye on guitar, Hal Blaine on drums, and Darlene Love and the Blossoms on backup vocals. These were some of the top West Coast session musicians who played on hundreds of hits in the '60s.
"Johnny Loves Me," Fabares' follow-up hit, is a sequel to this song, telling how the girl won Johnny over; it was Fabares' last Top 40 hit.
Fabares did not consider herself a singer and thought that the voices of her backup vocalists were so "beautiful" that it frightened her to try to be a recording artist herself... but she managed it. Although she did have another Top 40 hit, it was obvious that her acting career would always be stronger. Her singing career ended in 1966. >>
Suggestion credit:
Jerro - New Alexandria, PA
In the movie Mermaids, you can hear this song when Charlotte (Winonna Ryder) sees Joey (Michael Schoeffling)for the first time. >>
Suggestion credit:
Amalia - Barranquilla, Columbia
This song has nothing to do with the 1945 film of the same name nor the NWF wrestler of the same name.
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Who directed Back To The Future? | Robert Zemeckis - IMDb
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Producer | Writer | Director
A whiz-kid with special effects, Robert is from the Spielberg camp of film-making ( Steven Spielberg produced many of his films). Usually working with writing partner Bob Gale , Robert's earlier films show he has a talent for zany comedy ( Romancing the Stone (1984), 1941 (1979)) and special effect vehicles ( Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Back to ... See full bio »
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Often uses a scene in a restaurant/bar, with the main character starting a fight and then fleeing out into the street, where a complicated chase ensues ( Back to the Future (1985), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990)). See more »
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| Robert Zemeckis |
Where was Che Guevara killed? | Back to the Future (1985) directed by Robert Zemeckis • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd
"I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet...but your kids are going to love it." - Marty McFly
I...oh, wow. Seriously, wow. WOW. WOW. WOW.
I need to calm down. How have I missed out on watching this properly for 16 years? 16 YEARS.
While it's not perfect, it's certainly one of the most feel-good films I've ever seen. Not for one moment did I not have a smile on my face. Very few movies are able to do that to me. The ratio of air-punching moments is off the scales, too. Even though I'd seen the ending a few times when I had caught the odd showing of this on ITV, there was a genuine sense of peril…
2
Beneath the now-iconic blend of plot, performances, music and dialogue that is "Back to the Future," beats the heart of one of filmdom's great adventures. It is a heart that beats robustly with imagination, comedy, and excitement. Robert Zemeckis's comic slice of science fiction adventure is truly one of the most entertaining films ever made.
The story is well-known: a 17-year-old Marty McFly pilots a time machine from 1985 to 1955, the year his parents were to meet and fall in love. Without jeopardizing his very existence, Marty must find a way to get back to the future. In the hands of Zemeckis, this story is sleek, clever, and full of the stuff that draws huge smiles across the faces…
12
How do you review a film that is to all intents and purposes a piece of entertainment perfection?
It uses an age old story telling conceit, that of the lost child that needs to find its way home, and molds that into a story of high adventure that is as engaging as it is unforgettable. Back to the Future has one goal and that is to entertain you without taking short cuts and making it easy for itself. It does so with a perfect script, an impeccable cast, intelligent direction and one of the best scores ever created.
It is astounding really how well this film works on all levels imaginable. In films these days I often miss the art…
I just want to forget the world around me and dull the self-acrimony; my roommate had never seen it before. She liked it, but she did not expect it to be quite as goofy as it was.
Other thoughts:
* When I was in college, my friends used to talk about getting a white lab coat, sitting in a physics lecture, waiting for the professor to start, then jumping up and screaming "1.21 gigawatts!" before running out. They never did it, and the world is poorer for it.
* Completely disgusting sexual politics, hinging the whole "romance" around sexual assault. Also somewhat gross to have a white guy inventing rock'n'roll, sorta, and inspiring Goldie.
* Huey Lewis and the News…
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Daryl Dragon used which name when he formed a 70s duo? | Tennille on the Captain: `I've never felt loved by him' - Entertainment - Daytona Beach News-Journal Online - Daytona Beach, FL
Tennille on the Captain: `I've never felt loved by him'
Wednesday
Apr 13, 2016 at 12:46 PM Apr 13, 2016 at 12:47 PM
By MIKE CIDONI LENNOXAP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES —�It wasn't love but inertia that kept them together.
That's the essence of "Toni Tennille: A Memoir" (Taylor Trade Publishing), which details the relationship of Daryl "the Captain" Dragon and Toni Tennille, better known as `70s pop-music duo the Captain & Tennille.
They had a top-40 pop-chart run from 1975-1980 with hits including "Love Will Keep Us Together" and "Do That to Me One More Time." There was a Grammy, a TV series, millions of album sales and a fan club.
Yet Toni Tennille says their marriage, which lasted from 1975 to 2013, was a flop.
"I've never felt loved by him," Tennille, now 75, said in a phone interview from her home in Lake Mary, Florida. "He just did not seem to be able to do that." (Dragon, in a written statement, declined a request for an interview.)
The couple met in 1972 near the end of the run of an ecological stage musical that Tennille had written. Dragon, who was called "Captain of the Keyboards" by the Beach Boys, was hired for the musical's band.
"I loved him madly at the very beginning," she said. "In my mind's eye, he was this one thing. But the truth was, he was this other thing that I would find out I would never, ever be able to change."
Tennille said Dragon's behavior over the years became increasingly eccentric, which slowly wore her down. He began to prefer the isolation of his bedroom, she said, and after he developed tremors, she eventually transitioned to full-time caretaker though she says he could have taken care of himself at that time.
So why did she stay?
"I didn't want to let the fans down," she said.
Tennille filed for divorce in January 2014. She said the split was amicable. The couple, who co-own a music publishing company, talk about personal and professional matters weekly, she said.
Dragon, 73, lives in Prescott, Arizona, where he's doing OK physically and is getting full-time care at home, Tennille said. "He has nothing that's life-threatening. He's probably going to outlive all of us. But it's sad to me when I think of what Daryl could have been, what more he could have contributed."
Tennille has family nearby in Florida. She gardens, she's a birder and, yes, she plays piano every once in a while but just for herself.
"You know, they called Harper Lee a recluse," she said. "But she wasn't. She had a life in her hometown with friends and family whom she loved and they loved her. And she was happy. And that's my dream: to have a quiet life. To be happy. To have a life like Harper Lee did."
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| Captain |
Which has the highest population, Rode island or South Dakota? | Captain & Tennille’s Biography — Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and photos at Last.fm
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Biography
The Captain & Tennille are a husband and wife US pop music duo who achieved super stardom success during the 1970s and early 1980s. The duo consists of The Captain, Daryl Frank Dragon (born August 27, 1942), and Tennille, Toni Tennille, (born Cathryn Antoinette Tennille on May 8, 1940).
Formed: 1973 in Los Angeles, CA
Styles: Adult Contemporary, Soft Rock, AM Pop, Pop/Rock
Group Members: Toni Tennille, Daryl Dragon
Biography:
Keyboardist/arranger "Captain" Daryl Dragon and his wife, singer/pianist Toni Tennille, scored a series of pop/rock hits in a light, romantic vein in the second half of the 1970s, the most successful of which was the first, "Love Will Keep Us Together." The couple met in the summer of 1971, when Dragon was engaged as the keyboard player for a musical revue, Mother Earth, composed by Tennille. Dragon, born August 27, 1942, in Los Angeles, was the son of conductor Carmen Dragon; his mother was a singer. He studied piano while growing up and briefly attended California State University at Northridge before dropping out to form an instrumental jazz trio with his brothers called the Dragons. The group released the single "Elephant Stomp"/"Troll" on Capitol Records in 1964, but its style was out of step with labelmates the Beatles, who dominated popular music at the time. In 1967, Dragon became a touring backup musician for the Beach Boys. He was dubbed "Captain Keyboard" by lead singer Mike Love because he always appeared on-stage in a yachting cap. In addition to touring with the Beach Boys, Dragon appeared on their albums of the period, including Sunflower and Holland, and he was billed as Rumbo on a British single released in 1970, "Sound of Free"/"Lady," credited to the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson & Rumbo.
Tennille, born Cathryn Antoinette Tennille on May 8, 1943, in Montgomery, AL, was the daughter of Frank Tennille, a big-band singer (under the name Clark Randall) who had given up music to run his family's furniture store, and Cathryn Tennille, who became a local television talk-show host. Tennille also studied piano and occasionally appeared on her mother's show as a child. She attended Auburn University, studying music. In 1965, she moved to California, where she married and divorced drummer Kenneth Shearer and became involved in the South Coast Repertory theater group, which led to her writing the music for an ecologically minded revue, Mother Earth. The show was performed in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where Dragon joined the band. After it closed, Dragon returned to the Beach Boys and arranged to have Tennille hired as a pianist and backup singer. (Mother Earth eventually earned a Broadway production that opened on October 19, 1972, and closed after 12 performances. Tennille was no longer involved with it at that stage, but she was credited for its music under her married name, Toni Shearer.)
Dragon and Tennille toured with the Beach Boys for a year, meanwhile becoming a romantic couple (they married in 1975), then left and began performing in Los Angeles clubs as a duo called Captain & Tennille. (Dragon insists that the name is not "The Captain & Tennille," although it is frequently printed that way.) In September 1973, they financed their own debut single, Tennille's romantic ballad composition "The Way I Want to Touch You," pressing up 500 copies on their own Butterscotch Castle Records label and earning airplay in Los Angeles. "The Way I Want to Touch You" was purchased by the large independent A&M Records, which re-released it and signed Captain & Tennille to a contract, apparently viewing them correctly as a slightly harder rocking, slightly sexier version of the Carpenters, who also recorded for the label. For their next single, Captain & Tennille covered Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield's "Love Will Keep Us Together," a song that had appeared recently on Sedaka's American comeback album, Sedaka's Back, even singing "Sedaka is back" at the end of the track. The disc became a number one, gold-selling hit, launching Captain & Tennille's career.
For the next two years, they could do no wrong commercially. (Rock critics, predictably, dismissed their middle-of-the-road pop style.) The Love Will Keep Us Together album spent two years in the charts and went gold. "The Way I Want to Touch You," released a third time, gave them their second gold single. "Lonely Night (Angel Face)," written by Sedaka and released in January 1976 in advance of their second album, Song of Joy, made that three gold singles. In February, "Love Will Keep Us Together" won the 1975 Grammy Award for Record of the Year. Song of Joy was a gold album upon release and later went platinum, spawning two more gold singles, a cover of the Miracles' "Shop Around" and Willis Alan Ramsey's "Muskrat Love."
In September 1976, The Captain & Tennille, a weekly hourlong musical variety series, debuted on the ABC television network, which apparently viewed them incorrectly as an answer to CBS' Sonny & Cher. The show proved to be Captain & Tennille's first false step, failing to earn high ratings and, in Dragon's judgment, overexposing the duo and thus hurting their record sales. Although ABC was willing to extend the series, the couple demurred, and the show went off the air after only one season in March 1977. "Can't Stop Dancin'," their disco-oriented new single, made the Top 20, but broke their string of Top Ten, gold-selling singles, and Come In from the Rain, their third album, also marked a drop in sales, although it went gold. The duo embarked on a four-month national tour in May 1977, playing 90 cities through September. In November, A&M released the profit-taking Captain & Tennille's Greatest Hits, suggesting that the label felt their best days were already behind them.
Dream, their fourth album, released in July 1978, never reached the Top 100, although it stayed in the charts twice as long as Come In from the Rain, buoyed by the Top Ten success of the Neil Sedaka composition "You Never Done It Like That." Captain & Tennille left A&M for Casablanca Records, a move that turned out to be unwise, since the formerly trendy label (known for Donna Summer and Kiss) was entering a decline. Nevertheless, their label debut, Make Your Move, released in the fall of 1979, returned them to gold record status, featuring the chart-topping hit "Do That to Me One More Time," written by Tennille. By 1980, however, Casablanca was nearly moribund and was not able to promote Captain & Tennille's sixth album, Keeping Our Love Warm, which failed to even reach the charts.
Captain & Tennille briefly moved to CBS, but the deal ended without any records being released. In 1982, they recorded an album called More Than Dancing for the tiny Australian label Wizard Records, which released it in Australia only in 1984. (It was reissued in Australia by Raven in 2002 with bonus tracks as More Than Dancing…Much More). Thereafter, they essentially retired as a recording act while still playing occasional shows. Tennille went on to a solo career as a singer of traditional pop, performing with big bands and releasing the albums More Than You Know (1984), All of Me (1987), Do It Again (1990), Never Let Me Go (1992), Things Are Swingin' (1994), Tennille Sings Big Band (1998), and Incurably Romantic (2001), while Dragon produced her records and ran Rumbo Recorders, a recording studio he had built in Los Angeles in 1979 that hosted major acts, including Guns N' Roses. (Dragon sold the studio in 2003.) In 1995, the two re-recorded some of their hits along with standards like "Unchained Melody" for the Captain & Tennille reunion album Twenty Years of Romance.
In the second half of the 1990s, Tennille became increasingly involved in stage musicals, starring, for example, in a touring company of Victor/Victoria in 1998, while Dragon joined ex-Beach Boy Al Jardine's "Beach Boys Family and Friends" troupe in 1999. Increasingly, however, the couple preferred to remain at their home in northern Nevada rather than perform on the road. In November 2003, Tennille gave a concert benefiting the Reno Chamber Orchestra. Dragon was her special guest, and the two performed half a dozen songs together, including several Captain & Tennille hits. The show was recorded, resulting in the double-CD An Intimate Evening with Toni Tennille, the first album to feature Captain & Tennille live performances, released exclusively by the Reno Chamber Orchestra through its website, http://renochamberorchestra.org . ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
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What was Oliver Reed's real first name? | Oliver Reed - Biography - IMDb
Oliver Reed
Biography
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Jump to: Overview (5) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (2) | Trade Mark (4) | Trivia (65) | Personal Quotes (35) | Salary (2)
Overview (5)
5' 11" (1.8 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Oliver Reed was born on February 13, 1938 in Wimbledon, London, England as Robert Oliver Reed. He was an actor, known for Gladiator (2000), Oliver! (1968) and Tommy (1975). He was married to Josephine Burge and Kate Byrne. He died on May 2, 1999 in Valletta, Malta.
Spouse (2)
Outspoken views a trademark especially his opinions of his co-stars or women in general.
Marvellous speaking voice
Often sported a thick handle-bar moustache
Ocean blue eyes
Trivia (65)
Shared the same dentist as horror star Christopher Lee
Needed 36 stitches to repair cuts on his face after a bar fight in 1963. The incident left him with a permanent scar, which he initially feared would put an end to his screen career.
He had two brothers. David Reed became his business manager and his half-brother Simon Reed became his press agent.
Nephew of the film director Sir Carol Reed , who directed him in one of his best roles, as the villainous Bill Sikes in Oliver! (1968).
Father of Mark Thurloe Reed (born January 21, 1961) with his first wife Kate Byrne and of Sarah Reed (born 1970) from his 12-year relationship to dancer Jacqueline Daryl .
He died of a heart attack in a bar after downing three bottles of Captain Morgan's Jamaica rum, eight bottles of German beer, numerous doubles of Famous Grouse whiskey and Hennessy cognac, and beating five much younger Royal Navy sailors at arm-wrestling. His bar bill for that final lunch time totaled 270 Maltese lira, almost £450, about $594.72.
He was severely injured and almost died during the filming of The Three Musketeers (1973) when he was stabbed in the throat during the windmill duel scene.
Grandson of actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree , who founded the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1904.
His first job (at the age of 17) was as a bouncer at a Soho nightclub.
Was dyslexic.
Cousin of actress Tracy Reed and of the actor David Tree .
He was related by marriage to fellow actor Edward Fox , who was once married to his cousin, Tracy Reed , daughter of director Sir Carol Reed .
Narrowly missed out on playing superspy James Bond because of his love of alcohol and fighting. A new biography of the star uncovered a letter from Bond mastermind Albert R. Broccoli outlining how close he came to replacing Sean Connery in the role. Broccoli wrote, "With Reed we would have had a far greater problem to destroy his image and re-mold him as James Bond. We just didn't have the time or money to do that." According to Cliff Goodwin , author of the book "Evil Spirits", "Oliver was probably within a sliver of being cast as Bond." He adds, "But by 1968 his affairs were public and he was already drinking and fighting - as far away from the refined Bond image as you could get.".
By the mid-1970s he was considered by many to be Britain's biggest movie star. He declined roles in The Sting (1973) and Jaws (1975) because he didn't want to relocate to Los Angeles. Both of these roles were taken by fellow British hellraiser Robert Shaw . However, a Hollywood executive claimed, "Reed didn't turn us down. We turned him down. We like our stars to have respect - Oliver Reed didn't respect anyone and he showed it."
The actor he admired most was Errol Flynn .
He was a close friend of The Who 's drummer Keith Moon .
In 1973 Steve McQueen flew to England to meet Reed and discuss a possible film collaboration. "Reed showed me his country mansion and we got on well," recalled McQueen. "He then suggested he take me to his favorite London nightclub." The drinking, which started at Reed's home, Broome Hall, continued into the night until Reed could hardly stand. Suddenly, and with no apparent warning, he vomited over McQueen's shirt and trousers. "The staff rushed around and found me some new clothes, but they couldn't get me any shoes," said McQueen. "I had to spend the rest of the night smelling of Oliver Reed's sick."
Along with Michael Winner, former snooker champion Alex Higgins, himself suffering from throat cancer, were the only celebrities to attend Reed's funeral in Ireland.
His wrestling scene with Alan Bates in Women in Love (1969) was the first time full frontal male nudity had featured in a mainstream movie.
Reed died during the filming of Ridley Scott 's Gladiator (2000), and it cost the company $3 million to recreate his face so he could "appear" in the scenes he still had left to shoot.
Agreed to appear in the small but vital role of casino boss Eddie Mars in The Big Sleep (1978) just because he admired the film's star Robert Mitchum so much.
Described his role as Father Grandier in Ken Russell 's The Devils (1971) as the best performance he ever gave.
He named his favorite American actors as Lee Marvin , Rock Hudson and Rod Steiger .
In 1968 he was signed to star as William the Conqueror in a British film about the Norman Conquest, but the project fell through.
He never had any acting training or stage experience.
For a brief period in the late 1960s Reed was the highest paid actor in Europe, but by the early 1980s he was reduced to starring in dire European films.
At the time of his death he was signed to play Albert Finney 's role in My Uncle Silas (2001).
During the Falklands War in 1982, the highly patriotic Reed covered his house in a huge Union Jack flag and decorated every room with military memorabilia.
According to director Ken Russell , the original script for Women in Love (1969) did not include the famous nude wrestling scene because he felt it wouldn't pass the censors and would be difficult to shoot. It wasn't until Reed talked him into it by literally throwing his weight around--he wrestled Russell in his kitchen, pinned him down, and wouldn't let him up unless he agreed to shoot it.
At age 22, Reed was paid £90 per week for his first starring role in The Curse of the Werewolf (1961). But the film would not be seen in Spain for many years. It was banned because it was thought the film portrayed Spain as a backward nation.
He never forgot his Hammer roots. After hitting the big time, he went back to pay homage to his horror beginnings to narrate the full Hammer retrospective, a reminder that his voice was the one quality the English critics admired about him.
Reed remains the only British film star who never had any stage work of any kind. A 1980s National Portrait Gallery show noted this, saying he was their only pure film actor.
He starred in the first film to say "fuck", I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967). He also starred in the first British film to be rated X just for the violent content, Sitting Target (1972).
The public house in Malta in which he died, previously known as "The Pub", was renamed "Ollie's Last Pub" in his memory.
Some obituaries mentioned the similarity between Reed's death and Robert Newton 's. Newton, who had played Bill Sykes in David Lean 's non-musical version of Oliver Twist (1948), was a notoriously heavy drinker. He remained sober while filming Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), which was supposed to be a big comeback for him as an actor. Toward the end of filming, however, he indulged in one final drinking marathon and died from a heart attack, aged only 50. Similarly, Reed remained sober while filming Gladiator (2000) - intended as a big comeback - but died from a heart attack after allowing himself one final binge.
Owned a villa in the south of France next door to Jack Hawkins ' villa.
On location for The Hunting Party (1971), Reed bemoaned the necessity of faking an American accent and this, coupled with his love of Broome Hall and English pubs, was enough to cement his decision not to move to Hollywood.
Bought Broome Hall, a 63-bedroom Victorian mansion in Surrey, in 1970.
He was a fan of James Dean in East of Eden (1955) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
Lost weight to appear in Castaway (1986) on a diet of vodka.
Had a tattoo on his penis. According to Patrick Warburton , Reed showed him the tattoo the first day they worked together.
He was nearly killed in a friendly sword-fight with director Ken Russell . He described the incident in the December 1973 issue of Photoplay Film Monthly: "Ken Russell came down here last Sunday and we had a fight. I have two large, double-handed swords and he nearly killed me. He tore my shirt right down to here, and I was only fighting with a small sword, from The Three Musketeers (1973), and I said, "I'm going to kill you!" So, he said, "I'm going to kill you!!" All his viewfinders and his pince nez, and his silver hearts with "I am allergic to aspirin" on them, his Mickey Mouse shoes, his pontification about people's varicose veins, that was all blown to the wind. He left here at four. He said, "you didn't really mean that about killing me, did you?" But we were very serious at the time. But whatever it is that allows for that lunacy or sense of the ridiculous comes across in the work that we do. He's extraordinarily talented.".
Once reckoned that the strenuous filming of The Devils (1971) took four years off his natural life.
Had an intense dislike for Jack Nicholson , whom he called "a balding midget". (Reed claimed Nicholson was only 5'7" tall).
Infamously clashed with Shelley Winters on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson: Episode #11.137 (1972). He got angry at her for constantly jokingly interrupting the stories he was trying to tell and, when Winters had to leave the show early, Reed told Johnny Carson that he thought that women belong in the kitchen. She returned and poured a cup of water over his head. He then claimed it was whiskey that she poured over him.
Said that when he made the infamous drunken appearance on the Michael Aspel chat show when he sang a raucous rendition of "Wild Thing", that the producers of that show had plied him with spirits in the green room prior to the interview so that he was already plastered when he came on stage.
In 1979 he published an autobiography, entitled "Reed All About Me". Asked to describe the book by an interviewer he replied, "It's a load of bollocks really.".
He once described his purpose in life as "shafting the girlies and downing the sherbie.".
Was heavily criticized in the late 1980s for appearing in exploitation films produced by the infamous impresario Harry Alan Towers , most of which were filmed in South Africa under the apartheid regime, and released straight to video in the US and UK.
In order to avoid charges of nepotism Reed deliberately avoided working for his uncle, director Sir Carol Reed , until he was already established as a star in British movies.
He stated in 1974 his favorite book was "The House on Pooh Corner" by A.A. Milne .
He enjoyed playing golf and (lawn) bowls.
He loved horses all his life and also enjoyed breeding and rearing them.
He suffered from acute tinnitus for many years.
He won army sprint races while serving his national service.
Buried in Bruhenny Cemetery in Buttevant, Cork (Ireland). His grave-site was picked so that it was in full view of his favorite pub.
His paternal great-grandfather, Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm, was of German, Lithuanian, and Dutch ancestry.
He appeared in four Robert Louis Stevenson adaptations: The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960), Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype (1980), Black Arrow (1985) and Treasure Island (1990).
He appeared in two Best Picture Academy Award winners: Oliver! (1968) and Gladiator (2000).
He played Yvonne Romain 's son in The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) and her brother in The Brigand of Kandahar (1965).
He turned down the role of Doyle Lonnegan in The Sting (1973) but later played the role in The Sting II (1983).
He was arrested for walking in public without clothes while filming The Brood (1979) and for fighting in a bar just after filming had ended on Spasms (1983).
At his trial in 2014 Max Clifford claimed he had helped cover up Reed's liking for underage girls.
Personal Quotes (35)
You meet a better class of people in pubs.
I do not live in the world of sobriety.
My only regret is that I didn't drink every pub dry and sleep with every woman on the planet.
I believe that my woman shouldn't work outside the home. When I come home and I'm tired from filming all day, I expect her to be there and make sure that everything is cool for me. You know, like drawing my bath and helping me into bed. That's the kind of job she had and, in return for it, she can bear my children and if any man talks bad to her, I'll hit him.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) was about the only time I've been allowed to do what I want with a part. You can be over-directed by people, but Terry [ Terry Gilliam ] let me have my own way. There was a scene we rehearsed on Saturday where we really hit our stride. When we resumed, Terry said on the Sunday, "You seemed to be having much more fun with the character yesterday. Could you take it a bit further? I didn't need to be told twice! Once I realized I could get away with it, off I went!
There is, of course, a world of difference between cricket and the movie business . . . I suppose doing a love scene with Raquel Welch roughly corresponds to scoring a century before lunch.
American men like their women to have these special teeth and be perfectly coiffured and have amazing breasts. Have you seen an Italian mama with those kinds of teeth, that kind of hair, and that kind of waist? They're not like that. They're in the kitchen cooking for their families - doing what they should do. I believe my woman shouldn't work outside the home.
I also use women as a sex object; maybe I'm kinky. However, I like to talk to them as well.
I like the effect drink has on me. What's the point of staying sober?
I'm the biggest star this country has got, destroy me and you destroy the whole British film industry.
Richard Burton was hitting the bottle with Jimmy Hurt the night before his death. He knew it was going to kill him, but he did not stop. I don't have a drink problem. But if that was the case and doctors told me I would have to stop, I'd like to think I would be brave enough to drink myself into the grave.
Life shouldn't be about sitting around staring at frosted glass. Life should be lived and that's all there is to it.
Nicholson [ Jack Nicholson ]? As far as I'm concerned, he's a balding midget. He stands five-foot-seven, you know. He tries to play heavies and doesn't quite make it.
I'm not a villain. I've never hurt anyone. I'm just a tawdry character who explodes now and again.
I like to give my inhibitions a bath now and then.
I do think a carpenter needs a good hammer to bang on the wall.
I have made many serious statements -- I just can't remember any of them. I guess they mustn't have been very important.
I have two ambitions in life: one is to drink every pub dry, the other is to sleep with every woman on earth.
Once a pirate, always a pirate. I'm a buccaneer - a bucco - through and through. I'm the same old Ollie I was years ago. Ollie Reed doesn't change.
My acting school was, and still is, life in the raw - the whole wide world as a stage. I didn't go into a shop full of mirrors, I stayed outside and gazed at the reflections of life. I've got a lot of performances stored away at the back of my mind, ready to come out in front of the cameras when they are needed.
I was disappointed in Sonja Henie . Her legs were muscle-bound and unattractive and didn't give me the urge to give her one.
At one point I would have liked the role of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1970). Then I saw it done by Laurence Olivier on television and he was so good that I decided to forget about it.
[on The Devils (1971)] It vividly shows a side of the church that was never scrutinized attentively or even less accepted. The film shows that the monarchy can be weak, that the church can be corrupt, that society can admit that it has a lot to learn. I think these kinds of things were hidden from audiences for a long time. The masses go to the movies, not the intellectual elites.
I didn't go to acting school, only to normal school. I'm not for acting schools because I suspect that the majority of the teachers are there because they can't find work as actors or because they think they can teach people to act but haven't had much experience themselves in the field. What I mean is that my skepticism derives from the fact that I believe that for an actor it's much more important to learn with the audience . . . the audience is the real teacher and it's the audience that has taught me what I know. The audience's reaction tells me what I need to do, just as the audience's reaction makes you into a first-rate star. It's easy: the important thing is that a sufficient number of people, an audience, in a sufficient number of countries is willing to spend money to go see this actor. At this point the movie producers interfere and ask you to work on this or that film. And then one becomes an actor with international success depending on the public's reaction.
Theatre doesn't interest me. It doesn't interest me because in England theatre means warm gin during intermission, not being able to smoke in the theatre, eat chocolates and try to find out who else is present in order to then greet them in the foyer. Going to this or that theatre premiere is very much an "in" thing to do. But this is only one of the reasons; the second reason is a bit more professional. Logically speaking, I think that for an actor or an actress working in the theatre is boring, but I am not referring to theatre actors who have always worked there, and this my own boring opinion, but because it means reciting the same lines every night six nights a week, not counting matinées . . . boring, don't you think?
I think that the most important achievement of my career was getting paid for something that I really wanted to do.
[on his role as Father Grandier in The Devils (1971)] You would think from the critics' hostility that Ken Russell had tried to pull off some obscene hoax. On the contrary, the film is, I think, an utterly serious attempt to understand the nature of religious and political persecution. It is not in any way exaggerated. If anything, the horrors perpetrated in Loudun in the 17th century were worse than Russell has chosen to show . . . the character of the priest was a marvelous one to act. Ken Russell's brother-in-law is an historian and he helped me research Grandier's life, with particular reference to his thesis in celibacy. The people of Loudun loved him. He walked among the plague victims and comforted them. I started to play him as a priest and realized that he was a politician.
I bluster my way through, and I sing rather like a rugby forward. Tommy (1975) is an amazing visual film and the music is astonishing. I think for anyone to translate The Who 's music in terms of images, it must be somebody like [ Ken Russell ]--or a lunatic!
[on his role as Father Grandier in The Devils (1971)] It was certainly the most difficult and the most strenuous part I have ever played. And I think, quite important.
[on public reaction to The Devils (1971)] I remember noticing the gleam in [ Ken Russell 's] eye while everybody was working away on the set, so I knew something good was going on. What they said afterward was totally incredible. We were regarded as pornographers in Italy. We'd have been arrested if we went there.
[on directors Michael Winner and Ken Russell ] Winner gave me my bread and Russell gave me my art.
[on making The Devils (1971)] It was a difficult and tiring role. I don't think anyone in their right mind would say that they had fun shooting that film. It wasn't created with the intent of having fun or being pleasurable; on the contrary, it was analyzed acutely and made with extreme seriousness. It was definitely a film about a certain society and the things that society did. We tried to show that humans are diabolical or can be as diabolical as in the film. I didn't have fun, it was four months of hard work and if anyone has the courage or the desire to sit his ass down on a firecracker and scream for four months with Ken Russell yelling in your ears, well . . .
[on criticism of The Devils (1971)] It was very disturbing to make. I still haven't got over it... Where do you draw the line? This is the way it happened - those nuns were used for political ends, toted round France as a side show for a year. Do you ignore the actual historical accuracy and the fact that the Church, the politicians and the aristocracy were corrupt? I get so angry with the opinion makers who class it with the sex films. If we ignore history because it was unpleasant we're going to end up with nothing but nature films.
One day I should like to live in Ireland. I love the Irish, the more I see of other races the more I believe the Irish are the only real people left, and apart from that they have space and clear air in which to wander and think and to feel free.
[on claims he only got into movies because of his uncle] I am not a product of nepotism.
Salary (2)
| Robert |
Which country does the airline Sansa come from? | Oliver Reed - Actors and Actresses - Films as Actor:, Publications
Oliver Reed - Actors and Actresses
Oliver Reed - Actors and Actresses
Nationality: British. Born: Robert Oliver Reed in Wimbledon, Surrey, 13 February 1938; the nephew of the director Carol Reed. Family: Married 1) Kate Byrne, two children; 2) Josephine Burge, 1985. Career: Worked as nightclub bouncer, boxer, and cab driver; military service in the Medical Corps; 1960—film debut in The Angry Silence ; 1968–69—roles in Oliver! and Women in Love brought critical attention; 1993—in TV mini-series Return to Lonesome Dove . Died: 2 May 1999 in Valletta, Malta, of heart attack.
Films as Actor:
1960
The Angry Silence (Green) (as Mick); The League of Gentlemen (Dearden); The Bulldog Breed (Asher); Beat Girl ( Wild for Kicks ) (Greville) (as Plaid Shirt); Sword of Sherwood Forest (Fisher) (as Melton); The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll ( House of Fright ) (Fisher)
1961
His and Hers (Hurst) (as Poet); The Curse of the Werewolf (Fisher) (as Leon); The Rebel ( Call Me Genius ) (Day); No Love for Johnnie (Thomas)
1962
The Damned ( These Are the Damned ) (Losey) (as King); The Pirates of Blood River (Gilling) (as Brocaire); Captain Clegg ( Night Creatures ) (Scott) (as Harry Crabtree)
1963
Paranoiac (Francis) (as Simon Ashby); The Scarlet Blade (Gilling) (as Capt. Sylvester); The Party's Over (Hamilton)(as Moise)
1964
Read All about Me (autobiography), London, 1979.
By REED: article—
Interview in Arena (London), Spring 1992.
On REED: book—
D'Arcy, Susan, The Films of Oliver Reed , London, 1975.
On REED: articles—
Ecran (Paris), December 1979.
Ramirez, Anthony, "Oliver Reed, Diverse Actor for Film and TV, Dies at 61," in The New York Times , 3 May 1999.
Obituary in Variety (New York), 10 May 1999.
"Rogue Trip: Boisterous and Bibulous to the Very End, Actor Oliver Reed Enjoyed a Famously Spirited Life," in People Weekly , vol. 51, no. 18, 17 May 1999.
Time International , 17 May 1999.
Lucas, Tim, "A Toast to Mr. England," in Film Comment (New York), vol. 35, no. 4, July 1999.
* * *
Time and more than his fair share of bad films have tended to relegate Oliver Reed to the status of a washed-up middle-aged actor whose early promise has expired under a morass of inferior work. Certainly his appearances in the grisly, post- Wild Bunch splatter Western The Hunting Party , the snake-on-the-loose horror thriller Venom , and the comic book Condorman offered little opportunity for him to reveal either talent or screen presence. Yet there is nothing to be gained from merely pointing to Reed's long list of bad films and dismissing him on this basis. Nor would it be justified. From his first starring role in Terence Fisher's The Curse of the Werewolf to collaborations with Richard Lester and, especially, Ken Russell, with whom Reed's tempestuous nature formed an ideal match, Oliver Reed exhibits at his best a powerful screen persona which bad films have tarnished but not destroyed completely.
Cast early on as a thug or teddy boy in several British kitchen sink and juvenile delinquency dramas, Reed had his first major role as the title character in Curse for Hammer Films (he had had a small part as a bouncer in the same studio's The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll , also directed by Terence Fisher, released the previous year). Parts in other of the studio's horror and action thrillers quickly followed, most notably the scenery-chewing psycho in Paranoiac . His career advanced considerably when he met Ken Russell, for whom he starred as the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Russell's BBC biopic Dante's Inferno . Their association continued with Russell's breakthrough film, Women in Love , in which Reed co-starred, through several other Russell extravaganzas ( Mahler , Lisztomania ) in which the actor took cameos. Reed had his biggest success as the murderous Bill Sikes in Oliver! , the film adaptation of the hit musical based on Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist . The director, Carol Reed, was his uncle, who, detesting nepotism, declined considering his nephew for the part; the latter won it entirely on his own by auditioning. He has worked steadily since, but has never quite achieved the star status Oliver! so auspiciously hinted at.
A comparison of several of Reed's major roles apart from Sikes, but certainly not excluding it—Leon in Curse , Grandier in The Devils , and Athos in The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers —provides some insight into his success. In the case of the first, we have a man torn between a desire for love and a destructive animal rage which eventually overcomes and destroys him. Romance in the form of Christina (Catherine Feller) can conquer his werewolf side but circumstances tear them apart. Grandier is a priest who sees no contradiction between his clerical vows and the pursuit of physical pleasure. This "immoral" man becomes the most moral of all when he takes a lone and fatal stand against the government figures who wish to destroy the independence of the city of Loudon. Athos, who drinks and fights with no regard for public opinion or his own safety, is also a nobleman whose genuine love for a harlot, Milady (Faye Dunaway), lost him his honor. In all three cases Reed skillfully conveys the contradictions inherent in the characters—quiet introspection alternating with harsh violence.
It is true that Reed cannot on his own redeem a mediocre film, but then it is difficult to think of any actor who could have salvaged anything from Z.P.G. , Tomorrow Never Comes , or Sting II (where Reed took the part created by Robert Shaw). He often seems uncaring in his choice of roles. But he clearly knows a good project when it comes along (he told David Cronenberg that The Brood was the best script he had read since The Devils ).
It is encouraging, however, that recent supporting roles such as Vulcan in Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Münchausen , Billy Bones in Fraser Heston's version of Treasure Island , and the wry, drunken priest in Stuart Gordon's Russell homage, The Pit and the Pendulum , have brought him the praise he often deserves.
—Daniel O'Brien, updated by John McCarty
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Who wrote the song Harper Valley PTA? | Harper Valley P.T.A. by Jeannie C. Riley Songfacts
Harper Valley P.T.A. by Jeannie C. Riley Songfacts
Songfacts
The country singer Margie Singleton asked Tom T. Hall to write her a song similar to " Ode To Billie Joe ," which she had covered the previous year. After driving past a school called Harpeth Valley Elementary School in Bellevue, Tennessee, he noted the name and wrote "Harper Valley P.T.A." about a fictional confrontation between a young widow Stella Johnson and a local PTA group who objected to her manner of dress, social drinking, and friendliness with town's men folk. Jeannie C. Riley, who was working as a secretary in Nashville for Jerry Chesnut, got to hear the song and recorded it herself and it became a massive hit for her.
A "PTA" is a Parent Teacher Association. Popular in small towns of the United States, the organizations work to improve school conditions and encourage communication between parents and teachers. In some cases, the members of PTAs can be righteous and petty, and the characters in this song are depicted as such. The song struck a nerve with many women who felt some empathy with the character Stella Johnson.
Tom T. Hall is known as a Country music storyteller and he has racked up a number of solo hits, including 7 #1 Country singles. In 1974 he had a #12 pop hit in the States with "I Love," a sentimental list of things he likes. He recalled to The Boot in a 2011 interview that the song was based on a true story. Said the songwriter: "I chose the story to make a statement but I changed the names to protect the innocent. There were 10 kids in our family. We'd get up in the morning and my mother and father would get bored with us running around and we'd go terrorize the neighbors up and down this little road we lived on. After we had done our chores, of course.
I was just hanging around downtown when I was about nine years old and heard the story and got to know this lady. I was fascinated by her grit. To see this very insignificant, socially disenfranchised lady - a single mother - who was willing to march down to the local aristocracy and read them the riot act so to speak, was fascinating."
This won the 1968 Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Vocal Performance. It was also voted the Single of the Year by the Country Music Association.
This had the then biggest chart leap in American history, going from #81 to #7 in one week.
This topped both the Pop and Country charts in America, the first song by a female country artist to achieve this feat.
This proved to be Riley's only major Pop hit single, though she had further success on the Country charts. In the mid-'70s Riley became a Christian and began recording on the God's Country label. In 1981, she recorded the Gospel album From Harper Valley To The Mountain Top. Throughout the '80s and '90s, she continued to be a popular contemporary Christian recording and performing artist.
This hit inspired a 1978 film and a 1981 spin-off television series, both starring Barbara Eden playing Stella Johnson.
Tom T. Hall, who wrote this song, had planned a career as a journalist or novelist until the success of this song threw him into the spotlight. He told The Boot: "That song was my novel. I had been reading Sinclair Lewis. As a young man I read Lewis' novels Babbitt and Elmer Gantry, which is about hypocrisy. Babbitt is, of course, about the social structure of the small town. So being a big Sinclair Lewis fan, when I wrote 'Harper Valley' I incorporated elements of Elmer Gantry into the song."
| Tom T. Hall |
What was Elvis's last No 1 in his own lifetime? | Tom T. Hall - Harper Valley P.T.A. lyrics | LyricsMode.com
Tom T. Hall Tom T. Hall –
Harper Valley P.T.A. lyrics
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Tom T. Hall – Harper Valley P.T.A. lyrics
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Who choreographed the first performance of Copland's Rodeo? | Bonds test 10 the 20th century ch. 49-60 - Exam 1) Ruth Crawford was the
Bonds test 10 the 20th century ch. 49-60
Bonds test 10 the 20th century ch. 49-60 - Exam 1) Ruth...
SCHOOL
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Exam • 1 ) • Ruth Crawford was the first woman ever to be awarded a prestigious: (2.5pts) • Fibonacci Fellowship in numerical based composition. • Grammy Award in composition. • Guggenheim Fellowship in composition. • Emmy Award in performance. Answer : Corre ct Points: 2.5 • 2 ) • Ruth Crawford was the mother of: (2.5pts) • Taylor Dane. • Bob Dylan. • Pete Seeger. • John Lennon. Answer : Corre ct Points: 2.5 • 3 ) • William Grant Still's "A Black Pierrot" is based upon the poetry of: (2.5pts) • Robert Frost. • Langston Hughes. • Edgar Allen Poe.
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• the unknown poet. Answer : Corre ct Points: 2.5 • 4 ) • In "Hoe-Down" from Rodeo, Aaron Copland orchestrates his music in an extremely open fashion, which means he: (2.5pts) • composes in a public area where all can see him working. • uses the full range of registers from highest to lowest and leaves much space between groups. • leaves some parts unwritten and "open" for improvisation. • uses no cadences or final sounds, keeping the movements open for additions and improvements. Answer : Corre ct Points: 2.5 • 5 ) • The American dancer who danced the role of the Cowgirl in the premiere of Copland's Rodeo in 1942 was: (2.5pts) • Agnes de Mille, who also choreographed this production and is one of the most influential figures in American ballet. • Martha Graham, who barely beat out her friend Agnes de Mille for the role. • Bob Fosse, who choreographed many Broadway shows won numerous awards throughout his career. • Ginger Rogers, who also danced in many classic American films with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. Answer Corre
: ct Points: 2.5 • 6 ) • Aaron Copland received: (2.5pts) • The Congressional Gold Medal award in 1986. • no awards during his lifetime. • the modern ballet Composer d'excellence award immediately after the premiere of Rodeo. •
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| Agnes de Mille |
Who wrote Riders of the Purple Sage? | Aaron Copland: Biography - Classic Cat
Aaron Copland
14 nov 1900 (Brooklyn) - 2 dec 1990 (New York)
Buy sheetmusic from Copland at SheetMusicPlus
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900 – December 2, 1990) was an American composer of concert and film music. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, he was widely known as "the dean of American composers." [1] Copland's music achieved a balance between modern music and American folk styles. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are said to evoke the vast American landscape.
Copland incorporated percussive orchestration , changing meter , polyrhythms , polychords , and tone rows in a broad range of works for the concert hall, theater, ballet and films. In addition to being a composer, Copland was a teacher, lecturer, critic, writer and conductor – generally, but not always, of his own works.
Contents
Early life
Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College (part of the City University of New York)
Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn of Lithuanian Jewish descent, the last of five children. Before emigrating from Scotland to the United States, Copland's father, Harris Morris Copland, Anglicized his surname "Kaplan" to "Copland". [2] Throughout his childhood, Copland and his family lived above his parents' Brooklyn shop, H.M. Copland's, at 628 Washington Avenue (which Aaron would later describe as "a kind of neighborhood Macy's "), [3] [4] on the corner of Dean Street and Washington Avenue, [5] and most of the children helped out in the store. His father was a staunch Democrat. The family members were active in Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes , where Aaron celebrated his Bar Mitzvah . [6] Not especially athletic, the sensitive young man became an avid reader and often read Horatio Alger stories on his front steps. [7]
Copland's father had no musical interest at all but his mother, Sarah Mittenthal Copland, sang and played the piano, and arranged for music lessons for her children. Of his siblings, oldest brother Ralph was the most advanced musically, proficient on the violin, while his sister Laurine had the strongest connection with Aaron, giving him his first piano lessons, promoting his musical education, and supporting him in his musical career. [8] She attended the Metropolitan Opera School and was a frequent opera goer. She often brought home libretti for Aaron to study. [9] Copland attended Boys' High School and in the summer went to various camps. Most of his early exposure to music was at Jewish weddings and ceremonies, and occasional family musicales. [6]
At the age of eleven, Copland devised an opera scenario he called Zenatello, which included seven bars of music, his first notated melody. [10] From 1913 to 1917 he took music lessons with Leopold Wolfsohn , who taught him the standard classical fare. Copland's first public music performance was at a Wanamaker recital. [11]
By the age of 15, after attending a concert by composer-pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski , Copland decided to become a composer. [12] After attempts to further his music study from a correspondence course, Copland took formal lessons in harmony, theory and composition from Rubin Goldmark , a noted teacher and composer of American music (who had given George Gershwin three lessons). Goldmark gave the young Copland a solid foundation, especially in the Germanic tradition, as he stated later: "This was a stroke of luck for me. I was spared the floundering that so many musicians have suffered through incompetent teaching." [13] But Copland also commented that the maestro had "little sympathy for the advanced musical idioms of the day" and his "approved" composers ended with Richard Strauss . [14]
Copland's graduation piece from his studies with Goldmark was a three-movement piano sonata in a Romantic style. But he had also composed more original and daring pieces which he did not share with his teacher. [15] In addition to regularly attending the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Symphony, where he heard the standard classical repertory, Copland continued his musical development through an expanding circle of musical friends. After graduating from high school, Copland played in dance bands. [16] Continuing his musical education, he received further piano lessons from Victor Wittgenstein , who found his student to be "quiet, shy, well-mannered, and gracious in accepting criticism." [17] Copland's fascination with the Russian Revolution and its promise for freeing the lower classes drew a rebuke from his father and uncles. [18] In spite of that, in his early adult life Copland would develop friendships with people with socialist and communist leanings. [19]
Studying in Paris
From 1917 to 1921, Copland composed juvenile works of short piano pieces and art songs. [20] Copland's passion for the latest European music, plus glowing letters from his friend Aaron Schaffer, inspired him to go to Paris for further study. [21] His father wanted him to go to college, but his mother's vote in the family conference allowed him to give Paris a try. On arriving in France, he studied at the Fontainebleau School of Music with noted pianist and pedagogue Isidor Philipp and with Paul Vidal. But finding Vidal too much like Goldmark, Copland switched to famed teacher Nadia Boulanger , then age thirty-four. He had initial reservations: "No one to my knowledge had ever before thought of studying with a woman." [22] She interviewed him, and recalled later: "One could tell his talent immediately." [23] was another of his teachers at Fontainebleau.[ citation needed ]
Boulanger had as many as forty students at once and employed a formal regimen that Copland had to follow, too. Copland found her incisive mind much to his liking and stated: "This intellectual Amazon is not only professor at the Conservatoire, is not only familiar with all music from Bach to Stravinsky, but is prepared for anything worse in the way of dissonance. But make no mistake...A more charming womanly woman never lived." [24] Though he planned on only one year abroad, he studied with her for three years, finding her eclectic approach inspired his own broad musical taste.
Adding to the heady cultural atmosphere of the early 1920s in Paris was the presence of expatriate American writers Paul Bowles , Ernest Hemingway , Sinclair Lewis , Gertrude Stein , and Ezra Pound , as well as artists like Picasso , Chagall , and Modigliani . [25] Also influential on the new music were the French intellectuals Marcel Proust , Paul Valéry , Sartre , and André Gide , the latter cited by Copland as being his personal favorite and most read. [26] Travels to Italy, Austria, and Germany rounded out Copland's musical education. During his stay in Paris, Copland began writing musical critiques, the first on Gabriel Fauré , which helped spread his fame and stature in the music community. [27] Instead of wallowing in self-pity and self-destruction like many of the expatriate members of the Lost Generation , Copland returned to America optimistic and enthusiastic about the future. [28]
1925 to 1950
Upon returning to America, Copland was determined to make his way as a full-time composer. He rented a studio apartment on the Upper West Side, which kept him close to Carnegie Hall and other musical venues and publishers. He remained in that area for the next thirty years, later moving to Westchester County, New York. Copland lived frugally and survived financially with help from two $2,500 Guggenheim Fellowships --one in 1925 and one in 1926. [29] Lecture-recitals, awards, appointments and small commissions, plus some teaching, writing, and personal loans kept him afloat in the subsequent years through World War II. [30] Also important were wealthy patrons who supported the arts community during the Depression, underwriting performances, publication and promotion of musical events and composers. [30]
Copland's compositions in the early 1920s reflected the prevailing "modernist" attitude among intellectuals: that they were a small vanguard leading the way for the masses, who would only come to appreciate their efforts over time. In this view, music and the other arts need be accessible to only a select cadre of the enlightened. Toward this end, Copland formed the Young Composer's Group , modeled after France's "Six" , gathering together promising young composers, acting as their guiding spirit. [31]
Soon after his return, Copland was introduced to the artistic circle of Alfred Stieglitz and met many of the leading artists of that time. Stieglitz's conviction that the American artist should reflect "the ideas of American Democracy" influenced Copland and a whole generation of artists and photographers, including Paul Strand , Edward Weston , Ansel Adams , Georgia O'Keeffe , and Walker Evans . [32] Evans' photographs inspired portions of Copland's opera The Tender Land. [33]
In his quest to take up Stieglitz's challenge, Copland had few established American contemporaries to emulate apart from Carl Ruggles and the reclusive Charles Ives , although the 1920s were Golden Years for American popular music and jazz, with George Gershwin , Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong leading the way. [34] Later, however, Copland joined up with his younger contemporaries and formed a group termed the "commando unit," which included Roger Sessions , Roy Harris , Virgil Thomson , and Walter Piston . [35] They collaborated in joint concerts showcasing their work to new audiences.
Copland's relationship with the "commando unit" was one of both support and rivalry, and he played a key role in keeping them together. The five young American composers helped promote each other and their works but also had testy exchanges, inflamed by the assertion of the press that Copland was the "truly American" composer. [36] Going beyond the five, Copland was generous with his time with nearly every American young composer he met during his life, later earning the title the "Dean of American Music." [37]
Mounting troubles with the Symphonic Ode (1929) and Short Symphony (1933) caused him to rethink the paradigm of composing orchestral music for a select group, as it was a financially contradictory approach, particularly in the Depression. In many ways, this shift mirrored the German idea of Gebrauchsmusik ("music for use"), as composers sought to create music that could serve a utilitarian as well as artistic purpose. This approach encompassed two trends: first, music that students could easily learn, and second, music which would have wider appeal, such as incidental music for plays, movies, radio, etc. [38] Copland undertook both goals, starting in the mid 1930s.
Perhaps motivated by the plight of children during the Depression, around 1935 Copland began to compose musical pieces for young audiences, in accordance with the first goal of American Gebrauchsmusik. These works included piano pieces (The Young Pioneers) and an opera (The Second Hurricane). [39]
During the Depression years, Copland traveled extensively to Europe, Africa and Mexico. He formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chavez and would return often to Mexico for working vacations conducting engagements [40] During his initial visit to Mexico, Copland began composing the first of his signature works, El Salón México , which he completed four years later in 1936. This and other incidental commissions fulfilled the second goal of American Gebrauchsmusik , creating music of wide appeal.
During this time, he composed (for radio broadcast) "Prairie Journal," one of his first pieces to convey the landscape of the American West. [41] Branching out into theater, Copland also played an important role providing musical advice and inspiration to The Group Theater — Stella Adler 's and Lee Strasberg 's "method" acting school. [42] The Group Theater followed Copland's musical agenda and focused on plays that illuminated the American experience. After Hitler and Mussolini's attacks on Spain in 1936, leftist parties had united in a Popular Front against Fascism. Many Group Theater members were influenced by Marxism and other progressive philosophies, and several had joined the Communist Party, including Elia Kazan and Clifford Odets . [43] Copland also had contact later with other major American playwrights, including Thorton Wilder , William Inge , Arthur Miller , and Edward Albee and considered projects with all of them. [44] During the 1930s, Copland wrote incidental music for several plays, including Irwin Shaw 's "Quiet City" (1939), considered one of his most personal and poignant scores. [45]
In 1939, Copland completed his first two Hollywood film scores, for Of Mice and Men and Our Town , and received sizable commissions. In the same year, he composed the radio score "John Henry", based on the folk ballad. [46] But it wasn’t until the worldwide market for classical recordings boomed after World War II that he achieved economic security. Even after securing a comfortable income, he continued to write, teach, lecture and eventually conduct. [47]
Demonstrating his broad range, Copland in the 1930s began composing music for ballet, including his highly successful Billy the Kid (1939), the second of four ballets he scored (after Hear Ye! Hear Ye! (1934)). [48] Copland's ballet music established him as an authentic composer of American music much as Stravinsky's ballet scores established him with Russian music. [49] Copland's timing was excellent; he helped fill a vacuum for the American choreographers who needed suitable music to score their own nationalistic dance repertory. [50]
In keeping with the wartime period, Copland's "Piano Sonata" (1941) was a piece characterized as "grim, nervous, elegiac, with pervasive bell-like tolling of alarm and mourning." It was later adapted to "Day on Earth," a landmark American dance by Doris Humphrey. [51]
Copland started to publish some of his lectures in the 1930s, "What to Listen for in Music" being one of the most notable of his writings. [46] He also took a leadership role in the American Composers Alliance, whose mission was "to regularize and collect all fees pertaining to performance of their copyrighted music" and "to stimulate interest in the performance of American music." [52] Copland eventually moved over to rival ASCAP . [53] Through royalties and with his great success from 1940 on, Copland amassed a multi-million dollar fortune by the time of his death. [54]
The decade of the 1940s was arguably Copland's most productive, and it firmly established his worldwide fame. His two ballet scores for Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1944) were huge successes. His pieces Lincoln Portrait and Fanfare for the Common Man have become patriotic standards (See Popular works, below). Also important was the Third Symphony. Composed in a two-year period from 1944 to 1946, it became the most popular American symphony of the 20th Century. [55]
In 1945, Copland contributed to Jubilee Variation, a work commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony in which ten America composers collaborated. But the piece is seldom heard in the concert hall. [56] Copland's In the Beginning (1947) is a choral work using the first chapter and the first seven verses of the second chapter of Genesis from the King James Version of the Bible and is a masterpiece of the choral repertory. [57]
Copland's Clarinet Concerto (1948), scored for solo clarinet, strings, harp, and piano, was a commission piece for bandleader and clarinetist Benny Goodman and a complement to Copland's earlier jazz-influenced work, the Piano Concerto (1926). [58] His "Four Piano Blues" is an introspective composition with a jazz influence. [59]
Copland finished the 1940s with two film scores, one for William Wyler 's 1949 film , The Heiress and one for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck 's novel The Red Pony . [60]
In 1949, he returned to Europe to find Pierre Boulez dominating the group of post-War radical musicians. [61] He also met with the proponents of the twelve-tone school (Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg) and found himself having greater sympathy for them than he did for the French, whom he felt were drifting too far from classical principles to suit his taste. [62]
1950s and 1960s
In 1950, Copland received a Fulbright scholarship to study in Rome, which he did the following year. Around this time, he also composed his Piano Quartet, adopting Schoenberg's twelve-tone method of composition, and Old American Songs (1950), premiered by William Warfield . [63]
Because of the political climate of that era, A Lincoln Portrait was withdrawn from the 1953 inaugural concert for President Eisenhower . That same year, Copland was called before Congress , where he testified that he was never a communist. [64]
Despite the difficulties that his suspected Communist sympathies posed, Copland nonetheless traveled extensively during the 1950s and early 1960s, observing the avant-garde styles of Europe while experiencing the new school of Soviet music. In addition, he was rather taken with the work of Toru Takemitsu while in Japan and began a correspondence with him that would last over the next decade. Copland wrote of the Japanese composer: "He has the 'pure gold' touch, he chooses his notes carefully and meaningfully." [65] Copland also gained exposure to the latest musical trends in Poland and Scandinavia. In observing these new musical forms, Copland revised his text "The New Music" with comments on the styles that he encountered. In particular, while Copland explained the importance of the work of John Cage and others (in his chapter titled "The Music of Chance"), he found that these radical trends in music which appealed to those "who enjoy teetering on the edge of chaos" were less likely to gain the appreciation of a wider audience "who envisage art as a bulwark against the irrationality of man's nature." As he summarized: "I’ve spent most of my life trying to get the right note in the right place. Just throwing it open to chance seems to go against my natural instincts." [66]
In 1954, Copland received a commission from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein to create music for the opera The Tender Land , based on James Agee 's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men . [67] Copland had been leery of writing an opera, being especially aware of the pitfalls of that form, including weak libretti and demanding production values. [68] Nevertheless, Copland decided to try his hand at "la forme fatale," especially as the 1950s were boom times for American playwrights, with Arthur Miller , Clifford Odets and Thorton Wilder doing some of their best work. [68] Originally two acts, The Tender Land was later expanded to three. As Copland feared, critics found the libretto to be the opera's weakness, and he later stated: "I admit that if I have one regret it is that I never did write a 'grand opera'." [69] In spite of its flaws, the opera has established itself as one of the few American operas in the standard repertory.
Copland exerted a major influence on the compositional style of an entire generation of American composers, including his friend and protégé Leonard Bernstein . Bernstein was considered the finest conductor of Copland's works and cites Copland's "aesthetic, simplicity with originality" as being his strongest and most influential traits. [70]
Later life
From the 1960s onward, Copland's activities turned more from composing to conducting. Though not enamored with the prospect, he found himself without new ideas for composition, saying: "It was exactly as if someone had simply turned off a faucet." [71] Copland was a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the US and the UK. He made a series of recordings of his music, primarily for Columbia Records . In 1960, RCA Victor released Copland's recordings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra of the orchestral suites from Appalachian Spring and The Tender Land; these recordings were later reissued on CD, as were most of Copland's Columbia recordings (by Sony).
Copland's health deteriorated through the 1980s , and he died of Alzheimer's disease and respiratory failure on 2 December 1990, in North Tarrytown, New York (now Sleepy Hollow). Much of his large estate was bequeathed to the creation of the Aaron Copland Fund for Composers, which bestows over $600,000 per year to performing groups. [72]
Personal life
Copland was a calm, affable, modest and mild-mannered man, who masked his feelings. Even friends found it hard to crack his façade. Although shy, he preferred to be in a crowd rather than alone. He lived simply and approached composing in the same manner. He was an avid reader. He always remained thrifty, even after he achieved substantial wealth. In company, Copland could be "almost devilishly droll " and fun-loving. His tact served him well in his private life and in his public life as a moderator, committee man, and teacher. [73] Copland was a constant and diligent worker and a night owl, who composed primarily at the piano and at a relatively slow pace. He was careful in assembling and storing his documents and scores, so he could later find and re-use earlier ideas and themes. [74]
Deciding not to follow the example of his father, a solid Democrat, Copland never enrolled as a member of any political party, but he espoused a general progressive view and had strong ties with numerous colleagues and friends in the Popular Front, including Odets. [75] Copland supported the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1936 presidential election , at the height of his involvement with The Group Theater , and remained a committed opponent of militarism and the Cold War, which he regarded as having been instigated by the United States. He condemned it as, "almost worse for art than the real thing". Throw the artist "into a mood of suspicion, ill-will, and dread that typifies the cold war attitude and he'll create nothing". [76] In keeping with these attitudes, Copland was a strong supporter of the Presidential candidacy of Henry A. Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket. As a result, he was later investigated by the FBI during the Red scare of the 1950s and found himself blacklisted . Copland was included on an FBI list of 151 artists thought to have Communist associations. Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn questioned Copland about his lecturing abroad, neglecting completely Copland's works which made a virtue of American values. [77] Outraged by the accusations, many members of the musical community held up Copland's music as a banner of his patriotism. The investigations ceased in 1955 and were closed in 1975. Though taxing of his time, energy and emotional state, Copland's career and international artistic reputation were not seriously affected by the McCarthy probes. [78] In any case, beginning in 1950, Copland, who had been appalled at Stalin's persecution of Shostakovich and other artists, began resigning from participation in leftist groups. He decried the lack of artistic freedom in the Soviet Union, and in his 1954 Norton lecture he asserted that loss of freedom under Soviet Communism deprived artists of "the immemorial right of the artist to be wrong." He began to vote Democratic, first for Stevenson and then for Kennedy. [56]
Copland is documented as a homosexual man in author Howard Pollack's biography, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man. Like many of his contemporaries he guarded his privacy, especially in regard to his homosexuality, providing very few written details about his private life. However, he was one of the few composers of his stature to live openly and travel with his lovers, most of whom were talented, much younger men. Among Copland's love affairs, most of which lasted for only a few years yet became enduring friendships, were ones with photographer Victor Kraft, artist Alvin Ross , pianist Paul Moor, dancer Erik Johns , and composer John Brodbin Kennedy . [79]
Composer
Main article: List of compositions by Aaron Copland
Influences
Copland's earliest musical inclinations as a teenager ran toward Chopin , Debussy , Verdi and the Russian composers. Some of his preferences might also have been formed by the anti-German feelings during World War I, as later he studied German music. [80] Copland's curiosity about the latest music from Debussy and Scriabin was frustrated by the fact that sheet music for "avant-garde" works was expensive at that time and hard to come by. [18] So he borrowed these works from a music library and studied them intensely. Some of his earliest compositions were songs and piano pieces inspired by these European influences. [23]
Copland's teacher and mentor Nadia Boulanger was his most important influence. In gratitude for the immense support and promotion on his behalf, he stated to her in 1950: "I shall count our meeting the most important of my musical life...Whatever I have accomplished is intimately associated in my mind with those early years, and with what you have since been as inspiration and example." [81] Of all her students, she listed Copland first. [82] Copland especially admired Boulanger's total grasp of all classical music, and he was encouraged to experiment and develop a "clarity of conception and elegance in proportion." Following her model, he studied all periods of classical music and all forms—from madrigals to symphonies. This breadth of vision led Copland to compose music for numerous settings—orchestra, opera, solo piano, small ensemble, art song, ballet, theater and film. Boulanger particularly emphasized "la grande ligne" (the long line), "a sense of forward motion...the feeling for inevitability, for the creating of an entire piece that could be thought of as a functioning entity." [81]
In discovering Johann Sebastian Bach , Copland pointed out: "[Bach has an] inexhaustible wealth of musical riches, which no music lover can afford to ignore...What strikes me most markedly about Bach's work is the marvelous rightness of it. It is the rightness not merely of a single individual, but a whole musical epoch." [83] Copland stated that an ideal music might combine Mozart 's "spontaneity and refinement" with Palestrina 's "purity" and Bach's "profundity". [84]
Copland was excited to be so close to the new post-Impressionistic French music of Ravel , Roussel , and Satie , as well as Les six , a group that included Milhaud , Poulenc , and Honegger . Webern , Berg , and Bartók also impressed him. Copland was "insatiable" in seeking out the newest European music, whether in concerts, score reading or heated debate. These "moderns" were discarding the old laws of composition and experimenting with new forms, harmonies and rhythms, and including the use of jazz and quarter-tone music. [85] Serge Koussevitzky had just arrived in Paris and was adding to the ferment by conducting and promoting the new music of Russia and France. Later he would conduct many Copland premieres in New York. [86] Among the first performances that Copland attended was Milhaud's La création du monde , which caused riots in Paris. [87] Milhaud was Copland's inspiration for some of his earlier "jazzy" works. He was also exposed to Schoenberg and admired his earlier atonal pieces, thinking Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire a landmark work comparable to Stravinsky's " The Rite of Spring ." Copland even tried out Schoenberg's innovative twelve-tone system and adapted it to his style. [88]
Above all others, Copland named Igor Stravinsky as his "hero" and his favorite twentieth century composer. [88] Stravinsky was in many ways his premiere model. [89] Stravinsky's rhythm and vitality is apparent in many of his works. [90] Copland especially admired Stravinsky's "jagged and uncouth rhythmic effects," "bold use of dissonance," and "hard, dry, crackling sonority." [88] Copland was similarly but not quite as strongly impressed by Sergei Prokofiev 's "fresh, clean-cut, articulate style." [91]
Another inspiration for much of Copland's music was jazz . Although familiar with jazz back in America—having listened to it and also played it in bands—he fully realized its potential while traveling in Austria: "The impression of jazz one receives in a foreign country is totally unlike the impression of such music heard in one's own country...when I heard jazz played in Vienna, it was like hearing it for the first time." [75] He also found that the distance from his native country helped him see the United States more clearly. Beginning in 1923, he employed "jazzy elements" in his classical music, but by the late 1930s , he moved on to Latin and American folk tunes in his more successful pieces. [92] His earlier works especially demonstrate the influence of jazz rhythmic, timbral and harmonic practices. That influence is apparent in a few later works, such as the Clarinet Concerto commissioned by Benny Goodman . During the late 1920s and 1930s, Copland sought out jazz at the Cotton Club and heard Duke Ellington , Benny Carter and Bix Beiderbecke , among others. Of Duke Ellington among other jazz composers, Copland said he was "the master of them all." [93]
Although Copland was intrigued by the idea of a "jazz concerto" and "symphonic jazz," his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra did not succeed in that form as had those of Maurice Ravel and George Gershwin, who was praised by such eminent musical exiles as Schoenberg, Bartók, and Stravinsky (Gershwin had recently died at 38 and so was no longer a potential rival). [92] Copland would go on to write extensively and deliver the Norton lectures about jazz in America, especially the Big Band sound (1930s) and Cool West Coast Jazz (1950s). [94] Yet, enthusiastic as he was about jazz throughout his life, Copland also recognized its limitations:
"With the [Piano] Concerto I felt I had done all I could with the idiom, considering its limited emotional scope. True, it was an easy way to be American in musical terms, but all American music could not possibly be confined to two dominant jazz moods — the blues and the snappy number." [95]
Although his early focus of jazz gave way to other influences, Copland continued to make use of jazz in more subtle ways in later works. [92] But it was the synthesizing of all his influences and inclinations which create the "Americanism" of his music. [96] Copland pointed out in summarizing the American character of his music, "the optimistic tone", "his love of rather large canvases", "a certain directness in expression of sentiment", and "a certain songfulness". [97] As he advanced in his career (by 1941), he said of himself and advised other composers:
"I no longer feel the need of seeking out conscious Americanisms [folksongs and folk rhythms]. Because we live here and work here, we can be certain that when our music is mature it will also be American in quality."
In contradiction to this statement, however, he continued to look for and employ folk material for several more years. [98]
Copland's work from the late 1940s onward included experimentation with Schönberg 's twelve-tone system, resulting in two major works, the Piano Quartet (1950) and the Piano Fantasy (1957). [99]
Early work
Copland's earliest compositions before leaving for Paris were short works for piano and some art songs , inspired mostly by Liszt and Debussy. He experimented with ambiguous beginnings and endings, rapid key changes, and the frequent use of tritones. [23] His first published work was The Cat and the Mouse (1920), a piano solo piece based on a Jean de la Fontaine fable. [100] In Three Moods (1921), Copland's final movement is entitled "Jazzy", which he noted "is based on two jazz melodies and ought to make the old professors sit up and take notice". [101]
One of Copland's first significant works upon returning from his studies in Paris was the necromantic ballet Grohg. This ballet, suggested to Copland by the film Nosferatu , a free adaptation of the Dracula tale, provided the source material for his later Dance Symphony. [102] Originally intended as an orchestral exercise while he was studying in Paris, Copland completed it as a full orchestral score after returning to New York in 1925. [103] It too had "jazz elements" as did many of Copland's works in the 1920s.
Copland's Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924) brought him into contact with Serge Koussevitzky , a conductor known as a champion of "new music", and another figure who would prove to be influential in Copland's life, perhaps the second most important after Boulanger. [104] Koussevitzky performed twelve Copland works during his tenure as conductor of the Boston Symphony. Copland's relationship with Koussevitzky was apparently unique, as his interpretations of Copland's works reflected the particular admiration that the latter had for the young composer. [105] Copland's Music for the Theatre (1925) and the Piano Concerto (1926) were both composed for Koussevitzky. [106]
Other major works of his first period include the Piano Variations (1930), and the Short Symphony (1933). However, this jazz-inspired period was relatively brief, as his style evolved toward the goal of writing more accessible works using folk sources.
Popular works
Impressed with the success of Virgil Thomson's "Four Saints in Three Acts", Copland wrote El Salón México between 1932 and 1936, which met with popular acclaim, in contrast to the relative obscurity of most of his previous works. It appears he intended it to be a popular favorite, as he wrote in 1927: "It seems a long, long time since anyone has written an Espana or a Bolero—the kind of brilliant piece that everyone loves." [107] Copland derived freely from two collections of Mexican folk tunes, changing pitches and varying rhythms. [108] The use of a folk tune with variations set in a symphonic context started a pattern he repeated in many of his most successful works right on through the 1940s. [109] This work also marked the return of jazz patterns to Copland's compositional style, though they appeared in a more subdued form than before and were no longer the centerpiece. Chavez conducted the premiere, and El Salón México became an international hit, gaining Copland wide recognition. [110]
Copland achieved his first major success in ballet music with his groundbreaking score Billy the Kid, based on a Walter Noble Burns novel, with choreography by Eugene Loring. [111] The ballet was among the first to display an American music and dance vocabulary, adapting the "strong technique and intense charm of Astaire" and other American dancers. [112] It was distinctive in its use of polyrhythm and polyharmony , particularly in the cowboy songs. [113] The ballet premiered in New York in 1939, with Copland recalling "I cannot remember another work of mine that was so unanimously received." [114] John Martin wrote, "Aaron Copland has furnished an admirable score, warm and human, and with not a wasted note about it anywhere." [115] It became a staple work of the American Ballet Theatre , and Copland's twenty minute suite from the ballet became part of the standard orchestral repertoire. When asked how a Jewish New Yorker managed so well to capture the Old West, Copland answered "It was just a feat of imagination." [116]
In the early 1940s, Copland produced two important works intended as national morale boosters. Fanfare for the Common Man , scored for brass and percussion , was written in 1942 at the request of the conductor Eugene Goossens , conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra . It would later be used to open many Democratic National Conventions, and to add dignity to a wide range of other events. [117] Even musical groups from Woody Herman 's jazz band to the Rolling Stones adapted the opening theme. Emerson, Lake & Palmer recorded a "prog rock" version of the composition in 1977. [118] The fanfare was also used as the main theme of the fourth movement of Copland's Third Symphony , where it first appears in a quiet, pastoral manner, then in the brassier form of the original. [119] In the same year, Copland wrote A Lincoln Portrait , a commission from conductor André Kostelanetz , leading to a further strengthening of his association with American patriotic music. [120] The work is famous for the spoken recitation of Lincoln's words, though the idea had been previously employed by John Alden Carpenter 's "Song of Faith" based on George Washington 's quotations. [121] "Lincoln Portrait" is often performed at national holiday celebrations. Many Americans have performed the recitation, including politicians, actors, and musicians and Copland himself, with Henry Fonda doing the most notable recording. [117]
Continuing his string of successes, in 1942 Copland composed the ballet Rodeo , a tale of a ranch wedding, written around the same time as Lincoln Portrait . Rodeo is another enduring composition for Copland and contains many recognizable folk tunes, well-blended with Copland's original music. Notable in the final movement, is the striking "Hoedown". This was a recreation of Appalachian fiddler W. M. Stepp's version of the square-dance tune "Bonypart" ("Bonapart's Retreat"), which had been transcribed for piano by Ruth Crawford Seeger and published in Alan Lomax and Seeger's book, Our Singing Country (1941). For the "Hoedown" in Rodeo Copland borrowed note for note from Seeger's piano transcription of Stepp's tune. [122] This fragment (lifted from Ruth Crawford Seeger) is now one of the best-known compositions by any American composer, having been used numerous times in movies and on television, including commercials for the American beef industry. [123] The ballet, originally titled "The Courting at Burnt Ranch", was choreographed by Agnes de Mille , niece of film giant Cecil B. DeMille . [124] It premiered at the Metropolitan Opera on October 16, 1942 with de Mille dancing the principal "cowgirl" role and the performance received a standing ovation. [125] A reduced score is still popular as an orchestral piece, especially at "Pops" concerts.
Copland was commissioned to write another ballet, Appalachian Spring , originally written using thirteen instruments, which he ultimately arranged as a popular orchestral suite . [126] The commission for Appalachian Spring came from Martha Graham , who had requested of Copland merely "music for an American ballet". Copland titled the piece "Ballet for Martha", having no idea of how she would use it on stage but he had her in mind. "When I wrote ‘Appalachian Spring’ I was thinking primarily about Martha and her unique choreographic style, which I knew well…And she's unquestionably very American: there's something prim and restrained, simple yet strong, about her which one tends to think of as American." [127] Copland borrowed the flavor of Shaker songs and dances, and directly used the dance song Simple Gifts . [128] Graham took the score and created a ballet she called Appalachian Spring (from a poem by Hart Crane which had no connection with Shakers). It was an instant success, and the music later acquired the same name. Copland was amused and delighted later in life when people would come up to him and say: "Mr. Copland, when I see that ballet and when I hear your music I can see the Appalachians and just feel spring." Copland had no particular setting in mind while writing the music, he just tried to give it an American flavor, and had no knowledge of the borrowed title. [129]
Symphonic works
Copland composed three numbered symphonies, but applied the word "symphony" to more than just symphonies of typical structure. He rewrote his early three-movement Organ Symphony omitting the organ, calling the result his First Symphony. His fifteen-minute Short Symphony was the Second Symphony, though it also exists as the Sextet. His Dance Symphony was hurriedly extracted from the earlier unproduced ballet Grohg to meet an RCA Records commission deadline.
The Third Symphony is in the more traditional format (four movements; second movement, scherzo; third movement, adagio) and is his most famous symphony. At forty minutes, it is his longest orchestral composition. [130] He composed it with Koussevitzky's unique character in mind, "I knew exactly the kind of music he enjoyed conducting and the sentiments he brought with it, and I knew the sound of his orchestra, so I had every reason to do my darnedest to write a symphony in the grand manner." [130] Among the details of interest in the work is Copland's use of palindromic structure—whole movements as well as melodies end as they began. [131] Completing the work after World War II was won by the Allies, he stated that the symphony was "intended to reflect the euphoric spirit of the country at the time." [130] The work received generally strong acclaim. Koussevitzky "declared it simply the greatest American symphony ever written." Arthur Berger stated that it achieved "a kind of panorama of all the musical resources that have through the years formed his musical language." While Leonard Bernstein "deemed it the epitome of a decades-long search by many composers for a distinctly American music." [132] It is the best known, most performed, and most recorded American symphony of the 20th Century. [133]
Later work
Copland's work in the late 1940s and 1950s included use of Schönberg 's twelve-tone system, a development that he recognized as important, but which he did not fully embrace. His first result was his "Piano Quartet" (1950). [134] However, he found the atonality of serialized music to run counter to his desire to reach a wide audience. So, in contrast to the Second Viennese School, Copland's use of the system emphasized the importance of the "classicalizing principles", in order to prevent the material from falling into "near-chaos". [135]
In 1951, Copland undertook one of his most challenging works, the "Piano Fantasy" (1957) which he labored over for several years. [99] It was a commission for the young virtuoso pianist William Kapell , who died in an airplane crash in 1953 during the years of the work's development. The piece adapted the twelve-tone system as a ten-note row, reserving the last two notes as a tonal resolution and anchor. [136] Critics lauded the effort, calling the piece "an outstanding addition to his own oeuvre and to contemporary piano literature" and "a tremendous achievement". Jay Rosenfield stated, "This is a new Copland to us, an artist advancing with strength and not building on the past alone." [137]
Other late works include: "Dance Panels" (1959, ballet music), "Something Wild" (1961, his last film score), "Connotations" (1962, for the new Lincoln Center Philharmonic hall), "Emblems" (1964, for college bands), "Night Thoughts" (1972, for the Van Cliburn Piano Competition), and "Proclamation’" (1982, his last work, started in 1973). [138]
Film composer
By the 1930s, Hollywood began to beckon "serious" composers with promises of better films and higher pay. [139] The reality, however, was that few found good projects. [140] Copland sought to enter that arena, as both a challenge for his abilities as a composer and an opportunity to expand his reputation and audience for his more serious works. Unlike the total attention he would hope to get from a concert-goer, Copland wrote that film music had to achieve a balance. It should be "secondary in importance to the story being told on the screen" while notably adding to the dramatic and emotional content of the film—but without diverting the viewer's attention from the action. [141]
Upon arriving in Hollywood in 1937, he had high hopes: "It is just a matter of finding a feature film that needs my kind of music." [142] What he found, however, was the ongoing tendency of studios to edit and cut movie scores, which often subverted a composer's intentions. No projects seemed suitable at first. But his patience paid off two years later when Copland found a kindred spirit in director Lewis Milestone, who allowed Copland to supervise his own orchestration and who refrained from interfering with his work. Copland composed three of his five film scores for Milestone. [143]
This collaboration resulted in the notable film Of Mice and Men (1939), from the novel by John Steinbeck , that earned Copland his first nomination for an Academy Award ( he actually received two nominations, one for "best score" and another for "original score"). [144] He considered himself lucky with his first film score: "Here was an American theme, by a great American writer, demanding appropriate music." [143] Having accepted small sums for other projects in the past, especially to help out cash-strapped productions involving friends, this time Copland would capitalize on his efforts: "I thought if I was to sell myself to the movies, I ought to sell myself good." From then on, he became one of Hollywood's highest paid film composers, earning as much as $15,000 per film. [30]
In a departure from other film scores of the time, Copland's work largely reflected his own style, instead of the usual borrowing from the late-Romantic period. Many silent and early talking films used classical music themes directly, both in the credit sequences and during the action. But with Copland, the film score's purpose was more comprehensive and subtle, setting the atmosphere of time and place, illustrating the thoughts of the actors, providing continuity and filler, and shaping the emotion and drama. [145] He often avoided the full orchestra, and he rejected the common practice of using a leitmotiv to identify characters with their own personal themes. He instead matched a theme to the action, while avoiding the underlining of every action with exaggerated emphasis.
Another technique Copland employed was to keep silent during intimate screen moments and only begin the music as a confirming motive toward the end of a scene. [146] Virgil Thompson wrote that the score for "Of Mice and Men" established "the most distinguished populist musical style yet created in America." [144] Many composers who scored for western movies, particularly between 1940 and 1960, were influenced by Copland's style, though some also followed the "Max Steiner" approach, which was more bombastic and obvious. [145] As a commentator on film scores, Copland singled out Bernard Herrmann , Miklós Rózsa , Alex North and Erich Korngold as innovative leaders in the field. [147]
Copland's score for The North Star (1943) was nominated for an Academy Award , and his score for William Wyler's 1949 film , The Heiress won the award. [148] Several themes from his scores are incorporated in the suite Music for Movies. [60] His score for the film adaptation of John Steinbeck 's novel The Red Pony was arranged by commission of the Houston Symphony Orchestra as a suite for their performance in October 1948 and became widely popular. His score for the 1961 independent film Something Wild was released in 1964 as Music For a Great City. Copland also composed scores for two documentary films , The City (1939) and The Cummington Story (1945). [149]
When commenting on the effectiveness of film scores, Copland said: "I'd love to be able to have audiences see a film with the music, then see it a second time with the music turned off, and then see it a third time with the music turned on. Then, I think they'd get a much more specific idea of what the music does for a film.". [150]
Critic, writer, and teacher
Starting with his first critiques in 1924, Copland began a long career as music critic, teacher, and observer, mostly of contemporary classical music. [151] He was an avid lecturer and lecturer-performer. He wrote reviews of specific works, trends, composers, festivals, books about music, and recordings. [152] He took on a wide range of issues from the most general ("Creativity") to the most practical ("Composer Economics"). Copland also wrote three books, "What to Listen for in Music (1939)", "Our New Music (1941)", and "Music and Imagination" (1952). [153] He had a long list of notable students (see below). Copland put a good deal of time and energy into supporting young musicians, especially through his association with the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, both as a guest conductor and teacher. [154] In working with young composers, Copland thought it more important to focus on expressive content than on technical points. [155]
Conductor
Copland studied conducting in Paris in 1921, but not until his involvement conducting his own Hollywood scores, did he undertake it except out of necessity. On his international travels in the 1940s, however, he began to make appearances as a guest conductor, performing his own works. By the 1950s, he was conducting the works of other composers as well. From the 1960s on, he conducted far more than he composed. [156]
A self-taught conductor, Copland developed a very personal style. He occasionally asked friend Leonard Bernstein for advice. Copland took an understated and unpretentious approach to conducting and modeled his style after other composer/conductors such as Stravinsky and Hindemith. [157] Observers of Copland noted that he had "none of the typical conductorial vanities". [158] Though his friendly and modest persona, and his great enthusiasm, were appreciated by professional orchestra musicians, some criticized his beat as "unsteady" and his interpretations as "unexciting". [159] Some of his peers, like Koussevitzky, went even further, advising him to "stay home and compose". [160] Copland thoroughly enjoyed conducting but admitted that he did it in part because in the last seventeen years of his life he felt little inspiration to compose. He was offered "permanent" conducting posts but preferred to operate as a guest conductor. Nearly all of Copland's conducting appearances included his own works, which added to the intoxication of conducting. As he stated, "Conducting puts one in a very powerful position…Best of all, it is a use of power for a good purpose." It also allowed him the freedom to travel which he always enjoyed. [161]
Copland was a strong advocate for newer music and composers, and his programs always included heavy representation of 20th century music and lesser-known composers. [157] Performers and audiences generally greeted his conducting appearances as positive opportunities to hear his music as the composer intended, but sometimes found his efforts with other composers to be lacking. From Copland's point of view, he found both the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra to be "tough" groups, resistant to newer music. [162] Newton Mansfield, violinist with the New York Philharmonic, stated, "The orchestra didn’t take him too seriously. It was like going out to a nice lunch." [162] Copland also found resistance from European orchestras; however, he was warmly received and respected in England. [163] Copland recorded nearly all his orchestral works with himself conducting. [161]
Awards
Duo for flute and piano (1971)
Three Latin American Sketches (1972)
Film
Aaron Copland: A Self-Portrait (1985). Directed by Allan Miller. Biographies in Music series. Princeton, New Jersey: The Humanities.
Appalachian Spring (1996). Directed by Graham Strong, Scottish Television Enterprises. Princeton, New Jersey: Films for the Humanities.
Copland Portrait (1975). Directed by Terry Sanders, United States Information Agency. Santa Monica, California: American Film Foundation.
Fanfare for America: The Composer Aaron Copland (2001). Directed by Andreas Skipis. Produced by Hessischer Rundfunk in association with Reiner Moritz Associates. Princeton, New Jersey: Films for the Humanities & Sciences.
Written works
Copland, Aaron (1939; Revised 1957), What to Listen For in Music, New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company , reprinted many times.
Copland, Aaron (2006). Music and Imagination, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press . ISBN 978-0-674-58915-5
References
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What were D W Griffith's first names? | D.W. Griffith - Biography - IMDb
D.W. Griffith
Biography
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Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (2) | Trade Mark (1) | Trivia (43) | Personal Quotes (18) | Salary (9)
Overview (4)
5' 11" (1.8 m)
Mini Bio (1)
David Wark Griffith was born in rural Kentucky to Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith, a former Confederate Army colonel and Civil War hero. Young Griffith grew up with his father's romantic war stories and melodramatic nineteenth-century literature that were to eventually mold his black-and-white view of human existence and history. In 1897 Griffith set out to pursue a career both acting and writing for the theater, but for the most part was unsuccessful. Reluctantly, he agreed to act in the new motion picture medium for Edwin S. Porter at the Edison Company. Griffith was eventually offered a job at the financially struggling American Mutoscope & Biograph Co., where he directed over four hundred and fifty short films, experimenting with the story-telling techniques he would later perfect in his epic The Birth of a Nation (1915).
Griffith and his personal cinematographer G.W. Bitzer collaborated to create and perfect such cinematic devices as the flash-back, the iris shot, the mask and cross-cutting. In the years following "Birth", Griffith never again saw the same monumental success as his signature film and, in 1931, his increasing failures forced his retirement. Though hailed for his vision in narrative film-making, he was similarly criticized for his blatant racism. Griffith died in Los Angeles in 1948, one of the most dichotomous figures in film history.
His films depict the cruelty of humankind.
Trivia (43)
He has been called "the father of film technique," "the man who invented Hollywood," and "the Shakespeare of the screen".
In 1920, he established United Artists with Charles Chaplin , Douglas Fairbanks , Mary Pickford .
Interred at Mount Tabor Methodist Church Graveyard, Centerfield, Kentucky, USA. (30 mins North of Louisville).
In 1975, the U.S. Postal Service honored Griffith with a postage stamp.
15 December 1999: Declaring that Griffith "helped foster intolerable racial stereotypes," The Directors Guild of America's National Board - without membership consultation - announced it would rename the D.W. Griffith Award, the Guild's highest honor. First given in 1953, its recipients included Stanley Kubrick , David Lean , John Huston , Woody Allen , Akira Kurosawa , John Ford , Ingmar Bergman , Alfred Hitchcock , and Griffith's friend Cecil B. DeMille .
He produced and directed the first movie ever made in Hollywood, In Old California (1910) which was produced by the American Mutoscope & Biograph Co. which is still in existence today and the oldest movie company in America. The film was rediscovered by Biograph and shown on the 6th of May 2004 at the Beverly Hills Film Festival attended by the President of Biograph Company Thomas R. Bond II and Mikhail Vartanov . On the same day, a monument was erected near the site where the film was made (Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street. However, almost a year later in 2005, the 2.8 ton monument was stolen overnight, under mysterious circumstances and is no longer there, but was found almost one year after its disappearance near a garbage bin not far from where the monument stood on Vine Street in Hollywood.
His first sound film was Abraham Lincoln (1930).
He was said to be a imperious, humorless man.
Was voted the 15th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 415-427. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
He tried to sell a story to The Edison Company. They hired him as an actor instead.
He went from being a bit player to being the industry's leading director in a period of only five years.
The film America (1924) is regarded as a major turning point in his career. Its failure ended his tenure as the industry's preeminent director.
Same date of death, 21st of July, as the legendary Sergei Parajanov
After The Birth of a Nation (1915) was released and criticized as being racist, Griffith was very hurt. He decided to make Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) as a follow-up, to show how damaging and dangerous people's intolerance can be.
On May 26, 1918, he was elected president of the Motion Picture War Service Association, an organization charged with boosting war bond sales.
Was named an Honorary Life Member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in 1938. The DGA award for best lifetime achievement was named for Griffith in 1953. Awarded for "distinguished achievement in motion picture direction," the directors honored include Cecil B. DeMille (the first recipient), John Ford , King Vidor , William Wyler , Orson Welles , Alfred Hitchcock , Stanley Kubrick , Elia Kazan , Ingmar Bergman , Akira Kurosawa , Robert Altman , Francis Ford Coppola , Woody Allen , Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese . However in 1999, television director and DGA president Jack Shea persuaded the DGA National Board, to rename the award without consulting its membership, due to the "intolerable racism" in Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), even though producer H.E. Aitken , Louis B. Mayer , and many other producers invested and profited from the film which helped fund their vast motion picture empires in Hollywood. The growing outcry against political correctness led the DGA in 2002 to announce that it would not rename the award, although it would keep a lifetime achievement going in its arsenal of kudos.
Was the first person, after Charles Chaplin 's special award at the first Academy Awards (Chaplin had had his nominations rescinded and placed out of competition), to win an honorary Academy Award. Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences President Frank Capra thought it would be good publicity for the Academy, which was then structured as a company union, as the Academy was being boycotted by the trade union guilds and turnout at the 1936 Oscar ceremony was predicted to be low. The citation read: "For his distinguished creative achievements as director and producer and his invaluable initiative and lasting contributions to the progress of the motion picture arts."
In his declining years, Griffith lived off the income from an annuity that he had invested in when he had been on top in Hollywood.
Was hired as a first-time director in 1908 at the American Mutoscope & Biograph Co., when the chief director fell ill. Over the next two decades many of the biggest names of the silent screen would get their first movie jobs from Griffith and Biograph, including Mary Pickford , Mack Sennett , Blanche Sweet , Lionel Barrymore , Lillian Gish , Dorothy Gish and Florence Lawrence . The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company was active from 1895 to 1928. A new corporation with the same name was incorporated in California in 1991.
Began his career as a playwright, then moved to acting, and then finally (and famously) to directing.
The Adventures of Dollie (1908), a Biograph Company release, was his directorial debut in 1908.
Ironically, the release of The Birth of a Nation (1915) inspired many African-Americans to start making their own films in an attempt to counter the film's depiction of them and to offer positive alternative images and stories of the African-American people.
The NAACP attempted to have The Birth of a Nation (1915) banned. After that effort failed, they then attempted to have some of the film's more extreme scenes censored.
Charles Chaplin called him "the teacher of us all".
Was an ardent Jeffersonian.
Pioneered the technique of parallel editing, which he used extensively after 1909.
Lillian Gish called him "the father of film" (although Griffith considered her a close friend, she had so much respect for him that she never referred to him as other than "Mr. Griffith", even long after Griffith died).
Although Griffith was thought by many to be a bigot and racist, he detested the manner in which whites and the "white man's government" treated and oppressed Native Americans. This was a theme that he explored in several of his early short films, most notably in The Red Man's View (1909) and Ramona (1910), which are very strong denouncements of the oppression of Native Americans by whites.
Several filming innovations belong solely to Griffith (some of which he invented during his collaboration with G.W. Bitzer at The Biograph Co. They include the flashback, the iris shot, the mask, the systematic use of the soft focus shot and the split screen.
He directed more than 450 films for Biograph Co. Amazingly, 440 of them still survive, accounting for a large portion of Biograph's shorts that survive.
By 1909 he was turning out 2 to 3 films per week.
After the 1915 release of The Birth of a Nation (1915), riots broke out in several black neighborhoods across the country.
His movie The Birth of a Nation (1915) is generally considered as the birth of modern American cinema.
Started to write an autobiography, but never finished it. [1926]
Is portrayed by Charles Dance in Good morning Babilonia (1987) and by Colm Feore in And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself (2003)
Ironically, Griffith produced and directed the Biograph Company film The Rose of Kentucky (1911), which showed the Ku Klux Klan as villainous, a sharp contrast to The Birth of a Nation (1915) made 4 years later, in which the KKK was portrayed in a favorable light.
On August 17, 1908, the Biograph Company signed him to a contract at $50 per week plus a small royalty on each film.
Some of the investors for his controversial film The Birth of a Nation (1915) were Louis B. Mayer , H.E. Aitken and Jesse L. Lasky among many others in Hollywood at that time. The films success is what financed Mayer, Aitken and Lasky into forming their own studios in Hollywood, eventually becoming MGM and Paramount among others.
He is one of the the most prolific directors of all time, with over 450 shorts and over 80 feature-length films to his credit. Of non-television directors, he ranks as the 4th most prolific after Louis Feuillade and Georges Méliès , both of whom also directed silent shorts, and Dave Fleischer , an animated short director.
'Lillian Gish' claimed that D.W. Griffith invented false eyelashes in 1916 for his film Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916). Griffith wanted Seena Owen (who plays Attarea, the Princess Beloved, in the film's Babylonian segment) with lashes luxurious enough to brush her cheeks when she blinked. In collaboration with a wigmaker, who did the actual fabricating, the solution Griffith was credited with involved weaving human hair through a fine strip of gauze, creating false eyelashes. However, like many Hollywood legends, this claim proves to not be true. In 1911, a Canadian woman named Anna Taylor received a U.S. patent for the artificial eyelash; hers was a crescent of fabric implanted with tiny hairs. And even before that, hairdressers and makeup artists tried a similar trick. A German named Charles Nestle (nee Karl Nessler) manufactured false lashes in the early 20th century and used the profit from sales to finance his next invention - the permanent wave. By 1915, Nestle had opened a New York hair-perming salon on East 49th Street, with lashes as his sideline. Also, one of the earliest known attempts to enhance eyelashes was during the times of the Ancient Egyptians, when royalty used black powder called 'kohl' to protect their eyes against sand, dust and bugs. However, this was to provide practical benefits, rather than cosmetic.
Was the first to utter the catchphrase "Lights, camera, action!" in 1910, on the set of In Old California (1910). It, like many of his techniques, are still widely used in filmmaking.
D.W. Griffith was buried in his birth state of Kentucky, in the Mount Tabor Methodist Church Graveyard, Crestwood, Oldham County, Kentucky.
Personal Quotes (18)
by G.W. Bitzer in "Billy Bitzer: His Story."] A film without a message is just a waste of time.
[Instructions Griffith allegedly gave to his assistants during the making of one of his epics, quoted by Josef von Sternberg in his memoir "Fun in a Chinese Laundry"] Move these 10,000 horses a trifle to the right, and that mob out there three feet forward.
There will never be talking pictures.
Talkies, squeakies, moanies, songies, squawkies . . . Just give them ten years to develop and you're going to see the greatest artistic medium the world has known.
Actors should never be important. Only directors should have power and place.
Everything went downhill after Lillian [ Lillian Gish ] left me.
[on what people associated with silent films] The good old American faculty of wanting to be shown things.
I made them see, didn't I? I changed everything.
Remember how small the world was before I came along? I brought it all to life: I moved the whole world onto a 20-foot screen.
Movies are written in sand: applauded today, forgotten tomorrow.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? What art? What science?
[on Douglas Fairbanks ] He has such verve. He can use his body.
We do not want now and we never shall want the human voice with our films. Music -- fine music -- will always be the voice of the silent drama.
[on James Mason ] That Mason is the greatest actor.
[on sound movies] It is my arrogant belief that we have lost beauty.
[on Mary Pickford ] She never stopped listening and learning.
[to Mary Pickford ] You're too little and too fat, but I might give you a job.
[on being honored at the 1935 Academy Awards ceremony] We had many worries in those days, small worries. Now you people have your worries and they are big ones. They have grown with the business - and no matter what its problems, it's the greatest business in the world.
Salary (9)
| David Wark |
"Who created the line, ""Happiness is a warm puppy?" | D.W. Griffith | American director | Britannica.com
American director
Alternative Title: David Wark Griffith
D.W. Griffith
William Wyler
D.W. Griffith, in full David Wark Griffith (born January 22, 1875, Floydsfork, Kentucky , U.S.—died July 23, 1948, Hollywood , California ), pioneer American motion-picture director, credited with developing many of the basic techniques of filmmaking, in such films as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), and The Struggle (1931).
D.W. Griffith.
George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital File Number: LC-DIG-ggbain-34046)
Early life and influences
D.W. Griffith, the son of Jacob Griffith, a former Confederate colonel, was born in a tiny hamlet not far from Louisville , Kentucky. He received his early education in one-room schools, largely under the tutelage of his older sister, and was subject to the strong influence of his father’s imaginative stories of the Mexican-American War and the American Civil War and family readings of the works of Dickens, Shakespeare, and Sir Walter Scott . The family was impoverished upon the death of Jacob, when David was 10 years old. After a brief stay with relatives, the family moved to Louisville. Griffith’s formal education was terminated in secondary school by the necessity of contributing to the family’s financial needs. He became, successively, an elevator operator in a dry-goods store and a clerk in a bookstore. During the latter clerkship, Griffith was exposed to the literati of Louisville and to the actors and actresses who played at Louisville’s Temple Theatre.
history of the motion picture: D.W. Griffith
Griffith began an acting career with several amateur theatre groups and made his professional debut in small roles with a stock company at the Temple Theatre. A barnstorming career with various touring companies followed, concluding with a Boston engagement in the spring of 1906. Following that engagement, Griffith completed a play, A Fool and a Girl, based on his personal experiences in the California hop fields, which was produced in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1907. The play was a failure despite the presence of Fannie Ward in the leading role. After the closing of the play, Griffith wrote a second play, War, which was based on events that occurred in the American Revolution . This later play remains unproduced.
On the advice of a former acting colleague, Griffith sold some scenarios for one-reel films, first to Edwin Porter , the director of the Edison Film Company, and then to the Biograph Company , both located in New York City . Griffith appeared as an actor in one film for the Edison Company, Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest, under Porter’s direction, and in several films for the Biograph Company. When an opening for a director developed at Biograph, Griffith was hired. During the next five years, from 1908 to 1913, Griffith made more than 400 films for Biograph, the majority in the one-reel format, lasting approximately 12 minutes. His first film was The Adventures of Dollie (1908), about a baby stolen by and recovered from Gypsies. During the latter part of his employment, he experimented with longer films; his last Biograph film, Judith of Bethulia (1913), a biblical story of Judith and Holofernes, based loosely on a play of the same title by Thomas Bailey Aldrich , comprised four reels.
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During his Biograph period D.W. Griffith introduced or refined the techniques of motion-picture exposition, including the close-up, a film shot in which a single object or face filled the screen; the scenic long shot, showing an entire panoramic view; and cross-cutting, a technique of editing scenes at various locations together and intermixing them to give the impression to the viewer that the separate actions were happening simultaneously. With the assistance of his brilliant cinematographer, G.W. (“Billy”) Bitzer, Griffith made effective use of the fade-out and fade-in, a technique in which the screen darkens gradually to black or lightens from black to a full image, to indicate the end or the beginning of the story or of an episode, and the framing of film images through the use of special masks to produce a picture in other than the standard rectangular image. Griffith introduced to the screen young actors and actresses who were to become the motion-picture personages of the future. Included among these were Mary Pickford , Lillian and Dorothy Gish , Mack Sennett , Mae Marsh, Lionel Barrymore , and Harry Carey.
The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance
You Can’t Handle the Truth: Famous Movie Quotes
In 1913 Griffith left Biograph and entered into an agreement with Mutual Films for the direction and supervision of motion pictures. From this association, among other films, came The Birth of a Nation . With the official opening of the film under the title The Clansman, at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles on February 8, 1915, the infant art of the motion picture was revolutionized. The film was subsequently lionized for its radical technique and condemned for its racist philosophy. Filmed at a cost of $110,000, it returned millions of dollars in profits, making it, perhaps, the most profitable film of all time, although a full accounting has never been made.
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After screenings of the film had caused riots at several theatres, however, The Birth of a Nation was censored in many cities, including New York City, and Griffith became an ardent opponent of censorship of the motion picture. His next important film, Intolerance (1916), was, in part, an answer to his critics.
Intolerance, a film of epic proportions, combined four separate stories: the fall of ancient Babylon to the hordes of Cyrus, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of the Huguenots in 16th-century France, the Crucifixion of Jesus, and a contemporary story dealing with a wrongfully condemned man. The giant settings, especially the one representing ancient Babylon, have remained a benchmark for motion-picture spectacle, and the opulent settings for 16th-century Paris were almost equally impressive. Griffith interwove the four stories in an increasingly complex manner until all were brought to resolution in a controlled torrent of images that still leaves the viewer breathless. Only the contemporary story was given a happy ending. The film ends with an allegorical plea for the end of war through divine intervention, indicated through superimpositions of heavenly hosts above a flower-strewn battlefield. The film was an artistic success on its presentation in New York City on September 5, 1916, but proved to be a financial failure. Nevertheless, tribute has been paid to its seminal influence on the work done by many film directors. Almost unanimously, critics have hailed Intolerance as the finest achievement of the silent film.
Most of Griffith’s profits from The Birth of a Nation were used and lost in the making of Intolerance, but he was able to secure the financing for the building of his own studio in Mamaroneck, New York. His films were to be released through United Artists, a motion-picture distributor of which he was a founding partner, with Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks . Despite making such distinguished films as Broken Blossoms (1919) and Orphans of the Storm (1921), and an extremely profitable film, Way Down East (1920), his studio foundered on the failure of lesser films and the business recession of the first half of the 1920s.
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Griffith was subsequently employed as a director by Paramount Pictures and as contract director by United Artists. His view of the American Revolution was realized in America (1924), and his next-to-last film, Abraham Lincoln (1930), was another view of the American Civil War in a somewhat ponderous biographical style. Despite his past success and the general acknowledgement of his vital contributions to the syntax of the motion picture, Griffith was unable to find permanent employment after Abraham Lincoln. His last film, The Struggle (1931), a grim study of the degeneration of an alcoholic husband, was an abject failure, withdrawn by United Artists after a brief run. Griffith had produced The Struggle independently and, although not destitute , was never again able to finance another film or find regular employment in the motion-picture industry.
Assessment
More than any other individual, Griffith developed the techniques through which motion pictures became an art form—an instrument able to express emotions and ideas. A genius in the art of the film who never worked with a script, he innovated continually in the use of camera angles and movement, in lighting, and, especially, in editing and tempo, and his influence throughout the world on the most creative directors of the next generation, such as Erich von Stroheim and Sergey Eisenstein , is inestimable.
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Filmography
1925 The Light of Western Stars (production manager - uncredited)
1925 Adventure (production manager - uncredited)
1924 Open All Night (production manager - uncredited)
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2014/II Dark Hearts (special thanks)
2003 The Dreamers (acknowledgment: director of "Scarface" (1932)
1980 Hollywood (TV Mini-Series documentary)
Himself
1977 Hollywood Greats (TV Series documentary)
Himself
1970 Plimpton! Shoot-Out at Rio Lobo (TV Movie documentary)
Himself
1967 Cinema (TV Series documentary)
Himself
1925 1925 Studio Tour (Documentary short)
Himself - a Writer
2009 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year (TV Movie documentary)
Himself
2001-2008 American Masters (TV Series documentary)
Himself / Himself - Interviewee
2003 Cary Grant and Howard Hawks (TV Movie documentary)
Himself
1993-2001 Biography (TV Series documentary)
Himself
1997 Howard Hawks: American Artist (TV Movie documentary)
Himself
1967 The Great Professional: Howard Hawks (TV Movie documentary)
Himself
Personal Details
Other Works:
Story: "The Chariot of the Gods" (filmed as The Road to Glory (1926), The Road to Glory (1936)) See more »
Publicity Listings:
4 Biographical Movies | 10 Print Biographies | 5 Portrayals | 6 Articles | 2 Pictorials | See more »
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| Howard Hawks |
In which year was the talkie The Jazz Singer released? | Gentlemen Prefer Blondes on iTunes
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Top Critics' Reviews
Fresh: There is that about Miss Russell and also about Miss Monroe that keeps you looking at them even when they have little or nothing to do. Call it inherent magnetism. Call it luxurious coquetry. Call it whatever you fancy. – Bosley Crowther, New York Times, Mar 16, 2016
Fresh: A strong play to the sophisticated dialog and situations is given by Howard Hawks' direction and he maintains the racy air that brings the musical off excellently at a pace that helps cloak the fact that it's rather lightweight, but sexy, stuff. – William Brogdon, Variety, Jul 7, 2010
Fresh: There's more warmth in [Russell's] fondly bemused looks at Monroe, whose friendship is a front-row ticket to the best show in town. – Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice, Aug 3, 2010
Fresh: Howard Hawks adds sly sexual insinuation to the blatantly sexual antics of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in this scintillating 1953 adaptation of the stage musical based on Anita Loos's novel. – Richard Brody, New Yorker, Jan 25, 2016
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Alborg Roedslet international airport is in which country? | Aalborg International Airport information. Flights and air companies flying to Aalborg International Airport in Aalborg, Denmark - Flight tickets, charter and private flights. - Flight tickets, charter and private flights - BulgariaFlights.com
Airports
Aalborg
Alborg Airport (IATA code AAL) is a civilian and military airport situated in Denmark. It is the third largest airport in the country and serves at about 1.4 million passengers each year. The airport works from 5 a.m. to 12 p.m. and has a duty free shop open to all passengers that depart from here. The Alborg Airport could be reached by bus, car and taxi. There are eight airlines that operate here, offering flights to total of seventeen airports Including domestic flights and international long-distance flights. The airport serves many charter airlines as well.
| Denmark |
What was Elton John's first US No 1 hit? | Trains in Denmark | Denmark by Rail | Interrail.eu
Trains in Denmark
Trains in Denmark
The Danish State Railways (DSB) has a dense network of train services connecting Copenhagen, Arhus, Alborg and much more of Denmark. Trains are the fabulous way of exploring this fascinating country and its islands!
Spelling of cities in Denmark
Train types in Denmark
The railway network in Denmark is run by DSB . You can access a great deal of the country using Denmark's trains. Meanwhile, comfortable international trains connect you to cities in Sweden and Germany.
You can find Danish train times in the Interrail timetable .
Regional trains (RØ, RV, ØR, IR)
Regional trains throughout Denmark
InterCity and InterCity Lyn (IC, ICL)
Faster than the regional trains
Various routes within Denmark
Connects Copenhagen to Stockholm (Sweden)
Travels to Berlin and other German cities
Travels between Copenhagen and Hamburg
Fully included in your Interrail Pass
Not included in your Interrail Pass
With your Pass, you get a 50% discount
Private railway companies in Denmark
Most are included in your Interrail Pass
Bicycles are permitted on the train upon purchase of a special bike ticket.
From May to August bike space must be booked in advance for IC and ICL trains.
Reservations for trains in Denmark
Which trains in Denmark require reservations?
SJ High-speed train: Approximately €7 (DKK 52) in 2nd class and €17 (DKK 126) in 1st class
Reservations recommended for long journeys
InterCity (IC) and InterCityLyn (ICL): Approximately €4 (DKK 30)
Eurocity (EC): Approximately €4 (DKK 30)
InterCityExpress (ICE): Approximately €4 (DKK 30)
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In which decade was the Oral Roberts University founded at Tulsa? | Oral Roberts | Wheaton
Oral Roberts
John Wimber
(Granville) Oral Roberts (1918- 2009), healing evangelist and televangelist, was born in Pontonoc County, Oklahoma, the son of a poor farmer and itinerant preacher in the Pentecostal Holiness denomination. At the age of seventeen Roberts believed he had been miraculously healed of tuberculosis and a speech impediment. At age eighteen he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and was ordained into the Pentecostal Holiness ministry.
By the mid-1940s he was serving as the pastor of a church in Enid, Oklahoma, but left to undertake a full-time healing revival ministry in 1947. Based in Tulsa, Roberts became the most successful of the healing evangelists of the 1950s. He founded his own magazine, Abundant Life, and cobbled together a radio network of over 500 stations. It was in television, however, that Roberts truly found his calling, beginning weekly broadcasts from his crusades in 1955. Buoyed by the financial gifts of his Pentecostal followers, Roberts was able to maintain and grow his own independent network of television stations which reached every part of the United States. The impact of Roberts’s broadcasts on the burgeoning charismatic movement among mainline Protestants and Catholics in the 1960s cannot be overestimated. Such was his success that by 1965 he was able to open his own four year-liberal arts college, Oral Roberts University (ORU) in Tulsa.
1968 marked a watershed year in Roberts’s career. Sensing the “moving of the Spirit” within mainline denominations, Roberts startled both his friends and foes as he discontinued his crusades and television broadcasts. Giving up his ordination in the Pentecostal Holiness Church, he sought ordination in, and joined, the Methodist Church. In 1969 he vaulted back into television with a series of hour-long, prime-time specials featuring celebrity guests, a variety show format, and a talented musical ensemble all under the seasoned eye of a top-flight Hollywood producer. Over the next decade, these specials attracted comparatively huge audiences for religious television and made Roberts a household name. Financially they proved a boon and jump-started his vision to expand ORU with a law school and a medical school replete with its own hospital, clinic, and research center–”The City of Faith.” This marked the beginning of a new phase of escalating financial burdens, aggressive fundraising campaigns, and virulent criticism from the medical, legal, and academic establishments. Coming as it did in the midst of media publicity surrounding a growing corpus of financial and sexual misdeeds among other televangelists, Roberts’ ministry and image began to suffer. The subsequent sexual indiscretions of his son and televangelist heir, Richard, only served to further erode Roberts’s image.
In the early 1990s Roberts was forced to sell his City of Faith and his law school, although ORU remained as a stable Christian liberal arts college. Overall, the thrust of Roberts’s overall career made a great impact upon the evangelical subculture, raising the image and self-respect of Pentecostals, enabling the spread of the charismatic movement, and leaving a lasting legacy in evangelical media and education.
For further reading see David Edwin Harrell, Jr., Oral Roberts: An American Life (Indiana, 1985), and Oral Roberts, Expect a Miracle: My Life and Ministry (Nelson, 1995).
| 1960s |
In which English city is the Burrows Toy Museum? | Project MUSE - An Architecture for the Electronic Church: Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma
An Architecture for the Electronic Church
Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Margaret M. Grubiak (bio)
ABSTRACT
More than a university, Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was also the headquarters for evangelist Oral Roberts’s electronic church. The electronic church in America, dominated by Christian evangelicals, used technology to spread the Gospel over radio airways and television signals to a dispersed audience. Yet evangelicals like Roberts also constructed ambitious campuses in real space and time. The architecture of Oral Roberts University visualized a modern and “populuxe” image for the electronic church in the 1960s and 1970s. The university’s Prayer Tower purposely alluded to the Seattle Space Needle, aligning religion and the Space Age, and the campus’s white, gold, and black color palette on late modern buildings created an image of aspirational luxury, conveying Roberts’s health and wealth gospel. Oral Roberts University served as a sound stage for Roberts’s radio and television shows, a pilgrimage point for his audience, and a university dedicated to training evangelicals in the electronic church.
For the opening of a 1969 religious television special broadcast live from the campus of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the camera panned to the Prayer Tower as a voiceover proclaimed it to be “a beacon of a focusing of faith” ( fig. 1 ). After lingering on the eternal flame representing the Holy Spirit at the top of the tower and announcing “a bold and imaginative hour of words and music to live by,” the program cut to an indoor studio located on the campus. There, the announcer introduced the World Action Singers, composed of university students; soloist Richard Roberts, son of Oral; special guest, singer and actress Dale Evans, wife of cowboy entertainer Roy Rogers; and then preacher, healer, and university president Oral Roberts himself as students and faculty applauded in the [End Page 380] audience. 1 Roberts’s Contact television specials including this 1969 broadcast aired on prime-time national television four times a year. These specials intertwined the word of God with celebrities like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lewis to capture an audience numbering more than 37 million by 1973. 2 Roberts also filmed his weekly Sunday morning television programs on campus. The Oral Roberts University campus, valued at over $150 million in the late 1970s, was, in the words of Roberts’s Hollywood producer, “the world’s most expensive [television] set.” 3 Oral Roberts University served multiple and reinforcing purposes that went well beyond the traditional conception of a university. Its campus was simultaneously a sound stage for Roberts’s radio and television programs, a pilgrimage point for the believers he garnered over the airways, and a place to educate future evangelists in using technological communication to spread God’s word to the world.
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Fig 1.
Prayer Tower (center) and John D. Messick Learning Resources Center (left), Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma, ca. 1960s. (Source: Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society, Tulsa, Oklahoma.)
The architecture of Oral Roberts University reified the so-called electronic church in America—the collection of religious radio, television, and now online ministries dominated by Christian evangelicals. While the electronic church ostensibly existed in radio waves and satellite transmissions, radio evangelists and televangelists in the 1960s through the 1980s realized [End Page 381] ambitious architectural programs—including Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in California, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Heritage USA theme park in South Carolina, and Pat Robertson’s Regent University in Virginia—that located the electronic church in real space. 4 Oral Roberts University was a particularly successful realization of the electronic church in two principal ways. First, the campus was the site of the very production of Roberts’s electronic ministries, providing interior studio space and exterior stage sets. Second, the architecture of the campus itself symbolized the technological production and transmission of Roberts’s evangelical message.
The architectural image that Oral Roberts University employed to make the electronic church real reveled in fantasy. In 1973, the New York Times called the campus “an educational and spiritual Disneyland” for its world’s fair–like buildings imbued with overt religious imagery. 5 The 200-foot Prayer Tower, described by the university itself as a “twentieth-century cross” with a metal “crown of thorns,” also purposefully alluded to the Seattle Space Needle, trafficking in the architectural language of the Space Age in a frank alignment of technology and religion. 6 The other nearly twenty buildings of the campus constructed in the 1960s and 1970s (the campus is remarkable for few later constructions) were unified in their white, gold, and black palette 7 ( fig. 2 ). The campus architecture evoked a kind of popular luxury that was aspirational and reflective of Roberts’s health and wealth gospel.
The architectural press largely ignored the Oral Roberts University campus at the time of its construction, and the campus continues to elude critical inquiry. While David Edwin Harrell Jr.’s masterful 1985 biography of Oral Roberts—written, importantly, with access to primary sources and archival information—includes a brief history of the campus’s development, the archives of both Oral Roberts and Oral Roberts University are currently closed to scholars, which has stymied attempts to further understand its architectural program. 8 I cannot document Roberts’s original sources and rationale for the university’s architecture, nor that of his architects, first Cecil Stanfield and more substantially Frank Wallace. I propose here instead an analytical framework that contextualizes a campus built as both a university and radio and television studio. The significance of the [End Page 382] Oral Roberts University campus resides not in the originality of its architecture (indeed, architect Wallace drew freely on other sources) but rather what its architecture has to say about the possibility of religion and modernity coexisting and thriving together, an idea that challenges the secularization narrative that contends religion and modernity are at odds. I argue that the architecture of Oral Roberts University created a cogent visual language for the electronic church. In its futuristic buildings, the campus expressed the optimistic alliance between technology and religion in the modern era; in its opulent image, it realized Oral Roberts’s promise of an abundant life lived with Christ.
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Fig 2.
Oral Roberts University campus on dedication day, 2 April 1967. Clockwise from top: Prayer Tower, Learning Resources Center, Timko-Barton Hall, Roberts Hall dormitory, and the dome of the Health and Physical Education Center. (Source: Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society, Tulsa, Oklahoma.)
Oral Roberts and the Electronic Church
Granville Oral Roberts (1918–2009) was one of the preeminent televangelists in American history. His call to evangelization was rooted in a miraculous experience in rural, Depression-era Oklahoma. In 1935, at the age of seventeen and suffering severely from tuberculosis, Roberts was taken by his brother Elmer to a religious revival in the nearby town of Ada. [End Page 383] As evangelist George Moncey prayed over Oral in the tent, Roberts felt “the healing power of the Lord” as something “like electricity” went through his body. 9 In that moment, Roberts believed he was healed from both his tuberculosis and his stutter. The son of a Pentecostal preacher, he felt called to his own ministry first as a preacher for the Pentecostal Holiness Church (which had historic ties to the Methodist Church), then as a popular itinerant faith healer conducting tent crusades, and ultimately as a Methodist televangelist with national and world notoriety. In each phase of his ministry, the power of prayer and the Holy Spirit remained fundamental to Roberts.
Roberts came of age in the midst of an ascendant evangelical revival in the postwar era that drew large audiences in live religious crusades and over radio and television broadcasts. 10 Billy Graham’s 1949 Los Angeles crusade, visited by 350,000 people over eight weeks, announced evangelical Christianity’s entrance onto the national stage. Yet within the evangelical movement there were distinct differences in theologies and personalities. Ordained as a Southern Baptist in North Carolina, Graham—called by Roberts the “number one” evangelist to Roberts’s self-declared secondary status—emerged as the popular and respected face of evangelism. 11 Graham sought consensus among Christian denominations and employed a moderate, inclusive message focused on the opportunity to be born again in Christ. 12 Jerry Falwell, a Southern Baptist preacher who televised The Old-Time Gospel Hour from his church in Lynchburg, Virginia, advocated a harder, fundamentalist line in the fire-and-brimstone tradition. With the creation of the Moral Majority in 1979 and other Christian Right initiatives, Falwell engaged directly in American political life in ways that Roberts did not. 13 While Graham, Falwell, and other well-known Protestant evangelists in this period focused on the divine word, Roberts focused on divine healing. As one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit central to Pentecostal theology (including also prophecy and speaking in tongues), divine healing was subject to widespread skepticism. Roberts spent much of his life in a long-term public relations campaign to overcome his reputation as a suspect faith healer.
The evangelical movement coincided with a golden era of broadcast communication; the two together gave rise to the electronic church in the United States. Quentin Schultze identifies the “mythos of the electronic church” as being “grounded in the idea of Christian progress” and “grafted [End Page 384] to American optimism about technology.” 14 As theologian Joseph Kim argues, evangelicals saw “technology as God’s providential gift to the church for the accomplishment of its mission.” 15 Technology made possible a new and alternative model for religion, one dislocated from physical place, whose admission was through the radio speaker and television screen. The electronic church in the United States began with religious radio broadcasts in the 1920s and grew to include religious television programming in the 1950s. By the 1970s and 1980s, the electronic church became specifically associated with American Protestants, particularly evangelicals and Pentecostals. Marred by financial and sexual scandals, the electronic church in America also gained criticism for failing to effectively convert people to Christianity, presenting a dumbed-down theology for easy sound bites, and substituting a serious study of the Bible with entertainment. Martin Marty called the electronic church the “invisible religion,” where people could worship in private without having to engage physically in the congregation of worshippers—the traditional meaning of “church” and the cornerstone of community membership. 16 In spite of these challenges, the electronic church has played a large and persistent role in American mass media and popular culture. 17
Oral Roberts’s ministry participated in the electronic church both in radio and television formats at an early stage. By the early 1950s, his half-hour daily religious radio programs were heard on 300 to 500 stations in North America, including the American Broadcasting Company’s network, and 40 international stations by the 1960s. 18 Quickly, however, Roberts’s television ministry, begun in 1954, eclipsed his radio ministry. In 1959, the Roberts ministry quantified “souls won” in the past year by its electronic outreach efforts: 364,228 by radio compared to 532,880 by television. 19 The radio programs—which included listener testimonials, a short sermon by Roberts, and Roberts’s healing prayer—paled in comparison to the vividness of his televised tent revivals filmed in the mid- to late 1950s. The camera more faithfully conveyed Roberts’s charismatic persona, and he thrived on the interaction with an audience at times reaching [End Page 385] 15,000 people. These early black-and-white broadcasts featured Roberts’s sermons and the altar call for those wanting to accept Christ in their lives, but the most anticipated moment was the famed prayer line, where Roberts would lay his right hand on people and pray for God’s healing ( fig. 3 ). The ability to actually see Roberts’s physical touch in prayer generated belief in ways more powerful than radio could provide. 20
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Fig 3.
Granville Oral Roberts, laying on hands at a crusade in Salem, Oregon, 1963. (Source: Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society, Tulsa, Oklahoma.)
As successful as these early television programs were, Roberts understood that they did not take full advantage of the possibilities of television to reach the vast audiences who needed salvation. In the 1960s, he discarded the conventional tent revival in favor of a brand new format that fused Hollywood and religion and trod the line between secular and religious content. He created entertainment-driven, full-color programs filmed in a studio with stage sets and a live studio audience. Critics argued that the celebrities, entertainers, music, and choreography that created a lively and popular program—one of his specials even received Emmy nominations for art direction and production—crowded out Roberts’s own religious preaching, a point Roberts acknowledged but defended as strategy. He first needed to produce shows that the networks would broadcast, [End Page 386] and once he had proven the success of these shows he then devoted more time to his religious message. 21 Roberts’s frank use of Hollywood tactics strongly recalled those of Aimee Semple McPherson in 1920s Los Angeles, another Pentecostal evangelist well known for her sermons illustrated with props such as motorcycles and live animals. As Matthew Avery Sutton claimed, “McPherson found no contradiction between her rejection of Hollywood values and her use of show business techniques.” 22 Oral Roberts, too, made use of entertainment and theatricality in the service of saving souls, especially those of a younger generation.
Roberts’s entertainment-heavy format transformed televangelism. Harrell identifies the revamped Oral Roberts television programs of the late 1960s and early 1970s that infused religious broadcasts with entertainment and celebrity as the invention of the modern electronic church. 23 Importantly, these specials were televised in prime time to escape the “Sunday morning ghetto” of religious programming and to bring religion to a realm that had previously been reserved for secular entertainment. While very expensive to produce and air, Roberts’s television programs were quickly supported by mailed-in funds from viewers. Their popularity increased Roberts’s national notoriety and created dividends for other parts of his ministry. Roberts did not push inventions in broadcast technology itself—he bought airtime on existing networks, in contrast, for example, to Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson, who created the PTL (Praise the Lord) Television Network and Christian Broadcasting Network, respectively—but what he did do was pioneer the most popular format of televangelism and become one of its most prominent figures.
Oral Roberts University: Headquarters of Oral Roberts’s Electronic Church
When Roberts established his eponymous university in 1963 and opened its doors in 1965, it was more than a university—it was the physical realization and headquarters of Roberts’s electronic church. He established the university just as he was scaling back his traveling crusades. As one account put it, Roberts’s “traveling crusade tent has been folded away in favor of the television sound stage.” 24 That television sound stage was the university, conceived as another facet of Roberts’s ministry. Roberts himself explained that “Oral Roberts University comes from, is a part of, and continues to grow from ministry roots.” 25 The creation of an entirely [End Page 387] new university was an audacious and financially risky undertaking. Roberts employed a “pay-as-you-go” approach to constructing the campus, raising money—early loans and large donations—from his “prayer partners” and from the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association. 26 The founding of the university was part of his larger move toward mainstream legitimization, including his acceptance into the Methodist Church in 1968. 27
Oral Roberts University appealed to academic tradition and conventional hallmarks in order to establish itself as a mainstream institution. It was a point of pride how quickly the university received its accreditation in 1971. In choosing the motto “Educating the Whole Man” (now “Person”)—meaning wholeness in mind, body, and spirit, as the university seal recounts—it aligned itself with a longstanding tradition of teaching the whole student, stemming from the perceived ideals of Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other universities had embraced the same pedagogical notion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 28 In further signposts of legitimacy, Oral Roberts University advertised that half of its professors held a Ph.D. 29 Understanding athletics “as a means of witnessing about our faith,” the university also established a basketball team to gain national name recognition and to engender loyalty and fandom. 30
Even as it positioned itself within traditional academic ideals, the school identified strongly as a conservative Christian university with a central evangelical mission. Roberts was inspired to establish the university by his own son’s secularized experience at Stanford University. 31 Evangelist Billy Graham framed the genesis of the university this way: While many American colleges and universities had become places where “religion and God are foreign,” “[w]e see rising up in this country schools like Oral Roberts University and men like Oral Roberts, who are not ashamed to say ‘I believe in the Bible, in Christ, and in the supernatural.’” 32 The university required attendance at chapel twice weekly, though students could attend local churches of their choice and denomination on Sundays. Students also had to adhere to strict conduct and dress codes as well as physical fitness standards. 33 The school was distinctive for how strongly it was tied to its religious founder and namesake. President Roberts—who himself never [End Page 388] earned a college degree—was a constant presence on campus and exerted control over students and faculty in a “semitheocracy.” 34
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Fig 4.
Oral Roberts University Mabee Center (right) and the “Baby Mabee” broadcast center (left). The City of Faith central tower is visible at center left. (Photograph by Margaret M. Grubiak.)
The campus served as the interior and exterior stage for Roberts’s electronic church. In his reworked television programs of the 1960s, he filmed the first ones on the campus in 1969, then moved production to Hollywood, and in 1973 moved production back to the campus where Roberts felt more comfortable performing in front of a familiar audience often composed of university members. 35 Roberts initially filmed these Contact quarterly television specials and his weekly Sunday programs in the campus’s multipurpose auditorium, the Mabee Center (1970–72) ( fig. 4 ). The exterior of this elliptical-shaped building with its wide gold cornice, dark glass, and white vertical supports played on the imagery of a revival tent. In the late 1970s, an addition called the Baby Mabee—the Mabee Center’s architectural miniature—was constructed to hold a sophisticated television studio with state-of-the-art equipment, including a color camera named Evelyn II after Roberts’s wife (see figure 4 ). 36 Dick Ross, the Hollywood [End Page 389] producer who orchestrated the Oral Roberts specials, characterized the facilities as “the finest equipped television stage between New York and the West Coast.” 37
While the interiors of the Mabee Center and Baby Mabee were the primary settings for Roberts’s television programs, the larger campus also played an important role in the visualization of Roberts’s electronic church. In addition to the 1969 program that opened with views toward the university’s Prayer Tower and Learning Resources Center, a 1974 special introducing the home states of the World Action Singers placed the singers against exterior views of university dorms, the student center, and the Prayer Tower. 38 While it is unknown how often the campus appeared on Roberts’s television programs, its use as a backdrop explicitly tied the campus to the Roberts ministry and provided key publicity for the university. As Harrell reported, within one year of Roberts’s televised specials beginning in 1969, interest by prospective students wishing to enroll doubled. 39
The Prayer Tower was a microcosm of Roberts’s ministry, including his electronic outreach. Students and visitors reached the entrance at the base of the tower through lush sunken gardens, recalling a Garden of Eden seemingly out of place in the harsh Oklahoma climate. Inside, visitors found exhibits on the ground floor explaining the “whole person” mission of the university overlaid on an image of the world map. 40 Roberts also had displayed a simple and well-worn folded chair he used in his tent revivals as a historic artifact or even religious relic. 41 The lower level housed prayer rooms, available to all. For views of the Oklahoma landscape, visitors could ride the elevator up 100 feet to the observation level, which included Roberts’s own private prayer room. In his ambitious fund drive for the City of Faith medical complex (1977–81) constructed adjacent to the university campus, Roberts stayed in this prayer room until $8 million was raised, claiming that failure would mean the “Lord would call him home.” 42 The ultimate success of that fund drive served as more evidence of the power of prayer. Also located on this level were the offices of the Abundant Life Prayer Group’s 24-hour prayer line, the electronic version of the famed prayer line in Roberts’s tent revivals. The prayer group received phone calls from people around the world wanting to talk, pray, and receive counseling. During these calls, people were able to have a personal experience with a “prayer partner,” a surrogate for the laying on of hands by Oral Roberts himself ( fig. 5 ). The prayer line, which received nearly half-a-million calls [End Page 390] annually by 1977, spoke to the worldwide outreach of the Roberts ministry made possible through electronic communication. 43
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Fig 5.
A “prayer partner” speaking with a caller in the Abundant Life Prayer Group headquarters in the Prayer Tower. (Source: Perihelion (yearbook), 1967, 203. Image courtesy of Tulsa City-County Library, Tulsa, Oklahoma; used with permission from Oral Roberts University.)
The university’s non-profit KORU radio station was also on the Prayer Tower’s observation level 44 ( fig. 6 ). While Roberts’s radio shows were distributed nationally and internationally by a network of radio stations, KORU served a regional area of Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas. The station broadcast Roberts’s Sunday half-hour radio program, but it also filled its more than twelve hours of daily airtime with a mixture of classical, contemporary, and religious music along with some talk shows in an effort to evangelize in a different way. The target audience was “the non-Christian public.” As the station manager said in 1969, “Christian radio needs to stop being broadcast only to the three or four per cent of the public [End Page 391] who want strictly religious programming. … You can have the world’s greatest message, but if nobody hears it—if you can’t get anybody to listen to it … so what?” The station included short “fish hook” spots focusing on life’s meaning with a call to consider the role of Christ and God. This kind of “subliminal broadcasting” sought to “slip past the conscious mind and lodge persuasion in the subconscious.” 45 This fusion of secular and religious programming echoed the approach of Roberts’s television programs of the late 1960s and the 1970s. In its inclusion of the KORU radio station, the Prayer Tower further located the production and distribution of Roberts’s electronic message in real space and time.
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Fig 6.
Interior of KORU radio station headquarters in the Prayer Tower. (Source: Perihelion (yearbook), 1967, 48. Image courtesy of Tulsa City-County Library, Tulsa, Oklahoma; used with permission from Oral Roberts University.)
The focus on electronic media such as those located in the Mabee Center, [End Page 392] Baby Mabee, and the Prayer Tower pervaded the university as a whole. A primary selling point for the school in its promotional literature was its advanced electronic capabilities. The Learning Resources Center, which was on axis with the Prayer Tower, boasted a powerful “dial-a-lesson” computer called the Dial Access Information Retrieval System that allowed professors to record video lectures and students to view these lectures at any time, including when streamed into their dorm rooms on provided televisions. This early “electronic textbook,” also advertised as “homework via television,” enabled students to learn introductory concepts so professors could go into greater depth during class time. 46 The library itself was framed as an “electronic library,” and it also hosted television production studios. 47 The New York Times described the campus as having “probably the most sophisticated technology of any liberal-arts college in the country.” 48 Technology was viewed as an integral aspect of education, just as it was seen as essential to the overall ministry of Oral Roberts.
Students were also expected to participate in the electronic church. The World Action Singers who performed on the Roberts television ministry were selected from university students in an attempt to appeal to a younger audience. Students and faculty were also invited to be the audience for Roberts’s television shows. Students gained experience with technology in the service of evangelization by working at the KORU radio station, and this technological teaching was also codified in the curriculum. Roberts’s University of Evangelism, the predecessor to Oral Roberts University, trained students in the use of “radio, television, films and other modern methods to win souls”; one of the courses offered at Oral Roberts University was “Contemporary Methods in Evangelization.” 49 A key purpose of the university was to train future evangelists for the electronic church.
The university’s focus on technology identified it as a technologically progressive and forward-looking institution. In its own promotional literature, it used the descriptors “futuristic” and “ultramodern,” advertising that every dorm room had a television and air conditioning and that the student dining commons had state-of-the-art microwave ovens. 50 Amid the university dedication events in 1967, Billy Graham stressed the electronic leaning of the university: “Dr. Roberts has given Tulsa and America a university and an institution of and for tomorrow. He has taken all that modern science can give, including computers and electronics and used [End Page 393] them in the best way to mold students.” 51 While an operating, degree-granting institution, Oral Roberts University was, and remains, heavily invested in the modern electronic church.
Architecture for the Electronic Church
The power of the electronic church resided in its ability to transcend space and time to reach millions of potential believers through the airwaves. Even though these consumers of the electronic church may have felt a personal connection with radio preachers and televangelists whose voices they heard and whose visages they saw, the very nature of the electronic church dislocated its believers from real space and real presence. The most immediate point of contact was the radio or television set itself. Art historian David Morgan recounts that Oral Roberts “asked his listeners to place their hands on their radio sets as they listened from afar in their parlours to pray with him and receive a special blessing which he sent by touching the microphone through which he broadcast his sermon.” 52 Roberts would also ask his believers to touch their television sets as a way to emulate a personal connection. 53 Given that the desire for the in-person encounter between preacher and believer persisted, architecture provided a means to locate the electronic church in real space and enable a distant and dispersed church body to visualize a house of worship. It also offered a permanent locus for pilgrimage. Oral Roberts University was not the first to establish an architecture for the electronic church; it had important predecessors.
The early radio church of the 1920s had two remarkable architectural realizations: Aimee Semple McPherson’s Angelus Temple in Los Angeles and Father Charles Coughlin’s Shrine of the Little Flower church near Detroit. McPherson, considered a key founder of modern Pentecostalism, grew her International Church of the Foursquare Gospel as a powerful female evangelist who gained followers through her tent revivals and radio broadcasts on her own KSFG radio station, with a reach extending to Canada, Hawaii, and Mexico. 54 Through a successful fundraising campaign, McPherson was able to build the 5,300-seat Angelus Temple (1923), a white, domed auditorium that played on the visual language of theater—fitting the nature of her dramatic services—with its marquee-like signage and interior stage. The building also directly communicated McPherson’s radio ministry: atop the temple’s dome rose two tall metal radio towers, an [End Page 394] electronic substitute for traditional steeples 55 ( fig. 7 ). The red radio call letters and moniker “Angelus” later added to the towers, as well as a red cross on the dome’s roof, were illuminated to be visible in the night sky. McPherson later constructed a school, the Angelus Temple Evangelistic and Missionary Training Institute, next to the temple, as well as a 24-hour prayer tower, anticipating Oral Roberts’s own university and prayer tower.
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Fig 7.
A 1936 view of Aimee Semple McPherson’s Angelus Temple (1923) in Los Angeles, showing the KFSG radio towers. (Source: Photograph by Burton O. Burt, Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.)
Like McPherson’s Angelus Temple, Father Charles Coughlin’s Shrine of the Little Flower also fused a real place of worship with a locus of electronic religious broadcasting. Funds from Coughlin’s Roman Catholic radio program, begun in 1926 and attracting as many as thirty million listeners, helped the construction of the church outside Detroit in 1931. The octagonal art deco church included a tower carved with a crucifix out of which Coughlin recorded his broadcasts. 56 Towers have a long, deep history in ecclesiastical architecture—they are a key architectural component for visibility and the aural experience of ringing bells. Yet the notion that towers, in both the traditional form of the Little Flower church and the unconventional form of McPherson’s broadcast towers, became the locus [End Page 395] of radio broadcasts in the early years of the electronic church marks a novel irruption of the technological age into sacred space.
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Fig 8.
Rex Humbard’s Cathedral of Tomorrow, Akron, Ohio, 1958. (Source: Personal collection of Margaret M. Grubiak.)
When television emerged as the new medium through which to save souls, evangelist Rex Humbard, a friend of Oral Roberts, constructed the Cathedral of Tomorrow in Akron, Ohio, in 1958 with the purpose of producing and broadcasting televised religious services. After seeing one of the first-ever television broadcasts, Humbard wrote in his memoir, “I was impressed with the power and magnitude of this new invention, television, as it reached those of us gathered in front of that window. … At that moment, God placed upon my heart a burden to build a church known as the Cathedral of Tomorrow.” 57 In designing the church, Humbard created a huge domed auditorium with a seating capacity of 5,400 and a revolving stage ( fig. 8 ). The Cathedral of Tomorrow’s size and purpose presaged the later American megachurch, which relies heavily on technology to convey its message. 58
A more complex relationship between technology, architecture, and the experience of the electronic church played out in the drive-in church designed in 1961 by Richard Neutra for Rev. Robert Schuller’s Garden Grove Community Church in Southern California ( fig. 9 ). Schuller became a major American televangelist famous for his Hour of Power Sunday [End Page 396]
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Fig 9.
Garden Grove Community Church, architect Richard Neutra, Garden Grove, California, 1961. (Source: Photograph by Julius Shulman, 1963; ©J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles [2004.R.10].)
broadcasts. For Schuller, architecture orchestrated the auditory and visual spectacle of the service. Neutra designed a walk-in and drive-in church that could accommodate those who wished for the traditional experience of a church and those who wished to experience it from the privacy and convenience of their cars. In the glazed, rectangular structure of the church, Neutra oriented the pews conventionally toward an elevated stage and pulpit, reached by a tall staircase, for Reverend Schuller and the choir. The church’s glass walls allowed those in parked cars surrounding the building to gaze into the church as if it were a kind of movie screen while they listened to Schuller’s sermons through individual speakers. In a dramatic touch, Neutra designed the eastern glass elevation as a series of large windows that could be pulled back to open the nave to an outside terrace, in effect dissolving the screen so that Schuller could connect with the crowd in the “pews of Detroit” more directly. 59 This multi-modal architecture aligned religion with the popular culture of drive-in theaters and cars. It also trafficked in an electronic understanding—both aurally and visually—of church participation. Schuller further exploited this experience of church in his later Crystal Cathedral (1977–80) by architect Philip Johnson, [End Page 397] which was the centerpiece of Schuller’s televangelist empire on the same campus as the drive-in church.
The radio tower church, television studio church, and drive-in church began the visualization of the electronic church. When Roberts laid out his plans for a university in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 1960s, he envisioned a space for an evangelical mission unapologetically dependent on technological communication. First employing architect Cecil Stanfield and then architect Frank Wallace, Roberts crafted a cohesive vision of the electronic church, the centerpiece of which was both literally and metaphorically the Prayer Tower.
Prayer Tower and Space Needle
The iconic structure of Oral Roberts University is the 200-foot Prayer Tower (1966–67), what Roberts called “the logo for the university” 60 ( fig. 10 ). Designed by Wallace, the tower reminded students, visitors, and Roberts’s television audience alike “that prayer and the power of God are central to all we do” within Roberts’s ministry and the university. 61 Its embedded symbolism worked toward this reminder. The Prayer Tower was constructed on a spiraling steel frame, meant to realize the spiritual journey and ascent. From afar, the tower’s form looked like a cross. Up close, those looking up at the tower saw a symmetrical web of steel that was to recall Jesus’s crown of thorns. To stress this analogy, the tips of steel in the crown were colored red to symbolize the blood of Christ. From above, this crown of thorns also appeared as the Star of David. At the very top of the tower was an eternal flame, representing the Holy Spirit. Furthering the assertion of religion on the campus, a carillon on the Prayer Tower played hymns three times a day. In these visual and auditory cues, the Prayer Tower asserted Christ in the daily experience of the campus and presented the mission of the Roberts ministry visually and explicitly.
In addition to this overt religious symbolism, the Prayer Tower also trafficked in Space Age symbolism to create a futuristic vision for evangelical religion. The New York Times described the campus, including its Prayer Tower, as “right out of ‘2001,’” a reference to Stanley Kubrick’s landmark 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. 62 In 1978, architect Peter Papademetriou in the journal Progressive Architecture—one of the few articles to critically examine Oral Roberts University’s architecture—linked the school’s architecture to the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. Referencing architect Minoru Yamasaki, who had designed the popular U.S. Science Pavilion for the Seattle fair, and Oscar Niemeyer, architect of Brazil’s modernist capital Brasilia from the 1950s, Papademetriou described the Oral [End Page 398] Roberts University campus “looking as if it crystallizes the dream of a Yamasaki designing Brasilia after he had seen the Seattle World’s Fair.” 63
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Fig 10.
Prayer Tower, Oral Roberts University, architect Frank Wallace, 1966–67. (Source: Photograph by Margaret M. Grubiak.)
Papademetriou’s comparison of Oral Roberts University’s architecture to the Seattle World’s Fair was particularly on point. In May 1963, less than seven months after the fair closed, Roberts conducted a crusade on the Seattle fairgrounds. 64 During this visit, he would have seen the Space Needle and walked around the grounds, perhaps visiting the U.S. Science Pavilion science exhibition buildings designed by Yamasaki (now called the Pacific Science Center) ( figs. 11 and 12 ). Roberts was immersed in this environment just as he was thinking through the plans for his own university, then under construction. His experience at Seattle is significant because he had an active role in directing the design of the Oral Roberts University campus. As architect Wallace recounted, Roberts talked twice a [End Page 399]
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Fig 12.
View of the Century 21 Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 1962, with the U.S. Science Pavilion by architect Minoru Yamasaki, and the Christian Witness Pavilion (right). (Source: Photograph by Max R. Jensen, published by C. P. Johnston Co.; personal collection of Margaret M. Grubiak.)
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week with Wallace when Roberts was in Tulsa. 65 The forward-looking architecture Roberts observed in Seattle would ultimately be reflected in his campus in Tulsa.
The Prayer Tower in Tulsa parroted the Space Needle and U.S. Science Pavilion in Seattle in its designs. In 1962, when Stanfield was the architect for the campus, Oral Roberts University published a campus master plan with a central structure in a triangular, sail-like shape. 66 The design changed dramatically after Roberts visited Seattle in 1963 and changed his architect to Wallace. In a second scheme published in 1964, Wallace transformed the central structure, now named the Prayer Tower, into an open cylinder with lancet arches and an open crown 67 ( fig. 13 ). This design borrowed much formal language from Yamasaki’s so-called “space Gothic” arches on the Seattle fairgrounds.
The final design of the Prayer Tower, constructed in 1967, more directly referenced the Seattle Space Needle. The Space Needle itself has its own source in a radio and television tower in Stuttgart, Germany, notable for its rotating restaurant. One of the Seattle fair organizers who had visited the Stuttgart tower suggested that the fair have a similar structure with a similar rotating feature. Architect John Graham Jr. crafted a 608-foot structure elegant in shape: a tripod-like supporting structure pinched near the top supporting a gleaming round saucer holding a rotating restaurant (see figure 11 ). 68 The Space Needle did not have radio or television broadcasting capabilities, but during the world’s fair it did host a carillon, which the Prayer Tower emulated. From afar, the effect of the Space Needle evoked Space Age imagery in its metallic materials and soaring form.
While not a literal copy, the Oral Roberts University Prayer Tower trafficked in the same futuristic language as the Space Needle. Its mirrored gold, blue, and white surfaces gleamed in the Tulsa landscape (see figure 10 ). Although a third of the height of the Space Needle and with a different supporting structure, the Prayer Tower also showcased a saucer-like observation level that compared closely to the Space Needle. In the press, the Prayer Tower was described as “a space needle” with the nearby dome of the university’s Health and Physical Education Center “resembling a giant flying saucer that has just landed.” 69
The Oral Roberts University campus also mimicked the Seattle World’s [End Page 401] Fair in its broader alignment of religious and technological ideals. The world’s fair was originally conceived as a regional event, a “Festival of the West” intended to revitalize downtown Seattle, but it evolved into “America’s Space Age Fair,” known officially as the “Century 21 Exposition.” Spurring the change in focus was the launching of Russia’s Sputnik 1 in 1957 while the fair was in the planning stages, attracting the involvement of the federal government. By the time the fair opened in 1962, the focus shifted away from cold war propaganda to popularizing science to a public wary of the technologies and weapons science had produced. 70 The federally sponsored U.S. Science Pavilion, the most popular exhibit of the fair, framed science as an avenue for an optimistic future and a tool compatible with traditional values like the arts and religion. The fair’s Space Needle, with its metallic materials and soaring form, became an icon of the Space Age.
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Fig 13.
Successive schemes for the Oral Roberts University Prayer Tower by architects Cecil Stanfield (left) and Frank Wallace (center and right). (Source: “The Way We Weren’t,” Perihelion (yearbook), 1967, 86. Image courtesy of Tulsa City-County Library, Tulsa, Oklahoma; used with permission from Oral Roberts University.)
Religion stood prominently alongside science in the imagined Century 21. Three pavilions on the fairgrounds hosted religious themes: the Christian Witness Pavilion; the Sermons from Science exhibit; and the Christian Science Pavilion. Christian Witness housed Christian exhibits and a chapel, and screened a Christian film. Sermons from Science showcased films produced by the Moody Institute of Science, an evangelical Christian group that stressed the compatibility of religion and science. In addition to the religious exhibits themselves, the fair hosted religious-focused events, including Bible Week, Liturgical Week, and a visit by Billy Graham. 71 The fair was an opportunity for evangelization, especially as [End Page 402] only a reported 30 percent of residents in the Northwest belonged to a church, and for imagining the twenty-first century with God very much present. 72 Significantly, the fair organizers placed the Christian Witness Pavilion immediately next to the U.S. Science Pavilion (see figure 12 ). The Christian Witness group stated that the building was to be “a witness in its very location that God’s image, and that of Jesus Christ, stands before man’s technological and scientific achievements.” 73
The “spiritual-industrial complex,” named by Jonathan Herzog and evident in the Seattle fair, harnessed religion to imbue the cold war with higher ideals and aims. 74 Billy Graham, historian Andrew Preston claimed, “explicitly linked the cause of Christ with the cause of America, of Christianity’s struggle against Satan with America’s struggle against communism,” an example of how evangelists framed religion’s role within the cold war. 75 This Christian struggle was also linked directly to America’s space race efforts. David Noble noted that U.S. astronauts identified publically as “devout Protestants” to counter Soviet “godless communism.” 76 At the Seattle fair, as historian John Findlay has argued, the terms in which science and space were portrayed “had taken on a less earthly and more religious significance” in a fair imbued with religious imagery and language. 77 “At the Seattle World’s Fair,” Findlay reasoned, “science did not so much supplant religion as people’s preferred faith as supplement it by offering a new means to achieve traditional Judeo-Christian ends.” 78 The architecture of the fair, particularly Yamasaki’s U.S. Science Pavilion, imaged this comingling of science and religion. Strikingly, in the middle of the Science Pavilion structures, Yamasaki designed five white, freestanding towers formed from pointed, “space Gothic” arches (see figure 12 ). Fairgoers understood this religious imagery, including one critic who described Yamasaki’s buildings as possessing a “religious” character. 79 This fusion of religion and the Space Age era inspired Oral Roberts in the shaping of his university.
In a final example of his imitation of the Seattle fair, Roberts shaped his university campus as his own version of a world’s fair, one with an even more explicit religious message. As a locus of evangelization, the Oral Roberts University campus drew visitors from around the world. The carefully ordered grounds of the campus—the lavish sunken gardens, the inscribed geometries, and the unified buildings radiating out from the Prayer Tower—read not just as a college campus but also as fairgrounds. (Not coincidentally, Tulsa is also home to the annual Tulsa State Fair first opened in [End Page 403] 1961, one of two state fairs in Oklahoma located less than ten miles from Oral Roberts University.) The colorful Prayer Tower, offering rides to an observation deck much like the Space Needle and Philip Johnson’s New York State Pavilion for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, was an amusement-like attraction. The Avenue of Flags at the campus entrance showcasing the countries of Oral Roberts University students added to the sense of a fair, further increased by the addition of a giant, 60-foot-tall Praying Hands statue originally commissioned for the City of Faith complex in 1980 and moved to the campus entrance ten years later. These allusions to world’s fairs and amusement parks prompted the descriptions of the campus as a “spiritual Disneyland” and “Six Flags over Jesus.” 80 In 1978, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker more literally constructed an evangelical campus as fairgrounds and amusement park in their Heritage USA theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina. The Bakkers’ Heritage USA included a water park, its own version of Disneyland’s Main Street, hotel and conference facilities, an evangelical school, and studios for their PTL satellite network. The visual language of world’s fairs, amusement parks, and the Space Age was enticing for an electronic church deeply engaged in American popular culture and mass media.
The “Populuxe” Oral Roberts University Campus
A profile of architect Frank Wallace recounted a story about visitors on the Oral Roberts University campus tour who, when asked who the architect of the campus was, guessed architects Yamasaki and I.M. Pei. Their answers were revealing for two reasons. First, Wallace was not a household name, and he remains little known or studied. Like Oral Roberts, he was an Oklahoma native. He attended architecture school at the University of Arkansas, the same school where Edward Durell Stone—remembered for his designs for the John F. Kennedy Center (1959–71) in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Embassy (1954) in New Delhi, India, among others—also studied and taught. Rather than seek an elite architect with a national reputation, Roberts consciously chose an architect from his own community to execute his vision. The Oral Roberts University campus was the greatest architectural commission of Wallace’s career. 81
Second, the visitors’ guess of Yamasaki and Pei also revealed just how derivative Wallace’s architecture was. Wallace, who counted Yamasaki and Frank Lloyd Wright among his architectural heroes, crafted an image for Oral Roberts University that echoed the work of Yamasaki, Wright, Stone, Eero Saarinen, and other architects working in the 1950s and 1960s. 82 This [End Page 404] softened version of modernism eschewed the stark modernist box in favor of graceful lines and luxurious aesthetic. This style appealed to a wider audience, and it became a symbol of good taste for its time. Cultural historian Thomas Hine has named this mid-century style “populuxe.” The populuxe Oral Roberts University campus presented a luxurious, aspirational image that embodied Roberts’s belief that Christ wants his followers to have material as well as spiritual wealth.
The populuxe style of the university was signaled in earlier buildings by Roberts’s first architect, Cecil Stanfield. Born in Oklahoma, Stanfield earned his architecture degree from Oklahoma State University and became president of the firm Stanfield, Elliott and Associates in Tulsa. Like Wallace, Stanfield received his most important architectural commissions from Oral Roberts. Roberts commissioned Stanfield to design the Abundant Life Building (1957–59) near downtown Tulsa, which served as headquarters for the Roberts ministry before the construction of the university. The box-like Abundant Life Building was lavish in its white marble cladding, textured walls, gold accents, and dramatic lighting, including a spotlight on Roberts’s office chair because, according to Stanfield, “Roberts feels he should be at the center of interest here.” 83 Stanfield also designed the first buildings, including what is now named Timko-Barton Hall (1962–64), on what became the Oral Roberts University campus (see figure 2 ).
When Roberts replaced Stanfield with architect Frank Wallace, Wallace continued in the style Stanfield established while playing with more diverse forms and more explicit references to Roberts’s Pentecostal theology. A palette of white, gold, and black (only the Prayer Tower had more color) unified the buildings while mirrored glass, honeycomb brise soleil screens, and concrete-blasted panels provided textural interest. Many of the buildings, which Wallace designed “without fronts or backs,” followed triangular shapes both for architectural dynamism and for religious symbolism. 84 The triangular structures of the 3,500-seat Christ’s Chapel (1971–73) monumentalized Roberts’s tent revival structures, symbolized “praying hands,” and made present the Holy Trinity, as a stylized gold dove on the chapel’s foyer ceiling represented the descent of the Holy Spirit ( fig. 14 ). The triangular-shaped Learning Resources Center (1964)—whose graceful white colonnade, recalling the work of Yamasaki and Stone, screened black concrete panels arranged in a three-dimensional chevron pattern—evoked the Holy Trinity while its twelve-notched fountain referenced the twelve apostles 85 ( fig. 15 ). [End Page 405]
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Fig 15.
Detail of the John D. Messick Learning Resources Center, Oral Roberts University, architect Frank Wallace, 1964–65. (Source: Photograph by Magaret M. Grubiak.)
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Fig 16.
Hamill Student Center (1968–69), with view of the Quad Towers dormitories (1972) to right and left, Oral Roberts University, architect Frank Wallace. (Source: Photograph by Margaret M. Grubiak.)
Elsewhere, Wallace contrasted quirky angularity, as in the harsh forms of the Hamill Student Center (1968–69), with softened elliptical and circular forms of the Mabee Center and Quad Towers dormitories (1972) ( fig. 16 ). In the form and siting of the buildings, Wallace constructed a dynamic, active architecture. The buildings’ religious symbolism, including the crown of thorns on the Prayer Tower, visualized the mission of the university and its identity as an extension of Roberts’s ministry.
Wallace’s designs for Oral Roberts University were rife with references to iconic forms in contemporary American and collegiate architecture. The gold, geodesic-domed Howard Auditorium (1972) echoed the dome of Eero Saarinen’s Kresge Auditorium (1955) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, even if structurally they were not the same ( fig. 17 ). The triangular forms of Christ’s Chapel evoked Wright’s Taliesin West (begun 1937) in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Walter Netsch’s U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel (1959–62) in Colorado Springs. As a cohesive scheme, the Oral Roberts University campus recalled another Methodist-affiliated institution, Wright’s Florida Southern College (1941–58) in Lakeland, as well as Stone’s State University of New York at Albany (1961–64), especially with its carillon tower at the center of campus. These architectural references were most likely the result of visits to “other leading universities throughout the world” made by Wallace along with head of construction Bill Roberts and Dean of Academics John D. Messick as the [End Page 407] university was being formed, although it is unclear exactly which institutions they visited. 86
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Fig 17.
Howard Auditorium, Oral Roberts University, architect Frank Wallace, 1972. (Source: Photograph by Margaret M. Grubiak.)
The futuristic architecture of Oral Roberts University was also a product of its regional context. Tulsa proved fertile ground for experimentation in art deco and modern architecture. In 1968, Roberts and his wife joined the Boston Avenue Methodist Church in Tulsa, an important art deco church designed by Oklahoma architect Bruce Goff in 1926. In Bartlesville, Oklahoma, some fifty miles north of Tulsa, was another key architectural landmark: Wright’s Price Tower (1952–56), one of his only realized tall buildings and part of his imagined Broadacre City, a proposed plan for the development of the United States. In downtown Tulsa in 1975, Yamasaki designed the skyscraper One Williams Center (now BOK Tower), though this was nearly a decade after Wallace’s Prayer Tower for Oral Roberts University influenced by Yamasaki’s U.S. Science Pavilion for the Seattle fair. The context of the Midwest freed Roberts from the Colonial Revival style that dominated conservative Christian colleges on the East Coast, including Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University (founded 1971), Pat Robertson’s Regent University (founded 1978), and the more recent Patrick Henry College (founded 2000), all located in Virginia. Unlike Falwell and Robertson, Roberts did not need to rely on architectural revivalism to express his religious and social conservatism; rather, the populuxe aesthetic aligned Roberts with the modern era and spoke to the realization of God’s great wealth. [End Page 408]
Perhaps due to Wallace’s derivative designs, the university’s Christian identity, and its location in middle America, the Oral Roberts University campus was snubbed by the architectural press in its early years, though it was discussed often in profiles of Roberts himself. When the campus did receive attention from critics, they framed its architecture as rather pedestrian. The 1978 assessment published in Progressive Architecture claimed that Oral Roberts University represented “a kind of popular understanding of modern architecture” tinged with an idea of luxury:
The aesthetic reflects that of a new middle class whose aspirations are toward elegance—an elegance that is somewhat standardized and perhaps a bit gaudy to ensure that the point not be missed. It is designed to be impressive, in other words. Yet the impressiveness is as comfortably predictable as one would expect in a good motel; it is slightly overpriced “Ramada-mentality.”
Progressive Architecture also stated that this version of modernism “lost something along the way” as it “trickled down … from the professional taste elite to the larger audience.” Nonetheless the campus became a highly successful marketing tool appealing to students from a mostly white, Protestant middle class. 87 The suburban campus of elegant, modern architecture, which was “a reinforcing symbol of the taste of its users,” made them feel at home. 88
This appeal to modernism and luxury is captured in the idea of “populuxe” coined by Hine in 1986. In the book of the same name, Hine explored the decade between 1954 and 1964 that relished consuming on a mass scale the new and the luxurious in a material “golden age.” 89 Hine contends that populuxe designs were “symbols of achievement, affirmations that their owners had achieved a life of convenience and prosperity that their parents could have only dreamed of.” Populuxe design was popular taste, not academic or high-minded taste sanctioned by the Museum of Modern Art and other artistic and architectural elites. Rather, it strayed toward the fantastic, as in the hotel designs of Morris Lapidus in Florida. “People wanted to be known for their good taste,” Hine wrote, “but they also wanted to have great showy things that demonstrated that they had arrived.” 90
The image of Oral Roberts University was crafted to show that Roberts and his followers had indeed arrived. At the time of the school’s opening, Roberts was moving from the cultural fringe as a suspect faith healer into the American mainstream with an immensely popular television ministry [End Page 409] and a brand new university. One profile of Roberts noted he had become a respected Tulsa citizen with a country club membership, expensive suits, and a Cadillac—a far cry from his impoverished upbringing. 91 The architecture he and Wallace created for Oral Roberts University was of a piece with this idea of social arrival. The architectural image of the campus, evocative of middle-class taste, was the material manifestation of what Roberts’s electronic ministry promised: good health and great wealth with a true faith in Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
The architecture of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, reified the American electronic church of the 1960s and 1970s. It crafted a futuristic and luxurious image that spoke to technological optimism and material wealth embedded within the American evangelical tradition. Roberts created an institution that made real what was otherwise a disembodied experience of church over the airways, offering a pilgrimage point for the millions that his ministry reached. In 1969, a Kentucky steel mill worker and his wife drove to Tulsa specifically to visit the university. A chance encounter with Roberts himself on the campus became “the thrill of their vacation.” 92 By 1970, more than 100,000 people visited Oral Roberts University annually, making it the most visited tourist site in Tulsa. 93 Influenced by the Seattle World’s Fair, Roberts created a permanent religious fair, one that showcased what belief in Christ could mean.
Oral Roberts conceived of his university with technology at the forefront. Technology was a key component in the education of Oral Roberts University students—from the computers that played their professors’ lectures to the microwave ovens that warmed their food—and future evangelists here were trained in the most modern radio and television tools. The campus also served as sound stage for the very production of Robert’s radio and television programs. Understanding Oral Roberts University means understanding that it was, and is, more than our traditional conception of a university. It is the realization of Roberts’s entire ministry, one invested heavily in the American electronic church. [End Page 410]
Margaret M. Grubiak
Margaret M. Grubiak is associate professor of architectural history at Villanova University and author of White Elephants on Campus: The Decline of the University Chapel in America, 1920–1960 (2014). She wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers and Barbara Hahn for helping to shape this article, as well as the Tulsa City-County Library for its generous assistance and Oral Roberts University for permission to use images.
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_____. Televangelism and American Culture: The Business of Popular Religion. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991.
Sheldon, Marcus. Father Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life of the Priest of the Little Flower. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973.
“‘States Medley’ from Oral Roberts ‘Harvest Festival,’ 1973.” YouTube video, 5:18. Posted by lhelmle, 30 August 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsl_ghHhShM (accessed 13 June 2014).
Sutton, Matthew Avery. Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
“The Way We Weren’t.” Perihelion. Oral Roberts University yearbook, 1976, 86–87.
van Dyne, Larry. “God and Man at Oral Roberts.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 December 1975, 3–4.
Williams, Daniel K. God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. [End Page 413]
Footnotes
| i don't know |
On which label did the Beach boys record most of their 60s hits? | The Official 60's Site-The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. This American sold more singles and LPs then any other American band in history. They placed 36 hits in the Top 40, more than any other American band and had a total of 56 songs make the Hot 100 hits, once again more than any other American band.
Brian Wilson was born in Hawthorne, California in 1942. At the age of sixteen, Brian shared a bedroom with his two brothers, Dennis and Carl. He watched his father, Murry Wilson, play piano and listened intently to the harmonies of vocal groups like The Four Freshmen. One night he taught his brothers a song called "Ivory Tower" and how to sing the background harmonies. "We practiced night after night, singing softly, hoping we wouldn't wake our Dad." For his sixteenth birthday, Brian had received a reel-to-reel tape recorder. He learned how to overdub, using his vocals and those of Carl and his mother. He would play piano and later added Carl playing the Rickenbacker guitar he got as a Christmas present.
Soon Brian was avidly listening to Johnny Otis on his KFOX radio show, a favorite station of Carl's. Inspired by the simple structure and vocals of the rhythm and blues songs he heard, he changed his piano-playing style and started writing songs. His enthusiasm interfered with his music studies at school. He failed to complete a twelfth-grade piano sonata, but did submit an original composition, called "Surfin'".
Family gatherings brought the Wilsons in contact with cousin Mike Love. Brian taught Love's sister Maureen and a friend harmonies. Later, Brian, Mike and two friends performed at Hawthorne High School (Hawthorne, California), drawing tremendous applause for their version of The Olympics' (doo-wop group) "Hully Gully". Brian also knew Al Jardine, a high school classmate, who had already played guitar in a folk group called The Islanders. One day, on the spur of the moment, they asked a couple of football players in the school training room to learn harmony parts, but it wasn't a success — the bass singer was flat.
Brian suggested to Jardine that they team up with his cousin and brother Carl. It was at these sessions, held in Brian's bedroom, that "the Beach Boys sound" began to form. Brian says: "Everyone contributed something. Carl kept us hip to the latest tunes, Al taught us his repertoire of folk songs, and Dennis, though he didn't play anything, added a combustible spark just by his presence." It was Love who encouraged Brian to write songs and he also gave the fledgling band its first name: The Pendletones.
The Pendletones name was derived from the Pendleton woolen shirts popular at that time. In their earliest performances, the band wore the heavy wool jacket-like shirts, which were favored by surfers in the South Bay. In 1962, the Beach Boys began wearing blue/gray-striped button-down shirts tucked into white pants as their touring "uniforms." This was the band's signature look through to 1966.
Although surfing motifs were very prominent in their early songs, Dennis was the only member of the group who surfed. He suggested that his brothers compose some songs celebrating his hobby and the lifestyle which had developed around it in Southern California.
Jardine and a singer friend, Gary Winfrey, went to Brian's to see if he could help out with a version of a folk song they wanted to record - "Sloop John B." In Brian's absence, the two spoke with his father, Murry, who was a music industry veteran of modest success. In September 1961, Murry arranged for The Pendletones to meet publishers Hite and Dorinda Morgan at Stereo Masters in Hollywood. The group performed a straightforward rendition of "Sloop John B.", but failed to impress the Morgans. After an awkward pause, Dennis mentioned they had an original song, called "Surfin'". Brian was taken aback — he had not finished writing the song — but Hite Morgan was interested and asked them to call back when the song was complete. With help from Mike, Brian finished the song and the group rented guitars, drums, amplifiers and microphones. They practiced for three days while the Wilsons' parents were on a short vacation. A few days later they auditioned for the Morgans again and Hite Morgan declared: "That's a smash!"
On October 3, 1961, The Pendletones recorded twelve takes of "Surfin'" in the Morgans' cramped offices (Dennis was deemed not yet good enough to play drums, much to his chagrin). A small quantity of singles was pressed. When the boys eagerly unpacked the first box of singles, on the Candix Records label, they were surprised and angered to see their band name had been changed to "Beach Boys". Murry Wilson, now intimately involved with the band's fortunes, called the Morgans. Apparently a young promotion worker, Russ Regan, had decided on the change to more obviously tie the group in with other surf bands of the time (his original name for the band was The Surfers). The limited budget meant the labels could not be reprinted.
Released mid-November, 1961, "Surfin'" was soon aired on KFWB and KDAY, two of Los Angeles' most influential radio stations. It was a hit on the West Coast, and peaked at #75 on the national pop charts.
As an eight-year-old, Brian Wilson says his "young life was already being shaped and influenced by music... None affected me more than the music I heard when my father played the family piano... I watched how his fingers made chords and memorized the positions".
Murry had limited success as a songwriter, peaking with "Two Step Side Step" when it was recorded for a Bachelors album in 1952. Despite his musical ability and any wish to educate Brian in particular, Murry "was a tyrant", quick to offer discouraging criticism and who "abused his sons psychologically and physically, creating wounds that never healed." Carl found comfort in food and Dennis rebelled against the world to express his anger. Brian would immerse himself in music to cope, but though he longed to learn piano as a child, he was too frightened to ask and even too scared to press the keys when his father was at work.
Eventually Brian surprised his parents by showing he had learned how to play the piano by watching his father. Thereafter, "playing the piano... literally saved my ass. I recall playing one time while my dad flung Dennis against the wall... That was just one of many incidents when I didn't miss a note, supplying background music to the hell that often substituted for a family life..."
At first, Murry steered the Beach Boys' career, engineering their signing with Capitol Records in 1962. In 1964, Brian ousted his father after a violent confrontation in the studio. Over the next few years, they became increasingly estranged; when Murry died of a heart attack in 1973, Brian and Dennis did not attend the funeral.
On July 16, on the strength of the June demo session, the Beach Boys were signed to Capitol Records. By November, their first album was ready - "Surfin' Safari". Their song output continued along the same commercial line, focusing on California youth lifestyle. The early Beach Boys’ hits helped raise both the profile of the state of California and of surfing. The group also celebrated the Golden State’s obsession with hot-rod racing ("Shut Down," "409," "Little Deuce Coupe") and the pursuit of happiness by carefree teens in less complicated times ("Be True to Your School," "Fun, Fun, Fun," "I Get Around"). From 1962-65 they had sixteen hit singles during a period of time that included both a very competitive Top Forty but also saw the start of the British Invasion.
Although their music was bright and accessible, these early works belied a sophistication that would emerge more forcefully in the coming years. During this period, Brian Wilson rapidly progressed to become a melodist, arranger and producer of world-renowned stature. Their early hits made them major pop stars in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries, although their status as America's top pop group was soon challenged in 1964 by the emergence of The Beatles, who quickly became the Beach Boys' major creative, financial, and Top Forty rival.
Apart from the Wilsons' father and the close vocal harmonies of Brian's favorite groups, early inspiration came from the driving rock and roll sound of Chuck Berry and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. Some of Brian's songs were modeled after other songs; most famously "Surfer Girl" shares its rhythmic melody with "When You Wish Upon a Star". In his autobiography, Brian states that the melody of "God Only Knows" was inspired by a John Sebastian record.
he stress of road travel, composing, producing and maintaining a high level of creativity was too much for Brian Wilson to bear. On December 23, 1964, while on a flight to Houston, Brian suffered from an anxiety attack and left the tour. Shortly afterward, he announced his withdrawal from touring to concentrate entirely on songwriting and record production. This wasn't the first time Brian had stopped touring. In 1963, when Al Jardine returned, Brian left the road; but when David Marks quit, Brian had to return in his place. For the rest of 1964 and into 1965, Glen Campbell served as Wilson's replacement in concert, until his own career success required him to leave the group. Bruce Johnston was asked to locate a replacement for Campbell; having failed to find one, Johnston subsequently became a full-time member of the band, first replacing Wilson on the road and later contributing his own talents in the studio beginning with the sessions for "California Girls."
Jan & Dean, close friends with the band and opening act for them in concert in 1963 and 1964, encouraged Brian to use session musicians in the studio. This, along with Brian's withdrawal from touring, permitted him to expand his role as a producer. Wilson also wrote "Surf City" for his opening act. The Jan & Dean recording hit #1 on the U.S. charts in the summer of 1963, a development that pleased Brian but angered father/manager Murry, who felt his son had "given away" what should have been the Beach Boys' first chart-topper. A year later, the Beach Boys would notch their first #1 single with "I Get Around."
By 1964, traces of Brian Wilson's increasing studio productivity and ideas were noticeable: "Drive-In," an album track from All Summer Long features bars of silence between two verses while "Denny's Drums," the last track on Shut Down, Vol. II, is a two-minute drum solo. As Wilson's musical efforts became more ambitious, the group relied more on nimble session players, on tracks such as "I Get Around" and "When I Grow Up (To Be a Man)." "Help Me, Rhonda" became the band's second #1 single in the spring of 1965.
1965 led to greater experimentation behind the soundboard with Wilson. The album Today! featured less focus on guitars, more emphasis on keyboards and percussion, as well as volume experiments and increased lyrical maturity. Side A of the album was devoted to sunny pop tunes, with darker ballads on the reverse side. In November 1965 the group followed up their #3 summer smash "California Girls," with another top 20 single, "The Little Girl I Once Knew." It is considered to be the band's most experimental statement prior to Pet Sounds, using silence as a pre-chorus, clashing keyboards, moody brass, and vocal tics. Perhaps too extreme an arrangement to go much higher than its modest #20 peak, it was only the band's second single not to reach the top 10 since their 1962 breakthrough. In December they would score an unexpected #2 hit (#3 in the UK) with the single "Barbara Ann", which Capitol Records released as a single without input from any of the Beach Boys. It has become one of their most recognized hits over the years and was a cover of a 1961 song by The Regents.
It was during this time that the Beatles' Rubber Soul came out, and Brian Wilson was enthralled with it. Until then, each Beach Boys album (and most pop albums of the day) contained a few "filler tracks" like cover songs or even stitched-together comedy bits. Brian found Rubber Soul filled with all-original songs and, more importantly, all good ones, none of them filler. Inspired, he rushed to his wife and proclaimed, "Marilyn, I'm gonna make the greatest album! The greatest rock album ever made!"
Wilson's growing mastery of studio recording and his increasingly sophisticated songs and complex arrangements would reach a creative peak with the acclaimed LP Pet Sounds (1966). Pet Sounds is regarded as one of the finest albums of all time and is on many music lists as one of the of greatest albums of all time, including TIME, Rolling Stone, New Musical Express, Mojo, and The Times. According to Acclaimedmusic.net, Pet Sounds is the most acclaimed album of all time by music journalists.. Among other accolades, Paul McCartney has named it one of his favorite albums of all time (with "God Only Knows" as his all-time favorite song). McCartney has frequently said that it was the inspiration behind the seminal Beatles' album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The album's meticulously layered harmonies and inventive instrumentation (performed by the cream of Los Angeles session musicians known among themselves as The Wrecking Crew) set a new standard for popular music. It remains one of the more evocative releases of the decade, with distinctive strains of lushness, melancholy, and nostalgia for youth. The tracks "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "God Only Knows", showcased Wilson's growing mastery as a composer, arranger and producer. "Caroline, No," also taken from Pet Sounds, was issued as a Brian Wilson solo single, the only time Brian was credited as a solo artist during the early Capitol years. The album also included two sophisticated instrumental tracks, the quiet and wistful "Let's Go Away for Awhile" and the brittle brassy surf of the title track, "Pet Sounds". Despite the critical praise it received, the album was indifferently promoted by Capitol Records and failed to become the major hit Brian had hoped it would be (only reaching #10). Its failure to gain wider recognition hurt him deeply.
Because of his withdrawal from touring, Wilson was able to complete almost all the backing tracks for the album while the Beach Boys were on tour in Japan. They returned to find a substantially complete album, requiring only their vocals to finish it off. There was some resistance from within the band to this new direction. Lead singer Mike Love is reported to have been strongly opposed to it, calling it "Brian's ego music," and warning the composer not to "fuck with the formula." Other group members also fretted that the band would lose its core audience if they changed their successful musical blueprint. At Love's insistence, Brian changed the title of one song from "Hang On to Your Ego" to "I Know There's an Answer." Another likely factor in Love's antipathy to Pet Sounds was that Wilson worked extensively on it with outside lyricist Tony Asher rather than with Love, even though Love had co-written the lyrics for many of their earlier songs and was the lead vocalist on most of their early hits.
Seeking to expand on the advances made on Pet Sounds, Wilson began an even more ambitious project, originally dubbed Dumb Angel. Its first fruit was "Good Vibrations," which Brian described as "a pocket symphony". The song became the Beach Boys' biggest hit to date and a U.S. and U.K. No. 1 single in 1966 — many critics consider it to be one of the best rock singles of all time. In 1997, it was named the "Greatest Single of All Time" by Mojo music magazine. In 2000, VH1 placed it at number 8 on their "100 Greatest Rock Songs" list, and in late 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed it at number 6 on their "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list. It was also one of the more complex pop productions ever undertaken, and was reputed to have been the most expensive American single ever recorded at that time. Costing a reported $16,000, more than most pop albums, sessions for the song stretched over several months in at least three major studios.
In contrast to his work on Pet Sounds, Wilson adopted a modular approach to "Good Vibrations" — he broke the song into sections and taped multiple versions of each at different studios to take advantage of the different sound and ambience of each facility. He then assembled his favorite sections into a master backing track and added vocals. The song's innovative instrumentation included drums, organ, piano, tack piano, two basses, guitars, electro-theremin, harmonica, and cello. The group members recall the "Good Vibrations" vocal sessions as among the most demanding of their career.
Even as his personal life deteriorated, Wilson's musical output remained remarkable. The exact nature of his mental problems was a topic of much speculation. He abused drugs heavily, gained an enormous amount of weight, suffered long bouts of depression, and became paranoid. Several biographies have suggested that his father may have had bipolar disorder and after years of suffering, Wilson's own condition was eventually diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder
In 1980, the Beach Boys played a Fourth of July concert on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. before a large crowd. This gig was repeated in the next two years, but in 1983 Secretary of the Interior James Watt banned the group from playing on the Mall, saying that rock concerts drew "an undesirable element."[40] This drew howls of outrage from the many of the Beach Boys' American fans, who stated that the Beach Boys sound was a very desirable part of the American cultural fabric. President and First Lady Nancy Reagan spoke up for the group, and President Reagan presented Watt with a bronze sculpture of a foot that had a bullet wound, indicating that he had shot himself in the foot with the decision. In 1984 the group appeared on the Mall again. Love and Johnston most recently appeared on the Mall in 2005 for the Fourth of July concert.
Meanwhile, Dennis Wilson's personal problems continued to escalate, and on December 28, 1983 he drowned while diving from a friend's boat, trying to recover items he had previously thrown overboard in fits of rage.
Despite Dennis's death, the Beach Boys soldiered on as a successful touring act. On July 4, 1985, the Beach Boys played to an afternoon crowd of one million in Philadelphia and the same evening they performed for over 750,000 people on the Mall in Washington (the day's historic achievement was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records). They also appeared nine days later at the Live Aid concert. That year, they released an eponymous album and enjoyed a resurgence of interest later in the 1980s, assisted by tributes such as David Lee Roth's hit version of "California Girls." In 1987, they played with the rap group The Fat Boys, performing the song "Wipe Out" and filming a video for it.
In 1988, they unexpectedly scored their first #1 hit in 22 years with the song "Kokomo" which was written for the movie Cocktail, becoming their biggest-selling hit ever. It was written by John Phillips, Scott McKenzie, Mike Love, and Terry Melcher. As well as producing and co-writing several of the band's later songs and albums, Melcher was a long-time friend of Bruce Johnston, and the duo recorded together as Bruce & Terry and The Rip Chords, both surf acts with a very similar California sound, before Johnston formally joined The Beach Boys. Riding on "Kokomo"'s steam, the Beach Boys quickly put out the album Still Cruisin', which went gold in the U.S. and gave them their best chart showing since 1976. In 1990, the band, featuring John Stamos on drums, recorded the title track of the comedy Problem Child. Stamos later appeared singing lead vocals on the song "Forever" (written by Dennis Wilson) on their 1992 album Summer in Paradise.
Members of the band appeared on television shows such as Full House, Home Improvement, and Baywatch in the late 1980s and 1990s, as well as touring regularly. In 1995, Brian Wilson appeared in the critically acclaimed documentary I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, which saw him performing for the first time with his now-adult daughters, Wendy and Carnie of the group Wilson Phillips. The documentary also included glowing tributes to his talents from a host of major music stars of the '60s, '70s and '80s. In 1996, the Beach Boys guested with Status Quo on a re-recording of "Fun, Fun, Fun," which was a British Top 30 hit.
After years of heavy smoking, Carl Wilson succumbed to lung cancer on February 6, 1998 after a long battle with the disease. Although Love and Johnston continued to tour as the Beach Boys, Jardine did not participate and no other original members accompanied them. Their tours remained reliable draws, even as they came to be viewed as a nostalgia act. Meanwhile, Brian Wilson and Al Jardine (both still legally members of the Beach Boys organization) each pursued solo careers with their new bands.
On June 13, 2006, the major surviving Beach Boys (Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, and David Marks) all set aside their differences and reunited for a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the album Pet Sounds and the double-platinum certification of their greatest hits compilation, Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of the Beach Boys, in a ceremony atop the Capitol Records building in Hollywood. Plaques were awarded for their efforts to all major members, with Brian Wilson accepting for his late brothers Carl and Dennis. Wilson himself implied there was a chance that all the living members (not having performed together since September 1996) would reunite again.
| Capitol |
Whose musical works included Composition For Orchestra and Philomel? | The Beach Boys on Apple Music
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Biography
Beginning their career as the most popular surf band in the nation, the Beach Boys finally emerged by 1966 as America's preeminent pop group, the only act able to challenge (for a brief time) the overarching success of the Beatles with both mainstream listeners and the critical community. From their 1961 debut with the regional hit "Surfin'," the three Wilson brothers -- Brian, Dennis, and Carl -- plus cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine constructed the most intricate, gorgeous harmonies ever heard from a pop band. With Brian's studio proficiency growing by leaps and bounds during the mid-'60s, the Beach Boys also proved one of the best-produced groups of the '60s, exemplified by their 1966 peak with the Pet Sounds LP and the number one single "Good Vibrations." Though Brian's escalating drug use and obsessive desire to trump the Beatles (by recording the perfect LP statement) eventually led to a nervous breakdown after he heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the group soldiered on long into the '70s and '80s, with Brian only an inconsistent participant. The band's post-1966 material is often maligned (if it's recognized at all), but the truth is the Beach Boys continued to make great music well into the '70s. Displayed best on 1970's Sunflower, each member revealed individual talents never fully developed during the mid-'60s -- Carl became a solid, distinctive producer and Brian's replacement as nominal bandleader, Mike continued to provide a visual focus as the frontman for live shows, and Dennis developed his own notable songwriting talents. Though legal wranglings and marginal oldies tours during the '90s often obscured what made the Beach Boys great, the band's unerring ability to surf the waves of commercial success and artistic development during the '60s made them America's first, best rock band. The origins of the group lie in Hawthorne, California, a southern suburb of Los Angeles situated close to the Pacific coast. The three sons of a part-time song plugger and occasionally abusive father, Brian, Dennis, and Carl grew up a just few miles from the ocean -- though only Dennis had any interest in surfing itself. The three often harmonized together as youths, spurred on by Brian's fascination with '50s vocal acts like the Four Freshmen and the Hi-Lo's. Their cousin Mike Love often joined in on the impromptu sessions, and the group gained a fifth with the addition of Brian's high-school football teammate Al Jardine. His parents helped rent instruments (with Brian on bass, Carl on guitar, and Dennis on drums) and studio time to record "Surfin'," a novelty number written by Brian and Mike. The single, initially released in 1961 on Candix and billed to "the Pendletones" (a musical paraphrase of the popular Pendleton shirt), prompted a little national chart action and gained the renamed Beach Boys a contract with Capitol. The group's negotiator with the label, the Wilsons' father, Murray, also took over as manager for the band. Before the release of any material for Capitol, however, Jardine left the band to attend college in the Midwest. A friend of the Wilsons, David Marks, replaced him. Finally, in mid-1962 the Beach Boys released their major-label debut, Surfin' Safari. The title track, a more accomplished novelty single than its predecessor, hit the Top 20 and helped launch the surf rock craze just beginning to blossom around Southern California (thanks to artists like Dick Dale, Jan & Dean, the Chantays, and dozens more). A similarly themed follow-up, Surfin' U.S.A., hit the Top Ten in early 1963 before Jardine returned from school and resumed his place in the group. By that time, the Beach Boys had recorded their first two albums, a pair of 12-track collections that added a few novelty songs to the hits they were packaged around. Though Capitol policy required the group to work with a studio producer, Brian quickly took over the sessions and began expanding the group's range beyond simple surf rock. By the end of 1963, the Beach Boys had recorded three full LPs, hit the Top Ten as many times, and toured incessantly. Also, Brian began to grow as a producer, best documented on the third Beach Boys LP, Surfer Girl. Though surf songs still dominated the album, "Catch a Wave," the title track, and especially "In My Room" presented a giant leap in songwriting, production, and group harmony -- especially astonishing considering the band had been recording for barely two years. Brian's intense scrutiny of Phil Spector's famous Wall of Sound productions was paying quick dividends and revealed his intuitive, unerring depths of musical knowledge. The following year, "I Get Around" became the first number one hit for the Beach Boys. Riding a crest of popularity, the late-1964 LP Beach Boys Concert spent four weeks at the top of the album charts, just one of five Beach Boys LPs simultaneously on the charts. The group also undertook promotional tours of Europe, but the pressures and time constraints proved too much for Brian. At the end of the year, he decided to quit the touring band and concentrate on studio productions. (Glen Campbell toured with the group briefly, then friend and colleague Bruce Johnston became Brian's permanent replacement.) With the Beach Boys as his musical messengers to the world, Brian began working full-time in the studio, writing songs and enlisting the cream of Los Angeles session players to record instrumental backing tracks before Carl, Dennis, Mike, and Al returned to add vocals. The single "Help Me, Rhonda" became the Beach Boys' second chart-topper in early 1965. On the group's seventh studio LP, The Beach Boys Today!, Brian's production skills hit another level entirely. In the rock era's first flirtation with an extended album-length statement, side two of the record presented a series of downtempo ballads, arranged into a suite that stretched the group's lyrical concerns beyond youthful infatuation and into more adult notions of love. Two more LPs followed in 1965, Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!) and Beach Boys' Party. The first featured "California Girls," one of the best fusions of Brian's production mastery, infectious melodies, and gorgeous close harmonies (it's still his personal favorite song). However, dragging down those few moments of brilliance were novelty tracks like "Amusement Parks USA," "Salt Lake City," and "I'm Bugged at My Old Man" that appeared to be a step back from Today. When Capitol asked for a Beach Boys record to sell at Christmas, the live-in-the-studio vocal jam session Beach Boys' Party resulted, and sold incredibly well after the single "Barbara Ann" became a surprise hit. In a larger sense though, both of these LPs were stopgaps as Brian prepared for production on what he hoped would be the Beach Boys' most effective musical statement yet. In late 1965, the Beatles released Rubber Soul. Amazed at the high song quality and overall cohesiveness of the album, Brian began writing songs -- with help from lyricist Tony Asher -- and producing sessions for a song suite charting a young man's growth to emotional maturity. Though Capitol was resistant to an album with few obvious hits, the group spent more time working on the vocals and harmonies than any other previous project. The result, released in May 1966 as Pet Sounds, more than justified the effort. It's still one of the best-produced and most influential rock LPs ever released, the culmination of years of Brian's perfectionist productions and songwriting. Critics praised Pet Sounds, but the new direction failed to impress American audiences. Though it reached the Top Ten, Pet Sounds missed a gold certificate (the first to do so since the group's debut LP). Conversely, worldwide reaction was not just positive but jubilant. In England, the album hit number two and earned the Beach Boys honors for best group in year-end polls by NME -- above even the Beatles, hardly slouches themselves with the releases of "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" and Revolver. The Beach Boys' next single, "Good Vibrations," had originally been written for the Pet Sounds sessions, though Brian removed it from the song list to give himself more time for production. He resumed working on it after the completion of Pet Sounds, eventually devoting up to six months (and three different studios) to the single. Released in October 1966, "Good Vibrations" capped off the year as the group's third number one single and still stands as one of the best singles of all time. Throughout late 1966 and early 1967, Brian worked feverishly on the next Beach Boys LP -- a project named Dumb Angel, but later titled SMiLE, that promised to be as great an artistic leap beyond Pet Sounds as that album had been from Today. He drafted Van Dyke Parks, an eccentric lyricist and session man, as his songwriting partner, and recorded reams of tape containing increasingly fragmented tracks that grew ever more speculative as the months wore on. Already wary of Brian's increasingly artistic leanings and drug experimentation, the other Beach Boys grew hostile when called in to the studio to add vocals for Parks lyrics like, "A blind class aristocracy/Back through the opera glass you see/The pit and the pendulum drawn/Columnaded ruins domino/Canvas the town and brush the backdrop" (from "Surf's Up"). A rift soon formed between the band and Brian; they felt his intake of marijuana and LSD had clouded his judgment, while he felt they were holding him back from the coming psychedelic era. As recording for SMiLE dragged on into spring 1967, Brian began working fewer hours. For the first time in the Beach Boys' career, he appeared unsure of his direction. If SMiLE ever appeared salvageable, those hopes were dashed in May, when Brian officially canceled the project -- just a few weeks before the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In August, the group finally released a new single, "Heroes and Villains." Very similar to the fragmentary style of "Good Vibrations," though a distinctly inferior follow-up, it missed the Top Ten. That fall, the group convened at Brian's Bel Air mansion-turned-studio and recorded new versions of several SMiLE songs plus a few new recordings and re-emerged with Smiley Smile. Carl summed up the LP as "a bunt instead of a grand slam," and its near-complete lack of cohesiveness all but destroyed the group's reputation for forward-thinking pop. As the Beatles were ushering in the psychedelic age, the Beach Boys stalled with the all-important teen crowd, who quickly began to see the group as conservative, establishment throwbacks. The perfect chance to stem the tide, a headlining spot at the pioneering Monterey Pop Festival in summer 1967, was squandered. Though the Beach Boys regrouped quickly -- the back-to-basics Wild Honey LP appeared before the end of 1967 -- their hopes of becoming the world's preeminent pop group with both hippies and critics had fizzled in a matter of months. All this incredible promise wasted made fans, critics, and radio programmers undeniably bitter toward future product. Predictably, both Wild Honey and 1968's Friends suffered with all three audiences. They survive as interesting records nevertheless; deliberately under-produced, with song fragments and recording-session detritus often left in the mix; the skeletal blue-eyed soul of Wild Honey and the laid-back orchestral pop of Friends made them favorites only after fans realized the Beach Boys were a radically different group in 1968 than in 1966. Sparked by the Top 20 hit "Do It Again" -- a song that saw the first shades of the group as an oldies act -- 1969's 20/20 did marginally better. Still, Capitol dropped the band soon after. One year later, the Beach Boys signed to Reprise. The first LP for Brother/Reprise was 1970's Sunflower, a surprisingly strong album featuring a return to the gorgeous harmonies of the mid-'60s and many songs written by different members of the band. Surf's Up, titled after a reworked song originally intended for SMiLE, followed in 1971. Though frequently lovable, the wide range of material on Surf's Up displayed not a band but a conglomeration of individual interests. During sessions for the album, Dennis put his hand through a plate glass window and was unable to play drums. Early in 1972, the band hired drummer Ricky Fataar and guitarist Blondie Chaplin, two members of a South African rock band named the Flame (Carl had produced their self-titled debut for Brother Records the previous year). Carl and the Passions: So Tough, the first album released with Fataar and Chaplin in the band, descended into lame early-'70s AOR. For the first time, a Beach Boys album retained nothing of their classic sound. Brian's mental stability wavered from year to year, and he spent much time in his mansion with no wish to even contact the outside world. He occasionally contributed to the songwriting and session load, but was by no means a member of the band anymore (he rarely even appeared on album covers or promotional shots). Though it's unclear why Reprise felt ready to take such a big risk, the label authorized a large recording budget for the next Beach Boys album. After shipping most of the group's family and entourage (plus an entire studio) over to Amsterdam, the Beach Boys re-emerged in 1973 with Holland. The LP scraped the bottom rungs of the Top 40, and the single "Sail on, Sailor" (with vocals by Chaplin) did receive some FM radio airplay. Still, Holland's muddy sound did nothing for the aging band, and it earned scathing reviews. Perhaps a bit gun-shy, the Beach Boys essentially retired from recording during the mid-'70s. Instead, the band concentrated on grooming their live act, which quickly grew to become an incredible experience. It was a good move, considering the Beach Boys could lay claim to more hits than any other '60s rock act on the road. The Beach Boys in Concert, their third live album in total, appeared in 1973. Then, in mid-1974, Capitol Records went to the vaults and issued a repackaged hits collection, Endless Summer. Both band and label watched, dumbfounded, as the double LP hit number one, spent almost three years on the charts, and went gold. Endless Summer capitalized on a growing fascination with oldies rock that had made Sha Na Na, American Graffiti, and Happy Days big hits. Rolling Stone, never the most friendly magazine to the group, named the Beach Boys its Band of the Year at the end of the year. Another collection, Spirit of America, hit the Top Ten in 1974, and the Beach Boys were hustled into the studio to begin new recordings. Trumpeted by the barely true marketing campaign "Brian's Back!," 1976's 15 Big Ones balanced a couple of '50s oldies with some justifiably exciting Brian Wilson oddities like "Had to Phone Ya." It also hit the Top Ten and went gold, despite many critical misgivings. Brian took a much more involved position for the following year's The Beach Boys Love You (it was almost titled Brian Loves You and released as a solo album). In marked contrast to the fatalistic early-'70s pop of "Til I Die" and others, Brian sounded positively jubilant on gruff proto-synth pop numbers like "Let Us Go on This Way" and "Mona." However idiosyncratic compared to what oldies fans expected of the Beach Boys, Love You was the group's best album in years. (A suite of beautiful, tender ballads on side two was quite reminiscent of 1965's Today.) After 1979's M.I.U. Album, the group signed a large contract with CBS that stipulated Brian's involvement on each album. However, his brief return to the spotlight ended with two dismal efforts, L.A. (Light Album) and Keepin' the Summer Alive. The Beach Boys began splintering by the end of the decade, with financial mismanagement by Mike Love's brothers Stan and Steve fostering tension between him and the Wilsons. By 1980, both Dennis and Carl had left the Beach Boys for solo careers. (Dennis had already released his first album, Pacific Ocean Blue, in 1977, and Carl released his eponymous debut in 1981.) Brian was removed from the group in 1982 after his weight ballooned to over 300 pounds, though the tragic drowning death of Dennis in 1983 helped bring the group back together. In 1985, the Beach Boys released a self-titled album that returned them to the Top 40 with "Getcha Back." It would be the last proper Beach Boys album of the '80s, however. Brian had been steadily improving in both mind and body during the mid-'80s, though the rest of the group grew suspicious of his mentor, Dr. Eugene Landy. Landy was a dodgy psychiatrist who reportedly worked wonders with the easily impressionable Brian but also practically took over his life. He collaborated with Brian on the autobiography Wouldn't It Be Nice and wrote lyrics for Brian's first solo album, 1988's Brian Wilson. Critics and fans enjoyed Wilson's return to the studio, but the charts were unforgiving, especially with attention focused on the Beach Boys once more. The single "Kokomo," from the soundtrack to Cocktail, hit number one in the U.S. late that year, prompting a haphazard collection named Still Cruisin'. The group also sued Brian, more to force Landy out of the picture than anything, and Mike Love later sued Brian for songwriting royalties (Brian had frequently admitted Love's involvement on most of them). Despite the many quarrels, the Beach Boys kept touring during the early '90s, and Mike and Brian actually began writing songs together in 1995. Instead of a new album, though, the Beach Boys returned with Stars and Stripes, Vol. 1, a collection of remade hits with country stars singing lead and the group adding backing vocals. Also, a Brian Wilson documentary titled I Just Wasn't Made for These Times aired on the Disney Channel, with an accompanying soundtrack featuring spare renditions of Beach Boys classics by Brian himself. Just as the band appeared to be pulling together for a proper studio album, though, Carl died of cancer in 1998. Ten years after his first solo album, Brian became aware of his immense influence on the alternative rock community; he worked with biggest fans Sean O'Hagan (of the High Llamas) and Andy Paley on a series of recordings. Again, good intentions failed to carry through as the recordings were ditched in favor of another overly produced, mainstream-slanted work, Imagination. By early 1999, no less than three Beach Boys-connected units were touring the country -- a Brian Wilson solo tour, the "official" Beach Boys led by Mike Love, and the "Beach Boys Family" led by Al Jardine. In 2000, Capitol instituted a long-promised reissue campaign, focusing on the group's long out of print '70s LPs, and updated remastering of the '60s LPs followed soon after. Brian Wilson continued his solo career into the 2000s with a string of popular albums, including a live run-though of Pet Sounds (Pet Sounds Live) and, in 2004, a concert tour as well as a re-recording around SMiLE. The surviving members next united in 2006 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Pet Sounds. Two years later, however, Jardine was forced to settle a lawsuit brought by Love and Carl Wilson's estate over the use of the Beach Boys' name in his touring band (which was renamed the Endless Summer Band). Regardless of legal actions and strained relations, all of the band's surviving members were on hand in June 2011 for a special announcement: forthcoming were new live dates, reissues (including the first-ever release of The Smile Sessions; it appeared at the end of 2011), new recordings, and a spate of planned releases for 2012 that would feature all of the surviving members of the band who contributed the most to their '60s prime: Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, and even David Marks. The new recordings included a version of their 1968 hit "Do It Again" and, by June 2012, a full album, including 12 original songs produced by Wilson and given the title of its first single, That's Why God Made the Radio; the album generated generally positive reviews and debuted at number three on the Billboard 200. Just before their 50th anniversary tour ended, in late September, Love announced that additional tour dates for the rest of 2012 would not include Brian Wilson, Jardine, or Marks. The brief reunion was commemorated on the May 2013 live album The Beach Boys Live: The 50th Anniversary Tour. Three years later a couple of archival releases appeared: a 50th anniversary reissue of Pet Sounds and a compilation of their earliest recordings called Becoming the Beach Boys: The Complete Hite & Dorinda Morgan Sessions. ~ John Bush
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The Olympic Games
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Introduction
The Olympic Games, which originated in ancient Greece as many as 3,000 years ago, were revived in the late 19th century and have become the world’s preeminent sporting competition. From the 8th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D., the Games were held every four years in Olympia, located in the western Peloponnese peninsula, in honor of the god Zeus. The first modern Olympics took place in 1896 in Athens, and featured 280 participants from 13 nations, competing in 43 events. Since 1994, the Summer and Winter Olympic Games have been held separately and have alternated every two years.
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The Olympics in Ancient Greece
The first written records of the ancient Olympic Games date to 776 B.C., when a cook named Coroebus won the only event–a 192-meter footrace called the stade (the origin of the modern “stadium”)–to become the first Olympic champion. However, it is generally believed that the Games had been going on for many years by that time. Legend has it that Heracles (the Roman Hercules ), son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene, founded the Games, which by the end of the 6th century B.C had become the most famous of all Greek sporting festivals. The ancient Olympics were held every four years between August 6 and September 19 during a religious festival honoring Zeus. The Games were named for their location at Olympia, a sacred site located near the western coast of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Their influence was so great that ancient historians began to measure time by the four-year increments in between Olympic Games, which were known as Olympiads.
Did You Know?
The 1896 Games featured the first Olympic marathon, which followed the 25-mile route run by the Greek soldier who brought news of a victory over the Persians from Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C. Fittingly, Greece's Spyridon Louis won the first gold medal in the event. In 1924, the distance would be standardized to 26 miles and 385 yards.
After 13 Olympiads, two more races joined the stade as Olympic events: the diaulos (roughly equal to today’s 400-meter race), and the dolichos (a longer-distance race, possibly comparable to the 1,500-meter or 5,000-meter event). The pentathlon (consisting of five events: a foot race, a long jump, discus and javelin throws and a wrestling match) was introduced in 708 B.C., boxing in 688 B.C. and chariot racing in 680 B.C. In 648 B.C., pankration, a combination of boxing and wrestling with virtually no rules, debuted as an Olympic event. Participation in the ancient Olympic Games was initially limited to freeborn male citizens of Greece; there were no women’s events, and married women were prohibited from attending the competition.
Decline and Revival of the Olympic Tradition
After the Roman Empire conquered Greece in the mid-2nd century B.C., the Games continued, but their standards and quality declined. In one notorious example from A.D. 67, the decadent Emperor Nero entered an Olympic chariot race, only to disgrace himself by declaring himself the winner even after he fell off his chariot during the event. In A.D. 393, Emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, called for a ban on all “pagan” festivals, ending the ancient Olympic tradition after nearly 12 centuries.
It would be another 1,500 years before the Games would rise again, largely thanks to the efforts of Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) of France. Dedicated to the promotion of physical education, the young baron became inspired by the idea of creating a modern Olympic Games after visiting the ancient Olympic site. In November 1892, at a meeting of the Union des Sports Athlétiques in Paris, Coubertin proposed the idea of reviving the Olympics as an international athletic competition held every four years. Two years later, he got the approval he needed to found the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which would become the governing body of the modern Olympic Games.
The Olympics Through the Years
The first modern Olympics were held in Athens, Greece, in 1896. In the opening ceremony, King Georgios I and a crowd of 60,000 spectators welcomed 280 participants from 13 nations (all male), who would compete in 43 events, including track and field, gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, cycling, tennis, weightlifting, shooting and fencing. All subsequent Olympiads have been numbered even when no Games take place (as in 1916, during World War I , and in 1940 and 1944, during World War II ). The official symbol of the modern Games is five interlocking colored rings, representing the continents of North and South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. The Olympic flag, featuring this symbol on a white background, flew for the first time at the Antwerp Games in 1920.
The Olympics truly took off as an international sporting event after 1924, when the VIII Games were held in Paris. Some 3,000 athletes (with more than 100 women among them) from 44 nations competed that year, and for the first time the Games featured a closing ceremony. The Winter Olympics debuted that year, including such events as figure skating, ice hockey, bobsledding and the biathlon. Eighty years later, when the 2004 Summer Olympics returned to Athens for the first time in more than a century, nearly 11,000 athletes from a record 201 countries competed. In a gesture that joined both ancient and modern Olympic traditions, the shotput competition that year was held at the site of the classical Games in Olympia.
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Main article: Summer Olympic Games
After the initial success, the Olympics struggled. The celebrations in Paris (1900) and St. Louis (1904) were overshadowed by the World's Fair exhibitions in which they were included. The 1906 Intercalated Games (so-called because of their off-year status, as 1906 is not divisible by four) were held in Athens, as the first of an alternating series of Athens-held Olympics. Although originally the IOC recognised and supported these games, they are currently not recognised by the IOC as Olympic Games, which has given rise to the explanation that they were intended to mark the 10th anniversary of the modern Olympics. The 1906 Games again attracted a broad international field of participants—in 1904, 80% had been American—and great public interest, thereby marking the beginning of a rise in popularity and size of the Games.
From the 241 participants from 14 nations in 1896, the Games grew to nearly 11,100 competitors from 202 countries at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens . The number of competitors at the Winter Olympics is much smaller than at the Summer Games; at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin Italy, 2,633 athletes from 80 countries competed in 84 events.
The Olympics are one of the largest media events. In Sydney in 2000, there were over 16,000 broadcasters and journalists, and an estimated 3.8 billion viewers watched the games on television. The growth of the Olympics is one of the largest problems the Olympics face today. Although allowing professional athletes and attracting sponsorships from major international companies solved financial problems in the 1980s, the large number of athletes, media and spectators makes it difficult and expensive for host cities to organize the Olympics. For example, the 2012 Olympics (which were held in London), is based on an updated budget of over £9bn—one of the biggest budgets for an Olympics to date. Even if sponsorships do lighten the load in terms of the debt that these countries take on, one of the biggest problems faced is how their economies will cope with the extra financial burdens put on them.
Despite the Olympics usually being associated with one host city, most of the Olympics have had events held in other cities, especially the football and sailing events. There were two Olympics where some events were held in a different country: during the 1920 Antwerp Olympics two sailing races were held in the Netherlands; and during the Melbourne Olympics equestrian events were held in Sweden. The 2008 Beijing Olympics marked the third time that Olympic events have been held in the territories of two different NOC 's: at the 2008 Olympics, equestrian events were held in Hong Kong (which competes separately from mainland China.)
203 countries currently participate in the Olympics. This is a noticeably higher number than the number of countries belonging to the United Nations, which is only 193. The International Olympic Committee allows nations to compete which do not meet the strict requirements for political sovereignty that many other international organizations demand. As a result, many colonies and dependencies are permitted to host their own Olympic teams and athletes even if such competitors hold the same citizenship as another member nation. Examples of this include territories such as Puerto Rico , Bermuda , and Hong Kong , all of which compete as separate nations despite being legally a part of another country. Also, since 1980, Taiwan has competed under the name " Chinese Taipei ", and under a flag specially prepared by the IOC. Prior to that year the People's Republic of China refused to participate in the Games because Taiwan had been competing under the name "Republic of China". The Republic of the Marshall Islands was recognised as a nation by the IOC on February 9, 2006, and competed in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing . [9]
Youth Olympic Games
Main article: Youth Olympic Games
The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) [10] are planned to be a "junior" version of the Games, complementing the current "senior" Games, [11] and will feature athletes between the ages of 14 and 18. [12] The idea for such an event was envisioned in 2001 by IOC president Jacques Rogge , [13] and at the 119th IOC session in Guatemala City in July 2007, the IOC approved the Games. [14]
The Youth Games versions will be shorter: the summer version will last at most twelve days; the winter version will last a maximum of nine days. [15] [16] The IOC will allow a maximum of 3,500 athletes and 875 officials to participate at the summer games, while 970 athletes and 580 officials are expected at the winter games. [14] Each participating country would send at least four athletes. The sports contested at these games will be the same as those scheduled for the traditional Games, [13] but with a limited number of disciplines and events, and including some with special appeal to youth. Education and culture are also key components for this Youth edition.
Estimated cost for the game are currently $30 million for the summer and $15–$20 million for winter games. [17] It has been stated the IOC will "foot the bill" for the Youth Games.
The first host city will be Singapore in 2010; the first Winter Olympics is in 2012 in Innsbruk .
Olympic problems
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The 1956 Melbourne Olympics were the first Olympics to be boycotted. The Netherlands , Spain , and Switzerland refused to attend because of the repression of the Hungarian Uprising by the Soviet Union ; additionally, Cambodia , Egypt , Iraq , and Lebanon , boycotted the games due to the Suez Crisis. [18]
In 1972 and 1976 , a large number of African countries threatened the IOC with a boycott, to force them to ban South Africa , Rhodesia , and New Zealand . The IOC conceded in the first two cases, but refused in 1976 because the boycott was prompted by a New Zealand rugby union tour of South Africa, and rugby was not an Olympic sport. The countries withdrew their teams after the games had started; some African athletes had already competed. A lot of sympathy was felt for the athletes forced by their governments to leave the Olympic Village; there was little sympathy outside Africa for the governments' attitude. Twenty-two countries ( Guyana was the only non-African nation) boycotted the Montreal Olympics because New Zealand was not banned. [19]
Also in 1976, due to pressure from the People's Republic of China ( PRC ), Canada told the team from the Republic of China ( Taiwan ) that it could not compete at the Montreal Summer Olympics under the name "Republic of China" despite a compromise that would have allowed Taiwan to use the ROC flag and anthem . The Republic of China refused and as a result did not participate again until 1984, when it returned under the name " Chinese Taipei " and used a special flag. [20]
In 1980 and 1984, the Cold War opponents boycotted each other's games. Sixty-five nations refused to compete at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but 16 nations from Western Europe did compete at the Moscow Olympics. The boycott reduced the number of nations participating to only 81, the lowest number of nations to compete since 1956. The Soviet Union and 14 of its Eastern Bloc partners (except Romania ) countered by skipping the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 , arguing the safety of their athletes could not be guaranteed there and "chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in the United States". [21] The 1984 boycotters staged their own Friendship Games in July-August. [22] [23]
There have been growing calls for boycotts of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing in protest of China's poor human rights record and response to the recent disturbances in Tibet, Darfur, and Taiwan. There are also campaigns calling for Chinese goods to be boycotted. [24] [25] [26]
Olympic Problems
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One of the main problems facing the Olympics (and international sports in general) is doping , or performance enhancing drugs. In the early 20th century, many Olympic athletes began using drugs to enhance their performance. For example, the winner of the marathon at the 1904 Games , Thomas J. Hicks , was given strychnine and brandy by his coach, even during the race. As these methods became more extreme, gradually the awareness grew that this was no longer a matter of health through sports. In the mid-1960s, sports federations put a ban on doping, and the IOC followed suit in 1967.
The first and so far only Olympic death caused by doping occurred in 1960. At the cycling road race in Rome the Danish rider Knud Enemark Jensen fell from his bicycle and later died. A coroner's inquiry found that he was under the influence of amphetamines.
The first Olympic athlete to test positive for doping use was Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall , a Swedish pentathlete at the 1968 Summer Olympics , who lost his bronze medal for alcohol use. Seventy-three athletes followed him over the next 38 years, several medal winners among them. The most publicised doping-related disqualification was that of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson , who won the 100m at the 1988 Seoul Olympics , but tested positive for stanozolol.
Despite the testing, many athletes continued to use doping without getting caught. In 1990, documents were revealed that showed many East German female athletes had been unknowingly administered anabolic steroids and other drugs by their coaches and trainers as a government policy.
In the late 1990s, the IOC took initiative in a more organised battle against doping, leading to the formation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 1999. The recent 2000 Summer Olympics and 2002 Winter Olympics have shown that this battle is not nearly over, as several medalists in weightlifting and cross-country skiing were disqualified due to doping offences. One innocent victim of the anti-doping movement at the Olympics was the Romanian gymnast Andreea Răducan who was stripped of her gold medal-winning performance in the All-Around Competition of the 2000 Sydney games. Test results indicated the presence of the banned-stimulant pseudophedrine which had been prescribed to her by an Olympic doctor. Raducan had been unaware of the presence of the illegal substance in the medicine that had been prescribed to her for a cold she had during the games.
During the 2006 Winter Olympics , only one athlete failed a drug test and had a medal revoked. The only other case involved 12 members with high levels of haemoglobin and their punishment was a five day suspension for health reasons.
The International Olympic Committee introduced blood testing for the first time during these games.
Politics
Main article: Politics in the Olympics
Politics interfered with the Olympics on several occasions, the most well-known of which was the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin , where the games were used as propaganda by the German Nazis. At this Olympics, a true Olympic spirit was shown by Luz Long , who helped Jesse Owens (a black athlete) to win the long jump, at the expense of his own silver medal. [27] The Soviet Union did not participate in the Olympic Games until the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki . Instead, the Soviets organized an international sports event called Spartakiads, from 1928 onward. Many athletes from Communist organizations or close to them chose not to participate or were even barred from participating in Olympic Games, and instead participated in Spartakiads. [28]
A political incident on a smaller scale occurred at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City . Two American track-and-field athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos , performed the Black Power salute on the victory stand of the 200-meter track and field race. In response, the IOC's autocratic president Avery Brundage told the USOC to either send the two athletes home, or withdraw the complete track and field team. The USOC opted for the former. [29]
The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran specifically orders its athletes not to compete in any olympic heat, semi-final, or finals that includes athletes from Israel . At the 2004 Olympics, an Iranian judoka who had otherwise earned his place, did not compete in a heat against an Israeli judoka. [30]
Violence
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Despite what Coubertin had hoped for, the Olympics did not bring total peace to the world. In fact, three Olympiads had to pass without Olympics because of war: due to World War I the 1916 Games were cancelled, and the summer and winter games of 1940 and 1944 were cancelled because of World War II.
During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, a massacre of 11 members from the Israeli Olympic team occurred. The team members were taken hostage and eventually killed, along with a German police officer, by the Palestinian group Black September.
During the Summer Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta , a bombing at the Centennial Olympic Park killed two and injured 111 others. The bomb was set by Eric Robert Rudolph, an conservative American domestic terrorist, who is currently serving a life sentence. [31]
The 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City were the first Olympic Games since the September 11, 2001 attacks. Olympic Games since then have required an extremely high degree of security due to the fear of possible terrorist activities. [32]
There have been pro-Tibet / pro-human rights protests during the Beijing Olympic Games Torch Relay, some of which included violent incidents
Olympic Movement
Edit
A number of organizations are involved in organizing the Olympic Games. Together they form the Olympic Movement. The rules and guidelines by which these organizations operate are outlined in the Olympic Charter .
At the heart of the Olympic Movement is the International Olympic Committee (IOC), currently headed by Jacques Rogge . It can be seen as the government of the Olympics, as it takes care of the daily problems and makes all important decisions, such as choosing the host city of the Games, and the programme of the Olympics.
Three groups of organisations operate on a more specialised level:
International Federations (IFs), the governing bodies of a sport (e.g. FIFA , the IF for football (soccer) , and the FIVB , the international governing body for volleyball .)
National Olympic Committees (NOCs), which regulate the Olympic Movement within each country (eg. USOC , the NOC of the United States )
Organizing Committees for the Olympic Games (OCOGs), which take care of the organisation of a specific celebration of the Olympics.
At present, 202 NOCs and 35 IFs are part of the Olympic Movement. OCOGs are dissolved after the celebration of each Games, once all subsequent paperwork has been completed.
More broadly speaking, the term Olympic Movement is sometimes also meant to include everybody and everything involved in the Olympics, such as national sport governing bodies, athletes, media, and sponsors of the Olympic Games.
Criticism
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Most Olympic Games have been held in European and North American cities; only a few games have been held in other places, and all bids by countries in South America and Africa have failed. Many believe the games should expand to include locations in poorer regions. Economists point out that the massive infrastructure investments could springboard cities into earning higher GDP after the games. However, many host cities regret the high costs associated with hosting the games as a poor investment [33] .
In the past, the IOC has often been criticised for being a monolithic organisation, with several members remaining a member at old age, or even until their deaths. The leadership of IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch especially has been strongly criticised. Under his presidency, the Olympic Movement made great progress, but has been seen as autocratic and corrupt. Samaranch's ties with the Franco's regime in Spain and his long term as a president (21 years, until he was 81 years old) have also been points of critique.
In 1998, it became known that several IOC members had taken bribes from the organising committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City , Utah , in exchange for a vote on the city at the election of the host city. The IOC started an investigation, which led to four members resigning and six being expelled. The scandal set off further reforms, changing the way in which host cities are elected to avoid further bribes. Also, more active and former athletes were allowed in the IOC, and the membership terms have been limited.
The same year (1998), four European groups organized the International Network Against Olympic Games and Commercial Sports to oppose their cities' bids for future Olympic Games. Also, an Anti-Olympic Alliance had formed in Sydney to protest the hosting of the 2000 Games. Later, a similar movement in Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia organized to protest the hosting of the 2010 Winter Games. These movements were particularly concerned about adverse local economic impact and dislocation of people to accommodate the hosting of the Olympics.
A BBC documentary aired in August 2004, entitled Panorama: "Buying the Games", investigated the taking of bribes in the bidding process for the 2012 Summer Olympics . The documentary claimed it is possible to bribe IOC members into voting for a particular candidate city. In an airborne television interview on the way home, the Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë , specifically accused the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the London Bid Committee (headed by former Olympic athlete Sebastian Coe ) of breaking the bid rules with flagrant financial and sexual bribes. He cited French President Jacques Chirac as a witness but President Chirac gave rather more guarded interviews. In particular, Bulgaria 's member Ivan Slavkov, and Muttaleb Ahmad from the Olympic Council of Asia, were implicated. They have denied the allegations. Mayor Delanoë never mentioned the matter again. Others have alleged that the 2006 Winter Olympics were held in Turin because officials bribed the IOC and so Turin got the games and Sion, Switzerland (which was the favorite) did not.
The Olympic Movement has been accused of being overprotective of its symbolism (in particular, it claims an exclusive and monopolistic copyright over any arrangement of five rings and the term "olympics"), and have taken action against things unrelated to sport, such as the role-playing game Legend of the Five Rings. It was accused of homophobia in 1982 when it successfully sued the Gay Olympics, an event now known as the Gay Games, to ban it from using the term "olympics" in its name. [34]
Olympic symbols
Main article: Olympic symbols
The Olympic movement uses many symbols, most of them representing Coubertin's ideas and ideals. The Olympic Rings are the most widely used symbol. The five colored rings on a white field form the Olympic Flag . The colors, white, red, blue, green, yellow, and black, were chosen such that each nation has at least one of these colors in its national flag. The flag was adopted in 1914, but the first Games at which it was flown were Antwerp, 1920 . It is hoisted at each celebration of the Games.
The Olympic Motto is "Citius, Altius, Fortius", a Latin phrase meaning "Swifter, Higher, Stronger". Coubertin's ideals are probably best illustrated by the Olympic Creed :
"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
Prior to each Games, the Olympic Flame is lit in Olympia, Greece and brought to the host city by runners carrying the torch in relay. There it plays an important role in the opening ceremonies. Though the torch fire has been around since 1928 , the relay was introduced in 1936 as part of the then German government's attempt to promote their National Socialist ideology.
The Olympic mascot, an animal or human figure representing the cultural heritage of the host country, was introduced in 1968 . It has played an important part of the games since 1980 with the debut of Misha , a Russian bear.
French and English are the official languages of the Olympic movement.
Olympic ceremonies
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Apart from the traditional elements, the host nation ordinarily presents artistic displays of dance and theatre representative of that country. [35]
Various traditional elements frame the opening ceremonies of a celebration of the Olympic Games. The ceremonies typically start with the hoisting of the host country's flag and the performing of its national anthem.{{ safesubst:ifsubst |{{subst:Unsubst|Citation needed| name|¬|reason|¬| date|October 2007 }}| Template:Fix The traditional part of the ceremonies starts with a "parade of nations" (or of athletes), during which most participating athletes march into the stadium, country by country. One honoured athlete, typically a top competitor, from each country carries the flag of his or her nation, leading the entourage of other athletes from that country.
Traditionally (starting at the 1928 Summer Olympics ) Greece marches first, because of its historical status as the origin of the Olympics, while the host nation marches last. (In 2004, when the Games were held in Athens, Greece marched last as host nation rather than first, although the flag of Greece was carried in first.) Between these two nations, all other participating nations march in alphabetical order of the dominant language of the host country,{{ safesubst:ifsubst |{{subst:Unsubst|Citation needed| name|¬|reason|¬| date|November 2007 }}| Template:Fix or in French or English alphabetical order if the host country does not write its dominant language in an alphabet which has a set order. In the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona , both Spanish and Catalan were official languages of the games, but due to politics surrounding the use of Catalan, the nations entered in French alphabetical order. The XVIII Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan saw nations entering in English alphabetical order since the Japanese language grouped both China and Chinese Taipei together in the Parade of Nations.
After all nations have entered, the president of the host country's Olympic Organising Committee makes a speech, followed by the IOC president who, at the end of his speech introduces the representative of the host country who declares the Games open by reciting the formula:
«I declare open the Games of ... (name of the host city) celebrating the ... (number of the Olympiad) Olympiad of the modern era.» [36] (There is a similar recital for the Winter Games.)
Before 1936, the Opener often used to make a short Speech of Welcome before declaring the Games open. However, since 1936 when Adolf Hitler opened both the Garmisch Partenkirchen Winter Olympics and the Berlin Summer Olympics, the Openers have unswervingly stuck to that formula. The only exception was in 1984, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan opened the Summer Olympics that year in Los Angeles when he said:
Celebrating the XXIII Olympiad of the modern era, I declare open the Olympic Games of Los Angeles. [37]
Despite the Games having been awarded to a particular city and not to the country in general, the Olympic Charter presently requires the Opener to be the host country's head of state . [36] However, there have been many cases where someone other than the host country's head of state opened the Games. The first example was at the Games of the II Olympiad in Paris in 1900, when there wasn't even an Opening Ceremony. There are five examples from the United States alone where the Games were not opened by the head of state. [38]
Next, the Olympic Flag is carried horizontally (since the 1960 Summer Olympics ) into the stadium and hoisted as the Olympic Anthem is played. The flag bearers of all countries circle a rostrum , where one athlete (since the 1920 Summer Olympics ) and one judge (since the 1972 Summer Olympics ) speak the Olympic Oath , declaring they will compete and judge according to the rules. [36] Finally, the Torch is brought into the stadium, passed from athlete to athlete, until it reaches the last carrier of the Torch, often a well-known athlete from the host nation, who lights the fire in the stadium's cauldron. [36] The Olympic Flame has been lit since the 1928 Summer Olympics , but the torch relay did not start until the 1936 Summer Olympics . Beginning at the post- World War I 1920 Summer Olympics , the lighting of the Olympic Flame was for 68 years followed by the release of doves , symbolizing peace. [36] This gesture was discontinued after several doves were burned alive in the Olympic Flame during the opening ceremony of the 1988 Summer Olympics . [39] However, some Opening Ceremonies have continued to include doves in other forms; for example, the 2002 Winter Olympics featured skaters holding kite-like cloth dove puppets.
Opening ceremonies have been held outdoors, usually on the main athletics stadium, but those for the 2010 Winter Olympics will be the first to be held indoors, at the BC Place Stadium . [40]
Closing
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After medals are awarded and presented for a particular event, the flags of the nations of the three medalists are raised. The flag of the gold medalist's country is in the center and always raised the highest while the flag of the silver medalist's country is on the left facing the flags and the flag of the bronze medalist's country is on the right, both at lower elevations to the gold medalist's country's flag. The flags are all raised while the national anthem of the gold medalist's country plays.
This format of medal presentation is also seen in other multi-sporting events such as the Southeast Asian Games , the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games , as well as some motor racing events including Formula 1 and MotoGP
Olympic sports
Main article: Olympic sports
Currently, the Olympic program consists of 35 different sports, 53 disciplines and more than 400 events. The Summer Olympics includes 28 sports with 38 disciplines and the Winter Olympics includes 7 sports with 15 disciplines. [43] Nine sports were on the original Olympic programme in 1896: athletics , cycling , fencing , gymnastics , weightlifting , shooting , swimming , tennis , and wrestling . If the 1896 rowing events had not been cancelled due to bad weather, they would have been included in this list as well. [44]
At the most recent Winter Olympics, 15 disciplines in seven sports were featured. Of these, cross country skiing , figure skating , ice hockey , Nordic combined , ski jumping , and speed skating have been featured on the programme at all Winter Olympics. In addition, figure skating and ice hockey also have been contested as part of the Summer Games before the introduction of separate Winter Olympics.
In recent years, the IOC has added several new sports to the programme to attract attention from young spectators. Examples of such sports include snowboarding and beach volleyball . The growth of the Olympics also means that some less popular ( modern pentathlon ) or expensive (white water canoeing ) sports may lose their place on the Olympic programme. The IOC decided to discontinue baseball and softball beginning in 2012. Cricket and Rugby union used to be in the Olympic Games but were discontinued; a revival is now seen as possible.
Rule 48.1 of the Olympic Charter requires that there be a minimum of 15 Olympic sports at each Summer Games. Following its 114th Session (Mexico 2002), the IOC also decided to limit the programme of the Summer Games to a maximum of 28 sports, 301 events, and 10,500 athletes. The Olympic sports are defined as those governed by the International Federations listed in Rule 46 of the Olympic Charter. A two-thirds vote of the IOC is required to amend the Charter to promote a Recognised Federation to Olympic status and therefore make the sports it governs eligible for inclusion on the Olympic programme. Rule 47 of the Charter requires that only Olympic sports may be included in the programme.
The IOC reviews the Olympic programme at the first Session following each Olympiad. A simple majority is required for an Olympic sport to be included in the Olympic programme. Under the current rules, an Olympic sport not selected for inclusion in a particular Games remains an Olympic sport and may be included again later with a simple majority. At the 117th IOC Session , 26 sports were included in the programme for London 2012.
Until 1992, the Olympics also often featured demonstration sports . The objective was for these sports to reach a larger audience; the winners of these events are not official Olympic champions. These sports were sometimes sports popular only in the host nation, but internationally known sports have also been demonstrated. Some demonstration sports eventually were included as full-medal events.
Amateurism and professionalism
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Template:See The ethos of English public schools greatly influenced Pierre de Coubertin. The public schools had a deep involvement in the development of many team sports including all British codes of football as well as cricket and hockey .
The English public schools of the second half of the 19th century had a major influence on many sports. The schools contributed to the rules and influenced the governing bodies of those sports out of all proportion to their size. They subscribed to the Ancient Greek and Roman belief that sport formed an important part of education, an attitude summed up in the saying: mens sana in corpore sano – a sound mind in a healthy body. In this ethos, taking part has more importance than winning, because society expected gentlemen to become all-rounders and not the best at everything. Class prejudice against "trade" reinforced this attitude. The house of the parents of a typical public schoolboy would have a tradesman 's entrance, because tradesmen did not rank as the social equals of gentlemen. Apart from class considerations there was the typically English concept of "fairness," in which practicing or training was considered as tantamount to cheating; it meant that you considered it more important to win than to take part. Those who practiced a sport professionally were considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practiced it merely as a "hobby."
In Coubertin's vision, athletes should be gentlemen. Initially, only amateurs were considered such; professional athletes were not allowed to compete in the Olympic Games. A short-lived exception was made for professional fencing instructors. [45] This exclusion of professionals has caused several controversies throughout the history of the modern Olympics.
1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon champion, Jim Thorpe , was disqualified when it was discovered that he played semi-professional baseball prior to winning his medals. He was restored as champion on compassionate grounds by the IOC in 1983. Swiss and Austrian skiers boycotted the 1936 Winter Olympics in support of their skiing teachers, who were not allowed to compete because they earned money with their sport and were considered professionals.
It gradually became clear to many that the amateurism rules had become outdated, not least because the self-financed amateurs of Western countries often were no match for the state-sponsored "full-time amateurs" of Eastern bloc countries. Nevertheless, the IOC, led by President Avery Brundage , held to the traditional rules regarding amateurism. In the 1970s, after Brundage left, amateurism requirements were dropped from the Olympic Charter, leaving decisions on professional participation to the international federation for each sport. This switch was perhaps best exemplified by the American Dream Team , composed of well-paid NBA stars, which won the Olympic gold medal in basketball in 1992. As of 2004 , the only sport in which no professionals compete is boxing (though even this requires a definition of amateurism based on fight rules rather than on payment, as some boxers receive cash prizes from their National Olympic Committees); in men's football (soccer) , the number of players over 23 years of age is limited to three per team.
Advertisement regulations are still very strict, at least on the actual playing field, although "Official Olympic Sponsors" are common. Athletes are only allowed to have the names of clothing and equipment manufacturers on their outfits. The sizes of these markings are limited.
Olympic champions and medalists
See also: List of multiple Olympic gold medalists
The athletes (or teams) who place first, second, or third in each event receive medals. The winners receive "gold medals". (Though they were solid gold until 1912, they are now made of gilded silver.) The runners-up receive silver medals, and the third-place athletes bronze medals. In some events contested by a single-elimination tournament (most notably boxing ), third place might not be determined, in which case both semi-final losers receive bronze medals. The practice of awarding medals to the top three competitors was introduced in 1904; at the 1896 Olympics only the first two received a medal, silver and bronze, while various prizes were awarded in 1900 . However, the 1904 Olympics also awarded silver trophies for first place, which makes Athens 1906 the first games that awarded the three medals only. In addition, from 1948 onward athletes placing fourth, fifth and sixth have received certificates which became officially known as "victory diplomas;" since 1976 the medal winners have received these also, and in 1984 victory diplomas for seventh- and eighth-place finishers were added, presumably to ensure that all losing quarter-finalists in events using single-elimination formats would receive diplomas, thus obviating the need for consolation (or officially, "classification") matches to determine fifth through eighth places (though interestingly these latter are still contested in many elimination events anyway). Certificates were awarded also at the 1896 Olympics, but there they were awarded in addition to the medals to first and second place. Commemorative medals and diplomas — which differ in design from those referred to above — are also made available to participants finishing lower than third and eighth respectively. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the first three were given wreaths as well as their medals.
Because the Olympics are held only once every four years, the public and athletes often consider them as more important and valuable than world championships and other international tournaments, which are often held annually. Many athletes have become celebrities or heroes in their own country, or even world-wide, after becoming Olympic champions.
The diversity of the sports, and the great differences between the Olympic Games in 1896 and today make it difficult to decide which athlete is the most successful Olympic athlete of all time. This is further complicated since the IOC no longer recognises the Intercalated Games which it originally organised. When measuring by the number of titles won at the Modern Olympic Games, the following athletes may be considered the most successful.
Athlete
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The IOC does not publish lists of medals per country, but the media often does. A comparison between countries would be unfair to countries with fewer inhabitants, so some have made calculations of medals per number of inhabitants, such as [1] for the 2004 Olympics and [2] for a few more. A problem here is that for a very small country, gaining just one medal could mean the difference between the very top and the very bottom of the list (a point illustrated by the Bahamas ' per capita number one position in 2004). On the other hand, a large country may not be able to send a number of athletes that is proportional to its size because a limit is set for the number of participants per country for a specific sport.
A comparison of the total number of medals over time is further complicated by the fact that the number of times that countries have participated is not equal, and that many countries have gained and lost territories where medal-winning athletes come from. A case in point is the USSR , which not only participated relatively rarely (18 times, versus 45 times for the UK ), but also ceased to exist in 1991. The resulting Russian Federation is largely, but not entirely equal to the former USSR. Also, one would have to use population statistics at the time.
The IOC medal tally chart is based on the number of gold medals for country. Where states are equal, the number of silver medals (and then bronze medals) are counted to determine rankings. Since 1996, the only countries that have appeared in the top 10 medal tallies for summer Olympics have been the Russian Federation , United States , China , France , Germany , Australia and Italy . Since 1994, the only countries that have appeared in the top 10 medal tallies for winter Olympics have been Norway , the Russian Federation , the United States , Canada , Germany , Austria , South Korea , Switzerland , France and Italy .
Olympic Games host cities
Main article: List of Olympic host cities
By 2014, the Olympic Games were hosted by 42 cities in 22 countries. The upcoming 2012 Summer Olympic Games will be held in London, and the 2014 Winter Olympic Games will be held in Soshi. The number in parentheses following the city/country denotes how many times that city/country had then hosted the games, with said exclusions.
This table does not include the "Olympic Games" organized by Evangelos Zappas prior to the IOC's creation in 1894. It does list the "Intercalated Games" of 1906 , but it is not included in the counts as the IOC no longer considers them to be official Olympic Games.
Olympic Games host cities
1 Originally awarded to Chicago , but moved to St. Louis to coincide with the World's Fair
2 Cancelled due to World War I
3 Cancelled due to World War II
4 Equestrian events were held in Stockholm , Sweden . Stockholm had to bid for the equestrian competition separately; it received its own Olympic flame and had its own formal invitations and opening & closing ceremonies, just like the regular Summer Olympics. [46]
5 Equestrian events to be held in China's Hong Kong SAR . Although Hong Kong's separate NOC is conducting the equestrian competition, it is an integral part of the Beijing Games; it is not being conducted under a separate bid, flame, etc., as was the 1956 Stockholm equestrian competition. The IOC website lists only Beijing as the host city [47] .
See also
| i don't know |
Where in the former Soviet Union was Yul Brynner born? | Yul Brynner Statue - Rock Brynner in the Russian Far East
Rock Brynner in the Russian Far East
Moscow
Yul Brynner Park was opened on September 28th, 2012, when his statue was inaugurated in front of the house where he was born at 15 Aleutskaya St. in Vladivostok, Russia, in the garden where he played as a child.
This project took six years of planning and preparation before the granite for the ten-foot statue was transported to Vladivostok from a quarry in China a thousand miles away; appropriate, since Yul spent much of his childhood in China after his family fled Soviet Russia. Sculptor Alexei Bokiy, with whom I had begun discussing the monument in 2006, understood well the enormous challenge confronting him in carving such a very famous face and figure out of a single block of stone.
The City of Vladivostok that now owns the land in front of "Dom Bryner" contributed the grounds for the park, and financed the landscaping and architectural design. At night, along with the glow of the 1920s street lights, the statue is illuminated by spotlights as Yul Brynner himself was throughout his long career.
VLADIVOSTOK AND MOSCOW, 2016
The Russian edition of my book "Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia" was published in 2016.
Setting out on the book tour.
Book signing at the Far East Federal University.
My book tour in May began in Vladivostok, Sidimi, and Dalnegorsk in Primorye. . .
. . . with a formal event at the historic Vladivostok train station, last stop of the Trans-Siberian Express.
The Patriarch honored and blessed the event with an Orthodox choir.
The Vladivostok International Film Festival "Pacific Meridian," 12-19 September 2015
This perspective of Vladivostok helps explain its unusual topography, from the large Amur Bay to the right and the inlet called the Golden Horn on the left, around which sits the heart of the city.
The unique topography of the city is easier to understand from the view in Google Earth.
I had the pleasure of meeting the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, John Tefft, who was visiting Vladivostok while I was there. He especially wanted to see the statue of my father in front of the Bryner residence, where Yul was born in 1920.
Anbassador Tefft was determined to photograph me with the statue for his wife, a longtime fan.
I'm the only person from outside Russia who has attended every Vladivostok film festival since the first in 2003. By now I lope up the blue carpet.
Apparently, my dance moves were newsworthy.
With actress Thuy Anh, from Hanoi, and film-maker Vanessa Danielson, who was presenting a brilliant short film, "Guests," directed by her husband. My job, as the official talisman for the Film Festival, includes welcoming the guests. It's hard work, but somebody has to do it.
This year the luminous British actress Julia Ormond attended our Festival.
The admirable and delightful Julia Ormond has made many films in Russia but never visited Vladivostok before.
At the Gala night of the Festival I took a selfie from the stage of the Vladivostok Opera House. Julia Ormond is in the front row left.
Amur Bay from my hotel window.
The boardwalk in Vladivostok on a warm, autumn Sunday afternoon.
I was guest of honor at a conference at the Far Eastern Federal University, at the very conference table where Russian President Putin and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Asian-Pacific Economic Conference in 2012.
The Far East Federal University, with 20,000 students, is the only academic institution I know with its own bottled water.
An officer of the Russian merchant navy.
Local artist Roman Goloseev painted this beautiful canvass for me, with many of my favorite images of Vladivostok.
Standing on the Sidimi peninsula across Amur Bay from Vladivostok, where the Bryner country estate was. In the background is one of the lighthouses that Jules Bryner built in the 1890s.
With my "Russian brother" Sasha Doluda, who first invited me to Vladivostok in 2003. The date "1915" over our heads is on a structure at the estate where my father Yul first went swimming, a decade later.
MOSCOW, 21-27 SEPTEMBER 2015
Thanks to my friend Zhenya Diamantidi, the Swiss Ambassador to Russia, Pierre Helg, offered me the guest house in the courtyard at the Ambassador's official residence in Maliy Kislovskiy Pereulok during my week in Moscow. This was the family home of Turgenev, where the novelist spent his childhood.
My Swiss chalet in the center of Moscow, three hundred meters from the Arbat.
It's a beautiful two-bedroom house with a pleasant office space and full kitchen.
As well, the Ambassador gave a dinner party on my behalf at his official residence.
Ambassador Helg is a highly cultured gentleman from Geneva, where I grew up.
My date for the dinner was my dear friend Liza Arzamasova, of course.
Also at the ambassador's dinner party was James Land, the Cultural Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the Swiss Cultural Attache, my dear friend from Vladivostok Zhenya Diamantidi, my friend and translator (two books so far) Max Nemtsov, and his wife, poet and book store entrpreneur Shashi Martynova.
Nastya Smetanina joined us after I saw Liza's performance in the German play "Kamen."
Nastya and Alexei invited me to their dacha for a few days, 90 km. northeast of Moscow.
My dacha family. . . .
Sunset with Nastya at the dacha.
Victory Day in Dalnegorsk, 9 May 2015
The city of Dalnegorsk
Dalnegorsk (pop. 42,000) was founded with the Bryner Mines in 1896 by my Swiss-born great-grandfather Jules Bryner. Jules was one of a half-dozen Europeans who built the city of Vladivostok (pop. 500,000), but he built Dalnegorsk with his own capital and that of his mine's investors. Today, a towering, 12-foot-high statue of him stands in the city center.
I was invited by the city and the company that now owns the mines, Dalpolymetall, to come celebrate the 70th anniversary of Victory Day. Indeed, at least one out of eight Russian bullets fired at nazi troops came from these mines. And so I found myself as the honored guest, in a proud spot on the review stand where the town's 37 surviving W.W.II veterans and scores of war widows sat to witness the parade in their honor, and to receive the flowers that the children of the city brought to them.
I watched the Victory Day parade from the review stand with the Mayor, Gleb Zuev and the W.W.II veterans.
Beneath the statue of Lenin, and behind the veterans and widows.
Aleksander Doluda, his wife Natasha, and their daughters Dina and Sasha - my "Russian family."
This was planned as a family trip, and so it was. We flew on this small plane to Kavalierovo, an hour's drive from Dalnegorsk.
We stayed with wood artist Oleg Batukhtin and his wife in Kavalierovo, in the beautiful house that he built himself.
Laying flowers at my great-grandfather's monument.
The statue is an extraordinary tribute to Jules Bryner.
The plaque upon the pedestal reads "Jules Ivanovich Bryner (1849-1920), founder of Dalnegorsk and of the Joint Stock Mining Company 'Tetukhe.'"
The city's historian, Victor Tatarnikov, preesented me with a beautiful miniature of the statue, made of the same stone and bronze by the sculptor, my friend Alexey Bokiy, and made possible by Gleb Zuev.
My visit to the Jules Bryner monument was as significant to the city as it was to me.
I paid tribute to Russia's war heroes with Mayor Igor Sakhuta and with a veteran of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The Mayor and I left flowers at the statue to the heroes of World War II.
The parade began with a long wreath carried by youthful escorts.
Almost everyone in Dalnegorsk marched, in a variety of World War II uniforms.
Hundreds of dove balloons were freed along the parade route.
I spent time with a number of the World War II widows of Dalnegorsk.
Victory Day ended with fireworks over Town Hall.
Gleb Zuev and I beside Lake Bryner, beneath the lighthouse.
Sasha Doluda, my Russian "brother" who made this and all my visits possible, beneath Cape Bryner.
Off the coast from the lighthouse that my great-grandfather built there more than a century ago.
Here, on Gleb'a speed boat I found myself between Cape Bryner and the Twin Rocks.
Cape Bryner and the Twin Rocks were on the 1,000-Ruble notes that were printed in 1991, when the Soviet Union ended and Russia was born anew.
Before leaving Vladivostok for Moscow, I lay flowers at my father's statue.
A neighbor photographed me and my friends from his apartment.
As always, I visited Gorky (Kultura) Park. . .
. . . and this time with my young old friend Liza Arzamasova.
. . . and had lunch beside the badminton courts.
We strolled through the art-filled paths . . .
. . . and walked along the Moskva River.
Liza brought me to Mikhail Bulgakov's home and museum on his 124th birthday.
I had seen Sergey Aldonin's production of Master and Margarita there two years ago. in the beautiful little basement theatre just below when Bulgakov wrote it decades ago. Thanks to Liza, I feel very much part of the devoted family that keep the great author's memory alive.
Liza and I were greeted by the headless author.
The headless author at work.
Bulgakov's typewriter.
Time to leave Russia . . . until September.
Yul Brynner Tribute at The Solzhenitsyn House of Russians Abroad, Moscow, November 7-8, 2014
Yul Brynner, The Russian King of Hollywood Exhibit at the Solzhenitsyn Center.
I was proud to be able to help the Solzhenitsyn Center celebrate Yul's achievements, and to accept the Michael Chekhov Medal on his behalf.
Dr. Viktor Moskvin, the Director of the Solzhentsyn Center, presented the Medal and Certificate . . .
. . . along with Sergey Zaitsev, renowned documentary film-maker and the head of the Film Festival, and the members of the Chekhov Committee.
The Magnificent Seven will forever remain Yul's best loved film in Russia.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn created the Center to honor the work of Russians who, like himself, were forced to leave their homeland during the Soviet era. This year they honored my father - three times. The "Russians Abroad Film Festival" honored Yul with the Michael Chekhov Award -- especially fitting, since it was with Chekhov that he studied for three years and emigrated to the United States. And the Solzhenitsyn Center honored him with a documentary, beautifully filmed by Rita Kuklina, entitled "Yul - Gypsy Soul," which was shown both nights, and will soon be broadcast on the national channel, Kultura. Finally, a two-room exhibit of Yul Brynner and our family's memorabilia was opened, from the collection of Elena Sergeyeva. It will remain at the Center until the end of November.
Nataliya Klevalina, in charge of International Projects at the Center, whose year's work and preparation made the event possible.
I appeared on Kultura kanal . . .
. . . to announce the publication in Russian of my book Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond in 2016, as well as Rita Kuklina's documentary, Yul - Gypsy Soul.
Filmmaker Rita Kuklina and I answering questions about her documentary.
Part of the extensive collection of documents, photos, and memoribilia. . .
. . .including Chekhov's 1954 book for which he asked Yul to write the Preface.
I had time to visit the Arbat with my beloved friend Liza Arzamasova. . .
. . . and to drive past the Kremlin in the frosty climate of November 2014.
Inauguration of Jules Bryner Statue in Dalnegorsk, Russia September 27th, 2014.
The whole city turned out in tribute to Jules Bryner, warmly remembered as the single-handed founder of Dalnegorsk.
The cast bronze sculpture is by Alexei Bokiy, who also carved the granite statue of Yul in Vladivostok, 400 miles to the southwest.
Jules Bryner, my great-grandfather, established the Bryner Mines in the wilderness in 1897, and with them the town of Tetukhe, known today as Dalnegorsk.
I had hoped to attend, but my brief visit to Vladivostok did not make that possible . . .
. . . but I have accepted the invitation of Dalpolymetall, the company that now owns my family's mines, to visit next spring, and I look forward to it with great anticipation.
(My thanks to Alexander Borisenko and Sergey Kiryanov for use of all the photos.)
This year the Festival was held at the new Vladivostok Opera House, which opened just three months ago.
Arriving on the "blue carpet" . . .
. . . with my friend Michael Madsen, best known for his roles in Tarantino films.
Michael attended the Festival last year as a guest and enjoyed it so much he returned this year as a competition juror.
This year Adrien Brody also came to Vladivostok, where he is best known for his Oscar-winning role in The Pianist, and this year in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel.
He chose to present his earlier Anderson film, The Darjeeling Express.
Adrien and Michael have known each other for years.
Stephen Baldwin was also a guest at the Festival, best remembered in Vladivostok for The Usual Suspects.
The St. Petersburg stage actress Anna Astrakhantseva attended, representing her new film Two Women, adapted from Turgeniev's A Month in the Country. Anna co-stars in the film with Ralph Fiennes, whose performance in effortless, impeccable Russian is one of the film's many pleasures.
On the final night of the Festival I presented - as I do every year - the Yul Brynner Award for the Most Promising Young Actor or Actress, in the city where he was born.
Of course, this being 2014, the occasion called for the first onstage selfie at the Opera.
For this year's Yul Brynner Award, I chose Anna Levonova, who co-stars with Anna Astrakhantseva and Ralph Fiennes in Two Women, opening worldwide later this year.
Hockey legend Slava Fetisov is a beloved and admired national figure whom I've known for three years.
A true gentleman, Slava played for his Moscow team for more than a decade, as well as on the national Soviet Union team. Then he became the first former Soviet player to join the NHL, and played for the New Jersey Devils before winning back-to-back Stanley Cups with the Detroit Red Wings. Today Slava serves in the Duma (Parliament) representing Vladivostok and the region of Primorye.
Lecture at the Far East Federal University, Sept. 16th, 2014
The Far Eastern Federal University is on Russky Island, where a few years ago only goats roamed.
President Putin ordered the construction of the university to serve as the site for the Asian-Pacific Economic Conference, hosted by Russia for the first time in 2012. Today the university can serve 50,000 students from across Russia and Asia, since it absorbed the three main universities in the city.
Far Eastern Federal University with Vladivostok in the background.
The lecture was "The Role of Jules Bryner in the Birth of Vladivostok and the History of Imperial Russia."
Again, in 2014, it seemed a selfie was mandatory.
At night, the university is impossibly beautiful.
2013 - The XIth Vladivostok International Film Festival
The designated talisman of the event.
Opening the Film Festival
The transcendent Isabelle Huppert attended . . .
Her brilliant new film, Tip Top, directed by Serge Bozon (La France), had its Asian and Russian premiere at our Festival. Isabelle left early the next morning for the Paris premiere. I was introduced to her by my "Russian brother," Sasha Doluda, who first invited me to Vladivostok in 2003.
It would be impossible to spend enough time with this great artist.
. . . as did Michael Madsen . . .
His career on the screen goes back thirty years. Most recently he has appeared in a number of films by Quentin Tarantino.
But it was especially wonderful to have with us the inestimable Pierre Richard. . .
At the final Gala . . .
. . . who told me that he only imagined becoming an actor after seeing a Danny Kaye film: an interesting comedic inspiration. He also explained that he saw Yul's posthumous anti-smoking declaration in 1986 and stopped smoking the next day -- for which he credits his good health and long life.
With my friend Governor Miklushevsky of the Primorye region, of which Vladivostok is the capital.
Presenting the XIth Yul Brynner Award
Each year it falls to me to choose the winner and present the "Special Prize in the name of Yul Brynner" to the Most Promising Young Actor or Actress.
Yul's boots from The Magnificent Seven
My sister Victoria gave me these after she bought them at auction in Hollywood, and I wore them to the Gala. After Yul left Vladivostok for China at the age of seven, he had never again walked the streets of the city where he was born. . .
. . . but now, as I noted onstage, at least his boots had!
This year the Yul Brynner Award went to. . .
. . . Anfisa Chernich, for her role in the Russian film, The Geographer Who Drank The Whole Globe
A young actress from Moscow, Anfisa gives a heartfelt performance that was passionately embraced by Festival audiences.
The Festival's unpaid volunteers
Year after year, it is only thanks to scores of these devoted, sleep-deprived university students that the Festival is able to exist at all.
Across Aleutsakaya St. from Yul's statue
My Master Class on Michael Chekhov and Constantin Stanislavsky at Gorky Library
A peripheral event of the Festival, my lecture covered the important distinction betweeen Stanislavsky's "System" or "Method" based upon the recall of personal memories, and Chekhov's injunction that the actor must find the character and the emotions through the practiced use of imagination. I further emphasized that, until recently, Stanislavsky's greater renown owed primarily to his willingness to capitulate to any demands Stalin made upon him. By contrast, Michael Chekhov would not collaborate with Stalin's inhumanity, and had to flee his homeland in the 1930s. In 1940, at the age of twenty, Yul first came to the United States to live and study with him.
Michael Madsen chatting with Consul General Holm-Olsen and myself.
YUL BRYNNER DAY IN VLADIVOSTOK, JULY 2013
The Brynner commemorative silver coin
On July 11th, 2013, Yul Brynner's signature role in The King and I came to life in Yul Brynner Park, beside his granite statue . . .
. . . in front of the Art Nouveau home where he was born ninety-three years ago.
Each year on his birthday one of his films will be presented in Yul Brynner Park. This new tradition is sponsored by the city of Vladivostok and the Arsenyev State Museum.
The King and I is not well known in Russia, where Yul is most revered for The Magnificent Seven, the most popular foreign film of all time.
Rockenteur in the Arbat
The House of Actors
in the Arbat
Moscow's friendliest street, the Arbat, is a five-hundred-year-old passage, closed to traffic, where Pushkin and generations of independent artists have thrived. It is also where Russian theatre and film actors have gathered at the Actor's House for the past eighty years.
is where I was invited to perform
Rockenteur:
A Comedy of Cultural History
filmed before a live audience . . .
. . . including Anastasia Smetanina and Liza Arzamasova, past winners of the Yul Brynner Award at the Vladivostok International Film Festival.
May Day parade at the Kremlin, 2013
Vladivostok Spring Lecture Series, 2013
Far East Federal University
My thanks to Governor Miklushevsky, Professor Kusnetzov, Rector Ivanets, and interpreter Ivan Pisarev, who made this lecture tour possible.
A bouillabaisse of topics:
"Mikhail Chekhov, Konstantin Stanislavsky, and the Worldwide Revolution in the Art of Acting, 1900-1960."
"Global Problems Demand Global Solutions: Terrorism, Climate Change, World Hunger, and Sustainability."
"The Social and Political Impact of Rock 'n' Roll in the U.S. and Soviet Russia, 1960-1990."
"The Development of the American Language from Britain's English and the Birth of the American Character."
"Strengths and Weaknesses of the U.S. Constitution."
"Jules Bryner's Yalu River Timber Contract and The Russo-Japanese War."
"Global Problems Demand Global Solutions"
Political Science Students -- International Relations
"The Birth of The American Language"
Yul Brynner Statue and Park in Vladivostok, Russia
Yul Brynner Park and Statue
Yul, age 3, playing with his nanny (in wolf mask) and cousin Irena beside the Bryner house, 1923.
Yul Brynner was born on July 11th, 1920 in the terraced room above the statue.
People from across the city came for the Inaugural Ceremony in a festive atmosphere with a brass band, balloons, children playing in the park, dignitaries of Vladivostok and Primorye, and the very gracious United States Consul General Sylvia Curran.
The statue is a perfect likeness from every angle.
Dom Bryner (red arrow) on Tiger Hill presides over the heart of Vladivostok.
The inauguration of the statue was a day for flowers . . .
. . . families and children.
The sculptor Alexei Bokiy, who carved the granite statue
From across Aleutskaya Street
This view of the statue will greet every visitor arriving from Moscow on the Trans-Siberian -- the longest railroad in the world -- on their way to the city center. The house built by my great-grandfather is just a block from the railway station where Jules Bryner helped Tsar Nicholas II lay the corner-stone in 1891. The wall above the street is currently being re-faced in granite.
The announcement of the Inauguration featured a photo from The Magnificent Seven, which is still today the all-time most popular foreign film in Russia. But though The King and I has been seen by far fewer Russians, everyone who helped create this monument knew that Yul spent an unequalled fourteen years of his life in the theatre performing this role, for which he also won the Oscar.
The Mayor and I removed the Inaugural Ribbon . . .
Vladivostok Mayor Igor Pushkariov gave indispensable help to make the park and the statue possible.
. . . revealing the Russian inscription in gold: "Yul Brynner - King of Theatre and Film"
Thanking the hundreds of people who worked on this tribute.
The Yul Brynner Park grew out of the love and pride that this city of 600,000 feels toward its most renowned son. Even today, Yul Brynner remains the only Russian-born actor to win the Academy Award, for the title role in "The King and I," which he also played on stage for fourteen years of his life. His last performance on Broadway as the King came thirty-four years after his first. He continued playing eight shows a week until four months before his death from lung cancer in 1985.
THOSE WHO MADE THIS STATUE AND PARK POSSIBLE
Left to right: Sergei Stepanchenko, Moscow actor and head of the Vladivostok International Film Festival; Alexei Bokii, sculptor of the statue; Alexander Doluda, Rock's "Russian brother," who worked for years to bring Yul Brynner Park into existence; Igor Pushkarev, mayor of Vladivostok; Rock Brynner; Sergei Bogdan, Chairman of Primorye Bank; U.S. Consul General Sylvia Curran, who has done everything possible to support the Brynner legacy; and Anatolii Melnik, Chief Architect of the city of Vladivostok.
Liza Minnelli and Rock in Vladivostok, 2011
Liza May arrives in the Russian Far East. . .
. . . after we flew from New York to Seoul and (skirting North Korea) landed in Vladivostok, the last stop on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, six thousand miles from Moscow.
Liza Arzamasova, Rock Brynner, Liza Minnelli arrriving at. . .
. . .the Opening of the Ninth Vladivostok International Film Festival. Our young friend Liza Arzamasova is currently starring in Romeo and Juliette at the Stanislavsky State Theatre in Moscow.
Liza May waving to the crowd. . .
"Priviet, Vladivostok!"
. . ."Maybe This Time" and "New York, New York," all written for her by Kander and Ebb.
She earned a full-throated, Russian ovation.
I gave her a kiss onstage. . .
. . .as my father Yul had kissed her mother Judy exactly sixty years earlier, when they both won Tony Awards on Broadway.
With that, Liza began a long evening of shirt-signing, first for Sergei Stepanchenko. . .
. . . as our host, Governor Darkin, watched in amusement.
For more on the Brynners in Russia, copies of Empire and Odyssey can be ordered at Amazon.com.
Publishers Weekly - Starred Review:
A four-generation family saga�featuring one of the world�s sexiest movie stars�would usually signal a fluffy beach read, but the story of the Brynner patriarchs is too historically complex and fascinating to fall into that genre. Great-grandson Rock Brynner opens by introducing Swiss-born Jules, who started in the import-export business out of Shanghai and then Yokohama, before establishing himself in Vladivostok in the 1870s. Jules took advantage of the city�s Wild West character and the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad to expand from shipping into mining and forestry, and created an extraordinary commercial empire. It was Jules�s son Boris who had to negotiate the socialization of the family businesses in the newly created Soviet Union. Boris�s �migr� son Yul learned show business in France before turning his much-touted Genghis Khan genes�and his Russian method acting�into American box office gold. Yul�s American son Rock concludes the volume with his own adventures in the counterculture before becoming an academic. The odyssey comes full circle in 2003 when the city of Vladivostok invites Rock to come and celebrate as a native son. An enthralling family chronicle, the Brynner perspective on Far East Russian history should be important for Pacific Rim historians as well. 165 Photos.
Library Journal:
Brynner can truly be described as a Renaissance man accomplished in many fields, from street clown and actor to band manager, pilot, historian, professor, and writer. In this personal yet meticulous work, he chronicles the lives of four generations of his own family, beginning with his great-grandfather, Jules Bryner, a Swiss who eventually settled in Vladivostok, where he was greatly responsible for establishing its importance in the Russian Far East. Next, he covers Jules�s son Boris, a major industrialist, and then Boris�s son, the author�s father, actor Yul Brynner. He concludes, full circle, with his own odyssey to Vladivostok in 2003. Brynner expertly paints each era in the context of the family history, showing how each man made his own mark upon his generation, whether through direct involvement in the Russo-Japanese War or as an exemplar of Hollywood glamour. Brynner refers to many well-known celebrities, and he isn�t shy about revealing previously unknown stories involving Sammy Davis Jr., Marlene Dietrich, and Sam Giancana. Illustrated with over 150 photographs, this book can stand by itself as a fascinating tale of a fascinating family.
"The enthralling story, across four generations, of a singular dynasty of fathers and sons, all of them gifted, dynamic, complicated and driven, all of them firmly embedded in the history of their times. . . . They include the restless, brilliant, and ambitious Yul Brynner, whose odyssey from the Russian Far East to Paris, New York and Hollywood is chronicled with the flair of a born raconteur, the professional historian�s command of facts, and the memoirist�s firsthand knowledge of intimate family lore. His son, Rock Brynner, brings this dazzling saga full circle with his adoption by the people of Vladivostok."
� Elizabeth Frank, novelist and Pulitzer-prize winning biographer
"Empire and Odyssey is the Forsyte Saga of the Russian diaspora, an absorbing story of an extraordinary family adapting to changing times, of ambition, talent, egotism, loyalty, estrangement, and betrayal, set against a tumultuous background of imperial expansion, war, revolution, exile, and homecoming. It captures the characters Jules, Boris, and Yul with candor, humor, and poignancy. Rock Brynner�s curiosity and sensibilities, cultivated no doubt over the course of personal triumphs and travails, have attuned him to lyrical, tragic, ironic, and comic melodies, so that he can feel � and convey � the burden of Russia�s past, of Russia�s tragedies."
� Prof. John J. Stephan, author, The Russian Far East: A History
"Yul Brynner was among the most powerful actors of all time. Rock Brynner is one of the most exhilarating story-tellers I have ever read."
� James Earl Jones
"Dr. Rock Brynner is a gentleman and a scholar, and during my championship years he was always a true friend and reliable bodyguard."
� Muhammad Ali
"Matoushka" by Aliosha Dimitrievitch (1.1MB)
Vladivostok Station Last stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway
In 1891, Jules joined the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, in laying the cornerstone for this station.
The broad streets of the old city
Built on a narrow peninsula, Vladivostok is surrounded by two bays.
Vladivostok became home to 750,000 residents.
The Bryner Residence
The curved, Art Nouveau peak of the Bryner Residence was very daring when Jules had the house designed in 1910, and still looks modern today. Jules built it, Boris lived in it, and in 1920 Yul was born there. Eighty years after my family was forced to flee Stalin,I was welcomed there warmly. Now it is a city landmark.
The Bryner Residence (red arrow) overlooks the main square and port of Vladivostok.
Some years after leaving Vladivostok, Yul joined the circus in Paris as a trapeze acrobat.
Broadway, 1951
How Yul made it by the age of thirty from his childhood in Vladivostok to stardom in The King and I is only one part of the family epic, Empire and Odyssey . . .
1957
Yul is the only Russian-born actor to have won the Academy Award.
With Queen Elizabeth II in 1979
Yul's last performance as King came 34 years after his first. Even authentic royalty was happy to welcome him in their ranks.
1984
This was at the opening of the New York Hard Rock Cafe in 1984, the year before my father died.
Cape Bryner, four hundred miles from Vladivostok, where Jules built his first lighthouse above the port of the Bryner Mines . . .
. . . and the Twin Rocks beneath Cape Bryner. . .
. . . appeared on Russia's national currency - the thousand-ruble note - as soon as the Soviet era ended.
Yul on a tiger hunt in North Korea in 1937
In the 1930s, my father Yul, then 17, often hunted in North Korea with his father, Boris, and with Valery's father, Yuri Yankovsky, known since the late 1800s as "the greatest tiger hunter in the world."
To see the Bryner Mines and country estate, Sidemy, click on the links at the top of this page, all about Russia: Bryner Mines, Sidemy, Bryners, Friends, Moscow.
Our group.
As guest of honor on Victory Day, I was given a special spot on the review stand behind the city's 37 surviving veterans, all in their 90s, and the scores of widows, beside the Mayor and Gleb Zuev, the Director of the (formerly) Bryner Mines, today Dalpolymetall.
At the Victory Day parade, I was invited to the review stand with the Mayor, Gleb Zuev, and Dalnegorsk's 37 surviving veterans of W.W. II.
| Siberia |
When she died how old was Karen Carpenter? | Amazon.com: Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond (9781586421021): Rock Brynner: Books
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A four-generation family saga—featuring one of the world's sexiest movie stars—would usually signal a fluffy beach read, but the story of the Brynner patriarchs is too historically complex and fascinating to fall into that genre. Great-grandson Rock Brynner opens by introducing Swiss-born Jules, who started in the import-export business out of Shanghai and then Yokohama, before establishing himself in Vladivostok in the 1870s. Jules took advantage of the city's Wild West character and the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad to expand from shipping into mining and forestry, and created an extraordinary commercial empire. It was Jules's son Boris who had to negotiate the socialization of the family businesses in the newly created Soviet Union. Boris's émigré son Yul learned show business in France before turning his much-touted Genghis Khan genes—and his Russian method acting—into American box office gold. Yul's American son Rock concludes the volume with his own adventures in the counterculture before becoming an academic. The odyssey comes full circle in 2003 when the city of Vladivostok invites Rock to come and celebrate as a native son. An enthralling family chronicle, the Brynner perspective on Far East Russian history should be important for Pacific Rim historians as well. Photos. (Apr.)Look for PW's upcoming q&a with Rock Brynner.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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"According to the modern Olympics founder Baron de Coubertin, ""The essential thing is not conquering but..."" what?" | Controversy within the Olympics | The MediaPlex
Controversy within the Olympics
By The MediaPlex November 22, 2013 14:48
By Courtney Turnbull
Every four years people from around the world come together for the love of sports, and hope to see their country take home the gold. Whether sitting in front of a big screen stuffing your face with popcorn or getting a front row seat to the games itself, every four years we are assured there will be some sort of drama between nations. This is what we call the Olympics.
The first-ever modern Olympics was held in Athens, Greece in 1896. The founder of the International Olympic Committee Baron Pierre de Coubertin once said “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part, the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”
But are we, as nations, fighting well? Being fair to all athletes? Controversy in the Olympics dates to the early 20th century. In 1916 the Summer Olympics were scheduled to be in Berlin but because of the outbreak of World War 1 they were cancelled.
In 1936 Germany got another chance to welcome the world’s athletes and host the Olympics. With Hitler in power it was like stirring a pot of controversial soup. Hitler wanted all black athletes to be banned from competing. In the end African-American athlete Jesse Owens, stood first place on the podium refusing to do the Nazi salute, and went home with four gold medals.
“I think with the Olympics we have kind of given those (Olympic countries) a pass through the years because it’s been such a joyous occasion,” said Australian Rennae Stubbs, a former Olympic tennis player. “A place where we hope that the quality of sports is an equalizer to all athletes.”
In 1972, controversy became tragedy in Munich, when 11 Olympic athletes were held hostage and eventually killed. From black power salutes, to protests, to massacres and boycotting the event altogether, there is to inevitably some sort of issue that detracts from the real focus of the games.
The Olympics have turned a spotlight on worldwide human rights issues but the real focus should be on the athletes. The upcoming games will be in Sochi, Russia this February. There is already controversy and concern because of a law that was passed in late June. The new law states that it is punishable to speak openly about gays and lesbians among young people.
Lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender athletes going to Sochi don’t just have to worry about competing, but also face a law that could potentially put them behind bars. Foreign citizens or people coming into the country displaying same-sex affection or distributing information on gay rights can also be fined and/or deported
Stubbs, who has won several Grand Slam tennis titles and represented her country four times, is an openly gay athlete. She said her biggest complaint isn’t necessarily with Russia in particular but with the IOC.
“I think the IOC really needs to look at themselves,” said Stubbs. “They need to be a little bit more accountable for the decisions that they are making. Maybe one way of being able to help them with the decision making is to make better decisions on where to put the Olympics.”
According to the IOC’s Olympic Charter all segregation is prohibited, whether it “is on the grounds of race, religion, colour or other.”
Josh Cameron, a championship boxer from the Border City Boxing Club in Windsor, believes the Olympics was first created to end violence between nations and instead compete through sport. He thinks the law is discriminating towards athletes and that it could have an emotional affect on those of the LGBT community competing in Sochi 2014.
“Sports are for those who have a passion for what they love and not who they are as a person,” said Cameron.
“I feel that other countries should stand up for the gay community and promote sport over politics. Sports should bring people together, not apart.”
No matter who takes home a medal, countries that stay true to sportsmanship and equality will be the real winners.
The ultimate reward is for all countries to respect human rights for all people, but perhaps in today’s world that is still not realistic. Openly gay athletes are not being encouraged to start a riot or get arrested but to continue to pursue what they love. No matter who takes home a medal, countries that stay true to sportsmanship and equality will be the real winners.
| fighting well |
In which state was Charles Schulz born? | Rio 2016: Where does India stand? | debooWORKS
Rio 2016: Where does India stand?
Abhineet Dey 4 Comments
The greatest spectacle in sports, held every four years, the 2016 Olympics is just around the corner and the whole world is excited about this mega sporting event to be held from August the 5th to August the 21st in Rio de Janeiro , Brazil . The people of India will be expecting a lot more medals from the Indian contingent. India has been taking part in the Olympics since 1900, before independence and has only won 26 medals so far, which makes for 1 medal per 383 million people. Even countries like Kenya and Ghana have better performance than India in this respect.
India is the world’s 2nd most populous country and the largest democracy. Strangely, this is the reason behind India’s weakness in sports. Democracy, on the other hand, is mounted by corruption and it can be rightly said that ‘India is not the largest democratic, but the largest corrupted nation in the world.’ This is the reason for the gross mismanagement of resources already allocated for sports in India. And although India ranks 129 in terms of per-capita income in the world and still we managed the 50th position in the Beijing Olympics. Hence, the population argument should not be used to disparage India’s performance.
Another reason for this shortcoming is the nation’s obsession with cricket. India’s dominance in world cricket has kept the spotlight fixed on this English sport. All this has led to favouritism, poor sports infrastructure and facilities for sports of other categories.
Parents in India give more emphasis on academics. They consider sports to serve only recreational purposes. Work and education are believed to be the only way of livelihood and sports have never been considered for that. This must be changed if India has to become a sporting nation.
India’s chance in Rio Olympics
The 2016 Rio Olympics are less than 9 months away. India is planning to better its 2012 tally of six medals. This would be possible only if India is able to send a contingent of at least 100 athletes. According to information available to the government, 57 Indians have qualified so far for the 2016 Olympics, and 32 of them are from Hockey (Men & Women). So we must send a contingent of at least a hundred athletes in 2016.
The Government has formulated the ‘Target Olympic Podium Scheme’ ( TOP Scheme ). The funding for this scheme will come from the National Sports Development Fund . The objective of the scheme is to identify and support potential medal prospects for 2016 and 2020 Olympic Games. The selected athletes are being provided financial assistance for their customized training at institutes having world class facilities and other necessary support.So far, 88 sportspersons have applied for assistance and an assistance of ₹6.22 crore has been sanctioned to them. The total outlay for the scheme is about 43 crores.
The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports got a hike of around Rs 384 crore in the budget for 2015-16. Under the sports and games head, Sports Authority of India (SAI) will get an amount of ₹369.39 crore – a hike of ₹17.34 crore. This will definitely help in the development of indoor and outdoor facilities for sports in India.
Saina Nehwal, P.V. Sindhu in Badminton, Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt in wrestling, Gagan Narang in shooting, Shiva Thapa in boxing among others hold promise in winning medals this year. The Indian Hockey Team, which has not won a single medal since 1980 Moscow Olympics will be eagerly waiting to stand on the podium this time.
As Pierre de Frédy Baron de Coubertin , Founder of the International Olympic Committee, and father of the modern Olympic Games rightly said:
The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part. The essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.
by Hirak Jyoti Talukdar & Abhineet Dey
Reference
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"Who wrote, ""What is this life if full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?""" | W H Davies "Leisure" - "No time to stand and stare" Poem animation - YouTube
W H Davies "Leisure" - "No time to stand and stare" Poem animation
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Uploaded on Jul 7, 2011
Heres a virtual movie of Welsh poet William Henry Davies or W H Davies (1871 - 1940) reading his much loved and universally well known poem "Leisure" . William Henry Davies or W H Davies (3 July 1871[1] 26 September 1940) was a Welsh poet and writer. William Henry Davies was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, the son of a publican. After an apprenticeship as a picture-frame maker and a series of labouring jobs, he travelled to America, first to New York and then to the Klondike. He returned to England after having lost a foot jumping a train in Canada, where he led a penurious life in London lodging houses and as a pedlar in the country. He married in 1923, Emma, who was much younger than he. His first poems were published when he was 34. Most of his poetry is on the subject of nature or life on the road and exhibits a natural simple, earthy style. He also wrote two novels and autobiographical works, his best known being Autobiography of a Super-Tramp. Brief biography 2 ........... William Henry Davies (1871-1940), poet and author, was born in Pillgwenlly, Newport, Monmouthshire. After leaving school he trained as a carver and gilder, but remained dissatisfied with his life. He left his work and spent a period working and begging his way across the United States of America and Canada, but in March 1899 he lost his foot while jumping from a train. He returned to Britain and resolved to make his mark as a poet. After experiencing many setbacks he eventually published his first book, 'The Soul's Destroyer and Other Poems' in March 1905. Subsequent volumes included 'New Poems' (1907), 'Nature Poems' (1908), 'Farwell to Poesy' (1910), 'Songs of Joy' (1911), 'Foliage' (1913), and 'The Bird of Paradise' (1914). He also wrote prose and his 'Autobiography of a Super-Tramp' (1908) was based on his experiences of living hand-to-mouth in England and north America. In 1923 he married Helen Payne, a prostitute who was thirty years his junior. They settled in Sussex and later Gloucestershire. He was awarded an Honorary Degree by the University of Wales in 1929 and a plaque in his honour was unveiled at the Church House Inn, Newport, in 1938.
Kind Regards
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2011
Leisure
WHAT is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?— No time to stand beneath the boughs, And stare as long as sheep and cows: No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass: No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night: No time to turn at Beauty's glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance: No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began? A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare
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| W. H. Davies |
In which decade was Charles Schulz born? | W. H. Davies | poetryarchive.org
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About W. H. Davies
The Welsh poet William Henry Davies wrote the poem ‘Leisure’, which famously begins:‘What is this life if, full of care,/We have no time to stand and stare.’
The poem’s theme is reflected in Davies’s own outdoor life, which was unconventional. Leaving Wales, he worked and begged his way across America, losing a leg in an accident when jumping from a train. He returned to England and, unfit for physical work, dedicated himself to making a living as a writer. His first collection of poems attractedinfluential admirers, such as George Bernard Shaw, who helped Davies publish a successful memoir, The Autobiography of a Super Tramp, which dealt with his life travelling across America.
By 1929 his popularity and literary reputation led to the award of an honorary degree from the University of Wales and, ten years later, his home town of Newport unveiled a plaque in his honour.
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In what year was Oliver Stone born? | Oliver Stone - Biography - IMDb
Oliver Stone
Biography
Showing all 163 items
Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (3) | Trade Mark (16) | Trivia (71) | Personal Quotes (68) | Salary (1)
Overview (3)
6' (1.83 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Oliver Stone has become known as a master of controversial subjects and a legendary film maker. His films are filled with a variety of film angles and styles, he pushes his actors to give Oscar-worthy performances, and despite his failures, has always returned to success.
William Oliver Stone was born in New York City, to Jacqueline (Goddet) and Louis Stone, a stockbroker. His American father was from a Jewish family (from Germany and Eastern Europe), and his mother, a war bride, was French (and Catholic). After dropping out of Yale University, he became a soldier in the Vietnam War. Serving in two different regiments (including 1rst Cavalry), he was introduced to The Doors , drugs, Jefferson Airplane , and other things that defined the sixties. For his actions in the war, he was awarded a Bronze Star for Gallantry and a Purple Heart. Returning from the war, Stone did not return to graduate from Yale. His first film was a student film entitled Last Year in Viet Nam (1971), followed by the gritty horror film Seizure (1974) for which he also wrote the screenplay. The next seven years saw him direct two films: Mad Man of Martinique (1979) and The Hand (1981), starring Michael Caine . He also wrote many screenplays for films such as Midnight Express (1978), Conan the Barbarian (1982), and Scarface (1983). Stone won his first Oscar for Midnight Express (1978), but his fame was just beginning to show.
1986 was the year that brought him much fame to the U.S.A. and the world. He directed the political film Salvador (1986) starring Oscar-nominated James Woods . However, his big hit was the Vietnam war film Platoon (1986) starring Charlie Sheen , Willem Dafoe , Tom Berenger , and Francesco Quinn . Berenger and Dafoe received Oscar nominations for their roles as the polar opposite sergeants who each influence the tour of duty of Chris Taylor (Sheen). Stone won his first Oscar for directing this film, which won Best Picture and was a hit at the box office. After Platoon (1986), Stone followed up with the critically acclaimed Wall Street (1987). The movie, starring Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas , focuses on the business world of tycoons and stock brokers. The film was well received and won an Oscar for Douglas' portrayal of the villainous Gordon Gekko. Stone returned immediately the following year with Talk Radio (1988), which talked of a foul-mouthed radio host (played by Eric Bogosian ) who never fails to talk about the serious issues. Although it was not as successful as his last three films, Stone did not slow down at all. He directed Tom Cruise into an Oscar-nominated role in Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
The movie talked about the return of an embittered, crippled Vietnam soldier from the war. Although it failed to win Best Picture or Best Actor, Oliver Stone won an Academy Award for Directing, his third win to date. After Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Stone took a hand in producing several movies, including the Academy Award-winning film Reversal of Fortune (1990). He returned to the director's chair in 1991, once again with two films. Val Kilmer starred as the legendary and controversial Jim Morrison in Stone's psychedelic film The Doors (1991).
Despised by former Doors member Ray Manzarek , the film is nevertheless a wonderful achievement, with Kilmer pulling off an almost flawless impersonation of Morrison. Regardless of opinion, The Doors (1991) was overshadowed by Stone's colossal film JFK (1991), which Stone himself considers the best of his films. In Stone's movie, Jim Garrison tackles the conspiracy behind the murder of America's president John F. Kennedy . The large cast featured such well-known names as Kevin Costner , Tommy Lee Jones , John Candy , Joe Pesci , Donald Sutherland , and Walter Matthau . This film represented a change in Stone's works, because it was with this film that he really began to explore the different camera styles and combining them together to create a multi-dimensional way of showing a movie. JFK (1991), as with Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), earned eight Oscar nominations and was one of Stone's most successful films. However, he failed to win a third Oscar for Best Director.
After this film, Stone directed his third Vietnam film to date. Heaven & Earth (1993) was a film about the war from the viewpoint of a Vietnamese girl, and also co-starred Tommy Lee Jones (who had received an Oscar nomination for JFK (1991)). Despite its new woman's perspective and several positive reviews, it was a box office failure. Stone was unfazed; his next film is perhaps his most notorious film to date. Adapting a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino , Stone made Natural Born Killers (1994) starring Woody Harrelson , Juliette Lewis , Tom Sizemore and Rodney Dangerfield in his only dramatic performance. The film was received well at the box office, while review were very mixed. Because of the violence that people claimed was inspired by the film, it was compared to Stanley Kubrick 's A Clockwork Orange (1971). As usual, Stone was at the center of controversial subjects; his next film Nixon (1995) was no exception. The film focused on the life of President Richard Nixon, played by Anthony Hopkins , while featuring another well-known cast, including Joan Allen in the role of Nixon's wife. Both went on to receive Oscar nominations, while Stone received his sixth Oscar nomination for Screenwriting. The film got mixed reviews, and failed to recoup its budget.
Aside from directing, Stone has worked as a producer on several different films. There was, of course, the successful film Reversal of Fortune (1990), which won Jeremy Irons an Oscar and also nominated the director for an Oscar. There was also the highly praised and successful emotional drama The Joy Luck Club (1993) which centered around four Chinese immigrant women whose relationships with their daughters is affected by their own lives. Another highly praised Oscar nominated film was Milos Forman 's classic film The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) starring Woody Harrelson , Edward Norton , and Courtney Love . Whether the crime/action film The Corruptor (1999) or the brilliant war epic Savior (1998), Stone has worked in a variety of film genres.
Stone had directed ten films in nine years; now however, he began to slow down. He directed the film U Turn (1997) starring Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez . As with Natural Born Killers (1994), it was a dark and twisted satire on violence, but did not have the same success as the former. Stone was set to direct several projects in the late 90's but they fell through and were not made. However, success came back to Stone in the Al Pacino film Any Given Sunday (1999). This sports movie centered on the life behind the game of football, and it starred an impressive cast that included frequent Stone collaborators James Woods and John C. McGinley . This film was one of his most successful box office films, and put him back on track.
The following years brought Stone no new theatrical films, though he did make three fascinating TV documentaries. Two of them, 'Looking for Fidel' and Comandante (2003) were interviews of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, while 'Persona Non Grata' was an interview of several Palestinian leaders. Stone was also set to direct American Psycho (2000) with Leonardo DiCaprio and Beyond Borders (2003), starring Angelina Jolie and at the time, Ralph Fiennes . However, Stone dropped out of both projects, as did a number of the actors mentioned. Finally, five years after Any Given Sunday (1999), Stone directed a film he'd long wanted to make; the colossal epic Alexander (2004). Starring Colin Farrell as the Macedonian leader, Stone attempted to capture the essence of Alexander the Great through his conquests of the known world. The film focused on Alexander's relationships with his parents (a brilliant performance by Val Kilmer and a less impressive one by Angelina Jolie ) and his relationships with his wife and childhood friend/ gay lover (played by Rosario Dawson and Jared Leto respectively).
Alexander (2004) was a critical failure, and failed to win back its budget domestically. Despite being one of 2004's highest grossing films internationally, and recouping its budget through DVD sales, Stone's pet project was heavily criticized. Despite a far superior version (Alexander Revisited) being released on DVD, the film's reputation remains low by the majority. Stone was personally stung at these attacks, but managed to rebound, if mildly, with his hopeful film World Trade Center (2006). The film centers on two firefighters trapped in the rubble of the twin towers. It received good reviews, and allowed Oliver to step forward from his failure towards the possibility of more films.
In late 2007, besides a number of projects Stone was set to direct "Pinkville", which would have been his fourth Vietnam film to date. It was set to star a large number of well known actors such as Bruce Willis , Toby Jones , Channing Tatum , Michael Pitt , Woody Harrelson , and Michael Peña . However, a week before shooting was to begin, the Writer's Strike was started, and the finance for the film was cut, using the strike as an excuse. After Willis backed out of the project, it was eventually scuttled, much like Stone's early productions of Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Stone turned to another project he had worked on with former Wall Street (1987) collaborator Stanley Weiser . The project was W. (2008), a biography on president George W. Bush. Stone initially cast Christian Bale in the role of Bush but the actor dropped out at the last minute. Josh Brolin was cast, and this followed with a large cast of well known Oscar nominated character actors such as Richard Dreyfuss , James Cromwell , and Ellen Burstyn . The film was made in a record four months, starting in June and released in October. The film opened to mixed reviews, and though film's budget was recouped, it was not a financial hit.
Stone then made the documentary South of the Border (2009), a documentary which focused on bringing to light the positive aspects of the left-wing governments in South America, particularly Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Stone was much less critical than usual, instead making the documentary as a response to the harsh reputation that Chavez has in the States. The documentary was poorly received in the States. Stone also began work on Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010). Starring Michael Douglas , Shia LaBeouf , Josh Brolin , Carey Mulligan , and Eli Wallach , the film focuses on the 2008 economic crisis, and the return of Gordon Gekko from prison. The film was screened at Cannes to positive reception, and hailed as Stone's triumphant return. After this, Stone made a film adaptation of "Savages", a novel by Don Winslow. The movie follows two highly successful marijuana growers ( Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson ), whose shared girlfriend ( Blake Lively ) is kidnapped by a Mexican cartel and held for ransom. The movie also starred Salma Hayek , Benicio Del Toro , John Travolta , and Emile Hirsch . The film was a return to the tense action and violence of Stone's earlier films, though it polarized many audience members due to the colorful narrations of Lively's vapid and naive character, as well as the film's ending.
Oliver Stone is a three-time Oscar winner, and although he has mostly been stung by critics of his films, he remains a well-known name today in the film industry. The films he directed have been nominated for 31 Academy Awards, including eight for acting, six for screen writing, and three for directing. There is no denying that Stone has cemented himself a position among the legends of Hollywood.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Bob Stage
Spouse (3)
Trade Mark (16)
Staccato change of camera types, lenses and film stocks used.
Often directs and writes historical films on controversial subjects, such as Salvador (1986), Platoon (1986), The Doors (1991), JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), Alexander (2004), World Trade Center (2006), W. (2008) and Snowden (2016).
Opens films with a quotation in white text against a black background.
Often gives the lead actors in his films a special footage-enhanced credit appearance at the ending of his films (Ex. Platoon (1986), The Doors (1991) and Nixon (1995)).
His films feature large casts, featuring many well-known actors in both major and minor roles.
His films mostly center on male protagonists. The biggest exceptions are Heaven & Earth (1993) and Natural Born Killers (1994).
Has worked 11-times with cinematographer Robert Richardson on his feature films. He often works with military consultant Dale Dye , and producers A. Kitman Ho , Richard Rutowski , Edward R. Pressman and Moritz Borman .
Native Americans are frequently featured in his films.
Typically ends his films with a closeup of a face or a couple walking away from the camera.
The issues of family and fatherhood are frequently featured in his films. In JFK (1991), D.A. Jim Garrison must juggle fatherhood with his job. In Alexander (2004), Alexander is torn between his parents. In Natural Born Killers (1994), both the main characters were abused by their fathers. In Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), the two main characters cite that they went to Vietnam to live up to their fathers fighting in the Second World War.
During a dialogue scene, there will be frequent cutaways to details in the background that have symbolic resonance.
Has cameos in most of his films. When he does not appear, his son Sean Stone does.
Shoots the majority of his films on location, often using practical settings.
Frequently references classic mythology and literature. For example, William Shakespeare 's "Richard III" in his Scarface (1983) screenplay.
Usually has multiple camera setups rolling in a single take, and encourages a noisy set with a lot of racket. Both are done in order to encourage frenetic and uninhibited performances.
Trivia (71)
Attended Yale University and New York University.
Born at 9:58am-EDT
Did a tour of duty in Vietnam.
In Vietnam, Stone won the Bronze Star for Valor and the Purple Heart with First Oak Leaf Cluster. Stone was jailed for marijuana possession in Mexico at age 21.
Father of sons Sean Stone (born December 29, 1984) and Michael Stone (born 1991) with Elizabeth Stone and a daughter, Tara Stone (born November 3, 1995) with Sun-jung Jung.
His father Louis Stone was a successful stockbroker on Wall Street, then he suffered some financial setbacks due to bad investments and a bitter divorce from Oliver's mother Jacqueline. The movie Wall Street (1987) is supposed to be modeled after Louis.
Oliver's father met his mother while he was President Dwight D. Eisenhower aide in World War II in France. As a child, he was raised by a nanny because his mother frequently took vacations to France. He grew up as a child of privilege.
Arrested for drunken driving and possession of hashish. [June 1999]
Says he kicked a cocaine habit by moving to France while writing Scarface (1983).
Friends since childhood with Lloyd Kaufman , founder and president of Troma.
Speaks French fluently.
Underwent infantry training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
Shares the exact same birthday as good friend and star of some his films, Tommy Lee Jones . Both were born on September 15, 1946.
The same drum theme playing in the beginning of JFK (1991) (for which he was a producer), plays three times in The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001) (for which he was an executive producer).
Is a friend and admirer of Cuban Premier Fidel Castro , and shot a documentary about the world's longest reigning Communist leader, titled Comandante (2003). It was to air on HBO in May 2003, but due to fierce protests by anti-Castro Cuban-American activists, it was shelved and has never been aired on HBO or made available on home video in the United States. Stone then made a new, more pointed documentary titled "Looking for Fidel" that aired on HBO in February 2004, in which he asked Castro questions about his human rights record, and included interviews with anti-Castro activists.
Directed comedian Rodney Dangerfield in his first and only dramatic role in Natural Born Killers (1994).
On September 14, 1967, he left for Vietnam and was assigned to the 2nd Platoon of Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Infantry Division, stationed near the Cambodian border, as "Private Bill Stone" (fearing that "Oliver" was too effeminate).
Wrote a collegiate letter of recommendation for Claire Danes when she applied to his alma mater, Yale University. She was quickly accepted.
Often talks about the experience of his father Louis Stone taking him to lose his virginity to a prostitute in his mid-teens.
Was voted the 43rd Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Oliver's American father, Louis Stone, who was born Louis Silverstein, was from a Jewish family (from Germany and Eastern Europe). Oliver's mother, Jacqueline (Goddet), was French.
Was taught by Martin Scorsese at New York University Film School.
His 11-minute student film made at New York University is called Last Year in Viet Nam (1971).
As of 2004, Stone is attached to direct several projects. "Spite House", which he wrote and will direct about Vietnam. "The Fountainhead", based on the Ayn Rand novel. "Lennon", a biopic of John Lennon , a biopic of Margaret Thatcher , and a biopic of sorts about an attempted assassination plot by the Republican party against President Franklin D. Roosevelt .
Has directed eight different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: James Woods , Tom Berenger , Willem Dafoe , Michael Douglas , Tom Cruise , Tommy Lee Jones , Anthony Hopkins and Joan Allen . Douglas won an Academy Award for Wall Street (1987).
Known for the political content of his films, Stone was a member of the Class of 1968 at Yale University along with US President Bill Clinton administration adviser Strobe Talbot and future President George W. Bush ( John Kerry was also there at the same time as Stone, though he was several classes ahead of '68). Stone left Yale after only one year (he failed all his second-semester freshman classes) and ended up joining the army and fighting in Vietnam. He never returned to graduate from Yale.
Was attached to direct American Psycho (2000) with Leonardo DiCaprio in talks to star as Patrick Bateman. After DiCaprio left the project to make The Beach (2000) Stone left it also.
Received two Academy Award nominations for best original screenplay in the same year, 1987 ( Salvador (1986) and Platoon (1986)) but lost to Woody Allen for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).
Has directed four actors into Best Actor Oscar nominations, and three actors to Best Supporting Actor nominations. Lead roles were James Woods ( Salvador (1986)), Michael Douglas ( Wall Street (1987)), Tom Cruise ( Born on the Fourth of July (1989)) and Anthony Hopkins ( Nixon (1995)). Supporting roles were Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger ( Platoon (1986)) and Tommy Lee Jones ( JFK (1991)).
Following the furor over JFK (1991), Stone addressed the U.S. Senate over the continued secrecy of documents relating to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Partly through his efforts, the government began declassifying documents.
Interviewed in "Directors Close Up: Interviews with Directors Nominated for Best Film by the Directors Guild of America", ed. by Jeremy Kagan , Scarecrow Press, 2006.
He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7013 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on March 15, 1996.
Was planning to make a film about Eva Perón , but after several disagreements with Argentinian President Carlos Saúl Menem he abandoned the project. He later received a token credit as a writer for Evita (1996), despite having made no input to the script.
As of May 2008, World Trade Center (2006) is his first film rated "PG-13" and his only feature film to receive a rating of less than "R". As of September 2008, W. (2008) is his second film to receive a PG-13 rating.
Because of his specialty with Vietnam era period pieces, he was one of the first directors to be offered American Gangster (2007) in 2001. After long consideration, he decided to pursue making his passion project, Alexander (2004), instead.
Although he is a three-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker, it's been consistently difficult for him to acquire actors of his preference for most of the films he has directed. Casting Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday (1999), Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Snowden (2016), and Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July (1989) are the most significant exceptions where Stone's top choice was either available or agreed to partake in an Oliver Stone production.
Has sought Warren Beatty for three of his movies ( Wall Street (1987), Nixon (1995) and W. (2008)). Beatty declined them all, and the roles went to Anthony Hopkins , Michael Douglas and James Cromwell respectively. Hopkins and Douglas received Oscar nominations for their roles.
As of May 2008, World Trade Center (2006) is the only one of his war-related films to be made with government cooperation (by the Port Authority).
Was set to begin filming his fourth Vietnam film "Pinkville" in late 2007. However, after the Writers' strike began, the producers pulled out, and Bruce Willis moved on. Stone then turned his attention to making W. (2008) which will star Josh Brolin .
Took a year's absence from Yale University in 1965 to teach at a Catholic private school in Vietnam.
Sought Marlon Brando for two of his films: U Turn (1997) and Salvador (1986). James Woods who played the character in Salvador (1986) that Brando had turned down, received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Jon Voight , who played the role meant for Brando in U Turn (1997), received a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor.
After graduating from New York University, he worked as a cabdriver and a xerox messenger to support himself.
Has worked with two generations of two different acting families. Worked with Jon Voight and his daughter Angelina Jolie in U Turn (1997) and Alexander (2004) respectively. He has also worked with Martin Sheen and his son Charlie Sheen in Wall Street (1987).
As of 2016, has directed six films where people he based the main characters on were still alive and participated in the making of the film. These are Born on the Fourth of July (1989), World Trade Center (2006), JFK (1991), Snowden (2016), Salvador (1986) and Heaven & Earth (1993). He also worked on W. (2008), a film about George W. Bush while he was still in office.
Aside from directing James Woods in three of his films, Stone has also produced Indictment: The McMartin Trial (1995) and Killer: A Journal of Murder (1995), both starring James Woods.
Has worked with all of the Baldwin brothers. He cast Alec in Talk Radio (1988) and the other brothers made appearances in Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
Was flown to Vietnam traveling west from Sacremento, California on the evening of September 14, 1967 and crossed the international date line, arriving in Vietnam September 16, losing his 21st birthday.
Wrote a short film while still a student that was recently turned into a short film by his son Sean Stone . The title of the film is Singularity (2008) and is Sean's first fiction film.
Midnight Express (1978) and Scarface (1983) were written by him, and in both films, Giorgio Moroder composed the score.
In the 1992 Sight & Sound poll, Oliver Stone listed these as his top ten films of all time: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 1900 (1976), Raging Bull (1980), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), On the Waterfront (1954), Paths of Glory (1957), Citizen Kane (1941), The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974).
Had previously directed six of the acting nominees of the 81st Academy Awards: Sean Penn , Angelina Jolie , Viola Davis , Josh Brolin , Michael Shannon and Robert Downey Jr. as well as having worked as screenwriter for Mickey Rourke . He directed Brolin and Shannon in W. (2008) that same year (although Shannon's scene was cut).
Returned to America from his teaching job in Vietnam by serving on board a Merchant Marine vessel that came to port in Oregon.
Is one of nine directors to win the Golden Globe, Director's Guild, BAFTA, and Oscar for the same movie, winning for Platoon (1986). The other directors to achieve this are Mike Nichols for The Graduate (1967), Milos Forman for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Richard Attenborough for Gandhi (1982), Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List (1993), Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain (2005), Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity (2013), and Alejandro G. Iñárritu for The Revenant (2015).
Credits his tour of duty in Vietnam for turning him toward film instead of literature, which was his education. He found that cameras were much more practical to use in the jungle than books and paper, which got soaked.
Shia LaBeouf , who acted in Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), described him as "Orson Welles and the Easter Bunny all in one guy".
Dedicated Wall Street (1987) to his father, and Heaven & Earth (1993) to his mother.
His father, a retired Army Colonel, opposed his decision to enlist in the Army to fight in Vietnam, and tried to get him assigned non-combat duty. After being transfered out of Bravo Company, Stone was offered a job with the CIA, which he declined, opting to finish his tour of duty in the 1st Cavalry Division.
His family's name was originally Silverstein. It was his father Louis Stone who made the decision to change his name to Stone.
(March 23, 2009) Attended the 3rd Annual Asian Film Awards, in which he presented with Joan Chen the award for Best Director to Hirokazu Koreeda .
Rang the NASDAQ opening bell on September 20, 2010 to celebrate the N.Y.C. premiere of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010).
Three of his movies were nominated for AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills: Platoon (1986), JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994). "Platoon" made the list at #72.
Began producing his documentary series The Untold History of the United States (2012) in 2008 and continued working on it between other projects it until 2012, making it a four year production, the longest of his career. He also put up $1 million of his own money into the project's budget.
Wrote the novel "A Child's Night Dream" when he was 19 years old. The novel was not published until 1998.
Has been friends with Arnold Schwarzenegger since writing the script for Conan the Barbarian (1982). At one point, they both had offices on the same floor of the same building with Stone's on the left and Schwarzenegger's on the right, which they joked represented their respective political viewpoints.
Parallels with Steven Spielberg : Both directors were born in 1946, to fathers who had served in World War II. Both frequently make historical films, often about U.S. Presidents ( JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), Amistad (1997), W. (2008), Lincoln (2012)). They have both directed Tommy Lee Jones in an Oscar-nominated performance (JFK and Lincoln). They have both earned an Oscar nomination for the actor playing the President ( Daniel Day-Lewis and Anthony Hopkins once each). They have cast David Paymer and Bruce McGill as members of a President's cabinet. They both frequently use John Williams to score their films.
Has done a director's cameo in Savages (2012). Dances on the map of France.
In 2016, Oliver Stone gave the graduate school commencement address at University of Connecticut's main campus in Storrs. He told the graduates of his academic failures that led him to drop out of Yale University before starting fresh at a different university and ultimately launching a successful film career. Stone told graduates he flunked out of Yale, where former President George W. Bush was a classmate. After joining the Army and serving in the Vietnam War, he said a filmmaker friend suggested he go to film school. He did, earning a degree from New York University. Stone encouraged graduates to not be too down on themselves if things don't go their way early on [Hollywood Reporter, 2016].
After his Army service, Stone attended NYU Film School on the government's dime, as about 80% of his tuition was funded by the G.I. Bill. His instructors included Martin Scorsese [2016].
Received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Connecticut. [May 2016]
Currently writes the first drafts of his scripts in longhand [2016].
Endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the 2016 US Presidential election.
Personal Quotes (68)
I consider my films first and foremost to be dramas about individuals in personal struggles and I consider myself to be a dramatist before I am a political filmmaker. I'm interested in alternative points of view. I think ultimately the problems of the planet are universal and that nationalism is a very destructive force. I also like anarchy in films. My heroes were Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Godard . Breathless (1960) was one of the first pictures I really remember being marked by, because of the speed and energy. They say I'm unsubtle. But we need above all, a theatre that wakes us up: nerves and heart.
Nationalism and patriotism are the two most evil forces that I know of in this century or in any century and cause more wars and more death and more destruction to the soul and to human life than anything else.
[on legacies] Alexander's lasted 2,300 years. Why? He's remembered because of his vision, because of his compassion, because of his generosity, because of his spirit, because he was different. He was a general, a man who was able to weep over his [dead] soldiers on the battlefield. Never before had that happened. So this is a special man who has been remembered. There is a reason this film [ Alexander (2004)] was made. It is bigger than us, bigger than me, bigger than Colin [ Colin Farrell ] and all our team.
[on Alexander (2004)] But I always liked the Greek outfits. They were sexier than the Romans', you've got to admit. And they didn't wear sandals. They wore boots. So don't call it a sword-and-sandal [movie], for Christ's sake! It's sword-and-boot, okay?
[on Alexander the Great] This was the golden boy of all history. I've been trying to make Alexander (2004) for a long time. In 1991 with Val Kilmer , in 1996 with Tom Cruise . Then Colin Farrell came along, and he was perfect. He was a tough, Tyrone Power , barstool-looking boy from Dublin. We made him a blond, which was perfect for him, and he became Alexander.
He went for the head. Kill the king, and your enemy folds. Alexander would have gone after Osama bin Laden . I'm sorry, but [ John Kerry ] was right.
I don't believe in this business of chopping up a film and then releasing a "director's cut" on DVD. What you see should be the director's cut. This is the director's cut. If you can spend four hours killing Bill, Alexander (2004) deserves some space.
If we had to do things the American PG way, then we were screwed. Alexander (2004) had to be an R picture. If you work in Hollywood, you have to get past the studio development committees. The thousands of demands. The previews where they dumb it down for the audience. The system wears you down. It's a monster - demanding, uncompromising. [ Martin Scorsese ] and [ Spike Lee ] have been through hell...
If I could talk to Alexander, I'd ask him why he married Roxane. But the Greeks did have a regard for women: Six of the 12 gods are women, after all. Marrying her pissed off all of his men, but he didn't care, he was making a point.
The Cold War has been the most irritating thing to me personally. Throughout my life we've been in the grip of militarism and military budgets and a mindset that dictates a war on Communism, and that's a drain on the national energy. The real enemy is nationalism and patriotism.
[on JFK (1991)] I thought it was a helluva thriller. JFK's [ John F. Kennedy 's] murder marked the end of a dream, the end of a concept of idealism that I associate with my youth. Race war, Vietnam, Watergate. If JFK had lived, the combat situation in Vietnam would never have occurred.
I love intelligent films that come at you fast. I don't have attention deficit disorder, my mind moves fast. There's a lot to deal with in my films. We had so many facts to go through, so the governing style was flash, cut, flash, repeat.
If I were [ George W. Bush ], I would shoot myself. I think he lives in fear of drinking again. There's nothing more dangerous for America than an ex-alcoholic President who tells you to believe in Jesus.
I wasn't prophetic. It was there all around us. Money was the sex of the 1980s.
Alexander to me is a perfect blend of male-female, masculine-feminine, yin-yang. He could communicate with both sides of his nature.
The Indians once told me that stones are the most revered and ancient of recording devices. And that perhaps I am here on this Earth to write of these mute histories - just another stone, an 'Oliver' stone.
[on the September 11 terrorist attack on New York City] This attack was pure chaos, and chaos is energy. All great changes have come from people or events that were initially misunderstood, and seemed frightening, like madmen.
I believed in the John Wayne image of America. My father was a Republican, and he taught me that it was a good war because the Communists were the bad guys and we had to fight them. And then there was the romanticism of the Second World War as it appeared in the films we mentioned. Obviously, the reality was very different.
They make prostitutes of us all.
When I go to the movies, and I have to sit through ten previews of films that look [alike] and tell the whole story, you know that we've reached an age of consensus. And consensus is the worst thing for us. We all agree to agree. That's where we lose it as a culture. We have to move away from that.
[on Platoon (1986)] I wrote the "Platoon" script in 1976 in New York City. Primarily because I'd reached a point in my life that if I didn't write about it, I would forget what had happened in the war.
The film business? I love film, but the film business is shit.
Josh [ Josh Brolin ] is actually better looking than George W. Bush ] but has the same drive and charisma that Americans identify with Bush, who has some of that old-time movie-star swagger. I want a fair, true portrait of the man [for my film].
I should be making movies about the Dulles brothers [ John Foster Dulles , Allen Dulles ], I should be making movies about Dwight D. Eisenhower , I should be making movies about the fifties and the forties. We should be free. I'm hamstrung, I mean, they're always... preordaining, proclaiming... They always make a brouhaha, a controversy, out of nothing. It's like they're trying to keep me away from these areas.
The reaction to JFK (1991) was just stunning. I've never spent so much time defending a film after its release.
[on President John F. Kennedy ] He was the first man who stood up as a world leader and said, "We are one people, one planet. We must survive together or we will not survive at all." And it's a shame, because he was almost 30 years ahead of his time because 30 years later they're saying that.
[on his Vietnam War experience] You get to a point where you can smell them [the enemy]... I got to a place where I was using all my senses.
[on his childhood] It was a harsh upbringing in the sense that my parents divorced quickly. I was in a boarding school, so it was all boys in those days... And there was no femininity in my life either. My mother was often in Europe, I didn't see her very much.
[on casting Charlton Heston in Any Given Sunday (1999)] I wanted to show him he was still loved for all he gave to the movies. I remember his strength while in substantial pain from arthritis, during long shooting hours. He was a gentleman on the 14th hour, as he was on the first.
If [ George W. Bush ] had spent some time in Vietnam, he would have a very different view on war.
I'm tired of defending the accuracy of my movies. JFK (1991) was a case to be proven, Nixon (1995) was a penetrating biography of a complex and dark man. But I'm not bound by those strictures any more. [ George W. Bush ] is not a complex and dark man, so it's different. This movie can be funnier because Bush is funny. He's awkward and goofy and makes faces all the time. He's not your average president. So, let's have some fun with it. What are they going to do? Discredit me again?
The film business has always been full of strange characters. Who the hell gets into this business but gamblers and buccaneers and pirates? You don't get Henry Paulson as a producer in this business, that's for sure.
I'll welcome any sorts of investors in my films, as long as I can keep my freedom and my content free of interference. If you're asking if I would do a movie with a known drug dealer, no, I wouldn't. You don't want to corrupt a movie, though the nature of the film business lends itself to criminal enterprises.
[on Stanley Kubrick ] The most interesting aspect of a scene is "controlled uncertainty". That's what Kubrick got. Everybody else would shoot pretty conventionally, but when I saw [ Jean-Luc Godard ] or Kubrick, in that period when I was studying film with more intensity, there was an unpredictability about Stanley Kubrick. Even as a kid, I didn't know what he would do next. It's the way Kubrick looks at reality. His reality is supercharged.
No man dies in vain. You die because you believe for something. You hope that the cause is worth it. And in Vietnam we have reasons to question it. But you die hopefully with honor and with courage. And you should be remembered for your sacrifice. That is not to say the war was right, but you honor the men who fought in the war.
I thought we [the United States] were going to go to war in Iran. If we had been more successful in Iraq, I have no doubts that we would have been more involved in the Iranian situation now.
[on Bernie Madoff ] Madoff I consider to a be a sociopath; he was a crook running a Ponzi scheme.
[on the recession] Wall Street has an important role to play, and it can be a very constructive role in financing, in new business, in financing state bonds and pension plans. But the speculation is the mother of all evils. There have to be regulations. And we're not getting these regulations in place.
Look, you know something of what I've fought against in the U.S. establishment, but - McDonald's is good for the world, that's my opinion. Because I think war is the most dangerous thing. Nationalism and patriotism are the two most evil forces that I know of in this century or in any century and cause more wars and more death and destruction to the soul and human life than anything else - and can still do it with nuclear war. The prime objective we have in this era is to prevent war, to live in peace. The best way you can do that is to bring prosperity to as many people across the world as you can. And when you spread McDonald's all over the world, food becomes cheaper and more available to more people. Won't it be great when they can have McDonald's throughout Africa?
The Pax Americana, to me, is the dollar sign. It works. It may not be attractive. It's not pretty to see American businessmen running all around the world in plaid trousers, drinking whiskey. But what they're doing makes sense. Now it's been picked up more intelligently by the Japanese, the British, the Germans. But it brings education, health, and welfare to the rest of the world.
I don't feel particularly old, but I feel it in the morning when I wake up. Film is exhausting to make, it's a very tiring process physically.
You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate. We can't judge people as only "bad" or "good". [ Adolf Hitler ] is an easy scapegoat throughout history and it's been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect.
I agree with my father that the foundation of a healthy, prosperous and relatively free society is capitalism. The whole Alexander Hamilton idea of capitalism was to make the country grow, and he was essentially right that banks could be used to make the country grow, because we need capital and we need credit. And that is fundamental, and somehow people when they attack Wall Street so blindly, so ignorantly, they lose sight of that function.
J.P. Morgan merits enormous attention. He was a pharaoh. He controlled American business and governments in a way that's never been seen since.
[on Russia and China] When I was researching dissidents during the 1980s in the Soviet Union, there was a form of denial, which was that these people, who were very courageous people opposing the regime, were going to psychiatric institutes. The Russian people did not understand them and I felt very sorry for these people. I tried to do a movie about it but it could not get it financed. But I remember at that time researching the Brezhnev [former Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev ] regime how much of a hero Joseph Stalin was to the average Russian who did not really know about the great purges, and terrors, and famines of that period. Of the 1920s, '30s and '40s. Self-delusion of a population in denial is overwhelming to me still at my age. In China, which I've visited several times, I see a new generation, young people, crippled with amnesia. Unable to gain access to their own history. And then I see a generation my age, older people, men and women, and I'm amazed by what they've been through in their lifetime. Far more than I have, because they have lived a Lewis Carroll life, where it's been a 180-degree turn at the middle of their lives, at the age of 30 or 40 they've moved from collective Communism and worship of one god Mao, to a highly brutal competitive individual consumption and corruption in the name of another god: money.
[on Alan Parker ] Yes, I did say Alan Parker has no sense of humor, and this comment will haunt me for the rest of my days. But he doesn't, does he? Have I missed something?
[on his script for Scarface (1983)] Al Pacino intimidated me when I watched him in rehearsals, I saw how he turned Tony Montana into something very feral, something immigrant and hungry and decadent.
[on taxation] I pay 50% at the end of the day, it's a lot of dough. We work very hard, but we try to create things, we produce things. I think production is the key, I think producers should be encouraged. But when you're a speculator and you don't produce anything, that's where I think you should be taxed differently. I think there should be a bank tax. I think there should be a speculation tax, much higher. There's been proposals to that effect and they get defeated by the Republicans in Congress. I would put a tax on speculation because if you roll over stuff and you're just making money with money, like a casino, that's when you should really be taxed. A "Casino Tax", so to speak. But I don't really think taxing productivity is wise beyond a certain point. I'll pay 50%, but when you get to the 60% mark you're really dying, because you give jobs. My dad, who was a stockbroker, used to say, "No profit without production".
When I did Platoon (1986) in 1986, I was saying very openly that marijuana helped me survive the war. It helped me keep my humanity in a situation that was dehumanizing.
It's not a war on drugs. It's a war for money. There's too much money in it to back out now. Even if they taxed it, and they'd love to, there's so much money on the criminal investigation side with the DEA and the prison system. There are so many people in jail for drugs. They spend billions annually keeping non-violent criminals in jail, many of them drug users. How do you go back after forty years of tactics that haven't worked?
[on Taylor Kitsch ] He is very laid back. He's got that Canadian attitude. But he's a great athlete. He's a good boxer and apparently a great hockey player. At the same time he's powerful on camera. He conveys what in the old days you'd call a man's man.
You see a coarsening of society through war. If you think not showing the coffins that come back to the United States is a solution, that's not so. We have to be more truthful about the nature of violence.
I gave [my children] the best education I thought they could get... but I realize you have to go through some suffering and pain. People don't appreciate education unless they are an immigrant or coming up the hard way. It's a sense of entitlement.
I grew up conservative, remember. So I had a William Buckley view of the United States in the '40s and '50s - that we were good guys, and that we were moral, and that we were doing the right thing. And now I think, how did we become this bully - this international terror that dominates the world scene today?
I do feel that the Jim Crow laws are very important, coming back, by the Suprene Court gutting the Voting Rights Act. The gerrymandering that's going on in the states. I do believe that we owe this Republican legislature to that gerrymandering. And part of that is that ballot security issue. Every time... you've got have IDs for the poor and so forth. It's cutting out the blacks. They are really hanging on to... they don't want the Hispanic, Asian, black mixture to take over. I think that's what the Supreme Court thing is. I think that's what the gun laws are about too. The states want states rights. They want to keep the rules white. That's how I see this Tea Party.
I grew up conservative, remember. So I had a William Buckley view of the United States in the '40s and '50s - that we were the good guys, and that we were moral, and that we were doing the right thing. And now I think, how did we become this bully - this international terror that dominates the world scene today?
[on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy ] Like everyone, it was sad for the country. He was a handsome young man with a beautiful family, but the consequences of the act did not have meaning for me until later. Within four years I'd be in Vietnam as a ground soldier. And then as I got older, JFK's presidency became more important to me in retrospect than ever before.
[on his film Wall Street (1987) and its leading character, the reptilian Gordon Gekko] When I made the movie I thought greed was NOT good. But I learned people really like money. They like to make money. They will even admire the villain with the money - even when he breaks the law.
The Hollywood blockbuster is based on the idea of the conquering hero and that we are the exceptional nation, the indispensable nation, the rescuer of nations. But it's a fantasy, and people like Obama haven't really studied their history. They haven't studied cause and effect. Besides, the heroic narrative does not work because everyone thinks they're the hero, and then you end up with crazy heroes around the world trying to be a crusader.
I grew up living in the heart of the American dream in New York City. My father was conservative. I served in the military and it took several years after that of seeing the world from the point-of-view of people who were exploited and abused to change my perception. And my films have also taught me about aspects of life. With 'Untold History' I had the chance to really study and broaden my knowledge of the American past. And it's not the bill of goods they taught us in school.
Corruption surrounds us. It's in every part of the American organism now, from Wall Street to the military, to legislators and politics. It's endemic.
[on President Dwight D. Eisenhower 's warning about an expanding military-industrial complex] It's only gotten worse because the money has gotten much bigger. Now we're in an impossible situation where we find ourselves driven into wars, driven into a hundred and some thirty countries where we have military alliances, military bases. We can't seem to get out of it. I'm not sure that any one single man, one president, can do anything about it.
[on Talk Radio (1988) as a learning experience] I wasn't thinking of it so much as "my" movie as a chance to develop technique. Remember, I was a young director looking for new ways to express myself on film. (...) A lot of it was Robert Richardson and I learning how to use space by shooting in that tight little studio, which was cleverly built by [production designer] Bruno Rubeo . As you noticed, we used a lot of glass and reflections, bringing the lights up and down so that characters would appear and disappear, playing with different levels of reality within the studio. We got very comfortable with the idea of confinement on that set, which meant that then we could apply those ideas to a larger canvas when we moved on to Born on the Fourth of July (1989). There was a lot of location shooting on "Born..." and very little on "Talk Radio"; we did have the middle section with the basketball game and some scenes in cars, but all of that stuff in the studio was methodically shot. We shot it in around 30 days, and every one of those days was thought out to the max - boarded, rehearsed, with poor Eric Bogosian saying 40 or 50 lines of dialogue while moving and hitting marks. He didn't even know what marks were when we started, coming from the theater. We threw the first few days of rushes away, in fact, because they were so terrible. If you look at the movie we don't introduce him right away, you just see other characters and hear his voice for a while before you see him. (...) It's funny, because you can call it a small movie, but it has a muscularity to it and we really tried to push that as far as it would go. It contributed greatly to "Born..." and everything that came after it, because Bob learned a lot about lenses, and I fell in love with the split diopter. Bob didn't like it for some reason, but I loved it and I used it to death. I didn't care how crude it was, I loved the feeling of it. We built a three-sided set with a translight of the Dallas night skyline outside the window, and Bob used light banks with everything on dimmers so that the lights would come in and out at very precise moments, and he had to figure out how to deal with all of those crazy reflections. Often he would find magic in things that weren't expected or planned for, even though we very carefully designed our shots ahead of time. That was part of the discovery process. [2015]
Wall Street (1987) was an unfortunate situation because we fired [composer] Jerry Goldsmith . We paid him a lot of money, and I was unhappy with the music he had written. He was a big composer at the time, and he was really insulted, so I didn't make a lot of friends in the musicians' union when that got around - at that time, replacing a composer that way just wasn't done, I suppose. We were running out of time, and I liked The Police and had some kind of connection to Stewart [ Stewart Copeland ] that I can't quite remember, and he came in and did a nice job very quickly. [2015]
It's a dangerous world where one country [the U.S] is telling the world what to do, with the exception of Russia, China and North Korea. (...) Let's hope for a balance of power. [2016]
With Trump [ Donald Trump ], I hope that he has the good sense, because he's a businessman, that he would find a way to make a deal with Russia as well as China, and that would be better for everybody. [2016]
Mr. Snowden [ Edward Snowden ] said very clearly, that the mechanism is in place now so that when there is another terror attack, which inevitably there probably will be in this country, the next president, whoever he may be, will have the authority to really close down the system in the most oppressive way than it's ever been. [2016]
I'd point out to those of you who are struggling to be independent and to stay independent, that's the hard part, staying independent, I'd like to remind you that you can be critical. You can be critical of your government, and we've forgotten that. (...) The 1970s can come back, if you embody that in your own work. So don't go easy on what you think is wrong. Think internationally. There are other values beside our little little echo bowl we have there. [2016]
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What is Axl Rose's real name? | Oliver Stone Biography - life, childhood, parents, story, school, young, information, born, college, movie, time
Oliver Stone Biography
New York, New York
American director and writer
Oliver Stone is a writer-director of films with a flashy style that often deal with issues of the 1960s, such as America's involvement with the Vietnam War (1955–75; a war in which the United States aided South Vietnam in its fight against a takeover by Communist North Vietnam). He has won several Academy Awards as a writer and as a director.
Conservative background
Oliver William Stone was born on September 15, 1946, in New York City, the only child of Louis and Jacqueline Goddet Stone. His father was a successful stockbroker. Stone's childhood was marked by all the privileges of wealth—private schooling, summer vacations in France, and most importantly, a sense of patriotism. Stone's father was strongly conservative (one who believes in maintaining social and political traditions and who opposes change). When Stone was a junior at the Hill School, a Pennsylvania college prep academy, his parents decided to divorce. He discovered that his father was actually deeply in debt, which led him to question the values he had been taught. Stone entered Yale University in 1965, but he quit after only one year.
Late in 1965 Stone took a job teaching English at a school in Saigon, South Vietnam. He arrived there at the same time as did the first major commitment of U.S. troops, which were sent to help fight in Vietnam's civil war. Stone left after six months and returned home. While on his way back, he began to work on a novel, which he continued to work on during a brief stay in Mexico and another failed attempt at college. He was unable to find a publisher for it, and he then decided to join the army. Stone continued to work on the novel, which grew to eleven hundred pages. A Child's Night Dream was finally released in 1997.
Shaped by Vietnam experience
Stone could have avoided the Vietnam War by staying in college, but he joined the service and insisted on combat duty in an attempt to prove to his father that he was a man. He soon discovered that real combat was much different than he expected. "Vietnam completely deadened me and sickened me," he told the Washington Post. Stone was involved in several deadly battles. He was shot once and wounded by shrapnel (bomb fragments) another time, and he often witnessed the brutal treatment of Vietnamese citizens by U.S. soldiers.
After Stone was discharged and returned to the United States, he enrolled at New York University, where he began to study filmmaking with director Martin Scorsese (1942–). Stone decided he wanted to write screenplays and make movies. Stone graduated from the university in 1971 and within two years had sold his first project to a small Canadian film company. His first writing and directing effort was Seizure (1974), a horror story about a writer whose creations come to life.
Seizure did not make money or receive great reviews, and Stone entered a period marked by heavy drug and alcohol use. He finally pulled himself together in 1976 and decided to write a screenplay about his Vietnam experiences. Between 1976 and 1978 Stone wrote two stories on the war: Platoon, which was based on himself and other soldiers he had known in Vietnam; and Born on the Fourth of July, which was based on the autobiography (the written story of one's own life) of crippled war veteran Ron Kovic. No studio would touch either property; the scripts were considered too violent and too depressing. Stone's writing talents were recognized, however, and he was invited to work on other projects.
Oscars and controversy
In 1977 Stone was hired to write the screenplay for Midnight Express, a drama based on the true-life imprisonment of Bill Hayes in a Turkish jail. Many reviewers criticized the film's violence and accused it of racism (unequal treatment based on race) against the Turks. The controversy (open to dispute) helped the movie turn a profit, and it was also nominated (put forward for consideration) for five Academy Awards. Stone himself won an Oscar for his screenplay.
Stone then wrote and directed the horror movie The Hand (1981), and he wrote scripts for other movies, including Scarface. The film Scarface, which told the story of a ruthless cocaine dealer, offended some with its violence. For Stone, who had rid himself of a cocaine habit while writing the screenplay, it was a very important project. In an effort to exercise more control over his work, Stone then began making films independently. With the backing of Hemdale, a small British production company, he filmed Salvador (1986), based on the violence of the United States-supported Salvadoran army. Hemdale then gave Stone the money to make Platoon (1986). Stone used the script he had written in 1976 and the film won a number of Oscars, including best picture and best director.
Stone followed Platoon with Wall Street, his first big-budget project. Wall Street told
Oliver Stone.
AP/Wide World Photos
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the story of a young stockbroker and the ruthless older businessman who influences him. By this time Stone had found the money to film Born on the Fourth of July (1989). With Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise (1962–) as the raging Ron Kovic, who endures not only the horror of battle but life in a wheelchair, Born on the Fourth of July brought Stone yet another Academy Award for best director.
Stone explored the 1960s with The Doors (1991) and his most controversial feature, JFK (1991). In JFK Kevin Costner plays Jim Garrison, the Texas Attorney General who battled what the film views as a plot to cover up the real circumstances behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963). The film's mixture of dreamlike scenes and historical details angered many, but even his critics admitted that Stone's methods were effective. Stone returned to the subject of Vietnam for Heaven and Earth (1993), showing the war from the point of view of a Vietnamese woman. His brutally violent Natural Born Killers (1994), the story of two disturbed young lovers who become famous for their killing spree, was attacked for its casual treatment of violence.
Major step forward
Stone's next film was the story of another American president, Richard Nixon (1913–1994), who resigned in disgrace after the Watergate scandal (in which it was revealed that Nixon had broken the law by using bugging devices to listen in on the conversations of his opponents). With British actor Anthony Hopkins (1937–) in the title role, Nixon (1995) earned several Academy Award nominations. Many reviewers praised Stone's newly found ability to overlook his political beliefs and make a universally appealing film.
Stone's more recent film projects include directing U-Turn (1997), writing and directing Any Given Sunday (1999), and serving as executive producer of the TV movie The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001). In 2001 a Louisiana court threw out a lawsuit against Stone and Warner Brothers studios that claimed that viewing Natural Born Killers had led two people to shoot a store clerk, leaving her paralyzed. In 2002 Stone traveled to Cuba, where he spent seventy-two hours filming Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1927–) for a documentary (a completely fact-based film) on the country.
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